As it happened: Fatima Payman quits Labor; Pro-Palestine protesters arrested after climbing Parliament House

A proposed truth and justice commission to aid Indigenous reconciliation will go under the federal parliamentary microscope.

The Greens have pushed the government to move on enacting other elements of the Uluru statement after the failure of the Voice to parliament referendum last year.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart from Indigenous leaders in 2017 called for a truth-telling commission and a treaty.

Labor has been largely silent on how it plans to implement the rest of the statement after the referendum to enshrine an Indigenous advisory body in the constitution failed.

Today, the government supported the Greens push to send the minor party’s private members bill to a parliamentary inquiry.

But the Coalition opposed scrutinising the bill, saying the push for a truth telling commission wasn’t consistent with the vote of the Australian people.

“This house should be focused on delivering real outcomes for our most marginalised people,” Liberal senator Jonno Duniam said.

AAP

A national watchdog will set its sights on businesses found to have spoilt the environment in breach of federal laws after legislation setting up an Environment Protection Agency passed the House of Representatives today.

The agency would target offences to do with hazardous waste, sea dumping, air quality and wildlife trafficking, and have the ability to impose fines of up to $780 million for serious intentional breaches.

The national body would be able to issue stop-work orders and audit businesses to ensure they comply with environmental laws.

The suite of reforms would require environmental progress to be “nature positive”, the first time any country has legislated the term.

Nature positive has been defined as an improvement to the diversity, abundance and resilience of an ecosystem, based on a previous baseline.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said the reforms were crucial to ensuring natural habitats would be protected in years to come.

Former Labor leader Bill Shorten is disappointed Fatima Payman resigned from Labor earlier today, saying “the party is bigger than any of us.”

Speaking on ABC Afternoon Briefing moments ago, the NDIS Minister said he was also sad Payman had left.

“We’re all charismatic, exciting and very interesting people, but we get elected because we’ve got Labor next to our name,” Shorten said. “I’m disappointed that having been elected under the Labor flag, she sees the grass is greener elsewhere.”

Shorten said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gave Payman the benefit of the doubt by not immediately expelling her, per Labor convention, for breaching party rules and crossing the floor to support a Greens motion to recognise Palestinian statehood.

“I think he’s handled a very difficult situation in a pretty sophisticated, emotionally intelligent way,” Shorten said.

“She feels strongly on Palestine. We all want to see the tanks out of Gaza. We all want the violence to stop. I want the hostages back. It’s not the issue. She didn’t want to agree with the rules that she’d signed up to. The prime minister gave her time and space. She’s walked.”

Shorten later said: “Fatima Payman is smart ... so I’m not going to bag her.”

But the senior Victorian MP suggested Payman should resign from the Senate altogether to give West Australians the Labor senator they elected.

“I’m not going to put pressure on her. But if I was elected as a Labor candidate in Maribyrnong – which I am – and I chose to no longer be in the Labor Party, I would probably think that in the case of the voters who voted for me, it’s a Labor seat, it’s not a Bill Shorten seat,” he said.

“But that’s me and my seat. People can make up their own minds.”

A baby whale photographed off the West Australian coast could be the youngest member of its species seen in Australian waters.

Thought to be only weeks old, the pygmy blue whale calf spotted with its mother by a wildlife photographer on May 23 is believed to be the smallest ever observed.

The calf was about a third of the size of its mum, about six metres long, whereas the previous smallest calf sighted was about half its mother’s size.

Fully grown pygmy blue whales are typically about 21 metres long.

The discovery coincides with the release of the first-ever drone footage of pygmy blue whales’ family life by Charles Darwin University on Thursday.

AAP

Jerusalem: An evacuation order by the Israeli military this week covering roughly a third of the Gaza Strip came as people there are less and less equipped to handle repeated forced displacements, after nearly nine months of war that have left tens of thousands dead and injured and put the territory at risk of famine.

The order, which the United Nations has estimated affects about 250,000 people, was the largest since October, when about 1 million residents of northern Gaza were told to flee their homes, the organisation said this week.

“It’s an endless cycle of death and displacement,” said Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for the main UN agency that aids Palestinians, UNRWA, in voice messages from central Gaza.

“People express here that they are losing hope, they are losing the willpower, faced with another forced displacement and absolutely no certainty of safety.”

Read the latest news about the conflict that sparked Fatima Payman’s Labor split here.

Australian Federal Police commissioner Reece Kershaw says protesters used diversionary tactics at Parliament House this morning to allow the pro-Palestinian demonstrators to get onto the building’s roof.

Kershaw told a Senate committee on Thursday afternoon that a separate group made false reports of protests happening elsewhere to send police away.

“There are some actual deliberate actions this particular group has taken … to use diversionary tactics to move very, very quickly,” he said.

Asked how the protesters got on the roof, deputy commissioner Krissy Barrett said they breached the fence at the top of the grassed area on the side of the building “and were able to get over the fence, triggering an alarm”.

Liberal senator James Paterson said the upside down red triangle displayed at the bottom of one of the banners was a symbol of the al-Qassam brigades of Hamas, and asked whether that would be investigated as the use of hate symbols using recent legislation passed in federal parliament last year.

“It definitely will be in terms of hate symbols and other offences that are available to us,” Barrett said.

Senator Fatima Payman strongly denies one meeting with former preference whisperer Glenn Druery implies her departure from Labor has been a calculated plan over the past month.

Labor members told this masthead they believe Payman has been plotting this for a month when she first spoke out for Palestine and crossed the floor.

Payman told Sky News she denies this was the case.

“When I said that I intend on staying as a Labor Party member, that holds true. I did not think about leaving the party or exiting or making a show of it,” she said.

“Obviously, I’ve crossed the floor and I knew and understood that this could lead to my expulsion … so the community members in Sydney who organised this meeting with Glenn Druery invited me to come along. This was just a discussion

“I’m going into this meeting, I’ve heard of Glenn Druery because obviously coming from WA he got Wilson Tucker elected on like, 98 votes with preference deals. So like, everyone knows Glenn Druery in WA and so when this came up as an opportunity to talk to somebody who is a political strategist.

“I’ve had so many conversations, this was just one.”