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Thanks for joining our live coverage of national news this Wednesday, September 23.
Here’s what’s we covered today:
- The big news: The Coalition pledged to remove nearly every part of Labor’s energy and climate policy within 30 days if it wins the next election. Spokesman Dan Tehan told a Sydney forum the nation has made energy “unnecessarily green, complicated and expensive. We need to get back to basics”.
- One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce angrily denied holding a meeting with prominent neo-Nazis in Canberra earlier this month, after news outlet Crikey sent him an email alleging he spent two hours talking with the extremists at the local casino one evening.
- South Australia announced a $1 million reward for any information related to the disappearance of Gus Lamont. “Our heartache only grows as time passes, and an entire year without any answers is upon us,” said the missing four-year-old’s mother in a statement this morning.
- The AFP arrested a 65-year-old Melbourne man over allegations he pledged allegiance to Islamic State and distributed material about how to plan mass-casualty attacks.
- And Australian rock legend Angry Anderson has died aged 79, the news announced by his bandmates in Rose Tattoo this afternoon.
Two teal MPs who beat Coalition members on a platform of climate action in 2022 have slammed the opposition’s proposal to immediately do away with most of the government’s energy and emissions plan if elected in 2028.
“We need to take a chainsaw to Labor’s green, ideologically driven approach to energy. We need to start using all our own natural resources,” Coalition spokesperson Dan Tehan said in announcing the proposed changes today.
Wentworth MP Allegra Spender said industry was not excited about the policy at the forum where Tehan made the announcement.
“At the Energy Nation Forum today, industry was clear: they need certainty and settings that last. They didn’t welcome this. Industry doesn’t want a reopening of the climate wars. Tearing up your own policies creates exactly the uncertainty that pushes up the cost of investment, and with it, power bills,” she told this masthead.
Sweeping changes to parental leave and childcare funding are vital for encouraging the next generation to have children, an advocate says.
The Parenthood chief executive Georgie Dent used a speech at the National Press Club on Wednesday to campaign for more equitable parental leave legislation as the country’s birth rate falls, which would bring Australia in line with other OECD countries.
An increase in non-transferable leave for fathers, which would disappear if the dad did not use it, was a vital step as it would take the care load off mothers and help balance the gender pay gap, Dent said.
Many dads wanted to take leave but felt either they could not afford it or would fall behind in their careers, she said.
The Senate leader of the National Party, Bridget McKenzie, says any discussion of a political union between the Coalition and One Nation is premature.
It comes after her former colleague Barnaby Joyce, now a One Nation MP, claimed yesterday he had been in discussions with Coalition MPs about an arrangement after the next election.
“Our political history is littered with individuals who have measured up the curtains to The Lodge, only to never actually take up residence,” McKenzie told ABC News.
“I’m not going to get ahead of ourselves, the next election is 18 months away.”
Gary “Angry” Anderson, the singer of seminal Australian pub rockers Rose Tattoo, died on Monday aged 79.
The band announced his passing on social media earlier this afternoon, saying he was “surrounded by his loved ones here in Australia”.
“Angry was a devoted father, and much-loved member of his friends, bandmates and the wider music and entertainment community. His loss will be deeply felt by all those who knew and loved him both here in Australia and overseas,” they said.
The sad news came just six weeks after the band cancelled a European tour after Anderson suffered a cardiac arrest.
Known for their slide guitar-infused rock and roll, troublemaker lyrics and Anderson’s trademark snarl, Rose Tattoo found an adoring audience within and beyond Australia. Guns ’N Roses guitarist Slash once asked Anderson to perform on stage with him.
Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino has joined his prime minister in saying US tech companies won’t be exempt from the Digital Duty of Care bill, and that he didn’t expect them to retaliate with punitive tariffs.
Anthony Albanese defended the legislation after the US government raised serious concerns and arguing the attempt to tackle social media harm was likely to result in censorship and would disproportionately hit American companies.
Speaking on the ABC today, Mulino was asked if he would consider removing American social media platforms from the legislation to blunt the US’s concerns.
“That’s not the plan,” Mulino said. “We are adopting a non-discriminatory approach. We want to protect people, and we make no apologies for the fact we want people to have a choice [about algorithms].”
Mulino said the government had already implemented non-discriminatory policies around the under-16s social media ban and News Media Bargaining Incentive and continued to work constructively with concerned stakeholders on those.
He also rejected concerns that the reforms would affect foreign investment in data centres. “I don’t see that.”
Update 5pm: NAB now says most of its services have been restored.
“Some business banking customers may still experience login issues with NAB Connect, and we’re working as quickly as possible to resolve the remaining impacts. We apologise for the disruption – thank you for your patience and understanding,” said the bank on social media.
Earlier: National Australia Bank has confirmed several of its digital services are currently unavailable to customers as an unexpected outage continues.
Thousands of customers have been reporting problems since 1.30pm today.
Hurricane Polo, which has grown into one of the most powerful Pacific cyclones in decades, is expected to skirt Mexico’s south-western coast as a Category 5 storm.
Polo was an “extremely dangerous” storm with maximum sustained winds of 265km/h, the Miami-based National Hurricane Centre said today.
Polo was centred 338 kilometres south of Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and was nearly stationary over the Pacific Ocean.
The hurricane centre said Polo was expected to start a slow but sharp turn north-west during the night and then travel in a generally west-north-westward direction over the next several days.
The leader of One Nation has reacted to the news that an accused member of Islamic State has been arrested in Melbourne.
Earlier today, federal police confirmed the 65-year-old was apprehended over allegations he instructed people how to plan and conduct mass-casualty attacks.
Pauline Hanson called this evidence of “radical Islamic terror … festering in Australia”.
Hanson made an unsubstantiated claim in her statement that the accused was born in Somalia, and also claimed Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has “allowed alleged IS members back into Australia while secretly facilitating the return of more alleged ISIS fighters”.
“The home affairs minister needs to front the Australian public and start telling them the truth,” she said. “The government is soft on terror.”
Responding to the arrest, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland said there was no place in Australia for “any kind of extremism, racially or religiously motivated prejudice or hate”.
President Donald Trump said US officials had “very good” talks with Iranian envoys in New York, reviving fragile hopes for a new diplomatic off-ramp hours after he again threatened to annihilate the country.
Steve Witkoff, a Trump envoy, said the talks were conducted with the Iranians through mediators shuttling between each delegation.
Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, participated on behalf of the US. They had led negotiations with Iran that preceded the US and Israeli military campaign that began in late February and has roiled the Middle East, as well as global energy markets.
Trump said the three-hour session – held on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly gathering – was “very productive” and another was being planned for the near future. Iran has yet to comment on the meeting or say who attended.
The new Coalition policy to dismantle net zero emissions is music to the ears of at least one MP.
Andrew Wallace, the member for Fisher in Queensland, appeared on News24 after his colleague Dan Tehan revealed the plan earlier today.
“We’re back baby,” is how he viewed the plan to scrap net zero targets, lift prohibitions on nuclear energy and remove an existing carbon-emissions policy for vehicles.
Wallace said the Coalition’s new education policy, announced at the weekend and with a focus on pride in the Australian flag and western culture, was further evidence of the Coalition’s return as a political force.
