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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Emily Wind

Thorpe rebuffs Indigenous leaders’ criticism of protest – as it happened

John Pesutto Moira Deeming Lidia Thorpe Victoria Jones Craig Phillips David Crisafulli Don Farrell Steven Miles Australia Sue Chrysanthou SC
Senator Lidia Thorpe shouting at King Charles before being escorted away by security.
Senator Lidia Thorpe shouting at King Charles before being escorted away by security. Photograph: Victoria Jones/REX/Shutterstock

What happened on Wednesday 23 October 2024

With that, we’ll end our live coverage of the day’s news.

Here’s a summary of the main developments:

Thanks for reading. Have a pleasant evening

Updated

Moira Deeming created ‘extreme’ political problem akin to ‘lobster with a mobster’ incident, defamation trial told

John Pesutto’s lawyer has rejected claims the Victorian Liberal leader created a “false narrative” in order to expel Moira Deeming, telling a court he acted to “cauterise the damage” after neo-Nazis gatecrashed a rally the MP helped organised.

Deeming, who now sits on the crossbench after her expulsion from the state parliamentary Liberal party, is suing Pesutto for allegedly falsely portraying her as a Nazi sympathiser after she spoke at the Let Women Speak rally held on 18 March 2023, which was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis. Pesutto has denied the claim.

In her closing arguments, Deeming’s barrister, Sue Chrysanthou SC, asserted that Pesutto’s push to expel her from the party had “nothing to do” with the rally.

“The decision to expel was so irrational and clearly not based on the reasons he put forward to the press,” Chrysanthou told the federal court in Melbourne.

“Mrs Deeming was expelled because Mr Pesutto found it annoying to have to answer press questions about her whenever she made a statement about sex-based rights.”

Read more:

Updated

UAE agrees to trade pact on Australian minerals but China dominance sparks market angst

Billions of dollars in Emirati money could soon flow into the critical mineral sector but concerns persist over whether Australia is too far behind China in the battery race.

Australia and the United Arab Emirates have agreed to a trade pact that will be officially inked at the start of November and while it cuts trade tariffs, the centrepiece revolves around access to a multitrillion-dollar investment fund.

Trade Minister Don Farrell expects investment to flow before the end of 2024 after he handed over a list of 55 “shovel-ready” projects in Australia.

“As soon as the agreement is signed, that’s the signal to the UAE officials, Australia is open for business,” Senator Farrell told AAP.

“I think before Christmas we will see significant investment.”

While the fund was built on petrodollars, the Emiratis wanted to invest in clean energy, which required critical minerals for technologies such as batteries, Senator Farrell said.

One of the 55 proposals is the Kookaburra Gully graphite project in South Australia run by Lincoln Minerals.

While Australia was rich with critical mineral deposits, Prof John Mavrogenes questioned how much money they could bring into the nation given Chinese dominance in processing.

Australia can’t process the minerals and turn them into batteries or magnets as cheaply or as well as China and Beijing effectively set wholesale prices, the critical mineral expert said.

– via AAP

Updated

Glasgow model would have worked in Victoria: Commonwealth Games boss

Victoria could have hosted the same pared-back program as Glasgow for the same cost but the government never considered the option, Commonwealth Games Australia boss Craig Phillips says.

Glasgow announced its 2026 program on Tuesday after it stepped in to host the next event following Victoria’s withdrawal last year.

Using just four venues, only 10 sports will be contested at a projected cost of 114m pounds ($A221.51m).

Victoria cited a budget blow-out to $6bn which Phillips said was “outrageous and overestimated”. Instead of hosting, Victoria paid $380m in compensation to the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF), of which $200m has been directed to Scotland.

Phillips said the Victorian government withdrew without considering scaling back the multi-sport event.

“We were happy to talk to the Victorian government about finding ways of saving the costs of the Games and if eliminating sports from the program was part of that, we certainly would have had that conversation,” Phillips said on Wednesday. “I’ve been on record as saying before, we really didn’t get that opportunity to have that conversation.

– via AAP

Updated

Thorpe rebuffs Indigenous leaders’ criticism of protest against king: 'I don’t listen to the noise'

The independent senator Lidia Thorpe has played down criticism from Indigenous leaders of her protest against King Charles on Monday when she shouted “you are not out king” at him.

Thorpe, speaking to ABC News’ Greg Jennett, said she had received positive feedback from some elders who told her that her protest had “lit a fire back in their belly”, but dismissed other Indigenous leaders who had criticised her.

“I don’t listen to the noise of those who have chosen to assimilate into the colonial system. That’s their decision. I’ve decided to be a black sovereign woman and continue our fight against the colony and for justice for our people.”

Asked about whether her oath of allegiance when becoming a senator – in which she claims she deliberately mispronounced the word “heirs” as “hairs” – was valid, Thorpe said “why would I, with my hand on my heart, kneel to an oppressor?”.

“Look, it’s no it’s no secret I don’t like the colony. I don’t like the king and what he represents, and I don’t like the fact that I’ve got to swear to an oppressor to do my job to get justice for my people.

“I am there for one reason and one reason only, and it’s not to make friends, it’s not to get re-elected. It is to get justice for my people.”

Updated

Human remains found in Queensland near where teenager swept away in 2022 floods

Police have found human remains in an area west of Gympie in which a 14-year-old girl was swept away in floodwaters almost three years ago.

Krystal Cain was last seen by her father on the night of 8 January 2022 after they abandoned their flooded car near the Burnett Highway at Booubyjan, before she was swept away by raging flood waters in the aftermath of ex-tropical cyclone Seth.

Despite a widespread search involving water police, divers, volunteers and helicopters scouring the flood plain upon which the teenager went missing, she was never found.

Police found several human bones on a property at Booubyjan on Sunday.

On Tuesday, a spokesperson said Queensland police were conducting forensic examinations upon the bones yet-to-be identified remains and that the investigation was expected to be protracted.

Updated

Land in outer Melbourne to be unlocked under 10-year plan

Swathes of land in Melbourne’s outer suburbs will be unlocked over the next decade in a bid to build 180,000 new homes, AAP reports.

Ploughing ahead with a week-long housing policy blitz, premier Jacinta Allan unveiled a 10-year plan to release land across 27 Melbourne greenfield areas.

She said the pipeline plan for land releases across the city’s outer southeast, north and west was unprecedented.

“(It’s) the most significant commitment in history in greenfield areas to building new homes, new backyards,” she told reporters on Wednesday.

The first three greenfield sites will be released in Cardinia, Whittlesea and Kororoit as early as 2024 and 2025.

However, there is no timeline for when building will get under way on the expected 180,000 new homes.

You can read more on this here:

Updated

Miles calls out Crisafulli’s last-minute change of heart on abortion

The Queensland premier, Steven Miles, has slammed the opposition leader for an unexplained backflip on abortion.

At the third leaders’ debate last night, David Crisafulli said he was pro-choice. But he didn’t explain at a press conference this morning why he’d changed his mind since last year, when he said that he did not believe in “late-term” abortion.

“I can’t think of a single time that a candidate, let alone a leader, three days before an election, changes such a fundamental belief,” Miles said.

“How do you go from staunchly pro-life to suddenly pro-choice just a few days before the election. I think Queensland women will be rightly skeptical about the motivations behind this, but it really generates more questions than it answers.

“You know, he’s been able to hold his other 92 candidates to just parroting his lines, but now that he’s broken ranks and told Queenslanders that he’s pro-choice now all of his other 92 candidates should be allowed to give their views to and what we know is that all, bar three of them, Tim Nichols, Steve Mini can and now David Crisafulli, every single other one of them is pro life.

“And that would mean that a majority, if they had a majority, then there would be a majority in favour of laws that would force women to stay pregnant.”

Miles said Crisafulli had made the commitment because the Courier Mail/Sky News audience “laughed at him” for not answering questions about his beliefs.

Several LNP MPs and candidates have publicly revealed themselves as opponents of abortion in recent weeks.

Updated

Millions of people in NSW charged illegal merchant fees by state agencies, government says

New South Wales government agencies have illegally charged people about $144m in merchant fees on an estimated 92m credit card transactions for services such as licence renewals, car registrations and fine repayments since 2016.

The finance minister, Courtney Houssos, on Wednesday said the government had referred the issue to the NSW ombudsman for an investigation into “possible serious maladministration” after the state auditor general alerted it to the issue in July.

The state’s corruption watchdog has also been informed.

Houssos said the surcharges had been passed on to tens of millions of customers despite “repeated legal advice” during the former Coalition government’s term that Revenue NSW and Service NSW could not lawfully charge merchant fees.

“I find these revelations extremely concerning, and I can’t see how there is an excuse for a government [agency] that was repeatedly advised that activity was unlawful and to continue to do that,” she said.

She said that due to a longstanding practice of new governments not being given access to advice provided to previous governments, it was impossible at this stage to say who within the previous government was informed of the issue and when.

