Albanese meets with Chinese premier at East Asia Summit
Katharine Murphy
Good morning from Cambodia. I’ll keep you up to date with developments at the East Asia Summit today.
The most significant news overnight is the prime minister Anthony Albanese has spoken to the Chinese premier Li Keqiang through a translator for about four minutes at last night’s gala dinner.
That’s a significant development given we’ve been playing a will they or won’t they game for the best part of a week. As they say in our business, more to come
Key events
Filters BETA
Australia well represented at Cop27 even without PM: Plibersek
Plibersek defended prime minister Anthony Albanese’s absence at climate talks in Cairo by saying he was still engaged with international leaders in our own region.
Plibersek said Albanese had gone “straight from parliament to the G20, Asean and the East Asia Summit”.
He’s engaging with international leaders at the highest levels on issues including climate change, but with a particular focus on our region.
It is important for Australia to have a good close relationship with the Asean nations. This is an opportunity for the prime minister to speak directly with a number of Asean leaders.
Plibersek said Albanese will meet with US president Joe Biden and that Australia was “well represented in Egypt” by Chris Bowen, Pat Conroy and Jenny McAllister.
Asked about what Australia’s performance at Cop will mean for its Pacific neighbours, Plibersek said the government had been working to address the “strategic vacuum” that had been created by the previous government.
We’ve been scrambling since then to reassure our Pacific neighbours that they can rely on Australia as a good partner.
One of the reasons that we want to co-host Cop31 with the Pacific community is to show that we can cooperate on issues around climate change. But we have other really fantastic opportunities for cooperation as well. Australia has always been a good defence partner in the Pacific.
We’ve worked with Pacific nations, for example, to help them protect and manage their fisheries. Such an important source of income for Pacific nations. But there is a real opportunity for us to to rebuild the relationships that have been allowed, I think, to languish a little under the previous government when it comes to the Pacific.
China key to action on climate change: Plibersek
Minister for Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek has told Sky News this morning that a planned meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping would be “good for everybody” if “constructive” talks were possible on climate change.
Plibersek said China emits “about a third of the world’s greenhouse gases” and that it was necessary to bring “these very large emitters into the tent.”
In the past, even when there has been, you know, various times different issues where the US and China have disagreed they have managed to keep a conversation going about climate change, and if we can get that back on track, that’s great.
Plibersek also flagged a break fro the previous government’s approach to relations with China saying Australia would continue to assert its national interests but considered China an important member of the international community.
We will always raise issues with China that are in Australia’s national interests, but it is – wherever we can – it is in our interests for China to be part of the international community. Pn issues like the Pacific and climate change, if we can work cooperatively, of course that’s in everybody’s interests.
Katharine Murphy
Last night’s conversation between Albanese and the Chinese premier is the first leader level conversation since 2019.
Li saw Albanese as they entered the gala dinner and sought him out as they entered the room.
Albanese meets with Chinese premier at East Asia Summit
Katharine Murphy
Good morning from Cambodia. I’ll keep you up to date with developments at the East Asia Summit today.
The most significant news overnight is the prime minister Anthony Albanese has spoken to the Chinese premier Li Keqiang through a translator for about four minutes at last night’s gala dinner.
That’s a significant development given we’ve been playing a will they or won’t they game for the best part of a week. As they say in our business, more to come
Storms to dump up to 150mm of rain bringing new floods to NSW
Berlusconi:
In summary, what all this means is that today’s risk is really around severe thunderstorms. And flash flooding that comes with significant winds they can come from thunderstorm activity.
It’s combining with a widespread rain band and it is likely to result in renewed river levels for all those catchments.
Monday is likely to see this particular system move further east and it will move away and affect mostly the south and the east during the latter part of Monday we should see sunny conditions again and a spell of cooler, dry weather from Tuesday to Friday before we start to look at another weather system potentially from next weekend.
More rain incoming increasing flash flooding risk
Berlusconi is listing notable mentions of rainfall, including a small town – I missed the name – where the local school recorded 41mm of rain within a 30-minute window.
There is a heap going on around around state, national and even international politics so I’m not able to keep up with this information, but the key takeaway message is: there has been a lot of water, there is more water incoming and flash flooding is a real risk – so don’t take chances and stay safe.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s Steve Berlusconi is speaking now given an update now on the weather system sweeping across the country. He says conditions will intensify over Sunday and into Monday, extended all the way to the coastline and the Sydney metropolitan area.
Berlusconi says a tropical weather system is moving into New South Wales from the tropics, creating unstable conditions in the atmosphere which is leading to “wide bands of rain”. This is creating thunderstorms with rain in some places of around 60mm in one day.
We do expect widespread rainfall to occur around about 38 and 40mm across much of the 11 parts of the state, and a very high chance of severe thunderstorms, with intense rain, damaging winds, and the potential to hail.
The greatest risk for today around that an early into Monday is around flash flooding, and that is rain falling in intense bursts at short periods of time, which affects creeks and streams and local areas.
