Key events
Meta outage impacting Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp
Meta says it has suffered a global outage, with some users facing issues while using Instagram, Facebook and the WhatsApp messaging service.
It said in a post to X:
We’re aware that a technical issue is impacting some users’ ability to access our apps. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience.
You can read more details on this below:
Dutton stands by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flag comments
Speaking to Sunrise, Peter Dutton also stood by his pledge not to display the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags if elected the next prime minister.
Echoing his earlier comments, Dutton said:
The argument is: how can you be united as a country if we’re asking people to identify under different flags? No other western democracy does that. So I believe very strongly we should have an enormous amount of respect for the Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander flags but they are not our national flag.
Asked if he would also seek to remove the Aboriginal flag from the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Dutton said he would “work with the state governments.”
Obviously the state government has made a decision to put the flag up there, but for us, at a federal level, I’m not going to pretend that our country can be united when we’re asking people toed identify in different ways.
Although he eventually said it was a “decision for the NSW government.”
Dutton defends nuclear plan as costings announcement due
The leader of the opposition, Peter Dutton, was on Sunrise earlier this morning, as the Coalition is expected to detail its nuclear plan costings today.
Asked if he is rethinking his claim that nuclear would cut people’s power bills, given the CSIRO report, Dutton said: “No, we’re not.”
He pointed to international examples and continued to defend the Coalition’s plan:
We will release our costings this week. When you think of how much money the government is spending on the renewables-only policy, it’s cheaper than what the government is providing at the moment.
Asked if he could guarantee the Coalition will cut people’s power, Dutton said “yes, we can”, and claimed nuclear reactors could be built “very quickly” if there is bipartisan support.
We say 2035 to 2037 before the first reactor comes in.
There is bound to be lots of talk on nuclear today – for the latest, you can have a read below from our environment and climate team:
Steggall backs Labor’s childcare plans
Independent MP Zali Steggall has backed the government’s proposed $3bn childcare plans.
Labor yesterday said it would introduce the childcare subsidy for three days a week to all families earning up to $530,000 a year from January 2026. A second-term Labor government would also scrap the controversial activity test, the PM said.
Speaking on the Today Show just earlier, Steggall was asked about a report in the Australian saying it would “slug” taxpayers with $1bn, and said: “I think we have to remember it’s eye-watering for families, right?”
I think it depends on how you can pull out numbers that way. But the reality is [this is] part of the cost is building new centres in areas where they simply don’t have enough access … Families are slugged with this cost. We have to invest in our people if we want to be a great nation, and that means providing childcare centres.
Good morning
Emily Wind
And happy Thursday – Emily Wind here, I’ll be taking you through our live coverage for most of today here on the Australia news blog.
As always, you can get in touch with any tips, feedback or questions via email: [email protected].
Let’s get started.
Universities Australia calls for investment fund
Caitlin Cassidy
Universities Australia has called for the re-establishment of the Howard-era education investment fund in its federal election statement.
The statement, released today ahead of next year’s election, urged both major parties to provide bipartisan support for Australia’s universities to prepare for the challenges ahead. Universities Australia’s CEO, Luke Sheehy, said:
Universities matter to Australia’s future. The decisions made by the next federal government, and subsequent ones, will shape Australia’s ability to manage and prosper from these big shifts under way in our economy.
Our universities are national assets and should be treated as such, receiving bipartisan support to grow and succeed in the national interest.
The statement called for a number of reforms, including the re-establishment of the Education investment fund, established by the Howard government and supported by subsequent Labor governments to fund teaching, training and research facilities at universities.
The $4bn fund was disbanded in 2019.
Universities Australia also urged both major parties to reverse their attacks on international education and implement Indigenous-related recommendations in the Universities Accord.
Social media news and laws anticipated today
Our politics reporter Sarah Basford Canales has been following the story I mentioned at the top about how the government is going to try to make tech companies keep paying for news content it takes from Australian publishers.
Her reporting tells us that companies could face heavy penalties if they refuse to negotiate deals.
Read her full story here as we stand by for more details from the government:
Pressure grows on ANU vice-chancellor
Caitlin Cassidy
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) will issue a vote of no confidence in the Australia National University’s vice-chancellor if she remains in her position until next year.
Prof Genevieve Bell has been facing increasing pressure since a series of articles published in the Australian Financial Review (AFR) detailed a second paid job she held at Intel while in the vice-chancellor position.
In a statement, the NTEU called on the ANU council to remove Bell before February 2025, when it next meets, to “prevent further damage to the ANU”.
If not, the NTEU will conduct a vote of no confidence, pointing to flagged job cuts, a majority vote against management’s proposal for staff to forego their pay rise and her job at Intel.
A spokesperson for ANU said as a public institution, it had a “responsibility to use the taxpayer’s money responsibly”.
For us to sell assets to continue running operational deficits would be very poor practice, and one of the key reasons we’ve been able to retain a strong credit rating is because ratings agencies can see we are committed to getting our budget back in order.
They said Bell’s work with Intel was “no secret” and published on the university’s own website, adding the arrangement was disclosed through its conflict processes and known by the council.
It is common across universities for academics to work with external parties in their fields of expertise.
Welcome
Martin Farrer
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and then it’ll be Emily Wind with the main action.
The Albanese government is tipped to announce this week that it will try to force big tech companies to continue paying Australian news organisations for content. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said it would stop paying for news as agreed in a deal with the Coalition government in March 2022.
Today could also be the day when the Coalition tells us how much it will claim it’s going to cost to build the nuclear power stations it says we need. There will be intense focus on the numbers, not least because we have a story this morning reporting that the cost could be double even the CSIRO estimate dissed by Peter Dutton this week.
Australia is expected to join several other countries at an emergency session of the UN this morning in a vote for a resolution to demand Israel reverse its ban on the Palestinian aid agency, Unrwa. It will also call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza in a move likely to further enrage Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the weekend’s spat. We’ll have details of the vote from New York when it goes down.
And the education union is pushing for a vote of no confidence in the Australian National University’s vice-chancellor – more on this soon.
