Minister brushes off far-right populism warning
Aged Care Minister Sam Rae has dismissed concerns his party may face the same fate as that of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who resigned last night amid a rising surge of support for right-wing populist party Reform UK.
“What worries me is the issues facing families in my own community and across our country, and largely … that’s about cost of living challenges,” Rae told Nine’s Today this morning.
“It’s not about driving division within our communities, it’s about delivering solutions that actually help people with their household finances, with cost of living challenges, looking after their families,” he said.
In recent polling, Labor has fallen to second place behind One Nation, a phenomenon mirrored in the UK. In the most recent Resolve Political Monitor, published by this masthead, One Nation was polling at 29 per cent of the primary vote, ahead of Labor at 28 per cent.
Former Fed chair Greenspan dies at 100
Alan Greenspan, the jazz-playing US Federal Reserve chair who was celebrated for engineering a decade of prosperity but later shared the blame for a devastating financial crisis, died on Monday in Washington. He was 100.
Greenspan died from complications of Parkinson’s disease, said his wife of 29 years, NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell.
“Under his leadership, the Federal Reserve achieved a sustained era of price stability that supported economic growth and helped anchor the public’s confidence in the institution,” the central bank said in a statement.
In 18 years at the Fed, Greenspan presided over a breathtaking surge in stock prices and a 10-year economic boom that started in March 1991.
But his reputation suffered almost as soon as he left the Fed in 2006. American housing prices tumbled rapidly, and the growing financial crisis pushed the US economy into the Great Recession of 2007-2009 — the deepest downturn since the 1930s.
Greenspan himself later acknowledged “I made a mistake” in assuming that banks could essentially regulate themselves.
House prices to fall by $100,000
House prices in Sydney and Melbourne are likely to fall by up to $100,000 over the next year as the federal government’s overhaul of negative gearing and capital gains tax combine with interest rate settings to slow the property market.
As the nation’s auction clearance rate dropped to a six-year low last week, economists believe the next 12 months will track a fall of up to 8 per cent in prices in the country’s two largest cities and a slowdown in other capital cities that could spill over into the rest of the economy.
The government’s tax reforms, which include restricting negative gearing to new builds from the middle of next year and a return to the pre-1999 capital gains tax concession, were introduced into the Senate on Monday, with the Greens expected to support the proposals.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor used the first question time since Labor last week expanded CGT carve-outs for small and innovative businesses to accuse Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of an “Olympic-level backflip” over the additional concessions.
The full story is here.
US lifts oil sanctions
A 60-day reprieve of US sanctions on Iranian oil, under an interim peace deal, has reopened the US market to the Middle Eastern country’s crude for the first time in 35 years.
The easing of sanctions, although brief, is a step toward the return of more normalised relations between the two nations, which have been at odds for nearly five decades.
The Iranian supply could also alleviate the impact of the worst global oil disruption in history, but it’s unclear if US refiners will have the appetite to resume purchases again.
The new license, which expires August 21, also gives Iran greater access to US currency by allowing the country to conduct oil transactions using dollars.
Separately, US Vice President JD Vance said Iran had agreed to invite United Nations inspectors back to the country’s nuclear sites – a key element of the Obama-era nuclear accord that US President Donald Trump tore up in 2018.
“That is a major milestone for the American people, and the first step in permanently denuclearising or permanently ending a nuclear weapons program in Iran,” Vance said following weekend peace talks in Switzerland.
Cyber chiefs issue warning
The heads of the Five Eyes cybersecurity agencies have issued a rare joint statement warning that artificial intelligence is reshaping cyber risk in months rather than years and have urged business and government leaders to act immediately.
Released on Monday night, the statement brings together cybersecurity chiefs from the Five Eyes allies – Australia, the United States, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. It says frontier AI models are expected to exceed industry expectations and will transform both attack and defence, and that the gap between a vulnerability being found and exploited is closing fast.
“The urgency is clear. AI is not a future consideration – it is already here,” the statement says. “It lowers barriers for malicious actors and increases the speed and complexity of attacks … At the same time, AI offers powerful tools to strengthen defence.”
The warning follows a recent reminder of how quickly those capabilities are moving. On June 13, Anthropic suspended worldwide access to its two most powerful AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, after a US export control directive tied to security concerns, and Australian users lost access without notice.
Read more here.
This morning’s headlines at a glance
Hello and welcome to our national news live coverage for Monday, June 22. Here are today’s main headlines.
State budgets handed down: It’s budget day in NSW and Queensland. In NSW, road tolls will be cut and a new housing manufacturing hub will be set up. The budget lock-up ends at 12.30pm. In Queensland, mental health services will receive a $400 million boost.
House prices to slump: House prices in Sydney and Melbourne are likely to fall by up to $100,000 over the next year as the property market slows, with the issue set to be a hot topic in federal parliament today.
Cyber risk grows: The heads of the Five Eyes cybersecurity agencies have issued a rare joint statement warning that artificial intelligence is reshaping cyber risk in months rather than years.
Trust in Trump plummets: Australians say the nation’s relationship with China is more important than its partnership with the US, as trust in Donald Trump hits a new low, a new poll has found.
PM pays tribute to Starmer: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has paid tribute to his friend, British PM Keir Starmer, after the latter said he would step down.
US lifts sanctions on Iranian oil: A 60-day reprieve of US sanctions on Iranian oil, under an interim peace deal, has reopened the US market to Iranian crude for the first time in 35 years.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
