OVER 400 KILLED IN GAZA
The death toll from Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza on Tuesday morning (local time) now stands at over 400, the Hamas-run Health Ministry has said.
The Israeli military claimed it was striking “terrorist organisations” across the Gaza Strip, while Palestinian Health Ministry officials have said many of those killed in the strikes were children, the ABC reports.
The strikes on Tuesday came after attempts to extend the ceasefire in Gaza failed. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength” claiming the strikes were a result of “Hamas’ repeated refusal to release our hostages”. The statement also accused Hamas of rejecting “all of the proposals it has received from US Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators”.
The BBC reports Hamas has, in response, accused Israel of attacking “defenceless civilians”, and said mediators should hold Israel “fully responsible” for “violating and overturning” the ceasefire. The Guardian highlights Hamas also said the US “bears full responsibility for the massacres” in Gaza, after the White House confirmed Israel had consulted the Trump administration before the strikes.
Israel’s government spokesman David Mencer said the strikes were “fully coordinated with Washington”, while US ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea told delegates: “President Trump has made clear that Hamas must release the hostages immediately or pay a high price, and we support Israel in its next steps.” The US president has, at the time of writing, not commented on the strikes.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Foreign Affairs Minister Gideon Saar said the strikes were not a “one-day attack” and that the military operation would continue. The IDF has issued a number of evacuation orders across Gaza, with Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz saying “the gates of hell will open in Gaza”, warning Hamas would be hit with a force it has “never seen before” if the remaining hostages were not released.
Foreign ministries around the world have condemned Israel’s assault, including Qatar and Egypt — the main mediators in the ceasefire deal, The Guardian adds. The New York Times highlights Israel and Hamas were supposed to be holding talks on the ceasefire’s second phase, “which would end the war and free more hostages, but had seen little progress”.
While Trump has yet to comment on the deadly Israeli attacks, he did speak to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a 90-minute phone call, during which Putin agreed to a 30-day ceasefire on energy infrastructure in Ukraine.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted a readout of the phone call between Trump and Putin on X, which said: “This conflict should never have started and should have been ended long ago with sincere and good faith peace efforts. The leaders agreed that the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire, as well as technical negotiations on implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, full ceasefire and permanent peace. These negotiations will begin immediately in the Middle East.”
The statement goes on to say Trump and Putin agreed an improved relationship between their two countries has a “huge upside”, said to include “enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability when peace has been achieved”.
The Guardian says the Kremlin readout goes further and reports Russia “‘outlined a number of significant points’ requiring further consideration, including on ‘effective control’ over any ceasefire along the line of conflict, and Russia’s demand to stop mobilisation of Ukrainians and rearming of its armed forces alongside its broader request to ‘eliminate the root causes of the crisis’.”
The Kremlin statement is said to also include Moscow’s “key condition” that foreign military aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine “completely cease”.
DUTTON TALKS GAS AND REFERENDUM
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton will today say a Coalition government would move to grant approval for Woodside’s 50-year North West Shelf gas expansion within 30 days of an election victory, the ABC reports.
The national broadcaster says Dutton will on Wednesday announce a proposal for “fast-tracking” the WA project, claiming it to be of national importance. Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek earlier delayed a government deadline to the end of March on whether to green-light the project.
Dutton is set to say of Woodside’s planned expansion of the North West Shelf gas project: “It is of national importance that this project not be held up any longer by a government whose prime minister and minister would rather gain Green votes in inner-city electorates than approve good economic projects for the energy security of our nation.”
The Australian Financial Review says the pledge is among a number of measures Dutton will apparently announce to streamline resources project approvals, while the ABC reports the Coalition is also promising to limit the ability of protest groups to hinder approvals.
Yesterday, much was made of Dutton apparently considering a referendum to allow dual nationals to be stripped of their citizenship if they break the law. “If the prime minister of our country is not capable of having a debate and a conversation about the options available to us to keep our country safe, then I don’t think he’s worthy of his office,” he told reporters in Perth.
Many were quick to criticise the idea, with Dutton’s own shadow attorney-general Michaelia Cash saying the Coalition had “no plans to hold a referendum at this stage”, The Age reports. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also responded to the idea yesterday with: “Peter Dutton wants to talk about anything but the cost of living”, claiming the opposition leader had “no plans, just thought bubbles”.
Former attorney-general George Brandis wrote in the Nine newspapers (see The Commentariat below): “If the idea is under discussion, it is a very bad one. Dutton should rule it out, and fast.”
The Nine newspapers this morning also quote opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan as saying a Dutton government would add a section on antisemitism to the citizenship test. “We want to strengthen the test by placing a specific section within it which will deal with antisemitism. The rise in antisemitism needs to be dealt with and dealt with immediately, and we are looking, through the establishment of an antisemitism taskforce, to make sure we would address this as an absolute priority,” Tehan said.
Elsewhere, The Australian Financial Review says: “The Coalition is considering boosting defence spending by at least $15 billion a year, in a move that would put further pressure on the budget but heed the Trump administration’s warnings that Australia can no longer afford to shortchange the military.”
The very heavily trailed address to the Queensland Media Club by Treasurer Jim Chalmers yesterday was covered by pretty much everyone overnight. The Sydney Morning Herald reports the treasurer said “there will be fewer surprises on budget night”, but “meaningful and substantial” cost of living relief will be announced over the next few days.
On the theme of the economy, with regards to the latest on the next round of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, The New York Times reports Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has given an indication of what may happen next month.
Bessent told Fox Business that negotiations would take place with countries aimed at lowering foreign trade barriers or putting a reciprocal tariff into place. “What’s going to happen on April 2 — each country will receive a number that we believe that represents their tariffs. So, for some countries, it could be quite low. For some countries, it could be quite high,” he said.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
In a rather unfortunate series of events, a soccer club in Bulgaria has apologised for holding a minute’s silence for a former player who is, in fact, still alive.
