Australia politics live: PM pledges $1.7bn Medicare boost; Leeser says Coalition’s Gaza policy unchanged despite Trump comments

PM says $1.7bn Medicare boost will increase federal funding for hospitals by 12%
States have been calling on the commonwealth to increase their share of public hospital funding.
That’s also come under pressure more recently, after the federal government negotiated to put foundational supports on to the states to reduce some of the federal funding burden on the NDIS.
Albanese says the new agreement means a “double digit increase in commonwealth funding” for public hospitals.
Under this new agreement, the commonwealth contribution to state-run hospitals will increase by 12% to a record almost $34bn in 2025-26. To give you some idea of what that means, in the Northern Territory, it gets the largest increase – a 30% increase as a result of the fact that they need this investment.
Key events
Health Minister, Mark Butler, says this is a “landmark” deal between the commonwealth, states and territories.
He says the hospital system is under very serious pressure around the country, particularly as the population gets older.
Because of increases in activity and demand for public hospitals and very big increases in the prices – largely due to wage pressure in the public hospital system – under existing arrangements, the Commonwealth share of public hospital funding is dropping. And without intervention, would drop substantially below 40% of the total hospital budget of our system.
He adds the PM had committed to reaching a 5 year deal for hospital funding with the states and territories, but wasn’t able to conclude the deal in time:
In part, because I think the WA government has now gone into caretaker and, unlike schools funding arrangements, we are not legislatively able to do separate hospital funding agreements with separate jurisdictions. It is an all-in arrangement.
PM says $1.7bn Medicare boost will increase federal funding for hospitals by 12%
States have been calling on the commonwealth to increase their share of public hospital funding.
That’s also come under pressure more recently, after the federal government negotiated to put foundational supports on to the states to reduce some of the federal funding burden on the NDIS.
Albanese says the new agreement means a “double digit increase in commonwealth funding” for public hospitals.
Under this new agreement, the commonwealth contribution to state-run hospitals will increase by 12% to a record almost $34bn in 2025-26. To give you some idea of what that means, in the Northern Territory, it gets the largest increase – a 30% increase as a result of the fact that they need this investment.
Anthony Albanese announces an additional $1.7bn in funding for public hospitals and health services.
This funding will be delivered to states and territories to help cut waiting lists, to reduce waiting times in emergency rooms, and to manage ramping.
PM offers condolences to family and friends of woman who died in Queensland floods
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is up, and begins offering his condolences on the two people who have died in the Queensland floods.
Sincere condolences for the family and friends of a woman who was found outside Ingham, 82 years of age. This is the second loss of life that we’ve seen in the Queensland floods. The Australian government continues to provide every support possible.
The prime minister will be standing up shortly in Canberra with the health minister, Mark Butler.
We’ll have more details on that soon, before we enter the slide down into question time.
Voters have choices outside ‘uninspiring red tie, blue tie’ system, Zoe Daniel says
The independent MP Zoe Daniel is speaking at the National Press Club today, on the role the growing crossbench has played in this parliament.
Daniel says to voters there’s now a “choice” that goes beyond the “uninspiring red tie, blue tie” two-party system.
She says the crossbench have been instrumental in pushing the government to act more on climate, gambling, antisemitism and social media restrictions.
The community independents on the crossbench have become the literal and figurative spine of the house. We have not been cowed by name-calling and mansplaining, by those heckling like schoolyard bullies in Question Time, nor by the outsized dirty tactics outside it. We have stuck to our promises to our voters that we would listen to our communities and do what was in their best interests based on the evidence and the best outcomes for most people.
… Anyone who says what have you done, well, how long have you got?
‘Not a policy we’ve put forward’: Leeser responds to Trump’s Gaza comments
Sarah Basford Canales
Julian Leeser, the opposition’s assistant foreign affairs spokesperson, says the party’s policy on Gaza hasn’t changed after US president Donald Trump announced the US will “take over” the Gaza Strip and “level” it.
Appearing on Sky News on Wednesday, Leeser said the opposition’s policy still ultimately backs a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians but only after hostages are returned and Palestinian authorities recognise Israel’s right to exist.
When pressed on whether Leeser believed that position was now redundant if the US takes control of the strip, he said:
Our policy is – we note that the president’s put this policy forward, but it’s not a policy we’ve put forward.
In a joint press conference with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said the “US will take over the Gaza Strip” and relocate Palestinians living there to a “beautiful area with homes and safety … so that they can live out their lives in peace and harmony”.

