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Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Richard Marles, and Solomon Island’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Public Service, the Hon Francis Sade, officially opened the Western Border Outpost today in the Shortland Islands, Solomon Islands. 

The Western Border Outpost is a jointly delivered infrastructure project between the Australian and Solomon Islands governments. This new facility brings together the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF), Customs, Immigration, and Biosecurity officials in a single location, enhancing interagency coordination and strengthening border management operations that help keep Solomon Islands secure.

Minister for Police, National Security and Correctional Services, the Hon John Tuhaika Jnr., and Minister of Commerce, Industry, Labour & Immigration, the Hon Harry Kuma also attended the opening ceremony.

The new facility will support Solomon Islands to strengthen border management and maritime security, marking a significant milestone in the longstanding security partnership between the two nations. Once handed over, this will be a sovereign Solomon Islands facility.

Australia is investing more than $100 million (AUD) towards the project, which will also provide offices, accommodation and a wharf capable of supporting Solomon Islands’ Guardian-class Patrol Boats. 

In partnership with the Solomon Islands Government, this project has created lasting benefits for local communities including 368 jobs created and more than 1,000 contracts awarded to local businesses.

Australia is proud to support the broad range of initiatives that strengthen Solomon Islands’ national security capabilities and support the growth of the RSIPF.

Deputy Prime Minister, Richard Marles:

“The official opening of the Western Border Outpost marks an important milestone in Australia’s longstanding partnership with Solomon Islands.

“This new facility will support Solomon Islands to strengthen border management and maritime security while delivering real benefits for its people.

“It stands as a practical demonstration of what Australia and Solomon Islands can achieve together and provides a sovereign asset for Solomon Islands to use to strengthen its security.”

The Albanese Government has marked a significant milestone in Australia-Japan defence collaboration with successful field trials of a co-developed high-energy laser in South Australia.

The Boobook project has broken new ground as the first co-development project between Australian and Japanese defence industries, demonstrating deepening cooperation between our two nations.

The collaboration between Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG), Mitsubishi Electric Australia (MEA) and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO) has seen the successful field testing of a world-first prototype laser system.

The laser system draws on more than 20 years of research and development by DSTG to deliver a cutting-edge technology with the potential to enhance surveillance capability.

Boobook supports the implementation of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s 4 May announcement, which committed to enhanced defence and security cooperation.

The successful Boobook trials conducted at Cultana Training Area and DSTG Edinburgh have provided valuable insights into the system’s design and technical requirements, informing the next phases of development and commercialisation.

The testing also demonstrated Australia and Japan’s ability to jointly develop advanced technologies and conduct multinational testing on Australian ranges. This paves the way for ongoing defence industrial collaboration on advanced defence capabilities between our two countries.

As the project progresses, MEA is establishing new facilities at Rydalmere, New South Wales in preparation for large-scale manufacturing within Australia.

This $70 million investment will become the home of a new MEA Defence Division, supporting future manufacturing opportunities in Australia and strengthening access to advanced Mitsubishi Electric defence technologies for the Australian Defence Force into the future.

Minister for Defence Industry, the Hon. Pat Conroy MP:

“This project demonstrates close collaboration with Japan, to develop cutting-edge technologies that address real capability needs for the Australian Defence Force.

“Boobook is more than a technology project. It is a practical example of the growing defence industrial partnership between Australia and Japan, as well as the opportunities that partnership creates for both nations.

“The establishment of Mitsubishi Electric Australia’s new defence facilities in Rydalmere is a strong vote of confidence in Australia’s defence industrial future and will support new opportunities for advanced manufacturing, technology transfer and workforce growth.”

The Australian Greens have demanded that Labor go back to the drawing board on aged care assessments after a damning Four Corners investigation revealed that the government’s new assessment tool had been designed to under-assess need and priority.

The controversial Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT), which uses an algorithm to automate decision-making, has repeatedly been shown to provide assessments that have left thousands of people without an appropriate level of funding for their care needs.

Last month Labor suffered a humiliating parliamentary defeat when the Senate passed a bill co-sponsored by the Greens to restore human override to the IAT.

Now, a Four Corners investigation has revealed the test has been designed in a way that systemically under-assesses older people with mental health conditions, cognition issues and frailty. Most of the questions asked in the test are not even considered in the outcome.

This tool was not live tested, and the department has been unable to name any clinical experts that validated it. 

Senator Penny Allman-Payne, Greens Spokesperson for Older People:

“The Four Corners investigation is yet another damning indictment of Labor’s reckless aged care reforms. 

“Labor’s aged care assessment tool is broken, and the problems go beyond a simple fix. The IAT needs to be scrapped.

