What we learned today, Tuesday 9 September
Thanks for staying with us today. We’ll leave our live news coverage there for the evening. Here were today’s top stories:
Anthony Albanese and a slew of other politicians said Jacinta Nampijinpa Price should apologise for her remarks about Indian migrants.
Albanese and the prime minister of Vanuatu met in Port Vila but are yet to reach a deal on the landmark Nakamal treaty.
Thousands of Australians in the US on a special visa may have to return home to extend their stay after a new Trump administration directive.
Australia Post will resume postal sending to the US by Thursday 25 September after suspending some services last month.
Mercury Psillakis’s family mourned the “loving, devoted and ridiculously fun” surfer after he was killed in a shark attack on Saturday.
The NSW government will not remove shark nets over the coming summer after Psillakis’s death at Long Reef near Dee Why in Sydney on Saturday.
The Victorian opposition leader was ejected from question time and suspended from the chamber for “disregarding the authority” of the speaker.
Major bank ANZ announced it will make about 3,500 employees redundant over the next year.
We’ll be back tomorrow, keeping you across the country’s breaking news.
Updated
Snap analysis: Koala wars return for Coalition in NSW
The koala wars are alive and well in NSW, it seems, and again look set to cause serious marital strife for the Nationals and Liberals.
The Minns Labor government set the ball rolling on Tuesday afternoon by moving a public interest debate, patting itself on the back for finally declaring the 176,000 hectare Great Koala national park, an election promise made in 2019 and again in 2023.
The Nats then tried to amend the motion calling on the government to shrink the park to 37,000 hectares and protect timber worker jobs.
In an unusual move, the Liberals just did not show for the vote on the Nationals’ amendment, which failed 11-51, or for the motion itself.
The Liberals’ no-show has left the Nationals furious. The Nationals firebrand Wes Fang posted on X:
The gutless NSW Liberal party members didn’t turn up to the Lower house to vote in support [of] the NSW Nationals on #Forestry&#Timber jobs.
More fallout is expected.
In 2020, the Nationals, then led by the feisty John Barilaro, briefly left the Coalition after a dispute over clearing of koala habitat on private land, which the environmentally-conscious former planning minister Rob Stokes had sought to protect using the planning laws.
The split only lasted a few days, but was politically costly. Both Barilaro and Stokes have now left politics.
With the opposition leader, Mark Speakman, under pressure over his “cut-through”, the politics of koalas may be his undoing as well.
Or it could be the hunting bill, or support for net zero. The Coalition is not happy.
Updated
