Pauline Hanson speaks at CPAC event at Mar-a-Lago
One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, has spoken at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) “circle retreat and gala” at Mar-a-Lago today.
Hanson confirmed to Sky News that she would be making the speech, and had attended Donald Trump’s Halloween party last week (which her office previously wouldn’t confirm).
The Queensland senator was also spotted in pics posted by CPAC sitting at a table next to mining magnate Gina Rinehart (who also attended the Halloween party).
The 2025 CPAC Circle Retreat & Gala kicked off with an inspiring evening featuring Sec. Kristi Noem and LA Gov. Jeff Landry, marking a powerful start to a week focused on leadership, freedom, and America’s future. pic.twitter.com/WXfiqkngtR
— CPAC (@CPAC) November 5, 2025
In an Instagram post, Hanson wrote:
It was refreshing to stand in a room where common sense still matters. Where strong borders, national pride, energy independence, and putting your own people first aren’t dirty words, they’re priorities.
In just one year, under President Trump’s leadership, America is turning itself around.
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Updated at 16.14 EST
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Cait Kelly
Community and Public Sector Union criticise employment services as ‘a complete failure’
The CPSU has said Australia’s employment services system are “a complete failure”, after Guardian Australia reported earlier this week only 11.7% of jobseekers secured long-term work last year, while billions of taxpayer dollars were funnelled into private providers.
The current employment services system is projected to cost taxpayers $8.2bn over the next four years, and is dominated by only a handful of providers owned by multinational companies.
The CPSU said providers have been caught engaging in unethical behaviour while taking taxpayers’ dollars. Melissa Donnelly, CPSU national secretary, said:
Privatisation has turned employment services into a tick-a-box profit-driven industry that rewards providers for keeping people in a cycle of unemployment, and these numbers are proof of that.
An 11.7% success rate isn’t success at all – it’s failure. Failure to support jobseekers, failure to meet workforce demands, and failure to provide value for money.
Australians deserve better than a system that punishes jobseekers while lining the pockets of multinational corporations. It’s time to end this failed experiment and bring back the CES.
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Updated at 17.32 EST
Tom McIlroy
More on bid to host Cop31
Climate watchers in Canberra have noted that Turkey’s vice-president, Cevdet Yilmaz, is headed to Belem, Brazil this week for the annual Cop climate summit.
Australia and Turkey are competing to host next year’s Cop31 event, and the race is coming down to the wire. The fact that Yilmaz, and not Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is headed to Belem could be significant.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is not headed to the event.
Australia will be represented by the assistant minister for climate change and energy, Josh Wilson, and later by the climate minister, Chris Bowen.
Australia has majority support to host the conference, but UN rules require consensus among member states.
As long as both Australia and Turkey remain in the race, neither side can be declared the winner.
That risks the hosting rights defaulting to Bonn, in Germany.
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Updated at 17.30 EST
Bill introduced to require streaming services to spend more on Australian content
Staying in the House where the CDC bill just passed, arts minister Tony Burke is introducing a bill to legislate a requirement on streaming services to have guaranteed Australian content.
The bill would force services with at least 1 million Australian subscribers to spend at least 10% of their total expenditure for Australia or 7.5% of their revenue on new local drama, children’s, documentary, arts and educational programs.
We should never underestimate how important it is for Australians to see ourselves on screen, it helps us to better understand ourselves and our neighbours and allows the world to see Australian stories … they are our greatest cultural asset.
[Australian stories] reflect and define who we are as a nation and make us recognisable on the international stage. Australian stories help make sense of our past, define ourselves in the present and promote our people, our creativity and our country to the world.
The content quotas was a promise by Labor ahead of the 2022 election, but progress seemingly stalled over uncertainties about how it could be quarantined from Australia’s free trade agreement with the US.
Burke says this legislation is “consistent with Australia’s international trade obligations”.
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Updated at 17.29 EST
Josh Butler
Australia continues last-ditch bid to host Cop31 in 2026
Australia is still pushing to win hosting rights for the Cop climate summit next year, with the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, and others continuing to make last-ditch diplomatic efforts to secure the bid.
The federal government wants to host a “Pacific” climate summit, but the hosting rights are determined by consensus, not a formal vote, and Turkey also remains keen to host the conference. Australia and Turkey have been discussing how to manage that, and whether hosting rights could even be partially shared.
It’s understood Wong this week again contacted her Turkish ministerial counterpart, Hakan Fidan, to try and break the impasse. In a speech to an international development conference last night, Wong said the Australian government “will continue to make our case to host the Conference of the Parties next year, in partnership with the Pacific”.
We recognise that the threat of the climate crisis – to livelihoods, security and prosperity – is most urgent for Pacific island countries.
As I have made very clear to my Turkish counterpart, and as Minister Bowen has made clear to his counterpart, and indeed as the prime minister has made clear to President Erdoğan: we remain committed to delivering a Cop that will elevate Pacific voices and put a global spotlight on the urgent impacts of climate change in our region.
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Updated at 17.16 EST
Government to pass Centre for Disease Control legislation
After passing through the Senate with amendments yesterday afternoon, the governments bill to legislate an AustralianCentre for Disease Control is back in the house to pass parliament.
