You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker every morning to hear the latest episode. Just say play the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Tuesday, October eighth, another day, another dramatic shift in language from the Federal government on Israel. Health Minister Mark Butler has revealed his Jewish heritage and declared only Jews have suffered the brunt of social division since the October seven, twenty twenty three
Hamas attack on Israel. That story and all the fallout is live right now at the Australian dot com Au. Today, The Australian's national editor, debnih Shanahan says Anthony Albanezi's shifting to a war footing. He's trying to fix his stance on Israel and turn the heat on the Greens as the next federal election approaches at speed. That's today's story.
This will changed housing in Australia. It will benefit so many Australians.
I want kids to have a childhood. That's why we'll introduce legislation this year for a minimum age for social media. Together we can get this done.
You're paid super on your sick leave, you paid super on your annual leave, and there is no reason why it shouldn't be on paid parental leave too.
It shows why it's really important to have a tough environmental regulator, and it's one of the reasons that we're establishing a National Environment Protection Agency.
And tomorrow, together we begin the work of building a better future. He's one of the few people who has led a party from opposition into government. A handful of leaders have actually done that, so it is a great achievement for Antony Alberanzi.
Dennis Shanahan is The Australian's National editor.
Time has basically run out for the Albanesi government. The agenda that they set out. They've achieved a fair bit of their own aims, but a lot of that actually carries with it baggage from other sections of the community.
An election must be held by late May. That's more than six months away, but when you start looking at the logistics, it's not that long at all. Election campaigns have to run for at least thirty three days from when the writs are issued that is when the starting gun is fired to voting day, so that means the PAM would have to call a May election in late March or April, and that means time is running out to get things done in Parliament.
Look, I think that from what we've seen in the lead up to this final October sitting and then the final weeks in November is the government realizes it's not going to get much past the Greens and Coalition in the Senate.
Dennis, the government's biggest promise that most Australians would remember was housing. It got one big piece through Parliament, the Housing Australia Future Fund, but now it's struggling to get support for two big policies, a tax incentive for landlords called build to Rent and an equity sharing program called help to Buy. That's where the government kicks in part of the purchase price and owns a stake in the property. What's going on with those bits of the legislation.
They're not going to get a gender through. So what they're doing is saying, right, we are now going to put it up again and say to the Greens, we are going to embarrass you from time to time as every time you vote against this, we are going to tell the people you are against a housing bill which will give more housing to people on lower incomes. It's a political stage where at now I think we've passed the legislative stage.
Anthony Albanez, he prides himself on being a parliamentary tactician. Housing is something that the Greens say they want to fix for Australians. So what exactly has gone wrong? Why haven't they been able to bring the Greens with them?
Well, the Greens have wanted a whole series of add ons, particularly rent control. The government can't wear rent control. They flirted with doing away with negative gears during capital gains tax, and these are the things the Greens want and the Greens can say, look, Labor is just the same as the coalition and fight in these Green held and labor seats that the Green vote will grow as a result of that. Out in the wider electorate, it'll work against
the Greens, but it's only in these key seats. So I think what we'll see is the Greens just say we're going to stick with this. Let labour try and embarrass us. Wheell trial embarrass labor in the seats where it counts.
This coming Monday, October fourteen, it'll be a year since the Voice referendum.
This is a very sad moment in the country's history. I think it will be at least two generations before Australians are capable of putting their colonial hatreds behind them and acknowledging that we exist.
Dennis, could we say that the debate was worth having? This is maybe what Anthony Albanize might say that he put the question that we ventilated the issues, we had a big national conversation about it and we got to a resolution. Is that how you would say it? Or was it actually a complete disaster?
My view is it was a complete disaster, particularly from Antheina Albanese's view. It was the first promise he made on election night and he did it in such a way that it never had a chance of getting off the ground. The way the government handled the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum was actually a disgrace. They did not try and convince people, they didn't try to bring people with them. There was no constitutional convention that there was
no referendum convention. There was no real debate. It was just telling people what they should do and if they didn't vote, they were racists. Now, I think that this was a failure obviously because it didn't get up, but it was also a bigger failure for Labor because it trained people to vote against something that Labour supported. Now that's a very dangerous element for the government going into the election.
That big sweeping statement on election night from Anthony Albanez. He said that he would implement the Ulary Statement from the Heart in full. Now, of course that would include a Macarata commission, a truth telling process and progress towards a treaty with Indigenous people. Do you see either of those being part of the election agenda next time? Or is it We're not going to hear about this anymore?
I think it's gone. It's as gone as far as Linda Bernie's gone back burner. Forget about it. We're not going to talk about it. He's already ruled out any possibility of any consideration of a Republican referendum. He has learnt his lesson about referendums.
Coming up. Why is the government changing its tune on Israel now? As Parliament Since this week, all the action will be live at the Australian dot com dot au, complete with analysis from our experts like Dennis To put it all in context. Join us at the Australian dot Com dot u. It's a year now, Dennis, that we've been living in the post October seven world. That is a new conflict in the Middle East, a new generation learning what it's like to see that part of the
world torn apart. How have you seen the government's messaging evolve over this year?
It was appalling to begin with, it only got worse and we're seeing signs now that they may have realized that they've actually failed on a whole group of principles, which is hurting their credibility in the public. More generally, this is about more than just Israel or Gaza or Lebanon or Hesbala or Iran. It has raised the element of anti Semitism in society and we have seen real division.
We are seeing a split in the social fabric. The government is being held responsible for this well, and beyond the foreign affairs area, what we are seeing is the need for reality to take hold in the labor government. So I think we'll see a big change.
Yeah.
So in the past two days we've seen Richard Miles say that Israel does have a right to respond, and then we've seen health Minister Mark Butler give a very personal and quite impassioned speech about his own family heritage and to say that it's only Jewish Australians who have suffered the extreme effects of antisemitism in the past year.
Do you think that that means that they're less worried than they were a few months ago about the impact that kind of language might have in seats in Western Sydney, for example, where there are a lot of Muslim Australians who care about this issue.
The polling on the protests has demonstrated a much wider opposition and discontent with the government's position on Israel, not because of the foreign policy ins and outs of right to respond, the right to defend, or where you can do it, or which rivit you can stop at. It's about how it's affected Australian society. And what Mark Butler is saying is what people have been saying for months. Of course, it is not about having an equivalence between
Islamophobia and anti Semitism. So what Mark Butler has done is actually mouthed what people in the public have been telling the government for months, and that is this is window dressing. And Mark Butler has called that out, and from my understanding this is a wider view within the government that it is not Muslims who are suffering in the large, it is anti Semitism which is the problem, and we must stand against that. This is a big shift.
They can't deny it. And the question remains is the policy that Penny Wong put out which so upset the Israelis that there should be an idea that a set timetable be applied to the formation of a Palestinian state, with or without the cooperation that is Israel. Is that still policy, That's the policy question that has to be addressed. What senior ministers are telling me is that at least
it's better late than never. But this is so much of the problem of the Albanese government that it takes them a year, literally a year, to come to a conclusion which has been obvious. They react eventually when they're pushed to a reaction, but it's too slow and it's not good enough. Yes, it might help them now in the next five months towards the election, but boy, it was hard work getting them there.
Dennis Shanahan is The Australian's National editor. All the fun of federal politics is live twenty four seven at the Australian dot com dot Au. Join our subscribers to make sure you're always the first to know