source : the age
Hello and welcome to our national news live blog for Friday, June 5. 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.
- The first tranche of the government’s budget tax legislation passed the lower-house yesterday unamended. The package combines into one bill the $250 income tax offset and $1000 instant deduction for workers, as well as curbs on negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions. The legislation will now progress to the Senate, where Labor is in minority and reliant on either the Coalition or the Greens to pass the reforms.
- A US plan to hit 60 countries, including Australia, with new tariffs has been widely condemned by the government and opposition. Trump’s plan would subject Australian goods to a 12.5 per cent levy – a 2.5 per cent increase on the 10 per cent tariff currently in force. Trump claims the tariffs are a response to anti-slavery violations.
- ABC Radio Melbourne’s Drive host Charlie Pickering said he “should have known better” after telling far-right agitator Avi Yemini that the broadcaster’s four-part podcast series featuring Grace Tame was “problematic”.
- There are no signs a new ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon will hold. Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah has rejected a peace agreement with Israel and demanded a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Israel said it would not withdraw troops from the country. With Iran making a ceasefire in Lebanon a condition for any peace deal with the US, the prospect of an end to the war still seems unlikely.
Health Minister Mark Butler has defended the government’s plan to allow permanent residents to access its first home buyer scheme amid threats from the Coalition that it would strip access for residents who were not Australian citizens if it were elected.
“Permanent residents … Are building careers, they’re building businesses, they’re having children, and we want them to enjoy the full Australian dream, which includes getting into housing.
“Some in my electorate have been here literally for decades, British, Italian migrants, recently people from India and China, so they are here for life. Of course, we’d love them as soon as possible to go out and take the citizenship test and go to the ceremony as well. But they are here for life, and we want them to enjoy the full Australian dream,” Butler told Seven’s Sunrise today.
He also took aim at a policy slated by the opposition that would seek to strip migrants, including permanent residents, of access to welfare programs.
Independent MP Dai Le lashed out at the president of the ALP, Wayne Swan, this morning, saying the government’s tax reforms should have been debated in parliament before the legislation was pushed through.
The MP for Fowler said the reforms did nothing to address housing supply, especially in densely populated suburbs in her electorate such as Liverpool and Fairfield.
“This reform does not actually build a single new house, and we know that you have, you will not, address the cost of the supply, the cost of building a house,” she said on a panel with Swan on the Today show.
Le said the government should have instead considered removing GST applied to the purchase of new homes to bring down the cost of buying a house.
The Iran-backed Hezbollah militia rejected a new ceasefire in Lebanon and demanded Israel withdraw troops from the country which Israel refused, undermining US President Donald Trump’s efforts to halt fighting there to forge peace with Tehran.
Iran has made a ceasefire in Lebanon a condition for any peace deal with Washington, and has suggested in recent days that it could intervene directly if Israel keeps up attacks there.
However, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem rejected a US-brokered agreement between Israel and the Lebanese government to halt the fighting. Hezbollah had not been party to the negotiations. There was no immediate response from Israel, Lebanon or the US.
Israel kept up strikes in southern Lebanon, and Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israeli forces would not be withdrawing from the area or halting operations in the country, which they invaded in March in parallel with the war in Iran. The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Force – which established Hezbollah in 1982 – said Israel must at a minimum withdraw to positions it held before the war began.
Reuters
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce was caught short on Sky News last night when Andrew Bolt pressed him for details of the party’s call to outlaw foreign ownership of housing in Australia.
Party leader Pauline Hanson has said since at least November 2024 that foreign owners should be given two years to sell up their properties, and “If the property is not sold, it should be repossessed by the federal government”.
Bolt asked Joyce twice if this meant that permanent residents would also have to sell their homes.
The former Nationals leader said yes.
Hello and welcome to our national news live blog for Friday, June 5. 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.
- The first tranche of the government’s budget tax legislation passed the lower-house yesterday unamended. The package combines into one bill the $250 income tax offset and $1000 instant deduction for workers, as well as curbs on negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions. The legislation will now progress to the Senate, where Labor is in minority and reliant on either the Coalition or the Greens to pass the reforms.
- A US plan to hit 60 countries, including Australia, with new tariffs has been widely condemned by the government and opposition. Trump’s plan would subject Australian goods to a 12.5 per cent levy – a 2.5 per cent increase on the 10 per cent tariff currently in force. Trump claims the tariffs are a response to anti-slavery violations.
- ABC Radio Melbourne’s Drive host Charlie Pickering said he “should have known better” after telling far-right agitator Avi Yemini that the broadcaster’s four-part podcast series featuring Grace Tame was “problematic”.
- There are no signs a new ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon will hold. Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah has rejected a peace agreement with Israel and demanded a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Israel said it would not withdraw troops from the country. With Iran making a ceasefire in Lebanon a condition for any peace deal with the US, the prospect of an end to the war still seems unlikely.
