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Republicans take aim at News Bargaining Incentive
ESSENTIALS
- Republicans take aim at News Bargaining Incentive
- Exclusive: More than 700 job cuts at Home Affairs Department
- How AUKUS depends on Britain’s struggling submarine town
- Tom Rogers’ love for democracy sausage missiles
DRIVING THE DAY
THE VIBE IS: Relief.
What’s on the menu at the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge?
The end of the sitting session has finally arrived, with Labor and the Coalition striking deals to pass legislation on gambling, the NDIS and the News Bargaining Incentive. You wouldn’t know it from Question Time but it was a truly bipartisan week.
Yes, but: Americans for Tax Reform, the conservative group founded by Republican strategist Grover Norquist, is calling on the Trump administration to start an inquiry into the News Bargaining Incentive, which it frames as a “shakedown.”
Yes, but but: Expect Labor to face questions about the Parliamentary Budget Office’s forecast that national gross debt will reach $2 trillion by the end of the decade. The PBO also says the national fiscal position will likely remain sustainable, except in the most extreme cases.
NO CUT THROUGH LIKE A GUILLOTINE: One Nation won’t get a chance to progress their agenda on tobacco tax cuts in the Senate today.
Labor’s bill to expand powers to investigate illicit tobacco was tacked on to a guillotine motion passed by Labor and the Coalition earlier this week, limiting debate on the hot-button topic.
KEEP CALM, AND KEOGH ON: The Coalition has one sitting day left to hammer home demands that the Prime Minister cans a cap on payments for allied health care costs for veterans, or sacks Minister Matt Keogh.
The PM defended Keogh wholeheartedly yesterday and has extended an invitation to meet with the group of veterans and advocates who say they were snubbed and then brushed off by the Veterans’ Affairs minister.
Keogh did his best to appear contrite, cool, calm and collected, and little was said about the actual measure at the center of the political attack.
Rumors are swirling in the Parliament House coffee lines that the veterans criticizing Keogh aren’t all the ordinary punters they’re cracked up to be — and that some of the push against Keogh comes from what’s known as the “commercial advocacy sector,” a.k.a. organizations that operate for profit, promising to act for veterans to maximize their benefits claims.
What about the department? Defense ministers usually aren’t afraid to throw their departments under the bus, but Keogh wasn’t wrong when he referenced deteriorating trust in the Department of Veterans’ Affairs yesterday. This change was announced in May but is only coming to a head now. One possible explanation is a lack of stakeholder consultation.
And, then: There’s the $748 million that the government expects to save over three years by introducing the cap. Not a small sum. On the other hand, it doesn’t come into effect until July 2027, leaving time for a back-down.
BY THE NUMBERS
EXCLUSIVE — HOME AFFAIRS MAKES MAJOR STAFF CUTS
More than 800 staff have been offered voluntary redundancies, with at least 697 accepting, according to an update given to public servants earlier in the year, seen by POLITICO’s Miriam Webber.
The redundancies are part of a sweeping trend across the public service, but the Home Affairs numbers are significant. The mega department had 16,600 staff at the last count in Dec. 2025. (That’s headcount, not ASL, for fellow public service nerds.)
The breakdown of redundancies offered and taken shows 437 Home Affairs staff had accepted redundancies, including in immigration, national security and corporate areas, while 260 people chose to leave the Australian Border Force.
On immigration: 210 public servants accepted voluntary redundancies from the department’s immigration group, raising questions about whether the cuts will or have affected ongoing work on policy.
The department says: Not much, promising only an October update with final figures. No further offers are being made.
Know more?: WhatsApp on 0494 380 487 or email canberraplaybook@politico.com with anonymous tips.
THE PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW
TOM ROGERS — “THE DEMOCRACY SAUSAGE IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE MISSILE WE HAVE”
The former electoral commissioner, now a distinguished adviser to ANU Security College and Canberra Institute of Technology board chair, sat down with Playbook’s Miriam Webber in Queen’s Terrace Cafe.
There’s been a chorus of prominent calls for the University of Canberra to take over CIT — including Bill Shorten, Katy Gallagher, Jason Clare. What’s your view?
Obviously, the ultimate decision would be a decision for [ACT] government, it’s well beyond the board. But, if there are efficiencies and we can do this in a way where we continue to focus on our students and our teaching staff and it makes sense, it should at least be looked at.
