Australia news LIVE: Assange extradition draws closer as US offers UK assurances; Labor defence spending plan released today

Former Brisbane lord mayor Graham Quirk is the first witness to give evidence at today’s hearing on Australia’s preparedness to host the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Brisbane.

Quirk led a review into Olympic venues at the behest of Premier Steven Miles.

While most of his recommendations, including the relocation of the planned Brisbane Arena, were accepted by the Miles government, the main Olympic stadium was more contentious.

Quirk recommended a new stadium be built at Victoria Park, but Miles instead chose the Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre as the main track and field venue.

The former mayor said the state government had the review for a weekend before making its decision.
“About a week or so out, we briefed the minister,” he said.

Infrastructure Minister Grace Grace had indicated to the review that the government did “not have much of an appetite” for a new stadium, Quirk said.

It is official. The El Nino climate pattern declared last September is now over.

The Bureau of Meteorology has declared that the El Nino weather cycle is over based on atmospheric and oceanic temperatures.

It expects the El Niño–Southern Oscillation – the climatic pattern that oscillates between El Nino and La Nina – to remain neutral until July.

Several models are predicting a La Nina after July, but the bureau has cautioned that El Niño and La Niña predictions made in mid-autumn tend to have lower accuracy than those made at other times of year.

El Nino increases the probability of hotter, drier weather, while the other side of the same climate system, La Nina, more commonly brings rain.

However, the effect of El Nino is strongest in winter and spring and last summer, it coincided with a marine heat wave that brought unusually high rainfall especially to the coast.

Australia’s highest court will hear a case to determine the freedom of up to 200 people locked in immigration detention who the government says are refusing to cooperate with moves to deport them.

At the centre of the case is a bisexual Iranian man, given the court pseudonym ASF17, who the government has determined is not owed protection but who regardless fears persecution if he is returned to his birth country.

Following a failed Federal Court bid to be released, ASF17 is arguing before the High Court he should be freed along with 152 others who were let out of immigration detention following a separate, landmark High Court judgment that ruled indefinite detention was punitive and therefore unlawful.

But the government argues his continuing detention is not punitive, as his failure to cooperate with authorities is preventing efforts to remove him from the country.

“Such detention cannot properly be characterised as punitive because the alien could bring it to an end at any time,” court documents submitted by the government and published by the High Court say.

“That is true even if the alien’s non-co-operation is the result of a genuine subjective fear of harm in the place to which the alien is to be taken.”

Home Affairs officials told a Senate committee on Monday between 150 and 200 people in detention were refusing to cooperate with the government’s efforts to deport them.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has introduced controversial legislation to parliament that threatens people with jail time if they resist their deportation. The proposed law will act as a backstop if the government loses the case.

The freedom of multiple other Iranian men who have been released from detention recently also rests on this current challenge, as the government alleges they have also refused to cooperate with moves to deport them.

One of them is Ned Kelly Emeralds, whose legal team at the Human Rights Law Centre is seeking to join the current proceeding, given the potential effects the case will have on his ongoing freedom.

The centre’s acting legal director Sanmati Verma told a press conference outside the court this morning her client had been detained for over 10 years before his November release.

“If a person cannot be removed from Australia, indefinite detention is not the answer,” she said.

Circling back to Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who responded on radio this morning to this masthead’s report that Australian defence firms are bracing for major cuts when the federal government releases its 10-year defence spending plan today.

Chalmers flagged “difficult decisions” that government must make on defence spending, which would be outlined by Defence Minister Richard Marles in a speech today.

The $50 billion annual defence spending is a significant element of the national budget, said Chalmers.

“The emphasis here is on getting value for money in the huge sums we are investing in our security,” he said.

He said the previous government had made frequent announcements about new defence spending initiatives that were yet to be realised.

“Part of getting value for money is making sure we clean up the pipeline so that we are delivering on our objectives.”

Further detail would be announced in the federal budget, to be released on May 14, he said.

In state news, Queensland senator Matt Canavan, who is leading an inquiry into Brisbane’s Olympic preparedness, has described the process so far as a “complete schemozzle”.

Canavan told ABC Radio Brisbane this morning he hopes today’s inquiry, which will be held at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, will “make some sense of this mess”.

The senator is concerned the Queensland government is not focusing on creating an Olympic legacy, as Sydney did for the 2000 Games, and is overlooking transport costs.

“That’s the problem, there’s an election in October. All sides of politics are walking on eggshells,” he said.

“We need a legacy for Brisbane.”

