Australia news LIVE: Australian aid worker reportedly killed in Gaza while providing food assistance; poorly behaved politicians face docked pay, suspension

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will be joined by Treasurer Jim Chalmers, Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy and local Qld MPs Milton Dick and Shayne Neumann for a press conference at the Rheinmetall facilities.

The update comes after the news that more than 100 armoured vehicles will be made in Queensland for Germany under a $1 billion defence deal.

Good afternoon, and thanks for joining our live blog. It’s Caroline Schelle here, and I’ll be leading our coverage for the rest of the afternoon.

Thanks to Josefine Ganko for helming the blog this morning.

Here’s what you need to know if you’re just joining us:

• The identity of the Australian aid worker killed in an apparent Israeli air strike while providing food assistance in Gaza has been revealed as Zomi Frankcom.
• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese lauds a deal with Germany to build 100 armoured vehicles as the largest military export agreement in Australian history.
• Australian home values have risen for a 14th consecutive month and have defied expectations of a slower rise as demand continues to outstrip supply.
• The federal government is proposing to legislate voluntary digital IDs in a bid to cut down on the red tape required to establish an individual’s identity.
• Misbehaving politicians could be docked up to 5 per cent of their salary or suspended from federal parliament if a law to create a new body to investigate alleged misconduct passes.

• New data shows campaigners who pushed for a Voice to parliament received tens of millions more financial donations than groups opposed to the reconciliation movement.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmer’s press conference in Queensland will get underway shortly, so stay tuned.

Meta has commenced the closure of the Facebook news tab, with the change due to be completed by the end of the week.

In its March announcement, Meta said the number of people using the Facebook news tab in Australia had dropped by 80 per cent in the last year, and that its users did not use Facebook for news or political content.

The social media giant decided to stop paying Australian publishers for their content in March, a move that drew rebukes from the government and media outlets.

While the news tab will disappear, news organisations will still be able to post their content to Facebook and Instagram for now.

This could all change if Meta decides to escalate the dispute as it did in 2021, when it blocked Australian news from its platform.

An industry source, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely, said big media companies in Australia were taking very seriously Meta’s threat to walk away from news entirely, pointing to their decision to do this in Canada.

Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones and Communications Minister Michelle Rowland accused the tech giant of “a dereliction of its commitment to the sustainability of Australian news media.”

Jones signalled the government is prepared to use the news media bargaining code, put in place by former treasurer Josh Frydenberg, to force Meta back to the table to negotiate with Australian media companies for the millions of dollars in content they provide.

Donald Trump posted a $175 million bond on Monday in his New York civil fraud case, halting collection of the more than $454 million he owes and preventing the state from seizing his assets to satisfy the debt while he appeals, according to a court filing.

A New York appellate court had given the former president 10 days to put up the money after a panel of judges agreed last month to slash the amount needed to stop the clock on enforcement.

The bond Trump is posting with the court now is essentially a placeholder, meant to guarantee payment if the judgment is upheld. If that happens, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee will have to pay the state the whole sum, which grows with daily interest.

If Trump wins, he won’t have to pay the state anything and will get back the money he has put up now.

Until the appeals court intervened to lower the required bond, New York Attorney General Letitia James had been poised to initiate efforts to collect the judgment, possibly by seizing some of Trump’s marquee properties. James, a Democrat, brought the lawsuit on the state’s behalf.

The court ruled after Trump’s lawyers complained it was “a practical impossibility” to get an underwriter to sign off on a bond for the $454 million, plus interest, that he owes.

AP

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says it is “urgently seeking to confirm reports that an Australian aid worker has died in Gaza”.

The statement continues:

These reports are very distressing.

We have been clear on the need for civilian lives to be protected in this conflict.

We have been very clear that we expect humanitarian workers in Gaza to have safe and unimpeded access to do their lifesaving work.

Owing to our privacy obligations we are unable to provide further comment.”

Health officials in Gaza said four aid workers, including an Australian woman, and their Palestinian driver died while delivering supplies that had arrived only hours earlier by ship from Cyprus.

Graphic photos posted on social media by Palestinian photojournalist Mohamed Al Masri showed the Australian woman, apparently dead, wearing a World Central Kitchen jacket and with her Australian passport placed on her chest.

Click here to read more on this developing story from foreign affairs correspondent Matthew Knott.

More than 100 armoured vehicles will be made in Queensland for Germany under a $1 billion defence deal, as Anthony Albanese lauds it as the single largest military export agreement in Australian history.

Albanese appeared on ABC Radio Brisbane today to promote the deal, calling it “good news for Australia”.

This masthead reported last month that the lucrative agreement passed German parliament, that more than 100 Boxer heavy weapon carrier vehicles will be built by Rheinmetall at its manufacturing facility in Redbank, Queensland.