Anthony Albanese is speaking on the bill this morning, and says he called for the establishment of an independent ACDC after Covid.
We must not forget one of the factors that saw Australia even more vulnerable to Covid and its impacts was [that] we hadn’t had a [pandemic] drill since Exercise Sustain under the Rudd government.
Albanese said the new CDC will be an independent statutory agency with a director general and will be in place on 1 January next year. On a lighter note (with a dig at Sussan Ley) he says:
You couldn’t ask for a more Australian acronym than ACDC Mr Speaker, though if this ACDC were to have a theme song, and I know raising contemporary music is dangerous in this house, it would have to be Highway to Hell.
When it comes to a vote, there’s just a couple of Coalition members in the chamber, who force a division despite the government’s overwhelming majority (“Good on ya,” one government member says).
As everyone else is filing in, Albanese can be heard joking, “What are the hidden messages in ACDC?”
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Updated at 17.20 EST
Watt prepares for ‘intense negotiations’ on environment bill over coming fortnight
Murray Watt has an uphill battle in getting the Coalition or the Greens over the line on his environment protection bills – but has been all smiles and positivity so far.
Speaking in the corridor a little earlier this morning, Watt said he’s open to amendments from either side and acknowledges that no one is going to get 100% of what they want.
But what, in his view, are the Coalition and the Greens seeking in their negotiations with him?
The Coalition are struggling to come to a position on this because of their internal dysfunction at the moment, but it is becoming clearer that they do seek changes to some of the issues that business groups have been raising, whether that be around the definition of unacceptable impact, the role of the EPA.
And equally, the Greens are seeking changes relating to climate change relating to forestry activities, so we’ll give some thought to all of those options. You know, we’ve still got two weeks to go before we come back here and I know there’ll be some intense negotiations between now and then.
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Updated at 17.03 EST
Victorian police chief forced to defend use of helicopters as wife’s flight revealed
Victoria’s police commissioner has been forced to defend his use of a taxpayer-funded helicopter after details emerged of another undeclared flight, AAP reports.
Mike Bush has denied allegations he and his wife misled taxpayers about the extent of his use of the police aircraft.
The controversy comes just weeks after he apologised for using the police helicopter to travel from Melbourne to Hobart for a meeting with his national and trans-Tasman counterparts.
It has since emerged that Bush’s wife joined a 10-minute flight over Melbourne on 28 June. The commissioner also took another undisclosed flight on 29 July.
Bush said he had only been on the helicopter once for non-operational travel, a decision that triggered his previous apology.
He said the July flight was deemed necessary to understand the unique technology of the state’s air-wing fleet. In a statement Bush said:
This day was organised with this in mind and provided me with a deeper knowledge of how our elite units work to keep Victoria safe.
To be clear, this flight was not for non-operational travel – it was to gain a very real understanding of how the Air Wing operates in the air which simply cannot be achieved from ground level.
Victoria police commissioner Mike Bush. Photograph: Ethan James/AAPShare
Updated at 17.01 EST
Melissa Davey
Record wait times for mental health patients
The latest Public Hospital Report Card: Mental Health Edition from the Australian Medical Association (AMA) describes how exit block, a shortage of inpatient mental health unit beds, a lack of investment in community and primary mental healthcare, and a lack of interoperable electronic patient records all result in time-consuming administrative burdens.
The AMA president, Dr Danielle McMullen, said: “An increasing number of patients are presenting to health services in acute mental health crisis, requiring urgent intervention and coordinated care.”
For many of these patients, a hospital admission is required and the journey through the ED (emergency department) is a daunting and overwhelming experience. Patients are facing long waits in bright, noisy environments that often lead to increased agitation and distress. Sadly, this can lead to either verbal or physical assaults on staff, with violence in public hospitals continuing to rise.
She said governments must focus on funding accessible, high-quality mental health supports in the community, and that there is also a pressing need for increased investment in the public hospital system.
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Updated at 16.52 EST
Net zero debate ‘chewing up so much energy’, says Bragg
Andrew Bragg, one of the Liberal party’s most vocal and staunch advocates to retain a net zero target – at least by the end of the century – hasn’t missed a day of doing media this week.
Speaking to ABC RN Breakfast this morning, the Liberal senator continues to push for a quick resolution, and come up with a plan to “reduce emissions but also to protect their jobs and to ensure the industry remains onshore”.
Bragg defends the process, and confirms that while senior members of the Liberal party room haven’t yet seen Dan Tehan’s report, the process is “almost finished”.
I think it now needs to be brought to a head and resolved, I think, because it is harming our ability to hold the government to account because this is chewing up so much energy.
I imagine we’ll see it soon because this will be resolved this parliamentary year, and as you know, we’re running out of runway.
Shadow minister for housing, Andrew Bragg. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAPShare
Updated at 16.51 EST
Barnaby Joyce says One Nation vote is ‘climbing up’
Is he staying or is he going, Barnaby Joyce still says he’s keeping his cards “close to his chest” on a possible move to One Nation, but seems to certainly have good things to say about the minor party.