Read more from Catie McLeod and Tamsin Rose:

Updated

ACU to reimburse attendees after Joe de Bruyn’s anti-same-sex marriage speech

The Australian Catholic University will reimburse attendees of a graduation ceremony where Joe de Bruyn sparked a walkout with a speech denouncing abortion and same-sex marriage, as the university also revealed it had urged the former union boss to reconsider his remarks before he delivered them.

De Bruyn’s address, delivered on Monday evening, prompted major backlash after he compared abortion to the “human toll of world war two” and alleged same-sex marriage went against “every society on Earth”.

The vice chancellor of the ACU, Professor Zlatko Skrbis, wrote to staff on Tuesday afternoon confirming the university was aware of the contents of the address ahead of time and had allowed the speech to go ahead despite “strongly encouraging” De Bruyn to reconsider his remarks.

Read more:

Updated

Many thanks for joining me on the blog today, Elias Visontay will be here to take you through the rest of our rolling coverage. Take care.

More details on clash between police and suspected neo-Nazis

AAP has more details on the clash between police and suspected neo-Nazis seeking to gatecrash a peaceful refugee rally in Melbourne last night.

Roughly 300 refugee supporters were outside the Department of Home Affairs to mark 100 days of protests calling for asylum seekers to be granted permanent visas, when it was disrupted by about 20 men wearing black and covering their faces.

Aran Mylvaganam from the Tamil Refugee Council said the men marched towards their encampment with an offensive banner and shouted other slogans such as “Hail victory”, “White power” and “Australia for the white man”. He labelled it “quite a terrifying scene.”

Mylvaganam said asylum-seeker advocates initially chased the men away before police formed a line to separate the groups. Video shows police using capsicum spray to push back the suspected neo-Nazis.

Victoria police said the groups dispersed and “there were no arrests or reports of injuries”. Police would assess the circumstances surrounding the demonstration and review vision and people involved, it said.

Mylvaganam criticised the police response, saying some advocates were subjected to the same treatment as the masked men:

They pepper-sprayed some of our supporters well before they pepper-sprayed the [suspected] neo-Nazis who were delivering hate speech. One of our speakers ... who is a Palestinian activist, she was pepper sprayed.

Unplanned coal plant outages at highest level in years, energy regulator says

Clare Savage, the chair of the Australian Energy Regulator, is before the Senate inquiry into energy this afternoon (along with a big team), and she isn’t holding back about the unreliability of coal plants in the grid.

There were some 54 so-called high price periods during the quarter, when spot prices topped $5,000 per megawatt hour. Yes, the wind was particularly variable but so, it turns out, was coal.

The quarter had the highest number of unplanned coal plant outages since the national electricity market introduced five-minute trading intervals in October 2021, Savage said.

Spot prices are one thing, but since coal-fired plants are a major supplier of future contracts, that effect flows (so to speak) to market expectations. Hence, prices are bid up. Savage said:

The [coal] plants are becoming increasingly unreliable, and the owners of many of these plants are now more reluctant to sell the same volume of contracts in case one of their units fails.

“The exposure of our electricity system to international fossil fuel prices through the linking of our coal and gas markets to exports is a further source of volatility,” she added, noting the lingering impacts from overseas, including Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Asked by the SA Labor senator Karen Grogan how long it would take to set up a regulatory framework for a nuclear power industry, Savage said it would be drawn out. There’s the removal of the industry’s “current prohibition” (an accidental pun, we suspect), to start with.

I don’t have any expert view on how long it would then take to build a power station but I would have thought the regulatory framework itself would take eight to 10 years.

Updated

Woman in custody after allegedly assaulting child at Perth shopping centre

A 21-year-old woman has been taking into custody after allegedly assaulting a child while in its mother’s arms at a Perth shopping centre yesterday.

Police said a woman approached a mother holding her child yesterday afternoon at the shopping centre in East Victoria Park before allegedly assaulting the child and leaving the area. Police said the child received facial injuries.

The woman is not known to the mother and child, police said.

Today, police said a 21-year-old female was taken into custody at Mirrabooka Shopping Centre around 11am. Further updates would be provided when available, police added.

Updated

Pilot survives light plane crash in Queensland

A pilot has managed to escape from a light aircraft crash near Gladstone in Queensland, before the plane caught alight.

The Queensland Ambulance Service said a light aircraft went down and caught alight around 9.30am this morning on Duaringa Baralaba Road.

The pilot, aged in his 30s, removed himself from the plane and was transported to hospital “in a stable condition with spinal precautions”, QAS said.

The Courier Mail reported the man was flying a crop dusting plane, when it crashed and flipped over.

Updated

Second staff member working for NSW prison charged

A second staff member working for a NSW prison has been charged after she allegedly intimidated a witness who gave evidence before a special commission of inquiry into the prison system.

Guardian Australia understands it was in relation to the inquiry into former prison guard Wayne Astill, who was convicted of abusing female inmates while he was a guard at a NSW prison.

In September, a woman – who was an employee of Corrective Services NSW - was charged with two counts of stalk/intimidate to intend fear/physical harm, and public office misconduct after reports she allegedly intimidated a witness, according to NSW police.

Yesterday, NSW police arrested a second woman who is also charged with stalk/intimidate to intend fear/ physical harm and public office misconduct. A Corrective NSW spokesperson confirmed the woman is also alleged to have intimidated a witness that gave evidence before an inquiry.

Both women were charged under a NSW police operation known as Strike Force Pylane. Police said the operation was set up last July to investigate misconduct by prison staff, and attempts by prison staff to cover up information about that misconduct.

Both women charged under Strike Force Pylane have been granted bail, with one set to appear before court on 29 November, and another to appear on 20 November.

NSW police said, “Investigations under Strike Force Pylane continue.”

Updated

First passengers enter Australia without incoming passenger card

The first passengers have begun entering Australia without an incoming passenger card this week.

Qantas has begun a pilot of the Australia Digital Travel Declaration (ATD), a digital replacement to the incoming passenger card. This is available for eligible passengers travelling from Aukland to Brisbane, initially on flight QF126.

It will be expanded to include customers travelling from other New Zealand cities to Brisbane “in the coming days”, Qantas said, ahead of additional Australian destinations joining the program early next year.

Qantas said it is looking to expand the program to other international destinations in the coming months. In a statement, the Australian Border Force said the pilot program commenced on Monday.

DAFF’s deputy secretary of biosecurity, Justine Saunders, said:

We are pleased to see the biosecurity process becoming more integrated and streamlined while still effectively protecting Australia from harmful biosecurity pests and diseases.

The success of this pilot program is a step in the right direction towards our shared end goal of achieving streamlined border clearances.

As Mostafa Rachwani reported earlier this year, the change to digital could bring in an additional $50bn a year:

Updated

'Women, we make up our own minds, it's a thing': Spender

Wrapping up her press club appearance, Allegra Spender was asked about a recent article in the Financial Review stating she had asked them to remove a reference to Simon Holmes à Court from the powerbroking list. Was that true?

Spender said “I did”, and then rephrased:

I had heard that Simon Holmes à Court was on the covert power list and I have a problem with this idea that women like myself get here and there is someone covertly hiding behind us pulling the strings.

I am a woman of my middle ages, I spent ten or fifteen years running companies, I’ve got three kids and a life I’m trying to run here and this … insinuation someone out there is pulling the strings is insulting to me and it is insulting to women around Australia who are saying ‘we make up our own minds’.

That for me was the big learning from the 2022 election, is that we make up our own minds. Since we are talking about women, and we talk about Peter Dutton and the Libs, one of the things that concerns me on so many different levels – including the abortion debate that we are somehow now having again – is we need women in the rooms of power and across our parliament and if the Liberal party is serious about women, I cannot understand how they have managed to preselect 17 men in Queensland out of the 18 seats that they currently hold. That to me is absolutely remarkable.

You can see that it’s an issue. Women, we make up our own minds, it’s a thing.

She received a loud applause from the room after her response.

Updated

‘Gas a small part of energy transition’, Spender says

Allegra Spender was also questioned on the role of nuclear in the energy transition, as well as gas, once coal is phased out.

She said she is “tech-agnostic” and the question is about “how do we transition in a way that is right for the environment and the economy”:

Coal is exiting in the next 10 years, what will we do to replace that? The energy bosses said yesterday [that] nuclear is not what is going to solve the problem by 2035.

Many people are sceptical we will be here before the 2040s. We need to deal with the next 10 years.

I keep an open mind in terms of how nuclear as a technology evolves. Right now, the cheapest and reliable option for us in terms of dealing with the coal closure will be renewables backed by batteries but also gas.

Gas is a part of the transition. Aemo has gas in part of the transition. It is a small part of the transition, but it is important … it is a fossil fuel, I’d love to avoid it as much as you can, but right now it has an important role to play.

Updated

Spender says Coalition stance on climate ‘unacceptable’ and says numbers ‘crucial’ in minority government discussions

At the National Press Club, Allegra Spender was asked a number of times about the prospect of a minority government and said the numbers would be crucial.

