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Opposition leader Sussan Ley has been asked about a disagreement between State Liberal leader Basil Zemplias and Federal MP for Canning Andrew Hastie over net zero targets while touring WA.

“Both Basil and Andrew are outstanding colleagues of mine working with me on improving outcomes for Australians wherever they may be and Western Australia, with respect to Basil, and across the nation as a whole, with respect to Andrew Hastie,” she said while in Broome.

“Party members have meetings and conferences, and they’re entitled to pass the motions that they did. And I will leave that to those circumstances.”

Opposition leader Sussan Ley says she’s had a “valuable” time in WA during her trip across several northern Indigenous communities and expressed her hopes to reach Closing the Gap targets.

“It’s always valuable to come here. I visited WA 15 times as Deputy Leader, and this is my second long visit since I’ve become Leader,” she said.

“I talked about my personal interest in children going to school and early learning - these issues on the ground are very complex.

“We have to work with Aboriginal communities, that’s what I want to do.

“We want to work with the communities that understand where the solutions are.

“But we do want children to have the opportunities to go to early learning, to go to school, and to find the pathway through education that leads to a life with a real job in the real economy.”

Opposition leader Sussan Ley has said Treasurer Jim Chalmer’s productivity roundtable is “looking like a stitch-up”.

Speaking in Broome during her tour of WA indigenous communities, Ms Ley has addressed the three-day roundtable, which is expected to start on August 19.

“We’ve got proposals from the Productivity Commission, we’ve got proposals from the ACTU, and they’re all about increasing taxes on hardworking Australians. It’s looking like a stitch-up to me, this Productivity Roundtable,” she said.

And we want to make sure that this Government sticks to its promises when it says to Australians that it is there to ease the burden on them.

“But if you go to this roundtable, Jim Chalmers, and you’re looking for ways to raise taxes, then you are breaking faith with the Australian people.”

Senior Labor MP Tanya Plibersek has been grilled on if Labor will look to overturn new work-from-home legislation being introduced in Victoria to enshrine two days of WFH per week as a right or introduce it themselves.

Ms Plibersek said the Government supported working from home as long as it could be done “sensibly”, but the legislation was ultimately a matter for the Victorian Government.

“We’re making it very clear that we support work from home at a federal level as long as it can be done sensibly in negotiation between employers and employees,” Ms Plibersek said on Sunrise.

“We’ve got a lot of public servants, for example, who work a couple of days a week from home. It’s supported productivity.”

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan announced plans to legislate WFH protections for workers who could “reasonably” carry out their duties from home.

Read the full story here.

NSW Premier Chris Minns says his government will review the Supreme Court’s decision to permit the pro-Palestine march on the Sydney Harbour Bridge amid fears it establishes a precedent for future demonstration.

“Even those many people who were at the march on Sunday, and feel incredibly passionate about this issue, would accept that we can’t knock out the bridge every weekend,” Mr Minns said in a press conference on Monday.

While the Premier said he “accepted” the decision of the court to allow the protest, he reiterated that he does not want a situation where other advocacy groups expect the same platform.

“I need to weigh up public order, community safety, with the public’s right to protest, and no one should assume it’s open season on the bridge.

“We’re not going to have a situation where the anti-vaxxer group has it on one Saturday, then the weekend after that, Critical Mass takes over, then the weekend after that, an environmental cause…

“You’d accept that’s a situation that a big city like Sydney couldn’t cope with.”

Last week, Mr Minns opposed the protest as he warned the gathering of tens of thousands of people would cause “chaos” in the city.

Nationals’ leader David Littleproud has accused Anthony Albanese of “failing” diplomacy with the Trump Administration after Australia was slapped with a 10 per cent baseline tariff.

Speaking on Sky News on Monday, he said his “failings in terms of diplomacy with the Trump administration” was “raw to see”.

“I think the Prime Minister shouldn’t take any victory out of this,” he said.

“Obviously, we still need the Prime Minister to get over there and have a relationship with President Trump. Every other world leader of note has been through the White House to press our case.

“It’s important… that he gets himself to the White House sooner rather than later to make sure that we have a strategic partner in defence, but we also press the case, not just for Australia… to return to our rules base order of trade.”

Labor MP Ed Husic says the recognition of Palestinian statehood would undermine the terrorist organisation Hamas.

“On the point of whether or not this rewards Hamas, I would put it differently…I would actually say it fundamentally undermines them and undercuts their standing,” he told ABC Radio National Breakfast on Monday.

“And the fact that you’ve set up a state, reformed the democracy and the Palestinian Authority, demilitarised Hamas, I think undercuts it significantly.”

“So I would actually say for people who want to see Hamas removed out of the equation, this is the way to go. Recognition is the way to go.”

Labor MP Ed Husic, who took part in the pro-Palestine march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday, described the protest as a “tremendous example of a peaceful assembly”.

Speaking to ABC Radio National, Mr Husic said the demonstration sent a powerful message to politicians, many of whom have “underestimated” the depth of feeling among Australians regarding the crisis in Gaza.

Among the prominent figures marching alongside Mr Husic were notable figures such as Julian Assange, Bob Carr, Mehreen Faruqi and Craig Foster.

“It was a tremendous example…of people coming out in force to let governments know how deeply they feel and how much they want governments to act on the concerns they have, triggered by horrific images we’ve seen out of Gaza,” he said.

He added, “I think people in particular believe it’s just not right. Not only is it not legally right under international humanitarian law to treat kids in the way that they’ve been treated in Gaza, but it offends our values as people, and so people turned up in large number.”

“I think this is a wake-up call for Australian politics.”

Australia’s defence force is growing for the first time in years with applications rising and retention rates improving.

Defence enlisted more than 7000 full-time personnel in 2024/25, which is the highest annual intake in more than 15 years, and a 17 per cent increase from 2023.

The Federal Government aims to reach 69,000 permanent defence force personnel by the early 2030s and has introduced targeted initiatives to address declining recruitment.

Significant investments had helped support current defence workers and grow the force for the future, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said.

“In 2025, the ADF is now growing again for the first time in almost four years, (and) while there is much more work to do, we are confident these positive trends will continue.”

Read the full story here.

Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce says net zero is a “lunatic policy” that is hurting the poorest Australians due to increasing power prices.

“It’s outrageous, and it’s premised around this lunatic policy called net zero. We’re not going to achieve net zero. We are going to deindustrialise Australia. We are going to smash the Australian economy,” he told Sunrise.

Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek questioned Mr Joyce on his solution to cheapen energy prices.

“What is his alternative?... What is his plan? If he doesn’t want renewables, what does he want?”

“I will go back to coal-fired power,” Mr Joyce responded.

Mr Joyce also slammed the Productivity Commission’s report, which called for an expansion of the safeguard mechanism.

“It’s going to make it harder for manufacturing to come to Australia and heavy industries to come to Australia,” he said.