Politics live: former spy boss says ‘ball was dropped’ on antisemitism; Hastie says One Nation channelling ‘Maga’

Guardian Australia warns copyright backdown means free access for AI companies

Guardian Australia has joined artists and creative organisations to condemn the Albanese governments’ leaked proposals to give AI companies free access to local content by default.

AI companies have sought to train their models on content and data online but cannot do so with Australian content due to local copyright rules.

Labor is considering letting big tech through this barrier if it makes enough deals with enough businesses or creative rightsholder organisations, forcing smaller individual creators to proactively opt out. Backlash from musician and writer organisations is growing.

A Guardian Australia spokesperson said:

The growth of a domestic AI sector should not – and need not – occur at the expense of established cultural and publishing industries by weakening copyright laws.

As the most well-funded sector in history, the AI industry does not lack capital; it simply lacks the willingness to pay fairly.

The focus should be on encouraging commercial licensing deals, not on giving US tech giants free access to Australian content.

The NSW One Nation leader and state election candidate, Mike Newman, has clarified comments he made in support of a bill to explicitly prohibit sex-selective abortions at a rally outside NSW parliament yesterday.

Yesterday, speaking alongside anti-abortion activist Joanna Howe, Newman said:

And what we want to say to those people in there, we want to support people who want to make sure that abortion rights, we want to stop it. We want to make sure that same-sex, sorry, abortion is stopped. We want to make sure that people have the right to life, and we will vote for you in favour of that.

After Guardian Australian contacted Newman, he said that “One Nation policy is clear” and the party’s platform opposed late-term and sex-selective abortions, but did not advocate for an outright ban on abortions.

There are already restrictions on sex-selection abortion for non-medical reasons in NSW, and the upper house voted to formally oppose the practice in 2019 when the state decriminalised abortion. Libertarian upper house member John Ruddick’s bill proposes to explicitly prohibit sex-selective abortion and introduce penalties for medical practitioners. A 2020 NSW Health review found the practice was exceedingly rare.

Guardian Australia understands the bill, in which government and opposition members have been allowed a conscience vote, does not have sufficient support to pass this evening.

Mark Butler has defended his office’s involvement in a $5m grant for a sports club upgrade in his electorate.

The ABC reported Butler’s office urged the City of Charles Sturt council to submit a $6m grant application to redevelop the Jubilee Reserve in his electorate as a permanent home for the Adelaide Jaguars women’s football club – before detailed costings or formal planning had been done.

Labor committed $5m for the project in the lead-up to the 2025 election, which was funded under the “invite-only” grants scheme.

But Butler says there were multiple discussions with the council about the redevelopment, what funds would be needed, and that the council provided a budget proposal.

He said in a statement provided to Guardian Australia:

My office had multiple discussions with the City of Charles Sturt Council about what a redevelopment of Jubilee Reserve would look like, and what federal funding would be needed to deliver the project. The Council outlined to us in a detailed budget proposal how much funding would be needed to develop Jubilee Reserve.

The Adelaide Jaguars are the largest female-only soccer club in South Australia, and their membership has more than tripled in the past five years. Yet, they didn’t have a home ground and had to turn away over 100 players … This terrific club deserved its own home.

More than enough renewable projects to meet 2030 target, but not enough contracts being signed

Australia has more than enough wind and solar power projects “in the pipeline” to meet the government’s 2030 renewable energy target, but a large proportion are being held up because contracts to buy their electricity are not being signed, according to analysts.

Analysis from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis and Green Energy Markets has revealed the gap and the pair blame a lack of power purchase agreements being signed, saying the government’s capacity investment scheme also isn’t enough to persuade proponents to start building.

Releasing a new renewable energy scorecard that will be updated quarterly, Johanna Bowyer, lead analyst for Australian electricity at IEEFA said:

The scorecard shows that, in aggregate across Australia’s main grids, developers are pursuing far more renewable and battery capacity than is needed to meet the 82% target, and a large share has already been fully approved.

