Australia news LIVE: Defence to be boosted by $50b over next decade; Assange extradition draws closer as US offers UK assurances

The family of Jade Young, one of the Bondi Junction victims, have expressed their heartbreak over her death.

“There are no words to describe the sense of loss, sadness and grief we have been experiencing after the shocking events at Bondi Junction,” the family said in a statement.

“The entire family is still in shock and coming to terms with the loss of Jade.”

The family confirmed Jade’s partner Noel and one of their daughters were present at the time of the attack. They said processing the grief and trauma will take time.

Gofundme, a website for collecting online donations, has collated the verified fundraisers set up by the loved ones of victims Ashlee Good, Jade Young and Faraz Tahir on this web page.

Young’s family said they would be grateful for any donations people could give.

“They [donations] will be used to provide Jade’s daughters with a secure future as they begin to adjust to life without their mum.”

Police say that 51 NSW Police cars were damaged in the fracas on Monday night following the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel.

Arrest warrants for rioters were being processed this afternoon, after Police Commissioner Karen Webb told ABC Radio National that police would begin to charge those responsible from today.

The news comes as video emerges of some of the damaged vehicles being transported from the scene outside Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley, where emergency services, parishioners and rioters converged in dramatic scenes following the attack on the bishop.

The woman who died after consuming a suspected magic mushroom drink in Clunes was a health practitioner who lived in New Zealand before settling in Melbourne and raising her son.

Rachael Dixon died in Clunes early on Sunday morning after suffering a possible cardiac arrest. Paramedics were called to treat the 53-year-old Ringwood North woman at the Soul Barn Creative Wellbeing Centre in Clunes, near Ballarat, after a report she was not breathing.

The state coroner is investigating the death.

Her son, Matthew Mountain, posted a tribute to Dixon on Facebook on Sunday.

“To the most loving, most caring person I’ve ever known can’t thank you enough for everything you ever did for me and all the support you gave me, words can’t begin to describe how much I will miss you, wish I could give you one last hug,” he wrote.

“Love you infinity Mum.”

Read full story here.

Let’s cross to some sport news.

For designers of the Australian Olympic Team’s opening ceremony uniforms, our tricky green and gold national colours added to the pressure of being on display in the fashion capital of Paris.

The uniforms, which showcase Australia’s relaxed energy with a touch of French chic, were revealed at Clovelly Beach in Sydney on Wednesday, with athletes looking overdressed against a backdrop of morning swimmers in Speedos.

Deep teal linen blazers, in double and single-breasted styles, feature the names of 301 past Olympians and the Olympians’ Oath on the lining. Indigenous artworks Walking Together by Olympic boxer Paul Fleming and Our Way of Life by Torres Strait Islander artist David Bosun decorate pocket squares and scarves.

“Over the years, the shades of green have changed, and in Sydney 2000 we had the ochre blazers, but I think the green is beautiful,” says Olympic gold medallist and former senator Nova Peris. “Just as important is having Indigenous identity and culture embedded in the uniforms.”

Read more here.

At least 800 people in Indonesia’s North Sulawesi province have been evacuated after multiple eruptions from Ruang island’s volcano.

The volcano has erupted more than three times since Tuesday, spewing lava and ash clouds into the sky.

Authorities have raised the alert to the second-highest level following the increased activity, Heruningtyas Desi Purnamasari, an official at Indonesia’s Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation told Reuters.

The eruptions were triggered by recent earthquakes on the island, with the mountain emitting dangerous and “explosive hot clouds” as high as 1.8 kilometres into the sky, she said.

“We must clear the island because we anticipate there could be more eruptions. No activity is allowed within four kilometres from the crater,” she said.

Reuters

The French ambassador to Australia has praised the actions of construction workers Damien Guérot and Silas Despreaux, who tried to stop the man responsible for the deadly stabbing rampage at Bondi Junction.

Joel Cauchi, 40, stabbed six people to death inside the Westfield shopping centre on Saturday before he was killed by a single shot from a senior police officer.

France’s ambassador, Pierre-Andre Imbert, said the attack was an act of “senseless violence”.

“Our thoughts, compassion and solidarity are with the victims, their families and friends,” he said.

Imbert said the French citizens’ attempts to prevent the attacker from approaching other shoppers was commendable.

“I praise both men for showing courage in the face of violence and have personally conveyed my gratitude for their bravery to them.”

Good afternoon, thanks for joining us.

I’m Hannah Kennelly, and I’ll be anchoring our live coverage for the remainder of the day.

Catch up on this afternoon’s headlines:

Judges will be turning the courts into a “refugee tribunal” if they allow people who don’t co-operate with moves to deport them to walk free from immigration detention, the Commonwealth argued in the High Court.

Australia also risked diplomatic tensions by resettling people in countries where they didn’t belong, the court heard.

Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue told the High Court the government had investigated moving a bisexual Iranian man in detention to a third country but was “unsurprisingly” unsuccessful because he could be returned to Iran.

The Commonwealth argues the man at the centre of the latest High Court challenge to the government’s immigration detention regime, given the pseudonym ASF17, could be deported if he co-operated with authorities, and therefore his continuing detention is lawful.

ASF17’s barrister, Lisa De Ferrari, SC, told the court her client feared harm if he was returned, and would rather be sent to war-torn Gaza, but Donaghue said there many people who held those fears but had refugee applications rejected because their fears weren’t supported by an objective test.

Donaghue said if they found for the detainee “you will be turning the Federal Circuit Court into a refugee tribunal”.

De Ferrari argued the government didn’t even try to resettle her client in another country, which Donaghue disputed.

He said De Ferrari was effectively asking the government to take people to countries where they had no right of residency or long-term stay.

“If we did start removing people to those countries, that would create diplomatic tensions, and raise the risk of refoulement,” Donaghue told the court.

The defence minister was also questioned about expanding recruitment to the Australian Defence Force to non-citizens, and if there was a figure for how many people could be accepted.

This masthead previously reported that a Pacific battalion with rotating Australian and Pacific troops could address the military’s staffing crisis.

“There are questions and issues we will need to work through in respect of any category of non-Australian citizens that might enter into the Australian Defence Force, but I think the important thing is we need to start looking at this and an obvious place to start looking is among our AUKUS partners,” Richard Marles said this afternoon.

He said there were more than half a million New Zealand citizens living in Australia, and that was an “obvious place” to look to.

Marles said other nations had already done something similar, and pointed to the US and the UK.

“It is a bridge that has been crossed by others; we do have a significant workforce challenge … we are starting to turn that around in terms of recruitment and retention of those currently in the force, but it is not just a matter of maintaining the current numbers in the force, we need to grow the force by 2040 and to do that we need to be thinking about these avenues and this wider pool of people we can draw from.”

Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles is now taking questions after his speech to the National Press Club in Canberra.

He said the government needed to accelerate defence processes, to ensure cutting-edge technology and platforms were brought into service more quickly.

Marles said Australia was a medium power, and couldn’t compete with the kind of capability that other countries had.

“We are never going to bring to bear the kind of military capability that exists in the United States or China,” he said.

“Our strategic challenge is not trying to be a peer of the United States or China. The strategic problem that we are trying to meet, that we’re trying to solve, is making sure that in a much less certain world in the future, we are able to resist coercion, and maintain Australia’s way of life.”

He said that was the “strategic cat that we are trying to skin”.