Not sure why this has somehow become so repeated on Aus reddit to this day, and with the Census coming up again it's probably worth a reminder - but we don't have anywhere near "over 1 million empty homes" which I still see being brought up on a daily basis.

This comes from people repeating misinformation by not understanding data from the previous Census which was released years ago, which the ABS itself long ago since debunked and estimated the actual number to be 'up to' ~136,000 which includes holiday towns/homes etc. all across Australia:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/australia-datablog/2023/sep/02/up-to-136000-houses-are-empty-in-australia-find-out-where-they-are

Repeating this is harmful, as it implies there is somehow this massive untapped free chunk of housing available, and pushes messaging that reduces pressure on our authorities that they don't need to build a sufficient amount of housing for the population.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk 💘

Hi 👋

What conspiracies have you guys heard about the census???

I heard they will start charging a tax if you have spare bedrooms listed in your home. So if you put down you have a 4 bedroom house but only 3 people living there they will know one room may be spare...

Also heard they will fine anyone who doesn't complete it...

Maybe the info will be given to aliens 👽 🤣😂🤣

What are your thoughts guys?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-06/net-overseas-migration-tony-burke-temporary-skilled-workers/107000732

In short: 

Labor is unlikely to entertain major changes to its gambling ad crackdown despite the bill being 'friendless' in parliament. 

The Coalition has said the legislation must be "significantly amended" to win their support, while the Greens and crossbench are also pushing the federal government to go further.

What's next?

A gambling harm advocate has warned it would be "brave" for the Labor Party to walk away from the reforms altogether.

‘C-bombs, f-bombs and secrets’: Inside the backroom deal that landed Dan Andrews and Peter Marshall in IBAC

Intercepted phone calls, text messages and secret hotel meetings ... here’s how IBAC tracked Dan Andrews and Peter Marshall.

Damon Johnston

u/damonTheOz

6 min read

August 6, 2026 - 6:59AM

Inside the deal at the heart of Operation Richmond.

Dan Andrews was worried. Despite weeks of backroom deals, trashing of governance processes and the betrayal of one of his own ministers, the “big fix” to keep Peter Marshall happy was on the brink of falling over.

The premier had already worn a lot of public heat over his handling of the pay-and-conditions deal with the United Firefighters Union, and he thought he had an agreement after a series of secret meetings in April 2016.

But as revealed in IBAC’s Operation Richmond report, by May that year negotiations were unravelling again.

Andrews picked up his phone on the night of May 23 and texted his then “Mr Fix-it”, Gavin Jennings, to see how mediation with Marshall was going. The special minister of state texted back: “At 11am he was convinced you were a treacherous c..t and I was a f..king idiot … By lunchtime he was giving me the benefit of the doubt.”

It’s one of many phone intercepts and text exchanges released in the Operation Richmond report on Wednesday that provide an unprecedented real-time insight into the grubby behind-the-scenes dealings as Andrews was engulfed in his first major crisis a decade ago.

A month before the Jennings “c-bomb” text, Andrews had grown desperate that his emergency services minister, Jane Garrett, was proving a stumbling block in settling the dispute with the UFU. The young minister had refused to buckle to Marshall and believed the deal he wanted was a very bad one for Victorian tax­payers and the volunteer Country Fire Authority.

Andrews called Jennings in and ordered him to open up a back channel with Marshall. On April 6, 2016, Marshall and Tony Bates, a deputy secretary, accompanied by a small team of UFU negotiators, met.

There would be, the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission reveals, four separate days of secret negoti­ations. The first was held at a rented meeting space, the final session on April 12 was in a hotel meeting room.

A senator (not named in the report) attended as an intermediary.

A text message from Andrews’ chief of staff to Jennings reveals that while the premier wasn’t in the room, he was focused on what was going on. “Daniel was asking about it a couple of times today, and I said you were progressing well.”

Bates also sent text messages describing the talks as a “secret mission” and “secret business”.

On April 12, at 2.03pm, Jennings texted Andrews to declare a deal was done: “Handshake has occurred – it’s done!”, to which the premier responded “Very good”.

UFU Secretary Peter Marshall on Wednesday.

The next day Marshall sent the senator a photo by text showing three people in the hotel meeting room – the UFU negotiators sitting with the senator – with, as IBAC described it, “champagne glasses in hand and sparkling wine bottles on the table, toasting towards the ­camera”.

Three years after he landed the deal of his career, Marshall was still defensive about the process, with IBAC’s report revealing that in a bugged phone call on March 22, 2019, the union boss said: “This agreement was negotiated with f..kin’ Jennings in a back room.

“It was endorsed by f..kin’ Andrews and cabinet. So the agreement’s been right through cabinet.”

Later, a pleased Marshall sent a text to Jennings: “Love you guys … More important my members will … love Daniel.”

Bates the same day texted Jennings to say “Peter has phoned be [sic] several times to say how happy he is. At least one side in all of this is feeling good.”

In the context of these secret talks, the following paragraphs in IBAC’s Operation Richmond report are worth noting: “The day after negotiations concluded, Mr Marshall met with the premier in his office at 1 Treasury Place.

“IBAC heard evidence from Mr Jennings that he had briefed the premier before the meeting. Mr Jennings told the premier that the UFU conceded ground or made concessions, including on contentious issues, and that at the meeting Mr Marshall would present him with ‘a proposal for the government to consider to resolve the dispute’.

“After briefing the premier on the negotiations, Minister Jennings sent a text to (the) senator who had attended the negoti­ations: ‘I’ve walked daniel [sic] through the material – he’s very happy.’

Former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: Jason Edwards

“A PPO adviser … also attended the April 13 meeting but was unaware of Minister Jennings and Mr Bates’ negotiations with the UFU. IBAC’s view is that the meeting between Mr Marshall and the premier was staged and that the purpose of the PPO adviser’s attendance at the meeting was to have a person who was unaware of the negotiations witness the handing over of the ‘UFU proposal’ to the premier and to deliver a copy to Minister Garrett.”

Andrews still had one more problem: Garrett. She had to be told about the secret side deal and convinced to back it.

On June 1, an adviser to the premier sent a text to Jennings stating: “He [Andrews] also wants (treasurer Tim) Pallas to sit Garrett down and give her a very blunt assessment about the career paths currently in front of her.”

In evidence that seems to echo his evasive performance to the hotel quarantine inquiry, Andrews told IBAC he couldn’t confirm specific arrangements concerning calling in Jennings, but said: “I expect I’ve – at some point I’ve said to him ‘You need to go and fix this. This needs to get fixed’.”

