Anthony Albanese congratulates Rishi Sunak pledging to ‘build on the close bonds’
Anthony Albanese has revealed details of his call with his new UK counterpart with security top of their agenda.
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Anthony Albanese has congratulated Rishi Sunak on becoming Britain’s new prime minister, pledging to “build on the close bonds between our nations”.
The prime minister took to Twitter on Thursday night to confirm he had been in contact with Mr Sunak.
“Had a warm discussion with @RishiSunak to congratulate him on his elevation to UK Prime Minister. We agreed to hold our first bilateral meeting next month at the G20 in Indonesia. I look forward to working together as we build on the close bonds between our nations,” Mr Albanese tweeted.
Had a warm discussion with @RishiSunak to congratulate him on his elevation to UK Prime Minister. We agreed to hold our first bilateral meeting next month at the G20 in Indonesia. I look forward to working together as we build on the close bonds between our nations.
— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) October 27, 2022
Mr Sunak said he looked forward to strengthen our “common security, boost trade and support Ukraine.”
“Great call with Australian PM @AlboMP this morning. Geography is no barrier to the deep ties of friendship our countries share, as we work together to strengthen our common security, boost trade and support Ukraine. Looking forward to meeting Anthony at the G20 next month.”
Great call with Australian PM @AlboMP this morning.
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) October 27, 2022
Geography is no barrier to the deep ties of friendship our countries share, as we work together to strengthen our common security, boost trade and support Ukraine.
Looking forward to meeting Anthony at the G20 next month.
SUNAK UNDER FIRE OVER PLAN TO SKIP CLIMATE SUMMIT
Mr Sunak faces condemnation after his spokesman announced he will not attend next month’s COP27 UN climate summit in Egypt due to “pressing domestic commitments”.
Britain hosted the last such summit, COP26, when it stressed the importance of global leaders convening to discuss climate change amid growing criticism of their failure to meet vital carbon reduction targets.
Mr Sunak’s decision came on the same day the United Nations warned that countries’ climate pledges leave the world on track to heat by a potentially calamitous 2.6 degrees Celsius (36.7 degrees Fahrenheit) this century.
It also follows his moves to stop allowing the government’s COP26 minister Alok Sharma and climate minister Graham Stuart attending cabinet, as they had done under his predecessors.
His predecessor Liz Truss had been set to attend the UN climate conference in Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh, British media said.
“The prime minister is not expected to attend COP27 and this is due to other pressing domestic commitments including preparations for the Autumn Budget,” his spokesman told reporters, referring to a November 17 announcement of the government’s revised fiscal plans.
Downing Street insisted Mr Sunak was “absolutely committed” to supporting COP27, denying he was downgrading the importance of tackling the climate crisis.
But he faced immediate criticism from opposition politicians and environmental groups.
“This is a massive failure of climate leadership,” said Ed Miliband, the main opposition Labour party’s former leader and now climate change spokesman.
“We were the COP26 hosts and now the UK prime minister isn’t even bothering to turn up.”
SUNAK COMES OUT FIRING IN FIRST QUESTION TIME
Rishi Sunak gave as good as he got from the opposition Labour Party at his first session of Prime Minister’s Questions - delighting his Conservative backbenchers after the turmoil of recent weeks.
First Boris Johnson was forced out, after one scandal too many. Then the MPs voted for Sunak against Liz Truss as leader, only for the party’s largely white, wealthy and southern English members to overrule them.
“The only time he ran in a competitive election, he got trounced by the former prime minister, who herself got beaten by a lettuce,” Labour leader Keir Starmer mocked Sunak in a febrile House of Commons.
Truss suffered a political demise so rapid that a celebrity lettuce outlasted her in an online stream shown by the Daily Star newspaper.
At her last Prime Minister’s Questions a week ago, Truss declared to Starmer that she was “a fighter, and not a quitter”. Tory MPs behind her sat in glowering silence. The next day, she quit.
With Sunak now in charge after seeing off a brazen comeback bid by Johnson, the same Tory MPs cheered and thumped the Commons benches - prompting Speaker Lindsay Hoyle to warn: “Don’t damage the furniture!”
Sunak reminded Starmer that he was beaten by Truss because Tory members did not believe his warnings of the economic carnage that her tax-cutting policies would provoke.
He contrasted that with Starmer’s own support for the far-left Jeremy Corbyn to become prime minister, when Corbyn led Labour to defeat at the last election in 2019.
“I told the truth for the good of the country,” the new Conservative leader said.
“He (Starmer) told his party what it wanted to hear. Leadership is not selling fairy tales. It is confronting challenges,” he shouted.
Challenges aplenty await Sunak as he tries to unwind the havoc wrought by Truss during her 49 days in power - the shortest in British history.
Outside parliament, protesters gave their own verdict of Sunak, a self-confessed “Star Wars geek”.
At full amplification, they played “The Imperial March”, Darth Vader’s ominous theme.
CHARLES BREAKS WITH ROYAL TRADITION
King Charles broke royal tradition as he appointed the UK’s newest Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, just seven weeks into the new monarch’s reign.
Carrying out the sovereign’s duty to welcome the country’s new head of government, King Charles opted to break the Queen’s tradition of meeting them in the audience room at Buckingham Palace.
Instead, Mr Sunak was met in the 1844 Room in the Palace where the new monarch has chosen to meet other dignitaries.
Political historian, Dr Nigel Fletcher told The Telegraph the most likely reason for this change was to acknowledge the audience room was among the private apartments of the late Queen.
