Monique Ryan and husband apologise after video showed him removing Liberal campaign sign
Josh Butler
Kooyong MP Monique Ryan and her husband, Peter Jordan, have apologised after video circulated showing him removing a Liberal campaign sign from a Melbourne yard.
The Nine newspapers first reported a confrontation between Jordan and a Liberal supporter, after Jordan appeared to take exception to a yard sign for Ryan’s Liberal challenger, Amelia Hamer.
The video, also supplied to Guardian Australia by Coalition sources, shows Jordan walking down the street with the large sign, as the person filming the video asks why he took it down.
Jordan replied “because it’s on public land”, and declines to give his identity when asked by the person filming.
In a statement, Jordan said “I unreservedly apologise for removing the sign. It was a mistake.”
I believed the sign was illegally placed but I should have reported my concerns to council.
Ryan, looking to defend her seat from Hamer’s challenge, said in her own statement: “I apologise for the removal of the sign. It should not have happened.”
All concerns around signage should be reported to Council.
Key events
While we’re all gearing up for the budget, you might be wondering…
Where does the money for the budget actually come from (like how much comes from my personal taxes and how much is paid by companies), and how exactly does it get spent?
If you’re curious about this and you like colourful graphs I have got the piece for you, by my colleague Patrick Commins.
Monique Ryan and husband ‘should know better’, James Paterson says
Liberal senator James Paterson has also weighed in on the yard sign issue, and says Monique Ryan should “front up” to the cameras.
The Victorian senator is on Sky News, and says there should be a clean contest in the seat.
It’s totally inappropriate behaviour … He should know better and she should know better, and this never should have happened in the first place. And I really hope this is a once off. What we want in Kooyong is a clean contest.
Paterson is also asked about the Port of Darwin, which is currently leased by a Chinese company, but many are pushing for it to be returned to public hands.
Landbridge acquired a 99-year lease of the Darwin Port in 2015, while Scott Morrison was federal treasurer. Paterson says:
I think it should be returned to Australian ownership, and I hope that happens very soon.
I think there was a range of failures of the system at the time, and I publicly said repeatedly it was a mistake [for the] Territory government to release it. But because it was a lease, and because it was a Territory government [entity], not a private entity, it just fell through the cracks.
Josh Butler
Electoral commission responds to Kooyong campaign sign incident
Further to the Monique Ryan yard sign issue, the Australian Electoral Commission has now given us a statement. In a response to my colleague Adeshola Ore, an AEC spokesperson said they were “aware of the footage of a campaign sign being removed in Kooyong.”
The placement of signage is not regulated in electoral law, save for the requirement that campaign signs cannot be placed within 6 metres of the entrance to a polling place. The AEC is aware that some local councils have regulations in place around the placement of campaign signs or corflutes. Questions about signage on public land are generally a matter for local council.
The spokesperson said while the commission doesn’t regulate the placement of election signs, the AEC wanted to remind candidates about “the importance of civility while campaigning at this year’s federal election”.
More information about election signs is available on our website: Voter’s guide: Communication channels catalogue – Australian Electoral Commission.
Monique Ryan and husband apologise after video showed him removing Liberal campaign sign
Josh Butler
Kooyong MP Monique Ryan and her husband, Peter Jordan, have apologised after video circulated showing him removing a Liberal campaign sign from a Melbourne yard.
The Nine newspapers first reported a confrontation between Jordan and a Liberal supporter, after Jordan appeared to take exception to a yard sign for Ryan’s Liberal challenger, Amelia Hamer.
The video, also supplied to Guardian Australia by Coalition sources, shows Jordan walking down the street with the large sign, as the person filming the video asks why he took it down.
Jordan replied “because it’s on public land”, and declines to give his identity when asked by the person filming.
In a statement, Jordan said “I unreservedly apologise for removing the sign. It was a mistake.”
I believed the sign was illegally placed but I should have reported my concerns to council.
Ryan, looking to defend her seat from Hamer’s challenge, said in her own statement: “I apologise for the removal of the sign. It should not have happened.”
All concerns around signage should be reported to Council.
Caitlin Cassidy
Six University of Melbourne staff dismissed over sexual misconduct in 2024, report finds
Six staff members were dismissed from the University of Melbourne (UoM) following a finding of sexual misconduct last year and one student was expelled, a new report has found.
The UoM is one of the few universities that post annual, public sexual misconduct reports. This year’s report, released today found 21 complaints were made against staff in 2024, up from seven in 2023. Six people were dismissed.
A total of 23 complaints were made against students, down from 25 in 2023. Of those, one student was expelled, three were suspended with conditions places on re-enrolment and a range of penalties applied for three others.
University of Melbourne provost, Prof Nicola Phillips, said the university had made significant progress since the first report was published four years ago, but there was more work to be done.
No individual in our community should be subjected to sexual harassment or sexual assault as they go about their studies or work, and everyone should expect – and insist on – an environment which is characterised by professionalism and respect.