A reporter asked if she would consider supporting the Coalition forming government, “even when Peter Dutton has said they would dump the 2030 net zero target and that within the Coalition ranks, there are members who deny the very existence of climate change”.

Spender said the numbers matter because “there could be a scenario where there is 65 and 75” rather than a seat or two difference.

Then it is a negotiation, and that matters. Climate is incredibly important to me and my community … and frankly it is unacceptable that the Coalition pretends that they care about climate action, when they are saying they won’t have a 2030 target. That is unacceptable and it is ridiculous. Let’s see what actually comes out of any negotiations.

Updated

Education minister meeting with Indian counterpart in Melbourne

The education minister, Jason Clare, is entertaining his Indian counterpart in Melbourne today as part of a ministerial visit aiming to shore up transnational links in higher education and skills.

It comes amid a deteriorating relationship between Canada and India, with allegations of the potential involvement of the Indian government in crimes against dissidents.

Onshore, though, it’s all smiles between Clare and Dharmendra Pradhan, who today toured RMIT, which has a partnership with the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani.

Tomorrow, Pradhan will attend his second Australia-India Education and Skills Council (AIESC) meeting to be held in Sydney, with discussions to focus on Australia’s research strength and industry engagement, as well as the potential for further partnerships to deliver education in India.

The AIESC meeting coincides with Deakin and Wollongong universities opening in India this year, with more Australian universities expected to follow. Clare said:

It is an honour to welcome Minister Pradhan back to Australia for his second visit since 2022. This is the fourth time we have caught up here or in India in the last two years. I look forward to showcasing Australia’s education system and working together to further strengthen Australia’s education links with India.

Updated

Spender weighs in on Victorian government plans to rezone affluent suburbs

Back at the National Press Club, Allegra Spender has been asked about the Victorian government’s rezoning plans for 50 affluent suburbs – and the pushback by some of her fellow independents. She was asked if development is going too far in major cities.

Spender said her community in Sydney is “one of the densest electorates in the country”, and said:

We can build density that really works. I am someone who absolutely supports that we need to build more housing. We need to build it in regions, outer suburbs and also in the cities. You just have to make it work. You need to do the community consultation well, but we need more housing everywhere and that includes Wentworth.

Asked if she supports high-rise housing, Spender said she supports housing “in all different shapes and sizes but it has to work for the community”:

In my electorate, you talk to the aged care providers, childcare places, and people tell me it is as hard to get an aged care worker in Wentworth as it is in some rural communities because it is so expensive to live, so people have to come from such distances.

We need to make sure we have diversity of housing, we have diversity of density and housing at different levels in the income and affordability rate, so we can still preserve that sense of community.

Updated

Crisafulli pressed on abortion again in last days of Queensland election campaign

The Queensland opposition leader, David Crisafulli, has again been pressed on the issue of abortion, the day after he told a debate audience he is pro-choice. But Crisafulli didn’t explain why he had shifted his view since voting against legislation legalising the medical procedure in 2018.

At one point in the press conference he said “I haven’t spoken about it in four years”.

But the Guardian revealed yesterday that he told a live event last year that he didn’t support late-term abortions and committed to a conscience vote on the issue. He also did not explain why or when his view had changed:

Speaking today, Crisafulli said:

I was asked a direct question by Mr [Kerry] O’Brien, and I’m being asked a direct question by you. I’m telling you that I’ve never stood up and run a press conference speaking about that issue, not once.

I’ve never stood in the parliament speaking about that. Now you’ll ask me a question. You’ve done that repeatedly for three weeks, and I’m answering the question; there’ll be no change to abortion laws in Queensland.

The LNP has not ruled out a conscience vote on legislation to be introduced by the Katter’s Australian party on the first day of next parliament, which amends the state’s Termination of Pregnancy Act 2018.

Updated

Spender on how the government can reach its 2030 targets

Allegra Spender is now taking questions from the audience at the National Press Club.

Asked what else can be done to help the government meet its 2030 emissions reduction target, she pointed to the mining tax and said:

If you don’t have a reason why we need to make a change and if you can’t get the community on board for why … this is actually urgent to fix, then you will not get the community support and it is much more vulnerable to the fear campaigns that we had in relation to the mining tax.

She also pointed to tax reform and said there was an opportunity to “help reduce cost of living through permanently supporting households” with transitioning to solar appliances:

I am hearing whispers that both the major parties are going to do something more on this in the next election. That is good and we are pushing them to do that.

Updated

Gosford hospital to stop offering maternity services from next March

Gosford private hospital will stop offering maternity services from the end of March 2025, following the closure of eight private maternity services over the past 18 months.

The decision was attributed to declining birthrates, decreasing demand for private maternity services on the Central Coast, increasing cost of living pressures and challenges with private health insurance funding.

The hospital’s CEO, Stephen Johnston, said birthrates had fallen by almost 40% over the last 10 years.

We have now reached the point where it is no longer sustainable for us to continue to operate this service.

I want to express my gratitude for the tireless work of our maternity services staff. This decision in no way reflects the work they do and the exceptional care they provide for our patients.

Updated

Spender on tax, housing reform

Allegra Spender is also calling for “institutional change through a tax reform commission”, to provide policy makers with “credible, tested options and a tax reform process in the next parliament”.

She told the NPC that taxes need to be lowered for working people, saying:

We used to have a working-age population that was around six times as many as people who were retired. Now it is around four [and] in some decades’ time it will be under three …

Spender said tax reform is important in the long-term but housing is “urgent”, with the parliament needing to “stop wedging and start working together”:

The community is disgusted to see politicians wedging each other on this, when this is such a heartbreaking personal issue to so many Australians …

She called on the Coalition and the Greens to back rent and shared equity scheme bills currently before parliament because “they actually solve real problems for real people”.

Updated

Spender says neither party has plan to deal with structural deficit in budget

Addressing the crowd, Allegra Spender said Labor is “very keen” to take credit for two large surpluses – but “the fact is the budget is in structural deficit and will stay here for years to come”:

No one, neither party has a plan to deal with this. Most of the community don’t want higher taxes, they want our tax dollars to work better for our community by improved productivity in the public sector.

Spender said the commonwealth spends around $10bn a year on infrastructure but “often doesn’t do the basic due diligence to ensure that the benefits outweigh the costs, that money is spent appropriately and that lessons are learned for future projects”.

She said a “huge amount of our public money” is “wasted on white elephants like the suburban rail link.”

We need a shift in mindset from inputs – spending more money if we care about something – to outputs, to the difference it makes. If we can’t take easy decisions on infrastructure, how will we take the hard decisions on issues like health care?

I will be introducing a private member’s bill on this basis to deal with just this.

Updated

Allegra Spender speaks to National Press Club on economic reform

Allegra Spender, the Independent MP for Wentworth in Sydney, is addressing the National Press Club in Canberra on her thoughts around economic reform.

Beginning her speech, she said Australia “truly [was] the lucky country” but this has slipped away over 15 years as many people are left struggling – “including people who never thought they would”:

People who thought they had made the right decisions, but they feel now they can’t actually afford their mortgage, their rent … A recent survey found that only 15% of Australians believe home ownership is attainable … [and] less than one in 10 believe the standard of living in Australia will be better off for the next generation.

Spender continued, noting that from 2004-2016 the wealth of older Australians increased by 50% while those under 35 “barely moved”.

The current cost of living crisis exacerbates this because it has affected profoundly those people renting, or with big mortgages and low savings. This is not just a statistic – young people know they are falling behind, they are less hopeful than previous generations.

She said she was not here to “propose a silver bullet” but pointed to three major economic issues facing the country: growth, intergenerational equity and the energy transition.

Updated

Minimum demand and future of coal queried at Senate inquiry

As suggested earlier, the Senate inquiry into energy regulation will likely go in partisan directions. Still, there are some interesting points being raised.

The independent ACT senator David Pocock wanted to know what Aemo planned to do to ensure rooftop solar owners weren’t being unfairly curtailed when there’s abundant energy – for example, on sunny days in spring and autumn when demand for heating or cooling is low.

We looked at the emerging issue of minimum system loads in this recent article:

Pocock asked Aemo whether it has taken any steps to establish a market-based equivalent to its so-called Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (Rert) to deal with times when demand in the grid is too low.

(The Rert system pays big energy users to reduce their demand. A reverse of that would reward firms for using more power, electric vehicle owners for charging up, etc.)

Aemo’s boss, Daniel Westerman, said the issue was “a really important area for us operationally” but didn’t quite answer the question.

While we continue to look for ways to make sure that we can maintain a stable and resilient grid, we also need the ultimate backstop of being able to constrain – or rather ask distribution companies – to constrain off rooftop solar.

(Extra voltage is sent through the grid to switch off solar inverters – a separate but interesting problem in the grid, as we noted here.)

In short, the market-based solution “is still evolving”, Westerman said. Watch this space, in other words.

