News update for Thur 13 Feb 2025

Your trusted guide to the top independent news and views of the day...

Feb 13, 2025

Welcome to your TrueNorth news update where every weekday afternoon we share curated articles from Australia’s independent news media sector.

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TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here | Also follow The Australia Institute's new Live Blog with Amy Remeikis

Crossbench sidelined as Labor strikes deal with Coalition on political donations and spending caps - The Guardian

The major parties have struck a deal to cap political donations and campaign spending, sidelining crossbenchers in a major overhaul of federal electoral laws.

The legislation was expected to pass the Senate on Wednesday night after the special minister of state, Don Farrell, agreed to several amendments to secure the Coalition’s support for his plan to strip big money out of politics.

Under the changes, the cap on individual donations would rise from the proposed $20,000 to $50,000 and the disclosure threshold would increase from $1,000 to $5,000.

Splits, fusions and evolutions: how Australia’s political parties took hold - The Conversation

Political parties are integral to the Australian political system, yet also largely absent from the Commonwealth Constitution itself. They are not entirely absent: a constitutional amendment in 1977 – secured, as required by law, through a referendum – ensured that a casual vacancy for the Senate would be filled by a member of the same party. But until then, in a system dominated by parties and especially by the competition of two major parties – Labor and Liberal – the document formally establishing Australia’s federal political system was silent about them.

Also read > Do parties win elections because of their leaders, or in spite of them? History shows it’s a bit of both - The Conversation

Lidia Thorpe: ‘We need to scrap Closing the Gap’ - 7am Podcast

This week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told parliament it must face up to the fact only five of the 19 Closing the Gap targets are on track, as he handed down the government's annual implementation plan. Pledging an $842.6m investment in the Northern Territory over the next six years, the prime minister said closing the gap is about acknowledging what’s working and what isn’t. The federal, state and territory governments, along with peak bodies, have committed to improving the lives of Indigenous peoples across 19 key areas including health, education, employment and justice – but more Aboriginal children are being taken from their families, more are ending up in prison, and suicide rates are devastangily high. Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe believes the widening gap is by design – and argues Closing the Gap targets should be scrapped altogether.

Listen to the 7am Podcast

Also > Removing babies is still harming First Nations families, almost two decades after the apology to Stolen Generations - The Conversation

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Michael Pascoe: Three decades of policy failure. Productivity Commission's housing shame file - Michael West Media

The latest Productivity Commission report on government services underlines three decades of housing policy failure that the LNP promises to make worse while Labor attempts to maintain the deficient status quo.

In a parliamentary fortnight awash with miserable politics, Senator Andrew Bragg tried his very best to land the title of asking the most inane question in either house.

The Coalition’s actual “shadow minister for home ownership”, Michael Sukkar, must have been too busy trying to gag Mark Dreyfus from speaking about the LNP politicising antisemitism, so it was left to Bragg, the shadow assistant minister, to waste the Senate’s time with a particularly dumb effort that he no doubt thought was smart, or perhaps even cunning.

Trump and foolish old men who redraw maps - Pearls and Irritations

It generally ends badly. An old tyrant embarks on an ill-considered project that involves redrawing maps. They are heedless to wise counsel and indifferent to indigenous interests or experience. Before they fail, are killed, deposed or otherwise disposed of, these vicious old men can cause immense harm.

To see Trump through this lens, let’s look at a group of men who tested their cartographic skills and failed: King Lear and, of course, Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte, and latterly, George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein. I even throw in a Pope. But let’s start first with Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump.

Coalition’s nuclear plan would consume an extra Sydney Harbour’s worth of water a year, Labor says - The Guardian

A Sydney Harbour’s worth of extra water will be needed each year by the Coalition’s proposed nuclear reactors, according to federal government analysis that opens a new front in the political fight over Peter Dutton’s signature energy policy.

After focusing most of their attacks on the economic arguments against nuclear, Labor will pivot on Thursday to warn of serious implications for water supply, particularly in regional communities.

Nuclear reactors require substantial amounts of water for cooling, with estimates showing a 1,600MW facility consumes roughly 2,000 litres a second.

Surge in solar, wind and battery investment sets pace for 82 pct target. Can Australia keep it up? - Renew Economy

The year 2025 might have got off to a shaky start, politically speaking, for the renewable transition but if the data on investment in solar, wind and energy storage in the final quarter of 2024 is anything to go by, then Australia is right where it needs to be.

This is the hopeful message from the latest quarterly investment report from the Clean Energy Council, which tallies the total number and capacity of renewables projects financially committed in the last three months of 2024.

A new report card shows inequality in Australia isn’t as bad as in the US – but we’re headed in the wrong direction - The Conversation

It’s hard to remember a time the United States seemed as tense and divided as it does today. That should serve as a stark reminder of just how important it is to monitor the health of our own nation.

Today, our new report card on Australia’s progress will be launched in Canberra. It assesses progress on 80 economic, social and environmental targets and models a range of policy shifts that could boost progress.

Rachel Withers: A hot box on both your houses: Why ‘double haters’ may hold the key to the federal election - Crikey

The Werribee by-election may be a new low for the major parties. But where are the so-called ‘double haters’ parking their votes?

Watching Saturday’s Werribee by-election results, the first thing I noticed was that Little River — a tiny booth in the district’s west and the first to finish counting — had recorded an impressive 10.5% primary for Legalise Cannabis, more than half what it delivered to the incumbent Labor Party.

Something was certainly smoking in Little River. But by night’s end, it was clear something was ablaze in Labor’s western heartland. The ALP primary took a massive hit across Werribee, yet few of its defectors lit up for the Liberals.

Tim Dunlop: The enshittification of Australia democracy - The Future of Everything

Once that two-party dominance is normalised, the stage is set for the sort of platform decay that is currently threatening Australia, which manifests in the sidelining of the common good in favour of consolidation of the power of special interests that major parties come to represent.

It is pure enshittification. Trapping people on the two-party platform rather than equalising the playing field so that true democracy—as genuine self-rule—can be enacted.

Mostly this process is hidden from us, deeply internalised by the political class, particularly the media, who have a vested interest in normalising it and keeping in place the structures that support it (and them).

Every so often, though, the fix becomes obvious.

Labor’s grubby broken donations promise proves urgent need for minority government - Bernard Keane for Crikey

The major-party stitch-up on political funding is a spectacular backflip by Labor — one that demonstrates why we need a minority government.

What a sordid mob this government is.

In 2022, Labor promised voters it would reform the awful Commonwealth political donation laws to require real-time disclosure of donations over $1,000. It was simple promise, to fix one of the worst elements of the current system, in which we can wait up to 18 months to find out who donated above $16,900.

At any time in the past nearly three years, Labor could have legislated that requirement. It would have passed easily with the support of the crossbench.

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