Australia news LIVE: Chalmers urged to act to counter China downturn threat; Social media giants face big fines in revamped laws

Five Australians have been arrested in an international police operation that targeted a cybercrime platform used to steal personal data from around the world.

The platform known as LabHost allowed criminals to create ‘phishing’ websites that mimicked real websites, such as MyGov and banking websites, to steal personal details.

AFP Acting Assistant Commissioner Cyber Command Chris Goldsmid said a Melbourne man and Adelaide man were arrested during raids and charged with cyber-crime related offences.

Another three men from Melbourne were also arrested by Victoria Police as part of the operation, and charged with drug-related offences.

“This is a significant disruption of the LabHost infrastructure and criminals ability to operate using the service,” he said.

Australians had lost up to $26 million as a result of the scammers, with over 94,000 potential victims in Australia whose details were stolen from criminals using the website.

He added Australian criminals are believed to be among the top three users of the illegal platform.

Another 32 people were arrested overseas, the AFP commander said.

In addition to taking down the LabHost domain, the cybercrime police unit took down 207 services which were used to host the phishing websites.

The Australian Federal Police are providing an update on the global cybercrime operation that netted five Australians.

Watch below:

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has suggested the government will grant permanent residency to a heroic security guard who confronted the attacker in the Bondi shopping centre attack.

Albanese this week marked the brave actions of a Frenchman nicknamed “bollard man” by offering him permanent residency, which Albanese said would be signed off this week.

The move, remarked upon by French president Emmanuel Macron, prompted Pakistani security guard Muhammad Taha to publicly raise that his temporary skilled graduate visa was ending within a month.

Taha confronted the stabber alongside colleague Faraz Tahir.

Asked if he would look to grant Taha a permanent visa or citizenship, Albanese said on radio station FiveAA: “Yes we certainly will.”

“These are people who were … putting themselves in danger in order to protect Australians who they didn’t know.”

“This is the sort of courage we want so say thank you to. It’s a bit of light in amongst the darkness.”

Coral bleaching has swept from the tail to the tip of the Great Barrier Reef, with aerial surveys revealing the possibly unprecedented damage from a marine heatwave along the entirety of the 2300-kilometre World Heritage ecosystem.

Almost half the reefs in the ecosystem (46 per cent) have experienced record levels of heat stress, and all three regions – north, central and south – have had instances of extreme bleaching, where more than 90 per cent of the corals in one location are bleached.

The results are contained in the Australian Institute of Marine Science reef snapshot released on Wednesday.

“This is one of the most extensive bleaching events the reef has experienced in AIMS’ nearly 40 years of monitoring,” said Dr David Wachenfeld, research director at the institute.

“It’s the first bleaching event where we’ve had extreme bleaching in the northern, central and southern Great Barrier Reef.”

Catch up on the full story here. 

Five Australians have been arrested as part of a global cybercrime operation that shut down a phishing platform used to steal people’s personal details.

Another 34 people were arrested overseas as part of the multi-agency operation to shut down the phishing scheme, the Australian Federal Police have said.

Up to 94,000 people in Australia alone had their details stolen, according to police.

The AFP will hold a press conference about the arrests at 9.30 AEST, and we will bring you more details as they come.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has stared down Coalition criticism of her proposed bill to stamp out social media lies, arguing the storm of misinformation during the recent Sydney stabbings showed why such laws were urgently needed.

Rowland told this masthead yesterday a storm of damaging online lies during Sydney’s stabbing attacks has fuelled the case for legislating multimillion-dollar fines for social media giants hosting misinformation, pledging to take on X and Meta to prevent “devastating” social harm.

On ABC radio this morning, she said no responsible government would spurn a crackdown on social media firms, even though a backlash over a potential impingement on free speech forced the government to temporarily shelve the laws last week.

“If we needed to see any case study about what can happen when misinformation spreads at speed and scale, we only need to look at what happened in Western Sydney the other night,” she said.

