Anthony Albanese has cast doubt on Pauline Hanson ’s claims One Nation received $1.5m of donations in a day of fundraising this week.
After a reporter in Sydney cited Hanson’s claims to have raised the money, Albanese said:
double quotation mark Did she though? Did she though? Did she? What evidence is there?
It is an example of slogans being put forward, are not substance. And people can say all of these things. They get a run in the media. They had an ad for their fundraising campaign, effectively, free ad in one of the mainstream publications here, yesterday.
We’ll continue to actually be interested in making a difference to people’s lives. that is what we will focus on.
Albanese did not directly answer when asked if he believed that Hanson had raised the $1.5m. He said:
double quotation mark Well, you work it out. You know. I … no idea, nor am I … you know, this is someone who got a plane worth more than that given to her by Australia’s richest person.
So that [$1.5m] pales in significance with the size of a single donation which was given. showing, I think the interest that One Nation represents. It is not battlers, they vote against battlers each and every time.
Continuing on from the previous post …
NSW MP Jeremy Buckingham. who is chairing the inquiry, said he believed Milat’s murders date back to the early 1970s involving several victims whose cases remain unanswered for decades, AAP reports.
Rowland’s family believe her abduction. murder was sexually motivated and may have been the start of Milat learning his predatory behaviours.
The family claim at numerous junctures police could have connected Rowland’s death to Milat.
Buckingham said policing had come a long way,. in the past had involved a bias against some victims, including Aboriginal people.
Becoming emotional at times during his testimony. Kevin Docherty, whose twin sister, Kay, disappeared 47 years ago, touched on how his family was forced into playing detectives themselves.
“This was not our job, but families do this for their loved ones,” he told the inquiry on Thursday.
Families of suspected Ivan Milat victims claim cover-up
Missing evidence, hidden files. incomplete investigations are some of the challenges families of Ivan Milat’s suspected victims say they have faced in their quest to find answers, AAP reports.
The family of Keren Rowland. who was found dead after disappearing one night in the early 1970s, haven’t given up hope of uncovering the truth about what happened to her.
They believe she may have been the first victim of the notorious serial killer,. argue if police had made the connection early on he could have been stopped much earlier in his lethal campaign.
Rowland’s younger brother, Steve Rowland, appeared on Thursday at a NSW parliamentary inquiry into unsolved murders. missing persons between 1965 and 2010.
“We have. will continue to search for answers but we’re finding it incredibly difficult to get the same support and help from the investigating authorities,” he told the committee.
Rowland disappeared on 26 February 1971 after spending the evening at the Canberra Show. She was 20 years old and was five months pregnant.
No pay rise for MPs and departmental chiefs
Members of parliament. the bosses of federal government departments and agencies won’t get a pay rise from 1 July, after the independent remuneration tribunal ruled not to proceed with an increase.
A comprehensive review of pay arrangements for all offices under the jurisdiction of the tribunal is underway,. could result in an increase at a later date.
Annual pay increases are usually delivered at the start of the new financial year. MPs and senior office holders got a 2.4% pay rise in July last year, and 3.5% in 2024.
In conducting its review of pay. conditions, the tribunal considers inflation, private sector wage growth, the national minimum wage and other metrics.
“While this approach will result in a reduction in real remuneration, it preserves existing relativities. allows the tribunal to consider remuneration outcomes in a more integrated and considered manner,” the tribunal said in a statement.
The current review is expected to be finalisd ahead of decisions in 2027.
JB Hi-Fi says it takes compliance ‘very seriously’ after allegations of misleading discounts
JB Hi-Fi has responded after the Australian Competition. Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced it had raised concerns with the electronics retailer about allegedly misleading “Was/Is” pricing.
In a statement, the retail chain said:
double quotation mark JB Hi-Fi takes its compliance with the law very seriously. has strong compliance processes in place regarding comparison pricing.
The issues identified occurred in a small number of limited circumstances and. as acknowledged by the ACCC, were due to inadvertent errors.
JB Hi-Fi has fully cooperated with the ACCC at all times to resolve the matter. has contacted the 206 customers to arrange remediation.
The company will refund the affected customers more than $250,000 combined.
Investor home loans fall 20% post-budget but owner-occupiers stable, says Westpac
Investors have cut back on home loans. owner-occupier applications are stable since the budget reformed property taxes, Westpac has reported.
