Australia news LIVE: Inflation falls to 3.6 per cent; Elon Musk labels Jacqui Lambie ‘enemy of the people’ amid social media furore

Counter-terrorism police raided multiple addresses in Sydney on Wednesday after the stabbing of a religious leader in a Wakeley church.

“The JCTT Sydney is executing search warrants in Sydney today as part of an ongoing investigation. There is no current threat to public safety and no connection to Anzac Day commemorations,” a police statement said.

“More information will be provided later today, but nothing further is available at this time.”

More to come.

Spy boss Mike Burgess is using his speech today to urge tech companies to work with ASIO to intercept encrypted communications subject to search warrants.

Currently, ASIO can use warrants to lawfully intercept phone calls, intercept emails and encrypted communication.

“Even when the warrant allows us to lawfully intercept an encrypted communication, we cannot read it without the assistance [of the company that] owns and operates that app,” he said.

Burgess said the companies had to be willing and able to help with the warrant.

Today, I’m asking, urging, the tech companies to work with us to resolve these challenges. Let me be absolutely clear – I am not calling for an end to end-to-end encryption. I’m not asking for new laws, I’m not asking for new powers, I’m not asking for more resources.

I’m asking the tech companies to do more, I’m asking them to give effect to the existing powers and uphold existing laws. Without their help, in very limited and strictly controlled circumstances, encryption is unaccountable.”

ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess and AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw are delivering an address to the National Press Club this afternoon.

Opening his speech, Burgess said the internet has transformed information sourcing, but it is “the world’s most potential incubator of extremism”.

He said smartphones were a brilliant communication tool but also an “all-in-one surveillance device that’s listening when you’re not on the phone, tracking your movements and recording your browsing.”

“Encryption protects our privacy and enables our economy and creates safe spaces for violent extremists to operate, network and recruit.”

He said individuals and industries needed to be more resilient targets, and the spy agencies wanted tech companies to assist with vital missions.

“We want to ensure individuals and industries are more resistant and resilient targets, and we’ll ask the tech companies to assist us with our vital missions.”

The latest inflation figures mean student HECS debts are set to increase by 4.8 per cent on June 1.

Independent MP Monique Ryan said this morning’s inflation figures falling to 3.6 per cent means a person on a $60,000 salary with the average HECS debt of $24,771 will have their HECS indexed to $1177, yet over the past year would have only paid off $1200.

“In other words, hundreds of thousands of Australians with a HECS debt are either treading water or seeing their HECS debts increase despite working hard to pay them off,” she said.

In March, Ryan released a petition for HECS reform which has been signed by more than 270,000 people.

Last week Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said a government announcement was imminent on a recommended overhaul of HECS in the May budget.

“If the federal government is really listening, it will make concrete changes to the HECS system ahead of June 1, when this indexation kicks in,” Ryan said.

Minister for Women Katy Gallagher says the historic judgement which found former staffer Brittany Higgins was raped in a ministerial office at federal parliament gives even more weight to the need to create a powerful new body this year that could punish politicians and staff.

A draft structure leaked to this masthead in April revealed the potential powers of the much-delayed Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission, a body that could punish MPs, senators, staffers and others in the building for serious breaches such as sexual assault, violence, harassment, bullying and discrimination.

The commission is meant to be established by October, three years after an independent inquiry called out parliament’s “revolting and humiliating” workplace culture following Higgins’ revealing she had been raped in a minister’s office.

Gallagher said on Wednesday a bipartisan team of politicians charged with implementing the commission, including Coalition spokeswoman Jane Hume, Greens senator Larissa Waters and Trade Minister Don Farrell, still hope to have it enshrined in law before the end of the year.

Read more: ‘A rape happened in this building’: Minister for women flags need for new MP punishment powers

Higher university and high school costs and rental price increases helped drive inflation at the start of the year.

The main contributors to the March quarter increase in inflation were education, up 5.9 per cent, health (up 2.8 per cent), housing (up 0.7 per cent) and food and non-alcoholic beverages (up 0.9 per cent).

Education fees showed their strongest quarterly rise in 12 years, driven by a 6.5 per cent increase in tertiary education costs, while high school education costs rose by 6.1 per cent.