The BBC reports Bulgarian top-flight team Arda Kardzhali mourned Petko Ganchev ahead of its match against Levski Sofia on Sunday.
Before the game had even finished, the club uploaded a post to Facebook saying it had been misinformed about Ganchev and apologised to the former player and his family.
“We wish Petko Ganchev many more years of good health and to enjoy the success of Arda,” the club concluded.
Say What?
Well so would you presumably — but then you shouldn’t have asked me to come on the program.
Malcolm Turnbull
The former Liberal PM replies to The Project host Steve Price telling him “obviously, Peter Dutton would like you to shut up [about Donald Trump and the tariffs] and so would Albo presumably”.
CRIKEY RECAP
The fact that it is the media, via McKenzie and teams of Nine journalists, who have now broken the two biggest stories of corruption and criminality in Victoria in recent years — Crown Casino and the CFMEU — rather than regulators and the Victorian police force, makes a mockery of basic standards of governance and accountability in our second-biggest state. Indeed, quite what the Victorian police do, apart from making Victorians the most intensely fined populace in the country, is a mystery.
The response of Premier Jacinta Allan — who held the infrastructure portfolio under her predecessor Daniel Andrews — was limp beyond belief. She announced that a new taskforce would be “established” — her word — to investigate the new allegations; it turns out the taskforce has been operating for nine months.
Victorian Labor is incapable of effectively dealing with the entry of organised crime into a key internal Labor powerbroker that has managed to capture the Victorian government and use it to deliver power and funding.
But what of the federal government? How is it protecting the interests of all Australian taxpayers, who have handed billions to the Victorians, some of which has likely ended up in the pockets of organised crime and bikie gangs? There are two issues the Commonwealth can and should — but almost certainly won’t — address.
Peter Dutton has an obvious explanation for his stalling popularity in recent polls. A (very expensive) smear campaign: “All I can do is be honest with the Australian people about the fact that we have a plan to get our country back on track. The Labor Party spent $2 million over the past two months personally slandering me because they don’t have a good story to tell themselves.”
Ah yes, the only explanation for consistent gold-standard content such as this scathing Instagram post where White Lotus characters say stuff about the Coalition leader — not to mention years of… this kind of thing — is that such hard-hitting campaigning costs $1 million a month.
We’re not sure where Dutton got this $2 million figure — he might be extrapolating advertising spend — but it’s hardly the first time politicians have used oddly specific numbers of dubious provenance in public debate.
If the PM cared about wild animal mistreatment, he’d stop his state colleagues issuing pastoral licenses to kill more than half a million birds — black ducks, wood ducks, corellas, cockatoos, lorikeets, grey teals and swallows. And nearly half a million kangaroos and wallabies, 3,558 wombats and 2,050 brushtail possums.
He’d be outraged that dingoes across Australia are indiscriminately poisoned, trapped and shot, despite the magnitude of documentation about dingoes’ essential role in Sovereign Custodian Culture, Story and Songlines, and the evidence that dingoes maintain ecosystems (including curbing kangaroo populations), positively impacting natural environments and farm management.
In NSW, remaining koala habitat is being aggressively logged, and Victoria has extended an order for the killing of threatened dingoes in the state’s east until 2028, at a time when populations have already dwindled to 2,640 — and despite dingoes being Indigenous Cultural totems and ecosystem engineers.
Australians are outraged about wild animal abuse, but media outlets let us down by tolerating major party politicians who’d have us believe they share our outrage. Their track record suggests otherwise.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Details of Albanese’s pre-cyclone fundraiser revealed (AFR)
Trump’s attacks on science are a massive blow to Australia. These numbers show why (The Sydney Morning Herald)
Bulk billing and Medicare will come up constantly in the election campaign. What are the facts? (Guardian Australia)
‘Insane and deeply wrong,’ Musk says of Tesla vehicles set on fire in Las Vegas (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
Germany’s Parliament approves Friedrich Merz’s €1tn spending plan (Financial Times) ($)
Everything you say to your Echo will soon be sent to Amazon, and you can’t opt out (WIRED) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Labor and the Coalition are demonising a hung parliament but they’ll only have themselves to blame if it happens — Sabra Lane (ABC): Let me spell it out in case party apparatchiks still don’t get it: if there is a hung parliament, neither major party has convinced voters they have their interests at heart or are listening and governing with policies that are relevant to their communities’ concerns or their own lives.
As my colleague Jake Evans has noted, the last hung federal parliament (or minority parliament) in 2010 passed more than 560 bills. More than the preceding Rudd government and Howard government of 2005-2007 — when the Liberal party had a majority in both houses of parliament. Whether those bills were good or not, depends on your politics. But it means the government has to persuade crossbenchers to pass those bills.
If independents and minor parties were a nuisance, voters would not return them to Parliament.
This referendum folly is as mad an idea as I have heard in years. Dutton must rule it out — George Brandis (The Sydney Morning Herald): Nevertheless, as party leader, he led the fight and, thank goodness, he lost it. It was probably his worst mistake. It was also instructive. In later years, after the Labor split strengthened Menzies’ political position and the Petrov defection elevated yet further public concern about communist treason, he resolutely resisted attempts, led by the voluble anti-communist WC Wentworth, to have another referendum.
Menzies had learnt from his mistake. Dutton should learn from Menzies’ mistake, too.
An unwanted referendum, without bipartisan support, to overturn the High Court? It is as mad an idea as I have heard in a long time. If it is indeed under consideration, that consideration should stop right now.