Australia news live: ‘Barely a street’ in Dubbo without trees poisoned by pesticides, NSW Greens say; PM rejects speculation about CGT changes

Lidia Thorpe urges people to call out racism after Kumanjayi Little Baby’s death

Independent senator Lidia Thorpe urges people to call out racism and racist comments posted online in the wake of Kumanjayi Little Baby’s “deeply distressing” death.

Thorpe has just been interviewed on ABC Afternoon Briefing, where she said “keyboard warriors” had been posting offensive content relating to the tragedy and that:

The racism online, the videos online, our children are watching that, the racists are becoming more emboldened, and this is not a joking matter.

This is not a time where you become a perpetrator on top of an absolute tragedy.

I think if anyone is seeing that, then we all have a responsibility to call that out, because it is causing harm, not only for that family and that community, it is causing harm to this nation.

Thorpe said there should be an inquiry into the “absolute system failure” that led to Little Baby’s death, including what happened when her accused killer was previously released from prison.

She said:

The systems are failing us, and particularly in the Northern Territory, where I have heard stories this week from women where there are no safe refuges, there are no places to go, the women’s domestic violence service closes at 5pm and women have to go back to the perpetrator after that.

Thorpe called on the government to respond to the national antiracism framework, which she said had “been sitting on [the prime minister’s] shelf for over a year”.

You know, there are really tangible actions we can be doing as a nation to bring people along on a journey and to understand the harmful effects of racism.

I’m going to sign off from the blog now. My colleague, Cait Kelly, will see you through to the end of the day. Thanks for reading.

The construction industry association Master Builders Australia says the cost of materials has grown to a two-and-a-half year high.

The association has released a statement pointing to today’s release of the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) Producer Price Indexes data, showing the cost of building materials rose by 2.5 per% over the year to the March 2026 quarter.

Master Builders says this is the largest annual cost deterioration since September 2023, and partly reflects the increases in transport and production costs resulting from the war in the Middle East as well as disruption to supply chains.

The association’s chief economist, Shane Garrett, said the affordability of new homes was “already deteriorating” as a result of growing inflation caused by the war, and that the cost of a new house had increased by 4.1% over the past year.

Garrett said almost every category of home building material had increased in price over the past 12 months, with electrical equipment up 6.3% and installed gas/electrical appliances having risen by 5.7%.

The Master Builders CEO, Denita Wawn, has called on the federal government to “do all it can” to improve the affordability of building materials, saying that:

Construction productivity is 21.5% lower than it was just over a decade ago and continued escalations in labour and material costs will only make the situation worse.

The government needs a strong plan to address these pressures.

Australia must support local manufacturing by reducing input costs while also not impeding the flow of good quality and compliant building materials from overseas.

The association’s wish list for the government, released ahead of the upcoming federal budget, includes “a radical red tape reduction”, increased private and public funding for housing infrastructure, investing in all apprentice training pathways, and “embracing” skilled migration.

Vic premier responds to Bondi royal commission interim report

The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, has issued a statement after the release of the interim report into antisemitism and social cohesion, saying it contains “lessons for all of us”.

She said that while the first key recommendation is directed to New South Wales police, the Victorian government would also ensure its police force applies it. She said Victoria would also advance the recommendations relevant to states on counter-terrorism planning, preparedness and cooperation.

Regarding firearms, she said the government commissioned Ken Lay to conduct a rapid review. The government received the review on 30 March and will release it later this month along with its response.

Allan said:

Firearm safety is paramount, but this issue goes beyond firearms. Antisemitism was a crisis before Bondi and remains one now.

I would not be doing justice to the victims of every other antisemitic attack in Australia, including the Adass Israel Synagogue, if I did not make that clear. My thoughts are with each of those victims, their families, and the entire Jewish community.

We will continue to take tangible action to prevent what they have endured. We remain hopeful this process delivers the truth we need to hear – and the steps we must take next.

The NSW Greens upper house member Sue Higginson says there is a ‘barely a street’ in the Central West town of Dubbo which is not showing evidence of die-back from exposure to agricultural chemicals.

Higginson, who visited the town yesterday, has joined with local advocacy groups to call on the state’s Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to launch an investigation to determine the potential impact on human health.

Higginson says:

The sheer scale of the evidence that agricultural poisons are present in Dubbo and Narromine is shocking, and worse, this has been going on for decades. There is barely a street in Dubbo that doesn’t have a tree dying from the top down as these chemicals blow across town from season to season. …

It’s time for the EPA to act in the interests of community health and safety in the towns of the Central West. We have a right to know the chemicals that are settling on the trees and streets of Dubbo and Narromine, and the concentrations that people are being exposed to.

The Dubbo and Narromine councils and the EPA have been contacted for comment.

