What we learned, Thursday 30 April
Thanks for staying with us today. We’ll end our coverage of today’s breaking news there. Here were the top stories:
The royal commission established in the wake of December’s Bondi beach terror attack handed down its interim report.
The Albanese government has received a fuel supply assurance from South Korea as part of the diplomatic effort to insulate Australia from the international oil shock. Penny Wong also said China has agreed to help with jet fuel exports.
Woolworths’ food sales rose early this year, helped by anxious shoppers stocking up their pantries, but its warnings of uncertain sales later this year sent its shares sliding nearly 8% by 4pm.
The mother of Beau Lamarre-Condon will remain in custody for another two weeks over accusations that she attempted to influence a key witness to change their evidence before her son’s high-profile double murder trial.
Mark Latham has been ordered to pay Sydney MP Alex Greenwich $100,000 over homosexual vilification.
A New South Wales minister said the state’s plan for new gas exploration is about getting fuel to “local mums and dads”.
Syrian officials said Australia was refusing to permit the return of the families with alleged ties to Islamic State.
The body of the missing five-year-old Aboriginal girl, Kumanjayi Little Baby, was found in Alice Springs, with her mother releasing a statement saying she missed and loved her daughter and her relative, the Northern Territory senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, saying “we need justice for this horrific crime”.
Former counter-terror intelligence chief and anti-hate CEO backs royal commission report
Tahli Blicblau – the CEO of the Dor Foundation, an independent not-for-profit organisation focused on strengthening Australia’s response to antisemitism and hate – said the interim royal commission report represented an important “first chapter” for governments to act on.
Blicblau, who is also the former director of strategic intelligence and capabilities at the NSW crime commission, where she worked to prevent and disrupt serious organised crime and terrorism, said:
The recommendations made today are urgent and actionable, and government should not wait for December to act on them. This commission is the most powerful tool the country has to fix this – we are backing the process, and we urge every Australian to do the same.
No single agency is ever going to see the whole threat picture alone. What Australia must strive for is an intelligence and security architecture that connects the dots strategically, acts cooperatively and always evolves to stay ahead of the threat environment.
The report found that no agency told the commission it was prevented from acting by the existing legal framework. That is significant. The failures identified are not about what the law allows. They are about how the system was organised, coordinated, resourced and run.
Blicblau also said the first round of public hearings to start on Monday were significant as they would help explain the lived experience of antisemitism for Jewish Australians.
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