PUTIN COLD ON CEASEFIRE
We’ve made it to the end of the week, folks. However, in keeping with the theme of 2025, the news just keeps on coming.
In the last few hours, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he agrees in principle with the proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, but the terms need to be worked out.
The Associated Press reports Putin told a news conference with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday: “So the idea itself is correct, and we certainly support it. But there are issues that we need to discuss, and I think that we need to discuss it with our American colleagues and partners.”
US President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff is currently in Moscow ahead of US-Russia talks and will meet with Putin later on Thursday, The New York Times reports.
Also during his press conference, the Russian president declared: “We agree with the proposal to cease hostilities, but it should lead to enduring peace and remove underlying causes of this crisis.” The Guardian says that “could suggest Russia’s maximalist demands towards Ukraine and the US on [a] broader security environment in eastern Europe”.
The BBC reckons “he means alleged NATO expansion and Ukrainian sovereignty”. The British broadcaster also highlights Putin asking what the ceasefire would mean for the Kursk incursion and who would assess any potential violations, plus questions around whether Ukraine would be allowed to rearm and retrain its forces. As James Landale, the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent in Kyiv puts it: “None of which sounds like support for an immediate ceasefire.”
Responding to Putin’s comments, Trump has said he believes “things are going OK in Russia”. Speaking during a meeting with NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte, the 78-year-old said: “Hopefully they’ll do the right thing.” The New York Times reports that when asked if he will speak with Putin, Trump said he would “love to meet” and talk with him.
It wouldn’t be a Trump press conference these days without a dig at America’s allies, too. The BBC reports the US president went from saying he’d love to meet Putin again to saying the trans-Atlantic cooperation between the US and Europe on security matters was “unfair”. “We’re on the other side of the ocean,” Trump said of Europe. “And they’re right there”.
Which brings us to Trump’s threat earlier in the day to install a 200% tariff on alcohol from EU countries. Writing on his Truth Social platform, the American president said: “The European Union, one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the World, which was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States, has just put a nasty 50% Tariff on Whisky. If this Tariff is not removed immediately, the US will shortly place a 200% Tariff on all WINES, CHAMPAGNES, & ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS COMING OUT OF FRANCE AND OTHER EU REPRESENTED COUNTRIES. This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the US.”
Speaking during his meeting with Rutte, Trump called the EU “very nasty” and said of his chaotic tariffs regime: “I’m not going to bend at all.”
Last night, Australia’s ambassador to the United States Kevin Rudd told the ABC’s 7.30 program negotiations with the Trump administration for a potential exemption a second time round remain “tough”.
“This administration is more nationalist on questions of foreign policy, more protectionist on trade policy, and much more transactional in its overall approach to international negotiations,” he said. “These are deep-seated, fundamental changes in this different America, which every one of the 36 countries who negotiated tariff exemptions on steel and aluminium last time round, back in 2017, have had to contend with this time round.”
The former Labor PM said trying to negotiate with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had been “tough and hard, but we have delivered our arguments as equally firmly back so far”. Rudd also poured cold water on the suggestion Prime Minister Anthony Albanese managing to get another phone call with Trump (you’ll remember the Coalition wants to make a lot of the fact the PM was not able to get the president on the line) “would have necessarily made a material difference” to the tariff decision.
Guardian Australia highlights Albanese responding to the claims from the opposition that they could have definitely 100% got an exemption, even though no one else did. Speaking in Perth yesterday, the prime minister said: “When it comes to Peter Dutton’s response to the actions of the American government under the Trump administration, who’ve been very clear that they want these tariffs to apply across the board to every country. This is not Australia being singled out.”
On that theme, Brett Worthington over at the ABC calls Dutton “a man Trump couldn’t identify in a line-up”. Ouch.
TARIFF BEEF
The tariffs and everyone’s grandstanding about them has kind of been dominating everything overnight. The Australian Financial Review leads on the Albanese government persisting with using Australia’s critical minerals as a bargaining chip in ongoing negotiations.
The paper quotes sources familiar with the negotiations as saying Australia had given up on steel and aluminium exemptions (probably because, you know, no one got one). “The focus was now on avoiding tariffs on agricultural products and pharmaceuticals, which could be hit in a second wave in April,” the report states. Trade Minister Don Farrell is set to speak with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on Sunday.
