Australia news live: Hastie says he backs Ley but is ‘a little bolder’ about policy; Andrew Forrest describes ‘real pain’ about Trump’s climate denialism

Hastie says he supports Sussan Ley and denies policy campaigns amount to a leadership pitch

Dan Jervis-Bardy

Liberal MP Andrew Hastie says he supports the opposition leader, Sussan Ley, and anyone suggesting otherwise is “being mischievous”, rubbishing speculation he is preparing a tilt at the leadership.

Hastie’s personal campaigns on dumping net zero, “Australia-first” manufacturing and cutting immigration have been interpreted inside and outside the party as laying the groundwork to fulfil his long-held ambition to lead the party.

In an interview on 2GB on Thursday, Hastie said:

I support Sussan. Anyone who’s speculating otherwise is being mischievous.

I’m a team player. I’m just being a little bolder in some of the policy positions that I think we should adopt.

Andrew Hastie. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Hastie’s interventions have divided Liberal MPs. Some colleagues are frustrated with the distraction, while others have publicly endorsed the former soldier’s actions, including Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

Price said Hastie would “make a remarkable leader one day”, suggesting his internal critics were agitating against him because they saw him as a threat.

Asked if he was a “threat” to Ley, Hastie told 2GB: “I don’t think so”.

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Qld police union narrowly votes in favour of ‘worst ever’ pay deal

Members of Queensland’s police union have narrowly voted in favour of a state government pay deal of 8% over three years.

Queensland Police Union of Employees general president Shane Prior described the pay element of the deal as the “worst ever” in July, after a backlash by many union members, but backed it on the basis of side bonuses to general duties and rural officers.

The agreement was put to a ballot of all members, with 51.6% of members voting to take the offer.

“Members have had their say, and it is a real positive that so many have engaged in the process,” Prior said on Thursday.

This result reflects a mixed response to the proposed agreement, and while a slim majority have endorsed the offer, we have much work to do.

The state government has also struck in-principle deals with the leadership of the nurses union for an 11% pay increase, and the firefighters union for an 8% increase, among others.

That’s all for me. Josh Taylor will be tending the blog for the rest of the afternoon. Take care!

More on the earthquake in Tasmania this morning, the largest in the region in 20 years

As reported in the blog earlier, some Tasmanians woke up to a 4.1 magnitude earthquake this morning.

Geoscience Australia senior seismologist Hadi Ghasemi says it was the largest quake within a 100km radius of the epicentre in 20 years, AAP reports. He said:

Tasmania is not high seismicity. But this event … is testament that earthquakes can happen anywhere in Tasmania.

Ghasemi said the largest earthquake documented in Tasmania was a mid-to-high magnitude six in the late 1800s off Flinders Island.

Hydro Tasmania said no damage had been identified to its dams in the region, including Edgar Dam, which is undergoing upgrades. The dam, about 30km from the earthquake, could withstand tremors of up to 6.8 magnitude along the Lake Edgar fault line, the electricity provider said.

Greens urge Labor to dump aged care shower payments

The Greens are urging the Albanese government to scrap co-payments for aged-care recipients that would require them to pay up to $50 each time they receive shower assistance.

In a letter to the aged care minister, Sam Rae, on Thursday, the Greens senator, Penny Allman-Payne, called on the federal government to dump changes that could require aged-care recipients to pay for “non-clinical” services, such as “personal care” and “domestic assistance”, which would include showering, cooking and laundry.

The letter, referring to ABC reports earlier this week, said recipients would be forced to pay up to $50 each time they need help to take a shower and up to $75 per hour for help with “everyday living”.

The aged care inspector general, Natalie Siegel-Brown, has previously warned in a major report of “genuine fears” that the government’s model – which comes into effect from November – would ask some elderly people to pay more for non-clinical care over essential services.

Allman-Payne said:

All Australians want to have faith that they will be looked after in their old age, and be able to access the care that they need at the time that they need it.
But unfortunately, these aged care reforms are taking Australia in another direction, where the worse your health is, the more you’ll pay. And many older Australians will be squeezed out of care entirely by the government’s price increases.

Read more here:

Bali hospital denies allegation of organ theft after body of Australian repatriated without heart

A Bali hospital has denied allegations it was involved in organ theft, after the body of a young Australian who died on the Indonesian resort island was repatriated without his heart, Agence France Presse reports.

Queensland man Byron Haddow was found dead in the plunge pool of his Bali villa earlier this year while on holiday.

The body of the 23-year-old was returned to Australia four weeks later, and a second autopsy found his heart was missing, prompting Australian officials to demand answers from their Indonesian counterparts.

Read more here:

Hastie’s public support of Ley follows his comments that the Liberal party risked extinction

In his most recent intervention on Wednesday, Hastie said that the Liberal party could “die” as a political movement unless it committed to cutting net overseas migration, which he blamed for the housing crisis.

Hastie said he was concerned about the “fragmenting” on the conservative side of politics, with One Nation and micro parties peeling off Liberal voters.

He said the Coalition must “reconstitute our natural constituency” if it wanted to beat Labor.