Updated

Authorities reiterate warning over e-bike batteries after latest fire in Sydney

Fire authorities have reiterated warnings about the dangers of e-bikes and their batteries, after the latest fire threatened an apartment complex in Sydney overnight.

Fire and Rescue New South Wales (FRNSW) crews extinguished an e-bike fire before it could take hold and harm the occupants of the small apartment building in Waterloo after the battery of one of several e-bikes stored in the ground-floor stairwell burst into flames.

The fire occurred at about 12.50am on Wednesday, after the e-bike battery overheated while being charged and went into “thermal runaway” – “a process whereby a damaged or compromised battery cell generates enough heat to ignite, setting off a chain reaction of batteries exploding and giving off flammable, toxic gas”.

Six fire trucks and 22 firefighters took an hour to contain and extinguish the fire before they could identify the faulty e-bike battery as the cause of the blaze. No injuries were reported.

FRNSW reiterated a warning to owners of e-bikes and e-scooters not to charge them while sleeping, not to overcharge the batteries and not to block emergency exits.

They also stressed to buy reputable lithium battery brands, to avoid cheap alternatives and to never mix and match components.

Updated

Air New Zealand flight between Perth and Auckland forced to divert due to disruptive passenger

An Air New Zealand flight bound for Auckland from Perth was forced to divert this morning after a passenger became disruptive, the airline has said.

As AP reports, the flight landed instead in Melbourne, where police officers awaited the aircraft. The flight continued to Auckland after a 90-minute delay, Air New Zealand said in a statement.

The carrier did not give more details about the episode. An airline spokesperson, David Morgan, said:

Our crew managed the incident well, but incidents like this are distressing for our customers and our people and we have zero tolerance for this sort of behaviour on our aircraft.

The diversion came less than a week after another Air New Zealand flight was held on the tarmac for two hours when it arrived in its destination, Sydney, after what the airline called a security incident. Local news outlets reported there had been a bomb threat. There was “no threat to the community”, the AFP said on Saturday.

Updated

Australia has ‘greatest blessing’ of energy in the world, so why is it so expensive?

More on that Senate energy inquiry, where Matt Canavan put forward this point:

“I suppose the thing that perplexes me more than anything else is that we have probably per capita the greatest blessing of energy resources in the world, amazing resources of coal, of gas, and the world’s largest uranium reserves. Yes, we have the sun as well,” Canavan said (omitting wind, for some reason).

And yet we now have left ourselves with a situation where the United States have power prices a third of ours. How have we allowed that to happen?

Aemo officials didn’t have an answer. “I can’t answer that today,” the chief executive, Daniel Westerman, replied.

There are actually a range of answers. A key one was the linking of the east coast Australian gas market to the global one a bit over a decade ago.

As we noted a couple of years ago here, before that rather radical decision, gas prices were about $3 a gigajoule. Prices are more like $12/GJ now, if you can secure contracts, and have been a lot higher.

And as gas-fired power plants often set the price in the whole electricity price market, our power prices have soared too.

(The US has had curbs on gas exports, which have helped keep a lid on prices there. It’s a policy approach applied in Western Australia through a reservation system for local use.)

Updated

Senate inquiry scrutinises energy organisations – with a certain slant

The Senate inquiry into energy planning and regulation has started today, kicking off with the Australian Energy Market Operator in the dock. (You can stream it here.)

It’s not quite clear what this inquiry will unearth, but its first session suggests the results might have a partisan bend.

David Van, the committee chair – a former Victorian Liberal senator before he resigned to become an independent last June after denying accusations of inappropriate behaviour – has pressed AEMO on its integrated system plans. (See 2024 version here.)

In short, Van and LNP senator Matt Canavan aren’t happy the ISPs only examine the “least cost pathways” to whatever policy settings are in place. Aemo doesn’t consider, say, an energy system without a net zero goal by 2050. Van stated:

It’s not an economic test. It’s not testing the productivity from an economic point of view that will contribute to the Australian economy.

And Canavan, perhaps sailing towards a rocky shoal, asked:

If we were to ask you, ‘go and model this particular option, go and model nuclear, go and model no climate targets’, would that be useful … information that you could produce for people?

The answer was yes, Aemo’s models can accommodate various inputs – provided they are actual policy.

Should the Coalition win office and start implementing plans to build seven nuclear power plants, Aemo would recalculate its ISP. It would likely show a much more costly pathway than is presently put forward for the transition to net zero (assuming the latter remains policy).

Updated

More on the King and Queen’s departure from Australia

A pool reporter has informed us that King Charles and Queen Camilla were farewelled by a small crowd of fans, plus the NSW deputy premier, Prue Car, the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, and the NSW governor, Margaret Beazley.

The pair farewelled the Australian contingent for potentially the final time before heading up the steps on to the Royal Australian Air Force jet.

They will travel to Samoa after spending a short five days in Australia with a packed itinerary, including a visit to Parliament House and the War Memorial in Canberra.

The Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Samoa is expected to discuss climate change, the impact of colonialism and reparations.

Updated

Goodbye royalty: King and Queen leaving Australia after five-day tour

King Charles and Queen Camilla are about to take off for Samoa, where the King will attend the Commonwealth heads of government meeting.

Images are being broadcast of their plane circling the tarmac, preparing to take off.

The royals made their way up the stairs and waved goodbye after their first official tour of Australia as King and Queen.

Updated

Pay boost for workers to help fix ‘broken’ child protection

New child-protection workers will be offered more than $8000 in higher pay to fill critical shortages in NSW and help fix a “broken” system, AAP reports.

More than 2,000 public-sector caseworkers will get a pay rise of at least 4% under the deal with the Public Service Association. But starting pay rates for new caseworkers will get a much-larger increase, rising by $8,283 in the current financial year.

The NSW families minister, Kate Washington, said child-protection caseworkers have “one of the most challenging and important jobs in the world: keeping vulnerable children safe”.

I have seen first-hand the incredible difference these workers make to children and families and I hope that this agreement will encourage more caseworkers to take up positions with [the government].

As part of the new agreement, all child-protection workers will receive a minimum 4% rise and a 0.5% superannuation bump, backdated to the start of July.

Updated

Chris Minns to visit Broken Hill after major power outage

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, will travel to Broken Hill tomorrow, AAP reports, after severe thunderstorms that wiped out powerlines and faulty generators left locals with minimal electricity for the better part of a week.

Most residents currently have power, but some fear it could cut out again before the transmission infrastructure is fixed to reconnect the town to the national grid.

A backup gas-fired generator has been offline for nearly a year, while a second one tripped on Monday under high power demand due to hot weather.

Tom Kennedy, Broken Hill’s mayor, believes Minns will face unsatisfied locals when he heads to the region. He told ABC RN earlier this morning:

A lot of people in Broken Hill are just not happy, considering we shouldn’t have gone through this. There should have been two generators that would ensure Broken Hill kept its power supply and also the outlying regions that have been several days without power at different times during this disaster.

As we reported earlier, Minns said he had declared a natural disaster in Broken Hill to allow funds to flow, that “compensation for communities must happen” and an investigation into how this occurred will take place.

Updated

Fire danger period to begin next week for some areas of Victoria

VicEmergency says that the fire danger period is “fast-approaching” and will be declared as soon as next week in some areas.

In a post to X, it said it is “critical” for those in high-risk locations to “be prepared for the coming fire season”.

CFA declares the fire danger period for each municipality (shire or council) at different times in the lead up to the fire season. It is declared during periods of increased fire risk considering local conditions.

The fire danger period may be declared as early as October in some municipalities and typically remains in place until the fire danger lessens, which could be as late as May.

In NSW the bushfire danger period runs from 1 October to 31 March.

Ads at Samoan airport will advocate for global plastics treaty as King Charles arrives

As we flagged earlier, King Charles is off to Samoa this morning for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) in Apia.

The Minderoo Foundation says it will be placing ads in the Samoan airport as delegates arrive showing a young child vomiting up plastic as part of its campaign for a global plastics treaty.

The ads will be placed at the arrivals exit and baggage claim, as well as an external welcome screen, roadside and at a VIP airport terminal, it said, with geotargeted ads on social media as well.

The foundation’s director, Jay Weatherill, said Chogm was an “ideal place to ramp up advocacy” for the treaty given that 33 of the world’s 42 small states are Commonwealth members:

Nine are from the Pacific. These small states are particularly vulnerable to issues such as climate change and the environmental and human health impacts being driven by plastic pollution …

2.5 billion citizens live in Commonwealth countries, with more than 60% aged 29 or under. Our children deserve to have a future where their bodies are not involuntary riddled with dangerous chemicals stemming from plastic.

Updated

Bureau of Meteorology testing tsunami warning system

The Bureau of Meteorology says it will be testing its tsunami warning system from 11am to 4pm Aedt today.

The tests will be marked as “TEST” and appear on the Bureau’s website and weather app, it said.