Does something of this scale need to happen to secure the financial security of CIT and restore its reputation, given the chaos of the past few years?
The board is very clear that we need to make savings. I’ve been public: We probably need to cut about 10 percent. Just to be clear, that’s not 10 percent of staff; it’s 10 percent of expenditure. So we have to look at efficiencies in any case.
As electoral commissioner you talked about the agency being behind the eight ball legislatively when it came to dealing with the threats posed by AI. Do you see any progress?
There are some things well beyond the AEC that still need to occur, and the number one thing is still digital literacy for our citizens.
There’s been some movement in that regard, but here we are in August 2026, we still don’t have a national digital literacy program.
The only way for us to deal with these issues is to give our citizens skills on digital literacy, media literacy, and civics literacy, and we need to be doing that right now.
Do you see other big threats on the horizon for the AEC in terms of maintaining trust and integrity?
We had the year of elections last year, and we all predicted that there was going to be a tsunami of AI-based content, and it didn’t happen. The reason is it was too early.
But at the very end of last year, the Irish election was hit by a really clever deepfake of [Catherine Connolly] that was seen by 60,000 people before they managed to take it down.
Any final message to Playbook readers?
People just think elections are all about sausages and a school hall and a few old people handing out paper. But I’ve been thinking more about that, you know, and that democracy sausage is not just a defensive strategic weapon for Australia.
The democracy sausage is the most effective missile we have, because every time we run a successful federal election, and there’s the peaceful transfer of power, it’s actually a missile aimed at autocrats and dictators everywhere, which demonstrates democracy works.
IT’S A COMPLICATED SMALL WORLD: With Gordon de Brouwer starting today as ANU chancellor, an interesting triumvirate of figures in the robodebt saga is now in place running Canberra’s universities.
University of Canberra chief Bill Shorten was the services minister who called for robodebt action. ANU Chancellor de Brouwer was the man in charge of investigating the misconduct, and one of the prime targets for accountability was the now Charles Sturt University Vice-Chancellor and President Renée Leon, formerly de Brouwer’s close friend.
Attila Brungs, vice-chancellor and president of UNSW, is probably grateful his only Canberra connection is his time as a manager at the CSIRO.
CANBERRA MEETS WORLD
AUKUS ONLY WORKS IF BRITAIN’S SUBMARINE TOWN DOES
Barrow-in-Furness is being asked to deliver subs at an unprecedented pace, as it repairs decades of underinvestment in housing, skills and public services.
A House of Commons committee examining AUKUS went further, calling Barrow’s regeneration “too big to fail.” But a chorus line of critics and worried observers — from the British parliament to former cabinet secretaries and prime ministers — say delays in Barrow are not only possible, but likely, Mason Boycottt-Owen and Ryan write today.
Australia’s SSN-AUKUS fleet (the ones we get after the second hand Virginia class subs from the U.S.) will be based on a British design, and the first examples will be built at BAE Systems’ Barrow yard.
Because the first SSN-AUKUS subs will be for Britain’s own fleet — delays would put their nuclear deterrent that is most at risk.
Simon Case, the former head of Britain’s civil service who now leads a partnership dedicated to transforming the town, says Barrow went into decline after the end of the Cold War. It lost the capacity for continuous nuclear submarine production, and local residents are reporting the lowest life satisfaction in the U.K. The local college that feeds the shipyard apprentice pipeline was failed by Britain’s education standards body Ofsted in 2024.
While the workforce is now expanding, the shipyard has recovered faster than the place around it. Adding 3,000 jobs in a year would be hard for any town of 67,000. Ensuring a complex mix of graduates and apprentices, while building homes at four time the existing pace is … challenging.
Get it right and Barrow can claim to be the center of a British power revival, in its post-Empire, post-EU era. Get it wrong, and the central promise of AUKUS will go unmet.
Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy has visited Barrow twice and remains optimistic. His shadow minister James Paterson warns against fatalism, saying time is on Barrow’s side if swift action is taken.
If Barrow does not get more investment “we do not get our nuclear submarines, which are the cornerstone of this nation’s security. It is that simple really.”
Andy Burnham’s appointment of John Healey — a supporter of increased defense spending as Chancellor — has comforted Australian officials. After all, self-interest is the strongest political motivation.
QUESTION TIME
TOP LINE: “Why is Labor going slo-mo on UOMO?” served up by Helen Haines.