“This is the same tool that has denied essential funding to older Australians with lifelong degenerative conditions like MND and dementia.

“This tool was untested, fatally flawed and implemented with the absolute minimum accountability – all in the name of cutting costs.

“Labor must replace the IAT with a new assessment tool that centres the human rights and care needs of older people.

“Instead of penny-pinching from older people and withholding essential care, Labor could choose to properly fund aged care by taxing gas corporations and making billionaires and the 1% pay their fair share.”

The Australian Greens have called Labor captured and the Liberals weak for their dirty deal on cowardly and careless gambling reform.

The Greens say the Albanese Labor government’s lack of political will to take on big gambling corporations and vested interests is leaving Australians worse off.

This major party stitch up will see Australians continue to be bombarded by gambling ads online and hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people exposed to devastating gambling harm.

Larissa Waters, Leader of the Australian Greens:

“Anthony Albanese and the entire Labor party should hang their heads in shame today. Our Prime Minister has handed Australian screens over to predatory gambling companies.

“Generations of Australians who have suffered through the gambling industry’s bombardment will have the relentless ads follow them. How dare Anthony Albanese leave your living rooms, cars, YouTube, and even your kids Spotify playlists unsafe?  

“This cowardly Labor-Liberal deal means Anthony Albanese chose to protect his party’s gambling donations rather than delivering evidence-based policy that protects people.

“It is a government’s job to look after people, but when Labor has the opportunity they bend the knee to wealthy donors, side with big corporations and leave Australians behind. 

“Corporate donations are the fatal flaw of the Labor party. When they come under lobbyist pressure they choose their donors over people.

“A vote for Labor is a vote for the vested interests they protect. A vote for the Greens is a vote for people, not profits.”

Sarah Hanson-Young, Greens communications spokesperson:

“Anthony Albanese and Angus Taylor have failed the moral test to protect Australian families.

“Labor has proven itself to be captured by the gambling industry while the Liberals are just weak.

“These laws are designed to fail. Gambling companies are the winners while once again Australian families are the biggest losers.

“This bill is so convoluted it looks less like gambling reform and more like a protection racket for the gambling industry. It is full of loopholes, delays and complexity designed to ensure it’s never actually used.

“Angus Taylor has shown that he is a weak leader. He is a pushover who has sold out for nothing more than the veneer of action.

“They have turned a straightforward reform into a dog’s breakfast of exemptions, carve-outs and red tape. That is not an accident; it’s how you protect the gambling industry from real accountability.

“The Murphy Report was very clear, as was the evidence to the Senate inquiry: to reduce gambling harm a full ban on all forms of advertising for online gambling is needed.

“These piecemeal and confusing amendments will not work and will not stop the predatory practices of gambling companies. It’s a dog’s breakfast of a deal that gives the appearance of reform while ensuring the industry can keep doing business as usual.

“Under these laws, gambling companies will still be able to groom vulnerable people and problem gamblers with inducements, they will still be able to flood the internet with harmful advertising and they will still not have any oversight from a national regulator.

“This bill allows online ads to continue. Addictive social media platforms will be able to continue pushing addictive gambling products to users. Social media platforms will continue to be able to use the data they have on users to personally target people directly with gambling ads and promotions.

“The community have made it abundantly clear that they want and expect real action to remove gambling ads. The government has failed.

“Both the Labor and the Liberal parties have chosen to prioritise the profits of the gambling companies over the interests of the community. It’s not hard to see why when the gambling industry has spent millions giving inducements in the form of political donations to both the Labor and the Liberal parties.

“The parliament had the opportunity to enact generational reform that would protect Australian children and families from the predatory behaviour of the gambling industry and instead they have backed their mates in the gambling industry.”
 

The Australian Greens say the Albanese Labor government has abandoned disabled Australians in an appalling dirty deal with the Liberals.

This major party stitch up on the NDIS leaves hundreds of thousands without support, and solidifies Albanese’s legacy as one of commitment to protecting corporate profits over people.

Larissa Waters, Leader of the Australian Greens: 

“Today the Labor party becomes responsible for the largest cut to a government services program this century.

“This cowardly Labor-Liberal deal means Anthony Albanese is choosing to balance the budget off the backs of disabled people, rather than making the 1% pay their fair share.

“Albanese is choosing to kick 241,000 disabled people off the NDIS to save money, instead of a minimum 25% gas export tax that would raise at least $17 billion.

“It is a government’s job to look after people, but when Labor has the opportunity they side with the greedy gas corporations and leave Australians behind. 

“A vote for Labor is a vote for the vested interests they protect. A vote for the Greens is a vote for people, not profits.” 

