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The bill submitted on Monday would allow gay couples to adopt children and would denote marriage as a "union between two people" rather than between a man and a woman, according to reports.

Australia's Muslim communities are the best ally our security agencies have in their fight against violent Islamist extremism. Alienating them only severs a vital conduit of intelligence and potentially breeds more angry, isolated people vulnerable to corrupted views. Rightly so. Senator Brandis, who is a liberal rather than a conservative, has spent the past four years wrestling with how to balance liberty with security.

That is why Attorney-General George Brandis' thundering condemnation of Pauline Hanson's burqa stunt in the Senate on Thursday afternoon was not just a moment of fine moral and political clarity, it was also bloody common sense.

"And to ridicule that community, to drive it into a corner, to mock its religious garments, is an appalling thing to do and I would ask you to reflect on what you have done."

Senator Brandis was so angry his voice was actually wobbling with emotions

He knows it is absurd to argue we would be safer by banning the burqa on the grounds people would be compelled to show their faces at all times, when weighed against the damage that would be done by infringing the religious rights of a targetted group of Australians.

Yes, Australians. That's what they are and that's what Senator Brandis called them in his short but impassioned speech that earned a standing ovation from Labor and the Greens.

Senator Gallagher's office said on Tuesday an internal ALP investigation had cleared her in 2014, as part of the vetting process undertaken when she quit as the Australian Capital Territory's chief minister to join Labor's Senate team.

Talks were held in Delhi to consider the controversial proposal – which has economists and politicians fiercely divided.

Under UBI, all citizens – regardless of income – are given a basic amount to live on without being taxed, claiming benefits or having to meet other conditions.

The suspects, who feared Germany's refugee policies would impoverish the country, had begun to stockpile food and ammunition and plan attacks, the federal prosecutor's office said in a statement on Monday.

The searches, which took place in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, were carried out by national police and federal criminal investigators.

No arrests were made or any arrest warrants issued yet. 

The 400 visa, designed to parachute international specialists into short-term roles, has emerged as a "sleeper" category with looser restrictions than the 457 foreign worker visa, which was recently abolished by the Turnbull government in a high-profile "Australians first" crackdown.

In the past decade, hundreds of thousands of workers have been employed on short stay visa categories, including the 400's predecessor the 456, with at least 11 cases before the Fair Work Ombudsman. But experts warn despite the examples of exploitation, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection has little detail on the employment of these workers.

Among them, Chinese labourers flown in to dismantle the former Mitsubishi car plant in the Adelaide Hills paid $1.90 an hour, Filipino metal fabricators paid $4.90 an hour to install animal feed mills in NSW, and nine Indonesian timber workers flown into Tasmania and promised bonuses when they returned home.

Documents seen by Fairfax Media show 400 visas are sometimes approved within 24 hours with seemingly minimal oversight. Despite the government's requirement that the work be "highly specialised", the visa has been used to fill semi-skilled positions for which apparently qualified Australian applicants were available.

In 2015, Australia hosted the Cricket World Cup but local camera crews with decades of broadcasting experience were snubbed by the International Cricket Council for a crew from Singapore. In the same year the Spirit of Tasmania employed 44 per cent of its workers on 400 visas for a $31.5 million refurbishment.

At the start of a two-month campaign, the confidential research provided to Fairfax Media shows support for a "no" vote has risen, as has the number of people who say they don't know how they will vote. 

And alarmingly for "yes" campaigners, turnout could be very low, with just 65 per cent of voters rating themselves as very likely to participate – falling to 58 per cent among those aged 18 to 34. 

It prompted a concerned campaign veteran to declare: "There is every chance we can slip behind and lose this."

The research was conducted for the Equality Campaign by Newgate Research pollster Jim Reed between August 28 and September 6, with a sample size of 800 and a 3.5 per cent margin of error.

It showed that 58.4 per cent of those surveyed said they would back a "yes" vote, down six percentage points from two weeks earlier, while support for a "no" vote rose two percentage points to 31.4 per cent. The "unsure" vote rose three percentage points to 10.2 per cent.

Then she shifted gears: “What happened in 2015 cannot, should not and must not happen again.”

It is a phrase she has used repeatedly in market squares across Germany as she campaigns for a fourth term in a federal election on Sept. 24 that she is widely expected to win.

There are many factors behind her comeback. But few are as important as her skill at spinning a narrative about the refugee crisis that many Germans can support, whether they cheered or condemned her actions of 2015.

“Merkel is not running on a policy of open borders and that fits perfectly with the mood in the country,” said Robin Alexander, author of a best-selling book on the German government’s handling of the refugee crisis.

