Australia news as it happened: Albanese, Chalmers reject union push for four-day work week; Hamas welcomes Albanese’s Palestine state call, Trump declines to criticise PM

But the Australian Electoral Commission appealed, arguing the former MP contravened the law 28 times – equal to the number of people who saw the Facebook posts.

The Full Court of the Federal Court agreed and doubled the fine to $40,000, so Laming took the fight to the High Court.

On Wednesday, the court ruled the contraventions occurred when the posts were created, rather than when they were seen.

Laming welcomed the decision as an end to the years-long legal tussle.

“I’m satisfied with the result and I hope it will lead to a sensible conclusion of the matter,” he said.

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“Their ability to use it has been mostly limited by the fact that it’s only on a third of products,” she said.

Under the rating system, packaged foods can receive ratings from half-a-star to five stars, based on factors including their total energy value, saturated fat, sugar and fruit content.

The labels were introduced in 2014 in a joint initiative between the Australian and New Zealand governments. But uptake has fallen well behind schedule.

An estimated 36 per cent of products display the rating, about the same amount as four years ago.

A reason appears to be producers with low-scoring items choosing to not display the labels.
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“As a consequence, we have seen higher wage growth. Whilst this might be seemingly something the government can boast about, in practice, it is coming from future generations to pay for today.

“That isn’t the boast that anyone should be looking [at] with a sense of rosy optimism – it’s essentially the boast of a thief.

“The reality is the only sustainable way to achieve long-term, positive wage growth and improvement in standards of living is if you actually get the economy moving, and that is not what this government is doing and that is why they have called a roundtable [next] week because they have not fixed the root causes of the problem but borrowing from the future.”

“It could easily be contested they are not doing that,” Karvelas said.

Annual wage growth remained under 3 per cent for the entirety of the Coalition’s most recent nine-year term in power, according to ABS data.

Wilson’s comments continue the opposition’s attempts to attack the government’s credibility when it comes to financial management.

Yesterday, shadow treasurer Ted O’Brien said the RBA lowering its productivity predictions by 0.3 per cent suggested the bank had no confidence in the government’s economic agenda.

“What our government is doing is making sure we’re working with the international community to sideline Hamas, remove Hamas from the process and make sure the pathway to a Palestinian state is one where Hamas has no role.”

Earlier today, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said there was growing momentum behind allies formally recognising Palestine, after he announced on Monday the plan to acknowledge statehood at the UN in September.

It followed countries such as the UK, France and Canada unveiling similar proposals.

With AAP