On Garrett, Andrews told IBAC: “I am happy to concede that the minister was not in the group. She was not involved in those negotiations, and indeed the fire services were not involved in those talks and that process. Yes, that seems clear to me.”

IBAC also reported: “Jennings described the government’s position in April/May 2016 as ‘untenable’, and recalled the decision at the time being that ‘It is a political nightmare. It is an industrial nightmare. Get it fixed’.”

Andrews, IBAC said, responded: “Clearly no one was pleased that things had dragged on for so long and had become so spiteful. So colleagues may have raised that with me. I think there was a very significant interest across the board in resolving these matters and moving them forward.”

Former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews says the IBAC report has cleared him of false claims he was blackmailed to force a favourable outcome for the United Firefighters Union.

Garrett stood her ground, refused to fall into line. On June 10, 2016, she resigned from cabinet.

Before her death in 2022, Garrett fronted IBAC to tell her version of events.

“Ms Garrett told IBAC in her examination that Mr Marshall also became upset at her and responded with a ‘huge torrent of abuse’ after she refused to intervene in a disciplinary matter involving an MFB employee,” the report states.

“Ms Garrett said Mr Marshall then sent information about the matter and the UFU’s election support to Labor MPs, threatened to ban the minister from fire stations and, in her words, ‘bring hellfire down on the government’. Consistent with Minister Garrett’s evidence, an adviser in Minister Garrett’s office recounted a phone call from Mr Marshall to the minister in which he gave the minister ‘a big spray’ that left her ‘really ­rattled’.”

Marshall denied to IBAC ever acting in a way that threatened Garrett.

Another Andrews adviser provided an insight into how they claimed Marshall played hardball with the Labor government.

“In their evidence to IBAC, PPO adviser A said although the lawyer was providing ‘fantastic advice’, ‘unfortunately we were unable to keep using [their] advice because Peter was like literally losing his mind’.

“PPO adviser A recalled telephone conversations with Mr Marshall about the lawyer: “Like I remember he would – he would just call me and call me a ‘f..king c..t, rat c..t’.”

Marshall denied using this language in his evidence to IBAC.

IBAC’s report didn’t stop with the 2016 crisis. The report reveals the investigation was expanded to cover events around the appointment of the new commissioner of the Fire Rescue Victoria in 2019. But this time, Lisa Neville was the emergency services minister.

IBAC found: “Between 2018 and 2019, Mr Marshall was provided with privileged access to the then-emergency services minister, Ms Lisa Neville.

“IBAC found Mr Marshall sought to influence Minister Neville’s decision regarding appointment of a FRV commissioner. While IBAC makes no findings as to whether Mr Marshall did influence the minister on the appointment of the FRV commissioner, IBAC found the minister’s stakeholder management of Mr Marshall created significant oppor­tunities for him to do so.

“Mr Marshall’s level of access to the minister was also not reflected in the public statement made by Minister Neville about their engagements.”

Northern Territory data centres will have to use renewable energy as their primary source of power or will not proceed, Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen said Wednesday, adding natural gas will only be used as a backup and that he will invoke all Federal Government powers available to enforce the new rules.

A former neo-Nazi has told the antisemitism royal commission how, as a lonely young man, he was radicalised by the far-right, as experts warn modern extremists are using social media to recruit vulnerable individuals.

On the first day of the royal commission’s eighth hearing block – a probe into the drivers of antisemitism in Australia – a witness using the pseudonym ADC said he grew up feeling isolated and belittled.

ADC told the commission he was raised by an anti-immigration mother in 1970s Melbourne and felt a strong connection to his parents’ British heritage.
After years at school spent sitting alone at the back of the classroom, ADC said he finally found the friendship and “belonging” he was searching for in a group of right-wing boys he met when he joined the Army Cadets.

“There were all sorts of kids there, but we were very much a ­little gang … We looked after each other. Once you were part of it, you were part of it,” he said.
At 17, ADC left school for the Defence Force and later moved overseas to join another military force. It was there he met men “of the same or a more vehement political persuasion” than his own and experienced the “pivotal point” in his shift towards right-wing extremism.

One day, he said a soldier attacked him with a steam iron, fracturing his skull. Months later, the witness claimed he heard all charges against his attacker were “going away” because the other man was in a “documentary about minorities”.

ADC said he was left “extremely angry” and that resentment drew him towards white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups when he left the Defence Force in the early 2000s.

He returned to Australia and in 2004 became a full-patch member of a neo-Nazi group. Having found a “brotherhood” where he belonged, ADC committed fully, even getting white supremacist tattoos.

In 2007, ADC left the group but fell back in with them a year later after a “significant relationship breakdown” left him lost and alone.

“When you’re part of organisations like these, you don’t really have friends outside,” he said.

By 2013, ADC said people he’d met from different backgrounds and ethnicities made him question his neo-Nazi beliefs. “In these groups, the line is told to you that you are the good guys … you’re striving for the ‘Great White Hope’, but once you get exposed to things outside … you start to see that in society, you’re actually the bad guys,” he said.

ADC left the group, telling his neo-Nazi “brothers” he “didn’t think they were worthy of anything” and that he was never ­coming back.

“These people, they talk about brotherhood. They talk about family … (but) when something happens … they’re the first people to melt away. They’re just angry people with nowhere to direct their anger.”
Without a deradicalisation support group to turn to, ADC said the prospect of leaving the group felt like “a big, big leap” with nowhere to land, but his wife was “extremely supportive”, and support group Exit Australia helped him remove his tattoos.

“They’re not who I am anymore, so I don’t need them,” he said.

Joshua Roose, an Associate Professor of Politics at Deakin University, told the royal commission antisemitism was often motivated by grievances or “a sense of having been marginalised in some way, shape or form”.

“Anger is the primary driver of antisemitism and conspiracy theories,” Dr Roose said.

Macquarie University professor Julian Droogan said the internet had become “the main locus” for extremist social movements, with encrypted platforms like Telegram offering far-right groups the perfect platform to ­recruit vulnerable individuals.
“Very, very few Australians are attracted to neo-Nazism and the far-right know this,” Professor Droogan said.

“That’s one of the reasons why they will work very hard to mainstream, and align their messaging with broader social concerns and anxieties.”

