What’s making news today
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of national news for Monday, October 12. Here’s what is making headlines today.
- Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s preferred prime minister rating rose by three percentage points to 32 per cent and Labor’s primary vote is up one point, this month’s Resolve Political Monitor has found. Voter support for One Nation fell from its high point in June, with the party’s primary vote down by 2 percentage points in the past month.
- Labor’s Digital Duty of Care laws will be introduced to parliament this week, and will require platforms such as Meta and X to exclude harmful content for under-18s including pornography, content that promotes eating disorders, and sites promoting hostility to women.
- The Greens are proposing changes to the bill that would allow individuals to sue big tech companies for compensation if they believed they were harmed online.
- During an interview with 60 Minutes last night, former treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the Liberal Party faced an “existential threat”, and that leader Angus Taylor needed to “do better”. The remarks come amid renewed speculation Frydenberg could be making a return to politics. Senior Coalition figures, including Taylor, have said they would welcome him back.
- And Pope Leo will be undergoing surgery this week to remove a small growth in his lung in the first health scare of the 71-year-old’s tenure. The Vatican did not say whether the nodule was believed to be malignant.
PM waging war on small businesses, Taylor says
Now to politics, and Angus Taylor has accused the prime minister of waging a war on small business.
Labor has been under fire after the ATO announced it would not take credit card payments after the Reserve Bank banned passing on surcharges to customers, forcing the treasurer to intervene so small businesses could have more time to adjust to the change.
“Since Labor came to power, over 50,000 businesses have gone bust. Killed by power bills no one can afford, new taxes no one voted for, and a credit card ban no one was told about,” Taylor said.
Anthony Albanese said Labor backed small business.
“We pay tribute to those who aspire, who take risks, who invest in not just themselves and their families, but they invest in the future of the Australian economy,” he said.
He said the rate of insolvencies was lower under Labor than under the Howard government.
“The number of small businesses since we came to office is today 2.7 million. That is 265,000 more than were there when we came to office in 2022.”
Question time begins with Afghanistan war commemoration
Question time has begun today with a commemoration of the Afghanistan war to mark 25 years since the beginning of Australia’s longest war.
“Fires were still burning at ground zero from the September 11 attacks a month earlier, when Australia came to the aid of the world,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the chamber. “We went to support our friend and our ally. We went because of what was at stake.”
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor paid tribute to Coalition frontbenchers Andrew Hastie and Phillip Thompson for their service, and said Australians had played an important role in destroying Al-Qaeda.
“Five years after the war in Afghanistan has finished, Islamist extremism remains a real threat – a civilisational threat,” Taylor said. “Fight it we will. Because we love life more than those extremists love death.
The leaders then commemorated three years since the Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.
Watch live: Question time
Frydenberg ‘desperate to be PM’, Hill says
Assistant Citizenship Minister Julian Hill says former Liberal MP Josh Frydenberg has been “desperate” to be prime minister since he was a teenager.
“Josh has always had an aspiration, his burning desire from when he was a teenager to be the prime minister,” Hill told News24.
“But as for any consistent set of ideology and values, I’ve never identified them. But he’s desperate to be the prime minister, so we’ll leave that to Josh.”
Hill said he attended university alongside Frydenberg and that he got on “quite well” with him, but that he was “doing his best impersonation at the moment of Peter Costello”.
“Always the bridesmaid, is he going to run, isn’t he going to run?” the Labor MP said.
“He never quite ran.”
US live-stream of upcoming execution ‘abhorrent’: Labor MP
Assistant Citizenship Minister Julian Hill says the upcoming live-streaming of an execution by firing squad of a former US Army major who killed 13 soldiers at a military base in 2009 was “abhorrent”.
“I’m not someone who supports the death penalty, and that’s been Australia’s long-standing position, both domestically but also as part of our international statecraft,” Hill told News24.
Hill joined a chorus of MPs condemning the live-stream but said there was likely not much the government could do to block it.
“As for the proposition that such a thing would be broadcast live-stream, I don’t want Australians to have to view that,” he said.
“I don’t want them able to view it.
“The honest answer is, I don’t know what legal powers exist to block, I don’t know how effective such things would be, but my core proposition is, I just find the whole thing abhorrent.”
Assistant citizenship minister won’t comment on flydubai hijacker reports
Assistant Minister for Citizenship Julian Hill says he needs more information in relation to grants given to a mosque that has reported links to alleged flydubai hijacker and pilot Hamam al-Hammami.
Al-Hammami began his descent into extremism while living in Melbourne, according to UAE authorities, this masthead has reported. He was pursuing a mechanical engineering degree at Melbourne’s RMIT University, and reportedly admitted he regularly attended a mosque affiliated with the university. He reportedly became acquainted with individuals associated with MyCentre, an Islamic organisation based in Broadmeadows.
On September 30, the 29-year-old Omani co-pilot allegedly attacked the captain of flydubai Flight FZ1073, which was travelling from Dubai, with the intent of crashing the plane into Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.
Today, the Herald Sun reported that the Australian Federal Police and the federal government gave grants of more than $70,000 to the mosque.
Taiwan says it is monitoring Chinese live-fire drills
Taipei: Taiwanese Defence Minister Wellington Koo said on Monday that the country’s military is monitoring a series of Chinese live-fire drills taking place up and down the Taiwanese coast this week.
Starting from Thursday, the China Maritime Safety Administration announced no-sail notices for five areas, from the South China Sea up to the north-eastern Chinese province of Liaoning, though none around Taiwan itself.
The closest one to Taiwan is off China’s eastern province of Zhejiang. The drills are scheduled to last all week, according to the notices.
Speaking to reporters in parliament, Koo said the preliminary assessment is that these activities were firing drills by coastal artillery and related units.
Polish police detain man over threat to PM and defence minister
Warsaw: Polish police have detained a man suspected of planning an attack on Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, the Interior Minister said.
Marcin Kierwinski told state news channel TVP Info that police had detained a man in his 60s in the Lower Silesia region of southern Poland.
“Security services tracked him down through a detailed analysis of content posted online,” Kierwinski said.
Tusk and Kosiniak-Kamysz thanked the police for their “swift and decisive” response in posts on X.
Reuters
Australians should be able to seek compensation for online harms: Shoebridge
Greens leader David Shoebridge says Australians should be able to seek compensation for online harms as Labor’s Digital Duty of Care goes to parliament this week.
The party is pushing for changes to the bill that would allow individuals to sue big tech companies for compensation if they believe they are harmed online.
“There are a number of other key elements that I think all of us realise would be good in a digital duty of care. I mean, one of the key things is making sure that Australians, if they’ve been subject to serious harm as a result of one of these platforms, that they actually have a remedy that they can sue them and get the material taken down and seek appropriate compensation,” he told ABC TV this afternoon.
“Having rights without remedies doesn’t really answer the call that we’re hearing from across the country.”
ASX opens higher as miners rise
The Australian sharemarket has started the week in positive territory, with mining stocks driving the local bourse higher, while oil prices advanced after Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia raised the risk of a widening Middle East conflict.
The S&P/ASX 200 was up 26.1 points, or 0.3 per cent, in early trade to 8742.7. The Australian dollar was trading at US69.78¢.
Mining stocks are stronger in early trade on the back of rising commodities’ prices. BHP added 2.3 per cent, Fortescue 1.6 per cent and Rio Tinto 0.9 per cent. Gold stocks also advanced, with Northern Star up 1.3 per cent and Evolution Mining 0.2 per cent higher.
Read the full markets wrap here.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
