The Nationals leader, Matt Canavan, will run in a lower house Queensland seat at the next federal election, in a move that may see him face off with Pauline Hanson’s former chief of staff James Ashby.

James Ashby, One Nation’s party director and close political ally to Pauline Hanson is also publicly considering putting his hat in the ring. The announcement follows the retirement of the Capricornia MP Michelle Landry, and could result in a contest against Ashby in a major battle for regional seats.

“The issue is we need to keep this seat to change the government, and I want us to continue to deliver for central Queensland,” Canavan said on Monday, remarking that he may very well die politically but not going to die wondering.

Senator Canavan, who lives in Yeppon in the electorate, became leader of the Nationals in March this year, replacing David Littleproud, who stepped down. A successful move from the Senate to the lower house would shore up the likelihood of Senator Canavan becoming deputy prime minister in a Coalition government, and assure those in the Nationals who hold the view that their leader should sit in the House of Representatives with the other major party leaders.

The Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie said One Nation should not be fighting to win Coalition-held seats if the party was serious about taking on Labor.

Jacinda Ardern, who now calls Sydney home, has delivered a message to Australian politicians from the stage of the city’s Opera House.

She warned that politicians have been exacerbating the problem of polarisation within society and need to be better.

Her explanation is that in the past few decades, people across the world have been feeling an increasing sense of insecurity as globalization took hold, and hence they began attacking institutions such as the World Trade Organization. Politicians offered proposals such as Brexit in response to the insecurity – saying “here’s what you blame” – which then paved the way for the rise of totalitarian leaders like Donald Trump.

“It’s not just that you hold a different opinion, it’s that you hold it so deeply that you have this view you’ve got moral clarity that is not being held by the other person,” Ardern said when addressing the growing polarisation in public discourse. “Your opinions are recorded and held in time, and when so much of a healthy democracy is your ability to have debate and shift your views based on new evidence of information … that environment makes it more difficult.”

Ardern along with acclaimed Australian author and thinker Anna Funder were speaking a fortnight after the alleged attack on independent MP Helen Haines. The former New Zealand PM did not mention the incident explicitly, but stressed politicians and leaders needed to be aware of the tone they set.

The federal government wants to ban AI chatbots which seek to create “emotional intimacy” after prime minister Albanese raised the alarm in a heartfelt speech about children treating these agents as their “best friend”.

But Labor is coming under increasing pressure to empower the telecommunications ombudsman to become a watchdog for social media and AI to give Australians an external complaints mechanism and allow the “naming and shaming” of big tech.

The digital duty of care bill passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday and will be debated by the Senate in coming weeks. The government hopes to pass the bill by the end of 2026, but its pathway through the upper house remains unclear. The Greens support the bill, while the Coalition has said it will not vote for it, though Labor still appears keen to win the opposition’s support and remains open to amendments.

The planned framework would apply new online safety standards to social media, games, apps and chatbots. Labor said it would place “an overarching obligation” on tech platforms “to provide a safe online environment for all Australians” and replace a range of existing online codes and standards with a broader duty-of-care requirement to protect users from certain “harmful” content. It would also require social media platforms to offer an “opt-out” feature for its algorithm and suggested content.

The communications minister, Anika Wells, has suggested content that that promotes misogyny, terrorism, suicide, self-harm and eating disorders would be captured by the laws. On Wednesday, the government accepted amendments from crossbencher Kate Chaney which would add certain AI chatbot activity to the list of harms, requiring platforms to ban “material or conduct that simulates emotional intimacy and encourages or fosters a child’s dependence on it in place of human relationships”.

The opposition voted against the bill in the House, alongside One Nation. Political opponents have accused Labor of an “Orwellian” system of “censorship” and of seeking to influence conversations online – claims Wells strongly denied. The bill now moves to the Senate, where the Greens have set up an inquiry to probe the laws due to report back in late November.