What’s making headlines today
Hello and welcome to our national news live blog for Monday, June 1. My name is Emily Kaine, and I’ll be helming our coverage for the first part of the day. Here’s what is making news today.
- Price growth across the national property market has ground to a halt, new research shows, with steep falls in Melbourne and Sydney as higher interest rates, stretched affordability and the federal government’s overhaul of tax incentives combine to suppress values.
- One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has declared she has the “ability” to be prime minister. Speaking to Sky News Sunday Agenda, she said: “I won’t knock the job … I’m not going to underestimate myself or say ‘No, I can’t do it’, because you know, have a look at what we’ve got now … And that’s why we’re in a mess.”
- Significant amounts of Russian timber are entering Australia after being laundered through China and other countries, evading tariffs imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and sparking demands for government action. The phenomenon – similar to the flow of Russian “blood oil” into Australia after being processed overseas – means that thousands of Australian home builders could be inadvertently aiding Putin’s war effort.
- The number of confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has climbed to 260 as officials updated their estimates of the outbreak’s size and international health organisations warned of the risk of further spread. Aid groups have said that without urgent intervention, this could be the world’s deadliest Ebola outbreak ever.
- And US President Donald Trump has toughened the conditions of a proposed peace deal to end the war with Iran, and sent his updated conditions to the country for consideration, three officials told The New York Times.
Watch live: Chalmers to address media on tax and housing policy
Treasurer Jim Chalmers is due to hold a press conference with member for Griffith Renee Coffey in Brisbane on the government’s tax and housing policies.
Watch it live below.
Israel seizes Crusader fortress in deepest Lebanon incursion in decades
Israeli troops have captured a strategic mountain topped with a Crusader-built castle in southern Lebanon, in the deepest incursion into the country in more than a quarter-century, Israel’s military said.
The taking of Beaufort Castle, near the city of Nabatiyeh, on Sunday (Lebanon time) followed days of airstrikes and intense fighting in nearby villages between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants.
The capture marked a major Israeli advance in the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, which began on March 2 when Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel two days after the US and Israel attacked its main backer, Iran.
Since then, Israel has launched a ground invasion, capturing dozens of Lebanese villages and towns close to the border. Hezbollah has launched thousands of missiles and drones at Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon and northern Israel.
The Israeli push came despite a nominal ceasefire that has been in place since April 17, and just days before Lebanon and Israel hold their next round of direct talks in Washington, starting on Tuesday.
Read the full story here.
Liberals ‘recycling a failed prime minister’: Hill
The Liberal Party is “recycling a failed prime minister” by electing Tony Abbott as its new federal president, says Labor MP Julian Hill.
Staying with Hill’s appearance on Sky this afternoon, the minister was insistent Abbott’s new role would not help Opposition Leader Angus Taylor cut through to the Australian people.
“To recycle a failed prime minister, he might have been a devastatingly effective negative campaigner, against the national interest, I’d argue, on so many fronts … He was negative and relentless. But when he was elected prime minister, he failed.
“I wonder whether he’ll last as long as party president … as he did as prime minister before they dumped him from office. If Tony Abbott is the future, then God help us,” Hill said today.
On Friday, Abbott was elected unopposed as the new president at the Liberal Party’s federal council in Melbourne.
Polling a symptom of voter frustration, says Hill
Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs Julian Hill says new polling showing One Nation as the most popular party is a symptom of frustration among everyday Australians.
“A lot of this is a reflection of people feeling under pressure and angry or frustrated. We’re cutting taxes five different ways, boosting Medicare … But we are also tackling housing with big messy intergenerational issues, and when you do that as a government, when you choose to have a go at big things, then polls move around,” Hill told Sky.
He also said Australians needed to be more critical of One Nation’s policies, and encouraged scrutiny of Pauline Hanson’s political record on issues like workers’ rights and wages.
“I’d encourage Australians to focus on the substance, what she’s actually done,” Hill said.
“[By] the next election … It’ll have been 30 years since Pauline Hanson was first elected to the parliament. At every turn, she votes to cut wages, opposes wage rises. She’s no friend of the workers. She’s opposed penalty rates. She was on Sky on the weekend, saying she doesn’t support wage rises. There’s a pretty clear track record here of extreme conservatism.”
Joyce defends Hanson amid reports of her absenteeism from Senate
Earlier this morning, One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce defended Pauline Hanson’s record of absenteeism from Senate estimate hearings, following reports of the One Nation Leader’s patchy record of attendance.
The Australian reported today that the senator had been absent from 88 per cent of Senate estimate hearing days over the past decade, according to a parliamentary library analysis.
“It’s not unusual that Pauline gets asked to go to a range of things, as does the leader of the Labor Party, as does the leader of the Liberal Party, and Pauline is the leader of the most popular polling party in Australia. She’s going to get asked to a lot of issues. There you go, that’s the answer,” Joyce told the Seven Network.
