What we covered today
Thanks for joining us for today’s news updates. Here’s a recap of the day:
- Polls are about to close in the Victorian seat of Nepean, in a state byelection likely to be fought between the Liberals and One Nation. The state and nation are holding their breath to see if the minor party’s prominence in the polls translates into electoral success in one of the most left-leaning states. Read more here.
- US President Donald Trump has told lawmakers that American military operations in Iran have “terminated” as he skirts a deadline to gain congressional approval for the war that began two months ago.
- Trump said he was “not satisfied” with Iran’s latest proposal, after saying he would stick with the “incredible” naval blockade of Iranian ports amid concerns that the vital Strait of Hormuz would not reopen anytime soon.
- After a riot broke out in Alice Springs on Thursday night, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called for calm, saying word of Kumanjayi Little Baby’s death “breaks your heart”, and that he understood the anger and frustration of community members.
- The five-year-old’s accused killer, Jefferson Lewis, 47, was flown to Darwin for his own protection. He has since been released from hospital into police custody, and is yet to be charged.
- And King Charles has visited the Caribbean nation of Bermuda, after concluding his four-day tour of the US.
Alice Springs has changed forever
Alice Springs holds a special place in the nation’s heart thanks to its natural beauty and crucial role as a gateway to the outback.
It makes us smile, but sometimes, the town of 30,000 – 20 per cent of whom are Indigenous – 1500 kilometres from the nearest capital also makes us pause and reflect.
In 2024, concerns about local crime rates saw the territory government implement a series of controversial curfews criticised as a knee-jerk reaction.
In 2025, Kumanjayi White, a 24-year-old with a disability, was killed while being restrained by plainclothes officers for shoplifting, prompting local protests and an ongoing investigation.
But as our correspondent on the ground Hannah Murphy writes, the loss of Kumanjayi Little Baby may be the event that changes Alice Springs forever.
Read her latest dispatch here.
Attempted arson charge after Alice Springs unrest
Northern Territory Police have charged a woman following Thursday night’s unrest outside Alice Springs Hospital.
Following news spreading that Jefferson Lewis – wanted in relation to the disappearance and death of Kumanjayi Little Baby earlier this week – was at the hospital, dozens of residents arrived demanding that he be brought out to face their justice.
Lewis was at the hospital recovering from injuries received after a vigilante beating. He has since been airlifted to Darwin and is yet to be charged.
On Saturday afternoon, police announced they had charged a woman after a police car was set on fire during Thursday’s unrest.
Trump rues state of Iran talks, says he’d rather not strike again
President Donald Trump expressed displeasure with the current state of negotiations with Iran but stopped short of threatening fresh military action in the nine-week conflict that’s triggered a global energy crisis.
“They want to make a deal but I’m not satisfied with it,” Trump told reporters at the White House Friday. “We just had a conversation with Iran. Let’s see what happens. But I would say that I am not happy.”
Trump didn’t elaborate on the Iranian participants in the latest talks, or when they occurred. He added that “they’ve made strides, but I’m not sure if they ever get there.”
Tehran relayed a new proposal to Washington via Pakistan, which mediated a first round of direct negotiations last month, Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency said on Friday. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Trump’s remarks referred to that proposal.
Musk vs ChatGPT: Tesla billionaire has rough first week in trial
Elon Musk set out to tell a jury that his falling out with OpenAI was a simple tale of betrayal.
But the many questions that came up during the billionaire’s three days on the witness stand this week revealed the decade-long saga to be complicated – with twists and turns that cast some doubt on Musk’s version of events.
Musk has accused OpenAI’s, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman of subverting the mission of the artificial intelligence nonprofit that the men founded together in 2015 by accepting billions of dollars in investments from Microsoft Corp. and turning it into a for-profit company now approaching a valuation of $1 trillion and moving toward an initial public offering.
OpenAI, Altman, Brockman and Microsoft deny Musk’s allegations and argue he is trying to undermine a top competitor to his own company, xAI.
Nostalgia and algorithms: What Albanese thinks explains One Nation’s rise
Asked this morning why One Nation had risen so rapidly in the polls this year, Albanese suggested nostalgia was playing a role.