The Independent MP wanted to know why the government failed to progress its own legislation for nearly a year. The bill would require Telstra, Optus and TPG to require mobile coverage is “reasonably available” outdoors to all Australians.
Short answer: We’ve been a bit busy, but the UOMO will be back for consideration “soon,” Communications Minister Anika Wells said, in the politest tone Labor makes available to non-Labor MPs in the chamber.
Top Coalition targets: Keogh, who had to be defended by the PM after Taylor demanded he be sacked. Housing Minister Clare O’Neil has also been in the hot seat over rental prices, but thrives under pressure.
Oops: Amanda Rishworth accidentally declared the government had closed “the labour liar loophole” in an awkward slip of the tongue. She meant to say “labour hire.”
What next: Don’t expect any mercy for the Veterans’ Affairs minister at the final QT of the sitting session. He also happens to be the Defence Personnel minister, and the government just offered a 3 percent pay rise to Australian Defence Personnel for the next year — below the 3.8 percent inflation rate and the latest public service pay rise of 3.4 percent.
REALITY CHECK
PROPPING OFF: “What we do is not use people as props,” Industry Minister Tim Ayres said after a prickly question in the Senate. Greens Sen. Barbara Pocock asked what he’d say to Lou, a nurse struggling with costs after leaving a violent relationship, as rents rise.
Reality check: Labor regularly parades Australians who benefit from its schemes. Here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. (They’re the ones that took under ten minutes to find!)
PARTY ROOM
GREENS — THE KIDS AREN’T ALRIGHT: The Greens want kids to get superannuation — just as Labor’s National Conference called for last month — and will push a bill tomorrow. Currently, only kids who work 30 hours a week are entitled to super.
In this economy?: Jim Chalmers would have to find more than $400 million to fund the idea.
LIBERAL FREE SPEECH WARRIOR: Firebrand Sen. Alex Antic is pushing a bill to force journalists to “publicly disclose what they earn” and register gifts, like politicians are required to. This was, of course, announced on social media, but the freedom or die Senators did not allow his followers to comment or reply.
What the bill would actually do: Nothing about journalist salaries — it’s actually about creating a gift register.
For the record: Antic is paid a base rate of $239,270 annually — plus access to CommCars, generous travel allowance and the some of the best superannuation going.
REQUIRED READING
Assistant Technology Minister Andrew Charlton believes Australia may be able to tweak existing AI models easily and cheaply, rather than develop its own. But as David Wroe explains in the ASPI Strategist, there’s a catch.
The CSIS report — Rebuilding U.S. Missile Inventory: A Multiyear Project — is here, and you’ll want to read it after getting through the next item.
CANBERRA MEETS WORLD
GUNNED DOWN — THE WEST’S MUNITIONS ARE RUNNING DANGEROUSLY LOW
The Iran War fallout in Canberra has centered mainly on petrol prices, but its long-term impacts are worrying defense experts. A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies warned that by May, the war had depleted key munition inventories and that “created a window of vulnerability for a potential Western Pacific conflict.”
What next? Charles Edel, CSIS Australia chair, told Playbook the “significant drain” on U.S. stockpiles “will put missile deliveries to allies like Australia at a growing risk of delay — potentially exposing gaps in their defenses.” The U.S. had burned over 1,000 Tomahawk missiles in Iran by May, putting at risk the 200 Australia has on back-order.
It’s not clear whether — but it should be assumed — the U.S. will prioritize replenishing its own stockpiles over fulfilling orders from its allies.
Threat context: Former Prime Minister — and Xi Jinping expert — Kevin Rudd warns 2028 could be dangerous. There will be U.S. and Taiwan presidential elections, not to mention our own. “If a high-intensity conflict broke out in the Indo-Pacific, Australia would be dangerously exposed … Defence must shift to a pre-conflict mindset,” Coalition defense spokesperson James Paterson told Playbook.
A spokesperson for Defence Minister Richard Marles didn’t answer directly when asked if he’s concerned about the impacts of the Iran War. “(We are) moving at pace to establish sovereign missile manufacturing in Australia.”
Silver lining: Edel said this “validates” Australia’s $21 billion plan to boost domestic missile production by the 2030s. “What was once a gradual, decade-long buildup now needs to move at warp speed.”
