5m agoThu 17 Jul 2025 at 10:46pm
G20 counterparts having ‘blunt conversations’ about Trump tariffs
Finance ministers from across the G20 are having some pretty “blunt conversations” about US President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, Treasurer Jim Chalmers says.
The treasurer is currently in Durban, South Africa for meetings with his counterparts, where he says the is a sense that the tariffs are “unwarranted”.
“They’re unnecessary, and they are as the prime minister and others have said, they are an act of economic self-harm,” he told ABC Radio National Breakfast.Â
“People have been talking about that in relatively blunt ways, and that’s because we all recognise together that if you think about these four big economic shocks we’ve had less than two decades, this one’s a bit different to the first three, because this one is imposed by policy, by policy decisions out of DC and elsewhere.”
29m agoThu 17 Jul 2025 at 10:21pmJobless rate ‘unwelcome but unsurprising’: Chalmers
Treasurer Jim Chalmers is playing down concerns about a recent uptick in the unemployment rate, describing the figures as unwelcome but unsurprising.
(ABC News: Tobias Hunt)
The jobless rate jumped to a 3.5 year high of 4.3 per cent on Thursday, just a week after the Reserve Bank surprised markets by keeping interest rates on hold.
Speaking to ABC’s Radio National Breakfast from a meeting of the G20 Finance Ministers in Durban, South Africa, Chalmers said the budget books had forecast this outcome.
“This is unwelcome but it’s also unsurprising. We’ve been saying for some time, including in our own budget forecast, that we expect a modest tick up in the unemployment rate,” he said.
“It remains the case that over the last three years, the labour market in Australia has been a real source of strength at an uncertain time in the world.”
Chalmers said he didn’t expect unemployment would reach 5 per cent.
34m agoThu 17 Jul 2025 at 10:17pm
PM to return from China
Anthony Albanese is flying out of Chengdu this morning and returning to Canberra as he wraps up his six day visit to China.
The prime minister has hailed his trip to Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu as a great success and says he is building valuable relationships with China’s top leaders.
But the Coalition has sharply criticised the visit, saying parts of it were self indulgent and the prime minister hasn’t pushed back forcefully enough on China’s military exercises near Australia earlier this year.
Albanese’s responded by saying diplomacy requires patience and that his trips to the Great Wall and a giant panda breeding centre will help build mutual respect and draw more Chinese tourists to Australia.
He also said while he asserted Australia’s national interests on difficult subjects, the relationship isn’t defined by its differences.
45m agoThu 17 Jul 2025 at 10:05pm
👋 Good morning
Hi friends, welcome to our politics live blog.
I’m Courtney Gould, logging in from the ABC’s Parliament House bureau in Canberra, ready to bring you all the news as it comes in.
Anthony Albanese will jump on his prime ministerial plane, making his way back from his six-day tour of China. Elsewhere it’s a bit of a mixed bag and to be honest I have no idea where the day is going to take us.
So let’s just dive in, hey? What could go wrong!
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