His remarks come a day after Hanson declared she was ready to serve as the nation’s prime minister.
Aid groups warn Ebola outbreak could be world’s deadliest
The number of confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo has climbed to 260 as officials updated their estimates of the outbreak’s size and international health organisations warned of the risk of further spread.
The nation’s health minister, Roger Kamba, reported the revised tally on Saturday at a press conference in Bunia, the city at the epicentre of the outbreak, and said US health authorities had agreed to support Congo’s use of an experimental antibody treatment in a mid-stage trial. The research will help determine the efficacy of the medication, “which is very promising,” Kamba said.
The outbreak, caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, has been reported across more than a dozen health zones in three Congolese provinces. Uganda has recorded nine cases, one of them fatal. Doctors Without Borders says the epidemic may be spreading faster than responders can fully assess, with hundreds of samples still awaiting testing.
“The reality today is that nobody knows the true scale and severity of this outbreak,” Alan Gonzalez, deputy director of operations with the medical group, said in a statement. “Never before has an Ebola outbreak recorded so many cases so soon after its declaration.”
Aid groups have warned it could be the deadliest outbreak of the disease ever recorded.
Bloomberg
‘Don’t underestimate me’: Hanson says she has energy to lead in her 70s
Pauline Hanson has dismissed a question over whether she would be too old to participate in parliament at the next election, after the One Nation leader turned 72 last week.
“It will come down to my health. I’ve got nothing wrong with me. I take no medication, nothing. I’ve got more energy in me than a lot of these other people,” Hanson told 2GB radio this morning.
“My staff are flat out keeping up with me from eight o’clock in the morning till 10, 11 o’clock at night. I can still run down the halls of parliament in my heels when I have to get to the chamber. So don’t underestimate me,” she said.
Hanson said there was one member of parliament she thought should move on because of age, but refused to say who it was.
“I’ll let the people know this. I’ve already told my staff, if I become like a Joe Biden, just tap me on the shoulder and give me the heel to move on,” she said.
Hanson says ministers in western Sydney ‘sympathisers’ of IS-linked women
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has singled out ministers representing seats in western Sydney for allowing IS-linked women and children into the country, linking high Muslim populations in Labor electorates with the return of the cohort.
“They want them in the country. A lot of these Muslim electorates down there are predominantly in [Home Affairs Minister Tony] Burke’s and [Education Minister Jason] Clare’s and [Environment Minister Chris] Bowen’s electorate, and this is why they want it,” Hanson told 2GB radio this morning.
“They’re sympathisers of them, of the Muslims. I don’t care what Albanese says, and gets up there and says, and Burke says … I’ve been so strong on this that I don’t want these radicals here in Australia,” she said.
Burke, Clare and Bowen represent the electorates of Watson, Blaxland and McMahon respectively in Sydney’s West. One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce has said the party will seek to target western Sydney seats in the next election.
Littleproud: Abbott’s party presidency ‘a good thing for Angus’
Nationals MP David Littleproud has said the election of former prime minister Tony Abbott as the new federal president of the Liberals is a “good thing” for Angus Taylor, as the Coalition stares down the task of winning back popularity with voters amid record low polling.
Speaking to Sky News this morning, Littleproud said: “I think what Tony Abbott does is give a starch to Angus Taylor, and that cover and support, that structural support within the Liberal Party, and I think this is a good thing, to have that for Angus, to be able to have a party president that will be there shoulder to shoulder with him.”
Littleproud, who resigned as leader of the National Party in March, also responded to new polling by The Australian Financial Review that showed One Nation surging ahead of the Coalition – and overtaking Labor – in popularity.
Asked whether he thought the shift to One Nation would be temporary, Littleproud said it would depend on how well the Coalition sold their policies to the Australian public in the lead-up to the next election.
“I think it depends on what we do … Australians [are] lashing out because they’ve lost hope, they’re going broke, and they’re looking for something, they don’t know what it is at the moment.”
Abbott denies suggestion his new role is only administrative
President of the Liberal Party Tony Abbott has dismissed the suggestion his new role is purely administrative, as he vowed to be a vocal member of the party from outside the walls of parliament.
“Look, the party president is the organisation leader, not the political leader, but I don’t think there’s ever been a party president who’s taken a vow of silence, and I’m certainly not going to start,” he told ABC Radio National.
This morning, shadow treasurer Tim Wilson said the former prime minister only had an “administrative” role, and that the future of the party was in the hands of elected members of parliament.
Abbott also rejected the assertion he was using the presidential role as a pathway back into parliament.
Asked whether this was a relaunch of his political career, Abbott said: “No, absolutely not … I’m only doing this because I think our country is in a bad way, and I think our party needs to revive.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