Unless we get our act together, we’re going to be potentially in further decline and perhaps one day extinct. That’s why what we do over the next two years is so important.

A lot of people would like us to stay exactly where we are, including some people in our party, but we can’t – the world has changed.

Hastie says he supports Sussan Ley and denies policy campaigns amount to a leadership pitch

Liberal MP Andrew Hastie says he supports the opposition leader, Sussan Ley, and anyone suggesting otherwise is “being mischievous”, rubbishing speculation he is preparing a tilt at the leadership.

Hastie’s personal campaigns on dumping net zero, “Australia-first” manufacturing and cutting immigration have been interpreted inside and outside the party as laying the groundwork to fulfil his long-held ambition to lead the party.

In an interview on 2GB on Thursday, Hastie said:

I support Sussan. Anyone who’s speculating otherwise is being mischievous.

I’m a team player. I’m just being a little bolder in some of the policy positions that I think we should adopt.

Hastie’s interventions have divided Liberal MPs. Some colleagues are frustrated with the distraction, while others have publicly endorsed the former soldier’s actions, including Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

Price said Hastie would “make a remarkable leader one day”, suggesting his internal critics were agitating against him because they saw him as a threat.

Asked if he was a “threat” to Ley, Hastie told 2GB: “I don’t think so”.

Why Trump’s UN speech calling the climate crisis a ‘con job’ is wrong

Donald Trump recently used his own appearance at the UN general assembly to lambast climate science, calling the climate crisis “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”. He said:

All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success.

If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.

In fact, those claims themselves are wrong. There is broad scientific consensus that the world is warming, and humanity is the cause.

Billionaire Andrew Forrest says he feels ‘real pain’ when Donald Trump rejects climate science

Mining magnate Andrew Forrest spoke to a climate conference in New York City earlier, urging the US president, Donald Trump, to come to Australia to see the effects of the climate crisis first-hand after discounting the science behind global heating.

Forrest, the executive chair of mining company Fortescue, was a guest at the New York Times’ Climate Forward summit. He said at the event:

I feel real pain when I hear your president saying global warming is a great big con. Well, fellow businessman, I happen to own several million acres of land in Australia, come and see what’s happening in my land. Come and dive on these reefs, which were the most beautiful environment on Earth and are now devastated.

There’s real damage being done to people’s lives all over the world by your president propagating a complete myth that global warming isn’t happening. That’s wrong, that’s utterly wrong.

Forrest went on to speak about Fortescue’s cancelled plans to open a US$210m electric vehicle battery factory in Michigan, saying plans to employ thousands were “shattered” after Republican efforts to rescind renewable energy tax credits. He said:

The tragedy of this rollback, this one-horse bet in a multi-horse race which your administration is making now. It’s put a bet on the oldest, tiredest horse of the lot, which is fossil fuel.

Nicolette Boele says she will continue to serve with ‘integrity, care and dedication’

Independent Nicolette Boele just released a statement after Liberal Gisele Kapterian ended her court challenge over the seat of Bradfield.

Boele said:

Being part of this process has given me an even greater appreciation for the safeguards we have in place, and the value of every single vote. While we watch checks and balances erode in other countries, our electoral and judicial processes are something we can genuinely celebrate here at home.

Bradfield is a special community – our welcoming neighbourhoods, natural beauty, and vibrant multiculturalism make it a place I’m proud to call home.

I will continue to serve the people of Bradfield and ensure your voice is heard and respected in Canberra.

Boele added while she has had a busy start, there was still “much work to do”:

I look forward to getting it done.

Electricity generation costs would be up to 50% higher if Australia stuck with coal and gas only

The cost of generating electricity would be up to 50% higher today if Australia had relied solely on coal and gas instead of pursuing renewables, according to new analysis.

Right-leaning politicians and climate deniers have seized on the 30% increase in electricity bills since 2021 to call for new coal-fired power plants to replace renewable projects, claiming it would bring down energy bills.

To interrogate these claims, Paul Simshauser and Joel Gilmore from Griffith University’s Centre for Applied Energy Economics and Policy Research, modelled a counterfactual scenario where resource-rich Queensland had ignored the global push towards net zero and climate science, and instead pursued an electricity grid based on fossil fuels from 2005 – when coal and gas were “unambiguously the lowest cost technologies”.

But the pair concluded that soaring commodity prices, escalating costs associated with building new power plants, and major advances in clean energy technology means that coal can no longer claim to be the cheap energy source it once was.

Read more:

Wells rejects Elon Musk’s X’s concerns about under 16s social media ban

The communications minister, Anika Wells, has rejected questions raised by Elon Musk’s X platform on whether the under 16s social media ban could violate the human rights of children.

Guardian Australia reported yesterday X had called for a delay in the ban, due to commence on 10 December, arguing it had “serious concerns” about the lawfulness of what it described as a “punitive” policy.

Wells was asked about the news on Nine’s Today Show program, and said she was in New York meeting with tech companies and answering questions about the ban. She dismissed the concerns raised by X:

I think these are pioneering, innovating, some of the richest companies in the world. They transact a lot of business and they make a lot of revenue off Australians here on our shore, and I think it’s reasonable to ask them to use some of that tech and some of that revenue to look after our kids online.

