Benjamin Netanyahu takes criticism of Albanese to next level
NETANYAHU TAKES TO SKY NEWS
The diplomatic row between Israel and Australia ratcheted up yet again last night, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu using an appearance on Sharri Markson’s Sky News program to once more attack Anthony Albanese.
The AAP says “a furious Mr Netanyahu unleashed on Mr Albanese” during the 16-minute interview broadcast on Thursday evening.
“I’m sure he [Albanese] has a reputable record as a public servant, but I think his record is forever tarnished by the weakness that he showed in the face of these Hamas terrorist monsters,” the Israeli PM told Markson.
“When the worst terrorist organisation on earth… which murdered women, raped them, beheaded men and burnt babies alive in front of their parents and took hundreds of hostages, when these people congratulate the prime minister of Australia, you know something is wrong.”
Netanyahu said Albanese, French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and other world leaders who have recognised a Palestinian state, or signalled they are going to, “are actually rewarding terror, they are saying it doesn’t matter what horrors you people do”.
The 75-year-old went on to say: “[Australia and Israel] had a great relationship over the years. I think it’s gone astray because leaders did not show the strength and conviction they should have when we’re fighting the war of Western civilisation against these barbarians.”
On Wednesday it was reported Israel was calling up 60,000 reservists ahead of its planned ground offensive to capture and occupy Gaza City. Israel’s allies have condemned the plan, with Macron warning it “can only lead to disaster for both peoples and risks plunging the entire region into a cycle of permanent war”, the BBC recalls.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said an intensification of hostilities and further displacement of Palestinians “risk worsening an already catastrophic situation” for the 2.1 million people in Gaza. The United Nations has previously warned Netanyahu’s plan to take control of all of Gaza, which is in defiance of global pressure on Israel to end the conflict, would have “catastrophic consequences”.
Earlier this month, Ramesh Rajasingham, the coordination director of the UN’s humanitarian office OCHA, also said the situation in Gaza had developed into full-blown starvation, declaring: “This is no longer a looming hunger crisis — this is starvation, pure and simple.” The Nine papers report the health ministry in Gaza said another eight people, including three children, had died of starvation and malnutrition in the previous 24 hours, taking the total to 235, including 106 children, since the war began.
The ministry says at least 62,122 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military campaign in response to the attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage, the BBC reports.
Speaking on Sky News last night, Netanyahu claimed: “We are on the verge of completing this war… when that happens, I think we will have tremendous opportunities to expand the peace. We will win.”
The broadcaster reports the Israeli leader also said he would order the military into Gaza even if Hamas agreed to a last-minute ceasefire deal. “We’re gonna do that [go into Gaza] anyway. There was never a question that we’re not going to leave Hamas there. I think President Trump put it best, he says Hamas has to disappear from Gaza. It’s like leaving the SS in Germany. You know, you clear out most of Germany, but you leave out Berlin with the SS and the Nazi core there,” he said.
“But I’ve said that this war could end today. It can end if Hamas lays down its arms and releases the remaining 50 hostages, at least 20 of which are alive, and that’s our goal to get all the hostages out, to disarm Hamas, demilitarise Gaza, and give a different future for Gazans.” Netanyahu added: “My goal is not to occupy Gaza, it’s to free Gaza.”
The Nine papers pick out other lines from Markson’s interview, including the Israeli PM’s claim Australia risked being engulfed in a “tsunami of antisemitism”. The report flags the comments came “despite direct pleas for him to calm down from Australia’s top Jewish community leaders”.
A pro-Palestine march planned on Brisbane’s Story Bridge on Sunday has been in the courts this week after police launched legal action to stop thousands of people marching on the bridge as part of a national day of action, SBS News highlights.
Yesterday, a Queensland court blocked the march from going over the bridge, with Chief Magistrate Janelle Brassington saying she was satisfied police had established “a real and significant risk of safety”, the ABC reports.
Rally organiser Remah Naji said after the ruling on Thursday that the march would still go ahead at its planned starting point, but it was yet to be decided whether it would cross the Story Bridge.
Netanyahu told Sky News that pro-Palestine protesters should be “counteracted”, claiming: “[Protesters] should be defied by the leaders. And yet we see — not in America, I’m happy to say, because President Trump is standing strong — but in Europe, one country after another succumbing to them, condemning Israel that is fighting these monsters and is doing its best to avoid civilian casualties.”
After being told by Netanyahu earlier in the week that he was a “weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews”, Albanese said he did not take the criticism personally, adding: “I treat leaders of other countries with respect, and I engage with them in a diplomatic way.”
The Australian Financial Review reports frontbenchers and senior government figures said the vitriol from Netanyahu reinforced the government’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood, while Health Minister Mark Butler has called Netanyahu’s criticism of Albanese “frankly ridiculous”.
ROUNDTABLE: THE FINAL RECKONING
In domestic news, the two topics that dominated coverage this week — the government’s economic summit in Canberra and its plans for the NDIS — continued to generate plenty of headlines overnight.
The ABC recalls Treasurer Jim Chalmers concluded the Economic Reform Roundtable yesterday by saying he had “won support” for broader tax reform that addresses intergenerational inequity.
Chalmers told reporters consensus had been reached on 10 key priorities, from turbocharging housing supply to making AI a national focus to modernising government services, declaring the “hard work begins now”.
