Australia news LIVE: Apple users experience iMessage outage; Dutton pledges to slash permanent migration to 140,000 a year in budget reply

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Opposition Leader Peter Dutton believes the prime minister should kick out WA senator Fatima Payman from the Labor Party after she used a controversial “from the river to the sea” slogan.

Payman, a first-term senator from WA, on Wednesday accused Israel of conducting a genocide in Gaza and used the controversial “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” slogan.

Speaking on Melbourne radio station 3AW, Dutton was asked whether she should be kicked out of parliament.

“It’s hard to kick her [Payman] out of the parliament, because she’s been elected, but she can certainly be kicked out of the Labor Party and why the prime minister’s hesitating I don’t know,” he said.

Dutton said the prime minister allowed conduct which has been quite disgraceful against Jewish Australians, and those of Jewish heritage.

“The antisemitism we’re seeing on university campuses shouldn’t be tolerated.”

Dutton said that in NSW, the premier had demoted one of his parliamentary secretaries over comments he made about the behaviour of police officers at pro-Palestinian protests.

There are many domestic violence programs that are not getting enough funding, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says.

Asked if the Coalition would provide more funding to frontline service providers, Dutton said he will have announcements in due course.

“There are many programs where more funding is required. There’s no question about that, the government’s invested more, and we supported that investment,” Dutton said.

“There may be some programs where we’re not getting as much impact, as much successes perhaps people would want. And perhaps you can redirect back to the services, that you’re talking to at the moment, that are very keen for additional investments or services.”

Apple’s messaging service iMessage is suffering an outage, with users across Australia reporting they’re unable to send messages.

More than 500 Australian users have reported issues with iMessage on outage website Downdetector, with users also taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, to voice complaints.

‘iMessage’ is currently the top trending topic on X.

Despite the apparent widespread outage, iMessage is still listed as ‘available’ on Apple’s own system status page.

Apple has been contacted for comment.

Earlier, Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said the detail on the Coalition’s nuclear power plan was still being worked through, refusing to give any indication where the power plants would be built.

Speaking on Seven’s Sunrise, Ley said the opposition was focusing on how to help families reduce their energy bill costs in the short term.

“The detail is being worked through. It is still a year from the election. Right now, Australians know they need cheaper power. The businesses that I visit are desperate because their power bills are so high.”

“We’re also focused, and we talked last night about how we bring power prices down now, but we’re not seeing that under Labor,” she said.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says if people have a coal power plant in their backyard, that is a location the Coalition is looking at for a nuclear power plant.

The Coalition is yet to release plans on nuclear power, which Dutton says will come out in due course.

“If you’ve got a coal-fired power generator in your own backyard, then that’s a site that we’re looking at, but I’m just not aware of any Australians who have that in their backyard,” he said in Canberra this morning.

“So the scare campaign and immaturity from the prime minister, because he doesn’t have a coherent argument against nuclear, I think will be seen through by most Australians.”

Dutton said there was no reason for him to rush announcing the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy.

“We’ll make our decisions in good time. There’s a lot of work and I can tell you when you look at the research, there is an enormous amount of enthusiasm across the country for zero-emissions latest generation nuclear technology, which has been adopted by 19 of the 20 G20 countries. Australia is the outlier,” he said.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says his proposal to slash migrant numbers to 140,000 a year has been costed, but is refusing to say when he will release those figures.

Speaking in Canberra, Dutton said this proposal was in the country’s best interests.

“Our migration program is working at its best. It’s at its best when we can make decisions that are in our country’s best interest at the moment,” he said.

“You can’t bring a million people in when you’ve only got a quarter of a million homes because they need somewhere to sleep.”

Asked if the program had been costed, Dutton said it had, but would not release the figures until later.

“We’ll release the costings at a usual time, but what I can say is in relation to what we announced last night, we had offsets, obviously,” he said.

Bill Shorten was also questioned whether Labor senator Fatima Payman should be removed from a foreign affairs committee, after she used the controversial slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

On Wednesday, the WA senator accused Israel of conducting a genocide in Gaza, and deployed the phrase that has been criticised as provocative.

Liberal MP Julian Leeser, who is Jewish, asked the prime minister yesterday whether Payman, a first-term senator, would be removed from her position on the joint standing committee on foreign affairs, defence and trade. Albanese declined to directly address the question.

Today Shorten was asked whether he believed Payman should be removed from the committee.

“I mean, she’s a passionate woman. She’s got her views,” Shorten told RN Breakfast this morning.

He said that the “from the river to the sea” chant may sound innocuous, it correlates with a rise in antisemitism.

“It does mean there can’t be a two-state solution, it’s a violent statement.”

“Where it goes, that’s a matter for the PM, and for the senator, but I don’t agree with the senator,” Shorten said.

The NDIS minister said he wasn’t the person to decide on whether Payman should remain on the committee, but was pushed what he thought about it.

“If I was on it, and I had that much disagreement, I probably would decide to make a contribution in some other way.”

The NDIS and government services minister has spoken about pro-Palestinian protesters occupying a major building at the University of Melbourne.

Bill Shorten told ABC radio he believed the protesters should leave the building, saying their occupation of it was counterproductive.

“It’s a bit like burning books for literacy, stopping kids going to university, that’s not on,” he said this morning.

“I’ve supported the protests, even if some of the protesters don’t like everything I say. And I don’t have to agree with anything they say. I do think that’s part of a democracy. But when you go out of your way to stop other kids learning, I think that’s a mistake … I don’t want to see the police go in. I’d like to see the people leave.”

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is speaking in Canberra, the day after he delivered his budget reply speech.

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