On the Today show, he says the One Nation vote is “climbing up”, and that momentum on ditching net zero is building. But he says he’s still with the Nationals, even if he’s still not showing up to the party room meetings.
Joyce: I haven’t left. I’m still a member of the National party, have a look at question time.
Karl Stefanovic: Is there a chance you won’t leave now?
Joyce: I’m going to keep those cards up my sleeve.
(For someone keeping his cards up his sleeve, he sure does spend a lot of time in the media.)
Nationals member for New England, Barnaby Joyce. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Asked if he has any regrets over the debate on net zero, Joyce says there are “none whatsoever”. He also doesn’t believe the debate “blows up the Coalition”.
I don’t think it blows up Coalition. You can see what with where we went in the last election. It was not good and we had a policy at the last election that supported net zero and we got we got our electoral backside handed to us on a plate.
He ends the interview saying he’s got “no problems” with Liberal leader Sussan Ley and wishes her all the best.
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Updated at 16.40 EST
Home care waitlists to change ‘quite considerably’, health minister
Mark Butler says home care waitlists will change as a result of the extra 20,000 packages that the government was forced to bring online before the aged care changes started on 1 November.
On RN Breakfast this morning, the minister for health and ageing is asked what the current waiting times are for a home care package, but he says he doesn’t have the latest data.
I haven’t seen data in the last couple of weeks since we got the additional 20,000 packages out that we got in the last eight weeks to the end of October. We’ve got another 20,000 that are going out in the coming eight weeks as well. So we expect that to change the waitlists quite considerably. We’ve been looking at the assessment waitlists, as you would be aware, which are coming down, particularly outside of hospitals.
Host, Sally Sara, also pushes Butler on whether the assessments for aged care should be done by private providers – which the royal commission recommended against.
Butler says the government “inherited” a largely privatised system, with the states also doing some of the assessment.
We inherited a largely private arrangement outside of the hospital system, which, as I said, is largely for people requiring non-residential care. We’ve kept that in place, but we reversed the original decision from the Morrison government to privatise the hospital-based systems.
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Pauline Hanson speaks at CPAC event at Mar-a-Lago
One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, has spoken at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) “circle retreat and gala” at Mar-a-Lago today.
Hanson confirmed to Sky News that she would be making the speech, and had attended Donald Trump’s Halloween party last week (which her office previously wouldn’t confirm).
The Queensland senator was also spotted in pics posted by CPAC sitting at a table next to mining magnate Gina Rinehart (who also attended the Halloween party).
The 2025 CPAC Circle Retreat & Gala kicked off with an inspiring evening featuring Sec. Kristi Noem and LA Gov. Jeff Landry, marking a powerful start to a week focused on leadership, freedom, and America’s future. pic.twitter.com/WXfiqkngtR
— CPAC (@CPAC) November 5, 2025
In an Instagram post, Hanson wrote:
It was refreshing to stand in a room where common sense still matters. Where strong borders, national pride, energy independence, and putting your own people first aren’t dirty words, they’re priorities.
In just one year, under President Trump’s leadership, America is turning itself around.
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Updated at 16.14 EST
Caitlin Cassidy
Senate to debate Greens bill on universities divesting from ‘dirty industries’
A Greens bill that would require universities to divest from any partnerships with “dirty industries”, including weapons manufacturers, gambling, fossil fuel and tobacco companies, will be debated in the Senate this morning.
It follows a grassroots referendum led by the National Union of Students earlier this year that led to around 5,000 students voting for universities to divest from all partnerships with weapons companies.
It follows a report in Guardian Australia yesterday which found the Australian National University bought $138,000 worth of shares in Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer in March, despite an earlier pledge to not invest in controversial arms companies.
The Australia Institute’s recent Fossil-Fuelled Universities report found that 26 of Australia’s 37 public universities take money from fossil fuel companies, including Woodside, AGL and Santos, but the true extent of industry partnerships remains opaque.
The Greens deputy leader and higher education spokesperson, Senator Mehreen Faruqi, said “having these links to dirty industries betrays … the mission of academia”.
The rules are so lax that we don’t even know the full extent of these dirty partnerships, which is deeply concerning given the governance issues rife in the sector.
Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAPShare
Updated at 16.02 EST
James Paterson denies Nationals setting Coalition’s policy agenda
Having a very similar discussion to Jane Hume is James Paterson who is talking to Sky News.
Paterson says he would have liked the issue to have been sorted out by now, so the party could “focus our fire” on the government.
He also denies the Nationals are leading the Liberals on Coalition policy.
The National party are their own independent, sovereign political party, and they went through their own process to determine their position on net zero. The Liberal party will go and is going through our own process too, and you and your viewers will not have long to wait before we’re able to answer questions about exactly where we stand on those issues.
On another issue, on yesterday’s verbal brawl in question time between Jim Chalmers and Alex Hawke, Paterson responds to reports that “performance” did filter their way over to the lower house.
I thought the most interesting and telling thing was the way in which Jim Chalmers lashed out. He’s normally a very cool customer, but for him to lash out in such an extraordinary way yesterday shows how much pressure he’s under.
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Updated at 15.57 EST
