Shadow Cyber Security Minister James Paterson says we already have Indigenous voices in the Federal Parliament and they are “ignored”.
“It is not clear to me why, if we are ignoring the Indigenous voices that we already have who are democratically elected to represent their fellow Indigenous Australians are not being listened to – why a Voice to Parliament would change anything,” Mr Paterson told Sky News Australia.
Former Victoria Liberal Party president Michael Kroger says he hopes the Voice to Parliament "does not succeed" because he does not want Australia to be "permanently divided by race".
“If we incorporate the Voice mechanism into the constitution, you’ll have this country permanently divided by race,” Mr Kroger told Sky News Australia.
“You’ll have the First Nations Aboriginal Australians and you’ll have the non-Indigenous Australians and it’ll forever be this.
“It’s one Australia.”
Sky News host Paul Murray says the idea of protesting a funeral is “wrong” as an LGBTQ group plans to rally outside Cardinal George Pell’s funeral on Thursday over views he held.
“What exactly is to be achieved here?”, Mr Murray said.
“The idea that we’re going to start picketing people’s funerals is a line that I don’t believe reasonable Australians want anyone to cross.
“No matter what trauma was in your past, no matter what difficulties you had with the person who has now passed away, it’s just not the way we do things."
New South Wales Energy Minister Matt Kean says coal and gas price “spikes” are feeding through to energy price rises for families and businesses around Australia.
“We’re working with the commonwealth to put downward pressure on electricity prices, we’ve done our bit here with the coal cap,” Mr Kean told Sky News Australia.
“We’ve put $330 million worth of energy bill relief on the table to support families and businesses at this difficult time – this is not just a national problem, it’s an international problem driven by the illegal war in Ukraine.
“We’ve seen huge spikes in the price of coal – in the price of gas and that’s feeding through to domestic energy prices.”
Australian households are facing higher gas bills from today as retailers pass on price rises.
AGL, Energy Australia and Origin Energy will increase prices affecting customers in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT.
The gas industry has criticised the government for failing to have a plan to fix supply shortages as prices increase.