What we learned, Monday 30 September
As we draw to the end of our live news stream this Monday, here’s a look at what’s been keeping us busy:
Qantas engineers went on strike for two hours as part of their push for a 15% pay rise – the action delayed some flights, but not many.
NSW police allegedly pepper-sprayed a 13-year-old child at a Palestine-Lebanon rally in Sydney, according to legal observers.
The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, condemned the actions of protesters who waved Hezbollah flags at a pro-Palestine protest in Melbourne at the weekend.
It was a big day for treasurer Jim Chalmers, who delivered a $15.8bn budget surplus – and said the bumper figure was down to low expenditure, not high taxes, and did not come at the expense of cost-of-living relief.
LNP leader David Crisafulli kicked off the Queensland election campaign a day early, unsurprisingly focusing on youth crime.
The federal government was accused of throwing “small change” at the looming bird flu threat.
Confidence that the Reserve Bank may soon be cutting interest rates seemed to be spreading.
Brisbane’s thumping grand final triumph over Sydney was the most-watched AFL decider since 2021, we learned.
The Australian share market ended the month with a fresh all-time high while the local currency is also near a 19-month high.
And, with October comes the official start of the bushfire season.
That’s all for now. Thank you for joining us – we’ll be back bright and early tomorrow.
Updated
The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network said it is “dismayed” by the attention politicians and the media is giving to a “handful of flags” at the weekend’s Palestine and Lebanon solidarity protests, “rather than confronting Israel’s expansion of violence across the region.”
APAN president Nasser Mashni said:
This obsession with flags serves as a convenient distraction, allowing our leaders to continue to ignore the massacre of the people of Lebanon and Palestine, and other Arabs, and sidestep the urgent conversations about our complicity in genocide.