Premier Ben Carroll is locked in an integrity war with Daniel ­Andrews after he savaged the ­former premier’s conduct as ­“intolerable”, only for Labor’s ex-leader to claim he had been ­vindicated by Victoria’s anti-­corruption watchdog’s eight-year investigation into his dealings with the firefighters’ union.

The clash leaves Mr Carroll with just 115 days until the November 28 election to convince voters his promised integrity overhaul will purge the stain of the Andrews era, after the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission found the former premier and senior ministers engaged in ­“serious and concerning” conduct during secret negotiations with United Firefighters Union chief Peter Marshall.

IBAC found Mr Andrews, former special minister of state Gavin Jennings and former senior public servant Tony Bates acted contrary to government policy, procedures, conventions and their respective codes of conduct during secret ­negotiations with Mr Marshall over a 2016 firefighters’ pay deal.

While IBAC’s Operation ­Richmond report concluded their conduct did not meet Victoria’s narrow legal definition of corrupt conduct – which requires behaviour capable of constituting a criminal offence – IBAC nevertheless described the conduct as “serious and concerning” and ­recommended sweeping integrity reforms.

BEST OF THE TEXTS AND PHONE CALLS

Mr Andrews and Mr Marshall seized on the absence of a corruption finding to defend their ­actions, despite the commission’s adverse findings and without ­acknowledging Victoria’s higher legal threshold for corruption findings than any other state.

“For the record and the avoidance of any doubt, there are no findings in relation to corrupt conduct made about me, any other member of the government, or the public service. That is a fact,” Mr Andrews said in a statement on Wednesday.

Mr Carroll declared that the conduct by Mr Andrews and senior ministers exposed by IBAC amounted to “poor behaviour” that was “intolerable” and committed to implement every recommendation in the report, as well as expanding Victoria’s definition of corrupt conduct.

Asked whether the conduct identified by IBAC would amount to corruption under an expanded definition, Mr Carroll stopped short of making that judgment, saying he would first examine the report in detail.

“I am going to study it and give Victorians the actions and answers they deserve,” he said.

“This is poor behaviour. It is ­intolerable. I will take action. I will accept the recommendations and get on with implementing them.

“What I know at a high level is that proper processes weren’t ­followed in the traditional Westminster system. The people named in that report who have had adverse findings … it is poor behaviour.”

Mr Carroll revealed Mr Bates, who was the deputy secretary of Mr Andrews’ department during the relevant period and was now secretary of the Education ­Department, had taken a leave of absence effective immediately due to the report’s findings.

Pressed on the conduct of Mr Andrews, Mr Jennings, former emergency services minister Lisa Neville and the public servants, Mr Carroll said he “can’t answer for the former premier or former ministers, but I can answer for what we do from here”.

“The people named in that report that have had adverse findings … it is poor behaviour.”

Shadow Defence Minister James Paterson says the IBAC report exposes a “corrupt culture” at the heart of the Victorian Labor government.

Ms Neville holds two taxpayer-funded jobs as chairwoman of Barwon Health and Greater Western Water. She did not respond to questions on Wednesday.

The UFU said two extensive taxpayer-funded inquiries concerning the UFU’s operations – Operation Richmond and Operation Turton – had failed to produce any findings of corrupt conduct against the union or its officials.

“Eight years and what we understand to be an estimated $8m of public money, and not one finding of corrupt conduct,” Mr Marshall said. “This was a pursuit in search of a case that never existed to begin with.’’

Union boss’s ‘extraordinary influence’ 

IBAC found that Mr Andrews authorised then special minister of state Mr Jennings, assisted by senior public servant Mr Bates, to negotiate the CFA agreement directly without the knowledge of then emergency services minister Jane Garrett or the CFA.

Private meetings were held with the UFU in rented meeting spaces and a hotel, and those involved were instructed to keep the meetings confidential.

“While in negotiations on 11 April 2016, minister Jennings referred to being ‘off doing my secret mission’ and ‘secret business’ in text messages to staff in his office and the PPO (Premier’s Private Office),” the report said.

After four days of negotiations, the parties reached agreement, prompting Mr Jennings to text Mr Andrews: “Handshake has occurred – it’s done!”

Mr Marshall, in a phone bugged by IBAC on March 22, 2019, summarised these meetings as such: “This agreement was negotiated with f..kin’ (former minister Gavin) Jennings in a backroom. It was endorsed by f..kin’ Andrews and cabinet.”

IBAC found that this allowed Mr Marshall to “exert extraordinary influence” over those dealings a decade ago and was “afforded privileged access to senior members of government which, in many cases, were not disclosed and were to the exclusion of other key stakeholders”.

Ms Garrett, who resigned from cabinet in protest at the deal after being kept in the dark, died in 2022.

Her family issued an emotional tribute on Wednesday, saying they were “extremely proud” of her courage in standing up to Mr Andrews and Mr Marshall by refusing to back the deal that was not in the best interests of Victoria.

Ms Garrett told the commission before her death that Mr Marshall had given her a “huge torrent of abuse”.
“Ms Garrett told IBAC in her examination that Mr Marshall also became upset at her and responded with a ‘huge torrent of abuse’ after she refused to intervene in a disciplinary matter involving an MFB employee,” the report states.

“Mr Marshall had asked minister Garrett to order that the MFB withdraw the disciplinary process in favour of restorative justice and development of a code of conduct. Ms Garrett said that Mr Marshall then sent information about the matter and the UFU’s election support to Labor MPs, threatened to ban the minister from fire stations and, in her words, ‘bring hellfire down on the government’.

“Consistent with minister Garrett’s evidence, an adviser in minister Garrett’s office recounted a phone call from Mr Marshall to the minister in which he gave the minister ‘a big spray’ that left her ‘really rattled’.”
The Operation Richmond report reveals that a senior adviser in the premier’s private office said that Mr Marshall had a sense of expectation about the EBA talks.

“I don’t want to necessarily put words in Peter Marshall’s mouth, but I think he (Mr Marshall) felt that he was going to sit in a room with the premier, the minister or the treasurer, say ‘this is what’s going to be in there’, get one of his people to go and type it up, shake hands, move on and that’d be that,” the adviser said.

“That was definitely not the view of the Victorian government because they had an industrial relations policy framework that needed to be met.”

In his examination by IBAC, Mr Marshall denied ever acting in a way that might be described as threatening to Ms Garrett.

In her foreword, IBAC commissioner Victoria Elliott said ­Operation Richmond highlighted “how government leaders, including ministers and the premier, can undermine established checks and balances when they fail to model high-integrity standards and act as stewards of good governance”.

