Australian news and politics live: Albanese not budging on Port of Darwin despite calls to resolve issue

Education Minister Jason Clare has shut down calls for men to be barred from working at childcare centres, stating “just cutting blokes out altogether is not going to be the solution”.

Calls for on gender restrictions for childhood educators come after Victorian childcare worker and alleged pedophile Joshua Brown was charged with more than 70 offences.

Saying banning men from positions in early childhood education was not the answer, Mr Clare said Labor would instead fast-track implementing child safety laws in the first week of parliament from July 22.

He said no inquiry or review had recommended the total ban.

“In none of the reports do they recommend this, but they recommend the register and national mandatory safety training, so that the 99.9 per cent of people who work in our centres who are good, honest people … have the skills they need to identify if the person is up to no good,” Mr Clare told reporters in Sydney.

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Australia is falling further behind its ambitious 1.2 million new home target, as the number of dwellings started, completed or under construction has slipped.

According to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, 27,663 new houses were built in the March quarter, down 1.3 per cent, while new private sector housing came in at 15,190, a drop of 9.3 per cent.

When combined, 43,517 homes were built in the March quarter, down by 4 per cent on the December quarter.

Last year, the Federal Government set an ambitious 1.2 million new-home target in five years under the National Housing Accord.

In order to achieve this, Australia needs to build 60,000 homes a quarter.

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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has dismissed suggestions Australian businesses could be iced out of the Chinese market over the Government’s decision to put the strategic port of Darwin back into Australia’s hands.

Chinese objections to Labor’s election promise to overturn the awarding of a 99-year lease of the port to the Beijing-owned Landbridge group have loomed over Mr Albanese’s red carpet reception in China this week, with state media repeatedly highlighting the controversy.

Mr Albanese on Wednesday confirmed that the sale of the port had not been raised directly with him in talks with Premier Li Qiang or Chinese President Xi Jinping, who offered a rare lunch invitation to the Prime Minister and fiancee Jodie Haydon.

The Global Times, a state-run media outlet, was more direct.

“At present, there are specific issues between China and Australia that need to be discussed, such as the lease of Darwin Port and the expansion of the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement,” it said.

Asked during a press conference on the Great Wall of China on Wednesday if he was prepared for Australia to be put back into the deep freeze on the issue, Mr Albanese responded with a straight, “the answer is no.”

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Dr Henry says Australia’s failure to lift productivity has cost the average full-time worker more than half a million dollars over the past 25 years.

Reflecting on the 2002 Intergenerational Report, he said productivity growth had averaged 1.75 per cent over the previous 30 years and reached 2.25 per cent in the 1990s, including during a recession.

“We said, let’s assume (productivity growth of) one and three-quarters. That’s going to lead to the need to raise taxes by five percentage points of GDP if that’s all we can achieve.”

The goal, he said, was to avoid that by repeating the performance of the 1990s for the next 40 years. “Now that’s a big ask, but that’s what it was going to take,” he said. “If we can repeat the 1990s, then we can get through this without taxing people harder.”

Instead, productivity growth came in well below expectations. “We didn’t achieve the one and three-quarters. We certainly didn’t achieve the two and a quarter. What we’ve achieved is closer to three-quarters of a per cent a year.”

“Assuming real wages grow pretty much in line with productivity growth — how much has this cost the average Australian worker? I came up with a remarkable number: it’s cost the average full-time worker more than half a million dollars over the past 25 years.

“So when I hear people say, ‘Oh, we can’t do this to enhance productivity, we can’t do that because it might hurt somebody’ — I think, give me a break. Who are we talking about here?”

Dr Henry was asked whether the upcoming economic reform roundtable should look again at dividend imputation.

“We have the opportunity for a broad-ranging discussion about tax reform in this term of Parliament,” he said.

“16 years ago, we didn’t go so far as to recommend wholesale change to the dividend imputation system,” he said.

