source : the age
A crestfallen Chris Minns told NSW parliament this morning that Sydney bushwalker Lily Hooper’s body had been found, just minutes after he told the house she’d been found alive.
“I’ve got some terrible news, and I apologise to the committee. But it seems as if the early advice was wrong, and Lily’s body’s been found, and she’s been found deceased,” Minns said.
“This is obviously devastating, and I’m just profoundly sad for a family and for all those concerned. I apologise to the community.”
Hooper was last seen leaving her home in Oakdale, south-west of Sydney, at 8am on Wednesday last week to go on a hike through Nattai National Park in the Southern Highlands.
Humanoid robots will reach “mass market” popularity within a decade, after manufacturers solve problems that hold back their current usefulness, the founder of China’s Unitree Robotics said.
The market will take off once robots can handle 80 per cent of tasks given to them via voice instructions in unfamiliar surroundings, Wang Xingxing said in a speech at the World Robot Conference in Beijing on Thursday. That will take two to 10 years, he said.
Robots already perform well in test conditions, but their execution collapses once objects or surroundings shift even slightly, Wang said. That means robots still lag human workers and suffer from weak versatility in terms of the tasks they can handle, he said.
Shares of Unitree soared this week in their Shanghai trading debut, which made the firm the first listed humanoid robot maker in mainland China.
Good morning, thanks for joining us as we bring you all the latest news today. Here’s what’s been happening:
- Foreign Minister Penny Wong has summoned the Israeli ambassador to Canberra after Israel cleared its military of criminal wrongdoing in the killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom in Gaza in 2024. The ambassador, Hillel Newman, said both the IDF and Franckom’s convoy made mistakes leading up to the incident.
- Missing hiker Lily Hooper has been found dead after eight days lost in the NSW Southern Highlands, after her family were initially told searchers had found her alive.
- In Victoria, Premier Ben Carroll has announced the royal commission into the state’s construction sector will be overseen by the former chief justice of South Australia. Carroll has also promised to introduce new anti-corruption laws to parliament next month.
- Toothpaste retailer Colgate has dropped Swans star Isaac Heeney from its lucrative sponsorship deal as the footballer was revealed as the focus of Victoria Police’s investigation into an alleged sexual assault at an East Melbourne hotel room on Monday morning.
The nation’s jobless rate has unexpectedly increased to 4.5 per cent after a fall in the number of people in work.
In a development that will put pressure on the Reserve Bank to drop thoughts of further interest rate rises, the Australian Bureau of Statistics this morning reported that almost 16,000 jobs disappeared in July.
There was also a 4200 increase in the number of people officially out of work. Together, it pushed up the unemployment rate by 0.1 percentage points to its highest level since April.
The rate of employment growth, a key concern for the Reserve Bank, slowed sharply, from 1.7 per cent in the year to June to 1.3 per cent.
Israeli ambassador Hillel Newman is speaking outside Parliament House in Canberra following his meeting with Foreign Minister Penny Wong.
Wong called the ambassador for a meeting after Israel cleared its military of criminal wrongdoing in the killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom in Gaza in 2024.
Newman said the Israeli court found the soldiers were not criminally liable for the killing of Frankcom and six other aid workers. He claimed there were armed military personnel travelling with the aid convoy at the time, and that the IDF had not been notified of this.
“After two years of investigation, they came to the understanding that there’s no criminal liability of the soldiers involved … Criminal liability, you know, even if there are failures in the process, it doesn’t mean that the person had intention or that there’s any criminal responsibility for the action,” he told reporters moments ago.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner has told the royal commission that “racism is killing our people”, warning the confronting trend will continue without a broad cultural change that prioritises respect and recognition for Indigenous Australians.
Commissioner Katie Kiss called for greater access to information and education so Australians can understand the origins of racism against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and how it impacts First Nations people. This included programs in school and early childcare settings, which teach about inclusion for all cultures.
“In our communities, racism is killing our people,” Kiss said. “A lot of the impact of suicide on our people [is through] the racism that they’re exposed to. So unless we’re addressing that from the education system very early on, we’re not going to change the values, we’re not going to change the understanding, we’re not going to change the engagement.”
Kiss also told the commission of a “tendency” to erase some experiences of racism, saying that incidents of First Nations racism are often placed “in the corner” of multiculturalism debates in Australia.
Wholesale mortgage broker AFG has provided the latest confirmation of the slowing home loan market, saying its mortgage lodgements have fallen 16 per cent since the start of July.
AFG, which says its broking network arranges one in nine home loans in Australia, said on Thursday the market had softened recently, with investor loans slowing most.
The group said lodgements of investor loans had fallen 18 per cent since the start of July and owner-occupier loans were 14 per cent lower.
“Residential lodgements have softened since June as borrowers respond to changing tax policy settings, interest rate expectations, and household cost pressures,” chief executive David Bailey said.
The Australian race discrimination commissioner has said racism is often rooted in a systemic issue, warning the antisemitism royal commission that anti-racism efforts must begin at the source of the prejudice to prevent a “whack-a-mole” response.
Giridharan Sivaraman pushed for reforms addressing the source of racism, finding that antisocial behaviour would “continue to manifest” if issues are addressed only when an incident occurs.
He said a workplace, for example, could only work to eradicate racist behaviour once its organisation and support structures were honed, telling the commission that simply dealing with incidents of racism as they occur wouldn’t stop similar incidents in the future.
“There are systemic problems that lead to the manifestation of racism. If you don’t fix the systemic problem, the racism will continue to manifest,” Sivaraman told the commission.
“How it manifests and how it impacts on people is always going to vary depending on the community and the person. But if you keep trying to attack it at that point where it manifests you’re [playing] whack-a-mole rather than actually trying to do the hard work of the systemic change.”
Israeli ambassador Hillel Newman has arrived at Parliament House and is meeting with Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong.
Wong is demanding an explanation after Israel’s defence force cleared itself in the killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and six of her World Kitchen colleagues.
Wong will hold a press conference later this afternoon.