“Many people like the image of Germany as a model of humanitarian virtue. At the same time they know the country could not continue to welcome refugees like it did. It is this set of feelings that Merkel is appealing to.”

By the end of 2015, 890,000 asylum seekers had entered Germany, many without proper identity checks, overwhelming local communities.


Merkel’s actions divided Europe and led to a surge in anti-immigrant sentiment. The hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party seems sure to enter parliament for the first time.

A year after her decision, and following a series of small-scale attacks in Germany by Islamist militants, her popularity ratings had plunged 30 points to 45 percent and she faced questions about whether she would run for chancellor again.

Yet today, 63 percent of Germans say she is doing a good job and, according to a Bertelsmann Foundation survey this week, 59 percent believe the country is on the right track.

“It has been a long, difficult road back,” said one of her top aides. “But we have gotten to a point where the refugee issue is no longer a negative for Merkel in the election campaign.”Merkel’s actions divided Europe and led to a surge in anti-immigrant sentiment. The hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party seems sure to enter parliament for the first time.

A year after her decision, and following a series of small-scale attacks in Germany by Islamist militants, her popularity ratings had plunged 30 points to 45 percent and she faced questions about whether she would run for chancellor again.

Yet today, 63 percent of Germans say she is doing a good job and, according to a Bertelsmann Foundation survey this week, 59 percent believe the country is on the right track.

“It has been a long, difficult road back,” said one of her top aides. “But we have gotten to a point where the refugee issue is no longer a negative for Merkel in the election campaign.”

'No alternative'

Merkel has been helped by external events such as Britain’s vote for Brexit last year and Donald Trump’s election victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, both of which reinforced her appeal as a guarantor of stability.

A decision by Macedonia in early 2016 to shut its border with Greece stemmed the flow of refugees, easing pressure on Germany. And the country has not suffered a large-scale Islamist attack, an event which might have triggered a voter backlash.

But Merkel’s knack for understanding how Germans tick has also been crucial.

At many of her public appearances, she is confronted by anti-immigration protesters who try to drown out her speeches with whistles and chants of “Merkel must go!”.

In Steinhude, a woman held up a sign showing Merkel’s diamond-shaped hand pose over a German flag with a blood-spattered bullet hole in the middle. “I offer you terror, death and chaos”, the sign read.

But the dozen or so protesters were dwarfed by supporters who applauded her message.

“I‘m not sure if there was another way to handle the refugee crisis. Those refugees had to go somewhere,” said Willi Kordes, 70, who runs a sewage treatment firm in nearby Vlotho. “I don’t trust anyone to do it better.”

Working in her favour in the election is the fact that many of Germany’s other established parties, including the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), led by her main challenger Martin Schulz, backed her open-door policy.

The AfD, running a racially-tinged campaign that has put off some voters, has come off its 2016 highs in the polls. The one mainstream party that has offered a hardline alternative, the Christian Social Union (CSU), is the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). A vote for the CSU is akin to a vote for Merkel.

A crucial factor behind Merkel’s rebound has been the decline in asylum seekers entering Germany. About 280,000 arrived in 2016, with another drop likely this year.

Merkel takes credit for this, pointing to a deal she brokered between the European Union and Turkey, under which Ankara has cut the number of migrants crossing into Europe via its territory.

But critics say the closing of Balkan borders -- which Merkel publicly opposed -- was the real driver.

Some see parallels with her behavior in the euro zone financial crisis, when European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s pledge to do “whatever it takes” to keep the currency bloc together, allowing her to stick to a hard line towards euro states such as Greece without fear of consequences.

In the refugee crisis, it has been countries like Macedonia, Turkey and Hungary - which shut down routes the refugees used - that have done Merkel’s “dirty work”, allowing her to maintain the image of a caring leader who helped people fleeing war.

The approach has helped Merkel extend her control over the political centre. Some right-wing voters may have fled for the AfD but polls suggest young, urban voters who traditionally lean left could fill the gap.

Germany’s economy has been strong enough to absorb the influx of refugees without big cracks emerging in society. In reaction to its Nazi past, Germany has emerged as a more open, tolerant country than many assumed when the crisis hit.

A survey published this month ranking the top fears of the Germans put terrorism at the top. But a separate poll for the Bild newspaper showed they do not see curbing immigration as a priority.

“Germans are astonishingly global, liberal and open to the world,” said Menno Smid, head of the Infas Institute for Applied Social Sciences, which released a survey last month showing broad acceptance of refugees in Germany. “We are the winners from globalisation. The economic factors that led to Trump simply don’t exist.”

That followed Xenophon’s humiliating slapdown of longtime ally and retired lawyer Peter Humphries, who publicly stated in April he was set to represent SA Best as a Legislative Council candidate at the state election.