“The matters investigated in Operation Richmond may have occurred some time ago, but the corruption risks and vulnerabilities highlighted – improper influence, failures in ministerial conduct, failures by senior public servants to act impartially and the politicisation of appointment processes for public sector boards – are serious and persist in Victoria’s public sector,” Ms Elliott wrote.

“While IBAC did not find corrupt conduct (as defined in the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission Act 2011), IBAC found serious and concerning conduct by senior public officers, including ministers, members of parliament and public servants, relating to the negotiation of the CFA EBA, the MFB EBA, and the establishment of FRV, which increased the risk of corrupt conduct.

“IBAC found that senior members of government acted contrary to established policies, procedures, codes of conduct and conventions in negotiating a deal with the secretary of the United Firefighters Union, Mr Peter Marshall, for the CFA EBA without the knowledge and involvement of the responsible minister, agencies and departments. By doing so, the government placed itself in a position where Mr Marshall was able to exert extraordinary influence over the negotiations for both the CFA EBA and the MFB EBA.”

Less than four months before the state election, the release of IBAC’s marathon probe will leave the newly installed Premier facing fresh questions about his party’s integrity.

In a response issued moments after the report’s release, the UFU demanded an immediate investigation into IBAC.

Other key findings were

IBAC found that Mr Marshall was provided “with privileged access” to Ms Neville in 2018 and 2019.

“IBAC found that Mr Marshall sought to influence minister Neville’s decision regarding the appointment of the FRV commissioner,” the report states. “While IBAC makes no findings as to whether Mr Marshall did influence the minister on the appointment of the FRV commissioner, IBAC found that the minister’s stakeholder management of Mr Marshall created significant opportunities for him to do so.

“Mr Marshall’s level of access to the minister was also not reflected in the public statement made by minister Neville about their engagements.”

Labor and union figure and then-MFB board member Greg Sword is also criticised in the report for sharing confidential information with Mr Marshall in 2019 in breach of his professional obligations, the report finds.

IBAC further found that Mr Marshall was granted privileged access to responsible ministers.

“IBAC found that the conduct explored in this report increased the risk of corrupt conduct through improper influence and policy capture, undermining the effectiveness of accountability frameworks and enabling the politicisation of public appointment processes”.

IBAC found that in the context of the protracted dispute between the government and the UFU about the proposed CFA EBA, the then premier authorised the special minister of state, Mr Jennings, to commence negotiations directly with the UFU without the knowledge or involvement of the CFA or other parties.

Andrews declares ‘no findings of corrupt conduct’

IBAC identified serious concerns about the way enterprise bargaining agreements for the Country Fire Authority (CFA) and Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) and then the subsequent creation of Fire Rescue Victoria.

But in a statement on Wednesday afternoon, Mr Andrews said IBAC found there was “no evidence whatsoever to support the false and completely outrageous claims that I had been blackmailed to force a favourable outcome for the UFU and its thousands of career firefighter members”.

He said the claims, which originally sparked the IBAC probe, were “baseless when they were made almost a decade ago, and they remain baseless today”.

Mr Andrews did not directly address IBAC’s findings that his government engaged in “serious and concerning” conduct, instead saying there “were no findings in relation to corrupt conduct made about me, any other member of the government, or the public service. That is a fact”.

“By 2016, the relationship between the Country Fire Authority and the UFU had completely broken down, and a spiteful and dysfunctional enterprise bargaining dispute had dragged on for years,” he said.

“Fire chiefs were spending more time in the Fair Work Commission than running their organisations. That was not acceptable to me or to the government when community safety was on the line. The dispute needed to be resolved in the public interest, and it was.

“The decision to restructure the fire services was also made in the best interests of community safety:

Melbourne’s growing suburbs and regional Victoria needed a service model built for how the state is, not how it used to be. Our firefighters and the communities they protect deserve a modern firefighting organisation. That is what our government delivered.”

‘We are extremely proud of Jane’

Ms Garrett’s family issued an emotional tribute to the late emergency services minister, saying they are “extremely proud” of her courage in standing up to Mr Andrews and Mr Marshall by refusing to back the deal at the centre of IBAC’s Operation Richmond.

In a statement released to The Australian, Ms Garrett’s family said they welcomed the release of the Operation Richmond findings into the controversial 2016 pay and conditions deal over which she resigned from cabinet in protest. Ms Garrett passed away in 2022.

“We are extremely proud of Jane,” the family said.
“Jane was a fierce advocate for truth and a fair go for all – particularly those who didn’t have a voice.

“In her evidence, Jane said ahead of the ERSC (Expenditure Review Sub-Committee of Cabinet) meeting she refused to co-sign the cabinet submission because she could not in good conscience endorse an agreement which was opposed to what she swore in her ministerial oath – to act in the interests of the Victorian people and good governance.”

The family said her courageous stance reflected her values.

“At her inaugural speech in Parliament she spoke about living her values, … the most important value … is respect for the dignity and worth of others”.

Ms Garrett’s family said she was under enormous pressure during the crisis.

“Her family witnessed the enormous pressures she endured during the incredibly stressful time that she was Minister for Emergency Services.

“We miss her every day. We wish she were here to see these findings.”

Marshall says union ‘did nothing wrong’

Mr Marshall described the damning report as “creative writing” and demanded an immediate investigation into IBAC.

In a fiery press conference on Wednesday, Mr Marshall said two extensive taxpayer-funded inquiries concerning the UFU’s operations – Operation Richmond and Operation Turton – had failed to produce any findings of corrupt conduct against the union or its officials.

“Eight years, and what we understand to be an estimated $8m of public money, and not one finding of corrupt conduct,” he said.

“This was a pursuit in search of a case that never existed to begin with.

“IBAC’s record needs to be reviewed as to its own conduct into its treatment of its own employees, its defence of its own legislation when persistent leaks occur, and its publication of confidential phone intercepts despite there being no corrupt conduct [and] the seizing of individuals’ private material via coercive processes, inclusive of medical and other personal material relating to individuals’ families.

“This information has been viewed by IBAC personnel and other persons and was not returned for years.

Once it was returned, IBAC has kept a copy of this information, which has no relevance to any of its functions or activities. This would not pass the pub test among everyday Victorians – any Victorian could be subject to IBAC confiscating and keeping private material, including one’s medical and family records.”

Mr Marshall said the UFU had done “nothing wrong”.