“But we did observe that in a world of globally mobile capital, where we are a capital importer, our company tax system, with imputation amounts to a tariff on imported equity capital. That’s actually what it is — it’s a tariff on imported equity capital.

“And it has, you know, the protective effect — benefits resident shareholders, including Australian superannuation funds. So there is some return to the Australian population from that. But there is nevertheless a disincentive to business investment.

“And we — if we — if we don’t change the imputation system, and I can understand why that would be a difficult thing to do — if we don’t change it, we’ve got to find some other way of incentivising people with mobile capital, finding a reason to invest in Australia rather than somewhere else.”

Dr Henry told the National Press Club that environmental law reform can reduce red tape while delivering better outcomes.

“We can have better regulation and at the same time cut red tape,” Dr Henry said. “We can get rid of a lot of the complexity, the duplication, the uncertainty, the cost of approvals processes and so on. There is a way of achieving both.”

He said that applies to other areas of policy as well, but in the case of environmental law reform, the key insight is the existence of multiple layers of regulation — Commonwealth, state and local government.

“There’s a need to simplify all of that. This is what Graeme Samuel focused on in his review, and what I’ve been talking about today. The aim is not to add red tape, but to make it clearer, more certain, and to make sure that it’s properly enforced — not something that sits on the statute books but doesn’t really change people’s behaviour.”

Dr Henry has addressed the current concerns that Treasury recently flagged, which called for either a cut in spending or a lift in taxes, telling the National Press Club that it was an issue he had warned about two decades ago.

“When we published the first Intergenerational Report, way back in 2002 — right, 23 years ago — we published a projection,” he said.

“I’m talking about the Treasury, led by Treasurer Costello. We published projections for the spending side of the Budget, which actually are not that far off where we are.

“And what we said was: if the Budget is to meet these growing spending pressures, then we’ve got two options. We either increase taxes as a share of GDP, or we grow the economy faster. There’s only two options. And that’s what we said at the time.

“We have grown the economy slower — much, much slower. For example, just to illustrate that: over the decade of the 1990s, average productivity growth was 2.31 per cent a year. Over the past 25 years, it’s averaged 0.98 per cent a year. That’s a pretty fundamental difference, right?

“If we continue on that trajectory, as we said in 2002, we will have no option but to raise taxes — and quite significantly, by several percentage points of GDP. So that’s the other side of the Budget story — or cut spending. Or cut spending well below what was projected in the Intergenerational Report.”

Former Treasury Secretary and chair of the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation has been addressing the National Press Club on the need for reform of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

He said the best way to improve productivity is to implement recommendations under the Graeme Samuel review and base the EPBC on regional approvals rather than case by case.

Asked whether he still believes Labor should reconsider a carbon tax, Dr Henry said: “Why the hell did we ever drop it?”

“It still boggles the mind that we had the world’s best carbon policy, and then, for purely political reasons, decided that we can afford to do without it.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and fiancée Jodie Haydon have enjoyed a stroll along the Great Wall of China together.

Mr Albanese spoke earlier about the sense of history he felt while visiting the Wall as the Prime Minister of Australia, following in the footsteps of previous leaders.

“Here today, of course, I had the sense of history, following in the footsteps of the Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who was the first Prime Minister to visit here in 1973,” Mr Albanese said.

Anthony Albanese has revealed China put on “the full kit and caboodle” for him at an event on Tuesday evening, with Chinese musicians performing Aussie classics.

“The dinner last night, that was attended by all of the business people, leaders from Australia, as well as business leaders here in China, was a wonderful event,” Mr Albanese said.

“I’ve got to say that the band there in the Great Hall played a different version of Paul Kelly’s To Her Door, of Midnight Oil’s Power and the Passion and a range of songs as well.

“That obviously took them a long period of time and those gestures matter. Respect matters between countries. I took that as being a very warm gesture indeed and they did it very well,

“Powderfinger as well,” Mr Albanese added.

“They did the full kit and caboodle. So it was a splendid occasion.

Mr Albanese said the evening was a “really important part of diplomacy”.