What we learned, Wednesday 8 October
That’s all for today, thanks for joining us. Here’s the day’s main news stories:
The deputy secretary of the Department of Communications, James Chisholm, has told Senate estimates that Optus officials sent two emails about the triple zero outage to an incorrect email address last month, where the information sat undetected for more than a day.
The federal Greens are calling for the foreign minister, Penny Wong, to intervene after Israel intercepted a new Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
The industry minister, Tim Ayres, announced a joint federal and state bailout for the Glencore Mount Isa copper smelter.
The new AFP commissioner, Krissy Barrett, says hate crime laws introduced earlier this year following a spate of antisemitic attacks may need to be strengthened.
Victorians will get free public transport on weekends for two months, in a move the premier, Jacinta Allan, has described as a “thank you” to passengers for putting up with years of travel disruptions due to Metro Tunnel works.
The former prime minister Tony Abbott has suggested the UK could place migrants attempting to enter the country in a “mothership on the English Channel” before sending them back to France at the UK Conservative party conference overnight.
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says she has written to Sussan Ley demanding she intervene to put a stop to the leaks and backgrounding against their own side, which she claims is feeding perceptions that the Liberal party is turning into a “clown show. Coalition frontbencher Alex Hawke says the Liberals must prioritise “being honest with each other”.
Rent hikes are back on the rise after a decline in new listings brought vacant rental rates to a record low – despite a boom in housing investor activity.
George Williams, the vice-chancellor and president of Western Sydney University, apologised to current and former students this afternoon, a day after many reported receiving scam emails that said their degrees had been “revoked” by the institution.
We’ll be back tomorrow with more news.
Updated
Business as usual for ABC's Washington bureau after Trump clashes, MD says
The ABC has not been banned from Donald Trump’s press conferences after John Lyons’ run-in with the US president, the broadcaster’s managing director, Hugh Marks, has told Senate estimates.
Marks said it was business as usual for the ABC’s Washington bureau since the incident last month.
In his first appearance at estimates since taking up the role in March, Marks said:
We took steps to ensure that [Lyons] was in a safe position, that he felt OK … [he] is a very experienced journalist over many years, and I think he’s a big boy and handled the situation particularly well.
In an opening statement tabled by the committee Marks said the ABC’s latest corporate tracker survey saw the broadcaster score 80% for “tend to trust/trust a great deal” which is the highest rating since October 2024:
This result mirrors the finding by Roy Morgan research recently which found that the ABC was the most trusted media organisation in Australia.
Updated