But it is not just about responding when these things happen. It is also about creating a positive culture right across our university in which these forms of abuse are not accepted, are not accommodated or enabled or trivialised, and are always taken seriously – regardless of who the perpetrator may be.
Universities Australia is due to release another national student safety survey this year. The last survey was conducted in 2021.
Amanda Meade
TV networks announce budget night programming
TV networks are gearing up to cover the budget tomorrow night but only the ABC will carry Jim Chalmers’ speech live.
On the ABC, Jeremy Fernandez will present a budget preview nationally from 7pm on the ABC News channel. After the treasurer’s speech, Sarah Ferguson hosts a special budget edition of 7.30 featuring interviews with Chalmers and the shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, and analysis from Laura Tingle. At 8.30pm David Speers anchors a special budget edition of Insiders live from Parliament House.
On Channel Seven, dedicated budget coverage starts at 9.30pm when host Michael Usher, chief political editor, Mark Riley, and national business editor, Ameila Brace, analyse the numbers and the impact they will have on households.
Nine’s budget special is at 10pm and will be hosted by Peter Overton, with analysis from Charles Croucher, Andrew Probyn, Effie Zahos and Chris Kohler. The special will include interviews with Chalmers and Taylor.
Caitlin Cassidy
School funding agreement ‘too little too late’, Greens say
The Greens are not impressed with the education deal inked between Queensland and the federal government today.
Spokesperson on primary and secondary education, Senator Penny Allman-Payne, said it was too little, too late.
The agreement, now reached with all jurisdictions in Australia, will ensure all government schools will be fully funded for the first time by 2034.
Allman-Payne said:
Labor’s plan ensures that it will be a quarter of a century before Gonski is delivered and every Australian public school receives its bare minimum funding.
That means kids currently in school are going to finish year 12 never having experienced the fully resourced education they deserve. That means not enough teachers, not enough in-class supports, inadequate facilities, and parents and teachers dipping into their own pockets to make up the shortfall.
Budgets are about priorities, and if public schools were a priority for this government they would fully fund public schools this year.
Dutton ‘wearing the legacy’ of female voters who turned away from Scott Morrison, Littleproud says
As the election looms closer, the parties are looking at exactly which demographics they need to appeal to.
A big one is women.
The Coalition lost a significant amount of female support at the 2022 election, something they highlighted in their postmortem. But it seems that vote isn’t bouncing back.
David Littleproud was asked on Sky News earlier why women still aren’t returning to the party:
I don’t think we can run away from it. I think we lost a lot of female voters at the last election. They weren’t happy with how Scott Morrison handled it … I mean, I don’t think that there was a great love of Scott Morrison, particularly the way he handled some of the incidents that happened here in Parliament House … So Peter is wearing that legacy.
You’ll see as we get close to the election, is greater policies around women. And Peter [Dutton] has a very, very strong record in his support of women in this country.
Would more gas decrease prices, or is this all hot air?
Analysts last year warned that gas was a “far more expensive power source” in the national grid compared with renewable energy or coal when the Coalition announced their nuclear plan.
They also said opening more gas basins would be unlikely to be cheaper, because Australia’s cheap gas has “already been extracted”.
You can read more about that here:
Henry Belot
Littleproud says increasing gas supply is key to lowering energy prices
Circling back to the opposition’s gas position, they’ve said they would work to increase the supply of gas to the domestic market, and claim that it will bring prices down.
David Littleproud was asked on ABC Radio National earlier whether the Coalition could ensure energy prices would go down during the first term of a Coalition government. He said gas was key:
If you increase supply, yes. That’s what we intend to do by bringing in gas and quickly. You’ve got the gas here. This is a thing in Australia. We have sovereignty of all our resources. So why wouldn’t we use them? We have a spread in our energy mix, not putting all our energy into one basket.
We will have renewables as well, make no mistake. There will be renewables as part of our grid. But you’ve got to have baseload power. To get [prices] down in the short term, the only way is to increase supply. That’s an economic principle that no one can run away from.
Just a reminder, independent senators Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock have also been up this morning talking about gas, but they say there isn’t a shortage of it, the problem is that we export too much of it.
Why do we keep talking about fish in Tassie?
The Maugean skate, an endangered fish species found in Tasmania’s west coast has been the subject of a tug-of-war between environmentalists and the salmon farming sector.
Why? Because of scientific advice telling the government that salmon farms in Macquarie Harbour are having a “catastrophic” impact on the species.
The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, has been considering the fate of the aquaculture business in Macquarie Harbour since November 2023, when three conservation groups requested she reconsider whether the industry had the approvals it needed.
But the PM has promised to introduce legislation into parliament this week, to allow sustainable salmon farming to continue, and to protect jobs. He was asked about that in his press conference earlier.
My government makes no apologies for supporting jobs. That’s what the Labor party does we support jobs, but we also support sustainability, which is why we’ve invested $37 million for sustainability, for oxygenation. That’s why we’re engaged as well in what has been a very successful breeding program as well.
But that legislation isn’t going down well with environmental groups, which my colleague Adam Morton has more details on.
