Australia news live: delays up to 70 minutes on Sydney trains as industrial action begins; Hume says Coalition would cut ‘bloated bureaucracy’

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Japanese encephalitis virus detected in Victoria’s north

The early warning mosquito surveillance program in Victoria has identified Japanese encephalitis virus in two traps in Moira Shire.

The is the first mosquito-borne disease detections this season, with holiday makers and residents in the state’s north urged to remain vigilant against mosquitoes.

This also follows similar recent detections in NSW and a confirmed human case of Japanese encephalitis identified in Victoria in December.

The state’s chief health officer, Tarun Weeramanthri, said the findings confirmed the virus was circulating in northern Victoria:

Japanese encephalitis virus can cause a rare but potentially serious infection of the brain and is spread to humans through bites from infected mosquitoes.

If you’re visiting northern Victoria, particularly inland riverine regions and near the Murray River, you’re potentially at higher risk of infection.

It’s important to take steps to prevent mosquito bites so cover up, use repellent and limit your time outdoors when mosquitoes are about.

Photos from Dee Why, Manly beaches amid ball-shaped debris washing ashore

Yesterday, nine of Sydney’s northern beaches were closed after ball-shaped debris washed ashore:

We’ve contacted Northern Beaches Council for an update, and will bring you the latest as soon as we can. In the meantime, here are some photos from Dee Why and Manly beaches this morning:

Consumer spending plunge brightens hopes of rate cut

Australians pulled back sharply on buying household goods after bringing forward spending during Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, AAP reports.

Consumer spending fell 1.8% in December after a rise in November, with financially stretched households adapting purchasing habits to prioritise sales periods, the Commonwealth Bank has found.

The bank’s household spending insights index recorded a 7.7% drop in discretionary spending, reinforcing the view that Australian consumers are continuing to struggle.

Shoppers clearly brought forward holiday spending to take advantage of sales activities, said the CBA chief economist, Stephen Halmarick.

The bank’s index gleans spending insights from the de-identified payments data of about seven million retail customers. Rises in essential categories such as utilities, insurance and transport were outweighed by a steep drop in spending on household goods, which plunged 8.3%.

Combined with falling inflation, the pullback in spending bolstered CBA’s view that the Reserve Bank of Australia will cut interest rates at its next meeting in February, Halmarick said.

It’s no longer an outlier opinion among the big four banks. ANZ recently brought forward its rate cut prediction to February on the back of lower-than-expected inflation figures for November.

Impacts of industrial action felt along Central Coast

Passengers on the morning commute from the Central Coast down into Sydney are starting to feel the effects of today’s industrial action.

Commuters and holidaymakers boarded the 7.27am from Woy Woy to Central against a background of prerecorded announcements of protected industrial action.

Things initially looked good, proceeding smoothly alongside the Hawkesbury until the train reached the outskirts of Sydney and ground to a halt, between stations, with no further in-train announcements on our likely progress.

Due in at 8.41, it arrived about 20 minutes late.

The afternoon rush back north in the 30C heat could be interesting.

Rail union says disruptions would be limited through week while it mulls pay offer

While NSW rail union officials indicated they were unimpressed with the proposed wage increase from the government, they said disruption to services would be limited throughout the week while they mulled it over.

As AAP reports, the Rail, Tram and Bus Union state secretary, Toby Warnes, told ABC Radio:

The current wages offer … does seem a little light-on … We’re a little bit perturbed by the fact that the government only managed to find 1% in savings from it, and that those one per cent only came from job losses.

So that’s obviously something we’re not extremely happy about. I don’t think 13% over four years is going to cut it.

The Sydney Trains chief, Matt Longland, said he respected the rights of workers to take action but said those not completing full tasks from Wednesday onwards would be docked pay.

For staff that are coming to work, we expect them to undertake their normal duties, or they won’t be coming to work and they won’t be paid.

Delays up to 70 minutes on Sydney trains as industrial action begins

It’s chaos on Sydney’s public transport network this morning as industrial action takes effect.

Some commuters are sharing long lists of cancelled peak-hour services on social media platforms. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that as of 7.30am 164 services have been cancelled.

A quick scan of some routes on the TripView app shows that some of the remaining services are running more than 70 minutes late.

The cancellation of services on the train network is having knock-on effects to other services, putting pressure on bus routes and crowding out those that are still running.

We’ve reached out to Transport NSW for more updates and will bring those to you as soon as we have them.

Reconstruction Fund makes largest investment yet for rare earth mine

The Reconstruction Fund Corporation says it has made its largest investment to date, with a $200m injection for a rare earth mine.