Canavan said the Queensland government had initially declined an invitation to appear at the inquiry, but had since agreed to attend.

Former Brisbane lord mayor Graham Quirk was listed as first to appear at the hearing. Also scheduled to provide evidence on Wednesday was Archipelago Architects founding director Peter Edwards, whose Brisbane Bold vision first mooted a stadium at Victoria Park.

Andrew Hastie, the opposition’s defence spokesman, says the government needs a clear strategy for its new national defence strategy, which will be unveiled today.

Defence Minister Richard Marles will use his address at the National Press Club to go into detail about the plan, and its goal for military capability spending.

Hastie said the minister needs to explain the threats Australia is facing, and how to defeat them in his address.

“And how we’re going to build a defence force that will keep Australia safe over the next decade and beyond,” Hastie told RN Breakfast this morning.

He said strategy drives everything, and without it the government could spend too much or too little.

“It really comes down to [the defence minister’s] message today about how we’re going to defeat the threats going forward,” Hastie said.

He said Marles would also have to make decisions about capability.

“I’m concerned that this is setting the stage for defence cuts. And that is also a test. We can’t go backwards,” Hastie said.

The opposition’s defence spokesman Andrew Hastie said Australia’s social cohesion was facing a “severe test”.

His comments come after an attack at a West Sydney church, which authorities declared a terrorist incident, and the Bondi Junction stabbing rampage, which left six people dead.

“We’re a young country … in terms of being a democratic nation … I think this is our most severe test for social cohesion, which is why Anthony Albanese’s leadership is so important,” he told RN Breakfast earlier.

“We are under immense pressure, people are scared … we have many different people from all parts of the world, and it’s very diverse as Christians, Muslims, Jews and other religions in between, and we need to be able to live together.”

Hastie, a former soldier, said Albanese could be stronger in “articulating the values that we all share”.

“And insisting that we all adhere to them, and that there is no place for religious extremism in this country,” he said.

He said Albanese should restore directors of ASIO and ASIS to the national security committee of cabinet, adding the two agency heads would be “critical for decision-making”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is in Queensland’s industrial heartland at Gladstone today, announcing loans for minerals processing facilities under the government’s new “future made in Australia” scheme.

Albanese said the government’s scheme was needed to “move Australia up the value chain” to help businesses grow value, adding processes to the raw minerals that the country has in abundance.

“Why wouldn’t you want to value-add and make more things here?” Albanese said.

However, economists have criticised the government’s plan, warning taxpayers’ funds will be risked with investments in businesses that are not commercially viable without government support.

The Albanese government has pledged to deliver an unspecified sum of many billions in financial support to kick-starting manufacturing of low-emissions technologies like solar panels and batteries while boosting processing of critical minerals.

Today, it announced a $400 million loan to ALPHA HPA to become the first local maker of high-purity alumina, which is used in green technologies such as semiconductors and lithium batteries.

The government also lent $185 to a graphite miner in South Australia. Graphite is used to make wind turbines and solar panels, as well as batteries and electric vehicles.

Staying with the treasurer, who is offering sharp criticism of Greens senator Nick McKim after he grilled Woolworths boss Brad Banducci at a hearing into supermarket prices yesterday.

Banducci was warned by senators that he could cop contempt charges with six months in prison or a $5000 fine for failing to answer questions such as what was Woolworths’ return on equity.

Senators asked him multiple times but Banducci referred to other metrics of profitability for the business.

“I’m not interested in your spin,” McKim shot back.

Chalmers said McKim’s “confected outrage” was a hollow threat, noting that Banducci had committed to provide the answers to questions in writing.

He took the opportunity to point out the government was imposing a new code of conduct on supermarkets in an effort to lower prices.

“[McKim] does what he does for the camera, and we do what we do for the consumers,” Chalmers said.

Turning to Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who is on ABC Radio National ahead of his trip to the US for a meeting of the G20 finance ministers.

Speaking about inflation, he said there was a “tricky balance of risks” in the global economy.

“In our own economy, inflation is still hanging around, but we’ve got growth slowing as well,” Chalmers told RN Breakfast.

He said there was lingering inflation in parts of the world.

“We’ve got growth slowing in China and elsewhere. We’ve got tensions rising in the Middle East and a war in Europe. We’ve got supply chains which are straining, and we’ve got a global economy which is fragmenting and transforming,” he said.

All these factors were important to the Albanese government as it finalises its budget, he said.

“These global conditions are going to be a really big influence on our budget,” he said.

He added that the trip to the US would be a good opportunity to take the temperature of the global economy.