Jonathan Barrett
Mortgaged households record steepest living cost increases
Workers experienced the steepest living cost increases over the past 12 months, while self-funded retirees recorded the smallest rises, according to new inflation data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The annualised data for the December quarter is similar to the ABS’s benchmark consumer price index, although it also calculates the cost of mortgages on a household.
Given workers are more likely to have mortgages than other cohorts, their living cost increases have been more extreme during the prolonged period of elevated rates.
Worker households recorded a 4% increase last year, according to the ABS’ selected living cost indexes, released today.
“The most significant contributor to increases in employee households’ living costs was mortgage interest charges,” the ABS said.
Mortgage interest charges rose due to higher mortgage debt levels and the continued rollover of expired fixed rate to higher variable rate mortgages.
The official CPI was 2.5% for the same period.
Self-funded retiree households saw costs rise by 2.5% in 2024, in line with the benchmark CPI, with the increases linked to price rises for recreation and cultural activities.
Government-funded energy rebates helped keep a lid on living cost increases, with the cohort consisting of pensioners and government payment recipients recording a 2.8% rise.
Senior Victorian MPs ‘don’t even understand’ bail law review, opposition says

Benita Kolovos
The Victorian Liberal shadow attorney-general, Michael O’Brien, also weighed into the confusion this morning between the premier and her police minister on whether a review is taking place into the state’s bail laws.
Jacinta Allan on Tuesday announced a review, to be led by the attorney general and police minister, while Anthony Carbines today told reporters: “I wouldn’t even say that there’s particularly a review.”
O’Brien said the two senior government MPs were “at odds”. He said:
They don’t even understand what this bail review is all about, and the reason is because it’s not a review driven by protecting the community, it’s a review driven by polls, politics and panic, and that’s all Labor has to offer.
O’Brien said the government should reverse the “wrong-headed, dangerous changes” it made to the Bail Act in 2023.
Unbelievably, it’s now no longer an offence to breach a condition of bail. It used to be an offence. Labor took that away. No wonder we’re seeing people on bail ignoring their conditions, because there’s no sanction for them.
(The government, however, introduced a new offence for committing a serious crime while on bail last year, which came into effect in December.)

Benita Kolovos
Victoria’s opposition swipes at Labor after Melbourne stabbing
The Victorian opposition spokesperson for police, David Southwick, has accused the government of failing to keep people safe following a stabbing in South Yarra.
Police say they are investigating the stabbing of a man by an unknown person on Chapel Street just before 8am this morning. It is believed the alleged offender is known to the victim, who was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
It comes just days before the Prahran electorate, which takes in Chapel Street, goes to a byelection. Labor is not contesting, meaning it is a race between the Greens, who currently hold the seat, and the Liberals.
Southwick told reporters outside parliament:
The Allan Labor government is failing to keep Victorians safe, and we’re seeing that from a lack of investment in law and order in this state, whether it is police being underfunded, courts being overcrowded, prisons being empty, and ultimately, criminals on the streets committing absolute havoc.
When will this end? We’re seeing today a violent attack in Chapel Street Prahran. And our thoughts are with the victim and their families right now we saw also overnight, two cars stolen … These are offences that ultimately will lead to the loss of lives, and we are pleading with the other Labor government to do more and make law and order an absolute priority in this state.
This morning, Anthony Albanese attended an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the SBS at Parliament House, and posed for some photos:

Josh Taylor
Cybersecurity agency welcomes government decision to ban DeepSeek from its devices
CyberCX, the cybersecurity agency that last week called for the federal government to ban Chinese AI DeepSeek from government devices, has welcomed the news today that the government is doing just that.
Alastair MacGibbon, chief strategy officer at CyberCX, said the government should now “instruct operators of critical infrastructure to ban DeepSeek on their devices too”.
This isn’t the first time we have had this conversation and it won’t be the last. Chinese EVs, security cameras, TikTok and now DeepSeek show that we are playing whack-a-mole with new technology products and services from high-risk nations.
Any smart device or software that requires an ongoing connection with the manufacturer in an authoritarian state like China raises difficult questions for western policymakers. These technologies are invasive in their data collection practices and can be weaponised against Australians by nations that might seek to do us harm.
We need to move the debate forward in Australia towards a high-risk foreign vendor framework for critical infrastructure, democratic institutions and government.
Australians ‘deeply shocked’ at Sweden mass shooting – Albanese
The prime minister has expressed condolences for the victims of a mass shooting overnight in Sweden, where 11 people were killed. Anthony Albanese wrote in a post to X:
Australians are deeply shocked by the shooting in Örebro, Sweden. Violence like this is as senseless as it is abhorrent, and our thoughts are with the victims and their loved ones.
Senate to confirm death of national environment watchdog