The funds will go towards Arafura to fund the development of the “Nolans Project” – located 135km north of Alice Springs.

The project is expected to produce around 4% of the world’s neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) demand from 2032, the NRFC said, and create more than 600 jobs during the construction phase and more than 350 jobs during operations.

The project includes the construction of a mine, processing plant and related infrastructure that “will produce 4,440 tonnes of NdPr oxide per annum over its proposed 38-year lifespan”. A statement said:

These minerals are crucial to the global transition to net zero as they are key inputs for the industrial magnets used in the manufacturing of electric vehicles and wind turbines.

Bushfires burn out at Grampians, but visitor numbers go up in smoke

The danger of December’s devastating Grampians bushfires has peaked, AAP reports, but tourism operators are still struggling after a wave of cancellations.

The blaze in western Victoria was contained earlier in January after scorching 76,000 hectares of land over three weeks and halting tourism in the region over its busiest period.

Parts of the national park have reopened but Halls Gap, the gateway to the Grampians, remains eerily quiet under the haze of remnant smoke. Halls Gap zoo’s manager, Mark Treweek, told AAP “it’s still ghost town-ish”:

There are people that are coming to support every business they can, which is amazing... but yeah, she’s very, very quiet.

Treweek spent the Christmas break ferrying animals to safety before returning them to the zoo when conditions eased. He said fires had taken a huge toll on locals.

I’d say we’re all a bit tired, to be honest. It’s been a long time. We’re all a bit stressed.

Cancelled bookings spanned into late January, over a period when accommodation, tours and other activities would normally be fully booked. Without support for businesses, operators were relying on punters to stay afloat, Treweek said.

Hume says reports Coalition pre-selected small number of women ‘a bit of nonsense’ and quibbles with definitions

Wrapping up the wide-ranging interview, Jane Hume was asked if she is disappointed by reports the Coalition pre-selected only one woman to replace its retiring members?

She described the reports as “a bit of nonsense” and said she had been “campaigning around the country now for a long time”.

So, are the numbers wrong? Hume answered:

Well, retiring members aren’t the only safe seats. In fact, there’s no such thing as a safe seat anymore. Back in 2022 at that election, there were only 15 seats out of 151 around the country that were decided on first preference. So there’s no safe seats.

But of the seats that we are trying to win, and there are plenty of them, there are some extraordinary women that are running for those seats, with incredible professional backgrounds, such a diverse range of women, and I’m looking forward to campaigning with all of them. But not only campaigning with them, having them in the party room. They will be an extraordinary presence, a real force.

Hume defends Coalition nuclear plan amid promise of smaller government and less spending

On ABC RN, Jane Hume was asked how the Coalition’s promise of smaller government and less spending fits with its nuclear policy. It was put to her that the policy relies on taxpayers effectively bankrolling nuclear plants, as the private sector would not.

She argued one of the things driving inflation higher is energy prices and it’s “not just households [that are] feeling the pain, but businesses too, and it’s making the goods and services that they then produce more expensive”.

Hume said the Coalition wants to see a reduction in energy prices “over the long term” with would involve a mix in the energy system, including renewables and gas – also touting the Coalition’s plan to turn retiring coal plants into nuclear sites.

Critics like Climate 200’s Simon Holmes à Court have their doubts.

Hume questioned on public sector spending, use of external contractors

Jane Hume was asked about the prime minister’s defence of public spending while on the road last week. It was put to her that anyone with a parent in aged care would be happy a nurse is on site, and anyone needing childcare would be glad for the childcare pay increase – and she was asked if any of this falls into the Coalition’s definition of unnecessary spending.

The shadow finance minister said “we will not be making cuts to essential services.” But she again pointed to an increase of the public service as “irresponsible budgeting”.

Q: Will voters know before the election if the Coalition will cut public sector jobs, and how many? Hume responded:

You’d be hard pressed to find an Australian that believes that because they’ve had a 20% increase in the public service, that they’re being 20% better served than they were only a few years ago. This has been an extraordinary expenditure and yet it hasn’t been accounted for.

Labor argues the public service has grown because it has reduced its reliance on external contractors, which were a large expense under the previous Coalition government. Would the Coalition impose a cap on external contractors?

Hume argued “the government is still using consultants, and the public service will always refer to the expertise of consultants, particularly in a world where technology is changing so fast”:

So I think that that’s a difficult a different comparison to make. But we’ve been clear an efficient and effective public service is important, but it needs to be sustainable.

Hume says Coalition would cut ‘bloated bureaucracy’

The shadow finance minister, Jane Hume, has denied opposition leader Peter Dutton is calling for spending cuts when he says “economic surgery” is needed.