Updated

Queensland chief health officer ‘concerned’ about health harms of vapes

Queensland’s chief health officer, Dr John Gerrard, says he is concerned about the growing evidence of the health harms of vapes – including “damaged lungs, toxicity, seizures, poisoning and increasing evidence of adverse events on heart health”.

Addressing the Oceania tobacco control conference in Queensland being hosted by the Cancer Council, Gerrard said it is important not to forget the considerable harms to health that tobacco products, including cigarettes, continue to cause to Australians.

While there has been considerable success in reducing the smoking rate across the country in recent years, I’m concerned about the potential for the widespread sale of cheap, illicit tobacco products.

As we gather at this conference, it’s important to note that tobacco use is the cause of more preventable death and disease than any other modifiable health risk factor. We must whenever we do all we can to prevent smoking and assist current smokers to quit.

Updated

Health minister addresses conference on tobacco and vaping reforms

This morning the federal health minister, Mark Butler, addressed the Oceania tobacco control conference taking place on the Gold Coast, where he is speaking about the significant tobacco and vaping reforms introduced.

Tobacco laws, regulations, instruments, and court decisions have been combined under one piece of legislation.

“Tobacconists, vape shops and convenience stores can no longer sell vapes,” he said in a video address to conference attenders, which includes leading researchers and clinicians in tobacco and vaping control from around the world.

He said since January, more than 5m vapes had been seized at the border.

We’ve returned it to a therapeutic good, [with people] only being able to purchase a vape for smoking cessation at a pharmacy.

From October, prescriptions are no longer required to get vapes from a pharmacy. But the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia told Guardian Australia that while the society does not have exact numbers, many pharmacists are choosing not to stock them because they don’t want to provide an unregulated product to consumers.

There are also mixed reports about the availability of vapes and the effectiveness of enforcement action so far. Despite harsher penalties now being available to prosecute vape suppliers, there are concerns regulators are still too frequently using softer enforcement measures and failing to deter retailers from continuing to sell.

Since July this year, the TGA has issued 13 infringement notices totalling $244,410 against six companies for alleged offences in connection with the retail supply of vaping goods.

Updated

Adam Bandt posts in solidarity with pro-refugee protesters who were disrupted by neo-Nazis

As we reported earlier this morning, suspected neo-Nazis were pepper-sprayed by police in Melbourne after they tried to disrupt the final night of a 100-day protest in support of refugees.

The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, has commented on the situation in a post to X and said:

For 100 days a group of brave, peaceful protesters have sat outside the Department of Home Affairs calling for refugees to be given permanent visas. Last night neo-Nazis tried to disrupt them.

Solidarity with all at the encampment for their tireless advocacy these past months.

Updated

Union slams ‘false hope’ of nuclear plan and says jobs are at risk

Queensland’s sparkies have been warned of the “huge risk” to thousands of jobs in renewable energy posed by nuclear plans, AAP reports.

The Electrical Trades Union has told electricians and apprentices in a mass mailout that nuclear energy was a “radioactive pipe dream” that could not replace coal-fired power stations.

The union’s national policy director, Katie Hepworth, says the “false hope” offered by the LNP on the premise that coal-powered stations can keep running is “letting down coal communities”:

The ETU members, our maintenance workers, who work in these power stations know that they’re being held together by all the will in the world, but they know they can’t hold on forever.

There is a huge risk that if what they’re being given is a fantasy of a nuclear power station without an entire industrial plan and a renewable plan, that they’re just going to be thrown on the scrap heap again.

The union’s nuclear energy report for 2024 found nuclear reactors would be more expensive, could not be built before coal exits the electricity grid and was “simply unnecessary” given abundant renewable energy sources.

The report, authored by Dr Hepworth, found nuclear power would be the most expensive form of energy for Australia, at 1.5 to three times the cost per kilowatt hour of coal-fired electricity and four to eight times of solar.

Updated

Woolworths and Coles front federal court amid claims of misleading discounts

Supermarket giants Woolworths and Coles have appeared in the federal court for the first time since the competition regulator launched legal action against the companies for allegedly misleading customers with fake discounts.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) sued the supermarkets last month, alleging they had breached consumer law on hundreds of common supermarket products,

Lawyers for the parties appeared in the federal court in Melbourne this morning for a case management hearing.

John Sheehan KC, acting for Coles, said his client would show that price spikes were due to a request by suppliers for a price increase and during a period of a “sudden outbreak of inflation”. He described the case as “significant for the industry as a whole.”

Cameron Moore SC, representing Woolworths, labelled the ACCC’s case “misconceived”.

Sarida McLeod, representing the regulator, responded to the supermarket’s responses, telling the court “none of this takes the ACCC by surprise”:

The conduct is still misleading.

Justice Michael O’Bryan said another case management hearing would be held at a date to be determined.

Updated

Deputy Liberal leader also shoots down calls to put abortion on national agenda

The deputy Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, has also shot down Jacinta Price’s calls to put abortion on the national political agenda, saying the Liberal party has “no intention” to change federal rules on the issue.

As mentioned earlier, Price – the shadow Indigenous Australians minister – told the Nine newspapers she “cannot agree” with late-term abortions, which she claimed was “anywhere past the [first] trimester as far as I’m concerned … Full-term becomes infanticide”.

It comes as several states debate abortion issues, sparked by conservative politicians seeking to re-examine the issue. The shadow finance minister, Jane Hume, this morning gave a categorical rebuttal, saying “a Dutton led Coalition government has no plans, no policy and no interest in unwinding women’s reproductive rights.”

Ley, the deputy Liberal leader and shadow minister for women, gave a similarly blunt response to Price’s comments – twice saying the Liberals had no intention to change laws. She told Sky News:

It’s important to remember that access to abortion is a state issue, which is why you often see it debated at state level, and we have no intention to change the settings from a federal health perspective.

Obviously, individuals have their own views, and Jacinta is entitled, as a member of the National Party, to her own view, but the federal Liberals have no intention of changing the settings when it comes to this issue.

Updated

O’Neil defends government spending amid latest inflation forecasts

Today show host Karl Stefanovic grilled Clare O’Neil on whether government spending would be cut, amid forecasts showing headline inflation rising from 3% at the end of this year to 3.7% by the end of next year.

Peter Hannam had more on this earlier in the blog, here, with all the much-needed context.

O’Neil defended the government, saying inflation had “more than halved” since it came to office and that the Coalition didn’t deliver a surplus as promised while in government.

But how does she feel about going to an election without a rate cut? O’Neil responded that “it’s not about the politics” and said:

We’re in a country right now where your kids and mine, Karl, are going to face totally different housing opportunities than … our parents got and that our grandparents got, and we can’t put up with that. And that’s why you’re seeing our government and state governments do so much about this problem.

O’Neil says she is not suggesting policy shift on stamp duty

The housing minister, Clare O’Neil, made the rounds on breakfast television this morning and also spoke with the Today show about her comments that stamp duty was a “bad tax”.

O’Neil reiterated what she said to ABC earlier, saying that “it’s not a great tax” and that “pretty much every economist in the country would agree with agree with me when I say that.”

But the minister said she was not suggesting a policy shift for the states:

What I’m saying is an abject truth in this matter, and that this is not a great tax … That’s why we’re seeing some states and territories do some things to try to wind it back …

What I can tell you is that along with that, the states are doing some really big and important things about housing, massive changes in Victoria and NSW and Western Australia. So we’re all trying to do what we can here to change the housing situation up for the millions of people affected by this.

Royal tour of Australia wrapping up today

King Charles and Queen Camilla are wrapping up their Australian tour today, set to leave for Samoa at 11.05am.

Their next round of engagements will be at this year’s Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) in Samoa’s capital, Apia, the king’s first as head of the Commonwealth.

We’ll bring you more from their departure later in the morning. You can read about their final day of the Australian tour, yesterday, below:

Teen charged for allegedly displaying Nazi symbol in Sydney’s south

A teenager has been charged after alleged Nazi graffiti in Sydney’s south yesterday.

NSW police commenced an investigation after reports of offensive graffiti on driveways, gutters, and trees in the Gymea area yesterday.

Police were told a male teenager had allegedly been seen marking property along Forest Road. Officers have since arrested a 15-year-old boy, who was taken to Sutherland police station and charged with knowingly displaying a Nazi symbol without excuse.

He was refused bail to appear before a children’s court today.

Liberal frontbencher says changes to abortion law ‘not going to happen’

Liberal frontbencher Jane Hume has declared the federal Coalition has “no plan” to wind back abortion laws in Australia if it wins government, dismissing it as an issue raised by “fringe parties” in the context of the Queensland election.

“It’s not going to happen,” she has told Sky News.

Hume’s colleague and the shadow minister for Indigenous affairs, Jacinta Price, has told Nine newspapers she cannot support abortion past the first trimester, calling full-term abortion “infanticide” and elevating the issue beyond the current debates in Queensland and South Australia to the national political agenda.

