Labor National Conference LIVE updates: PM announces Fair Work Court, expands health student prac support in address to party’s 50th National Conference in Adelaide

A smattering of protesters out the front and a warning from the party president that she would cut off enthusiastic delegates whose speeches ran overtime have been the only minor hiccups on the first day of the 50th Labor Party conference.

It could have been a different story though, after an escalator fault almost sent the prime minister tumbling down a flight of stairs before proceedings even began.

Anthony Albanese was descending into the conference when the escalator he was riding jerked to a halt. The prime minister gave an exclamation as he quickly grabbed onto the handrails to keep himself from falling. He looked around to try to identify what went wrong, before walking himself safely down to the floor.

As the conference breaks for lunch, let’s look at four key takeouts from the prime minister’s speech earlier this morning.

• Union wins: A large chunk of Anthony Albanese’s speech was aimed at the bloc of union delegates. New policies included superannuation for teenagers and a Fair Work Court for small workplace claims. There was lots of applause for wins the government had already handed unions on wage theft and labour hire.
• One Nation looms large: The Coalition has been scrambling to create a contrast with Pauline Hanson’s party. Albanese used new language to cast the Coalition and One Nation as aligned on core values and one and the same, no matter what Angus Taylor said about preference deals. “Beyond One Nation’s personality clashes, policy confusion, conspiracy theories and candidate chaos, and regardless of who leads the Liberals to the next election, in every way that matters, the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation are already a coalition,” he said.
• AI balancing act: Albanese told the pro-worker audience that while Labor would try to guard against mass layoffs, AI was here to stay. “I know that there are real concerns about how fast AI is moving and the disruption that it might bring, and we can only manage that and protect ourselves if Australia is active and confident in shaping this,” he said.
• Nods to Labor history: Australian Labor, at 135 years old, is one of the oldest political parties in the world. SA Premier Peter Malinauskas noted that Australian Labor had outlasted various non-Labor formations on the conservative side; the One Nation convulsion on the right was just the latest example, he said. Albanese cited the conservatives’ scorn when Chris Watson took his seat as the first Labor prime minister in 1904. “Our opponents have never been able to accept the legitimacy of a Labor government. They think we should know our place,” he said.

The Labor conference is now moving on to vote on amendments related to its economics agenda: superannuation, taxation, housing and so forth.

With that, the keynotes are over. Several people poured out of the room after Albanese’s address to mix and mingle on the sidelines.

Demonstrators are assembled out the front taking issue with the party’s policy on Palestine, and handing out stubby coolers championing a gas tax, while press conferences will also be given by delegates and observers on key issues.

Albanese received a bunch of cheers and claps throughout his address – some of which seemed slightly procedural – but the loudest eruption of applause came when he cited the government’s moves to change negative gearing and the capital gains tax in its recent budget.

Chalmers has turned his attention to the other side of politics, warning of a “coalition of callous and chaos” awaits if the Liberal, National and One Nation parties came to office.

Earlier this month, Liberal leader Angus Taylor warned that One Nation policies would bring an “eternity of pain” to the country.

But Chalmers says it would be just as bad with the Liberal and National parties, which are campaigning against the budget changes around capital gains tax.

“They’d make the pressures on people, and the challenges in our economy, worse not better,” he said.

“When we’re reforming that broken status quo in housing and tax and they’re clinging to it, none of it comes easy. All of it is hard, all of it contentious and contested, but all of it is worth it.

“And if reform subjects us to daily rage bait headlines from the usual suspects, peddling their usual partisan misinformation and disinformation, then so be it. Fights like these are a small price to pay for progress.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has closed out his speech with a rejection of Pauline Hanson’s vision of a monocultural Australia and a celebration of the diversity of his caucus.

“Like the new nation that it served, even the very first Labor government was not a monoculture. There were Protestants and Catholics, English, Irish, and Scots. One was an American pretending to be a Canadian, and no one was quite sure if the leader was born in New Zealand or Chile. For all of that, those men could never have contemplated a Labor government caucus room with a majority of women,” he told the conference to applause.

“Or a roll call, which goes: Abdo, Albanese, Aly, Ambihaipahar, Ananda-Rajah, and Ayres. And that’s just the letter A. They might have been more comfortable with the union leadership team of O’Neil and McManus. But Michelle and Sally would have come as a real shock,” he said.

Albanese said the Labor Party, and the nation, embraced “the fullness and richness of our own history, the privilege we have of sharing this ancient continent with the oldest continuous culture on Earth”.

“Labor has changed because Australia has changed, and because our movement has had the kindness and courage to drive that change and shape that change in the interests of all.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has attacked his political opponents, saying One Nation, the Liberals and Nationals were already a coalition.

“Beyond One Nation’s personality clashes, policy confusion, conspiracy theories, and candidate chaos, and regardless of who leads the Liberals to the next election, in every way that matters, the Liberals, Nationals, and One Nation are already a coalition.

It’s not just that they need each other to form government; they agree with each other about what they want to do in government. They all want to cut wages. They all want to scrap paid parental leave. They all want to make it easier to sack workers. They all want to make it harder for young Australians to buy a home, and they all want to slash the jobs and industries powered by renewables and spend billions on nuclear reactors instead.

And they all want to cut Medicare and everything else. All those attention-seeking culture wars imported from overseas. All those trips around the world to talk Australia down cannot disguise the fact that none of them have anything new or anything positive to offer our country.