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Latest posts 4.53pm
‘Gossip and stupidity’: Hawke shuts down phone call reports Liberal powerbroker Alex Hawke has refused to be drawn on whether he referenced frontbencher Jane Hume during a phone call with Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s office, following her comments about Indian immigration.
In a tense exchange on ABC Afternoon Briefing, host Patricia Karvelas grilled Hawke about whether he referred to Hume during the phone call.
Opposition spokesperson for industry and innovation Alex Hawke. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Karvelas asked: “The staffer has reported to the senator who she works for that you directly mention Jane Hume in a way that was menacing, because you were basically insinuating that, like Jane Hume was dumped from the front bench, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price would be too.”
Hawke said, “no, I didn’t make any threat or reference to Jane in any way about her dumping”.
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When pressed on whether he mentioned Hume at all, Hawke said: “I’m not going to go into the conversation we had. I am going to say I didn’t make any reference to any dumping, and I’m going to say perfectly clearly, I wouldn’t draw the staffer into it.”
Hawke rejected Karvelas’ suggestion that his call to Price’s office was more than five minutes’ long, rather than the two minutes he claimed it was. Karvelas cited several conservative Liberals as telling her about the length of the phone call.
“I don’t know how any ‘several conservative Liberals’ would know that,” Hawke said.
“I’m on one end, and there’s someone on the other end. It was an unplanned and unexpected call, and there’s only two people that know how long it went for. Everybody else is speculating. I’m not going to get into that realm of gossip and stupidity.”
4.16pm
Two lost, five sleeping rough: State care system’s missing children By Catherine Strohfeldt Police are searching for two children missing from residential care, the Queensland government has revealed, as its child safety review begins three weeks of public hearings.
An audit of Queensland’s foster, kinship, and residential care system in July found almost 800 children were unaccounted for.
Queensland’s Child Safety Minister Amanda Camm. Credit: Catherine Strohfeldt
Child Safety Minister Amanda Camm said 75 per cent were “frequently missing, absent, or both” during routine headcounts.
“It’s over 500 children across the system that, at one point in time, my department didn’t know where they were,” Camm said.
“When we’re talking about complex children – complex adolescents – that have an interface with both youth justice system or… a disability, or a mental health condition, that has an impact on their own safety, but it also has an impact on our community safety.”
The audit found more
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