Australia news LIVE: Defence minister to visit Ukraine; Morrison pushed $500m project before business case was done

Andrew Forrest’s legal battle to hold social media giant Meta to account over the proliferation of scam ads using his likeness on Facebook is all but dead in the water.

The Commonwealth filed a notice of discontinuance on all charges in the case on Friday morning, putting an end to the mining magnate’s court crusade in Perth.

Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions lawyer Tahlia Zerafa told the District Court the federal body had made the decision after assessing the evidence. The court consented to receiving the notice and Meta was discharged.

The hearing lasted all of four minutes.

Forrest claimed the trillion-dollar company had blatantly refused to address fraudulent content on its site, including deepfake crypto scams and get-rich-quick schemes featuring his image.

More on this breaking story here.

High-roller gamblers are steering clear of Star Entertainment Group’s three casinos, as the company’s former and current senior executives prepare to front another public inquiry into whether its Sydney casino should stay open.

The Star issued a mixed trading update to the ASX on Friday, telling investors that its premium gaming revenue had slumped 20 per cent in its properties in Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast in the March quarter. The lack of high rollers pushed overall revenue down 5 per cent on the previous corresponding period to $133.6 million. However, revenue from the main gaming floors – home of the bulk of the poker machines – pushed up 5 per cent in the quarter.

The Star’s statutory loss after tax over the three months was $6.8 million, a significant improvement on the $50 million loss over the same period in 2023. The quarterly loss reflects $10 million in significant items such as provisions for a yet-to-be determined Austrac fine and the legal costs of the second inquiry.

The company’s normalised earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation for the quarter were $38 million, which gives a clearer insight of the underlying performance of the group.

Here’s the full story.

Earlier, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has responded to the Productivity Commissioner chair’s comments on the government’s bid to subsidise Australian manufacturing could create a “class” of business reliant on government handouts.

Chair Danielle Wood told The Australian Financial Review that Labor’s “future made in Australia” budget pitch to invest in local growth industries, such as clean energy, wasn’t going to be costless.

Albanese was questioned about the comments on Sydney radio station 2SM this morning, and said there was opportunity in the proposal given the US, Japan and Korea had introduced similar legislation.

“We can sit back and watch the whole world go past us, or we can take up the opportunities that are there,” Albanese said.

He pointed to the debate over the Liddell power station in NSW’s Hunter Valley, and a deal to produce solar panels at the plant.

“We know one in three Australian households have solar panels on their roofs, [the] highest uptake in the world. But only one per cent of them have been made in Australia. We need to be better than that.”

Albanese said Australia had to stand on its own two feet.

“The other thing that the pandemic reminded us of how vulnerable we are with disruption to our trade,” he said.

He said Australia could be competitive because of how production changed, with increased mechanisation and technology leading to less labour.

“It used to be that we lost jobs in Australia because of the variant labour costs because labour was cheaper in our north, in particular in China and Taiwan and those countries.

He said instead of the tyranny of distance Australia had the “proximity of opportunity”.

NSW Liberal MPs have urged the party to embrace renters as the “new forgotten people”, with one warning a failure to appeal to the growing cohort “will make us unelectable for decades to come”.

Davidson MP Matt Cross and MLC Christopher Rath called for the party to adopt policies aimed at supporting renters, including providing landlords who offer long-term rental agreements of three years or more with tax breaks and replacing bonds on rental properties with “simple insurance products” to protect landlords.

The intervention in the housing debate came as Sydney rental prices reached another record high of $700 a week for a median rental unit and $750 for a typical house – an annual increase of 12.9 per cent, and a $200 jump since March 2019.

Both Millennials, Cross, 39, and Rath, 34, said the party needed to become not just the “party of homeownership and aspiring homeowners” but of renters, too. The imperative to find a solution was not just “one of political necessity; it is a matter of necessity for our country’s future”, the pair said.

Continue reading here.

A forever chemical recently declared carcinogenic is allowed in Australia’s tap water at 140 times the maximum level the United States now considers safe after the Biden administration dramatically lowered its safe limits for drinking water.

