Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
A Listener Production. Hello, Sasha Barber-Gatt with you. Welcome to The Briefing. Tony Abbott is back on the front line of Liberal Party politics after being elected its federal president. But what exactly does a president do?
Chapter 2: What recent events have escalated tensions in the Middle East?
How influential are they? And could his appointment help rebuild the Libs or drive more voters away?
If Abbott sticks to the sort of bread and butter stuff of economic management and migration levels and things that are sort of a general concern... It wouldn't be too bad. If he starts wading into the culture wars and transgender issues, then that very scenario you outlined will come into play.
Our chat is coming up in the second half of this episode. But first, as always, it's time for the headlines with Chris Spirou on Wednesday the 3rd of June.
Hey Sash, we're starting in the Middle East where Israel and Hezbollah are continuing to trade fire despite Donald Trump's announcement yesterday that both sides had agreed to pause attacks. Israel struck around 30 locations in southern Lebanon while Hezbollah has been attacking Israeli troops inside the country and firing projectiles at northern Israel which the IDF says it has intercepted.
Lebanon's health ministry says at least 3,486 people have now been killed and since the country was drawn into the conflict in March when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran's supreme leader. At least 26 Israeli soldiers and one civilian contractor have also been killed in that time frame.
Now the attacks come as Donald Trump continues to push back on reports that peace talks with Iran have stalled. He's taken to Truth Social this morning to describe that chatter as false and erroneous. He said, no one knows where the peace talks will lead, but has told Iran now is the time to make a deal.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of changes to the NDIS for disabled Australians?
But Tehran is holding firm that any agreement must include Lebanon. Now, also, Chris, we are getting a little apparent behind the scenes look at how a call between Donald Trump and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went down. Now, we were told by Trump that it was a productive talk. But reports from Axios claim it was not a civil call at all.
Trump apparently said to Netanyahu, quote, what the F are you doing? He shouted at him. He said, you're effing crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me.
Chapter 4: What did Barnaby Joyce say at the anti-abortion rally in Sydney?
I'm saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this. So this, how Axios got access to this report? I don't know. It'd be interesting to find out. Maybe a source within the White House. But yeah, apparently things not all good between Trump and Netanyahu at the moment.
The one thing to take away from that is it does, the nature of this phone call at least, and if we do believe these reports, which, you know, Axios is very reputable, it does show the closeness of the Trump Netanyahu relationship. The fact that he can hop on the call and do this says something.
But also it shows that Trump's under a lot of pressure right now to settle this war, to get this war done and dusted, to have a peace deal. But it also shows just how much Netanyahu is willing to push that friendship and test that friendship.
Chapter 5: Why is Tony Abbott's return to the Liberal Party controversial?
So whether or not that phone call achieved anything... who can tell the strikes are still continuing. As to what's going on on the ground with troops at the moment, we don't know how that's advancing, how that's progressing. We haven't really heard from Israel on this this morning, but any updates that we do get, we'll keep you across it on the briefing.
Back home, the federal government's own Reform Advisory Committee has told an inquiry that changes to the NDIS will cause material harm to disabled Australians. The group, which is made up of disability representatives, has made a submission to a parliamentary inquiry, which is looking into Labor's plans to cut more than 200,000 people from the scheme in a bid to save billions.
It's criticised the reforms, saying any changes should have been made in genuine partnership with the disability community. The committee says savings could have been made instead through focusing on provider integrity, fraud enforcement and pricing reform. Right now, the scheme is costing more than $50 billion a year.
With projections, it would be supporting more than 900,000 people and cost $100 billion annually by the end of the decade.
Now, Labor's proposed changes include tightening eligibility criteria for participants, and that would see an estimated 240,000 people removed from the scheme. Now, the Human Rights Commission has also made a submission to this inquiry into the reforms proposed for the NDIS.
It says a two-week consultation period is wholly inadequate to properly understand how the changes will impact disabled Aussies. The Labor-led Senate inquiry will deliver its recommendations by the middle of this month after three public hearings.
Barnaby Joyce has addressed an anti-abortion rally in Sydney as activists threatened to campaign for One Nation on the issue. A crowd of around 2,000 gathered outside state parliament in New South Wales for the event, which was in support of a bill being debated today that would criminalise so-called sex-selective abortions.
