Australia news as it happened: Albanese, Chalmers reject union push for four-day work week; Hamas welcomes Albanese’s Palestine state call, Trump declines to criticise PM

A culture of “act first, check later” in the Department of Home Affairs led to repeated mistakes causing almost every wrongful detention in a single year, including an Australian citizen and a person who was held for 18 months before being released.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman revealed in a report on Wednesday that the department wrongfully detained 11 people between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, with officers failing to decide for themselves whether it was reasonable to detain someone in most of the cases.

Read more here.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky will visit Berlin on Wednesday to join German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for talks with European and US leaders ahead of the Trump-Putin summit later this week, the German government said.

Merz has convened a series of virtual meetings on Wednesday in an attempt to have the voice of European and Ukrainian leaders heard before a summit from which they have been sidelined.

Zelensky is due to meet with European leaders first, to prepare for a virtual call with US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance about an hour later.

A call between leaders involved in the “coalition of the willing” countries prepared to help police any future peace agreement will take place last.

Trump has said he wants to see whether Putin is serious about ending the war, now in its fourth year. Trump has disappointed allies in Europe by saying Ukraine will have to give up some Russian-held territory.

He also said Russia must accept land swaps, although it was unclear what Putin might be expected to surrender.

The Europeans and Ukraine are wary that Putin, who has waged the biggest land war in Europe since World War II, might secure favourable concessions and set the outlines of a peace deal without them.

AP

Consumers are stilling having to digest complex nutrition tables when shopping as brands thumb their nose at voluntary health-star labels.

Dietitians and other health experts are demanding health-star ratings be made mandatory to correct the dismal uptake of the guide.

Only one-third of packaged foods on supermarket shelves display the labels – a far cry from the federal government’s November target of 70 per cent.

People understood the concept of stars and could use it to make better choices, the George Institute for Global Health’s Alexandra Jones told reporters on Wednesday.

“Their ability to use it has been mostly limited by the fact that it’s only on a third of products,” she said.

Under the rating system, packaged foods can receive ratings from half-a-star to five stars, based on factors including their total energy value, saturated fat, sugar and fruit content.

The labels were introduced in 2014 in a joint initiative between the Australian and New Zealand governments. But uptake has fallen well behind schedule.

An estimated 36 per cent of products display the rating, about the same amount as four years ago.

A reason appears to be producers with low-scoring items choosing to not display the labels.
AAP

Staying with Tim Wilson on Afternoon Briefing, and the shadow finance minister was also asked about new data showing Australian wages are growing.

Fresh data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today showed wages rose by 0.8 per cent in the three months to June, and by 3.4 per cent in the year to June.

“This is the seventh consecutive wage growth that we have seen, that is positive, isn’t it?,” asked host Patricia Karvelas.

“What we’ve seen from this wage growth is that the government has been borrowing from future generations to prop up, particularly, public sector wage growth,” he replied.

“As a consequence, we have seen higher wage growth. Whilst this might be seemingly something the government can boast about, in practice, it is coming from future generations to pay for today.

“That isn’t the boast that anyone should be looking [at] with a sense of rosy optimism – it’s essentially the boast of a thief.

“The reality is the only sustainable way to achieve long-term, positive wage growth and improvement in standards of living is if you actually get the economy moving, and that is not what this government is doing and that is why they have called a roundtable [next] week because they have not fixed the root causes of the problem but borrowing from the future.”

“It could easily be contested they are not doing that,” Karvelas said.

Annual wage growth remained under 3 per cent for the entirety of the Coalition’s most recent nine-year term in power, according to ABS data.

Wilson’s comments continue the opposition’s attempts to attack the government’s credibility when it comes to financial management.

Yesterday, shadow treasurer Ted O’Brien said the RBA lowering its productivity predictions by 0.3 per cent suggested the bank had no confidence in the government’s economic agenda.

Staying with Afternoon Briefing, and shadow employment minister Tim Wilson was just on, accusing the government and unions of working together to make the government appear more moderate.

Earlier today, the Australian Council of Trade Unions said it would suggest a four-day working week for certain industries at Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ productivity roundtable next week. Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rejected the idea at separate press conferences a few hours later.

“The ACTU has put this plan out there to gaslight workers,” Wilson said.

“You have the union going and putting out ambit claims that the treasurer can come out afterwards and say, ‘we did not give the unions everything they wanted, we did not give businesses everything they want too’...”

“You think this is a deliberate theatre that the ACTU has cooked up with the government knowing it’s going to get knocked back?” Karvelas clarified.

“Resolutely, yes,” Wilson replied.

“Where’s your evidence?” asked Karvelas.

“The ACTU has already floated it, the government has already ruled it out. This is the reality of where these conversations go.”

Employment Minister Amanda Rishworth denied Wilson’s assertion when she appeared on the same show.

“I am not sure the thought process is going on the shadow minister’s head, he is obviously in a much different world than I,” she said.

“I engage across the board with businesses [and] with unions to talk about a range of different ideas. We work through what is possible.”

Earlier today, we broke the story that Hamas has applauded the federal government’s decision to recognise Palestine.

Employment Minister Amanda Rishworth was just on ABC Afternoon Briefing, where she was asked by host Patricia Karvelas if this worried her.

“It is not surprising – terrorist organisations use whatever to promote propaganda,” she replied.

“What our government is doing is making sure we’re working with the international community to sideline Hamas, remove Hamas from the process and make sure the pathway to a Palestinian state is one where Hamas has no role.”

Earlier today, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said there was growing momentum behind allies formally recognising Palestine, after he announced on Monday the plan to acknowledge statehood at the UN in September.

It followed countries such as the UK, France and Canada unveiling similar proposals.

With AAP

Earlier today, 150 teachers descended on Victoria’s parliament, and met with 47 MPs in what the education union is calling the “biggest lobbying event ever” by its members.

They were concerned about the state government’s plan to cut $2.4 billion in public school funding, by delaying its Gonski funding commitments by three years.

“Victoria is an outlier,” said AEU Victorian Branch president Justin Mullaly at parliament. “Every other state and territory is going to deliver full funding for their public schools.

“That means we won’t have the resources to support the best learning outcomes for our students.”

Education Minister Ben Carroll has previously said the Victorian Labor government has invested $35 billion since coming to office in 2014.

On July 24, months (or centuries) of oscillating agitations and insecurities in Southeast Asian neighbours Thailand and Cambodia erupted into armed clashes, killing dozens – possibly several dozen – on both sides of the disputed borderlands.

Too scared to go home even days after a ceasefire, thousands of Cambodian families huddle here in wooden wagons, unfolding themselves when space permits on hammocks and cardboard mats.

Watch this special report by our correspondents below: