Shadow minister says Australia ‘ill-prepared’ for conflict – as it happened

And with that, we are going to put the blog to bed. Before we go, let’s recap the big headlines:

• The RSL has announced it will review its guidance on welcome to country addresses at Anzac Day services after Indigenous leaders were booed at three dawn services on Saturday.

• The opposition leader, Angus Taylor, says a Coalition government would double fuel reserves in Australia to at least 60 days, and spend $800m to build a new storage facility. Announcing a new policy alongside the Nationals leader, Matt Canavan, Taylor said the Albanese government should lift baseline stockholdings from 1 January next year, to get Australia closer to the 90-day minimum reserves required by the International Energy Agency.

• The White House has nominated David Brat, a former Republican member of the US House of Representatives, to be the next ambassador to Australia. Brat represented Virginia in Congress and served two terms before he was defeated by a Democrat in a close race in 2018.

• The NSW premier, Chris Minns, said he may not move to ban the contested phrase “globalise the intifada” if a constitutional challenge over a similar ban is successful in Queensland.

• The search area for missing five-year-old Sharon has grown to about 20 sq km around the Old Timers camp in Alice Springs, with about 60 people searching for the young child. Sharon has not been seen since around 11pm on Saturday night after she was put to bed in her family home.

• The New South Wales government will spend $820m to upgrade the state’s public transport ticketing system, including a new Opal app and the introduction of a digital Opal card.

• Anthony Albanese confirmed growing speculation that his Japanese counterpart, Sanae Takaichi, will visit Australia next week. In office since October, Takaichi will visit Canberra amid sensitivity about energy exports stemming from the Iran war and the closure of the strait of Hormuz.

• Mouse numbers have exploded to plague proportions across Western Australia’s grain belt, with experts warning the outbreak is among the worst the state has seen.

Thank you for spending part of your day with us. We will be back tomorrow to do it all again.

Mouse numbers have exploded to plague proportions across Western Australia’s grain belt, with experts warning the outbreak is among the worst the state has seen, AAP reports.

CSIRO researcher Steve Henry says surveys in key cropping regions have found up to 4,000 burrows per hectare, particularly around Northampton, north of Geraldton, and between Albany and Esperance near Ravensthorpe.

On conservative estimates of one mouse per burrow, that equates to about 4,000 mice per hectare.

Mouse plagues are a well‑known hazard for grain growers in New South Wales and South Australia, but historically have been rare in WA.

Henry said the current outbreak was one of the worst in recent years, with truck drivers telling CSIRO researchers that travelling the outback roads was “like driving across rice bubbles”.

Sydney man in court after allegedly assaulting AFP officer at Sydney Airport

A Sydney man has faced Downing Centre local court today after allegedly assaulting an Australian federal police officer at Sydney Airport.

In a statement, the AFP said on Monday, officers responded to a request for assistance to check on the welfare of a man believed to be sleeping in a car park toilet:

When police approached the man, 30, he allegedly became highly aggressive.

Police requested his personal details, but the man allegedly walked away, failing to comply.

After being stopped by police, the man allegedly tried to hit officers and struck an AFP officer on the side of the head.

NSW government’s public transport upgrades to address ‘phantom bus’ issue

Public transport commuters in New South Wales, using a ticketing system as old as the BlackBerry and Blu-ray player are set to benefit from sweeping technology upgrades, AAP reports.

Online accounts that can locate buses in real time and see a live passenger count are set to be some perks from the NSW government’s $800m boost to the system.

Other upgrades include real-time information about fare deductions and receiving automatic compensations through a digital-based account.

The new system is set to address the phantom bus issue burdening the state’s most popular mode of transport, NSW premier Chris Minns told reporters:

We’ve heard repeatedly about phantom buses on the network, an app that seemed to indicate a bus was on its way, but it never arrived.

This latest Opal upgrade will mean those buses arrive [and] you’ll know exactly where they are.

WA government to build 500 homes in regional cities for frontline workers

The nation’s most cashed-up state will pump millions of dollars into its regional cities to build hundreds of homes for workers, AAP reports.

The Western Australian government plans to build more than 500 houses for frontline workers, including teachers, police and nurses, in towns like Broome, Port Hedland and Karratha over the next five years.

The $419m of funding, to be included in next week’s 2026-27 state budget, is part of an overall $692m investment in regional housing initiatives.

It includes $170m from Rio Tinto, BHP and Hancock Prospecting.

WA premier Roger Cook said the state’s regional worker housing program had been a long-term challenge for governments.

Death of Bikram Lama prompts calls for coronial inquest

We’ve been reporting on the death of Bikram Lama, a rough sleeper whose body was found in Hyde Park in December, near a busy thoroughfare on the edge of Sydney’s CBD.

The circumstances of Lama’s death have prompted widespread calls for change.

The state’s peak homelessness services group, Homelessness NSW, on Tuesday backed calls for a formal coronial inquest into the death. Independent MP Alex Greenwich has already written to the state attorney general, Michael Daley, to call for such an inquest, saying it must get to the bottom of any potential policy failures.

The Homelessness NSW CEO, Dom Rowe, said:

An inquest is vital to examine the policy failures that led to Mr Lama’s tragic death and to ensure this never happens again. The death of every person experiencing homelessness is a tragedy and very often a systemic failure. We strongly support mandating the reporting of homelessness deaths to the coroner to help determine where, when and how deaths occur. Our thoughts are with Mr Lama’s family and friends.

That’s all from me. Cait Kelly will take things from here, you’re in good hands.

Western Australia police said a man died yesterday after he was swept off the rocks near Yallingup.

Officials said emergency services were called to the area, at Wyadup Rocks, around 12.20pm on Monday. A search of the water found the man unresponsive and he was not able to be revived.

Police said his death is not suspicious and a report will be prepared for the coroner.

Australians are being lulled into a false sense of security about threats of conflict, a Coalition senator says, as he calls for more transparency on risks to defence.

In a major speech to the National Press Club on Tuesday, shadow defence minister James Paterson said military leadership and the government needed to be more forthcoming on looming dangers, AAP reports.

He said openness would allow the public to be more on board with rises in military spending in coming years.

“If the Australian public knew how likely conflict is in our own region in the near future, and how ill-prepared we were for it, they would be marching in the streets demanding higher defence spending,” Paterson said in the address.

Instead of being honest with the Australian people about the threat and our preparedness, they are being lulled into a false sense of security.

Paterson said a way to lay out the threats would be an annual address by the chief of the defence force on the security challenges. Such a speech would be similar to the annual threat assessment done by Asio head Mike Burgess.

Australians are hungry for more candour about the dangers we face and they are entitled to it.

ANU council removed from decision to appoint next university chancellor

Julie Bishop’s replacement as chancellor of the Australian National University will be done independently of the university’s council, following a string of controversies around ANU’s governance.

Bishop, the former Liberal foreign minister, will end her term as ANU chancellor at the end of 2026. She has been accused of bullying by an academic and former ANU council member who gave evidence to the Senate.

The ANU voluntarily requested an undertaking from the university quality and safety body, TEQSA, to appoint the next chancellor. The body raised concerns over the culture of the ANU council in late 2025.

The majority-independent panel who will choose the next chancellor will be chaired by Emeritus Prof Peter Coaldrake, a former chief commissioner of TEQSA and vice-chancellor of the Queensland University of Technology.

Google, Meta and TikTok face new levy to pay for Australian news as Albanese reveals media plan

Anthony Albanese has urged Google, Meta and TikTok to make deals with Australian media outlets to avoid a dedicated 2.25% levy on local revenues, warning digital giants should not be able to exploit the work of journalists to boost profits.

Releasing an exposure draft for the government’s news bargaining incentive (NBI) scheme on Tuesday, the prime minister said platforms who sign new deals with publishers to pay for news content would receive offsets of between 150% and 170% from the new levy.

Any revenue collected will be directed to support Australian journalism.

Read more from our full report here:

Former Canadian PM answers questions about global conflicts during Melbourne conference

Young women from around the world subjected Canada’s former prime minister and his chief of staff to questions about global conflict and compromising values for political expediency at a feminist development conference on Tuesday.

Justin Trudeau and Katie Telford appeared at the six-day Women Deliver 2026 conference in Melbourne as part of a lineup that also included UN deputy secretary general Amina Mohammed, Victorian premier Jacinta Allan, Australia’s governor general Sam Mostyn, New Zealand’s former prime minister Jacinda Ardern, and many more.

Guardian Australia attended this session – described as a “fireside chat” – expecting it to also include New Zealand’s former prime minister Helen Clark, and we were hoping for a robust discussion between the two erstwhile world leaders. Clark’s name, however, was removed from the event’s online listing in the last 24 hours. (We’ve enquired about what happened there.)

Bathed in pink light in the “youth zone” of what one participant described as “feminist Coachella”, Trudeau claimed his government’s “unequivocally pro-choice” position was driven largely by youth, but said in response to a question that mentioned Israel’s war in Gaza, that there was “usually no right answer” on issues in which “strong emotions” became involved:

If you’re trying to find a response that pulls as many people together as possible, you’re probably going to piss off everyone … Any time you get strong emotions involved, it becomes so much more difficult to govern. And that’s not a bad thing. I mean, there are things that really matter in the world that people need to get emotional about. But as a government, you sometimes, often, have to make compromises that seem extremely difficult for people to live with.

When asked if he had taken positions that didn’t align with his values, Trudeau said he was “fairly confident” he hadn’t “compromise[d] on positions of fundamental importance”, before describing the controversial crude oil pipeline project his government oversaw as doing a “massively good job of starting to bend the curve” towards environmental sustainability:

I was true to my principles, even though a lot of people are like, well, if you’re buying a pipeline, you’re burning down the planet and you’re betraying everything you live for.

Anthony Albanese confirmed growing speculation that his Japanese counterpart, Sanae Takaichi, will visit Australia next week.

In office since October, Takaichi will visit Canberra amid sensitivity about energy exports stemming from the Iran war and the closure of the strait of Hormuz.

Japan is one of the largest investors in and purchasers of Australian gas. Labor is under pressure to increase the tax paid by gas exporters but appears unlikely to use the 12 May federal budget to make changes.

Albanese said the visit will be Takaichi’s first official travel to Australia, coming in the 50th anniversary year since the signing of the Basic Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Australia and Japan.

The two prime ministers will hold the annual Australia-Japan Leaders’ Meeting in Canberra on Monday.

“Australia and Japan share strong strategic alignment. Our cooperation is essential to maintaining a peaceful, stable and prosperous region,” Albanese said.

Our enduring trade and investment ties underpin our relationship, creating jobs, providing opportunity and delivering economic growth to both our nations.

Victorian government makes new funding announcements

The Victorian government is continuing its pre-budget blitz, with the deputy premier, Ben Carroll, and the minister for transport infrastructure, Gabrielle Williams, both out today to make funding announcements.

Williams announced $100m for more bus services. This includes expanded bus hours and weekend services across the network, two new routes in Melton South, another connecting Drysdale and Ocean Grove, and better access to universities, including La Trobe, Monash and RMIT’s Bundoora campus.

She said the annoucement completed the Labor government’s decision to extend free public transport until the end of May and then halve fees until the end of 2026:

More buses north, south, east and west – and it’ll be half-price to ride for the rest of the year. With Donald Trump’s war driving up costs at home, more bus services help Victorians save money and time.

Carroll, meanwhile, used International Workers Memorial Day to announce a $13.7m workplace safety package. This package includes funding for 20 extra WorkSafe inspectors, the establishment of a new “health care and social assistance compliance and enforcement” division and a three-year pilot program to support families grieving a loved one killed at work.

He announced that the state government, the City of Melbourne and Victorian Trades Hall Council would jointly build a permanent memorial sculpture in Melbourne to remember those killed at work.