The Nine newspapers are highlighting Australia’s farmers are “next in line to be turned into red meat” by Trump’s tariffs. The papers point out Australian exports to the US of steel and aluminium are worth a collective $1 billion, while lamb and beef businesses (of which 90% are family-owned) collectively sell more than $5 billion of goods to America.
The Australian says Farrell will later today “pledge to protect Australia’s $75 billion food export industry, including beef, wine and agriculture supplies to the US, amid fears of April 2 reciprocal tariffs”.
“The Albanese government has a strong track record on trade, and has shown that calm, persistent and quiet diplomacy pays off. We will be unrelenting in making our case to the US, and working tirelessly for Australia,” the trade minister will reportedly say.
As mentioned above, much has been made all week of Albanese and Dutton slagging each other off over the tariffs (Dutton has said any more tariffs would be a “disaster for our country”, while the PM has said Dutton is “undermining Australia’s national interest” and “choosing politics over substance”).
While they continue to bicker, the Australian Energy Regulator yesterday lifted the caps on how much retailers can charge for electricity, with power prices set to rise again from July, the ABC reports. The announcement comes less than two weeks before the Albanese government’s budget and a couple of months (max) before the federal election.
David Crowe writes in The Sydney Morning Herald of the rises: “Australians have been misled about power prices for years — and the fake claims will get worse now the election campaign is so close. The price rises unveiled on Thursday are proof of the deception because they show another spike in electricity bills after political leaders sounded so sure they could bring prices down.”
You’d think it would be a time for measured policies to counter hundreds of thousands of households facing higher power bills. Instead, Dutton has called for Energy Minister Chris Bowen to be sacked, calling him “a disaster”. But, as Guardian Australia highlights: “Dutton also declined to say whether he would back a further extension of $300 rebates for household energy bills, which the Labor government is expected to outline in its federal budget later this month.”
I suggested yesterday it had been a week to forget for Dutton and the commentary just keeps coming. This morning Guardian Australia carries two pieces, headlined “Peter Dutton’s work from home policy has many in Coalition ranks worried” and “Coalition offers mixed messages on insurance as Dutton faces internal criticism over lack of economic policy”. The Australian Financial Review has a piece titled “As Dutton falters, Labor polishes discarded budget”, while The Conversation asks “Will voters fear PM Peter Dutton would be a surprise packet?”
And latest YouGov polling apparently shows an “emerging trend shows improving satisfaction with Anthony Albanese and declining satisfaction for Peter Dutton”.
Reminder: the election still hasn’t even been called.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
For today’s Lighter Note I thought I’d take the opportunity to highlight the fact it’s GRIN2B Awareness Week.
I’ve shared before that my youngest daughter Holly was recently diagnosed with the extremely rare GRIN2B-related neurodevelopmental disorder and the challenges we as a family now face. Those with the condition are described as having “mild to profound intellectual disability and delayed development of speech and motor skills, such as sitting and walking. Some affected individuals never develop speech or the ability to walk on their own. Many people with this condition have weak muscle tone (hypotonia), which can contribute to the problems developing motor skills and lead to difficulty eating”.
There are only a couple of hundred documented cases of the condition worldwide and every medical professional we ever meet has never heard of it.
Therefore the awareness week and the work of the likes of GRIN2B Foundation has been so important to us and other families. So please excuse the personal element of today’s Lighter Note, I just wanted to shine a bit more light on GRIN2B and the amazing work being done by some wonderful individuals.
Say What?
I can’t wait for Australia to see the back of this individual, I don’t expect she will return.
Tony Burke
The Home Affairs minister was talking about influencer Sam Jones who has made headlines around the world after the video of her picking and running away with a baby wombat went viral. The backlash has been rapid and widespread. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese added: “Take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there.”
CRIKEY RECAP
Dutton is a serial risk to national security. Hyping the caravan plot is only the latest example why
Given that ASIO, under two different leaders, has repeatedly warned that undermining social cohesion makes its job harder, Dutton has pursued a political business model that he must fully understand risks national security.