Yet projects under construction still fall far short of what must be built by 2030 – in several states less than one tenth of the required new wind and solar capacity is currently being built, and even the strongest states have at most around one third of new capacity required currently under construction.

Tristan Edis, director of analysis and advisory at Green Energy Markets, said projects that were already connected or under construction would only get Australia’s main grids to 53% renewable energy by 2030.

He said power purchase agreements were not being signed because of uncertainty over when coal plants might close and whether state governments might step in to keep them open. He said:

Government underwriting schemes are helping, but on their own they don’t guarantee enough revenue certainty to get projects to financial close. Without more contracts from large energy users, too many fully approved projects will stay stuck.

‘I would love to see a plan’: Pocock rips into migration debate

David Pocock says the government needs to stop faffing about and actually deliver a plan and have a serious conversation about immigration.

Labor, for weeks, has stalled on a migration plan but it’s expected as soon as this week. The Coalition has also been mulling its own plan and been promising it’s also just weeks away.

Meanwhile, One Nation came out of the gates earlier this week to announce their plan for net-negative migration over three years, cutting temporary visas by 750,000 over that period.

Pocock says there needs to be a mature conversation, not starting with numbers, but what the country actually needs.

The big thing I would love to see is a plan. There’s this constant talk about numbers, about classes of visas. Rather than actually having the conversation as a country, what is our 10-year plan for migration? What are the skills that we need? What are the trade-offs when it comes to housing, impact on the environment?

How is it that as a country that is as wealthy as Australia, we rely on half of our new doctors to come from overseas, from countries that undoubtedly also desperately need doctors? What are we doing in terms of training? To me, that’s how you solve this issue: you actually have these hard conversations, then you say, ‘right, this is what it’s going to look like over the next 10 years’, rather than having this ridiculous fight over a number that raises all sorts of concerns for aged care, for healthcare, for farmers who are relying on backpackers. It just seems so unproductive.

Opt-out AI proposal for artists ‘throwing creators under the bus’

David Pocock, who has been on a crusade to protect the creative industry from being gobbled up and spat out by AI training models, says artists are being thrown under the bus if the government goes ahead with an opt-out model for their work.

Leaked documents reported by the ABC show the government is considering a model where artists’ work would be automatically available to AI companies unless they actively take steps to opt-out.

Pocock tells RN Breakfast that these multi-billion dollar tech platforms should have to sit down and negotiate with copyright holders.

I really think this [proposal] is throwing creators under the bus that is a one-stop express bus to datacentres. And I think we should do better as a country.

You think of when you stream something on Spotify. Spotify has not done a deal with every single artist. They are going through collecting institutions. So it’s all set up for that.

We just have AI companies who refuse to actually sit down with them and negotiate to use their works. They want to steal them, they want to use them, and they want to then, who knows, on the one hand, replace a whole bunch of jobs. On the other hand, potentially end the world as we know it. Why are we just caving to these companies?

Asked about James Paterson’s point that these frontier AI models could have national security benefits, he says there could be some truth to that but he’s very sceptical.

Pocock says the major parties too often pull out the national security card because “they can’t win an argument on it’s merits” and use it as a “trump card” so they don’t have to reveal all the details to the public.

At the moment, it seems like there’s not many things where we’re willing to take on big US companies, and particularly ones that Trump doesn’t want touched.

Victorian premier plans to expand police search powers to crack down on knife crime

No matter who wins the Victorian election, police will be given the power to stop and search people using a metal detector wand for knives.

The Victorian premier, Ben Carroll, will today announce plans to introduce Jack’s Law in the state if Labor is reelected – matching a commitment made by the Coalition in 2025.

The law, introduced in Queensland in 2023 following the stabbing death of 17-year-old Jack Beasley in 2019, gives police the power to use metal detectors on people anywhere in the state to search for knives.

