What’s making headlines
Hello and welcome to our national news live coverage for Tuesday, July 7. Here’s what’s making headlines today.
Geopolitics: The launch of a nuclear-capable long-range missile from a Chinese submarine in the South Pacific with just hours of notice has angered Australia, New Zealand and the US, who labelled the test destabilising and concerning. It came just hours after Australia and Fiji struck a new defence alliance.
Solomon Islands: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned the missile test alongside his Solomon Islands counterpart, Matthew Wale, who said, “this is not something a friend does”.
Housing: Decades of property prices rising far faster than incomes has left young people facing a bleak future and a fall in living standards, the head of the Productivity Commission has warned.
Bird flu: Free-range poultry farmers may need to keep their birds indoors due to the risk of the deadly H5N1 bird flu, as another seabird became Australia’s seventh case of the highly transmissible virus.
World Cup: Donald Trump admitted to calling FIFA president Gianni Infantino to ask for a review of a US player’s red card.
Death toll from Venezuela quakes rises to 3535
The death toll from Venezuela’s twin earthquakes has risen to 3535, authorities said on Monday (Caracas time), while nearly 18,000 people remained homeless more than a week after the disaster struck the capital and nearby coastal areas.
Top lawmaker Jorge Rodriguez said the latest official tally showed 16,740 people injured and 17,854 left without housing after the June 24 quakes, which measured magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, and struck within seconds of each other.
The new figures underscore the scale of the disaster in and around Caracas and La Guaira, the coastal area hit hardest, as criticism mounts over the government’s response.
Reuters
Albanese spruiks raft of diplomatic offerings to Solomon Islands
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a suite of diplomatic offerings to the Solomon Islands, including an education package to fund new books and training centres, during an address this afternoon alongside the Pacific nation’s leader, Matthew Wale, in Honiara.
The pair have been discussing a “comprehensive treaty” as the prime minister seeks to counter Chinese influence in the Pacific, an undertaking thrown into sharp relief by China’s testing of a nuclear-capable missile.
Albanese also announced a memorandum of understanding had been signed centred on the new Royal Solomon Islands Police Force Academy, saying:
This MOU will allow our countries to work together on the construction of the academy, as well as provide advanced training and growth requirements.
Finally, shortly, I’ll have the great honour of opening the Australia-funded Naha Birthing and Urban Health Centre. This is a $45 million facility that will improve the health of women and their babies, as well as the broader community.
Australia and the Solomon Islands share the view of Pacific leaders that the peace and security of our region is best led by the Pacific. We know we’re stronger when we stand together, and I look forward to the many decades of closer co-operation to come to a stop to solve.”
‘What we need is less nuclear weapons’: PM
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale said the test of a nuclear-capable missile underscored the need for a Pacific-wide regional security pact.
“In many ways the missile test is further evidence for the need for a regional platform, so that the region can speak as one,” he said beside Anthony Albanese at a press conference in Honiara.
“The countries in the Pacific are not all on the same level of strength, and may not want to speak up when things like this happen. But the regional platform will allow cover, and allow for much greater sharing of intelligence and information, so we can be advocating better for Pacific-wide issues.”
Albanese said the government was concerned about the nature of the weapon tested.
“Part of our concern here isn’t just the lack of notice that occurred, it is the fact that this was a test of a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile fired from a nuclear-powered submarine,” he said.
“That is of real concern, because what we need is less nuclear weapons, certainly not more.”
‘Don’t threaten us’: Albanese, Solomon Islands PM respond to China
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government had made its concern over China’s ballistic missile test clear to Beijing.
“We don’t want to see any action that is destabilising or which undermines the peace, security, and stability of the Pacific and the region, and there is no doubt that this is a provocative act by China, which does destabilise the region, and therefore we will put forward our strong view,” Albanese said at a press conference alongside his Solomon Islands counterpart Matthew Wale.
“We have said consistently that we want to cooperate with China where we can, we’ll disagree where we must, and we’ll engage in our national interests. This is one of those occasions where we must disagree with this action, and in particular, we point out that it is standard procedure for tests such as this for there to be given 48 hours notice. This was not done on this occasion.”
Wale said: “China is a good friend of Solomon Islands, but this is not something a friend does. This is not good in our region.
“We don’t want to see any more countries – China, America, anybody – we don’t want anybody testing the ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] in the Pacific Islands region.
“That’s the bottom line. Be our friend, but don’t threaten us.”
Albanese hails ‘comprehensive treaty’ in Solomon Islands address
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has become the first foreign leader to participate in Independence Day celebrations in the Solomon Islands. Today marks 48 years since the Pacific nation transitioned from British rule to a sovereign state.
Addressing celebrations in Honiara, the prime minister said Australia had learned of the nation’s courage “amidst the devastation of war” and paid tribute to “the bravery, skill and sacrifice of scouts and coastwatchers” who helped report Japanese troop movements during World War II.
