Mark Speakman stands down as NSW opposition leader and endorses Kellie Sloane as successor
The NSW opposition leader, Mark Speakman, has stood down as leader of the NSW Coalition, after a day of drama in which he resisted moderate colleagues’ urgings to resign.
The party’s health spokesperson, Kellie Sloane, is expected to succeed him as leader when the party room meets.
Speakman said he was endorsing Sloane to succeed him.
“Even a few hours is a long time in politics. I was on radio saying I was staying as leader. By this afternoon some had come forward saying she wanted to be leader of the Liberal party.”
Key events
What we learned – Thursday 20 November
And with that, we are going to put the blog to bed. Before we go, let’s recap the big headlines:
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The Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, will set out her priorities on defence preparedness and energy security in a speech to the Menzies Institute tonight. Ley will also focus on Australia’s role in resolving tensions within our region but warns Australia will have to “credibly deter others” from using force by increasing Australia’s military power and honour commitments it has made to defend friends and allies.
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Tropical Cyclone Fina has intensified into a category 2 weather system and turned south towards the Northern Territory coast. Communities were preparing for it to hit.
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Australian Facebook and Instagram users under 16 will be notified starting Thursday that their accounts will be deactivated by 10 December, as Meta begins to comply with the Albanese government’s social media ban.
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Turkey will host the Cop31 climate conference after the Australian government dropped its push to hold the event in Adelaide at the last moment despite having launched a more than three-year campaign.
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A lack of suitable jobs and a trend towards insecure work is locking hundreds of thousands of people in poverty, according to a new report that finds there are 39 jobseekers for every entry-level position in Australia.
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The South Australia premier, Peter Malinauskas, complained of “frankly obscene” process that ended in Cop31 going to Turkey instead of Adelaide.
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NSW police sprayed an 87-year-old with capsicum spray at a south-west Sydney aged care home yesterday.
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ACT police arrested an Indigenous teenager on a bus at gunpoint last week and allegedly “slammed him on to the ground” before realising they had apprehended the wrong person.
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The NSW opposition leader, Mark Speakman, stood down as leader of the NSW Liberals, after a day of drama in which he resisted moderate colleagues’ urgings to resign. The party’s health spokesperson, Kellie Sloane, is expected to succeed him as leader when the party room meets.
Thank you for spending part of your day with us. We will be back tomorrow to do it all again.
Kellie Sloane thanks Mark Speakman for leadership, endorsement
Penry Buckley
Kellie Sloane has thanked Mark Speakman for his endorsement of her candidacy for the leadership of the NSW Liberal party following his resignation, and confirmed she will nominate for the vacant position tomorrow.
In a statement shared to journalists just now, she says:
“I have enormous respect for Mark and thank him for his leadership of our party. I appreciate his endorsement of me this evening.”
Sloane says she will not make further comment until after the Liberal party room meeting to decide the new leader tomorrow morning.
Lisa Cox
The Northern Territory land councils have also used a Senate inquiry examining proposed nature law reforms to call for an expansion of the federal water trigger.
The existing water trigger requires the environment minister to consider the impacts of large coal mining, coal seam gas and unconventional gas projects on water resources.
The land councils argue it should be expanded to include other “thirsty mega projects”, including large agricultural and horticultural projects.
The NT is facing a large expansion of these types of projects. Traditional owners have taken a legal challenge to the largest ever groundwater licence granted in the territory to the high court.
The licence would allow fruit and vegetable operation Fortune Agribusiness to extract up to 40,000 megalitres of groundwater a year from aquifers under Singleton Station, near Tennant Creek.
Georgia Stewart from the Central Land Council said:
From our perspective, inland Australia is really protected by groundwater in particular, and that’s at a landscape level.
And at the moment, we have projects in the Northern Territory lined up to extract large quantities of water. In the case of Singleton, the largest ever extraction of water … it’s not a coal seam gas and it’s not a fracking project, but it’s an intensive horticulture project.
Andrew Messenger
The Queensland Labor MP Nikki Boyd has apologised for giving the premier the finger during question time.
Boyd said:
Speaker, I’d like to take this opportunity to address the matter that occurred this morning. I’ve spoken to the leader of the opposition about my conduct, and he has made it clear to me that he has far higher expectations of me and all of our team.
As champions of our local communities in this house, it is unacceptable. While I withdrew twice this morning and withdrew from the chamber at the speaker’s direction, I will always take full responsibility for my actions in this chamber, and I unreservedly apologise to the premier, the house and all honorable members for any offence caused.
Government MPs accused Boyd of making an “obscene gesture” and “flipping the bird” to the premier, David Crisafulli. She was kicked out of parliament for an hour.
Boyd has been an MP for 10 years, served as the minister for fire and disaster recovery and the minister for corrective services last year and is currently a shadow minister.