Greens say response to Kumanjayi Little Baby’s death must be ‘evidence based’ and led by Aboriginal women

The Australian Greens have released a statement about Kumanjayi Little Baby, the five-year-old girl found dead near Alice Springs on Thursday.

The statement said:

Our hearts ache for the family of Kumanjayi Little Baby and their community. The pain and grief being felt in Mparntwe Alice Springs and across the nation for the loss of this little girl is immense, and words cannot express the heartbreak of this loss.

We support the family and community of Kumanjayi Little Baby and their right to grieve in accordance with cultural practices. The community must be given the respect it needs during this time of Sorry Business.

There will be questions about how to prevent anything like this happening again. The response must be evidence based and led by Aboriginal women and their communities.

Aboriginal self-determination and leadership is critical to women and children’s safety.

We condemn all violence against First Nations women and children. It is a human rights abuse and an epidemic. We must take leadership from and work in solidarity with First Nations women to address it.

After years of dedicated First Nations advocacy, a community-led plan to end violence, Our Ways – Strong Ways – Our Voices, was launched in March 2026. Governments must ensure funding and commitment to specialised services, and support the national peak body, Our Ways Strong Together.

Federal intervention in First Nations communities has at best failed to deliver lasting change and at worst been harmful to those communities.

• Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14

• Kids Help Line on 1800 551 800

• Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467

• Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636

• Headspace on 1800 650 890

• ReachOut Australia at au.reachout.com

• 13YARN Crisis Support on 13 92 76

Hello, I hope you’ve had a great day so far. It’s Friday! I’ll take you through the rest of the afternoon’s news on the blog.

I’m going to hand you over to my colleague Catie McLeod now, who will take you through the rest of the news this afternoon. Thanks for your company today!

Tax changes in the upcoming budget are designed to help young people own a home, the prime minister says, while claiming speculation about changes to the capital gains tax are wrong.

Asked about reported changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount at an event in western Sydney on Friday, Anthony Albanese said young people felt the system was working against them, eroding trust in the economy and democracy, AAP reports.

Media reports have ramped up expectations the 50% capital gains discount will be reverted to the pre-1999 regime, which taxed real gains on assets adjusted for inflation.

Albanese said:

I know there’s been a bit of speculation, all of it wrong.

When people see what we’re actually going to do in the budget, people will be able to make their own assessments, but I can assure you that it is aimed firmly and squarely at aspiration.

‘Sliding doors’ moment for Australian-owned AI, Labor minister says

Labor minister Andrew Charlton has given an interesting speech today in Sydney, imploring businesses to back Australian-owned AI firms and saying the country faced a “sliding doors” moment between adopting locally made AI models or foreign-owned ones.

Earlier, the peak body for the datacentre industry in Australia made a similar argument to a NSW parliamentary inquiry, which we reported here.

The assistant minister for science and the digital economy said it was an argument about national resilience, and whether Australia would have to rely on overseas models instead of homegrown ones.

“If we fail to build a strong AI industry around our own data and ingenuity, we will be a more vulnerable and less prosperous country,” Charlton told a forum at the University of Technology Sydney.

He went on:

Australia is in a critical window in which we will determine whether this country builds a strong domestic AI industry, or whether we become an importer of foreign AI and a permanent renter of intelligence from abroad. This distinction matters. In the last few months we have seen how dangerous it is to be reliant on foreign imports of a commodity that is critical to our economy.

Charlton said in his speech that Australia had more than 1,500 AI-focused companies, and that many businesses and researchers were world-leading – but needed support to grow.

We all need to lean into buying Australian AI technology and services. The government has an important role to play, but so do Australian businesses.

The assistant minister made the case for businesses to “lean Australian” when choosing AI technology and companies.

Capital gains and negative gearing tax breaks likely to be scaled back

The Albanese government is widely expected to scale back tax breaks for investors in its May budget, under the banner of fighting intergenerational inequity.

Investors, including landlords, only pay tax on 50% of their capital gains on investments held for at least 12 months.

Experts say the concession, alongside rampant negative gearing, has helped fuel soaring home prices, locking many young Australians out of the property market.

Treasury has reportedly modelled cutting the discount to 33%, or returning to the pre-1999 regime where the capital gains were adjusted by inflation.

Just under two weeks out from the 12 May budget, bets have firmed that the Albanese government will opt for the second of these options.

With an eye to lifting housing supply – and to fend off opposition attacks about housing supply – the budget could include more generous tax breaks for investment in new builds.

There could also be changes to negative gearing – where landlords claim rental losses against their taxable income – which could involve limiting the number of negatively geared properties, or abolishing it altogether.

Will these things actually make homes cheaper?

Read the full story here:

Six Australians that were detained by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) while attempting to transport aid to Gaza as part of the Global Sumud flotilla are being transported to Crete, Israel’s foreign minister says.

