A charter plane carrying the passengers from the MV Hondius. the cruise ship at the centre of the hantavirus outbreak, has landed in Perth.
The passengers – four Australians, one Australian permanent resident,. one New Zealander – will be transported directly to the Centre for National Resilience in Bullsbrook with no community contact, where they will quarantine for an initial three-week period.
All have tested negative for hantavirus to this point. The virus has a maximum 42-day incubation period.
Burke says hate group listing still applies if organisation attempts to ‘phoenix’
Burke said the listing applied despite any efforts to “phoenix”, referencing when an organisation disbands,. then tries to reform under a new name. He told reporters:
double quotation mark The way the legislation works. the phoenixing part of the question, once an organisation has been listed and they try to reform under a new name, effectively it is a simple regulation change and we don’t need to start the process again.
The minister for home affairs. Tony Burke, says the government has listed a second organisation as a prohibited hate group, a neo-Nazi group, formerly known as the National Socialist Network.
Burke said in a press conference:
double quotation mark There is a very strict process for this to happen. This process can only occur when it is initiated by Asio an ministerial decision has to follow.
The ministerial decision has to be made with the approval of the attorney general. then there also has to be consultation with the opposition and all of these steps have been met.
The listing takes effect at midnight tonight. Burke said:
double quotation mark This means supporting. funding, training, recruiting, joining or directing this group constitutes a criminal offence with maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.
The National Socialist Network claims it disbanded in January before legislation to proscribe alleged “hate groups” was introduced to federal parliament after the Bondi terror attack.
Victorian opposition uses estimates to question state’s cash deficit
As expected, the Victorian opposition is using estimates to question the cash deficit figure. The deputy chair. Liberal MP John Pesutto, quoted an auditor-general’s report stating that “a fiscal cash surplus is a sign of good financial health”. He then asked Barrett whether he agreed.
Barrett said he didn’t “entirely” as it was necessary for governments to borrow to build infrastructure.
double quotation mark If you were to hold yourself to never borrowing for infrastructure. which is what that statement effectively says, I think you would very substantially under invest in infrastructure in the state.
Barrett said all states were required to borrow to build infrastructure, given how little Commonwealth funding they received:
double quotation mark The federal government … has not historically funded urban infrastructure in a highly urbanised country like Australia the way. you might expect … And while that’s the case state governments are required to do that. If state governments are required to do that entirely on their own balance sheet. without adding any debt, you would hugely under invest.
Pesutto then asked whether Victorians should therefore expect future cash deficits, given they were a “necessary part of delivering infrastructure”. Barret replied:
double quotation mark I agree … The amount of that is obviously a policy choice for government.
Symes, though, stressed that the budget showed the government was moderating its infrastructure spend back to pre-pandemic levels.
Estimates hearings begin in Victoria
While all eyes have been on the federal government’s budget this week. the Victorian government handed down its own budget last week, which brings us to the start of estimates hearings.
Today, we’ll be hearing from the treasurer, Jacyln Symes,. the premier, Jacinta Allan, as well as the minister for equality, emergency services and creative industries, Vicki Ward, later this evening.
Symes is up first, joined by officials, including the department of treasury and finance secretary, Chris Barrett.
While the budget delivered a $727m operating surplus in 2025-26. projects surpluses averaging $1.71bn over the forward estimates, these figures exclude infrastructure and other capital spending. When factored in, Victoria is running cash deficits averaging $7.62bn over the four years.
The opposition has seized on those deficit figures. with Liberal leader Jess Wilson using her budget reply speech on Tuesday to pledge a cash surplus by 2032 if elected in November.
Queensland Labor leader says government has ‘politicised’ parliament’s ethics committee
Queensland’s Labor leader. Steven Miles, has accused the government of having “politicised” the state parliament’s ethics processes, after he was found to have mislead parliament.
In February last year. Miles wrongly claimed that the deputy premier, Jarrod Bleijie, had failed to disclose a conflict of interest relating to a rail project. He quickly apologised for what he said was an inadvertent error, but parliament’s speaker, Pat Weir, said the apology was insufficient. referred him to parliament’s ethics committee.
On Thursday, two days before a byelection, it reported back, finding him in contempt of parliament.
At a press conference on Friday, Miles accused the government of abusing “its big majority”, “playing personal attacks on the eve of a byelection”, “throwing out many of the conventions that have served our state very well for a very long time”,. wasting time on an hour-long debate on the subject on Thursday evening.