The increase in housing inflation was again driven by rents, which rose by 2.1 per cent, and new home purchases by owner occupiers (up 1.1 per cent).

“Rental prices rose 2.1 per cent for the quarter in line with low vacancy rates across the capital cities. Rents continues to increase at their fastest rate in 15 years,” ABS head of prices statistics Michelle Marquardt said.

The increase in food and non-alcoholic beverage prices was driven by beverages (up 3.4 per cent) and fruit and vegetables (up 2.5 per cent), partially offset by meat and seafood prices which fell by 0.7 per cent.

“Meat and seafood prices fell this quarter as increased supply and discounting led to price drops for beef and veal and lamb and goat. Discounting of fish and other seafood and other meats also contributed to the fall,” Marquardt said.

Inflation has fallen to 3.6 per cent in the year to March according to the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

In the first three months of the year inflation rose by 1 per cent, higher than the 0.6 per cent in the last three months of 2023 ABS head of prices statistics Michelle Marquardt said.

“While prices continued to rise for most goods and services, annual CPI inflation was down from 4.1 per cent last quarter and has fallen from the peak of 7.8 per cent in December 2022,” she said.

Lost luggage containing uniforms and instruments has forced the New Zealand Defence Force to revise plans to commemorate Anzac Day in Gallipoli.

A 40-strong NZDF contingent arrived in Turkey last week, but without their checked bags owing to a transit through flood-hit Dubai, which caused massive disruptions to airport operations.

Lost in the mayhem were service dress uniforms and band instruments to be used at the dawn service at Thursday’s Anzac Cove and a late-morning NZ-specific service at nearby Chunuk Bair.

“Efforts were made to source musical instruments locally but it had proved very difficult to find the right instruments, particularly given local bands’ participation in Turkish services,” NZDF Gallipoli lead John McLeod said.

“The contingent would evaluate what had and hadn’t arrived on Wednesday morning before deciding how it might take part in the dawn service and how the New Zealand Chunuk Bair service will be delivered.

“It will, however, be delivered.

“We are determined to ensure our Chunuk Bair service honours those who fought here at Gallipoli.”

In crisis, the servicemen and women have created a distinctively Kiwi performance.

“Our outstanding vocalist, Lance Corporal Bryony Williams will sing anthems without accompaniment and we have a guitar to support our Maori Cultural group in singing waiata,” Mr McLeod said.

Embassy staff managed to retrieve some of the lost luggage by Tuesday night, but only one instrument and some of the uniforms.

AAP

Greens senator David Shoebridge has likened campus protests against Israel’s actions against Gaza to the anti-Vietnam war and anti-apartheid protests of the past.

Shoebridge told ABC Radio National that at the centre of the protests were concerns about Australia’s arms trade with Israel and over university relationships with military organisations.

“Sydney University has quite deep connections with the global weapons industry, in particular with Talos, a French multinational arms manufacturer, which has a series of coventures with Israeli arms manufacturers and is a major supplier into the genocide,” Shoebridge said.

“The students were sitting in occupation out the front of the quad, and demanding that those links be ended, and that their institution and that their country, not be complicit in an ongoing genocide.”

Shoebridge denied the protest were making Jewish students uncomfortable or feel unsafe, and said, “none of that was happening at the protests I saw”.

The Sydney University protests have followed student arrests at on-campus protests at Columbia, Yale and New York University in the United States.

Returning to Australia, the political saga over the PEP11 gas project off Sydney’s coastline took another unexpected twist, as federal Resources Minister Madeleine King surrendered her veto powers over the controversial development.

The ambitious plans by Asset Energy and Bounty to tap the seabed for gas off the coast of Sydney have been mired in delays for at least four years.

The Petroleum Exploration Permit 11 – known as PEP 11 – was collateral damage in the fallout of former prime minister Scott Morrison’s secret ministries scandal, after the Federal Court found he had shown “implacable opposition” and bias in refusing the permit.

While the court case revoked Morrison’s decision and restarted the application process, the federal government has not declared what it will do about the project since coming to power in May 2022, even though Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said during the election campaign that he was opposed to the project.

The companies’ plan is opposed by community groups, the state government and Albanese.

It came as a shock to observers when King announced she would absent herself from decisions on PEP11, handing her veto power to Science and Industry Minister Ed Husic.

Catch up on this story here.