Australia politics live: Hastie accuses Hanson of avoiding media; Anthony Albanese and King Charles speak

Follow the day’s news live Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast ‘Rotten, awful, ugly’, politicians condemn Hanson’s comments on First Nations Australians The housing minister says Pauline Hanson punches down on people and her language is rotten and ugly, after comments resurfaced of the One Nation leader saying Indigenous Australians are the “most primitive race”. If Pauline Hanson wants to take us down the road of Americanising our politics, so people in a family who disagree on political issues can’t speak to each other any longer like this is the pathway to do it … We’ve got lots of challenges facing Australia, but we’re not going to solve them by punching down on things that are brilliant about our country. So I think it’s rotten. I think it’s awful. I think it’s ugly. I just don’t agree with those comments. But I actually do agree with Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price when she says that there are serious issues that do need to be discussed. And these comments shouldn’t be a distraction from them. I mean, why aren’t we closing the gap? Catherine King has probably been away from her family for a third of the last 25 years. And that’s kind of the extent of this. The important thing is … she made a declaration of it, and she’s been transparent about it. Continue reading...