“They clearly have politicised the ethics committee process. You can see that in the report and the way they carried on yesterday,” Miles said.
On Tuesday. Weir decided not to refer the education minister, John-Paul Langbroek, to the ethics committee for a response he gave to a question on notice claiming that he had not finalised the name of a new theatre by May 2025. Guardian Australia later reported that he signed a document formally approving the name in February. Weir said the briefing note was “equivocal in its language”.
Miles was asked whether Weir had imposed a double standard.
“We see very clearly that where LNP members are misleading. they are not reprimanded in any kind of way, while the LNP uses their massive majority to pull stunts like they did yesterday,” he said.
A charter plane carrying the passengers from the MV Hondius. the cruise ship at the centre of the hantavirus outbreak, has landed in Perth.
The passengers – four Australians, one Australian permanent resident,. one New Zealander – will be transported directly to the Centre for National Resilience in Bullsbrook with no community contact, where they will quarantine for an initial three-week period.
All have tested negative for hantavirus to this point. The virus has a maximum 42-day incubation period.
A 25-year-old man has been charged over a “visible swastika tattoo” on his leg after visiting a business in Alice Springs in December 2025.
Northern Territory police yesterday arrested the man. executed a search warrant at his home, where items indicative of drug supply were seized.
The man was taken to the Alice Springs watch house. has been charged with public display of a prohibited Nazi symbol.
He has been remanded in custody to appear in Alice Springs local court today.
Labor MP says bailout of Spirit of Tasmania operator ‘shocking’
Kerry Vincent, the state minister for infrastructure. transport, said the cash injection was to cover past capital cost overruns and was not TT-Line spending additional money, AAP adds.
double quotation mark We know these decisions come at a difficult time,. it’s no secret the capital cost overruns have put a strain on TT-Line. This is about ensuring our vital infrastructure. a key tourism and freight link is supported and continuing to function as Tasmanians need and deserve.
Labor MP Dean Winter said the bailout was “shocking”:
double quotation mark The half-a-billion dollar bailout is the most shocking chapter yet of the horror novel known as the Spirits fiasco.
Tasmanians will be paying the price for the Spirits for generations to come,. every job and essential service that Eric Abetz cuts in next week’s budget is just the tip of the iceberg.
An embattled Bass Strait ferry operator, which has suffered delays. cost overruns in the delivery of two new ships, has been given a $506m government bailout, AAP reports.
The equity injection from the Tasmanian government to state-owned Spirit of Tasmania operator TT-Line will be provided over four years.
TT-Line’s delivery of two new replacement ferries, which are set to sail in October, is years behind schedule. $717m over the initial project estimate.
The saga made international headlines in 2024 after it was revealed the new ferries would have to sit idle. a new berth in northwest Tasmania wouldn’t be ready in time for the ships.
TT-Line has been forced to fork out millions to hold the ferries in berths while the new berth is being constructed. The operator was given $75m by the government in November’s interim budget. with the $506m to be included in Thursday’s 2026/27 budget.
Pauline Hanson continues to attract support from Liberal ranks. with former Coalition senator Hollie Hughes to host the One Nation leader at her pub in Rydal, New South Wales this weekend.
Hughes was a federal senator from 2019 to 2025, but left the parliament after losing a preselection fight. not being re-elected last year. Hughes quit the Liberal Party in November. was strongly critical of her former colleagues for undermining then-leader Sussan Ley, who was later replaced by Angus Taylor in a party room coup.
Hughes owns a pub in Rydal, outside Lithgow. On Saturday, Hughes said Hanson would appear at the hotel for an event called “Pauline In The Pub”. A poster published on Hughes’ Facebook page states the event is sold out,. advertises: “join us for a big night!”
Hughes wrote alongside it: “Well I think Saturday night might be even more of a party!”
Several people commented on Hughes’ post, asking if she was joining One Nation. Guardian Australia has contacted Hughes to ask if she was planning on joining another party.
Rydal is in the federal seat of Calare. held by independent Andrew Gee, a former Nationals member who quit the party in 2022.
PM rejects calls for Australia to boycott Eurovision over Israel’s inclusion
Following Delta Goodrem ’s success in moving to the Eurovision grand final overnight. the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has said Australia should not boycott the event over Israel’s continued inclusion in the song contest.