Currently in Victoria, police are only authorised to perform pat-down searches in “designated areas,” and the laws governing these searches are currently being challenged in federal court.

Carroll says if reelected, Jack’s Law – Stop and Search will be in place statewide by early 2027 and new legislation will be “watertight”.

Police will also be given 1,200 additional handheld metal detectors to search people “anywhere, anytime”, the police minister Paul Edbrooke said.

It’s a significant shift for Labor, who since the Coalition announced their plan to introduce Jack’s Law in 2025 have maintained there was no need.

In September 2025, the then police minister Anthony Carbines said searches in the state’s designated areas had netted more than 10,000 knives and machetes. He said at the time:

It might not be called Jack’s Law, but what we have in place in Victoria is a safe and effective mechanism that Victoria police asked for.

But Carroll on Tuesday repeated the line that he was taking the state in a “new direction”. He said:

My priority is community safety – and stop and search powers for knives is the new direction I’m delivering. I stand with parents like Brett and Belinda, just like I stand with all Victorians who have had their lives destroyed by violence.

All aboard the frontier AI train, Paterson says

Australia should be pushing for access to the most advanced US frontier models of AI, says shadow defence minister James Paterson, despite concerns around copyright and protecting the work of creatives.

Paterson tells RN Breakfast frontier models (i.e. the latest most sophisticated AI models) have economic and national security benefits, and securing these training models “gets us a seat at the table”.

The ABC is this morning reporting leaked policy documents that reveal Labor is considering imposing a model where the work of artists could be made automatically available to AI companies unless creators actively take steps to opt-out.

Paterson is asked whether, if he’s so keen for those frontier models to be trained in Australia, that creatives just get thrown under the bus. He says he doesn’t think so.

We’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars of investment, including some of the most advanced chips in the world, which we don’t really have access to now, coming to Australia … These technologies are incredibly important for intelligence collection, for cyber defence, and for modern warfare.

I think it’s very clear that people’s intellectual property, if it is used, should be paid for. I think what is open to being resolved is how they’re paid for, the mechanism that’s paid for.

Paterson says he’s open to how creatives are paid for their work, but stresses that time is of the essence and a decision needs to be made.

I am concerned about the timelines here because there are windows for investment that are closing. They will not be open forever, and Australia is not the only market in the world these companies are looking at. They’re looking at countries like the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, and they could go elsewhere.

Andrew Hastie says the national tone has “taken a real dip” with One Nation making politics personal and “Maga-style”.

It’s certainly personal for Hastie with One Nation targeting his Western Australian seat of Canning, and Hastie and Pauline Hanson currently feuding over a cartoon video that labelled the former SAS captain a “traitor”. Hanson denied ever calling him a traitor.

Speaking to ABC News Breakfast, Hastie says he hasn’t spoken to Hanson in the last week.

The national tone has take a real dip of late and become quite personal, US-style Maga politics have been run by One Nation, and I have decided to push back. We want to win the next election as the Coalition and it’s a three-cornered contest and the Liberal party should be striving to be number one on the ballot. That’s what I’ve been arguing for.

It seems like a pretty clear message to his party to push back hard on Hanson and One Nation.

Asked more explicitly if he’d be comfortable with the Coalition joining with One Nation to form government, Hastie says the Liberals need to focus on themselves … at least for now.

Our primary vote is still very low compared to what it’s been in historic terms, we have to focus on being number one in terms of primary votes. Whatever happens after the election I don’t know. We’re fighting for our survival and we should be focused on that.

Sports precinct funding report reveals a ‘pattern of behaviour’, Wilson says

Tim Wilson says there are questions for Labor to answer over an ABC report which says health minister Mark Butler’s office asked an Adelaide council to put forward a $6m sports precinct upgrade for federal funding before any detailed costings or formal planning had been done.

Labor then awarded the project $5m of funding in the 2025 election – under the invite-only grant scheme.

Wilson tells News24 the government needs to explain who reached out to the council, who made the initial contact, what proposals were put forward and whether Butler is an honorary member of the club.

