Australia news live: police pepper spray neo-Nazi rally in Melbourne; McKenzie argues Thorpe breached her oath of allegiance with protest to king

Key events

Show key events only

Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature

Lehrmann allowed to continue appeal, federal court rules

In a five minute hearing the federal court has ruled Bruce Lehrmann will be allowed to continue his appeal after Justice Wendy Abraham stayed the costs order of $2m made by Justice Michael Lee.

Abraham said Ten’s application for a $200,000 security of costs order has been denied. She said:

I order the interlocutory application of the respondent stated 21 June, 2024 be dismissed.

Lee’s order for Lehrmann to pay Ten $2m should be stayed “until the appeal in the proceeding”, Abraham said.

Her reasons will follow after they have been published.

Warning issued amid bulk email extortion scam

The Anti-Scam Centre says it has detected a new bulk extortion email campaign targeting Australians which is likely using personal details sourced from public data breaches.

Scamwatch has received hundreds of reports throughout the past week, with people allegedly targeted by someone claiming to have compromising images or videos of them after hacking into their computer or webcam.

The scammers then allegedly threaten to release the material if they are not paid cryptocurrency to a specified address. The emails allegedly include personal details of the recipients, the centre said in a statement, “likely to have been sourced from previous public data breaches”.

There is no evidence that those behind the emails really do have access to people’s webcam or computer, the centre said. The ACCC’s deputy chair, Catriona Lowe, said “people need to be especially alert to this emerging trend”:

The fictional threats in these emails combined with the inclusion of people’s personal data are intended to terrify the individual reading it. It’s extortion and it’s a crime.

People should ignore these spam emails and be aware that the recent volume of reports of this scam suggest it is a large-scale campaign. The Anti-Scam Centre is working with partner organisations, including law enforcement and IDCARE, to disrupt this scam and ensure victims have access to support.

QBE apologises for price ‘inconsistencies’

QBE Insurance has responded to the regulator’s pursuit of the insurer in the federal court over allegations it misled customers, as we just flagged.

The insurer said in a statement it had taken steps to address the “inconsistencies in the delivery of premium price promises”.

QBE apologies for the inconsistencies. QBE will review the pleadings and continue to work with ASIC on these matters.

Avoid hyperventilating about IMF (and other) inflation forecasts

There’s a bit of reporting around this morning about the Monetary Fund’s 2025 forecast for Australia’s inflation being the second highest among advanced nations (behind Slovakia). (Eg, in the Australian and the AFR.)

First up, the forecasts sound scary, such as headline inflation rising from 3% at the end of this year to 3.7% by the end of next year. That’s not the direction we want to travel.

However, that’s hardly news. The Reserve Bank’s August statement on monetary policy predicts the rate to rise from 3% to 3.7% over the comparable period.

We’re also well accustomed to the RBA’s more lenient approach to bringing down inflation - the aim is to retain as many of the job gains as possible. (That part of the mandate is holding up perhaps a tad too well if you’re hoping for an early interest rate cut.)

Recall that headline consumer price inflation has been artificially lowered lately by energy and housing rebates.

Now some of those won’t be repeated – eg Queensland’s $1000 per household handout on 1 July – but it remains highly likely that a federal government seeking reelection is going to offer some sort of rebates for next year (and the opposition will probably seek to match or exceed them).

The RBA, of course, can’t anticipate what those rebates will be so they don’t include any. Hey presto, headline CPI rises next year.

The central bank, of course, pays more attention to underlying inflation. On current forecasts, the trimmed mean measure will ease from 3.5% at year’s end to 2.9% by December 2025.

Those predictions will get updated ahead of the RBA’s next board meeting on 4-5 November. On 30 October, we’ll also have September quarter inflation data - the real numbers that we need to fuss about.

Federal court to make cost ruling in Lehrmann case

The federal court will rule this morning on whether Bruce Lehrmann will be allowed to stay the costs order of $2m made by Justice Michael Lee in the defamation case.

Lehrmann is appealing his defamation loss against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson but is unemployed and is unable to pay his legal costs.

Justice Wendy Abraham will also rule on whether Ten’s application for a $200,000 security of costs order has been successful.

Lehrmann has argued there is a genuine public interest in allowing an appeal and a risk that if the security of costs is granted it may abort the appeal.

In April, Lee found Lehrmann was not defamed by Wilkinson and Ten when The Project broadcast an interview with Brittany Higgins on 15 February 2021 in which she alleged she was raped by a staffer.

Lee found on the balance of probabilities Lehrmann raped Higgins on a minister’s couch in Parliament House in 2019.

Lehrmann has always denied the rape allegation and pleaded not guilty at his criminal trial in the Australian Capital Territory supreme court which was aborted. Prosecutors did not seek a retrial due to concerns about Higgins’s mental health.