The bank had already seen home loan applications slump from 35,000 a month at the start of 2026 to 30,000 a month in mid-May. Since the budget, applications are tracking at 27,000 a month.
Westpac’s chief executive for consumer, Carolyn McCann, told analysts this morning the post-budget fall was almost all investors. owner-occupier demand had been flat.
Investors no longer account for four in every ten Westpac home loans,. still make up three in every 10, which McCann said was close to the historical average. She suggested investor demand could come back:
double quotation mark Keep in mind, that’s only three weeks. So we’re expecting people are sort of sitting on their hand a bit while they understand the rules.
New builds, which are exempted from the reforms, accounted for just 6% of Westpac investor loans in April. McCann predicted investor demand for new housing would be “much higher” in future.
Social media ban affecting over 16s with disability from accessing social media
A survey of 118 children. young people with disability, and parents and caregivers, has found while the under 16s social media ban continues not to work, it is also making it more difficult for users over 16 to access social media through age assurance measures.
The survey, conducted by Children. Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA) found 24% of those young people and children over 16 who were asked to verify their age were unable to access social media due to the age assurance technology used by the platforms.
Despite that, 95% of under-16s with a disability were still accessing social media in some way, according to the survey,. zero reported feeling safer online since the ban came into effect.
Just 4% of parents reported their child being safer online.
The survey found 86% of children. young people with a disability under 16 said the social media restrictions are not fair, compared to 83% of 16-25-year-old respondents, and 70% of parents or caregivers.
Auction clearance rates slide further to 47.3%
Most homes listed for auction across Australia have failed to sell for two consecutive weeks, new Cotality data shows.
Auction clearance rates were around 65% at the start of 2026. They have averaged 64% in the last decade.
But the share of homes that sold fell to 46.3% in the first week of June. from 49% in the last week of May, as buyers step back from the housing market.
Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra each had auction clearance rates below 50%.
Just 34.1% of Brisbane’s 134 auctioned homes sold, the city’s lowest rate since June 2020. More than half – 76 – of those homes passed in at auction.
The number of homes up for sale slumped to 1,175. given most states had a long weekend for the King’s Birthday on Monday. It’s expected to pick back up to 2,192 this week.
Interest rate rises. the budget’s tax reforms have helped slow Australian auction markets, but it’s not all good news for first-home buyers, as you can read here:
One Nation says it will undertake a “forensic audit” of the donations it has received in a fundraising drive this week. in a bid to prove to Australia’s political establishment that the contributions are real.
As of midday Thursday. a donation tracker on One Nation’s website claims the party has received nearly $1.9m in contributions for its campaign in Labor-held seats. However that figure is unverified though, as the party does not disclose its donations in real time. the website provides no details of purported donations.
Liberal and Labor figures have cast doubt on the veracity of the donation amount. The prime minister. Anthony Albanese, when asked about the figure Pauline Hanson claims to have raised, said today: “Did she, though? Did she, what evidence is there?”
One Nation figures are furious about the doubt cast on the fundraising drive by Liberal and Labor. A One Nation spokesperson told Guardian Australia the party would undertake a “forensic audit” of the donations to prove they were authentic. The spokesperson said a report would be released publicly in some form, but did not give a timetable.
The spokesperson said the party had received about 28,000 individual donations, with the highest being about $15,000. Each of these donations is below the Australian Electoral Commission’s disclosure threshold for donations, which is set at $16,900,. therefore none of those would be captured or published by the AEC – meaning the only way to verify the donations, or know their source, is if One Nation voluntarily publishes that information.
Wells says parents see the social media ban as ‘untidy’ but right
Ahead of an expected announcement in the UK,. as Australia marks six months of its under 16s social media ban, the communications minister, Anika Wells, has admitted to the BBC that parents have seen the process as “untidy” but the right thing.
Wednesday marked six months since ten platforms were required to remove under 16s accounts from their platforms. Wells told the BBC that there have been 5m accounts removed for the 1.2m Australians between 13. 16 – a figure that the government has refused to break down by platform.
Wells said that was a “huge result”. said social media platforms were using tactics to “undermine” the ban in Australia to ensure other countries do not follow in our footsteps. She said the government was aware of teens circumventing the ban,. this is why five of the platforms are being investigated by eSafety to face potential fines of up to $49.5m per breach.
Wells urged the UK to follow, while acknowledging the issues with the process. She said:
double quotation mark This is the right thing. All of the feedback I’ve received from Australians. Australian parents in the six months since we have attempted this has been: ‘thank you for trying, we appreciate this wasn’t going to be perfect, it is untidy. That’s what parenting looks like in the modern age.’