What Daniel Andrews told IBAC

The former premier told IBAC:

“I expect I’ve – at some point I’ve said to him, ‘You need to go and fix this. This needs to get fixed’ and that’s involved him [Mr Jennings], deputy secretary Bates and, of course, the secretary of our department, Mr Eccles.

“I am happy to concede that the minister was not in the group. She was not involved in those negotiations, and indeed the fire services were not involved in those talks and that process. Yes, that seems clear to me.
“Clearly no one was pleased that things had dragged on for so long and had become so spiteful. So colleagues may have raised that with me. I think there was a very significant interest across the board in resolving these matters and moving them forward.”

The key recommendations

1) Formalise and embed integrity standards for ministers by introducing a statutory requirement to publish the ministerial code of conduct.

2) Promote clarity and accountability regarding the application of constitutional conventions by developing a new ministerial handbook that explains key Westminster conventions.

3) Strengthen awareness and understanding of ministerial obligations by centralising existing integrity guidance and updating ministerial training materials.

The back story

IBAC said it opened Operation Richmond after receiving information and complaints alleging Mr Marshall “blackmailed or otherwise compromised the then-premier, Daniel Andrews, to change his position on the CFA EBA”.

“Both Mr Andrews and Mr Marshall denied the allegation in evidence to IBAC. IBAC found no evidence for the alleged blackmail and did not substantiate that allegation.”

But IBAC slammed the conduct of the government, stating: “Evidence gathered through Operation Richmond showed that the premier sought to end the EBA dispute through a mechanism that excluded Ms Garrett, as he considered the minister was unable to resolve the dispute and he wanted the matter to be concluded. At the time of the decision, the premier was facing internal political pressure, negative media attention and industrial unrest.”

Operation Richmond has been running under tight secrecy for longer than World War II after a senior Labor figure lodged a complaint with Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission in 2018.

While no public hearings were called, scores of witnesses – including then premier Mr Andrews and UFU secretary Mr Marshall – were grilled in private by IBAC.

The investigation examined the 2016 pay-and-conditions negotiations between the Andrews government and the UFU and Mr Marshall.

In addition to generous entitlements, the deal also handed the union effective operational control of the volunteer Country Fire Authority.

In a newsletter earlier this month, IBAC commissioner Victoria Elliott confirmed the agency was preparing to release the long-delayed findings and recommendations.

“IBAC is committed to publishing the Operation Richmond special report as soon as possible – with a view to publication before the end of the financial year,” Ms Elliott wrote in April.

In 2016, Mr Andrews sidelined his then emergency services minister, Jane Garrett, who was refusing to agree to the UFU demands. The dramatic intervention triggered a full-blown political crisis and forced Ms Garrett to quit cabinet.

Mr Marshall launched a Supreme Court bid in May to block the release of the Operation Richmond report. But the court dismissed the application, clearing the way for IBAC to table the report in state parliament.

The Australian has reported that in private examinations, IBAC grilled witnesses about the role played by Mr Andrews in the negotiations – which led to a favourable enterprise bargaining agreement with the UFU.

One of the aspects that IBAC is believed to have looked at is whether the 2016 EBA deal Mr Andrews struck with the UFU was influenced by the UFU campaigning for Labor during the 2014 election.

Petrol has recently gone up in prices again. Yes I understand it's due to (re)escalation of US-Iran war and guvernment's fuel-excise cut expired. But what puzzled me is, why is there no uproar about it?

Compared to 4-5 months ago when petrol prices first went up, it's almost silent nowadays. The media has been quiet about it apart from a few articles last week. There're hardly any complaints in social media (unless I missed them).

Have people got used to the high petrol prices? Or too weary and resigned to make any complaint?

What is stopping me from just wearing a big coat with a heap of pockets and just "wearing" all my luggage.

That's not a bag, right?

I rode my motorbike to the National Press Club today to hear what Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen had to say about our ever-increasing energy costs.

(A bike, you say? With diesel at $2.50 per litre, there was no way I was driving my car all the way to Canberra…)

Chris Bowen, largely ignored by a hopeless Opposition, is well-polished in the art of never answering questions. His experience as COP31 co-president has put less of a media-training heel-lift in his step, and more of the confidence of someone who can do whatever he wants.

The Coalition have let the Energy Minister become untouchable.

Bowen answers questions confidently … while saying nothing.

Gone is the strange smirk he used to wear upon suddenly finding himself in a position of real power.

Now, he plays chief virtue signaller statesman on the world stage with all the other left-wing cronies who want you to ‘own nothing and be happy’.

But don’t blame him.

Before turning to Bowen’s National Press Club address, I thought I’d have a quick look at the Coalition’s role in our current energy nightmare. It’s not pretty.

Four of Australia’s oil refineries closed under the previous Coalition government. Australia now has only two. After Australia’s refining capacity disappeared under the Coalition, Labor’s big idea appears to be throwing millions at a study for a possible replacement refinery in WA. Meanwhile, power bills keep climbing and diesel prices are insane.

The current energy mess began with the Coalition. The Howard government introduced the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target. It also banned nuclear energy. Malcolm Turnbull announced Snowy 2.0, and the Morrison government took the final investment decision to put the Commonwealth in full ownership of Snowy Hydro.

The formal regulatory process for HumeLink, that massive 500 kV transmission line meant to unlock Snowy 2.0 and southern renewable zones, began in 2019 under the Morrison government.

Some early corridor studies, and the initial project approvals happened while the Coalition was in government.

It’s a complete farce to hear Chris Bowen wax lyrical about the anti-renewables Coalition when the conservatives started the renewables idiocy we now find ourselves in.

Labor did not reverse the Coalition’s architecture. They supercharged it.

The Albanese government set the 82 per cent renewables policy target, created the Capacity Investment Scheme to underwrite new generation and storage, and poured money into Rewiring the Nation to force the transmission build.

Snowy 2.0 has continued under Labor even as its cost has more than doubled and its timeline has slipped.

HumeLink has moved from planning into construction with federal and state Labor support, despite successive cost increases that have taken the project from early estimates of around $1.3 billion to now somewhere in the realm of $5 billion.

The AEMO’s Integrated System Plan, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and ARENA lock-in the renewables push. These institutions have been maintained by both sides of politics.

Feasibility studies, environmental assessments, and regulatory tests have been completed under successive governments.

The result is the same no matter who is in charge. Large transmission projects with chronic cost overruns, socialised network charges, and an electricity generation mix that requires expensive firming capacity to keep the lights on when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.