Albanese told ABC Radio Melbourne that he spoke with Goodrem earlier in the week and hoped she would win Eurovision.
double quotation mark I think she’s a ripper. She’s so proud. I’ll say this about Delta Goodrem.
She’s at the stage of her career – she doesn’t need to do this at all. She’s doing this because she wanted to represent Australia. The Australian government supported her doing this as well.
Asked by host Raf Epstein if Australia. like several other countries, should have boycotted Eurovision while Israel was allowed to compete, the prime minister said: “No.”
double quotation mark Because we should participate. And you know, the idea – you can have a disagreement with a policy of a government. As I’ve been critical and will continue to be critical of what has happened in Gaza. That doesn’t mean that I believe Israel doesn’t have a right to exist. It does. I want it to exist side by side with a Palestinian state.
SBS drew criticism late last year when it confirmed Australia intended to compete in the competition.
Dingoes distinct from ‘wild dogs’, research shows
Dingo DNA from before colonisation has been used to show Australia’s canines are almost 90% dingo. with just 11.7% of their DNA coming from domestic dogs.
Researchers from Adelaide University’s Australian Centre for Ancient DNA. Environment Institute tested 300 dingoes and said the results resolved a disagreement over how much European dog ancestry was in the animals.
A 2023 study found more than half of Australia’s dingoes were genetically pure.
A new documentary tells how dingoes have been shot, trapped. poisoned since colonisation, penned in (or out) by the 5,614km dingo fence, and often grouped with “wild dogs” so they can be treated as pests. It argues for better human/dingo coexistence.
The Adelaide University research, published in Conservation Letters, also found there are eight genetically distinct populations of dingo,. says the technique they used is affordable and scalable, which would allow large-scale ancestry screening to be feasible for the first time.
Senior author Dr Yassine Souilmi said:
double quotation mark The ‘wild dog’ label hides important biological and cultural differences. A predominantly dingo individual is not the same as a stray domestic dog.
Future management should be regionally informed,. developed in close partnership with Indigenous Australian communities, for whom dingoes have been companions and kin for thousands of years.
Australia’s housing affordability expected to worsen as homelessness soars under fossil-fuelled future
Global heating could worsen housing affordability, push up rents. quadruple homelessness in a decade without fairer housing policies and action to reduce emissions, new research has found.
Home prices. rents in Australia are influenced by a complex mix of factors, from incomes and mortgage rates to insurance premiums, available land and population.
University of Sydney researchers modelled the housing market system, using two decades of public data,. tested its response under different climate scenarios, publishing their results in Cities.
They found climate change affected housing. rental affordability under both high and low-emission scenarios, but vulnerable households were worst-hit under a fossil-fuelled future.
Taylor says Labor budget declaring war on ‘aspiration’
The opposition leader, Angus Taylor, is speaking at a press conference, saying his budget reply yesterday was all about making sure “young Australians have the hope of being able to buy a home. pay it off over time”.
“If we are to achieve that. we have to scrap, we have to axe Labor’s toxic taxes,” Taylor said, adding that migration needed to be dramatically reined in. He went on:
double quotation mark They’re going after savings. They’re going after hard-working Australians. They are declaring war on aspiration in this country.
The Coalition has pledged to repeal Labor’s changes to the capital gains tax discount. negative gearing, which the Albanese government says are meant to address housing affordability and aid young people in their dreams of buying a home.
Higher education union calls Coalition’s migration plan a ‘potential nightmare for universities’
The National Tertiary Eduction Union (NTEU) says the Coalition should reveal how many international students would be cut as part of its migration measures. unveiled by the opposition leader, Angus Taylor, this week.
The union said the Coalition’s plan to cut net overseas migration to about 175,000 people per year. or a 40% reduction, would be a “potential nightmare for universities”.
NTEU’s president, Alison Barnes, said in a statement:
double quotation mark The devil is in the lack of detail. … It’s obvious that a migration cut of that magnitude would mean going after international students. who make up a third of net overseas migration. …
Viewing international students purely through the prism of revenue completely ignores the rich cultural exchange they bring to our campuses. closer ties they create with countries in our region.
Barnes went on to say Taylor was mimicking One Nation leader Pauline Hanson rather than setting out a vision for higher education:
double quotation mark All sides of politics should rule out going after international students. commit to measures that properly fund universities so they can provide the world-class teaching and research we need.
