Australia politics live: Labor senator Fatima Payman crosses floor to support Greens’ Palestine motion | Australian politics

So for anyone watching the Senate right now, here’s a quick rundown of what’s happening.

• The Greens put forward a motion to recognise Palestinian statehood.

• The Albanese government amended the motion to add “as part of a peace process in support of a two-state solution and a just and enduring peace”.

• The opposition added another amendment to Labor’s proposed changes, adding five preconditions to supporting the vote.

• First up, Labor and the Coalition banded together to force it to a suspension of the standing orders so that Labor could vote on it.

• Then Labor, the Greens and some crossbenchers voted together against the opposition’s amendment.

• Now it looks like the Greens and the opposition are voting together against Labor’s amendment.

If that last point happens, it means the Greens’ original motion will get put to a vote.

It says: “The need for the Senate to recognise the State of Palestine.”

Essentially, that means senators will be directly voting on whether Palestinian statehood should be recognised.

The Senate’s division bells are ringing after the Albanese government moved to suspend the standing orders in order to pass its amendment to the Greens’ motion to recognise Palestine as a state.

Labor and the Coalition are voting in favour of suspending the standing orders while Greens senators and the independent senator Lidia Thorpe are voting against it.

Senators David Pocock, Jacqui Lambie and Ralph Babet have joined the major parties.

The Labor senator Fatima Payman has entered the Senate chamber but is sitting on a bench for staffers and advisers. It appears she is abstaining from the vote.

Thorpe loudly chants “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” while counting the votes takes place.

“All complicit in genocide, everyone one of you,” Thorpe says, pointing to the major party senators sitting to pass the motion to suspend standing orders.

“Shame on you all, have a good night’s sleep,” Thorpe adds.

New governor general’s $200,000 pay rise is fair, republic minister says

Matt Thistlethwaite, the assistant minister for the republic, says the governor general’s $200,000 pay rise is fair, bringing it in line with the chief justice.

The government wants to pass legislation to increase the pay for incoming governor general Sam Mostyn to about $700,000 a year – about a 40% increase.

Asked about the potential raise on ABC’s Background Briefing, Thistlewaite said:

It is a pretty important job. It’s the representative of the head of state, with a significant role under our constitution. From what I understand, the pay is pegged to and related to what the chief justice of the high court receives. They are both pretty important roles.

The second point to make is previous governors general have had military careers and have been able to access military pensions. The new governor general, Samantha Mostyn, won’t be able to do that, so there is an element of that in it as well. We think it’s pretty fair.

‘There must be appropriate security guarantees,’ Liberal Senate leader says during Palestine debate

After the Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi finishes her speech on the motion for Palestinian statehood, the Liberal Senate leader, Simon Birmingham, steps up to speak.

As reported earlier, Birmingham is moving to amend Labor’s amendment to include another five “preconditions” that centre on Palestinian statehood only being recognised after the Palestinian Authority achieves reforms and agrees on Israel’s right to exist.

Birmingham says:

There must be agreement and a resolution on the status, including orders and rights of return. And there must be appropriate security guarantees between the two to ensure peace and security within recognised borders.

‘You should feel embarrassed,’ Greens senator tells Labor as she introduces Palestine motion

The Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi is on her feet now to introduce the Greens motion to recognise Palestinian statehood.

The NSW senator says it is “shameful” and “embarrassing” that the Labor government has not supported its previous motion to suspend the standing orders in order to debate recognising Palestinian statehood.

You should feel embarrassed that it has come to this. You refuse – you voted against a similar Greens motion in the house … The Greens are the only party here with a conscience, the only party that gives a damn about Palestinian [rights] and we will do all we can to drag the Albanese government kicking and screaming to take real action at the heart of recognising Palestinian statehood.

Faruqi says Labor members have cemented themselves as “an enemy” of Palestinians and “a traitor” of their own party.

They really are trying to water down a very simple straightforward motion to recognise Palestine as a state, ducking and weaving … trying to move amendments, rather than take a principal position – a position that is actually in their policy platform. You are playing political games while there is a genocide happening.

The peak national organisation for pharmacists, the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, says it cannot support amendments to the vaping reforms bill, which if passed would see pharmacists issuing vapes without requiring a prescription.

The PSA national president, Associate Prof Fei Sim, said:

Vaping is a public health crisis … PSA continues to strongly support the government’s intent to limit the supply of vaping and removing vapes from retail settings.

