Australia should tax digital companies based on their revenue and extend superannuation to all working Australians, new Labor senator Tony Sheldon has said. In an interview ahead of his first speech on Wednesday, Sheldon said he would hold technology companies including Uber, Facebook, Amazon and Google accountable for “failing our economy and democracy” and “disrupt the disrupters” by calling for ...

The powerful US backers of a conservative conference being held in Sydney next week say they are committed to making the event a “multi-year, forever-type project” aimed at galvanising the right wing of Australian politics. The organiser of the first Australian Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, says the event will “not be a one-off” and that its US backers, the ...

More than one in three Australian lower house MPs own investment properties, sharing a lucrative portfolio of 90 homes and apartments between them. The latest batch of financial interest declarations was released on Wednesday, showing a significant holding of investment properties among Coalition MPs, many of whom strongly opposed attempts to overhaul negative gearing. A Guardian analysis also shows about 15% of ...

The head of IFM Investors says the $140bn investment powerhouse will be pushing Australian company bosses to work on growing their businesses instead of focusing on cutting costs. The chief executive, Brett Himbury, said IFM, which invests on behalf of Australian industry super funds and like-minded international pension outfits, also supports mining giant BHP’s new pledge to do more to ...

If Christian Porter is writing these dixers, it is just indicative of how busy he is, because OMG it might just be easier to put a microphone on the prime minister when he delivers his joint party room rah rah, then put up with this. Put it in a press release. Let backbenchers ask questions that actually matter to their communities. Can ...

Poverty in Australia is increasing again after several years of decline, a respected University of Melbourne study has found, with changes to welfare policies cited as a possible contributor. The annual Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (Hilda) survey, released on Tuesday, found the proportion of people living below the relative poverty line – 50% of the median income – ...

Australian swimming is being accused of hypocrisy after an Olympic hopeful said she returned an abnormal drug test just days after teammate Mack Horton’s high-profile protest against a Chinese rival suspected of a doping offence. Queensland swimmer Shayna Jack announced on Sunday that she had tested positive for anabolic agent Ligandrol – which is popular with bodybuilders – in late ...

The government has attempted to fend off a formal inquiry into controversial meetings between Angus Taylor and the environment department over endangered grasslands by producing a letter that purports to show the minister was acting in the interests of his constituents and not himself. But the letter, which was said to have come from a concerned farmer, was actually from a lobby ...

In the same week UK courts declared British arms exports to Saudi Arabia to be unlawful, a large shipment of Australian-built remote weapons systems left Sydney airport. Secret photographs, obtained by Guardian Australia, confirm the identity of the buyers – the Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates governments, whose forces are currently waging a devastating war in Yemen. Also marked are the suppliers ...

The attorney-general’s department will probe whether Confucius Institutes at Australian universities require registration as a source of foreign influence after revelations about the extent of Chinese control of teaching standards. On Thursday, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age reported that contracts signed by four universities state that they ‘‘must accept” the assessment of the Confucius Institute headquarters on the teaching quality at the ...