Speaking with ABC RN earlier about the prospect of spending cuts, she said the decisions of this government had meant “inflation has stayed too high for too long, that productivity has gone backwards and economic growth has stagnated”:

We also believe that the only way that our nation will reach its potential, and Australians will experience the prosperity that they expect and deserve, is if that’s a private sector-led phenomenon.

It doesn’t mean that having a great big public sector and ever-increasingly bloated bureaucracy is going to be the solution to the problem, but there’s a difference between a bloated bureaucracy and deep spending cuts.

Hume was again asked about the comments from Dutton – that the expensive “Panadol policies must stop”, and the necessary economic surgery to stop wasteful spending must start – and responded:

The only solution the Albanese government has to a problem is to spend more … We don’t think that that is the right solution for Australia. We think that containing the size of government and the size of spending is fundamentally important.

It was put to Hume that a cut in government spending, which the Coalition is proposing, could force Australia into recession. But she argued Australia is “already in a household recession”. It was also put to her that inflation is now within RBA targets, and Hume replied this was “an artificial deflation because of government spending on subsidies”.

‘Reaching a ceasefire is critically important’: Husic

Ed Husic also told the program there was “promising signs” about a ceasefire occurring in the Middle East.

This is off the back of many months of work, particularly by our friends in the United States. Others in the region also, and there are a lot of members of the international community, as well as Palestinians and Israelis that want to see an end to this conflict.

We need to see the hostages released. We need civilians protected and we also need to see aid urgently go into Gaza, where it is needed desperately. Reaching a ceasefire is critically important.

Husic on Oscar Jenkins: government is ‘deeply and clearly concerned about his welfare’

The science and industry minister, Ed Husic, just spoke with ABC News Breakfast amid reports Oscar Jenkins has been killed – as we flagged earlier in the blog.

Husic said the Australian government was “deeply and clearly concerned about his welfare.”

At the foreign minister’s direction, we have called in the ambassador from the Russian Federation to follow up on those inquiries and also to remind the Russian Federation of their obligations under international humanitarian law, particularly around the treatment of prisoners of war.

We are providing consular support to Mr Jenkins’ family, who have requested privacy at this time, while they get some news and detail about what has happened with Oscar.

Asked if the Russian ambassador to Australia should be expelled, Husic said “at this point in time [we will not] engage in hypotheticals but rather try to provide the type of details that not just the family rightly should obtain, but Australians as well.”

Rishworth echoes foreign interference warning from PM ahead of federal election

The social services minister, Amanda Rishworth, has backed a message from Anthony Albanese yesterday, warning tech giants – particularly X’s owner, Elon Musk – that Australian elections are a matter for Australians and that the country has foreign interference laws.

(You can read more on this in yesterday’s blog, here).

Speaking to Sunrise this morning, Rishworth said “the decision of who governs our country should be left to the Australian people”:

That is the corner stone of democracy. It is important for our prime minister to be sending a clear message that if anyone is thinking about interfering in our elections, we won’t stand for it …

Of course, people can comment on social media and the like, but what has got to be really clear is that they can’t interfere with our elections … we are a sovereign country and we need to stand up for our national interests and it is really, really important that the message is out there that Australia is it own country and we won’t stand for foreign interference.

Geotechs continuing to monitor landslide at McCrae that brought down one home yesterday

SES Sorrento unit controller Mark Daw has been speaking with ABC News Breakfast after a landslide brought down a house in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula yesterday, with nearby homes evacuated.

Daw said crews had been monitoring and measuring the scene every hour overnight and “at the moment we’ve had no movement, which is a fantastic occurrence.”

Geotechs would continue to monitor the scene through the day, he said, because crews are worried there is “potential for a further slip”.

As for the scene yesterday after the landslide, Daw said it was “total destruction of that house”.

We have moved seven permanent residents out of places … Until we make the hill safe and deem that hill safe, and when we talk to the geotechs to what they think could happen up there, they won’t be allowed back into their properties.

Wong ‘hopeful’ that ceasefire deal can be reached in Gaza

Amid widespread reports that Hamas and Israel were in the “final stages” of agreeing a ceasefire agreement, Penny Wong said she is “hopeful” this can be reached.

She told ABC RN this had been talked about “for some time” and president elect Trump had been “very clear in his language about his expectation that this deal must be done.”

I saw what secretary [Antony] Blinken had to say, and I know this is something that the outgoing Biden administration has been working on for months.

So we have both the outgoing administration and a very clear language and engagement from the incoming Trump administration, and I think all of us are hopeful that we can see the ceasefire that we have been advocating for and so many around the world have soared for so long.