However, the amendment proposed undermines the role of pharmacists as health care professionals. The amendment – if it was to pass the Senate in its current form – asks pharmacists to prescribe unapproved, unregulated, untested vaping products to the public.

This would not represent a health model.

She said the PSA “cannot and do not support positioning pharmacists as retailers rather than health professionals”.

It echoes comments from the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, a lobby group which represents pharmacy owners, made earlier on Tuesday that pharmacies do not want to sell vapes outside of the prescription model, and that they were not consulted.

Greens will soon try to move Senate motion on Palestinian statehood

Over in the Senate, the Greens will soon attempt to move an urgency motion on recognition of Palestinian statehood.

The motion, to be moved by the Greens senator Nick McKim, says:

The need for the Senate to recognise the State of Palestine.

But as we reported earlier in the blog, the Albanese government has amended the wording of the motion to add “as part of a peace process in support of a two-state solution and a just and enduring peace” to McKim’s wording.

It’s understood the Greens will vote against the government wording.

To make things more complicated, the Coalition will attempt to further amend the federal government’s wording to include five “preconditions”.

The amendment, to be moved by the Liberal Senate leader, Simon Birmingham, will call to include:

• recognition by Palestinian representatives and the Palestinian Authority of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state;

• that there is no role for Hamas in a future Palestinian state;

• reform of the Palestinian Authority is achieved, including major security and governance reforms;

• agreed processes to resolve final status issues including agreed state borders and rights of return; and

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• appropriate security guarantees between parties to ensure peace and security within recognised borders.

Senators are now starting to filter in.

Brady Heywood has yet to complete its final report on the Queensland coal plant.

The forensic engineer Sean Brady has blamed CS Energy for a “failure to implement effective process safety practices” as part of the switchover.

His preliminary report blames four causes: a lack of DC redundancy, the battery charger, the automatic changeover switch and the loss of AC. It also notes the company was under pressure to save money and there were “likely competing tensions between cost reduction and process safety”.

It concludes:

The planning, execution, and decision-making around the switching sequence did not consider the risks associated with bringing the battery charger into service, without DC system redundancy and with the unit online. Nor was there any requirement in CS Energy’s processes to do so.

There should have been several backup systems – but all of them failed. It could have had a backup battery, but CS Energy had known since 2010 its coupling would not allow two batteries to be connected at once, the draft report found.

There is a switch on the DC system which automatically reroutes DC supply from another part of the plant, which is called the “automatic changeover switch”. But it had been damaged in a previous incident and did not work.

An emergency diesel generator which can restore AC supply could not do so – because DC supply is required to reconfigure switches on the AC system.

The plant’s systems were dark – including the unit’s cooling and lubrication systems – but the turbine continued to spin at 3,000 rpm using power it drew from the grid.

The unit overheated, and parts of the turbine melted and deformed, and the rotor shaft wobbled out of alignment. The shaft tore itself into pieces, splitting in nine places. Thirty-four minutes after the initial incident it caused what is referred to in the report as a “turbine missile event”.

A two-tonne piece of shaft was thrown 5 metres across the floor and a 300kg gear was fired through the turbine hall roof. Other equipment was thrown across the turbine hall, wrecking the unit.

It remains out of service.

The plant was still connected to the grid for about 40 seconds after exploding. An electrical fault in the wrecked generator caused an arc, drawing a huge amount of power from the grid, which was detected by its substation, which disconnected both from the grid. About half a million homes lost power as a result of grid disruption.

Nobody was injured or killed in the incident.

Part of Queensland’s Callide coal power station blew up due to “deficient” processes at operator CS Energy, which “actively removed redundancy” and left it without power, according to a draft engineering report.

Three parts of the report – authored by engineering consultancy Brady Heywood – were released on Tuesday, after sections were read into the record in a court case on Monday.

The incident happened on the afternoon of 25 May 2021 while a new battery charger was being installed, and was caused by the loss of both direct current (DC) and alternating current (AC) power. Operator CS Energy chose to do the installation while the turbine was in operation and spinning.

After its alternative source of power was switched off to switch on the new battery charger, the device failed to provide energy rapidly enough – because it was not designed to do so instantaneously, the report says. That caused a rapid collapse in voltage.

This led to a loss of AC power because a safety system responded as if there had been a failure in that part of the system.

Without AC power the DC battery charger shut down. Both AC and DC power was now off. Lights went out across the plant, including the control room.

