Australia news live: Labor national executive to meet as pressure grows to reject donations from CFMEU

Australia news live: Labor national executive to meet as pressure grows to reject donations from CFMEU | Industrial relations | The Guardian

Welcome

Good morning, and welcome back to the Australia news live blog. I’m Emily Wind and I’ll be taking you through our rolling coverage today.

Making news this morning: AAP reports that Labor’s national executive is deciding whether it will continue taking donations from the embattled CFMEU’s construction division, after state branches and the peak union body suspended links.

The national executive is set to meet today and would be “dealing with this in a fairly firm fashion”, the workplace relations minister, Tony Burke, said. He noted “a number of state branches have already done so,” but wouldn’t preempt whether the executive would cut ties or refuse future donations. More on this shortly.

Meanwhile, 18 organisations have released a joint statement on the need for climate and energy policy certainty. Signed by the likes of the Clean Energy Council, National Farmers’ Federation and WWF-Australia, the statement reiterates business and community support for 2030 climate targets and states:

Time is short before ageing generators retire. By working with and refining the tools at hand now, Australia can efficiently meet its existing and future targets to help the world limit climate change, improve affordability and build a new advantage in energy.

As always, you can get in touch with any tips, thoughts or questions via X, @emilywindwrites, or you can send me an email: emily.wind@guardian.com. Let’s get started.