Australia news LIVE: Deadly fire ants detected at Sydney logistics centre; Hanson-Young won’t run for Greens leadership again; Russia continues striking energy facilities despite ceasefire

A protester linked to anti-coal group Rising Tide was forcibly restrained by MPs after jumping into the chamber during question time in the New South Wales Parliament.

The protester, Andrew Sneddon, jumped into the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday as the house was sitting, holding a copy of a Net Zero Commission report and shouting at Premier Chris Minns.

Footage of the incident showed the protester being restrained by Labor MP for Fairfield, David Saliba, and the Independent Wakehurst MP Michael Regan, along with parliamentary staff. Other protesters also stood up in the public gallery and threw paper into the chamber during the protest.

Question Time was briefly delayed as Sneddon was removed. Outside he told Nine News he had been holding a copy of a report by the Net Zero Commission, an independent government agency which has warned NSW will not meet emissions reduction targets on its current trajectory.

“I just disrupted the NSW Parliament, jumped onto the floor of the house, to try and deliver a message to Premier Chris Minns that the government has failed NSW on climate change,” he said.

“This government and this system is failing us.”

Liberal senator Jonno Duniam has dismissed the suggestion Josh Frydenberg is a self-promoter and said he would be welcomed back into the party if he made a return to politics.

Speaking to News24 earlier this morning, Duniam said:

“He’s a larger-than-life character. Anyone who knows Josh knows there is a lot of Josh to go around, and we’re all interested in the things he has to say.”

Asked whether he would like to see the former Liberal treasurer back in the party, Duniam said Frydenberg would be an “amazing contributor”.

“I look forward to hearing the day that he announces he’s putting his foot forward for pre-selection … I hope he knocks off the member for Kooyong.”

Frydenberg was ousted from the seat at the 2022 election by Independent MP Monique Ryan, but has been hinting at a possible comeback.

Liberal Minister Angie Bell says the prime minister and Small Business Minister Anne Aly should be “shamed and stoned in the square” over the Australian Taxation Office’s banning of credit cards to pay bills.

On Friday, the government delayed the ATO’s decision to ban the use of credit cards to pay tax bills after the Reserve Bank’s scrapping of card surcharges was implemented.

Speaking in the House of Representatives in favour of shadow treasurer Tim Wilson’s proposed bill to force the ATO to reinstate the payment method, Bell said: “Shame on this Labor government.

“They need to be backing in small business, and they need to stop this credit card ban and allow small and family businesses to have the cash flow that they need to make money.

“This minister [Anne Aly] and this prime minister should be absolutely shamed and stoned in the square.”

Bell was later ordered to withdraw her comments.

Angus Taylor has defended his proposed cuts to migration to business leaders, who have warned of labour shortages without enough foreign arrivals.

The opposition leader told the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry that Australian migration was “well on its way” to losing its social licence.

“You know what’s business-friendly, is when we have a social licence for good immigration in this country, if we lose that … it all changes,” he said.

“The way we get it back is by shifting from what’s seen as mass migration to skilled migration.”

Assistant Minister for the Digital Economy Andrew Charlton has pointed to the moratorium on data centres in Texas as evidence that Australia needs to ensure tech giants maintain their social licence locally.

“Texas, home of the brave, land of the free, has introduced a moratorium on data centres,” Charlton said. “You have to lose a lot of social licence to be banned in Texas. Data centres have done that. We do not want that to happen in Australia.”

He said Labor’s AI standards would ensure certainty around how data centres would be powered, how they used resources and engage with communities to avoid the backlash that has been seen in the United States.

“To make sure that when they come into Australia, they come in with social licence, not to unnecessarily restrain this industry, but to put it on a stable foundation so that it can grow and deliver benefits to Australians,” Charlton said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has told his Labor colleagues that former Liberal treasurer Josh Frydenberg is only interested in himself, and has labelled the Victorian the “shadow opposition leader” following days of coverage over his forthcoming memoir.

“The shadow opposition leader has never lacked confidence in his own capacity, but when he’s had an opportunity to act, he never delivered an energy policy, and as treasurer, he never delivered the surplus,” Albanese told a caucus meeting this morning.

The prime minister said “Frydenberg’s priority has always been Josh Frydenberg”, and said he expected the former MP was “hoping people forget his record” at the upcoming Victorian state election. The leader of the Victorian Liberals, Jess Wilson, once worked as an aide to Frydenberg.

Extracts of Frydenberg’s memoir, A Grateful Son, have been circulated over the past few days, and the former MP has repeatedly appeared on television programs. Many have speculated Frydenberg is creating a launch pad for a return to federal politics after he lost to teal independent Monique Ryan at the 2022 election.

Albanese went on to criticise Opposition Leader Angus Taylor for attending the weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Brisbane, and said the Liberals had “abandoned any pretense of being a centre-right party”.

Telstra’s nationwide mobile outage in July wiped an estimated $552 million from the Australian economy, according to modelling commissioned by consumer advocates.

The FTI Consulting estimate, prepared for the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network and seen by this masthead, is more than 500 times the roughly $1 million Telstra says it has paid in compensation.

ACCAN chief executive Carol Bennett said the telco at fault “didn’t foot the bill”. “Australian households and small businesses did,” she said.

Telstra said it had not seen the research, but the figures appeared to “significantly overstate” the outage’s economic effect.

The July 8 outage left more than 8 million Australians unable to make calls or use mobile data, and hundreds of Triple Zero calls failed.

ACCAN wants senators debating the Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation bill this week to impose enforceable reliability standards on mobile networks. The Coalition says its amendments will ensure the findings of an inquiry by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, due next year, are properly considered.