Follow live updates - Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast The prime minister has been asked if Australia has any plans to join the EU, after the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney , welcomed the offer of Canada becoming the EU’s first associate member. Anthony Albanese says “we’re a long way from Europe, of course”, but after it is pointed out that Canada is too, he says: Our relations, of course, are also in areas that Canada doesn’t have. So Asean, for example, and the centrality of Asean in our region is important. The Pacific Island Forum, where I was just a couple of weeks ago, is very important as well. Our priority when it comes to Europe and our engagement with the EU is, of course, Australia-EU free trade agreement. It was never going to be perfect, but in the legislation that we passed just in the last sitting fortnight, I can tell you … that already the eSafety Commissioner has used that strengthening of the laws to require some of the social media organisations to provide information to it, so they’ve already been compelled. Continue reading...
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Angus Taylor vows ‘one of the biggest cuts to immigration in Australian history’
The federal opposition leader, Angus Taylor , has vowed to deliver one of the biggest immigration cuts in Australia history and called Labor “socialist in all but name” in a bid to rally the party faithful, six months out from the New South Wales election.
In a wide-ranging address to the NSW Liberal party state council in Sydney on Saturday, Taylor admitted the previous coalition government had its shortcomings, but said Labor was “utterly failing the nation”.
For the past four years, we’ve had a government in Canberra which is socialist in all but name.
Taylor said it was “divisive” for Labor politicians to “stand in front of three different flags instead of our one national flag”, referring to press conferences where leaders would deliver speeches with the Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander flags alongside the national flag behind them.
After Labor unveiled its new immigration plan, which includes transforming a former quarantine facility into a new detention centre, and preventing international students from bringing their family members to Australia, Taylor offered to go further.