New South Wales SES Commissioner Carlene York is giving an operations update. She repeats a reminder for people not to drive through floodwaters.
She says the next 25 to 36 hours will be of concern and that authorities remained concerned about the prospect of flash flooding.
An effort to underway to supply towns that have been isolated or cut off due to flooding.
Not only are we preparing for the next 24-36 hours, as the minister said, we are also resupplying many communities across the state you are still isolated and will remain isolated the weeks if not months. — who are. We have 23 helicopters supplying those communities. In response phase, we have no time which rescue helicopters available across the areas that we are expecting this extreme weather events to come.
York asks members of the public to act on evacuation warnings as early as possible otherwise there is a real risk people may be cut off and unable to receive assistance from emergency services.
New South Wales Emergency Services Minister Steph Cook is speaking to reporters with the SES and Bureau of Meteorology about the situation in New South Wales.
Once again it is the communities and later New South Wales that will be in the firing line for these thunderstorms and heavy rain. — in inland New South Wales. Particular areas of focus on the south-west slopes, the central and Southern Tablelands, and the Riverina and ACT.
Cook says the New South Wales landscape is already saturated and flooding is likely as more rain is expected.
She says a flood rescue area of operation has been established around the Goulburn Area. Areas of concern included Aubrey, Wagga, Yass, Young and all towns along the Murray River system.
I know that you are flood weary. Our volunteers are also fatigued and wary at this time. I am asking everybody to continue working together. We have developed incredibly close relationships with communities right across New South Wales this year. It has been a very difficult year and we are not through it yet. As long as we continue to work together we will do everything that is possible to make sure our communities are safe and that people’s lives are protected.
Six feared dead after historic military planes collide at US airshow
Two historic military planes collided and crashed to the ground Saturday during a Dallas airshow, federal officials said, sending plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky.
Officials didn’t immediately make clear how many people were on board the aircraft or if anyone on the ground was hurt. Nonetheless, an ABC News producer – citing reporting from a colleague – said on Twitter that at least six people, all crew members, were feared dead after the crash.
Anthony Montoya saw the two planes collide.
“I just stood there. I was in complete shock and disbelief,” said Montoya, 27, who attended the airshow with a friend. “Everybody around was gasping. Everybody was bursting into tears. Everybody was in shock.”
Emergency crews raced to the crash scene at the Dallas Executive airport, about 10 miles from the city’s downtown.
Live news footage from the scene showed people setting up orange cones around the crumpled wreckage of a bomber, which was in a grassy area.
The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and a Bell P-63 Kingcobra collided and crashed at about 1.20pm, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement. The collision occurred during the Commemorative Air Force Wings Over Dallas show.
For all the latest read the full story Guardian staff and agencies.
Government considering proposal to get rid of temporary protection visas
O’Neil says one of the changes being proposed is to get rid of temporary protection visas:
It is a promise, we have a number of people living in Australia on temporary protection visas who have been here for more than a decade. And I think there is real desire in the community to allow those people to have some sense of permanency.
She says the government is “working through it slowly and carefully” but won’t provide a timeframe for when and how this may take place.
O’Neil is also asked about other complexities like the backlog of people who were left in limbo without refugee visas. Again, she says that “complex and difficult problem” is to be determined.
Australia’s migration system is in ‘a state of disrepair’: O’Neil
O’Neil is being asked now about reforms to Australia’s migration system – specifically a national strategy for migration.
If you look at our country we have never done anything big or important or meaningful in the last 100 years without asking the best and brightest from around the world to come and help us do it.
And when I look at the migration system today, you know, we have come into office, this system is genuinely in a state of disrepair. It has no strategy, we have got enormous complexity in the system. Literally hundreds of different visa categories and subcategories. It’s expensive, it’s complicated it is bureaucratic. It’s not working for migrants or for business, or for the country.
O’Neill is canvassed about a series of proposals for bringing in skilled workers, wait times such as getting rid of the skills list and introducing a minimum salary thresholds but she is non-committal saying it will be considered as part of the review.
We have spent almost the whole of the last decade in a big conversation about immigration, about how to keep people out of our country.
We are in a global competition to attract the talent that we need for the future with the US and Canada and New Zealand and all the other countries, they are rolling out the red for the migrant they need. In Australia, it can take two or three years to get a visa to come here and then we will only let you stay for a couple of years and then send you back again.
We have to think about this as a competitive mind-set where we want Australians to be a destination of choice and that’s not what the migration system is doing at the moment
Fines against Optus and Medibank up to privacy commissioner: O’Neil
O’Neil says any decision about fines against Optus and Medibank is the responsibility of the privacy commissioner, not hers.
The government is undertaking a review of the Privacy Act at the moment to clarify what needs to happen around data deletion.
What we need to make sure is that companies are only holding data for the point in time where it’s actually useful and the data is otherwise disposed of.