True, that recklessness is not confined to Dutton. Under John Howard, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and now Dutton himself, national security has always been first and foremost a partisan weapon. Under those leaders, the priority for the Coalition was always less about keeping Australians safe than keeping them fearful and angry and in a constant state of anxiety that Labor would, to use Tony Abbott’s phrase, “roll the red carpet out” for terrorists.
Dutton’s difference from his predecessors is that he has made overt fostering of division and unabashed articulation of racism his key political weapons. If our intelligence agencies are to be believed, that inevitably means Australia is a less safe place.
Krayem is not concerned by claims unseating Labor MPs may lead to a hung parliament with Peter Dutton in the box seat, declaring it a scare campaign.
“It’s obviously something we’re mindful of, but the pathway for a Liberal minority government is really narrow,” he says. “That is currently being used to scare the community, not just our community but the community generally, into falling back into this pattern where you think you only have two options around voting, and that’s either the Labor Party or the Coalition… The current duopoly is not working.”
It’s worth noting MVM plans to endorse in Liberal-held Sturt, a marginal seat that’s grown increasingly progressive. Krayem can’t yet say who the group is endorsing, as it are still locking in commitments. But even a 2% Muslim vote could be enough to sway a seat held by 950 votes.
“Whether the Greens win it or Labor gets the seat, they’re going to need our 2%,” he says. “We’re more than happy to take a seat off the Coalition to demonstrate that it’s not just about numbers, that we know the political landscape and we can pick where our strategic impact will have an effect.”
The task of stamping out these applications becomes trickier as these applications find alternate, more obscure sources of financing and distribution. Cryptocurrencies have become a major source of funding, Gannon says, along with other “closed loop” financing like in-app and in-game currencies. An example ICMEC tracked was Fiwfans, a Thai-based “communication” platform that was dismantled in January for allegedly facilitating human trafficking.
While Apple and, to a lesser extent, Google can stop their users from downloading apps to their phones, Gannon says many now rely on websites that can’t be blocked at an app store level. These apps are promoted on adult websites by obscure advertising networks or posted by users to places like Reddit, so it’s difficult to deal with them in a top-down way.
Gannon lists three major methods to combat these apps: cut off their ability to turn a profit, stop them from being able to advertise, and inform people about the dangers of using these applications.
He says nudify apps have “distorted” the social norm of interaction for young people by removing any barriers to creating non-consensual sexually explicit imagery.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
UN experts accuse Israel of ‘genocidal acts’ and sexual violence as a war strategy in Gaza (ABC)
Universities accuse Trump administration of foreign influence (AFR)
Elon Musk’s Starlink could be used to transmit Australian election voting results (Guardian Australia)
‘I’ll have to bow and apologise’: Palmer admits mistake while stoking gender war (The Sydney Morning Herald)
Meta stops ex-director from promoting critical memoir (BBC)
Revealed: How the UK tech secretary uses ChatGPT for policy advice (New Scientist)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Disturbing Closing the Gap report shows there’s been little political will to address inequality in the wake of the failed Voice referendum — Isabella Higgins (ABC): Despite these states creating implementation plans for the new Closing the Gap framework just years ago, the political will to tackle these entrenched issues appears to have evaporated.
During the debate around the Indigenous Voice to Parliament in 2023, prominent “No” campaigners like Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price argued that governments should be focusing on addressing Indigenous social problems rather than constitutional reforms.
They argued tackling issues like crime and violence was the solution to the lack of equity and agency experienced by Indigenous Australians.
Now, more than a year on from the rejection of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, there’s been no groundswell of action to fix social inequity in communities.
Will voters fear PM Peter Dutton would be a surprise packet? — Michelle Grattan (The Conversation): No wonder some Coalition MPs are worrying Dutton has left it too late to release and flesh out much of his policy.
He contests claims of a policy vacuum, pointing to the nuclear policy, housing measures and some other initiatives.
Nevertheless, because Dutton has run a basically small-target strategy (nuclear apart) there will be a feeling among some voters that in government he could be a surprise packet. We know more of what he is against than what he is for, what he would do.
Many voters would recall Tony Abbott going out of his way to reassure people in the 2013 election campaign, and then unleashing the shock 2014 budget. A logical (and reasonable) question is, what would Dutton’s first budget be like?