Anthony Albanese has cast doubt on Pauline Hanson ’s claims One Nation received $1.5m of donations in a day of fundraising this week.
After a reporter in Sydney cited Hanson’s claims to have raised the money, Albanese said:
double quotation mark Did she though? Did she though? Did she? What evidence is there?
It is an example of slogans being put forward, are not substance. And people can say all of these things. They get a run in the media. They had an ad for their fundraising campaign, effectively, free ad in one of the mainstream publications here, yesterday.
We’ll continue to actually be interested in making a difference to people’s lives. that is what we will focus on.
Albanese did not directly answer when asked if he believed that Hanson had raised the $1.5m. He said:
double quotation mark Well, you work it out. You know. I … no idea, nor am I … you know, this is someone who got a plane worth more than that given to her by Australia’s richest person.
So that [$1.5m] pales in significance with the size of a single donation which was given. showing, I think the interest that One Nation represents. It is not battlers, they vote against battlers each and every time.
Onshore immigration detention centre staff to strike
Staff at Australia’s onshore immigration detention centres will strike for the next two days over what they describe as “US-style labour practices”.
The US-based private prison operator Management. Training Corporation assumed control of the onshore detention system last year, through its local subsidiary Secure Journeys.
The company. the main staff union, the United Workers Union, are negotiating a new enterprise bargaining agreement, which has reached a stalemate.
The UWU says workers are now engaging in two-hour rolling stoppages at immigration detention centres on Thursday and Friday.
Surya Nagulapalli, United Workers Union lead organiser, said:
double quotation mark Members have raised serious issues about their rostering. pay rates that threaten the ability of Immigration Detention Centres to be run in a safe, sustainable way.
It is beyond belief that the moment Secure Journeys took over this contract a year ago it sought to cut jobs, cut critical roles. cut the standards of Immigration Detention Centres. Despite more than 10 rounds of bargaining. Secure Journeys – which is being paid $2.3bn to run these centres – has shown they are not willing to address members’ concerns in a meaningful way.
Instead, they continue to import US-style labour practices, cutting the overall labour force at commencement of the contract. keeping wages low, at the expense of Detention Services Officers and detainees.
In a statement last week, during prior strikes, a Secure Journeys spokesperson said the company has made “a fair. balanced offer” to workers regarding wages, conditions and rostering, “while recognising the realities of operating in an immigration detention environment”.
“Secure Journeys’ commitment to maintaining safe and secure operations and detainee welfare remains our top priority,” the spokesperson said.
The Kyle. Jackie O show’s former Sydney breakfast slot on Kiis FM has dropped 3.5% in the first full radio survey since the $20m a year duo were taken off air in March.
Jackie “O” Henderson. Kyle Sandilands have both taken legal action in the federal court against Kiis FM’s owner, Commonwealth Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), after their contracts were terminated.
The federal court case is scheduled to begin on 12 October and is expected to run for 10 days.
The Kiis FM breakfast show has slipped to third place in Sydney’s FM ratings with 8.2%, behind Smooth FM (11.4). Nova (9.5), according to the survey which ran from 1 March to 23 May. The slot has had multiple hosts including Smallzy, Mike E and Abbie Chatfield.
Overall, the Sydney breakfast ratings were won by 2GB’s Ben Fordham with a 15.6% share, down from 16.8%.
This post was corrected on 11 June 2026, the original version had incorrect ratings figures for Ben Fordham.
State. territory disability ministers are ringing alarm bells over the Albanese government’s proposed overhaul of the NDIS, warning they cannot deliver “like-for-like services” for more than 200,000 participants expected to be shifted off the scheme by 2030.
In a submission uploaded to the NDIS inquiry this morning on its third. final day of public hearings, the joint submission warned curbing the scheme’s growth was important but must not be prioritised over participant safety, wellbeing and life outcomes.
The submission said:
double quotation mark Without a careful, coordinated approach that aligns these changes with broader improvements across the disability support system, there is a significant risk that people with disability will end up in hospitals or other settings that are inappropriate. unable to meet their needs, or have no access to services at all.
States. territories are not in a position, and have made no agreement, to deliver like-for-like services to people who are exited from the NDIS.