But Hume said abortion was a personal matter, the responsibility of state and territory governments and not an issue on the Coalition’s reform agenda:

It’s not an issue for the federal government. In the Liberal party, it’s always been an issue of conscience, too, and rightly so. There are some deeply held views right around the country and that is fine. That’s why they call it choice.

But what I can assure you and assure your viewers and assure all voters, is that a Dutton led Coalition government has no plans, no policy and no interest in unwinding women’s reproductive rights.

Hume described it as “an issue raised by fringe parties in a state election”.

It is not an issue for federal politics and there is no plan to change or unwind women’s reproductive rights in Australia under a Coalition government.

Hume was asked for her personal view on women’s legal access to abortion, and said: “I don’t see the need to change the laws”.

Updated

Lehrmann allowed to continue appeal, federal court rules

In a five minute hearing the federal court has ruled Bruce Lehrmann will be allowed to continue his appeal after Justice Wendy Abraham stayed the costs order of $2m made by Justice Michael Lee.

Abraham said Ten’s application for a $200,000 security of costs order has been denied. She said:

I order the interlocutory application of the respondent stated 21 June, 2024 be dismissed.

Lee’s order for Lehrmann to pay Ten $2m should be stayed “until the appeal in the proceeding”, Abraham said.

Her reasons will follow after they have been published.

Updated

Warning issued amid bulk email extortion scam

The National Anti-Scam Centre says it has detected a new bulk extortion email campaign targeting Australians which is likely using personal details sourced from public data breaches.

Scamwatch has received hundreds of reports throughout the past week, with people allegedly targeted by someone claiming to have compromising images or videos of them after hacking into their computer or webcam.

The scammers then allegedly threaten to release the material if they are not paid cryptocurrency to a specified address. The emails allegedly include personal details of the recipients, the centre said in a statement, “likely to have been sourced from previous public data breaches”.

There is no evidence that those behind the emails really do have access to people’s webcam or computer, the centre said. The ACCC’s deputy chair, Catriona Lowe, said “people need to be especially alert to this emerging trend”:

The fictional threats in these emails combined with the inclusion of people’s personal data are intended to terrify the individual reading it. It’s extortion and it’s a crime.

People should ignore these spam emails and be aware that the recent volume of reports of this scam suggest it is a large-scale campaign. The National Anti-Scam Centre is working with partner organisations, including law enforcement and IDCARE, to disrupt this scam and ensure victims have access to support.

Updated

QBE apologises for price ‘inconsistencies’

QBE Insurance has responded to the regulator’s pursuit of the insurer in the federal court over allegations it misled customers, as we just flagged.

The insurer said in a statement it had taken steps to address the “inconsistencies in the delivery of premium price promises”.

QBE apologies for the inconsistencies. QBE will review the pleadings and continue to work with ASIC on these matters.

Avoid hyperventilating about IMF (and other) inflation forecasts

There’s a bit of reporting around this morning about the International Monetary Fund’s 2025 forecast for Australia’s inflation being the second highest among advanced nations (behind Slovakia). (Eg, in the Australian and the AFR.)

First up, the forecasts sound scary, such as headline inflation rising from 3% at the end of this year to 3.7% by the end of next year. That’s not the direction we want to travel.

However, that’s hardly news. The Reserve Bank’s August statement on monetary policy predicts the rate to rise from 3% to 3.7% over the comparable period.

We’re also well accustomed to the RBA’s more lenient approach to bringing down inflation - the aim is to retain as many of the job gains as possible. (That part of the mandate is holding up perhaps a tad too well if you’re hoping for an early interest rate cut.)

Recall that headline consumer price inflation has been artificially lowered lately by energy and housing rebates.

Now some of those won’t be repeated – eg Queensland’s $1000 per household handout on 1 July – but it remains highly likely that a federal government seeking reelection is going to offer some sort of rebates for next year (and the opposition will probably seek to match or exceed them).

The RBA, of course, can’t anticipate what those rebates will be so they don’t include any. Hey presto, headline CPI rises next year.

The central bank, of course, pays more attention to underlying inflation. On current forecasts, the trimmed mean measure will ease from 3.5% at year’s end to 2.9% by December 2025.

Those predictions will get updated ahead of the RBA’s next board meeting on 4-5 November. On 30 October, we’ll also have September quarter inflation data - the real numbers that we need to fuss about.

Federal court to make cost ruling in Lehrmann case

The federal court will rule this morning on whether Bruce Lehrmann will be allowed to stay the costs order of $2m made by Justice Michael Lee in the defamation case.

Lehrmann is appealing his defamation loss against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson but is unemployed and is unable to pay his legal costs.

Justice Wendy Abraham will also rule on whether Ten’s application for a $200,000 security of costs order has been successful.

Lehrmann has argued there is a genuine public interest in allowing an appeal and a risk that if the security of costs is granted it may abort the appeal.

In April, Lee found Lehrmann was not defamed by Wilkinson and Ten when The Project broadcast an interview with Brittany Higgins on 15 February 2021 in which she alleged she was raped by a staffer.

Lee found on the balance of probabilities Lehrmann raped Higgins on a minister’s couch in Parliament House in 2019.

Lehrmann has always denied the rape allegation and pleaded not guilty at his criminal trial in the Australian Capital Territory supreme court which was aborted. Prosecutors did not seek a retrial due to concerns about Higgins’s mental health.

Funding for Indigenous students at boarding schools extended until end of 2026

The federal government has extended funding to Indigenous students at boarding schools until the end of 2026, after months of warnings young people in remote communities would miss out on education.

The $43.2m investment will allow around 2,500 students to attend boarding schools and deliver “wrap-around supports” in addition to housing. Secondary schools and boarding providers that mainly support First Nations students from remote and very remote areas may be eligible to receive funding under the program.

Graham Catt, the CEO of Independent Schools Australia, welcomed the announcement while noting it came after months of advocacy.

These schools are more than just educational institutions – they provide cultural, emotional, and pastoral support to thousands of students from remote areas.

But while a two-year extension is welcome, it’s not a long-term fix. We need a sustainable funding model to provide certainty for these schools and the students they serve.

Cheryl Salter, the executive director of the Association of Independent Schools of the Northern Territory, said many of these boarding schools were the only option for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in remote communities where access to secondary education was limited or nonexistent.

The minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, said the investment would provide “critical support for First Nations boarding students” while the government considered the outcomes of its Indigenous boarding design review.

Updated

Regulator sues QBE over allegations it misled policyholders

The corporate regulator is suing QBE Insurance over allegations it misled customers about the value of premium discounts offered for various home, contents and car insurance products.

Sarah Court, the deputy chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic), said some customers were promised discounts for their loyalty when renewing their policies which they didn’t receive.

Where insurers make discount promises to renewing customers, they need to have robust systems and controls in place to make sure their customers receive the discounts they were promised.

Asic alleges QBE’s pricing mechanisms, which include the use of algorithms, may have prevented the full value of the promised discounts being applied.

The discounts were offered through more than 500,000 renewal notices to customers including retirees, QBE shareholders, and those holding multiple policies with the insurer, according to the regulator.

The promised discounts were made in statements and renewal notices sent between July 2017 and September 2022, according to the regulator.

ASIC has filed the court proceedings in the federal court and is pursuing penalties. QBE was contacted for comment.

Updated

Clare O’Neil says protest against Victorian rezoning plan ‘a bit much’

Moving to the Victorian government’s rezoning plan for 50 affluent suburbs, Clare O’Neil was asked if she agreed with comments from the premier, Jacinta Allan, that those opposed are Nimbys.

She said the plan is “bold and ambitious” and affects her own electorate:

What I say to people at home, we can’t all complain about the housing crisis and talk about how much we care about the younger generation and then complain when it might affect us. So we do need to get that balance right. We need to see some change here.

On the protest from Brighton residents at the weekend, O’Neil said that “staging a protest before we’ve got any real detail about this is a bit much”:

These are the same people who are complaining about housing options for their kid … We’ve got a younger generation that [are facing] real difficulties here. To make a difference to them we need to see some changes … If we want to make sure we live in a fair country where young people get a good go at getting into home ownership, change has to happen.

Updated

Housing minister clarifies comments that stamp duty is ‘bad tax’

Clare O’Neil also clarified comments she made yesterday that stamp duty was a “bad tax”.

She was asked about a report from the Business Council that has suggested states and territories replace stamp duty with a land tax, and said this was a “really good idea” because “stamp duty is a bad tax”, preventing people from “moving around the housing market in the way that suits them best”.

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, has since outlined why the state will not scrap stamp duty despite agreeing with O’Neil.

Speaking this morning, O’Neil said:

I was actually, in those comments yesterday, commending something the Victorian state government has done, saying they’ll make some limitations on stamp duty. It isn’t a great tax. That being said, it’s a matter for the states and I don’t want to take away from the hugely bold and ambitious things the states are doing on housing.