Dan Jervis-Bardy
Labor’s promised federal environment protection agency is poised to be officially killed off today, with the motion to formally “discharge” the bill from the Senate notice paper.
As we reported on Sunday, Anthony Albanese intervened to shelve the EPA indefinitely. The prime minister claimed Labor simply didn’t have the numbers to get it through the upper house, blaming the Greens and Coalition for torpedoing a 2022 Labor election promise.
But the Greens and environment groups saw things differently, accusing Albanese of capitulating to vested interests after Western Australian premier Roger Cook and the mining industry lobbied him to abandon a pillar of the “nature positive” reforms.
In a motion to formally “discharge” the bill from the notice paper, Labor will take one final swing at the Greens and Coalition for teaming up to “block” the legislation.
The motion moves that the Senate note the Liberals and Nationals “teamed up with the Greens and One Nation to block” a number of measures – including faster environmental approvals for businesses – and that under the last Liberal government, “the Liberals cut 40% from the federal environment department”.
The motion also calls on the Liberals and Nationals to “rule out any future cuts to the environment department”.
Faruqi condemns Trump moves on Unrwa and UN rights council
Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi has condemned US president Donald Trump’s decision to stop funding for the UN aid agency for Palestine (Unrwa) and withdraw the US from the UN human rights council.
Faruqi is urging Labor to condemn Trump over the decision, and says foreign minister Penny Wong should be calling her counterpart in the US to reverse it.
She’s also calling on the government to increase its funding to the aid agency.
Trump’s decision is an unprecedented attack on global human rights, international aid and the Palestinian people in their time of greatest need.
Slashing Unrwa funding will deepen an already dire humanitarian crisis, while walking away from the UNHRC sends a dangerous signal that human rights abuses will go unchallenged.
PM says fee-free Tafe bill is key to boosting Australian productivity
Anthony Albanese is up in the House of Representatives while it debates fee-free Tafe legislation.
The bill’s pretty likely to pass, and it’s a key pillar of the government’s cost-of-living and education platforms. You’ll notice it almost always gets a mention in speeches or press conferences by the prime minister when those issues come up.
Albanese says the bill is “one of the key mechanisms that we have to boost productivity” in Australia.
We know that public Tafe is so important – of course, the private sector have an important role to play as well. But if you don’t have a public Tafe system that is effective, then the system simply won’t be able to deliver what is needed for our economy.
Farrell says he’ll stay on message with US over tariffs
Trade minister Don Farrell, believes he’ll be “amongst the first” of countries to speak with Howard Lutnick, who is yet to be confirmed by the US Senate as the secretary of commerce.
Speaking to Sky News, Farrell says he’ll stick to the message we’ve been hearing that the US runs a trade surplus with Australia. He also says he wants to put forward the argument that all trade tariffs can have global impacts.
Interestingly, he mentions the World Trade Organisation (WTO), to which Australia brought a complaint against China’s trade tariffs on barley and wine in 2021. Farrell says:
One of the reasons, I think, that we were able to negotiate an outcome, a satisfactory outcome, [with China] particularly as it relates to wine and barley, was that we were prepared to withdraw our World Trade Organisation disputes in return for a fast review of those tariffs.
I think the World Trade Organisation will be important in this, in this process. The other thing I think we’ve done over the last couple of years is to diversify our trading relationship. So in that three-year period, we’ve got a new trade agreement with the United Kingdom. Our trade with the United Kingdom has doubled.
Victoria’s police minister contradicts premier on bail law review

Benita Kolovos
Following from the last post…
Carbines’ comments also directly contradicted the premier, Jacinta Allan, who yesterday announced a review into the state’s bail laws. He said:
I wouldn’t even say that there’s particularly a review. We’re always working on what more we can do to keep the community safe.
Carbines said he was “always looking at proposals” brought to him by police: “We’re not talking about some long-winded piece of work. This is stuff we’re talking about all the time. We’ve got plenty of stuff from the bottom drawer that I can pull out that will hold offenders to account. I’m doing that.”
He said he did not plan to consult with stakeholders as he knew their views.
Later in the press conference, Carbines admitted the government needed to work “carefully” on bail reform because they did not “want to make errors that have been made in the past”.
We’ve been held to account as a government and as a parliament from the coroner, from the courts, around what we need to do to not have collateral damage in the work that we do to hold serious offenders to account, but we can find a balance. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Carbines also said he was not “chasing shoplifters”, in an apparent reference to Veronica Nelson, who had been remanded in custody at the time of her death after being arrested for shoplifting and refused bail.