Jordon Steele-John, Greens NDIS spokesperson:

“You can’t say you haven’t been warned.

“The community has made its position clear: the NDIS bill should not pass. What is clear now is that the major parties have come together behind closed doors in Canberra and signed away the rights, security and lives of people who depend on the NDIS.

“The passage of this bill is a betrayal, particularly of the people who trusted Labor to protect them and maintain the supports they rely on.

“And the government had choices.

“It could have chosen to properly tax gas corporations and ask those with the greatest capacity to contribute their fair share. Instead, it has chosen to strip back the safety net and the supports available to people who need them most.

“Shame on Labor.”

In another embarrassing defeat for Labor’s unravelling aged care reforms, the Senate has this afternoon backed a Greens motion demanding that the government abolish its Integrated Assessment Tool, which was the subject of yesterday’s damning Four Corners investigation.

The substantive motion was agreed to without a vote being recorded, after the Coalition and the crossbench earlier voted in support of the Greens motion to suspend standing orders.

This is the latest in a series of humiliations the parliament has inflicted on the Albanese Government’s new aged care system, including being forced by the parliament to release 20,000 more home care packages, backtracking on some co-payments, and launching a rapid review into the algorithm.

Just last month Labor suffered another parliamentary defeat when the Senate passed a bill co-sponsored by the Greens to restore human override to the IAT.

Greens Older People spokesperson Senator Penny Allman-Payne: 

“The writing is on the wall for Labor’s aged care assessment tool.

“It’s a friendless system that older people, carers and experts have been screaming about for months.

“It’s systematically under-assessing need and priority, denying care to thousands and leaving people with degenerative conditions desperately short of even the bare minimum funding they need.

“Now the parliament has been crystal clear: it’s time for Labor to go back to the drawing board on aged care assessments. Older people deserve a tested assessment system designed by experts that has their rights at its core.”

Full text of motion here:

Motion by leave— Integrated Assessment Tool (in between items of business)

That—the Senate:

(a) notes that the Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT) is untested, structurally flawed and systematically under-assessing the care needs of older Australians, especially those living with mental health conditions, cognitive issues and frailty; and

(b) calls on the Government to:

(i) take immediate action to abolish the IAT,

(ii) replace the IAT with a tested assessment system that is designed with clinical experts,

(iii) ensure this new assessment system has guaranteeing the rights of older people as its first priority, and

(iv) restore the role of clinical professionals in the assessment process and reinstate the ability for human override.

Thank you, Speaker.

South Vietnam. Phuoc Tuy Province. The 18^th of August 1966. 

D Company, 6th Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment – 100 men spread across three platoons.

They enter a rubber plantation near the village of Long Tan at 3:00 pm.

The Australians find themselves pinned down and outnumbered by a number of well-armed and highly skilled enemy, some 2,000 strong.

They fight in a torrential downpour which hits the red earth and kicks up ‘mud mist’ – reducing visibility.

On the verge of being overrun, the Australians are saved by the guns of a New Zealand artillery battery.

Then, as ammunition runs low, two RAAF helicopters fly a daring mission in atrocious conditions and resupply D Company at the critical moment.

As the Viet Cong prepares for an all-in attack, hope appears on the horizon.

And like friendly cavalry coming over the hill, Australian armoured personnel carriers arrive carrying A Company.

The enemy withdraws and the battle ends.

At least 245 Viet Cong soldiers have been killed.

The men of D Company have endured three-and-a-half hours of hell against all the odds.

But not without cost – Seventeen Australians have fallen, 25 Australians have been wounded.

One will die of his wounds days later.

Speaker, The Battle of Long Tan reinforced the courage, camaraderie, and composure that defines Anzacs in war.

And it came to represent Australia’s commitment to the Vietnam War.

That is why, every year, on the 18^th of August, we commemorate Vietnam Veterans’ Day.

Today, on the 60^th Anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan, we not only remember those who fought and fell in that fray.

We also acknowledge the spirit, suffering, and the sacrifice of all of our Vietnam veterans.

Between ‘62 and ‘73, some 60,000 Australians served in Vietnam.

Some 15,000 were ‘Nashos’ – men conscripted who went to war without complaint and served as wholeheartedly as the regulars.

The War saw 3,000 Australians wounded and 523 Australians tragically killed.

And, as we just heard from the Prime Minister, this country did take too long to recognise the sacrifice of our Vietnam veterans.

To the warfighters, freedom fighters, and heroes of Vietnam, on your day – Vietnam Veterans’ Day – we remember you, we honour you, we thank you for your service, your suffering, your sacrifice.

Lest we forget.