I think what we’re now seeing is a pattern of behaviour. The prime minister gave a grant to a golf course in his electorate just around the corner from his home, of which he was a member, which he failed to declare. Now we have the health minister, the next wannabe prime minister, doing exactly the same thing.

Former Asio boss Dennis Richardson told the Lowy Institute last night that the “ball was dropped” on antisemitism, but this morning says he won’t focus on any particular people to ascribe responsibility.

Speaking to RN Breakfast, Richardson says comments posted to social media by an Islamic preacher in November 2023 were not immediately and widely condemned.

He adds the country needs to have a discussion about Islamic extremism without making Muslim Australians feel targeted.

That’s a difficult thing to do. However, I think one way to do it is to ensure that Muslim leaders are at the centre of any such discussion and guide that discussion in a way that Australian Muslims as a whole do not feel targeted.

Because there is a real risk when you have a discussion about extremist Islam, you have a real risk that Muslims as a whole feel under pressure. Equally, if you don’t have that discussion, you play into the hands of extremists at the other end of the spectrum.

Asked about the royal commission – which he was initially engaged in but then left – he says everyone should withhold judgment until the final report is released later this year, but that it has already done an “outstanding” job of spotlighting the experiences of Jewish Australians.

Good morning, Krishani Dhanji here with you, thanks to Martin Farrer for getting us started.

One Nation will continue dominating chatter across the halls of parliament today, and if you haven’t already, take a read of my colleague Sarah Martin’s piece on Pauline Hanson’s daughter working remotely without ministerial approval.

And what to do with AI and whether it will lead to the end of human civilisation? The issue has drastically ramped up in Canberra this week after a slow down warning from tech leaders, while creatives push for the government to hold strong on copyright protections.

It’s going to be another busy one – let’s get cracking.

Betting company Dabble has been fined more than $1m for sending more than 800 messages to 165 gamblers who had joined the federal government’s self-exclusion register and asked to be left alone.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority also found the gambling company failed to close the betting accounts of 157 people who registered with Betstop, which helps people break their gambling addictions.

In a statement, Acma said Dabble sent more than 2,000 push notifications to 45 customers without including any information about the Betstop service, which is a legal requirement.

The watchdog has fined the company $1,069,200. According to Acma, Dabble has also been given a court-enforceable undertaking to guarantee future compliance with the rules.

Acma member, Carolyn Lidgerwood, said the breaches were serious and undermined the federal government’s harm minimisation strategy.

People who register with BetStop have made a clear decision to exclude themselves from online wagering. Providers must respect that decision by closing their accounts promptly and ensuring they are not targeted with gambling promotions.

BetStop is an important consumer protection measure, but it only works if wagering companies follow the rules. The Acma will take action where wagering providers fail to meet their obligations.

NSW government to smooth transfer of rental bond from one property to the next from today

Renters in NSW will be able to transfer their bond from one property to the next from today, meaning they won’t need to come up with thousands of dollars upfront every time they move.

It’s expected Smart Rental Bonds will save more than two million renters across the state up to $4,000 each time they move home – though the online scheme costs $25 to use.

The NSW government will pay the landlord the bond upon the end of the lease, while the renter will repay the government.

Renters will need to pay the difference if the second bond is higher – equally they will be refunded the difference if it is cheaper, provided there is no agreed claim on the bond.

The NSW government scheme has already seen $1m in bond transfers in Penrith, Parramatta and the Central Coast, where it was rolled out early.

It follows similar moves to make renting fairer in NSW, including a ban on no grounds evictions, a limit of one rent increase a year, enforcing fee-free ways to pay rent and making it easier for people to have pets.

The head of One Nation in New South Wales has fronted a rally opposing “abortion up to birth” ahead of an expected vote in the upper house on Libertarian member John Ruddick’s bill to ban “sex-selective abortions” today.