Joyce told supporters to, quote, keep that fire burning for those people who can't stand up for themselves, and I call them people, they're not fetuses, end quote.
It doesn't win me votes. It's not a popular thing.
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Chapter 6: How does Tony Abbott's presidency impact the Liberal Party's future?
In a lot of areas it's incredibly unpopular, but that's what I believe in and that's what I'm going to stand up for.
That's him speaking on 10 there.
Now, the vote on the bill is set to be tight and it is the latest in a series of attempts to wind back abortion access since it was decriminalised in all states and territories almost three years ago. And it's not just in New South Wales we're seeing these attempts to wind back abortion access.
Yesterday in Queensland, there was a pro-choice rally over how abortion pills can be accessed, prescribed and administered. Now, that happened after Conservative MP Robbie Catter indicated he'd block a healthcare reform that would allow more nurses and midwives to give the drugs to patients.
Now, as well in South Australia, a former One Nation MP has proposed legislation to ban abortion after 25 weeks, even in cases of severe fetal abnormalities. Now, on the issue of the sex selective abortions, which is what last night's rally in New South Wales was all about. So there was a New South Wales health review in 2020, which found it happens rarely.
Of 15,973 abortions in the year to September 2020, 13 were done for sex selection. But of those, 10 were likely to be reporting errors, according to the review. And that's because the abortions happened at less than nine weeks when you can't reliably determine gender, Chris.
And the thing that campaigners have been coming out to say is that while we do have that on paper, are people really going to be reporting to health authorities that they're aborting a child on the basis of their gender? Probably not. As to the scale of this issue, I can't speak to it.
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Chapter 7: What criticisms have arisen regarding Grace Tame's new podcast?
I haven't looked well enough into this to speak to the scale of this issue, but it seems to be something that pro-life campaigners have found and are really running with at the moment.
Veteran broadcaster and ABC star Charlie Pickering has weighed in on the national broadcaster's decision to launch a new podcast with sexual abuse survivor and former Australian of the Year Grace Tame saying the decision is problematic. The four-part series called Autistic AF includes expert interviews and dives into Tame's experiences of being an autistic woman.
But the podcast has been slammed by critics who have accused the ABC of being tone deaf by signing on Tame, who recently faced criticism for leading a chant to globalise the Intifada at a pro-Palestine rally back in February.
How do you feel about the fact that they hired Grace Tame after all of that? I do actually think it's problematic. That's my personal opinion. As you would understand, um... And as a Jewish Australian, there is a complete misunderstanding of a lot of the words that are said and what the true meaning of them are.
And a lot of people are using words and phrases that have meaning well beyond what they think they do.
That was Pickering responding to questions by right-wing Israeli-Australian commentator Avi Yemeni there. Tame's podcast has launched months after she said she had lost speaking gigs across the country in what she described as an ongoing national smear campaign.
Now on the phrase globalize the intifada, if that's something that you're still not really sure what it means, we have deep dived it in the past. We'll pop a link to that in the show notes.
And changing pace now with an item dubbed the Franken-can named Australia's worst packaging in the inaugural Unpackit Awards.
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Chapter 8: What is the 'Franken-can' and why was it deemed problematic?
What is it, you ask? Well, it's a half-can, half-bottle drink container that is plastic at the bottom and aluminium can on the top and it's being slammed for being environmentally unfriendly and ineligible for container refund schemes or easy recycling.
Yeah, I only came across these not too long ago. Ditto. My strawberry matcha was in there. Yes, ditto.
Work put on a matcha cart for us and they were in these cans.
Yeah, and it's like this deliciously plastic thing and you can crack the can at the top so you still get that like very satisfying sound of like opening a can but it's a plastic bottle really.
Look, the Australian Marine Conservation Society and WWF Australia have established the Unpackeds to highlight the huge amount of plastic packaging used by Australians each year, and that's around 1.3 million tonnes. Other dishonourable mentions went to major supermarkets using plastic netting to wrap avocados and individually wrapped Mentos mints.
Right now, almost 60% of litter in Australia comes from packaging.
These are so unnecessary and I think that's the criticism because it's like cans, you can recycle. You can put them in a return and earn scheme.
You can squish them, play soccer with them.
Sure. Why have they invented a half plastic, half aluminium thing that you can't recycle?
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