In a press conference, the White House also paid tribute to young Minnesota woman Amara Strande, who led a deathbed crusade to outlaw forever chemicals before she died from liver cancer at the age of 20.

Strande began her lobbying efforts in 2018, after she was featured in a world exclusive investigation by this masthead, which uncovered 21 cancer cases in students from her high school at Oakdale in America’s Midwest, where the water was heavily polluted with forever chemicals.

The same 3M factory that poisoned Amara’s high school has also contributed to the contamination of 98 per cent of the world’s population with the forever chemicals, also known as PFAS or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

Here’s more on the issue.

A Victorian minister says she is locked in “ongoing discussions” about the Allan government’s controversial overhaul of Victoria’s public records.

The comments come amid concerns about the future integrity and oversight of key documents that – if misplaced, destroyed or redacted by vested interests – could compromise future royal commissions or native title decisions.

The Victorian government is planning to abolish the Public Records Advisory Council in a bill that is currently before the state’s upper house.

The council oversees the activities of Public Records Office Victoria and can make directions about how records are kept, who can go in and change them and which documents are destroyed.

Earlier this week, this masthead revealed the Victorian opposition and crossbench are planning to team up to prevent the council – a legislated public board – from no longer being enshrined in law.

Speaking to the media this morning, Government Services Minister Gabrielle Williams insisted that she was “consulting heavily” with concerned archivists, librarians and historians.

“I want to be really clear that we are not looking in any way at eroding the function and protection of document and public records preservation,” Williams said.

“In fact, we are looking to enhance it. And those are conversations that we continue to have.”

The minister was then asked if she could name a single public institution in Victoria that operated without a board.

Her reply?

“As I said, we are in ongoing discussions.”

Tasmania’s Liberals can govern in minority after receiving the final required offer of support from an independent MP.

Premier Jeremy Rockliff’s party won 14 of 35 lower-house seats at the March 23 election, four short of the number required to govern in its own right.

Three first-term Jacqui Lambie Network MPs earlier this week inked a deal to provide votes of confidence and supply in parliament in return for several measures.

Rockliff said today that independent and former Labor leader David O’Byrne had provided a written assurance of confidence and supply.

He also told ABC radio a more formal agreement was still being discussed but at this stage he had not made any commitments in return for O’Byrne’s support.

“We can now move forward … and have a parliament that is workable, that listens to everyone’s ideas [and] provides that certainty and stability that Tasmanians want,” he said.

The incumbent Liberals suffered a 12 per cent swing against them at the election.

AAP

Former political editor for the ABC and Nine, Chris Uhlmann is joining News Corp’s conservative news channel, Sky News Australia.

Uhlmann joins the Murdoch-owned network as a contributor to other established shows.

He will not host his own program, however will present on the channel’s other news and commentary shows, also offering analysis. He will also produce his own documentaries.

He confirmed his appointment to this masthead this morning. Sky News was contacted for comment.

Read the rest of the exclusive here.

Turning to NSW news, the Minns government’s signature density reforms around train stations will be expanded, adding an extra six stations to the existing 31 after several councils asked for more suburbs to be included.

Belmore, Lakemba and Punchbowl stations will be added, as well as Cardiff and Cockle Creek near Newcastle, and Woy Woy on the Central Coast. All six were suggested by the local councils for inclusion.

The bulk of reforms, which will amend planning controls to allow six-storey residential apartment buildings within 400 metres of the stations in the 37 chosen suburbs, are due to start this month

Continue reading about the changes here.

Australia Post will take longer to deliver letters under new performance standards agreed with the federal government recognising its growing role in parcels.

From Monday, letters will be delivered every second day instead of every day for 98 per cent of locations across Australia.

At the same time, Australia Post will have an extra day to deliver standard letters.

For example, a letter posted within a state should be delivered in four days and no more than five.

Between states, deliveries should take between six and eight days.

The government-owned corporation will also be able to change how it manages priority mail, allowing it to deliver services “at a more commercial rate”.

After trials were set up last year, capital city households may already be familiar with the letter delivery extension.

AAP