I’ve got kids, I want them to grow up with good housing opportunities in this country. For the first time we’ve got a Commonwealth government and states and territories all making big radical changes to change the way that housing works in our country and that’s a really good thing for the next generation.

Updated

Clare O’Neil speaks on $26m fund for infrastructure in Sydney’s south-west

The housing minister, Clare O’Neil, was also up on ABC News Breakfast this morning to discuss the government’s announcement of $26m to fund roads, sewerage, water and power for new homes in Sydney’s south-west.

We had more on this earlier in the blog, here.

She was asked about the Coalition’s announcement of $5bn for infrastructure, and argued “they’re kind of copying our homework”:

This is just $26m of what is a much bigger sum of money … just part of the $32bn we’re spending.

O’Neil argued that the opposition was planning to cut $19bn out of the money the government had committed to housing, and said the Coalition “ignored this problem for the ten years they were in office”.

Labor and the opposition have traded barbs over housing all morning. Earlier, Bridget McKenzie repeatedly told ABC RN the opposition had to “solve the housing crisis of Labor’s making”.

Updated

Power restored to Broken Hill following prolonged outage

As of 4:30am this morning, all power has been restored to Broken Hill in western NSW.

Thousands had been experiencing a prolonged power outage after severe thunderstorms last Thursday flattened transmission infrastructure, and backup generation tripped at on Monday, leaving homes in the dark again – and in sweltering 35C heat yesterday.

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, was on ABC News Breakfast earlier and said load sharing would continue until 6 November – which means potentially “more power disruptions” if the grid can’t bear the load.

There was a major weather event that ripped through six power lines that disconnected maintenance power from Broken Hill late last week. There should’ve been a redundancy in place, there should’ve been two gas generators to keep the lights on … I have declared a natural disaster in Broken Hill and that means the funds as well as the workers will be on site as soon as possible.

Minns said it was “absolutely not” acceptable that one of the backup generators has been out of action for nearly 12 months, and that “compensation for communities must happen”:

The number one priority is to get the electricity back on, number two is to get the town back on its feet. But we’ll have an investigation as to how this happened and regional communities quite rightly feel let down.

Updated

Qantas says industrial action not expected to impact customers

As we flagged earlier, around 300 Qantas engineers are set to walk off the job for 24 hours from this morning.

AAP reports that Qantas is not expecting the industrial action in Melbourne or Brisbane to have any impact on customers. A spokesperson said:

There’s been some industrial action by engineers since late September and so far we’ve been able to successfully ensure it hasn’t resulted in any flight delays or cancellations.

The airline says the engineer’s demands are unsustainable. Qantas said it has had meetings with the unions and wanted to find a way forward, but they had chosen to take action.

Our preference is to reach an agreement that includes pay rises and other benefits. This includes annual pay increases, increased apprentice pay, as well as new career progression opportunities and more advanced training.

Updated

Watch: the moment Lidia Thorpe was sworn in as senator

Just circling back to those comments from Bridget McKenzie earlier, who argued Independent senator Lidia Thorpe had breached her oath of allegiance by protesting King Charles.

When Thorpe was sworn in, in August 2022, she was told to repeat the oath of allegiance after she initially described the Queen as a coloniser.

Speaking to ABC RN yesterday (see post), Thorpe said she had sworn allegiance “under duress” and it was “a very, very difficult thing to do as a Blak, sovereign woman.”

However, I was told that if I didn’t do it, I couldn’t be a senator to bring Blak issues into this space and around the world…

You can watch the moment Thorpe was first sworn in as a senator below:

Updated

Man charged for allegedly vandalising Queen Victoria statue in Sydney

NSW police have charged a man for allegedly vandalising a statue of Queen Victoria in Sydney’s CBD.

About 5.30am yesterday, police were called to the Queen Victoria Building over reports the statue had been vandalised. Officers established a crime scene and an investigation commenced, with assistance from the public order and riot squad.

About 10pm last night a search warrant was executed at a home in Strathfield, with police allegedly locating and seizing paint bottles. A 26-year-old man was arrested at the home and taken to Burwood police station.

He was charged with malicious damage and wearing a disguise with intent to commit an indictable offence, and granted conditional bail to appear before Burwood local court on 12 November.

McKenzie argues Thorpe breached her oath of allegiance with protest to king

Bridget McKenzie was also asked about Lidia Thorpe’s protest at King Charles’ parliamentary reception on Monday, which she said raised some “quite tricky constitutional questions” for her.

McKenzie said she wasn’t suggesting “we shut down protest or silence debate”, and noted Thorpe was not the only republican in the room or the “only person that believes in treaty and truth telling”. But she argued Thorpe should have taken the same approach as Greens leader Adam Bandt:

He made a legitimate and potent protest by snubbing the event entirely … whereas Senator Thorpe, I think, is the only parliamentarian that I’ve ever known to disavow their oath of allegiance to our sovereign and their heirs and successes according to law.

What she did on Monday essentially breached – this is a question I think we actually need to investigate, because it’s the first instance I’ve ever actually experienced where a parliamentarian who’s sworn that oath of allegiance has breached that oath of allegiance. And so what then is the consequence of that for our constitution?

Updated

McKenzie says detached housing in outer suburbs most affordable for young people

Do Teal MPs need to rethink the Victorian government’s rezoning proposal and embrace it, given we have a housing crisis?

Bridget McKenzie responded that we need to “throw the kitchen sink” at addressing the housing crisis, arguing that “detached housing is the most affordable”.

If we’re interested in those young families in particular who want to get a foot in the door, then the most affordable houses that we can build are actually detached housing in those outer suburbs.

But what about exploring high-rise density? McKenzie said we need to “absolutely be looking at all solutions”.

Updated

Teal MPs 'biggest Nimby's in town at the moment': Nationals senator

Bridget McKenzie, the shadow infrastructure minister, was just on ABC RN where she was asked if the opposition would match Labor’s housing commitments?

She argued that their plan would “get more houses built than Labor’s plan” and said:

It’s not about who’s got more money … because it will be the private sector that’s actually delivering the house and land packages around capital cities and regional capitals across the country.

Asked again, how much less would the opposition spend on housing, she didn’t state a figure but said: “why should the taxpayer be building the houses?”

She was asked about Victoria’s rezoning plan for 50 affluent suburbs, and argued that Teal MPs are the “biggest Nimby’s in town at the moment” – meaning “not in my backyard”.

They don’t want transmission lines, wind towers, solar farms in their backyards, nor do they want to see their leafy suburbs – very affluent suburbs – make a contribution to the housing crisis.

I think we need to take the politics out of it, and the Teals like to make a big play that they want to not play politics. Well, I don’t see any greater political move from the Teals then saying, ‘Look, can someone else help us … solve the housing crisis? Can we do that down the road in those peri-urban suburbs out in western Melbourne and Western Sydney?’

Updated

Number of NSW residents who can’t afford GP more than triples: Ncoss data

New research from the NSW Council of Social Services shows the percentage of people who can’t afford a GP visit has more than tripled across the state over four years.

The report was commissioned by Ncoss and conducted by the University of Canberra, finding that patient experiences with health services – including GPs, specialists and dentists – in NSW had gone backwards since its 2020 report.

NCoss’s chief executive, Cara Varian, said the report “illustrates that the health system is broken”:

When people can’t afford the most fundamental medical care it leads to bad health outcomes and puts pressure on hospitals. The NSW and commonwealth governments must take urgent action to address these matters.

The key statistics from the report include:

  • A 246% surge in patients who delayed or didn’t see a doctor due to cost.

  • A 116% increase in patients who delayed or did not see a specialist due to cost across NSW. In regional areas, there was a 202% increase.

  • A 47% increase in patients who felt GPs did not spend enough time with them. In regional areas there was a 63% increase.

  • A 25% increase in the number of NSW patients delaying or not seeing a dentist due to cost.

Ncoss is calling on the government to improve affordability and reduce out-of-pocket costs, particularly for vulnerable populations, and enhance healthcare access in regional areas.

Updated

300 Qantas engineers to strike for 24 hours

Around 300 Qantas engineers will walk off the job for 24 hours from this morning.

Engine components maintenance engineers in Melbourne will strike from 9am Aedt, with a large rally expected at the city’s Tullamarine airport international terminal from 10am.

Brisbane heavy maintenance engineers will also strike from 1:30am Aest for 24 hours, with a large rally planned at the Brisbane international terminal from 9am.

The Qantas Engineers’ Alliance – a union alliance including the AMWU, the AWU, and the ETU – said further action was necessary after “Qantas management refused to return to the bargaining table and increase its previous offer”.

The current enterprise agreement expired at the end of June, and the union has put forward a wage claim of 5% a year, with a 15% first-year increase to compensate for 3.5 years of wage freezes and as an industry catch-up payment.

The AMWU’s national secretary, Steve Murphy, said union members were “voting overwhelmingly to escalate our industrial activities.” Michael Wright, national secretary with the ETU, said that “Qantas needs to stop stalling, start showing their respect to these workers and pay them what they’re worth”.