So Mark Dreyfus is undertaking a review of the Privacy Act at the moment and he’s looking at that. It’s a complex question because as you noted on the panel there’s a lot of state and territory regulation about the retention of data that needs to be taken account of.
O’Neil is also asked about ransoms – the guidance is to not pay ransoms for fear of feeding the business model, but one of the questions is will the government make it illegal to pay ransoms.
Medibank and Optus defences not where they needed to be: O’Neil
O’Neil says she does not think “anyone can promise that cyber attacks will go away”.
One of the things that people need to understand is really how relentless this is. We had National Australia Bank come out a month or so ago saying they are subjected to 50m cyber-attacks a month. The ATO is subjected to 3m cyber-attacks a month. So we have to understand here, that we have got to adapt our whole approach and thinking about the new crime type.
O’Neil says she “doesn’t want to run a commentary” about the “technical aspects of every cyber event in Australia” but she says companies that hold large stores of “very personal information” “owe big obligations to Australians to protect that information”.
She says Optus and Medibank did not fulfil their duties.
I have been direct in my discussion with Medibank and Optus. There are criminal investigations on foot now. I’ve made it clear that I don’t think the defences were where they needed to be.
Australia must ‘not be a soft target’ for cybercriminals, O’Neil says
O’Neil is challenged over the effectiveness of this new taskforce force – specifically what can be realistically achieved when the people were responsible are in other jurisdictions where they may receive the protection of their governments.
There is an enormous amount we can do. I think we need to shift away from the sense that the only good outcome here is someone behind bars because that can be hard when we have people who are essentially being harboured by foreign governments and allowed to continue this type of activity.
But what we can do is two really important thing things. The first is hunt these people down and disrupt their operations. It weakens these groups if governments like ours collaborate with the FBI and other police forces and intelligence agencies around the world.
But the second important thing we need to do is to stand up and say that Australia will not be a soft target for this sort of thing and if people come after our citizens we will go after them.
‘Australia standing up and punching back’: Claire O’Neil on fighting cybercrime
Home affairs and cybersecurity minister Claire O’Neil is speaking to ABC Insiders host David Speers now where she has continued talking tough about the cyber threats to Australians over.
She says this is “Australia standing up and punching back”.
We are not going to sit back while our citizens are treated this way and allow there to be no consequences for that.
A permanent standing force of 100 of the best most capable cyber experts in this country that will be undertaking this task force for the first time. Offensively attacking these people, David.
So this is not a model of policing where we wait for a crime to be committed, and then try to understand who it is and do something to the people who are responsible, we are offensively going to find these people, hunt them down and debilitate them before they can attack our country.
Katharine Murphy
Australia chases promise of a meeting with Chinese president at Asean
Anthony Albanese has sent a clear public signal to the Chinese leadership that Australia is open for dialogue during international summits over the coming days, saying he is prepared to meet his counterpart without “preconditions” .
With the US president, Joe Biden, set to meet the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, at the G20 summit in Bali on Monday, Australia’s prime minister told reporters at the Asean-Australia summit in Cambodia on Saturday a conversation was “not locked in at this point” and he was awaiting “finalisation of any meeting”.
Albanese was expected to attend a gala dinner at the summit on Saturday night, and the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, was to be present, as well as Biden and a host of other world leaders.
Australia’s prime minister noted that Canberra and Beijing’s foreign affairs and defence ministers had already met despite significant irritants in the bilateral relationship as part of a cautious diplomatic thaw following Labor’s election victory in May.
“If the leaders of our respective countries have a meeting, that would be positive,” the prime minister said. Albanese noted it was “the nature of these events that meetings get locked in at the last minute”.
For more on this story, read the full report by Guardian Australia political editor Katharine Murphy who is on the ground in Phnom Penh.
Minister for environment and water Tanya Plibersek has spoken to Sky News this morning – more on that to come shortly.
Home affairs minister Clare O’Neil will also be speaking to ABC Insiders this morning in the wake of an announcement on Saturday that the government will be mounting an offensive against cyber criminals.
Good morning
And welcome to another Sunday morning Guardian live blog.
Another monster storm 3,500km in length is sweeping over eastern Australia and is expected to lash New South Wales with thunderstorms, damaging winds, heavy rainfall and giant hail. Severe thunderstorm warnings are in place for central NSW and severe weather warnings are in place along the southern half of the state and down across the Victorian state border. It is expected 70mm of rain could fall on Sunday.
Prime minister Anthony Albanese is attending the East Asia and Asean summits in Phnom Penh on Sunday but has been left waiting for a meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping. Xi, who has not had a formal meeting with an Australian leader since Malcolm Turnbull in 2016, has said he will meet with US president Joe Biden in Bali but whether a similar meeting will be held with the Australian prime minister has yet to be confirmed.
I’m Royce Kurmelovs, taking the blog through the day. With so much going on out there, it’s easy to miss stuff, so if you spot something happening in Australia and think it should be on the blog, you can find me on Twitter at @RoyceRk2 where my DMs are open.
With that, let’s get started …