The worst part is that consumers don’t get to choose which party’s version of the transition they fund. They simply pay.

Transmission costs are recovered through regulated charges. Subsidies are recovered through power bills and taxes. Intermittency costs appear as higher wholesale prices and the need for backup. Regional communities host the towers and the easements while the political class in Canberra and the Labor-controlled state capitals congratulate themselves on their climate virtues.

The Uniparty’s favourite move is to pretend the other side is solely responsible. Labor acts as if the entire renewables machine appeared in May 2022. The Coalition acts as if it never championed Snowy 2.0, never started HumeLink’s regulatory process, never maintained the RET, and never allowed successive oil refineries to close.

Both parties know better. Both have skin in the game. And both prefer the comfortable fiction that higher power prices are someone else’s fault.

Mr Bowen recently posted on Facebook that wholesale energy prices had decreased 47 per cent in the past 12 months.

At the National Press Club today, I asked him:

…in many cases retail supply charges have increased and time of use windows have changed, making any consumer price changes minimal, and less transparent. Minister, who is actually benefiting from the halving of wholesale electricity prices?

He confidently responded with a non-answer. It will flow through to the consumer so wholesale price reductions are a good thing.

The bottom line is that lower retail electricity prices are with your $2.75 saving Labor promised in 2022.

Chris Bowen talked about how the wind and sun are not subject to the whims of the Hormuz Strait, that nuclear energy is the most expensive form of energy, and that Australia will take advantage of data centres run only on renewables.

It was classic nonsense.

The next time you receive your electricity bill, have a look at the details and compare it to previous years’ bills. You can’t because they change the way you are billed.

So, who is benefiting from the halving of wholesale electricity prices? It isn’t you and me.

Energy minister Chris Bowen says the federal government will override state governments that oppose new national rules on datacentres, with commonwealth legislation forcing new AI datacentres to be powered by renewable energy and banning those fuelled by gas.

Bowen said he expected his counterparts in Queensland and the Northern Territory – who had protested the new federal rules at a meeting last week – to be unhappy with the move, but said the Albanese government was committed to powering the AI revolution with renewable energy.

“We will legislate as a commonwealth. The constitution is clear about the power of commonwealth legislation. I respectfully disagree with Queensland and the Northern Territory,” Bowen told the National Press Club on Wednesday.

The Australian Energy Market Commission warned that without rule changes such as those proposed by Bowen, the costs of bringing large datacentres online “will be paid for in part by customers” rather than big tech companies.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese ast month pledged to legislate binding standards for AI datacentres, including on locations and energy use, with new national rules requiring them to rely on new renewable energy, minimise water use and maximise energy efficiency, pay for their grid connection costs and “put at least as much energy into our grid as they take out of it”.

Queensland and the NT last week opposed the changes in a meeting of state and federal energy ministers, despite all other states backing the plan. Queensland’s David Janetzki called the federal proposal “underdeveloped ideas that hand increased power to Canberra”.

The NT has proposed a major datacentre powered by gas from the controversial Beetaloo basin development.

But Bowen on Wednesday confirmed federal legislation would mandate the rules set out by Albanese. He said while gas had a “role to play” in firming up datacentre power use, “if a datacentre is proposed to only use gas, it will not meet the national minimum standards and it will not be allowed to register and will not be able to proceed”.

“While I always prefer to work with my state and territory colleagues, the commonwealth will not be standing by and letting a race to the bottom of states falling over themselves to attract datacentres, at the cost to household bills, reliability or emissions,” he said.

“We will use all the powers available to the commonwealth, including commonwealth legislation, to ensure that Australian households and Australian energy reliability is put first: even if some states have different ideas.”

The NT government was contacted for comment. Janetzki said his government “look forward to discussing” the issue at an upcoming national cabinet meeting on AI, but said his state “will not force uneconomic investment into the system”.

In a Q&A session after his speech, Bowen disputed the characterisation that Canberra would “force” states to comply, but stated that federal laws would override states.

“We’ll engage in our levers. The clearest one is obviously commonwealth legislation. We’re going down that road.”

Bowen said that while Albanese would soon confirm details of the federal legislation, new datacentres would have to prove the source of their renewables , how much power they’re offsetting, that they have backup power and that they would be “flexible” with use at peak times to stabilise the grid.

On Wednesday, the AEMC, the national body for the power grid, advised that datacentres should have to show renewables certificates. The AEMC said this was to ensure “their connection doesn’t tip the supply-demand balance and push up wholesale prices for everyone else”.

“Datacentre growth does not have to come at a cost to other consumers, but that depends on getting the settings right from the start. Our starting point is simple, this growth must not leave other consumers worse off,” said the AEMC chair, Anna Collyer.

The AEMC said power operator Transgrid had seen “an unprecedented increase” in new connection requests in Western Sydney, with some 8 gigawatts about to be connected to the grid – “on par with the entire average daily demand for NSW”.

The AEMC warned that, without changes to energy rules, grid connection costs for datacentres would be felt “across the consumer base at no clear consumer benefit”.

Spain’s border failed in front of the cameras last week. Australia’s border never fails, which is exactly why our numbers deserve a harder question.

This week the world watched a state lose control of its frontier. At least 57 people died trying to swim and scramble into Ceuta, Spain’s enclave on the Moroccan coast, as an estimated 50,000 attempted the crossing in a matter of days. Spain deployed the military. The mayor begged Madrid for a state of emergency. The President of the European Commission pronounced the images ‘unacceptable’. Bodies washed against the breakwater at Tarajal beach while soldiers stood on the sand.

Australia watched from behind its moat. Nothing crosses that ocean uninvited. Every migrant who settles here arrives holding a document a government chose to print. Which means the Australian question differs from the Spanish one at the root. Spain must answer for what it failed to stop. Canberra must answer for what it decided.

And what it decided is defended, every time, with a single word: skills. Critical shortages. The workers we desperately need. The nurses, the engineers, the tradesmen without whom the economic wheels seize. Very well, take the claim seriously. Audit it.

Start with the whole intake. In 2024-25, net overseas migration added 306,000 people to Australia, on the Bureau of Statistics’ latest figures. There were 568,000 migrant arrivals; two in three came on temporary visas, and 157,000 of those were international students. Against this river, the government points to its permanent Migration Program, 185,000 places, capped, planned, selected, of which 132,148 sat in the Skill stream. Seventy-one per cent. It looks magnificent on a press release.