She argued that the ban does not violate human rights covenants Australia has signed up to regarding children.

There are a number of international covenants that we are upholding by protecting the rights and wellbeing of children when there is so much evidence in now about particularly the mental harms that are afflicted to children by being exposed to social media too young – too young being before the age of 16.

Wells said she does not have a meeting lined up with Musk: “but my door is open”.

‘Urgent’ need to address lagging school performance of boys and bullying behaviour, shadow education minister says

The shadow education minister, Senator Jonno Duniam, says Australia needs to “urgently” address poor outcomes of boys in school and their “much higher tendency” toward bullying.

Addressing the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney on Thursday, Duniam said “bizarrely”, tackling the lagging performance of boys was a “controversial topic” but was “glaringly obvious” in data.

For a long time, there’s been way too little policy attention paid to the underperformance of boys … relative to girls in Australian schooling. And I think that’s something we need to change urgently. That is a massive cohort in our education system … and we need to deal with it.

Duniam pointed to boys’ lower year 12 completion rates, lower participation in universities, lower performance in Naplan and “much higher tendency toward bullying and classroom disruption”.

He also pointed to his strong relationship with the education minister, and the “constructive approach” he would take in his new role.

It’s important to have the two major parties of Australian politics working together … And I intend to … take advantage of that golden opportunity we have now – a shadow minister who wants the right outcomes for our country … and Jason Clare, who is open to working with us and has accepted the invitation to work where we can.

Shimmering sculpture of a golden head lands in Sydney

A massive golden sculpture by British artist Thomas J Price has been unveiled outside the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, AAP reports.

A highly detailed, reflective bronze head measuring three metres high by four metres wide, the artwork, Ancient Feelings (2025), has been installed on the museum’s Tallawoladah Lawn, facing Sydney harbour.

The head is that of a fictional black woman with both its material and scale suggesting power and high standing – challenging the notion that only wealthy, powerful people deserve commemoration. Price said:

It’s a beautiful object, and so hopefully that will entice people to look at it a little bit longer, and start to go down these paths of questioning what it is, who it is, and why it’s there.

Globally speaking, there’s a huge lack of representation and inclusion and acknowledgment – acknowledgment perhaps more than anything, because I’m pretty sure Black women know what they’re doing for the world.

University of Wollongong found to have underpaid staff $6.6m

The University of Wollongong has become the eighth university to sign an enforceable undertaking with the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) after underpaying thousands of staff more than $6m.

The university self-reported to the FWO in 2023 after receiving queries from staff. Approximately 5,340 current and former employees – mostly casual – were underpaid $6.6m between 2014 and 2024, the Ombudsman found, largely as a result of the university underpaying penalty rates and failing to pay staff for a minimum engagement period.

Back payments to individual employees ranged up to $36,000, including superannuation and interest.

The FWO found the failures were due to the university’s “poor governance processes” and “fundamental payroll system errors”.

Under the enforceable undertaking, the university must also make a contrition payment of $130,000 and implement a broad range of measures to ensure compliance with workplace laws.

Kapterian glad she had the chance to ‘review the play’ and be satisfied the ‘right call was made’

Kapterian said she is grateful the electoral system “anticipates and supports the need for further scrutiny through a statutory right”. She went on:

This is particularly so given the often difficult and subjective nature of ballot interpretation. In other words, after asking the on-field decision to go to the video umpire, we have had the opportunity to review the play and can now be satisfied the right call was made overall.

The Liberal candidate said the country needed a “strong, cohesive and modern Liberal party that speaks to the concerns of Australians”.

I believe the Liberal party’s future success depends on a policy agenda that seeks to aspirational Australians. I’m disappointed to miss out on contributing from inside the party room, but I will continue to play my part.

Liberal Gisele Kapterian concedes Bradfield, 145 days later

The Liberal candidate for Bradfield, Gisele Kapterian, has conceded the race more than four months – 145 days – after the federal election, after a final review of ballot papers showed her behind independent Nicolette Boele.

Kapterian said she was “satisfied” that overall “the correct outcome has been declared” and said she would no longer press a petition for a final review by the court of disputed returns.

Kapterian wrote on social media:

We have taken the decision to no longer press the petition for a final review by the Court of Disputed Returns. I wish Ms Boele all the best in the role and I thank the people of Bradfield for this incredible opportunity to have spoken with so many of you to hear your ideas, your stories, and what matters most to you. Come say hi if you see me around.

Bruce Lehrmann’s rape case is delayed

Bruce Lehrmann’s rape case has been delayed, after a pre-trial hearing set for Friday in Toowoomba was put off to next month.

Lehrmann is accused of raping a woman twice on the morning of 10 October 2021, in Toowoomba.

Judge Dennis Lynch delisted the Friday hearing on Wednesday. The matter is now listed for a mention on 27 October, in Ipswitch.

Lehrmann’s lawyer has indicated he intends to plead not guilty. He was charged in 2023.