Funding for Indigenous students at boarding schools extended until end of 2026

The federal government has extended funding to Indigenous students at boarding schools until the end of 2026, after months of warnings young people in remote communities would miss out on education.

The $43.2m investment will allow around 2,500 students to attend boarding schools and deliver “wrap-around supports” in addition to housing. Secondary schools and boarding providers that mainly support First Nations students from remote and very remote areas may be eligible to receive funding under the program.

Graham Catt, the CEO of Independent Schools Australia, welcomed the announcement while noting it came after months of advocacy.

These schools are more than just educational institutions – they provide cultural, emotional, and pastoral support to thousands of students from remote areas.

But while a two-year extension is welcome, it’s not a long-term fix. We need a sustainable funding model to provide certainty for these schools and the students they serve.

Cheryl Salter, the executive director of the Association of Independent Schools of the Northern Territory, said many of these boarding schools were the only option for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in remote communities where access to secondary education was limited or nonexistent.

The minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, said the investment would provide “critical support for First Nations boarding students” while the government considered the outcomes of its Indigenous boarding design review.

Regulator sues QBE over allegations it misled policyholders

The corporate regulator is suing QBE Insurance over allegations it misled customers about the value of premium discounts offered for various home, contents and car insurance products.

Sarah Court, the deputy chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic), said some customers were promised discounts for their loyalty when renewing their policies which they didn’t receive.

Where insurers make discount promises to renewing customers, they need to have robust systems and controls in place to make sure their customers receive the discounts they were promised.

Asic alleges QBE’s pricing mechanisms, which include the use of algorithms, may have prevented the full value of the promised discounts being applied.

The discounts were offered through more than 500,000 renewal notices to customers including retirees, QBE shareholders, and those holding multiple policies with the insurer, according to the regulator.

The promised discounts were made in statements and renewal notices sent between July 2017 and September 2022, according to the regulator.

ASIC has filed the court proceedings in the federal court and is pursuing penalties. QBE was contacted for comment.

Clare O’Neil says protest against Victorian rezoning plan ‘a bit much’

Moving to the Victorian government’s rezoning plan for 50 affluent suburbs, Clare O’Neil was asked if she agreed with comments from the premier, Jacinta Allan, that those opposed are Nimbys.

She said the plan is “bold and ambitious” and affects her own electorate:

What I say to people at home, we can’t all complain about the housing crisis and talk about how much we care about the younger generation and then complain when it might affect us. So we do need to get that balance right. We need to see some change here.

On the protest from Brighton residents at the weekend, O’Neil said that “staging a protest before we’ve got any real detail about this is a bit much”:

These are the same people who are complaining about housing options for their kid … We’ve got a younger generation that [are facing] real difficulties here. To make a difference to them we need to see some changes … If we want to make sure we live in a fair country where young people get a good go at getting into home ownership, change has to happen.

Housing minister clarifies comments that stamp duty is ‘bad tax’

Clare O’Neil also clarified comments she made yesterday that stamp duty was a “bad tax”.

She was asked about a report from the Business Council that has suggested states and territories replace stamp duty with a land tax, and said this was a “really good idea” because “stamp duty is a bad tax”, preventing people from “moving around the housing market in the way that suits them best”.

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, has since outlined why the state will not scrap stamp duty despite agreeing with O’Neil.

Speaking this morning, O’Neil said:

I was actually, in those comments yesterday, commending something the Victorian state government has done, saying they’ll make some limitations on stamp duty. It isn’t a great tax. That being said, it’s a matter for the states and I don’t want to take away from the hugely bold and ambitious things the states are doing on housing.

I’ve got kids, I want them to grow up with good housing opportunities in this country. For the first time we’ve got a Commonwealth government and states and territories all making big radical changes to change the way that housing works in our country and that’s a really good thing for the next generation.

Clare O’Neil speaks on $26m fund for infrastructure in Sydney’s south-west

The housing minister, Clare O’Neil, was also up on ABC News Breakfast this morning to discuss the government’s announcement of $26m to fund roads, sewerage, water and power for new homes in Sydney’s south-west.

We had more on this earlier in the blog, here.

She was asked about the Coalition’s announcement of $5bn for infrastructure, and argued “they’re kind of copying our homework”:

This is just $26m of what is a much bigger sum of money … just part of the $32bn we’re spending.

O’Neil argued that the opposition was planning to cut $19bn out of the money the government had committed to housing, and said the Coalition “ignored this problem for the ten years they were in office”.

Labor and the opposition have traded barbs over housing all morning. Earlier, Bridget McKenzie repeatedly told ABC RN the opposition had to “solve the housing crisis of Labor’s making”.