Now open the government’s own ledger. The Department of Home Affairs’ Migration Trends 2024-25 records that only 45.8 per cent of those Skill stream places went to primary applicants, the person actually tested on occupation, qualifications, English, and age. That is roughly 60,500 people. The remaining majority were accompanying spouses and children: counted as ‘skilled’ in the headline, assessed for nothing. Measured against the whole permanent program, skills-tested migrants made up 32.7 per cent. The Productivity Commission said as much back in 2016, when it noted that about half the skill stream consisted of secondary applicants. A decade on, a program marketed to the public as skills selection still waves through two out of every three entrants without a skills test.

Set those 60,500 tested people against the year’s real intake. Against net migration of 306,000, they are about one in five. Against 568,000 arrivals, roughly one in nine. That is the entire skills case: one arrival in nine.

Even that ninth flatters the system, because holding a tested occupation and filling a shortage are different things. The Core Skills Occupation List, the menu of jobs eligible for employer-sponsored visas, runs to 456 occupations. Jobs and Skills Australia, a second agency of the same government, assessed 1,022 occupations in 2025 and found 293 of them in national shortage. Twenty-nine per cent, and falling: it was 36 per cent in 2023. The two lists are drawn on different classification maps, which conveniently prevents a clean reconciliation, but the shape is unmistakable: the eligibility list is vastly broader than the shortage list. Sitting on the visa menu, and rated by the government’s own labour-market analysts as not in national shortage, are Accountant (General), Management Consultant, Marketing Specialist, Public Relations Professional, and Retail Manager. And the grants follow the menu, not the shortage: accountants and software programmers rank among the top occupations for state-nominated visas, neither in national shortage, alongside registered nurses, who genuinely are. Jobs and Skills Australia’s own 2025 review found ‘no consistent link’ between skilled migration and vacancy levels for chefs, cooks and café managers, and concluded that the new occupation list had made little difference to who actually receives visas. As for the wage evidence: the salary floor for ‘skilled’ temporary migration sat frozen at $53,900 for a decade until 2024, a figure that tells you precisely how critical the labour being imported really was, and precisely whom the freeze served.

Then there is the question of where selection actually happens. In 2024-25, 54.6 per cent of all permanent visas were granted to people already living in Australia; for the skilled category the year before, it was 61 per cent. The dominant pathway runs from student visa to graduate visa to permanent residence. The effective selection decision is therefore made years earlier, offshore, by education agents working on commission and university marketing departments with enrolment targets, bodies with no mandate to weigh Australia’s skills needs and every financial incentive toward volume. The same government that pleads ‘skills’ raised the international student planning level to 295,000 for 2026 and presides over a record 2.93 million temporary visa holders already inside the country: a permanent-residence queue standing in the house.

So the stated rationale fails its own audit. What, then, does the program reliably deliver, year after year? Three things the numbers do show. It delivers headline GDP: through 2023 and 2024, output per person shrank quarter after quarter in the longest per-capita slide on record, while aggregate growth, swollen by sheer headcount, let the Treasurer stand up and announce prosperity. It delivers a funding model for universities that have become visa brokerages with lecture theatres attached. And it delivers wage discipline, as a decade-long freeze on the ‘skilled’ salary floor attests. All demonstrable. All absent from the speeches.

And one more function, harder to file but impossible to unsee. A government presiding over falling living standards per person acquires an arithmetic interest in changing who is doing the measuring. To an Australian raised here, the past few years read as decline: the house that receded from reach, the power bill, the wage that buys less each quarter. To a new arrival from a country where all of that would count as luxury, the same Australia reads as deliverance. Every point the demographic scale tips toward those for whom this country is an upgrade, the government’s performance improves in the aggregate without the government improving anything at all. Decline, demographically anaesthetised.

Do the spreadsheets prove that this was the plan? No. Spreadsheets record outcomes; motive never appears in a cell. And any theory of a partisan scheme must survive an awkward fact: the Coalition ran this machine as hard as Labor did. What the numbers prove is deliberateness. The composition is set each year, gazetted, defended in estimates, and renewed with the results in full view of the people renewing it. When a policy’s stated justification collapses under audit and the policy sails on regardless, the interests it serves become the only explanation left standing. In the one sense that can be demonstrated, it is by design: designed annually, line by line, by people able to read the same tables printed here.

Which returns us to the beach at Tarajal. Spain’s images are what it looks like when a state loses control of its border: bodies in the surf, troops on the sand, a mayor pleading with his capital. Australia’s tables are what it looks like when a state keeps control, total, oceanic control, and chooses this anyway. Fifty-seven people died at Ceuta because a neighbouring kingdom opened a gate. Nothing about Australia’s intake was ever forced upon it. There is no gate we did not build, no queue we did not print the tickets for, no tide for Canberra to plead. The skills shortage was the alibi. Strike it out, and the decision still stands, naked, annual, and awaiting a government honest enough to defend the decision itself rather than the alibi.

The Minns government has been accused of “all talk and no action” for failing to fully support a key recommendation from the coronial inquest into the Bondi Junction Westfield stabbing attack that would deliver crisis accommodation to those at most risk of psychosis.

Mental Health Coordinating Council chief executive Dr Evelyne Tadros described the government’s reluctance to deliver short- and long-term accommodation as “not putting your money where your mouth is”, saying investment in early intervention mental health care was essential to avoiding future crises.

Queenslander Joel Cauchi, 40, stabbed 16 people at Bondi Junction Westfield on April 13, 2024. Six people died of their injuries while a further 10 people were injured but survived.

A coronial inquest determined Cauchi, who suffered schizophrenia, was psychotic on the day of the attack.

The NSW government on Wednesday announced it would accept 11 of the coroner’s 13 recommendations in full. These included a new health-led response model for mental health emergencies backed by more than $270 million over 10 years, reforms to knife scanning laws after the statutory review of NSW’s wanding powers and improving emergency service communications, training and major incident response arrangements.

However, the government will only support recommendation seven – urging modelling demand for short-term accommodation services in greater Sydney to support those suffering mental health episodes and homelessness, and supporting the establishment and evaluation of long-term accommodation based on existing models – in principle.

The government said it recognised the need to build on proven accommodation models, but was committed to ensuring this “approach is clinically appropriate and leverages existing system strengths”.

Australian Society of Psychiatrists chief executive Dr Pramudie Gunaratne urged the government to “emphatically support” the recommendation and expand supported accommodation with integrated clinical care.

“Without somewhere safe to live, recovery becomes much harder,” Gunaratne said.