The report says this entire process took less than two seconds.

CS Energy could become fully state-owned under Queensland Labor plans

The Queensland government will appoint special advisers to the board of CS Energy and conduct a review into the generation businesses it owns, it announced today.

The premier, Steven Miles, said Labor would also aim to take the company completely into state hands. It’s now half-owned by a private joint venture partner.

The review could lead to a restructure of other government-owned corporations CleanCo and Stanwell. Miles said:

These GOCs were created when we primarily generated our electricity using coal, so they are structured for the energy system of the past, we want to make sure our GOCs are structured for the energy system of the future, one that we believe should be primarily powered by renewable energy, and pumped hydro storage.

Despite pressure from the opposition to sack him, the premier backed the energy minister, Mick de Brenni, as “the minister best placed to implement these strong reforms”. The LNP has attacked the minister after the release of a damning report into the 2021 explosion at a Callide power plant unit.

The review – which will be led by Treasury – will report back in advance of the 2025 state budget.

Thanks Amy for steering the good ship blog on what has been a very big day for news. Still plenty more coming your way!

The team are continuing to cover off the day’s events and I will leave you in the very capable hands of Natasha May to take you through that.

Thank you to everyone who followed along on a very big news day – tomorrow looks set to be just as big, so I’ll be caffeinated and ready bright and early to guide you through it – so until then, take care of you.

Dieticians call for national nutrition standards in early childhood centres

The peak body for dieticians is pushing for nationally consistent nutrition standards in early childhood education centres, after national data released this month revealed that 96% of Australian children aren’t eating enough fruit and vegetables.

Dietitians Australia is calling on the government to prioritise stricter guidelines for managing allergies, stronger nutrition requirements, and more supportive eating spaces.

The Dietitians Australia president, Tara Diversi, said the changes should be part of the government’s upcoming Early Years Strategy, which she hoped would “start a national conversation on nutrition … and ensure the best possible outcomes when it comes to our children’s growth and development”.

She said early childhood centres provide a “major opportunity” to improve the diets of young children, as children “start developing their eating habits and cultivating their relationship with food” in preschool.

There were no nationally consistent nutrition guidelines, nor a requirement for early childhood centres to engage a practising dietician.

Diversi said engaging a dietician would also allow for children with disabilities, who struggle to access dieticians through the healthcare system, to receive nutritional support:

Now is the time to be having a national conversation about nutrition and how critical it is to ensure the best possible outcomes when it comes to our children’s growth and development.

Binskin reappointed as Civil Aviation Safety Authority chair

The retired Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin has been reappointed by the government as chair of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (Casa) board for three years.

Catherine King says Binskin “brings considerable experience in the fields of aviation, corporate governance, program management, international relations and defence”.

During his time already served as Casa board chair, ACM Binskin has focused on implementing the statement of expectations issued last year, revamping the board for better performance and improving Casa’s technical capability.

These skills and his leadership experience will continue to be valuable in his reappointment as chair of the Casa board.

You may recognise Binskin’s name as head of a government investigation into the killing of Australian Zomi Frankcom and her colleagues in a World Central Kitchen convoy in Gaza.

The Greens will not be supporting Labor’s amendments to the motion Mehreen Faruqi plans to move to have the Senate recognise Palestine as a state.

Labor wants to add “as part of a peace process in support of a two-state solution and a just and enduring peace”.

The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, says:

The Greens intend to vote for the original motion that will recognise the State of Palestine immediately. Labor wants to water down this simple motion so it no longer immediately recognises Palestine, a cowardly delay tactic to avoid doing what they promised at the election.

Labor must put pressure on the extremist Netanyahu government to stop this genocidal invasion, and that can start today by joining the majority of countries in the world that recognise the State of Palestine.

Here is how Mike Bowers saw QT:

Assange deal ‘an enormously heartening development’, Wilson says

The Labor MP Josh Wilson has released a statement on Julian Assange, as co-chair of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group:

This is an enormously heartening development, and we recognise the next few steps are crucial and delicate.

We know it will be welcomed by the hundreds of thousands of Australians who have spoken-up and spoken-out from a position of principled concern for Julian Assange.

Over the last two years the Australian government has been a clear and steady advocate for Julian Assange, with this effort led by Prime Minister Albanese.

The cross-party group of Australian MPs has worked resolutely to raise the issue at home and abroad, culminating in the successful Parliamentary motion earlier this year that called for an end to a matter that has dragged on too long.