In a turn of events this morning, One Nation has recorded a higher primary vote than Labor. the Coalition, in post-budget polling by Roy Morgan, which finds that if an election were held tomorrow, Australia would see a hung parliament.
The two-party preferred count, according to polling of 2,348 voters between 13. 14 May, shows Labor just ahead of One Nation on 51% to 49%. Labor polls 55% against the Coalition’s 45% on a two-party preferred count of the two major parties.
The Coalition’s primary vote sits at a meagre 16.5%.
Of the key themes tested by the poll, immigration was the most dominant issue, with respondents linking migration to “housing pressure, cost of living, cultural change, infrastructure strain. loss of national identity”.
One Nation has enjoyed a meteoric rise in recent months. having just swiped the seat of Farrer from the Liberals at last weekend’s byelection. But there is more than a year to go before the next national vote – so plenty can change.
There is also a lot of uncertainty in polling. so until we see more results from other pollsters aggregated together, it’s hard to say how definitive this result is for One Nation.
Pauline Hanson cut off after running out of time delivering One Nation’s budget reply
One Nation’s Pauline Hanson said yesterday Australians were simply asking for a “country that works again” in her budget reply speech in parliament that lambasted renewable energy efforts. the Labor party, before she was cut off for running out of time.
Hanson, the leader of One Nation, claimed in her remarks that any tax offsets proposed by Labor would be “completely rubbed out” by bracket creep, saying the policies were a “trap for the next election. an advertising slogan for 2028”.
As she continued to attack the Albanese government, moving on to a section about solar panels, she was cut off.
The official Hansard of the speech reads:
double quotation mark It is perverse that a government. an opposition believe they can change the weather, and are prepared to waste ultimately hundreds of billions to do it …
We are covering the land with windmills and solar panels and, in turn, delivering– (Time expired)
Hanson sought leave to finish her speech, but it was not granted. The Senate was then adjourned.
House prices to fall, economists predict
A growing number of economists have predicted house prices will fall across Australia in the coming year.
The Reserve Bank’s three interest rate hikes have pushed buyers out of the housing market,. a fourth is expected later this year. Investors are now expected to step back even further after the budget scrapped their tax breaks.
HSBC’s chief economist, Paul Bloxham, is the latest to downgrade forecasts. After prices rose nearly 9% in 2025, he had expected them to rise by up to 7% in 2026. Now Bloxham thinks they’ll fall in the next few months. unwinding earlier gains this year to stay flat by December, then fall further in 2027.
The government expects house prices to continue to rise. just slower, with prices 2% lower than they would otherwise have been, thanks to the taxes
Commonwealth Bank’s Trent Saunders thinks the drag is probably just a touch stronger, which would see house prices rise just 3% over 2026,. warns it could be almost three times stronger, leaving prices about flat this year. But if investors go scrambling for the exits. more out of fear than from the fundamentals of the tax reforms, a downturn becomes possible, he says.
Macquarie analysts are also warning of the risk of a “negative immediate impact”; NAB expects a “small decline” in prices;. AMP and UBS believe a 5% fall in the short term is credible. AMP’s Shane Oliver said:
“This will no doubt be chalked up as a win for the policy change.”
Asylum seekers advocacy group says Angus Taylor’s speech ‘divisive and misguided’
The Asylum Seekers Centre in Sydney said the opposition leader’s budget-in-reply speech, linking housing supply to migration levels, was “sadly predictable, divisive,. misguided”.
“The opposition leader has found a scapegoat, not a solution,” Elijah Buol, chief executive of the ASC said.
double quotation mark Housing is a human right,. everyone in Australia should have access to safe, secure shelter – regardless of their visa status.
Buol said already, many people seeking asylum are denied income support, shut out of crisis accommodation. left with no path to stability. On some estimates, one in five people sleeping rough are non-residents on uncertain visas, including people seeking asylum.
The ASC’s own data shows that 55% of its clients have experienced homelessness since arriving in Australia.
Buol said political leaders must stop misdirecting the housing crisis towards migration for short‑term political gain:
double quotation mark Blaming people seeking asylum or migrants for structural housing shortages is not only misleading. it distracts from the real policy solutions we urgently need.
The consequences are severe. predictable: people who have fled persecution and trauma are pushed into homelessness, exploitation and ongoing harm.
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