Updated

Daniel raises infrastructure concerns amid Victorian government rezoning plans

Zoe Daniel was also asked about a proposal within her Victorian electorate for high-rise housing, having already raised concerns.

The state premier, Jacinta Allan, has announced an overhaul of planning rules in 50 inner-Melbourne areas located near public transport, to allow for greater density:

Daniel said she “absolutely” supports more housing within her electorate, but accused the government of announcing its housing policies “on the front pages of these Sunday newspapers with no warning to local councils or communities, which causes residents concern and uncertainty about what the plan is”:

And I think that’s really bad practice. In low-rise suburbs, to put on the front page of the paper that you’re considering towers of up to 20-storeys adjacent to train stations – where there is nothing anything like that height, even barely half that height in the entire electorate – requires conversations with people, to bring them along and to say, ‘well, this is actually what we plan to do’.

She also expressed concern over infrastructure demands, stating: “Where’s the childcare? Where are the schools? Where’s the healthcare? What are the transport impacts of that?”

None of those conversations … have been had, and they need to be had.

Updated

More on news media bargaining code and funding of media publishers

One of the committee’s key recommendations was a digital platform levy on companies like Meta and Google, which some have described as a tech tax to fund public interest journalism.

Does Zoe Daniel support this? She responded “maybe”, and said whether it can be in the next budget is “really a question around the technicalities of how you design it.”

So in parts of Europe, for example, there’s a 2% digital services tax. You could look at a public interest journalism levy.

The issue that we have fundamentally here is the … offshoring of the digital platform’s profits, where currently they pay very little tax because they argue that they don’t operate in Australia, even though they’re getting this enormous profit yield of the advertising on their platforms. So that’s another thing that has to be resolved within legislation in order to impose a tax.

Daniel said that “a tax won’t solve anything” and as a former journalist herself she is “supportive of finding mechanisms to support media diversity”:

But simply imposing a tax and feeding [it] into media organisations … won’t fix the issue if Meta continues to deprecate news content – that is, reduce the exposure of news content to its consumers.

Updated

Zoe Daniel on reignited news media bargaining code fight

As Josh Butler and Amanda Meade have reported, social media company Meta has accused a federal parliamentary committee of ignoring “the realities of how our platforms work” and the value Facebook and Instagram bring to news outlets.

This comes as a fight reignites over the news media bargaining code and funding of media publishers:

Zoe Daniel, the Independent MP for Goldstein, was on ABC radio earlier this morning to discuss this and said there was “some irony” in platforms arguing the committee was not acknowledging how they work, because “we have so little transparency around how their platform operates”.

In fact, that’s probably the main thing that we heard during the extensive committee hearings that we’ve done so far. But we simply don’t know what’s going on under the hood with these digital platforms, and until we allow digital researchers access to actually understand the algorithms, we won’t be able to resolve issues around either social media harm and the various social issues that that’s causing, and also what impact that’s having on the way that news content is distributed to Australians.

Footage emerges of Queensland LNP leader promising ‘conscience vote’ on abortion, despite assertions

Confusion around the abortion policy of Queensland opposition leader David Crisafulli remains today after footage of an interview from last year shows him suggesting there would a “conscience vote” on the issue if he won power.

That appears to contradict his repeated assertion on the campaign trail that there would be no changes to abortion laws despite pressure to do so from rightwing minority parties.

Our full story explains the significance of the footage:

Full Story: the ‘doomsday’ cult

The Shincheonji church is an international Christian sect which started in South Korea. The group is being accused of bizarre recruitment strategies at a number of Australian universities and former members have made allegations of “coercive control” tactics that include love bombing and sleep deprivation.

Medical editor Melissa Davey speaks to Reged Ahmad about the experiences of families of current members, as well as former members, about life on the inside of this alleged “doomsday cult”.

Coles and Woolworths to face federal court today

Supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths are headed to their first court appearance since being accused of tricking customers with fake discounts, AAP reports.

Both supermarkets will face the federal court today accused of violating consumer law by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which says they misled shoppers on hundreds of popular supermarket items with their “Down Down” and “Prices Dropped” campaigns.

The alleged fake discounts included on dairy, pet food, personal care, coffee, medicine, lollies, cereal and household cleaning products. The ACCC began separate proceedings against Woolworths Group Ltd and Coles Supermarkets Australia Pty Ltd in September.

At the time, the ACCC’s chair, Gina Cass-Gottlieb, alleged both supermarkets used similar ploys to increase prices of hundreds of products before dropping them as part of their respective campaigns. The products sold for less than the inflated prices, but still more than the regular price that applied before the price spike.

The ACCC said, if successful, it would seek a significant penalty for the alleged breaches of consumer law.

Coles said it would defend the court proceedings, while Woolworths said its Prices Dropped program was introduced to give shoppers “great everyday value” on products.

Good morning

Emily Wind here, signing on for blogging duties. Thanks to Martin Farrer for getting things started this morning. I’ll be with you for most of the day as we bring you our rolling coverage.

You can reach out via X (@emilywindwrites) or email (emily.wind@theguardian.com) with any thoughts, tips or feedback.

Let’s go.

Bruce Lehrmann’s appeal verdict due today

An impoverished Bruce Lehrmann is about to find out if an appeal of his defamation loss is over or he can continue fighting in court, AAP reports.

Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson have asked for federal court orders that he pay $200,000 in security in the event he loses his appeal. The former Liberal staffer opposed this move.

He has also asked Justice Wendy Abraham to stay orders he pay $2m in legal costs to Ten, as well as an as-yet unknown bill for Wilkinson’s defence costs.

The judge is scheduled to hand down her decision today.

She heard on 14 October Lehrmann was living on Centrelink benefits and his lawyer described him in court as “pretty much unemployable”.

Ten has already served a bankruptcy notice on Lehrmann but agreed not to take any further steps until the appeal is resolved.

Updated

Police break up neo-Nazi counter-protest in Melbourne

Suspected neo-Nazis were pepper-sprayed by police in Melbourne last night after they tried to disrupt the final night of a 100-day protest in support of refugees.

Protesters supporting a campaign for refugees to be given permanent visas had gathered in Docklands for a peaceful protest.

But a few dozen black-clad counterprotesters turned up at the scene and chanted “white power” and “hail victory”, David Glanz, a spokesperson for the Refugee Action Collective, told the Age.

Police formed a line and pushed the counterprotesters back, pepper-spraying them and forcing them to retreat.

Updated

Albanese government to give $26m for Sydney housing infrastructure

The Albanese government has announced it will set aside $26m to fund roads, sewerage, water and power for new homes in Sydney’s south-west as part of its broader $32bn housing commitments.

The move comes after the opposition announced, if elected, it would deliver $5bn to build critical infrastructure required for new homes in undeveloped land, known as greenfield sites.

The home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, said the funding would help progress the Bonnyrigg renewal project which will provide 65 new social homes and 210 private residential lots.

The Albanese government’s housing support program will deliver $500m in funding for state, territory and local governments to build enabling infrastructure until mid-2025 with a further $1bn set aside for social housing.

Under the Coalition’s plan, $5bn in funding in the form of grants and concessional loans would go to industry, local councils and state utilities to build enabling infrastructure like water, power and sewerage.

Up to 500,000 homes could be built on mostly undeveloped outer suburb or regional lands, the opposition claimed, and if a development did not progress within 12 months of receiving the funding its grant or loan would be terminated.

It also proposed to freeze any changes to national building codes for 10 years, claiming the updates – such as those requiring new homes to meet higher energy efficiency standards – have added thousands of dollars to housing prices.

O’Neil said:

We have an ambitious plan to build 1.2m homes over the next 5 years, unlocked by billions of dollars of investment in roads, sewerage, water and power right across Australia ... Peter Dutton’s infrastructure announcement is a road to nowhere, pushing Australians to live hours away from their families and from their work.

Read more:

Welcome

Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and then it’ll be Emily Wind with the main action.

“We’re going down the same path as Amazon. We’re not robots, we’re humans,” says one Woolworths warehouse worker about new working arrangements to eliminate “time-wasting” seen by staff as a “bullying” tactic. We have spoken to several workers who are pushing back at the new framework introduced by the supermarket giant in the name of efficiency but which workers describe as unsafe.

It comes as Woolworths joins Coles in facing the federal court today, accused of violating consumer law by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which says they misled shoppers about discounts. More on that soon.

Suspected neo-Nazis were pepper-sprayed by police in Melbourne last night after they tried to disrupt the final night of a 100-day protest in support of refugees. More details coming up.

And how to dispose of used solar panels has become a major headache for Australia’s renewable industry. For a range of reasons, panels that could operate for 20 to 30 years are being pulled off rooftops and solar farms after 10 or 12 years, causing a “staggering” number to end up in landfill. But there is some hope as Petra Stock visits a company in Brisbane that is finding ways to make money from unwanted panels.

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