What we learned today, Thursday 24 October
With that, we’ll end our live coverage of the day’s news.
Here’s a summary of the main developments:
Independent senator Lidia Thorpe appears to have backtracked on the suggestion that she deliberately mispronounced “heirs” as “hairs” when she was sworn in as a senator, now insisting she misspoke because her “English grammar isn’t as good as others’”.
The prominent Sydney restaurateur Alan Yazbek has pleaded guilty to displaying a Nazi swastika at a pro-Palestine rally.
Three men have been found guilty under new laws banning the display of Nazi symbols after trying to argue their “heil Hitler” salutes outside the Sydney Jewish Museum were a joke.
Victorians could be able to build two homes on a lot without a permit under a planning reform that Jacinta Allan says will make her state the “townhouse capital” of the nation.
ABC Radio will be elevated to the executive team and moved to a stand-alone audio division in a dramatic reversal by the chair, Kim Williams, of a major restructure announced by the managing director, David Anderson, last year.
Thanks for reading. Have a pleasant evening.
Updated
Italian man jailed over plot to traffic ketamine hidden in Christmas gifts
An Italian man has been sentenced to three years in jail over a plot to traffic ketamine into Australia hidden inside Christmas gifts.
The man, 27, was arrested in January after an Australian federal police investigation triggered when border force officers found about 1.5kg of high-purity ketamine hidden inside stuffed toys in a package that arrived from Spain on 25 December 2023.
The border force alerted federal police, with officers replacing the illicit drugs with a harmless substance before the package was released for delivery on 4 January and taken to a residence in Coogee in Perth.
Later the same day, the police executed a search warrant at the address, where officers found the package open on a table, with the substituted drugs removed from some of the soft toys. One bag of the substituted drugs was located on a set of scales, near a vacuum sealing machine, police said.
The man has been in custody since his arrest on 4 January. After legal proceedings, the Perth district court on Tuesday sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment. He will be released on a good behaviour order after he serves 18 months.
Det Insp Matt Taylor of the AFP said ketamine was a sedative that could be used legally by medical practitioners and veterinarians but was illegal to be imported for recreational use.
“Illegal ketamine can be quite dangerous – people using it will not know how it was made, what strength it is or what else it has been mixed with,” Taylor said.
Updated
