Australian news and politics live: Albanese claims Government knew about Chinese live-fire after pilot claim

Senator Thorpe told the room that she hates going to Parliament House but that she has to do it for her “people and for all our ancestors”.

Mentioning her protest during King Charles and Queen Camilla’s visit to her workplace in 2024, Senator Thorpe said: “It was my ancestors that threw me out into the middle there and told that king off, it was my ancestors that done that.”

Senator Thorpe shouted “you are not my king” at the completed of King Charles’ address in the Great Hall before being taken away by security.

“I am just the body, I am just the mechanism.,” Senator Thorpe added.

The Nightly’s Latika M Bourke reports Australian intelligence chief Andrew Shearer has labelled China’s unpredented warship presence off Australia as a “demonstration of Beijing’s increasing intent to project military power into Australia’s immediate region”.

Mr Shearer’s warning came as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was confronted on live television on Monday and told that he gave the public no confidence that he would encourage China to respect Australia’s autonomy.

China sent a task force comprising a destroyer, frigate and a supply ship to the Tasman Sea to conduct live-fire exercises between Australia and New Zealand on the weekend.

While the military drills are allowed in international waters, China did not provide sufficient warning for its drills, causing commercial pilots flying overhead to reroute — something the Government described as disconcerting and complained to China about.

Mr Shearer, Director-General of the Office of National Intelligence (ONI), said it was the first time that the Chinese had sent its Navy so far south and that it was a deliberate provocation aimed at testing and shaping Australia’s response.

Read the full story here.

Audio has surfaced of Senator Lidia Thorpe encouraging a room of Indigenous Australians to take on and “f**k the colony”.

“We need to start putting our own flags into our own land and f**k the colony,” Senator Thorpe told the room.

The audio, obtained by The Australian, captured Senator Thorpe’s address at a Queensland University of Technology anti-racism symposium in January.

“It’s the only way we are going to do it. We need to mobilise, we need to heal, we need to decolonise,” Senator Thorpe said.

“We need to take on the colony.

A member of the Bali Nine who spent almost two decades behind bars has avoided punishment over a charge of joyriding in a stolen vehicle dating from before he left Australia.

Matthew Norman was convicted of attempted heroin trafficking and locked up in Bali’s Kerobokan Prison alongside eight others, two of whom were ultimately executed.

Following his release and return to Australia, the now 38-year-old was charged with riding in a stolen car, in March 2005, when he was 18.

On Tuesday, Norman pleaded guilty at Waverley Local Court in Sydney and the charge was dismissed with no conviction recorded.

Read the full story.

Katina Curtis reports that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has defended the delay in approving the extension of the Woodside North West Shelf lifespan - and denied it was due to crossbrench pressure.

The Federal environment department has pushed back its deadline by a month for a decision on allowing the project to operate until 2070, citing a delay in receiving paperwork from WA counterparts.

The WA department took some six years to consider the application before making a decision in December.

But asked whether the Government was delaying a decision because of crossbench concerns, Mr Albanese gave a blunt: “No.”

​Read the full story here.​

The Coalition have accused Labor of “secret planning” to reinstate their proposed biosecurity levy which would have seen $50 million per year collected from the agricultural sector.

In senate estimates on Tuesday, National Party Senator Bridget McKenzie questioned something that had been on a parliamentary notice paper in the Senator’s last sitting week.

Labor Senator Anthony Chisholm, however, said the issue was off the table ahead of the looming Federal Election.

“We won’t be taking the biosecurity levy to the election,” Mr Chisholm said.

The proposed levy had been unpopular with farming groups and failed to get the support of the Coalition or the Greens.

Ms McKenzie claimed Labor had to be “dragged kicking and screaming” on the last day of the Senator to have it discharged from the notice paper.

“So please don’t spread misinformation to the agricultural sector that somehow the minister and you as her spokesperson here in the Senate somehow supported the discharge,” she said.

Anthony Albanese says defence were “aware” of Chinese live fire danger ahead of time, despite Airservices Australia claiming a Virgin Australia pilot was the first to alert a government agency.

Asked if he was concerned a Virgin Australia pilot had been the first to alert about the military exercise in the Tasman Sea on Friday - after testimony from Airservices Australia chief executive Robe Sharp at Senate estimates overnight - the PM says he’s spoken to the defence chief about what occurred.

“The Australian Defence (Force) were certainly aware … Australia has had frigates, both monitoring by sea and by air … of the presence in the region of these Chinese vessel,” he said.

The department of defence are due up before Senate estimates on Wednesday, where questions about the military exercise are expected.

Asked what role Australia might play in the ongoing Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations, Anthony Albanese says we’re not involved.

Despite that, he says Australia’s position is clear.

“We regard the struggle of the people of Ukraine as being a struggle between a country defending its sovereignty, defending its borders, defending the rule of law, a democracy in the Ukraine, versus an authoritarian regime that has breached international law, that has engaged in barbaric activity and attacks against infrastructure and civilians in Ukraine,” he said.

“This is an unlawful action by Russia. We have stood with the people of Ukraine, because their struggle is the struggle for the international rule of law.”

Labor had earmarked $5.5 billion in its latest budget update for the pledge, but hasn’t revealed where the remainder of the money is coming from.

Asked how Labor was planning to fund its pledge, Mr Albanese said: “We have gone through the budget line by line”.

“We didn’t do what the Coalition did, which was on Sunday say, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll just make this big commitment without knowing what it is, without seeing any of the detail before it’s even been announced’,” he said.

Anthony Albanese says Labor has gone through the budget “line by line” to account for the $8.5 billion Medicare package.

The significant investment, quickly matched by the Coalition, has come under scrutiny by economists who query how either side can claim to be financially prudent if they’re going to splash such significant cash without tinkering with the revenue base.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says cutting up to 36,000 public service jobs will cover some of the costs.

The Prime Minister says there’s no way the Coalition could do that without resulting in “less people providing support for our veterans, less people providing the support that Australians need, perhaps more robodebt being brought back as well”.