Source : the age
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of national news for Monday, October 12. Here’s what is making headlines today.
- Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s preferred prime minister rating rose by three percentage points to 32 per cent and Labor’s primary vote is up one point, this month’s Resolve Political Monitor has found. Voter support for One Nation fell from its high point in June, with the party’s primary vote down by 2 percentage points in the past month.
- Labor’s Digital Duty of Care laws will be introduced to parliament this week, and will require platforms such as Meta and X to exclude harmful content for under-18s including pornography, content that promotes eating disorders, and sites promoting hostility to women.
- The Greens are proposing changes to the bill that would allow individuals to sue big tech companies for compensation if they believed they were harmed online.
- During an interview with 60 Minutes last night, former treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the Liberal Party faced an “existential threat”, and that leader Angus Taylor needed to “do better”. The remarks come amid renewed speculation Frydenberg could be making a return to politics. Senior Coalition figures, including Taylor, have said they would welcome him back.
- And Pope Leo will be undergoing surgery this week to remove a small growth in his lung in the first health scare of the 71-year-old’s tenure. The Vatican did not say whether the nodule was believed to be malignant.
Warsaw: Polish police have detained a man suspected of planning an attack on Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, the Interior Minister said.
Marcin Kierwinski told state news channel TVP Info that police had detained a man in his 60s in the Lower Silesia region of southern Poland.
“Security services tracked him down through a detailed analysis of content posted online,” Kierwinski said.
Tusk and Kosiniak-Kamysz thanked the police for their “swift and decisive” response in posts on X.
Reuters
Greens leader David Shoebridge says Australians should be able to seek compensation for online harms as Labor’s Digital Duty of Care goes to parliament this week.
The party is pushing for changes to the bill that would allow individuals to sue big tech companies for compensation if they believe they are harmed online.
“There are a number of other key elements that I think all of us realise would be good in a digital duty of care. I mean, one of the key things is making sure that Australians, if they’ve been subject to serious harm as a result of one of these platforms, that they actually have a remedy that they can sue them and get the material taken down and seek appropriate compensation,” he told ABC TV this afternoon.
“Having rights without remedies doesn’t really answer the call that we’re hearing from across the country.”
The Australian sharemarket has started the week in positive territory, with mining stocks driving the local bourse higher, while oil prices advanced after Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia raised the risk of a widening Middle East conflict.
The S&P/ASX 200 was up 26.1 points, or 0.3 per cent, in early trade to 8742.7. The Australian dollar was trading at US69.78¢.
Mining stocks are stronger in early trade on the back of rising commodities’ prices. BHP added 2.3 per cent, Fortescue 1.6 per cent and Rio Tinto 0.9 per cent. Gold stocks also advanced, with Northern Star up 1.3 per cent and Evolution Mining 0.2 per cent higher.
Read the full markets wrap here.
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce has condemned the Trump administration’s plan to livestream an execution by military firing squad, labelling it “Roman amphitheatre stuff”.
“No … I don’t agree with that,” he told News24 this morning.
“I certainly don’t want any children or anybody, to be honest, to witness another human being being shot by a firing squad. No, don’t want that.”
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said he would ensure the public could watch a stream of the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring dozens more in a shooting at the Fort Hood military base in 2009.
Independent senator Jacqui Lambie has accused the government of “financial coercion” in its ongoing fight with former senator Rex Patrick over access to FOI documents about the AUKUS agreement.
The government is pushing for Patrick to cover the Commonwealth’s legal fees if he fails in his bid to access the documents. He would be forced to pay $150,000 to cover the costs.
Lambie warned today that it would set a dangerous precedent. She is proposing a bill that would force the government to meet a “citizen’s reasonable legal costs if it appeals a citizen’s FoI win to the federal court from either the information commissioner or the administrative review tribunal”.
“Australians know the term ‘coercive control’ – what the federal Labor government is doing is financial coercion,” the Tasmanian senator said.
A flash flood has caused significant damage in the Gorhka District in Nepal just six weeks after a catastrophic glacial collapse and debris avalanche triggered massive flash floods that devastated the Nepal-Tibet border.
The second flash flood struck when a river blocked by a landslide burst through and destroyed more than 35 homes and six bridges. At least 10 people are missing, and hundreds more have been affected, according to CARE Nepal.
Thousands remain unaccounted for after the August flash floods as Nepal moves from search and rescue efforts to the rehabilitation phase.
Authorities have said they require $5 billion for early recovery and rehabilitation.
Phanindra Paudel, chief of the National Emergency Operation Centre, told Reuters last week that authorities were considering how to legally declare the missing persons dead to allow families or relatives to move forward with formalities.
with Reuters
Geneva: At least 139 people, including children, have died after a boat carrying more than 300 migrants capsized off the coast of Djibouti in east Africa, the International Organisation for Migration said.
That number only includes those buried by authorities in Djibouti. Others have been buried by the migrants themselves, but they won’t be added to the official count until authorities can verify the bodies, Alexandre Coissac, IOM chief of mission in Djibouti, said on Sunday.
“What is terrible is that they were buried with no names, in a common grave, like in a war situation,” Coissac said. “They all have a mother, a father, and we may never learn what happened.”
Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson says Australia should not be promoting violence, but will have trouble blocking the livestreaming of a US execution from being streamed in Australia.
“My basic principle is we shouldn’t be promoting that sort of violence, and so my fundamental view is yes, I think it’s enormously problematic to tolerate this type of behaviour,” he told ABC Radio National earlier when asked whether the government should block it.
“But the challenge is going to be how do you do that in a way that doesn’t amount to a censorship ban on the internet? How are you going to do that without creating the artifice to be able to block content on the internet and create an online portal of censorship?”
The execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring dozens more in a shooting at the Fort Hood military base in 2009, will be the first by military firing squad since World War II. The execution was approved by US President Donald Trump last week on the recommendation of Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth who originally said it would be a public event.
London: British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit vote, and he warned voters in France and Germany about Moscow-backed efforts to influence their politics.
Burnham, who took over as leader in July and said last month the UK could consider rejoining the European Union in the future, is the first British prime minister to openly say there was evidence of Russian interference in the referendum a decade ago.
“I asked the question coming to Downing Street, was there interference in the 2016 referendum from Russia? And I’ve had the clear answer that yes, there was,” Burnham said in an interview with The Rest Is Politics podcast released overnight.
Burnham did not spell out how he believed that Russia interfered in the referendum and gave no details on what evidence this statement was based.
Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson says he would welcome Josh Frydenberg back to politics, after the former member for Kooyong hinted again on 60 Minutes last night that he could make a comeback.
“I think it’s always good to have candidates who want to step up and run and make sure we pick up seats so that Angus Taylor can be prime minister of this country,” Wilson told ABC Radio National.
“What we need is people who’ve got courage in their hearts and [are] prepared to make the sacrifices necessary for public office. So I have no issue with people putting themselves forward. I encourage them to do so, so they can be part of a winning team.”
During the interview last night, Frydenberg, a former treasurer, said the Liberal Party faced an “existential threat”, and Opposition Leader Angus Taylor needed to “do better”.
