New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said the state must not be indifferent to domestic violence. He spoke following a series of alleged domestic violence incidents over the weekend.
Minns said there were numerous examples of individuals who had allegedly committed horrific acts against often helpless family members. He assessed the situation as confronting and incredibly violent, but stated that pain and violence must not become normalised. He said action was needed and that the issue should be addressed through government agencies, legal reform, prisons, New South Wales police, education, and other aspects of government, as well as through civil society.
The NSW Opposition leader, Kelly O'Donnell, also spoke of a series of domestic violence incidents in the state in recent days. In a statement to ABC News, she said something was broken and that women in the state and the country were being failed. She assessed the situation as a national crisis, noting that each time such an incident occurred, it was treated as a wake-up call.
O'Donnell said people were calling for action, for men to be spoken to about respect, and for women to be spoken to about respect, and that more funding was needed. She stated that people were in a hopeless situation where things were getting worse. She added that it was not just the government's responsibility, although the government had a responsibility to fund and manage the issue properly, but that the response needed to come from the community as a whole. This included sports clubs, fathers in homes who respected their women, and conversations with children about what respect meant.
In separate statements, Opposition Senator Dan Tehan said that criticism of the coalition's fuel plan was unfair. He said that Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party should go out among the people and see what was happening in their electorates, as people were suffering due to the cost of living. Tehan said they had discipline to ensure that political work would ensure that such policies did not inflate and that the necessary relief was provided.
Tehran added that they had helped when the war began with some changes to fuel excise, but that they had shifted, including in the budget, to longer-term arrangements for the cost of living, including through the tax system. He said that their decisions were embedded in the budget so that relief for the cost of living was permanent. He also said that the sooner the war in the Middle East ended, the better.
The Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, wrote on social media that she had recently spoken with the Palestinian Foreign Minister, Varsen Aghabekian. She stated that Australia was committed to a two-state solution. Wong said she had spoken with the Palestinian Foreign Minister, Dr. Varsen Aghabekian, about the reform program and the joint effort to strengthen the institutional foundations of Palestine. She added that they had also discussed the devastating situation in Gaza, reiterating that Hamas must not have any role in the State of Palestine.
Tehran defended the coalition's plan to reduce the content on indigenous peoples in schools. In his view, the coalition's educational plan to reduce content on indigenous peoples from the curriculum would give Australian children "a broader perspective on history". Tehan said to Radio National that he would not become an apologist for who they were, but that he would become proud of who they were, what they had created as a nation and what they could contribute to the rest of the world. He said that it was about achieving balance and that he would seek that balance in the way the curriculum was taught in schools.
Tehran said that the values of western civilisation, in particular, were at the heart of what was in the nation and that they wanted to ensure that it was equally part of the curriculum taught to young Australians. The opposition's education minister, Julian Leeser, revealed on Saturday that the coalition government would remove the cross-curriculum content on the history and culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the Australian engagement with Asia and sustainability. Leeser said that this should be taught as separate, planned subjects within the history, geography or science curriculum, rather than thematically across the curriculum.
