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Australia to send military plane to strait of Hormuz reopening mission

Australia will join an international mission to reopen the strait of Hormuz, with plans to contribute a hi-tech surveillance plane to the effort.

Our intention is to contribute Australia’s world-leading E-7A Wedgetail aircraft to this defensive effort.

While this platform [the Wedgetail] is already doing work in the region, providing this capability would make a valuable contribution to the multinational mission and efforts to secure freedom of navigation in the strait of Hormuz.

We want to see this conflict end, the strait of Hormuz open and freedom of navigation resume. The longer this conflict goes on the more significant the impact on Australia will be. Our government is doing all we can to shield Australians from the impacts.

Farrer win casts shadow over budget as government signals it’s alive to populist rightwing threat

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One Nation has cast a shadow over the federal budget and influenced decisions to reform negative gearing and taxes, with Jim Chalmers admitting many Australians are feeling economic anxieties that are “driving them to consider” rightwing populist parties.

The treasurer and Anthony Albanese have conceded that many people are locked out of the housing market and that the problem is getting worse, not better, under Labor. With Pauline Hanson’s party winning a historic byelection in Farrer – its first lower house seat win in its 30-year history – the government was alive to the threat of a populist wave of grievance similar to those in the United States, Britain and Europe.