He used the address to talk up the treaty under discussion between the two nations.
Independence for Solomon Islands was formalised by an act of British Parliament but independence was brought to life by a thousand different acts of leadership, imagination and co-operation, from the people of these islands.
Because the sovereignty of independence is not a condition that one country can bestow on another.
It is a right and a responsibility.
Sovereignty, stability, prosperity and peace are not born of one moment in time.
They are built, maintained and secured down the generations.
Not just in the high principles of global forums but in the universal building blocks of a good life.
A healthy family, a secure home, a safe community.
The opportunity of education and the dignity of work.
The connections to region, culture and the great blue Pacific.
These are the continuing acts of independence that bring power, progress and sovereignty to individuals and nations alike.
I have been impressed by Prime Minister Wale’s vision to build a better life for each and every Solomon Islander.
And as we celebrate the past, we look forward to the future.
A future with a stronger, peaceful and more prosperous Solomon Islands.
As you continue your journey we also look to our own shared future, negotiating a new comprehensive treaty that will bring our great countries even closer together.”
Taylor says gambling reform needs more scrutiny but dodges details
Angus Taylor said the Coalition would use a parliamentary inquiry into the government’s gambling reforms to “get the balance right”.
“We want to see young Australians protected from gambling addiction,” the opposition leader told reporters in Darwin. “This is a very, very important reform.”
“It’s taken the government too long to get to the point it’s got to, and then it suddenly wants to rush it through. Well, the reason it does that is it never wants scrutiny, it never wants accountability, it never wants the light of day shone on its proposals.”
Taylor would not say which changes the opposition might want to try to extract from the government, which will need the support of the Coalition or the Greens to pass the changes.
“We want to see a proper inquiry, we want to see the balance right, and that is the key,” he said. “So we will work with the government on this. We’re happy to work with the government, but the government has to be willing to subject its proposal to scrutiny.”
‘Weakness is provocative’: Taylor calls for more defence spending
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said he wanted to see a South Pacific free of Chinese influence after the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fired a test missile across the region.
“These are not the acts of a friend, let’s be clear, and that provocation and intimidation is unacceptable,” Taylor told reporters in Darwin, where his national tour visiting battleground seats is underway.
“We want to see a South Pacific free of the interference of the PLA and the [Chinese Communist Party], we want to see a South Pacific that is stable,” he said.
Taylor accused the government of underfunding the defence force and called for spending to be lifted to 3 per cent of GDP. The government has promised to hit that mark in 2033, but the Coalition argues that it will fall short in real terms because it uses a different method to measure spending.
‘What the heck’: Rhonda Burchmore responds to PM’s ‘shag’ comments
Actress Rhonda Burchmore said the prime minister should be more careful about which podcasts he chooses to go on after he said he wanted to “shag, marry and date” Kylie Minogue over Burchmore and Nicole Kidman.
Anthony Albanese was forced to apologise yesterday for the crude game played on the Bush Deep podcast, in which he nominated his preferred famous Australian woman.
“I was having my cup of tea, and I nearly spat it out … and then he picked Kylie, and I figured, well, Nicole and I are kind of around the same height, he must be intimidated,” Burchmore, who is touring the country with Anastasia the Musical, told Today.
“I thought, what an incredible group of women to be part of. I was kind of flattered, but then my husband kind of rang and said, ‘What the heck’.”
Asked what her message to the prime minister was, Burchmore said: “I think maybe you should kind of choose what podcast you go on.”
Red-carpet welcome for PM in Solomon Islands as treaty talks progress
Anthony Albanese has received a red carpet welcome in the Solomon Islands this morning and was greeted by the nation’s Prime Minister Matthew Wale.
The leaders held a brief bilateral meeting at Honiara airport moments after Albanese touched down. The prime minister told Wale there was “much more that we need to do together”, including the development of a comprehensive treaty.
“We will task our ministers to continue to do work on that and hopefully to conclude that by the end of the year,” he said.
AI systems ‘cheating, deceiving’: Assistant technology minister
Australia’s new AI Safety Institute is already testing some of the world’s most powerful AI models, Assistant Minister for Science and Technology Andrew Charlton told a Sydney forum, and argued building safeguards in early is the only way for the country to claim a share of the AI boom.
In a speech to the Australian AI Safety Forum this morning, Charlton said frontier AI systems were “already doing things their creators never intended – cheating, deceiving, going their own way” – and that the window to get ahead of that behaviour would not stay open for long.
The speech was the government’s most detailed public account of what the institute announced in November and funded with $29.9 million, has done since it began operating this year. Charlton said it was testing frontier models with technical partners “in its first month of operations”, and named two research projects now under way.
Charlton used the speech to reject the idea that safety and economic opportunity pull against each other. “No country will win the AI race with technology that its own citizens don’t trust,” he said, arguing that the nations that build safety in from the start would be the ones that come out ahead.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