The Albanese government’s NDIS bill is designed to dramatically curb the $50bn-a-year scheme’s growth by reducing category budgets from later this year. the number of Australians with disabilities who can access it from 2028. Without these changes, the government estimates it will cost $117bn a year in a decade’s time.
Albanese criticises notion One Nation. Coalition could strike a deal and says Liberals ‘giving up almost two years’ before election
The prime minister. Anthony Albanese, heaped criticism on any notion the Coalition could strike a deal with One Nation amid the latter’s surging popularity.
Albanese, speaking in Sydney, was asked about Pauline Hanson. a claim in The Australian this morning from Tony Pasin, a Liberal frontbencher, that One Nation and the Liberals should split seats. The opposition leader, Angus Taylor, said this morning there is “no plan” to carve up seats”.
The prime minister had this to say:
double quotation mark That says it all about the way that the once-mainstream Liberal party has become just a fringe party. almost giving up almost two years before an election is held.
Chalmers accuses political opponents of defending ‘broken status quo’
Jim Chalmers has accused his political opponents of engaging in a “truly absurd” effort to defend a “broken status quo” from tax reforms. as he claimed a noisy minority of vested interests were overshadowing the silent minority who stand to benefit.
“Too often the story of this budget is told by the biggest beneficiaries of these current arrangements. not the biggest victims of the broken status quo,” the treasurer said in a speech to the ALP’s national policy forum this morning.
double quotation mark Our job is to make the right decisions for the right reasons. to represent those voices who aren’t already amplified by the usual suspects with political or commercial skin in the game.
The government has released a range of Treasury analysis showing most Australians would be better off under the proposed changes to the capital gains tax. negative gearing, alongside a $250 working Australians tax offset from next year.
“Those reforms are motivated by three main goals: making it easier for people to buy their first home; cutting taxes for workers again,. again; and better aligning the tax treatment of labour and asset income,” he said.
With One Nation riding high in the polls. Chalmers said the three rightwing parties wanted to replicate the divisive politics seen overseas.
double quotation mark The irony of their position is they want to change the government in order to leave everything as it is – a truly absurd proposition.
Mal Lanyon says it’s hard to read some of the accounts of harmful behaviour within NSW police
Mal Lanyon, the NSW police commissioner, said the experiences he read in the report are “simply unacceptable”. He went on:
double quotation mark It’s very hard to read some of the personal accounts … they are human, they are my officers, I expect them to have a safe. respectful workplace …
That’s why I’m firmly committed to making sure we implement the recommendations.
NSW police minister and commissioner speaking after sweeping report into culture
The NSW police minister, Yasmin Catley,. NSW police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, are speaking after the release of a report into the culture of the force, which found bullying, discrimination and harassment within the organisation after interviews with about 5,000 current and former officers and staff.
Catley said Lanyon had accepted all 29 recommendations included in the report. saying the government was “taking this very seriously, because it’s the right thing to do”. She said during a press conference:
double quotation mark We want the NSW police to reflect the community that it serves,. this review goes a lot to making sure that we do that.
We want to be transparent. This is a time to reset … to build a future workforce within the NSW police.
Lanyon said NSW police was moving in the right direction, but that there was more work to do. He went on:
double quotation mark What it shows to me is a healthy organisation, an organisation where people care …. want to make it better … I am committed to improving the NSW police force.
He confirmed the report found harmful behaviours were present in the NSW police force, including bullying, discrimination. harassment, behaviours he said “were unacceptable and will not be tolerated”.
double quotation mark I have made it clear,. I have made it clear to our workforce that that is not the culture that we will have in the NSW police force.
States and territories ‘unequivocally’ cannot support NDIS exits under proposed federal changes
The states. territories argue there’s a “significant risk” the Albanese government’s proposed changes to the NDIS will leave people with disability in hospitals or other inappropriate settings.
The submission, which has only just been uploaded, was read out in part by Greens senator, Jordon Steele-John, this morning on the third. final day of public hearings for the inquiry.
Steele-John said the joint submission said the federal bill would undermine the original intent of the NDIS. focused heavily on expenditure constraints without a clearly defined broader ecosystem.
The senator said the submission concluded the states. territories “unequivocally” are not in a position and have made no agreement to deliver like-for-like services for people who are exited from the NDIS due to the proposed changes.
The pace of the inquiry, which has reportedly received more than 4,000 submissions. has so far only uploaded about 500, has been heavily criticised over the last few days with the majority of witnesses saying it should not pass in its current form.
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