PLAYBOOK FEEDBACK
On the AI and mining in our story Australia doesn’t want to be AI’s landlord
“This is the wrong characterisation imo. Mining is not the analogy, military bases are. On shore data centres are insurance against our own lack of sovereign frontier AI.” Lucy Mannering
On what to do about Question Time:
“I attended question time in 2023 where I was sitting next to a delegation from the German Bundestag who was there to see Australian democracy in action. After seeing the usual circus of Dorothy dixers, poorly worded opposition questions and ministerial fluff, they turned to each other and said “and they call this democracy?”
Australia could learn a thing or two [from U.K.] by having a single minister of duty for questions rather than the whole front bench.” Matthew Lillywhite
MEA CULPA: We referred to longtime and possibly recently departed Canberra Playbook reader Cheryl Kernot as a “minister” in her feedback byline yesterday. Kernot served only as a shadow minister, before losing Dickson to Peter Dutton in 2001.
AGENDA ASSISTANT
European Australian Business Council CEO Jason Collins will discuss the Australia-EU Free Trade Deal and Horizon Europe tonight. The speech kicks off at 7 pm in Deakin. Register here.
ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb will give the keynote speech at the Women UNLIMITED Summit in Sydney, where she’ll speak on “leading from conviction, not consensus”.
Australian Human Rights Act? Labor MPs are petitioning Dear Leader Albo for such an act, and will be handing over a petition signed by 50,0000 people to that effect, with an assortment of Greens and independent Federal MPs. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights chaired by Labor MP Josh Burns recommended an Australian Human Rights Act in 2024.
DEAR DOROTHY
What should I do if I see a Minister’s child burst into tears at being told he would be sitting in economy?
LOCAL CANBERRA
COMMUNITY CORNER
RADIO DADAA, SLAYING IT
The Fremantle-based radio station, which operates under the banner “Listen Differently,” came to Parliament on a tough morning — the day after budget cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme were announced.
But they had no trouble assembling a cast of 11 MPs and senators to join them in chatting all thing disability-related on the station. Josh Wilson, MP for Fremantle, whose father was a community radio DJ, reminded the crowd that “everyone has a story and there’s a place for every story.”
A persistent theme and question: Where is the art by disabled artists in Parliament and Canberra’s other national art institutions?
Tania Lawrence (Hasluck), spoke about her sister-in-law, the artist Anwen Handmer, who lives with muscular dystrophy and faces the challenge of figuring out how to perform in her new, and changing, circumstances.
Sen. Jordon Steele-John, 31, who uses a wheelchair, spoke about the importance of showing up in Parliament where decisions are made about people with disabilities by people who don’t understand those lives. “We get better stories” when journalists with disabilities get to tell news, and work by artists with disabilities is hung and presented in prominent places, he said, because then we get to see the complexity of life.
You can listen to Josh Wilson, Jordon Steele-John, Tania Lawrence, Zali Steggall, Carol Berry, Ali France, Alicia Payne, Mark Dreyfus, Paul Scarr, and Penny Allman-Payne on Radio DaDaa.
FAREWELL, TONY WRIGHT: After fifty years in journalism, the associate editor and special writer for The Age and SMH is planning to retire. Wright received heartfelt praise from Albanese and Taylor at the end of question time Wednesday. “Tony has never lost sight of his humanity, even in this place that sometimes does,” the PM said. Bravo, Tony.
SPOTTED: What do former minister Wayne Swan and Simon Birmingham have in common with former Olympic swimmer Michael Klim? They were all at Aussie’s yesterday.
TOM’S TOP TIP: We asked Playbook interviewee Tom Rogers for a Canberra recommendation, and he pointed to Manuka institution Kopi Tiam.
METEORIC RISE: Nine newspapers chief political correspondent Paul Sakkal has been bumped from the intermediate to advanced division in Parliament’s squash competition. #PrayForPaul
IN TOWN: Senate Twink, iykyk.
DID YOU KNOW? Senate staff operate a social club book buying system, leave you donation in the labeled tea cup. It operates out of the staff lunch room on the Senate ground floor.
MOVES
Interim ANU Chancellor, Dr. Larry Marshall, has retired from the uni’s Council.
BIRTHDAYS
Liberal Sen. Paul Scarr; W.A. Premier Roger Cook — don’t send flowers, send a guarantee on the GST deal; Jennie George, former Labor MP and the ACTU’s first female leader; Channel 7 political reporter and citizen of the year Josh Martin.
It takes a village. Playbook is brought to you by a global team today, including editors Dean Southwell and Joe Schatz.
