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ESSENTIALS

— CFMEU organizers blocked from shaping subcontractor pay deals

— Farrell: “Superannuation funds have an obligation to the national interest”

— One Nation eyes NSW majority in “wild” new election analysis

DRIVING THE DAY

CFMEU BLOCKED FROM SELLING PAY DEALS

The construction union administrator has released its latest six-month report, the first since executive officer Michael Crosby replaced barrister Mark Irving.

Crosby gives builders in NSW a massive serve, calling them out for “appalling safety breaches” in high-rise residential apartments and for being “quite happy to work with” former Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union NSW Secretary Darren Greenfield, jailed in 2025 for receiving bribes.

“Whether money changed hands the Administration cannot say. What is clear is that compliance with the [workplace pay deals] was optional,” Crosby said. “There are no longer deals in backrooms.”

In the NSW branch administrators have introduced new rules so that only the union executive, not organizers, can influence subcontractor selection and approve dispensation of clauses in workplace pay deals, which must be disclosed. “[This] stops these conversations being monetizable assets.”

While the report is rosy about progress in most branches, in Victoria there is still “an ongoing and organised opposition” of those loyal to removed leaders John Setka and Joe Myles. That branch went bad because delegate and safety roles were “handed to people with no history of union activity and with links to criminal gangs”, Crosby said.

IMMIGRATION — SECURE JOURNEYS, ABRUPT EXITS

On Thursday, Paul Karp scooped that the Australian government has begun docking the pay of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement-linked private prison operator, recouping millions of dollars and assessing options up to and including early termination of a $2.3 billion Australian dollar contract to run the country’s onshore immigration detention centers.

We brought you the news but neglected to link to the full article on Secure Journeys — mea culpa. Here it is.

Since Secure Journeys began managing onshore detention in March 2025 it has dealt with a string of incidents culminating in 12 escapes, several deaths and a multimillion-dollar fine in the first month it was liable for penalties (September 2025).

Part 2 of the saga: A series of changes occurred at the top of Secure Journeys, the Australian subsidiary of the Management and Training Corporation. Troy Ittensohn, the managing director of Secure Journeys, emailed all staff Sept. 11 announcing his retirement from MTC at the end of the year, after discussing his plans with MTC President Dan Marquardt during a recent visit to Australia.

A Secure Journeys spokesperson denied that Ittensohn was pushed, insisting he is “looking forward to a well-earned retirement” after 44 years as a corrections officer. The network “has faced significant challenges throughout its transition,” Ittensohn conceded.

David Hood, vice president of development at MTC, will lead a transition to a new managing director and “the continued enhancement of operations and service delivery” across the immigration detention network, the email said.

Col Caskie, the director of center operations, also left earlier this year, with staff informed just two days ahead of his Aug. 28 departure. The spokesperson said this was due to the completion of a 12-month contract.

‘SAFETY IS NON-EXISTENT AND VIOLENCE IS NORMAL’: Detention center staff, represented by the United Workers Union, are taking industrial action over pay and staffing.

Joel Tongaonevai, a UWU delegate and Villawood detention services officer for 11 years, said Secure Journeys had cut staff numbers at the center from 450 under Serco to just under 300. “Safety is non-existent and violence is normal,” he told POLITICO.

Conditions are like jail, with gang violence a common problem, but staff lack equivalent powers to search the detainees’ rooms or confine them. “This morning … during the shift there was a person in our care … when we did routine checks, we noticed he had facial injuries. We obviously reported it, and an ambulance came.”

“Staff are overworked, they don’t bother coming to work because of safety issues. There is no point doing overtime if all the risk is pushed onto employees.”

STATE OF THE NATION

NSW — ONE NATION’S PATH TO VICTORY IN 2027

Forget the latest Newspoll putting One Nation on a 31% primary vote in NSW: Six months out from the state’s election, new analysis from DPG Advisory Solutions suggests Mike Newman could lead the party to close to 50 seats, which would give it a slim majority in the NSW lower house

David Gazard, director of DPG Advisory, told Playbook the company arrived at its conclusions by overlaying “all the [2026] election results: SA, Farrer, Nepean and Secret Harbour, as well all state polling and some industry bits and pieces that we know about from various parties. It’s not a poll but an amalgam of everything we know. It’s pretty wild.”