“I would imagine the King’s use of the 1844 room, where he now seems to hold all his audiences, reflects the fact the audience room was part of his late mother’s private apartments,” Dr Fletcher said.
It comes as the British parliament discussed the roles of Prince Harry and Prince Andrew following questions regarding whether they should remain “counsellors of state”, despite no longer being working royals.
SUNAK VOWS TO FIX TRUSS ‘MISTAKES’
Bowling into No 10 Downing Street to chants of “Rishi out, Rishi out, Rishi out,” Mr Sunak addressed the nation for the first time as Prime Minister, saying he will work “day in, day out” to earn the nation’s trust.
He promised a stronger NHS, better schools, safer streets and control of borders.
Levelling with the public, he vowed to unite the fractious party and conceded there were “difficult decisions to come” but that he would make them with “compassion”.
“I know how hard it is, I am not daunted, I know the high office I have accepted and hope to live up to its demands,” he said at his new, sturdier, podium in a six-minute speech.
“I stand here before you ready to lead the country to the future and build a government that represents the best traditions of my party.
“Our country is facing a profound economic crisis. The aftermath of Covid still lingers. Putin’s war in Ukraine has destabilised energy markets and supply chains the world over,” he said.
He paid a warm tribute to his predecessor Liz Truss.
“She was not wrong to want to improve growth in this country. It is a noble aim and I admired her restlessness to create change.
“But some mistakes were made, not born of ill will, or bad intentions. Quite the opposite in fact, but mistakes nonetheless,” he said.
“I have been elected as leader of my party and your Prime Minister, in part to fix them. And that work begins immediately.”
Mr Sunak’s speech came after he was installed as Britain’s first Asian prime minister and the youngest in more than 200 years in an audience with King Charles III, taking office at the height of deep economic trouble.
In an audience with the new sovereign underlining that British politics is in fast forward, the former chancellor was crowned the Conservative Party’s new leader, the third in seven weeks.
He was declared winner of the party leadership contest on Monday afternoon, while the King was travelling to London, as previously planned, from the private royal estate of Sandringham.
A former banker, Mr Sunak, 42, who was born in Southampton and who is of Indian heritage, was appointed the country’s 57th prime minister at Buckingham Palace after the King asked if he could command the fractious party.
A statement from Buckingham Palace confirmed the King received in an audience The Right Honourable Rishi Sunak MP and requested him to form a new administration.
“Mr Sunak accepted His Majesty‘s offer and kissed hands upon his appointment as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury,” the statement said.
He was nominated without a usual vote by Conservative Party members, or the electorate, – after a leadership contest that saw former prime minister Boris Johnson and House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt stand aside.
Business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg resigned from the Government as Sunak was to begin announcing his new cabinet.
NEW CABINET UNVEILED
In his first order of business, Sunak retained Jeremy Hunt as chancellor of the exchequer, bidding to keep financial markets on side after Truss’s budget plans shocked investors, and also retained her foreign and defence ministers, among others.
In other cabinet designations, Sunak retained James Cleverly as foreign secretary, Ben Wallace in the defence brief and Kemi Badenoch in international trade, underscoring stability along with Hunt’s re-appointment.
Just days after she was forced out of Truss’s cabinet, hardline right-winger Suella Braverman was re-appointed as interior minister, in charge of policing and immigration control.
Grant Shapps, who had briefly replaced Braverman at the Home Office, was named business secretary with partial oversight of climate policy, instead of Johnson loyalist Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Sunak brought close ally Dominic Raab back as deputy prime minister and justice secretary.
Mordaunt remains as Leader of the House of Commons – a post which oversees government business in parliament – in neither a promotion nor demotion which may disappoint the ambitious centrist who had been tipped for a more senior role.
‘A HUGE HONOUR’: TRUSS LEAVES NO 10
Earlier in the day his predecessor Liz Truss held a brief 25-minute farewell meeting with her Cabinet at Downing Street ending just 44 days in power, before talking on the steps of No 10 to say it was “a huge honour” to lead the nation in the mourning of the late Queen and welcoming the ascension of the new King.
The new government needs to be “bold,” she said, adding, “We need to take advantage of our Brexit freedoms, to do things differently … It means lower taxes.”
“In just a short period, this government has acted urgently and decisively on the side of hardworking families and businesses, we’ve reversed the National Insurance increase, helped millions of households with their energy bills and helped thousands of businesses avoid bankruptcy,” she insisted.
She went on to formally tender her resignation in an audience with the King overseeing his first full handover of power as new monarch.
In a private meeting in the 1844 Green Roof, the King heard Mr Sunak’s plans for a new government before shaking hands and asking him to form a new administration.
The new Prime Minister and his inner circle of advisers have been busily drawing up his Cabinet, with allies suggesting he wants representatives from all of the party‘s warring factions.
Mr Sunak told the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers that he will recruit an ambitious government of “all talents” and will keep chancellor Jeremy Hunt in place.
Mr Sunak is said to be cautious and acutely aware his crown may be easily snatched away.
He enters Number 10 unchallenged and has averted an online ballot of the Conservative members that rejected him for Ms Truss last month.
Calls for a general elections have been crescendoing with Conservative MPs
Nadine Dorries, Zac Goldsmith and Christopher Hope, allies of Mr Johnson, saying the public should have a say on who governs the country.
New polling by YouGov has found that a majority of people believe Rishi Sunak should call an early general election.
The results, published hours after it was confirmed that Sunak would be the next prime minister, found 56 per cent of people said they thought he should, against 29 per cent who believe otherwise.
– with AFP
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