Key events
What we learned, Sunday 8 February
And that’s a wrap on today’s blog, folks. Here are the highlights:
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The big news story of the day was the Coalition getting back together, with the Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, and Nationals leader, David Littleproud, promising they’ll stick together in good times and in bad.
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West Australians are bracing for the impact of Tropical Cyclone Mitchell, which has been upgraded to a category three.
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Souped-up ebikes will be seized and destroyed under a crackdown in New South Wales.
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NSW police and the Palestine Action Group are still working out the details of Monday’s protest against Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s visit, and a legal challenge to police powers is in the offing.
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GetUp has hired David Sharaz to tackle the “democratic threat” of conservative groups.
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And Josh Taylor goes inside the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras to find out why the party’s over.
See you back here tomorrow for all the latest from Canberra!
Coalition compromise deal ‘not a bad outcome’: Jason Falinski
The ABC has asked former Liberal MP Jason Falinski about the opposition leader, Sussan Ley, watering down her initial plan to keep the rebel Nationals senators out of the shadow ministry for six months (they’ll now be back in March) in order to reunite the Coalition. He says the compromise they reached is “not a bad outcome”:
The important thing is not what has happened but what is going to happen, because I can’t say it enough. I mean, there are people who are really hurting in our community, and we do not have a government in either state or federal levels that is actually responding to that.
He also said he was surprised the deal was done:
To be honest, I thought the obstacles to the Coalition getting back together again were pretty high, and would have been difficult to surmount. So credit where credit’s due. Both Sussan and David have clearly worked very hard with a lot of internal stakeholders to get the band back together.
How to re-enact Qantas’s historic ‘kangaroo route’ for under $10,000
Isabella Lee has hunted down a budget version of the “kangaroo route”, following the path of Qantas’s first fully operated air travel journey in 1947 from Sydney to London.
Why pay $50,000 when you can pay $10,000 for some hellish travel?!
A ray of sunshine
This is lovely, from the Guardian’s New Zealand correspondent, Eva Corlett.
Before reading it, I didn’t know how much I wanted to pat a stingray, or as Bella called them, “big sea puppy pancakes”:
Coalition back together – in pictures
Please enjoy some images from today’s Coalition press conference, in which the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, looks pretty chuffed:
Planned challenge to protest rules
Here’s Benita Kolovos again, with all the details about the Palestine Action Group’s challenge to police powers, as they prepare to protest against tomorrow’s visit from the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog:
Petra Stock
Tropical Cyclone Mitchell approaches WA as category 3 storm
Severe Tropical Cyclone Mitchell is expected to maintain category 3 intensity as it barrels along the Pilbara coast, before making landfall between Exmouth and Onslow.
Located west of Karratha, the cyclone was about 30km offshore, with 120km/h winds near the centre and gusts up to 165km/h, on Sunday morning, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
Senior meteorologist Miriam Bradbury said
The expectation is that it will maintain its category 3 intensity as it moves south-west today, parallel to the Pilbara coast.
EmergencyWA has issued cyclone emergency warnings stretching from Dampier to Onslow, urging residents to shelter indoors.
Wind gusts of 148km/h have been recorded at Barrow Island on Sunday morning, with more than 70mm of rain falling in Karratha since midnight.
Read more:
Littleproud guarantees unity of Coalition
Asked if he can guarantee there will be “no further fractures”, Littleproud says “yes”.
He’s painting the hate speech vote as the only issue behind the split, while the journos in the room are rightly asking about a whole range of other ones that Coalition members have differing views on. Breaking party room solidarity would “have consequences”, he says.
And that, for now, is that.
Ley confident of party room support
Back on the leadership speculation, Ley says she is “very confident of the overwhelming support” of the party and that they getting ready to announce migration policy details. They will be absolutely fine and united all the way, she says.
One Nation a ‘party of protest’
The two leaders are being quizzed about how they’ll manage issues that have divided the party room in the past, including on the Voice and net zero. “The joint party room has primacy,” Ley says. And she’s not buying into any leadership speculation or whether the reunification will push people towards Angus Taylor as leader – speculation has been rife about a challenge to her leadership.
“With respect, they are your characterisations of a series of events and opinions,” she says.
And on the idea that One Nation could join the Coalition (the “three-ring circus” treasurer Jim Chalmers talked about this morning), Ley says:
One Nation is broadly a party of protest, very good at identifying problems … not so good at identifying what the solutions are.
Nationals leader ‘comfortable’ Coalition together until next election
Littleproud fielded a question about how he can guarantee there won’t be another split.
He says:
I’m very comfortable, and we’ve said to one another, this is where we can look each other in the eye and say, ‘this is the team that will go to the next election’.
He said he wouldn’t be standing there if he didn’t trust Ley but that they took a “principled position”.
Nationals were ‘crying’ over hate speech decision, Littleproud says
The caveat to the deal was that the three Nationals senators had to be reinstated, Littleproud says, defending their decision to vote against the hate speech bill because they weren’t given long enough to scrutinise it properly.
He said:
We don’t come to this place just to vote blindly; we come here because we believe in something.
And I’m proud of my party room. It wasn’t an easy decision, and I can tell you when we got to that decision, there were people in my party room crying because they knew the substantive nature of what we were voting on and what that could lead to.
But I would rather stand with the men and women of the National party who believe in something.
Parties ‘better together’: Littleproud
Littleproud says the two parties are “better together”:
“It’s not the way we wanted to do it,” he says,
[But we can] say to the Australian people we’ve put in processes now to ensure that both parties know exactly that one can’t override the other, but in essence that there is one body that will determine that and that’s this room that the collective wisdom of the National party and the Liberal party will come together.
Split not ‘about personalities’, Littleproud says
Neither party will be able to overturn the shadow cabinet’s decision under the new processes, Ley said.
Littleproud said the split was over a “substantive issue” to make sure there wasn’t an overreach on hate speech laws:
This isn’t about personalities. This was about principles … we tried to get to a position in a short period of time … we weren’t afforded a proper process.
date:2026-02-08 04:18:00