source : the age
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of national news for Tuesday, September 8. Here’s what is making news today.
- Labor’s changes to rules about social media algorithms and attempt to rein in big tech will go before the Senate today. The government’s Digital Duty of Care bill is designed to force platforms to prevent harm. The bill is expected to include an opt-out model for algorithms which will allow users more control over their feeds.
- One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce’s latest interview on ABC’s 7.30 program devolved into chaos when he shouted that he was One Nation’s treasury spokesman – “not Jesus Christ” – when under pressure to explain the superannuation policy his party revealed yesterday. The policy proposes to allow renters and mortgage holders access to a quarter of their future superannuation contributions over the next three years. Joyce announced the proposal alongside party leader Pauline Hanson in Canberra yesterday, but dismissed suggestions it would raise inflation and discourage pay rises.
- There are 36 Australians still unaccounted for in Nepal and Tibet after flash flooding battered the Nepal-Tibet border nearly two weeks ago. Australian personnel remain on the ground assisting with ongoing search and rescue operations.
- And Australian emergency services are bracing for a fire season supercharged not only by the intensifying “supersized” El Nino, but by the increasing threat of “flash droughts” which act “like hot hair dryers”, blasting moisture out of soil and scrub faster than the creeping droughts that have long been part of Australian life.
A Liberal MP has thrown her support behind a return to “2007 Facebook”, playing down talk of fractures in the Coalition over the government’s plans to force big tech companies to take more responsibility for what users are shown.
Flinders MP Zoe McKenzie told Nine’s Today program that alleged fractures within the Coalition were “being blown up by the media”.
She said the Coalition had actually “led on most of this reform” but would not go as far as saying she supported the government’s plan.
“It depends on what they put forward today, I’m happy to look at opt-out and opt-in,” she said.
Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino has launched a strong defence of Australia’s superannuation system as he labelled One Nation’s super proposal “dangerous”.
“Superannuation is one of the best retirement income systems in the world, and Australians should rightly be proud of it,” he told ABC’s News Breakfast earlier today.
“It took us decades to get to [a] 12 per cent superannuation guarantee, and that’s a level that is going to provide people with a high level of dignity and security in retirement. To unwind that is dangerous and undermines the whole superannuation system. What we’ve suggested over recent years is that the far better approach is to support people getting pay rises.”
Mulino said One Nation had consistently proven it did not care about improving outcomes for Australian workers.
“One Nation and the opposition routinely vote against those pay rises … To do what the One Nation party is suggesting, we’ll see somebody who’s 30 years old, $25,000 worse off at retirement, and a couple, around $50,000 worse off. It’s really saying to people that they should steal from their future to pay for the current. We would rather do that through sustained wage increases and tax cuts.”
Nationals leader Matt Canavan has accused the government of using its social media bill to deflect focus away from its broken budget promises.
“I just don’t think the government’s got clean hands here … Perhaps the reason voters aren’t trusting you is because your government lied to them last year and told them they wouldn’t increase taxes on capital gains on trusts or negative gearing,” Canavan told News24.
“Perhaps that’s at the core of why there’s been a lack of trust, and so the government’s attempts here to deflect from their own failings and their own trust issues calls into question whether or not this really is a good faith effort to deal with toxic material online.”
Canavan claimed Labor’s bill was the party’s attempt to “tilt political discussion in favour of themselves” by censoring “conservative” content.
An Australian father is demanding answers as the search for his wife, who vanished in flash floods along the Nepal-Tibet border, nears its second week.
Newcastle father-of-two Bhavin Patel has tirelessly searched Nepal’s disaster zone for his missing wife, Reshma.
He has chartered a helicopter, tracked his wife’s phone signal and pleaded with governments of three countries for help, and is yet to find any trace.
“She is my life,” the father-of-two told AAP.
Berlin: Chancellor Friedrich Merz ruled out working with the Alternative for Germany after the far-right party surged into first place in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, but he conceded the result had shaken his party “to its very foundations”.
The AfD is appealing to MPs from Merz’s conservatives to form government supporting its bid to rule the eastern state, in what would be the first time a far-right party takes power at state level in postwar Germany.
The anti-immigrant, pro-Russia AfD won nearly 44 per cent of the vote, an outcome that underlined the deep unpopularity of Merz’s ruling coalition and also triggered alarm among Germany’s neighbours, France and Poland, and elsewhere.
However, the party – which wants to deport immigrants, halt support for Ukraine and restore ties with Moscow – fell short of an absolute majority in the state legislature, winning 39 of the 83 seats, and hopes to poach individual conservative MPs.
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of national news for Tuesday, September 8. Here’s what is making news today.
- Labor’s changes to rules about social media algorithms and attempt to rein in big tech will go before the Senate today. The government’s Digital Duty of Care bill is designed to force platforms to prevent harm. The bill is expected to include an opt-out model for algorithms which will allow users more control over their feeds.
- One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce’s latest interview on ABC’s 7.30 program devolved into chaos when he shouted that he was One Nation’s treasury spokesman – “not Jesus Christ” – when under pressure to explain the superannuation policy his party revealed yesterday. The policy proposes to allow renters and mortgage holders access to a quarter of their future superannuation contributions over the next three years. Joyce announced the proposal alongside party leader Pauline Hanson in Canberra yesterday, but dismissed suggestions it would raise inflation and discourage pay rises.
- There are 36 Australians still unaccounted for in Nepal and Tibet after flash flooding battered the Nepal-Tibet border nearly two weeks ago. Australian personnel remain on the ground assisting with ongoing search and rescue operations.
- And Australian emergency services are bracing for a fire season supercharged not only by the intensifying “supersized” El Nino, but by the increasing threat of “flash droughts” which act “like hot hair dryers”, blasting moisture out of soil and scrub faster than the creeping droughts that have long been part of Australian life.