The deputy CEO of the Tiwi Islands Regional Council, Heidi Dorn, has just been speaking on the ABC. Earlier, authorities in Darwin had said there was a cyclone shelter in every area, but Dorn said there were none on the islands.
The tropical lows and cyclones are not new to Tiwi, but it’s definitely, quite alarming when we don’t have a cyclone shelter, or anything like that, on both islands at the moment.
Although everyone’s calm, it’s making everyone a little bit nervous.
She said the community was preparing, cutting tree branches that were weak, and stocking up on supplies.
Georgie Purcell alleges she was sexually harassed in Victorian parliament
Adeshola Ore
The Victorian Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell, in a parliamentary debate on proposed laws to restrict non-disclosure agreements in workplaces, has alleged she was sexually harassed in the state’s parliament.
Without naming anyone, Purcell alleged the harassment occurred while she was working as a political staffer and as a politician. Purcell was first elected to Victoria’s parliament in 2022.
Speaking in the upper house, she said:
I have been sexually harassed in parliament on multiple occasions … It was my very first year as a staffer, when I was just 26 years old.
I will never forget in those early months when someone came into my office for a discussion and I bent over to get something from the fridge and he remarked to me, in my member of parliament’s office, ‘If you do that again, I won’t be responsible for what happens next.’
For me, in my experience with someone else in this place, it was the late-night messages, the harassing phone calls, the harassing texts, the bombardment of digital contact, the knocks on our doors when we cannot see who is on the other side.
Purcell said she had reported sexual harassment while she was an MP and said this quickly spread through parliament:
The immediate questions were: ‘What did she expect? Look how she dresses. Look at the tattoos. Look at her past. You can’t sexually harass the stripper.’ I heard the whispers when I walked past in the hallway.
The specific timeframe of the allegations and the outcome of the report was not specified.
Victoria’s nation-first proposal to curb the use of NDAs in the workplace is designed to prevent victim-survivors from being silenced.
Lisa Cox
Land councils oppose Albanese nature fast-track laws
Northern Territory land councils have criticised an Albanese government plan to fast-track approvals for projects under national nature laws.
The land councils were appearing before a Senate committee examining legislation to reform the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.
Under the proposed reforms, three methods for assessing projects under the existing laws would be replaced with a new streamlined method that would see developments approved within 30 days.
Grassroots organisations have already expressed concern that the proposal reduces transparency and community consultation.
Dr Josephine Douglas, the policy manager at the Central Land Council, said the proposal was a significant change that would see less information about projects made available to the public and reduce the opportunity for communities to have a say. Douglas said:
For this reason, land councils do not support the proposal for undemocratic, streamlined assessment processes, especially for fossil fuel projects.
We want to see engagement with traditional owners on projects that affect them, their country and the environment. And it has to be genuine, and it needs to be tailored to the impacts of a project and the cultural concerns of each particular group.
The Central Land Council also said it was disappointed that the land councils were the only Indigenous organisations that were appearing at the hearings before the bills were expected to be debated by the Senate next week.
Speakman says Gen Z expect action on cost of living and environment
Speakman says he “just isn’t getting the oxygen”:
This is about addressing the centre ground issues that matter to people and what matters to people at the moment.
Most of all is the cost of living. A huge component of that is housing affordability. But Gen Z expects my generation to leave their world in a better place than we have it, and that involves environmental stewardship and responsibility, not denying science with your head in the sand.
And it also involves making sure that they are not the first generation worse off than their parents, and they can’t afford a home.
Speakman says stewardship of environment should be part of conservative ethos
Speakman says the NSW Liberals have strong policies – having helped pass the housing reform, back public transport and supporting Net Zero.
If you want to be a conservative, you can’t just be a conservative on economics or on institutions. You should be conservative on the environment as well.
And having that custodianship and that stewardship of the environment has to be part of our message to young people, not only as a matter of politics, but because it is the right thing to do.
Speakman says it is ‘impossible to get clear air’ with him as leader
Speakman:
Notwithstanding my best efforts, it has now reached the point where it is impossible to get clear air, no matter what policy announcements I make, no matter how ambitious I am, to make sure that the Liberal party engages with Gen Z, engages with the multicultural community, and engages with women.
There is just too much white noise that interferes with that message. And I will never get the clean air that’s needed.
Kellie Sloane will be a fantastic leader if selected by the Parliamentary Liberal party. She is someone of enormous talent.
Speakman said he is not fully sure who will put their hand up to run tomorrow, but Kellie Sloan will have his support:
I don’t know who will be the candidates for the Liberal Party leader tomorrow at a party room meeting, which I hope will be convened. I know Kellie Sloan will be one of those candidates.
Kellie spoke with me this afternoon and indicated to me as she wished to take the leadership. She believed that the interests of the party would be best served if she took the reins, and I have reluctantly agreed that that is so.