The Conversation lists the government’s 10 reform directions and the 10 “quick wins” that emerged from the roundtable, including abolishing hundreds more “nuisance tariffs” and reducing complexity and red tape in the National Construction Code.
On tax reform, Chalmers said: “There was a lot of support for trying to put a structure around the work that we will now do as a government … to really try and address three objectives in the tax system. The first one is about a fair go for working people, including in inter-generational equity terms.
“The second one was about an affordable, responsible way to incentivise business investment, recognising the capital deepening challenge that we have in the economy. And then thirdly, how we make the system simpler, more sustainable so that we can fund the services that people need.”
The AAP highlights business groups are now urging the federal government to act on the “goodwill” at the roundtable and follow through on the reforms discussed.
Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black declared: “It sets us a bit of a course for how we can go about progressing real action over the course of the next months and years ahead. It’s time for the rubber to hit the road.”
Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox added: “What we’ve got out of today and the past couple of days is a clear intent to tackle some of the bigger, thornier issues that the country is confronting. We’ve started on a pathway of making Australia a better place to work and to invest.”
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
A sheep named Kiki who was born with limited mobility and cannot walk has become a viral sensation due to her ability to drive a motorised wheelchair with her head and zoom around her farm.
“It took seconds for her to start driving it,” Deb Devlin, president of the Don’t Forget Us, Pet Us sanctuary in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, told The Washington Post. “It’s the greatest feeling to watch her doing it. She is incredible, and I never doubted her.”
A Facebook video of Kiki driving herself around has been watched over 6.5 million times and attracted thousands of comments. “Everybody online finds her so inspirational,” Devlin said.
The newspaper says Kiki also dances, makes music with a chime set and visits schools and meets children who have disabilities.
“When kids are so self-conscious about something that might be different in themselves, when they see an animal like Kiki who has so much against her physically but yet her personality just shines through, it puts things into perspective,” social worker and family therapist Ebony McGlynn said.
The picture of Kiki with her goggles on outside a high school last year is particularly fantastic.
Say What?
It’s been over 40 years since Australia’s last reduction in working hours — our society has changed, it’s time working hours reflected that.
Larissa Waters
The Greens leader has advocated for a shorter working week and called for legislating a right to work from home.
CRIKEY RECAP
The Wiggles’ teen social media ban lobbying exposes an uncomfortable truth about young kids and tech
In a battle over a law impacting the world’s wealthiest, most powerful companies, one voice pushing back against the teen social media ban in its current form has been louder than the rest: The Wiggles.
The company representing the colourful Australian children’s entertainment juggernaut has loomed large over the government’s plan to ban teens under the age of 16 from having accounts on social media platforms, now set to include YouTube.
The Wiggles — their management, not the skivvy-wearing performers — have repeatedly met with communications ministers, firstly Michelle Rowland last year, according to an email from YouTube’s global CEO, and now also Anika Wells.
Labor rightly moves to curb NDIS growth — but, erm, what about defence spending?
If done right, Thriving Kids will plug a gap in the current services that is driving parents — especially middle-class parents with greater access to and more skills for navigating care systems — toward the NDIS, filling the scheme with kids with mild disabilities better served with additional support in existing environments rather than bespoke (and more expensive) NDIS services.
With children, and especially boys, being diagnosed with autism as the biggest driver of the expansion of the NDIS, Thriving Kids — scheduled (optimistically, you’d think) to commence in 2026 and intended only for newly diagnosed kids, not existing NDIS clients — seems the best solution to the unsustainably rapid increase in NDIS costs.
Empty chairs, net-zero whinging and a pre-recorded Gina Rinehart: Dispatches from News Corp’s ‘Bush Summit’
Rinehart herself also addressed the summit — albeit via a recorded video message from her Bannister Downs Dairy property in south-west WA. Rinehart said that farmers and their families were “already suffering from net-zero ideology”, and that Australia “still being in the Paris Accord will saddle them with net-zero restrictions, paperwork and huge expense”.
CSIRO and BoM modelling shows that the Kimberley would be unlivable if the current emissions trajectory were maintained.
Rinehart said she hoped journalists “call on our government to excuse this essential industry from the Paris Accord as a priority”.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
LNP convention to farewell party architect, president (AAP)
US factory in Ukraine hit in largest Russian air attack for weeks (The Financial Times) ($)
NY appeals court voids the roughly $500 million civil fraud penalty against Trump (CNN)
Pope Leo XIV to travel to Lebanon in likely first international trip (BBC)
IRL brain rot and the lure of the Labubu (The New Yorker) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
A laundry basket of reform leaves a lot of washing to be done — Michelle Grattan (The Conversation): So what has this week told us about reform under the Albanese government?
The NDIS plan shows that a big parliamentary win can inject a degree of political bravery. If the government had been reelected with a tiny margin or in minority, would it have re-tackled the NDIS? And would it have done so in such a manner, without rounds of talks before the announcement?
In contrast to the approach on the NDIS, Chalmers has used his roundtable to present a masterclass in inclusive incrementalism.
It’s the question Albanese hates most, but the answer tells us much about him — James Massola (The Age): Albanese has not yet delivered anything like Howard’s signature achievement, though if the government can put the NDIS on a sustainable footing, that will be a huge accomplishment.
It’s that lesson about trust (and not rushing policy as the Rudd government did) that Albanese took to heart in opposition and is seeking to replicate in office.
What isn’t clear yet is what Albanese will spend his political capital on. Until he decides, people will keep accusing him of lacking ambition.