The biggest pattern: The more regional and working class the seat, the bigger the swing.

Gazard said it’s important to look beyond the 31% Newspoll figure: “Clearly that’s dragged down by inner city voters,” and to see “how well they are traveling in the outer metro and regional areas.”

Yes, but: In NSW-specific polls, One Nation averages 25%. DPG also employs Former Liberal senator Hollie Hughes, now with One Nation, as an adviser.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: If the election were held today, then ...

— Labor could lose its majority.

— The Nationals could lose every seat.

— The Liberals could be gutted, down the eight seats.

— The Liberals face losing Goulburn in a 33% swing against them. (That’s where federal Opposition Leader Angus Taylor lives.)

WHERE DPG THINKS ONE NATION WOULD WIN: The seats are from nearly every corner of the state.

In Sydney: Penrith, Badgerys Creek, East Hills, Winston Hills, Castle Hill, Kellyville, Hawkesbury, Wollondilly, Hornsby, Camden, Riverstone, Prospect, Heathcote, Oatley, Miranda

South of Sydney: Wollondilly, Kiama, South Coast, Monaro, Bega, Shellharbour, Goulburn, Albury, Murray

Central Coast and Hunter: The Entrance, Gosford, Terrigal, Wyong, Swansea, Charlestown, Newcastle, Maitland, Cessnock, Port Stephens, Upper Hunter

North Coast: Myall Lakes, Oxley, Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour, Tweed, Clarence

Inland: Northern Tablelands, Tamworth, Barwon, Dubbo, Bathurst, Cootamundra, Orange, Wagga Wagga

SA — MALI’S AI ROYAL COMMISSION TAKES SHAPE

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has picked retired Federal Court Justice Iain Ross, a former Australian Council of Trade Unions assistant secretary and Fair Work Commission president, to lead his AI royal commission. It’ll look into the “economic societal opportunities and implications resulting from AI” and deliver its report by July. 1.

The takeaway: Given Ross’ background, it’s fair to say the implications, especially labor force disruptions, will be a key focus of the commission.

He’ll be supplemented by deputies Kate Pounder, the former Tech Council CEO who is now a board member at Essential Energy and the Tech Policy Design Institute, and Stanford University lead AI researcher Christopher Manning.

CANBERRA MEETS WORLD

FARRELL RED MEAT — SUPER FUNDS SHOULD INVEST IN US TO HELP US AVOID TARIFFS: Trade Minister Don Farrell “Australian superannuation funds have an obligation to the national interest, to represent the national interest,” he told Joe Kelly for The Australian, saying creative super investments would show Australia is “fair dinkum about working with the Trump administration.”

Case in point: “Let’s look at ways in which the Australian lamb industry, Australian superannuation, and the Australian government can work together with the Americans to boost lamb sales in the United States.”

Danger zone: Farrell’s language will be red meat to One Nation and Liberals who accuse Labor of wanting to raid super funds to finance their pet interests.

Reality check: Super funds do not have an obligation to support the national interest, that’s the government’s job. The funds have an obligation to make their members money, within the law, and according to member wishes.

JOIN POLITICO AND NETFLIX — EXCLUSIVE SCREENING OF THE DIPLOMAT

If you’d like to join the Playbook team for drinks, and watch the first episode of the new season before everyone else at this screening, email canberraplaybook@politico.com for an invitation. The event is Wednesday, Oct. 14.

THE PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW

LORNA WOODS — GODMOTHER OF DIGITAL DUTY OF CARE

Woods is professor of internet law at Essex University and credited in Australia’s review of its Online Safety Act as one of the leading proponents of the digital duty of care. Paul Karp corresponded with Woods by email to discuss the Australian government’s exposure draft bill and new obligations it would impose on social media giants.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you first propose a digital duty of care?

The problem as I saw it in 2017 was that most people were talking about the regulation of social media and other internet-based services in content terms — that is, whether they should be liable or responsible for the content of their users. The idea of intermediary immunity had shielded them from this in most jurisdictions since the late 1990s and early 2000s. This did not reflect the provider’s role in the online environment.

While they did not create the content, they created the environment in which people spoke and, in creating that environment, the services were not neutral. They did not have to be designed the way they were, but design choices were made in support of the business model (ad revenue). Their systems created feedback loops for users that not only facilitated the content but also encouraged and rewarded it.