“The pace of change is so fast that a political movement that says, ‘Stop. We want things to go back to where they were in the past, and to romanticise that past,’ is attractive to some people frustrated by the cost-of-living pressures,” he told ABC Radio National.
Algorithms were leading people to extremes, he said, “they just dig deeper and go further to the far left or right”, and then tells them: Everyone agrees with your point of view”.
Albanese says Canadian PM’s famous speech inspired by his
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says that the blistering speech Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered at the start of the year in Davos, Switzerland, was inspired by a speech he delivered last September at the UN.
Carney turned heads with his speech in January, in which he stated that the old world order that had served the West so well had fallen, and the middle powers had the capacity to build a new rules-based order despite the challenging times.
“He took from that speech, the view strongly that I put that middle powers needed to work together,” Albanese told ABC’s Radio National on Saturday morning.
Citing Australia’s track record of new regional deals in the Pacific and Asia under Labor, Albanese said “we have reengaged with our region and the world. We’ve repaired the relationship with China, and it’s much more stable than it was when I came to office. It’s been very much a focus. And I must say that we are reaping the benefit through the deals that we’ve been able to do on fuel security.”
He praised King Charles III’s speech in Washington DC this week for its references to the AUKUS security pact.
“The point that he was making was that the system of the United States is by far the largest economy still in the world. They play a critical role,” Albanese said.
All eyes on Victoria as Liberals face One Nation challenge
When former tennis player Sam Groth quit his state seat of Nepean, in Victoria’s idyllic Mornington Peninsula, in January, it’s unlikely he was thinking about One Nation.
Groth and his wife had been through a bruising legal battle with a Melbourne newspaper in the months leading up to his departure, and he was also aggrieved by what he saw as the infighting bedevilling his party, the Liberals.
But the timing of his exit has coincided with the orange party apparently arriving as a fourth force in Australian politics, making today’s Nepean byelection a fascinating study of where the allegiances of right-wing voters truly lie.
It isn’t the first such study, and it won’t be the last.
What is sorry business?
The family of a five-year-old girl found dead in central Australia this week is appealing for calm across the region, after violent scenes outside the Alice Springs hospital where a man wanted over her abduction was taken.
In a statement on Friday, a spokesperson for Kumantjayi Little Baby’s family said “now is the time for sorry business, to show respect for our family and have space for grieving and remembering”.
Sorry business refers to the mourning period and cultural practices of Indigenous communities following a death.
During this time, normal activities like work or school often halt as the community gathers to share their grief.
US approves nearly $9 billion in arms sales to Gulf states
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has approved expedited arms transfers to Israel, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, bypassing a standard congressional review to rush air defence missiles and laser guidance systems to the Middle East as the Iran war ceasefire seems ever more fragile.
The agreements amount to nearly $9 billion, according to the US State Department.
The department authorised the sale to Israel of as many as 10,000 advanced precision kill weapon system-II all up rounds, worth $992.4 million and manufactured by BAE Systems.
Kuwait has been cleared to buy Integrated Battle Command Systems and related equipment worth as much as $2.5 billion. Northrop Grumman, RTX Corp and Lockheed Martin are the principal contractors on the potential sale.
Fears of further hit to food supplies amid mouse plague in wheatbelt
The Albanese government is working with industry to tackle a fresh mouse plague across Western and South Australia that poses a threat to the country’s food supply.
On Saturday, Energy Minister Chris Bowen said authorities were concerned about the plague, which has hit grain farmers already grappling with fertiliser and fuel shortages linked to the Middle East conflict.
Bowen said the government was continuing to work hard with industry to reduce the plague’s impact on local and overseas food supplies.
“A mice plague is a very difficult situation for farmers and for industry and for governments,” he said.
Mice are a persistent problem in Australian grain-growing regions and have recently been infesting farms in the wheatbelt areas of Western Australia. The situation prompted grain producers in April to warn of crop losses and call for access to more powerful mice poison.
Australia, the world’s fourth-largest wheat exporter, suffered its worst mouse plague in 1993, when the rodents destroyed thousands of hectares of crops and attacked livestock in pig and chicken farms.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