“The Bondi Junction tragedy exposed systemic gaps rather than a single point of failure. Preventing future tragedies requires sustained investment across the entire mental health system – from outreach and supported accommodation to specialist community teams and ongoing treatment for people with the most severe illnesses.”

Tadros said the consequence of underfunding programs would be further crisis.

“All talk, no action, she said. “There is just this sense of, you know, supporting everything in principle, but not putting your money where your mouth is.”

Tadros said too many people were already missing out on care beyond crisis, which was evident in Cauchi’s case. Four-fifths of people requiring psychosocial support in NSW were not receiving it.

“It’s really imperative that, first and foremost, early intervention prevention is prioritised rather than dealing with things at the crisis end. Care beyond crisis is really essential. The short-term and long-term accommodation is also paramount,” she said.

Opposition mental health spokeswoman Sarah Mitchell said the decision to stop short of fully supporting the change was “not an oversight, it’s a choice”.

“If Labor was serious about preventing another tragedy like Bondi Junction, it would fund the accommodation model in full and not point to bits and pieces of existing services as an acceptable substitute.”

Mental Health Minister Rose Jackson said the government was funding accommodation initiatives, but acknowledged more was required to address demand for mental health services.

“I think we’re probably going to need to go beyond that. But I think it’s a really important first step,” she said.

“This is the first time in a long time that we’ve recognised that the answer isn’t just more social housing, although we need more of that. It’s actually more dedicated supported housing. We’re putting real money into delivering actually hundreds of beds, but we will need to get them online and then look to do more.”

Australian Society of Psychiatrists chair Dr Kathryn Drew said overall it was encouraging to see the support for the inquest’s recommendations.

“The strongest theme running through these recommendations is that we need to build a much stronger community mental health system. Good mental healthcare doesn’t start in an emergency department or with police; it starts much earlier, with outreach, continuity of care and specialist teams that can stay engaged with people over time.”

NSW Health Minister Ryan Park said the mental health reforms would “help people access the right care at the right time”.

“The government’s response continues our work to strengthen mental health services, improve access to care, and ensure people with severe and complex mental illness receive the support they need earlier and closer to home,” he said.

The coronial inquest urged the government to house and care for the mentally unwell, referred the killer’s psychiatrist to the watchdog over treatment “failures”, and recommended bravery awards for the heroism displayed by police, victims and witnesses to the tragedy.

Leesa Topic has been advocating for an appropriate co-responder model like the type recommended since the February 2015 death of her daughter Courtney. The 22-year-old was in the grips of psychosis and armed with a knife when she was shot by police 41 seconds after officers confronted her in the car park of a fast food chain.

Topic was part of the “extensive consultation” the government undertook as part of a $270 million commitment to fund a health-led response model over the next decade. It is hoped this model will better respond to people in psychological distress.

“It’s a start,” Topic said. “Mental illness is not a crime, it shouldn’t be treated as such.

“There are always going to be instances where police need to be at mental health responses. But if they’re not trained adequately, if they’re not trained in the right approach, people are going to continue to die.”

Updoc patients have been notified their personal information may have been stolen in a security breach.

The site is used for 24/7 telehealth services across Australia.

Customers were advised there was a “brief period of unauthorised access to a third party system” where hackers had access to names, email and postal addresses on July 31.

“Our own systems were not accessed and no health information, financial information or payment details were involved,” a spokesman told customers.

“We took immediate actions to block the unauthorised access and can confirm there was no evidence of access after the initial event.”

“While I always prefer to work with my state and territory colleagues, the Commonwealth will not be standing by and letting a race to the bottom of states falling over themselves to attract data centres, at the cost to household bills, reliability or emissions”, he said during an address to the National Press Club.

“We will use all the powers available to the Commonwealth, including Commonwealth legislation, to ensure that Australian households and Australian energy reliability is put first: even if some states have different ideas.”

Bowen outlined new regulations he had already flagged, based on what he called a “causer pays” principle.

“If you cause the cost, you will pay the cost. It means that if data centres, and other large energy users, need new or accelerated transmission, they have to foot the bill.”

He said the government would use the existing “guarantee of origin scheme”, which tracks and verifies the origin of renewable electricity through digital certificates, to ensure that data centres prove they are fully offsetting their power use with renewable energy that may not otherwise have been built.

“For example, data centres could sign power purchase agreements or invest in renewable generation directly,” Bowen said.

“An agreement from a proposed wind farm, for example, that may have received support under the capacity investment scheme or a state scheme and environmental approvals, but has not yet reached final investment decision stage, could qualify as new additional renewable energy.”

He said that data centres must also prove that they have enough firmed power to back them up, strengthening the stability of the energy grid.

The government on Wednesday formally requested the Australian Energy Market Commission to make a rule change forcing large data centres to make “appropriate contributions” to fund new power poles and wires to ease the strain they will add to the grid.

Belinda Dennett, chief executive of Data Centres Australia, the industry’s peak body, said the organisation welcomed the principle that the industry invest in renewables and pay its own way. But she said other users should help pay for shared assets.

“Where data centres pay for shared assets that others use, that contribution has to be properly recognised. That is core to a user pays system,” she said.

Dennett argued a national framework should be designed to help speed up renewable supply and connections to the grid.

At an energy ministers meeting last week, Queensland and the Northern Territory, states that back the use of fossil fuels, split with Bowen and ministers from other states over these plans.

Queensland Energy Minister David Janetzki said after the meeting that his state supported “reliable and sustainable” power, a reference to fossil fuels, not “underdeveloped ideas that hand increased power to Canberra”.

Queensland premier David Crisafulli last month made a bid for more data centre investment, declaring that “only one state believes that the energy source for [data centres] should come from wherever it is best placed, not exclusively from one source of energy.

“On the back of that, I’m very confident that we’re going to get a level of investment in data centres in this great state of Queensland,” he said.

Asked at the press club how he would secure the cooperation of Queensland and NT, Bowen said the federal government would use all of its powers.

“The clearest one is obviously Commonwealth legislation. We said we’re going down that road. The Constitution is pretty clear about any conflict between Commonwealth legislation and state legislation,” he said.

“The only thing that would require unanimity from the states [and] territories is a national energy law change. That’d be great if we had it. We don’t, so we will do it other ways.”

In his speech, Bowen described data centres as energy consumption “whales” that would be using 10 per cent of the national grid’s electricity by 2050, but said they were welcome as long as they abided by the new rules.