Is this regulation of content?

This approach does not mean that a company would be liable for individual items of content; indeed it would be possible for services to have “bad content” on their platforms and still satisfy this duty. The aim was not perfection; the corollary of this is that it may be that for some types of harmful content — for example child sexual abuse material — other content-specific measures might be required.

Will Australia’s legislation work?

The draft legislation does envisage a general duty looking at the platform design and operation, and it is a single duty for all types of content caught. In this I think it is an improvement on the U.K. regime which divides up duties by reference to different types of content leading to a complex structure.

I question whether focusing on content types really covers all the system issues — the problem of addictive design is a clear example of something that might lie outside the regime. It is also not clear to me whether the ad tech business model — which seems to be the driver of a lot of the design choices —is adequately covered.

Critics have labeled the duty of care censorship — is it?

I think the claim about censorship is overstated, partly because it seems to proceed from a particular view of free speech that is not universally accepted and also because it seems to think that a system approach to social media regulation is content regulation, which it is not.

Indeed, while the regulation will probably impact some types of speech harder than others, it is not designed to attach to any particular speech over other speech and in that sense could be said to be content-neutral.

Read POLITICO’s full interview with Lorna Woods.

BY THE NUMBERS

HELTER SMELTER SPENDING

— $4.2 billion: Commonwealth funding committed to smelters since February 2025.

— $148,300: Average cost per job saved, combining direct and supply chain jobs (28,550 total jobs).

— $656,600: Average cost per direct job saved (6,450 direct jobs).

— $1.75 billion: To keep Whyalla Steelworks afloat, with another $650 million from SA.

— $135 million: For Nystar’s smelters in Port Pirie and Hobart, with $55 million from SA and $22.5 million from Tasmania.

— $1 billion: For the Boyne aluminum smelter in Gladstone, matched by Queensland and with Rio Tinto underwriting $7.5 billion in investment.

— $1.25 billion: For an aluminum smelter in the NSW Hunter, matched by NSW and with Tomago Aluminium agreeing to invest another $1.1 billion.

— $100 million: For Bell Bay, with Tasmania throwing in another $100 million.

NEGATIVE (EQUITY) CAMPAIGNING

UNDER 1% — Labor is pointing to new Reserve Bank data showing the national rate of mortgage holders in negative equity is much lower than the 2.75% in negative equity under Scott Morrison in 2019.

5% — How many borrowers who would be at risk of being in negative equity if the RBA jacks up the cash rate by a further 1%, to 5.6%, according to the RBA.

Context: Those 2019 figures are mostly down to WA’s mining downturn, which had flow-on effects for the housing market. WA and NT negative equity rates neared 15% in that year.

And anyway: The RBA doesn’t pay close attention to negative equity rates — if borrowers can still service higher loan repayments, it’s not destabilizing. The central bank prefers to focus on other metrics, like consumption.

The risk: Labor is entering the debate on negative equity now, even though house prices may continue to fall in the coming 18 months.

NEWS CORP AND THE BUDGET DEFICIT

Rupert Murdoch’s Australian media outlets are famous fiscal hawks. So it’s relevant to see how much tax they’re contributing to Jim Chalmers’ bottom line.

$23.9 billion: News Corp’s Australian income across the past 11 years. (The official company name here is News Australia Holdings.)

$1.89 billion: News Corp’s Australian income in 2024-25, according to tax data released Thursday, first reported by Crikey’s Bernard Keane.

ZERO: The tax News Corp paid in 2024-25.

PARTY ROOM

LABOR — GREENS: EVERYONE’S SOMEWHAT CONCERNED

Despite promising to work “constructively” with the new Greens leadership team, David Shoebridge and Steph Hodgins-May, the PM couldn’t resist a snarkier tone than Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Wednesday.

“It was somewhat concerning that at a time where we see a rise of a far-right wing party, Sen. Shoebridge took the opportunity to actually criticize Labor,” Anthony Albanese said. “It sounded a lot like some of the people who didn’t win their seats.”

That’s a thinly veiled swipe at former Greens housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather, who got under Albanese’s skin before losing his seat last year. Catch up on that bad blood in The Guardian’s report on Albanese and Chandler-Mather.