Twenty-two ships were intercepted on Wednesday evening off the coast of Greece, containing about 175 activists, including the Australians. More than 40 are continuing to attempt to sail to Gaza.

Posting to X, Gideon Sa’ar said the IDF had “successfully blocked attempts to breach the lawful naval blockade on Gaza and the arrival of vessels from the provocative flotilla”:

All participants in the provocative flotilla who were taken off the vessels were taken off unharmed. In coordination with the Greek government, the individuals transferred from the flotilla vessels to the Israeli vessel will be disembarked on a Greek beach in the coming hours. We thank the Greek government for its willingness to receive the flotilla participants.

The Global Sumud flotilla says the IDF’s actions were unlawful as the boats were intercepted in international waters hundreds of kilometres from Israel.

Coles says it is receiving at least as many supplier requests to increase product shelf prices, due to the flow-on effects from the war in the Middle East, as it did during the pandemic.

In a call with investors this morning announcing Coles’s financial results for the third quarter of this financial year, Anna Croft, the supermarket’s chief commercial and sustainability officer, said fresh groceries had already become more expensive to reflect high fuel costs.

Croft said:

We are starting to see that come through in some of the other categories, but really the vast majority at this time is fresh, which would be kind of bakery, produce, meat, dairy, as you would expect.

[It’s] starting to come through in some of the grocery categories, but not to the scale at which we’ve seen on fresh.

We are seeing [supplier requests for price increases] at Covid levels and in some cases in certain categories more elevated than Covid.

Coles recorded a 3.1% rise in its quarterly revenue to $10.7bn, with strong supermarket sales offsetting a pullback in liquor purchases.

The release of Coles’ quarterly results comes two days after the government’s latest inflation data was released, showing the cost of living had jumped to 4.6% in the year to March.

A man has been charged over the alleged abduction and rape of a young mother after she left a suburban milk bar more than four decades ago, AAP reports.

The woman, then aged in her 30s, was returning from a university lecture on 24 June 1985, when she stopped at a milk bar on Colby Drive at Belgrave Heights in Melbourne’s outer south-east.

When she returned to her unlocked car, it is alleged a man armed with a knife appeared from the back seat, threatened her and directed her to drive. She drove for about one to two kilometres, before the man ordered her to pull into a secluded bush area on Courtneys Road in Belgrave South.

Police allege the man forced the woman out of the car and raped her while obscuring the victim’s vision, placing items over her head and face in a bid to conceal his identity.

She was left tied up and partially clothed in the rain as the man fled in the vehicle, where it was abandoned about 100m from where she was allegedly abducted.

The woman ran several hundred metres to the nearest house where she sought refuge and emergency services were called.

At the time, the offender was described as in his 20s, about 183cm tall, with short hair, a deep voice and wearing a dark military-type overcoat.

The cold case was reviewed by Sexual Crimes Squad detectives in 2023.

On Thursday afternoon, a 65-year-old Bendigo man was taken into custody and later charged with abduction, common law assault, attempted aggravated rape, two counts of aggravated indecent assault, aggravated rape, common law assault, theft and theft of motor vehicle.

He is expected to appear at Bendigo magistrates court on Friday.

Locusts on move in South Australia

Plague locusts are on the march in South Australia – but it’s not yet an official outbreak.

The Australian plague locust is a significant agricultural pest that can devastate crops.

In SA there have been multiple reports of swarms in recently sown paddocks, after rain in February and warm days created favourable conditions.

The SA plague locust commissioner, Michael McManus, from the Department of Primary Industries and Regions (Pirsa), said they had not yet reached outbreak levels. Pirsa is sending out survey teams to assess the locusts’ movement, numbers and distribution.

Immature locusts (nymphs) form bands that move over pastures, while adult locusts create swarms which can cover several square kilometres.

According to the federal agriculture department, an outbreak is when there are multiple bands or swarms in one region, a major outbreak is when there are many bands or swarms in several regions. A plague is when several hundred thousand hectares are infested in several regions, and a major plague is when more than 500,000 hectares are infested.

The poliovirus has been detected in a wastewater sample taken from a catchment in Perth in mid-April this year.

The wastewater detection demonstrated evidence of a vaccine-derived poliovirus Type 2 strain, similar to what has been detected in the wastewater of various countries globally in recent years, including in Africa, Europe and Papua New Guinea.

Western Australia’s chief health officer, Clare Huppatz, said it was low risk to the population.

Huppatz said:

The potential for this strain to circulate in a highly vaccinated population is very low, and the poliovirus vaccination coverage in WA children is 92%.

This finding is most likely from someone who has travelled overseas and is shedding this virus strain.

Fortunately, Australia has an excellent vaccination program against poliovirus, which will protect the community against this strain.