The deal was announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during a trip to Berlin last year, but doubts emerged about its future when the federal government awarded a lucrative contract to build infantry fighting vehicles to South Korean company Hanwha instead of Germany’s Rheinmetall.

“It is worth more than 600 jobs directly in the Ipswich region west of Brisbane. And many more than that through the multiplier effect as well. It shows that Australia can compete, and we are good at manufacturing,” Albanese said.

“This is good news for Australia, and part of the creation of more than 1000 jobs every day we’ve been in office.”

The prime minister will on Tuesday visit Rheinmetall’s Vehicle Centre of Excellence in Ipswich to spruik the deal which will support 600 direct jobs in Queensland.

Germany’s parliament has approved a plan to buy the Boxer heavy weapon carrier vehicles.

They will be built in Queensland by the German company’s subsidiary, Rheinmetall Defence Australia.

AAP with Josefine Ganko

The Israel Defence Forces has released a statement following the apparent airstrike that killed an Australian along with three other aid workers and their Palestinian driver in northern Gaza.

The IDF statement reads as follows:

Following the reports regarding the World Central Kitchen personnel in Gaza today, the IDF is conducting a thorough review at the highest levels to understand the circumstances of this tragic incident.

The IDF makes extensive efforts to enable the safe delivery of humanitarian aid, and has been working closely with WCK in their vital efforts to provide food and humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.”

Footage showed the bodies of the five dead at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah. Several of them wore protective gear with the charity’s logo.

Staff showed the passports of three of the dead – Australian, British and Polish. The nationality of the fourth aid worker was not immediately known.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is investigating reports that an Australian woman working with the World Central Kitchen charity was killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike while delivering food and other supplies in northern Gaza.

Four international aid workers with the charity and their Palestinian driver were reported dead late on Monday, health officials in Gaza said.

Footage showed the bodies of the five dead at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah. Several of them wore protective gear with the charity’s logo. Staff showed the passports of three of the dead – Australian, British and Polish. The nationality of the fourth aid worker was not immediately known.

Mahmoud Thabet, a paramedic from the Palestinian Red Crescent, was on the team that brought the bodies to the hospital. He told The Associated Press that the workers’ car was hit by an Israeli strike just after crossing from northern Gaza. They had helped deliver aid that arrived hours earlier on a ship from Cyprus.

The source of the airstrike could not be independently confirmed, and the Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment.

AAP

The campaigners who pushed for a Voice to parliament received tens of millions more financial donations than groups opposed to the reconciliation movement, new data shows.

The Australian Electoral Commission has released new figures detailing the sums received and expended by political parties and lobby groups involved in last year’s referendum campaign, which was defeated by a 60-40 margin.

The disclosures show major groups tied to the Yes campaign raked in more than $60 million, which was spent on advertising and other campaign material. Yes23 fundraising body Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition received $47.5 million, and the Uluru Dialogues group – via the University of NSW – received more than $11 million.

Left-wing group GetUp! gathered $1.7 million and the Labor Party secured $400,000.

On the No side, the group led by senator Jacinta Nampajinpa Price, Australians for Unity, received about $11 million, the Liberal Party gained $1.9 million, and high-profile campaigners Advance solicited $1.3 million.

The biggest individual donors were the Paul Ramsay Foundation – founded through a bequest from the Australian business of the same name – which gave $7 million to the main pro-Voice group.

MYOB founder Craig Winkler’s firm gave $4.5 million to the Yes-aligned Uluru Dialogues.

ANZ bank gave $2.5 million to Yes23, while Westpac, Commonwealth Bank, Wesfarmers, BHP, Rio Tinto, Woolworths Group and Woodside Energy all gave upwards of a million dollars to the same group.

Independent MP Zali Steggall has suggested Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen offset the emissions of the two jets they used to attend the same event.

On Monday, Bowen was forced to defend using two separate Royal Australian Air Force jets to take him and Albanese to the NSW Hunter Valley to promote a renewables fund.

He claimed the airport couldn’t accommodate the PM’s larger jet and hence two smaller jets were needed to carry the politicians and their staff to the press conference.

Steggall told Channel Seven’s Sunrise that she “hopes they were offsetting the emissions of those two jets with companies”.

“I certainly hope, and I call on the minister for climate change to do that. As a lowly independent, we don’t get the luxuries of flying in the ADF jets,” she said.

Bowen said the RAAF advised the two jets were the most efficient way to land at Scone airport.

The trip was aimed at promoting the government’s $1 billion Solar Sunshot scheme. Albanese and Bowen attended the event at the decommissioned Liddell Power Station alongside Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic, Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy and Hunter MP Dan Repacholi.