Mike Newman appeared alongside members of fringe parties outside the state’s parliament house on Tuesday evening, where he claimed One Nation wanted to “stop” abortion rights. Stumbling upon his words, he told the crowd:

We want to stop it. We want to make sure that same-sex, sorry, abortion is stopped. We want to make sure that people have the right to life, and we will vote for you in favour of that.

Debate on Ruddick’s bill was adjourned in the June sitting week, and is expected to be decided via a conscience vote. Labor and opposition sources said the vote was expected to be close, or for support for Ruddick’s bill to fall slightly short.

The event follows another anti-abortion rally in June, attended by One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce, where he piled pressure on Nationals MPs to vote on favour of the bill.

Some members were expected to be absent for today’s vote, including Shooters, Farmers and Fishers MLC Robert Borsak, who spoke in favour of the bill in June. A senior Liberal source said that without members including Borsak, there did not appear to be “any room or margin” which could deliver Ruddick’s bill.

UK ‘on track’ to begin building Aukus submarines, Marles says

Richard Marles was also asked about Aukus, and whether he was concerned about reports from the UK which indicated the Labour government was delaying its decision about beginning to build the boats by two years to 2028.

He said there was “no change” on Australia’s end in terms of the UK’s position and rejected that they were “red flags”.

The ultimate number of submarines is not the key issue here, the key issue is the development of the design, the pace of that which is happening.

The UK is on track to cut steel in respect of its first SSN Aukus submarine next year. It’s on track to have that submarine come off the production line in the UK in the late 2030s. That’s perfect timing in respect of what we’re doing … We are really comfortable with what is happening there.

Marles takes ‘comfort’ from AI company boss’s call for safeguards around the technology

The deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, says he is “comforted” by a recent essay from the boss of artificial intelligence company Anthropic which warned his industry must slow the pace in developing AI systems.

Appearing on ABC’s 7.30 program on Tuesday evening, Marles was asked about Dario Amodei’s comments urging governments to press pause on the AI revolution.

He replied:

I actually take comfort in Dario Amodei’s essay and the call he’s made … It’s firstly not about … stopping this all together but rather making sure that the development of the safeguards that are in place in respect of this technology is in front of the technological capability itself …

The technology is being developed very quickly, and … from an Australian point of view, our focus is making sure that, in seeing this as a revolutionary technology which can be doing so much good in Australia, that we do have in place … AI safeguards in Australia which make sure that this is a technology which will benefit Australians and not the other way around.

Jacqui Lambie has warned Australians not to support “dangerous” and “delusional” Pauline Hanson, drawing comparisons between the One Nation leader and controversial international leaders.

In a speech during adjournment last night in the Senate, the Tasmanian senator said she had received a stream of abuse after her impassioned defence of Andrew Hastie after he was repeatedly labelled a “traitor” in One Nation’s cartoon series.

Lambie said:

One Nation whips up the anger and they tell people who to blame. That’s the populist trick … It’s a trick Australia, and we’ve got to wake up to it. Because every time a populist leader, like Trump or Farage, get any power, the lives of working people don’t get better. They get worse.

The outspoken senator criticised Donald Trump’s potential forever war with Iran while singling out Hanson’s support of his actions.

You’d put [Australian soldiers] back in another American forever war? [Hanson] is not only dangerous, she’s delusional!

Lambie said figures such as Trump and Nigel Farage were great at telling people they would fight for them while doing the opposite.

Senator Hanson will be fine in her retirement, as will Nigel and Donald in theirs, because once again they are feathering their own nests … Australia can choose not to follow the ugly politics of populism, we can do better because we bloody are better.

And it’s not about right or left, it’s about respect and finding solutions, and not operating from a place of fear – whatever side you’re on.

Welcome

Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and then it’ll be Krishani Dhanji with the main action.

Jacqui Lambie has launched a fiery attack on Pauline Hanson, urging Australians not to support the “dangerous” and “delusional” One Nation leader. More coming up.