Fire with fire: Shoebridge shot back: “Under Labor we have seen wages flat line, the rise of the far right and record war profits from fossil fuels going untaxed. We think these are ‘somewhat concerning.’”

Glass half full: Sen. Sarah Hanson-Young broke her silence after losing out on the party leadership, promising to back Shoebridge to deliver an “optimistic, caring and defiant progressive force” to counter One Nation. “God, politics can be brutal — friendships made and lost,” Hanson-Young said in a video posted to social media.

Olive (Green) branch: Shoebridge is playing down long-running tensions with other defeated candidate Sen. Mehreen Faruqi, telling The Guardian: “I have huge respect for Mehreen and the work that she does.”

COOLING OFF PERIOD: The Greens were initially meant to sit for a two-day strategy meeting on Wednesday. That became a leadership ballot after Larissa Waters’ shock resignation and, unsurprisingly, the second day didn’t go ahead. They’ll all meet again when Parliament returns on Oct. 12.

LABOR — MINNS SCHOOLS FEDERAL LABOR ON FISCAL RESTRAINT: Both PM Albanese and NSW Premier Chris Minns play down their personal frustrations in public. But they’re great at niggling each other, and Minns in particular is a master of passive aggressive trolling. Here he is at his latest press conference:

“We have heard the advice from the RBA over the last two years that we need to be careful with public funds, and as a result, over the last four years, we’ve had the lowest increase in spending growth of any jurisdiction in the country.”

“I’m not going to make a long commentary about other governments. It’s up to them and their decisions, obviously,” Minns said. “We’ve been careful with public money, particularly the growth in public money, and that will continue if we’re re-elected next March.”

AROUND THE PLAYBOOKS

BRUSSELS — EU AND CANADA TO INK LANDMARK PARTNERSHIP NEXT MONTH: The EU and Canada will use a landmark summit next month to announce an expansive new partnership, ranging from breaking down digital trade barriers to joint support for Ukraine and investing in fighting wildfires.

POLITICO obtained the key document on the draft announcement.

WASHINGTON — THE U.S. IS FINALLY OUT OF IRAQ: 23 years later, the final U.S. forces are now back home. Here’s the Pentagon statement.

WASHINGTON — FEDERAL INVESTIGATION INTO AI SUPER LABS: “Federal Trade Commission opens sweeping probe of Anthropic, OpenAI and other ‘super intelligence’ models,” per the New York Post.

PLAYBOOK PODCAST: Hillbilly Autopsy — the D.C. Playbook pod examines Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s 2028 presidential chances, and what an Appalachian showdown with J.D. Vance could look like.

AGENDA ASSISTANT

Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs Julian Hill is speaking at the National Migration Conference in Canberra at 9:05 a.m.

LOCAL CANBERRA

ACT HEALTH TO CUT 4% OF JOBS: ACT Health and Community Services staff have been told 65 jobs out of 1,500 will go, through a voluntary redundancy process. “No frontline health workers like nurses or doctors are affected, as those staff are employed by Canberra Health Services,” The Canberra Times reported.

COMMUNITY CORNER

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Singapore is piloting a new dating app on its public servants in an attempt to tackle a fast-declining fertility rate, Owen Walker reports. FirstDate uses a Nobel Economics Prize-winning matchmaking algorithm and users are only matched with one person at a time.

Is it time for a similar endeavor in Canberra? And if you already have a match, check out Jasper Lindell’s guide to the best restaurants for dates.

MOVES AND APPOINTMENTS

Communications Minister Anika Wells has made Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential rising stars. Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard described her as “one of the most significant voices in a growing global movement to reframe the relationship between technology and the well-being of our children.”

Global signals: Subjective lists are nothing more than that, but Wells’ inclusion also signals what cuts through on the global stage from Australia — innovation in tech policy.

BIRTHDAYS

Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie, former Defense Minister Ian McLachlan turns 90, British musician Sting.

Liberal Sen. Jess Collins, and Labor MP Mark Dreyfus celebrate Saturday, which is also Day of German Unity.

On Sunday it’s prosecco time for DFAT Assistant Director Linsey Bowers — who gets the credit for the tip on BYOB booze at The Kingo, from Playbook’s inaugural edition.

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