“The destruction, the damage to public property threats to life and health.”

Since the Bondi and western Sydney church stabbings, attention of politicians and analysts has turned to the role of social media and Australian influencers including the anti-Western, Russia-aligned X users Simeon Boikov, known as the “Aussie Cossack”, and Maram Susli, who uses the name Syrian Girl online.

Both falsely suggested to large followings that the Bondi attacker was a local Jewish man, while Boikov cited rumours, since proved false, suggesting a mob cut fingers off the 16-year-old who allegedly stabbed preachers.

Injuries to the boy’s hand were actually sustained in the act of stabbing, NSW Premier Chris Minns was forced to clarify.

ESafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant this week used her legal powers to demand X, formerly known as Twitter, and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, take down distressing footage of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel being attacked during a live-streamed service.

A spokeswoman for the commissioner said late yesterday she was satisfied with Meta’s attempts to comply but was still assessing X’s response.

The Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles is now speaking on ABC’s Radio National about the risks to Australian national security underpinning a $50 billion boost to defence spending.

Responding to questions about Australia’s ability to respond to a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Marles said it was “ridiculous” to think Australia could match the US and China in terms of military strength in our region.

He cautioned against analysts floating worst-case scenarios regarding an imminent Chinese invasion, though he added Australia was doing what it could to avoid such a serious conflict.

“We want to do everything we can to avoid conflict of that kind, and we are working very closely with … the US in respect to that,” he said.

Marles explained a key reason for the military funding rise was to deter adversaries from taking actions such as blocking sea routes through which Australia imports large amounts of fuel.

He said long-range submarines and missiles would “give any adversary pause for though” before taking a step like that.

Yesterday, the Albanese government directly identified China’s unprecedented military build-up as the biggest threat of conflict in the Indo-Pacific.

Former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews is among more than 200 names on the latest list of Australians who have been banned from entering Russia.

Andrews is one of the most high-profile of the 235 current and former Victorian and South Australian MPs across the political divide who have made Moscow’s list over Australia’s “anti-Russian agenda”.

Russia’s foreign ministry said the Australians were handed indefinite bans “in response to politically motivated sanctions against Russian individuals and legal entities by the Australian government”.

AAP

Defence Minister Richard Marles has rejected assertions that a massive boost in military spending will not come quick enough to counter imminent threats in our region.

Speaking on ABC TV, Marles said yesterday’s announcement of $5.7 billion in new spending over the next four years and $50 billion over the next decade would help “resist coercion”.

Yesterday, the Albanese government directly identified China’s unprecedented military build-up as the biggest threat of conflict in the Indo-Pacific.

“We’re seeing $5.7 billion in this year’s budget over the next four years, in the forward estimates. And to put that number in context, that represents … that’s the biggest increase over a 4-year period in defence spending that we have seen in this country in decades,” Marles said.

“We do believe, by acting quickly, by acting decisively with this very significant increase in defence spending, we can give our country agency and we can make sure that going forward in a much less certain world we’re able to resist coercion and maintain our way of life.”

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Richard Marles has spoken about the Frenchman who tried to ward off the Bondi Junction attacker with a bollard.

He told ABC News Breakfast he wasn’t sure if Damien Guerot had taken up the offer of permanent residency, but said the man’s actions were extremely brave.

“[Geurot] is the kind of person who we would want to see in Australia, and he’s not the only person who demonstrated incredibly bravery at Bondi,” Marles said this morning.

“It was an appalling event and, you know, it has moved the entire nation, understandably. But what we saw in the midst of that was immense bravery from a range of people, including this gentleman, and his circumstances will be looked at going forward.”

Damien Guerot and Silas Despreaux, both construction workers employed by a small building firm on the North Shore, were at the shopping centre when Joel Cauchi stabbed six people to death inside the shopping centre.

Footage from the shopping centre under siege shows Guerot standing at the top of an escalator brandishing a bollard as Cauchi advances, trying to ward him off.