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Education Minister Jason Clare says more reforms to education will be revealed on budget night, as there is a need to break down barriers.

Asked about whether the HECs is bad economics when it makes humanities graduates pay more than medical specialists, Clare said the scheme helped build and widen the system.

But he acknowledged there will need to be reforms.

“We have to break down the barrier that stops a lot of kids from places like where I grew up, from going to university in the first place, to open the doors of opportunity,” he said.

Here’s what else he said about the scheme.

We will see some of that in the budget on budget night. What we announced yesterday is about the cost of degrees, reducing the cost of degrees.

What we are talking about today is the cost of living, providing financial support for teaching students and nursing students and social work students.

What you will see more of on budget night is the cost of kids missing out on going to university in the first place.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is speaking in Canberra, where he is announcing that students in critical areas will get extra support while they undergo placements as part of their studies.

This masthead reported students training for critical occupations such as teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work will receive more than $300 a week to supplement their incomes while they finish their degree.

“What we’re doing here is making sure that students can be paid during that period when they’re off, getting that practical work, to remove that disincentive, which is there to undertake these courses,” Albanese said.

He said it was a practical initiative that will be included in next week’s budget.

“The important work of how do we make our higher education system work better for students, work better for the national interests, work better for our national economy,” Albanese said.“

That is why we want to encourage students to go into teaching, we want to encourage them to go into nursing and midwifery, we want to encourage them to undertake these courses.”

Education Minister Jason Clare said many students who didn’t have the money to support themselves during the practical component of their degree had to drop out.

“Time after time when I’ve spoken to students …they’ve told me that often they’ve had to give up their part-time job to do their prac placement.

“Placement poverty is a real thing … so many told me that it’s forced them to either drop out of their course or delay completing their degree,” Clare said.

Clare said the payment would help keep people studying these critical degrees.

“These are the people who have signed up to do some of the most important jobs in this country. People who educate our kids, who look after us when we are sick or old, who help provide support for women in domestic violence refuges,” he said.

“On top of the announcement we made yesterday to make the HECS system fairer, this is part of the first stage of our response to the universities accord and we will outline the full first stage of our response to the universities accord on budget night in either day’s time.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Education Minister Jason Clare will speak in Canberra.

Watch live:

Australia’s second-largest telco Optus has appointed a new CEO, with NBN Co boss Stephen Rue to take the reins after a mass outage that affected some 10 million customers.

Rue, a former News Corp executive, will join Optus in November 2024 after the telco conducted an extensive internal, external and international search according to Optus chairman Paul Sullivan.

“Stephen was chosen after a rigorous process that involved a slate of high-quality candidates. We’re extremely pleased to have someone of his calibre to lead the next chapter at Optus,” O’Sullivan said.

“His experience in setting up the digital backbone of Australia will serve us well as we reinvigorate Optus as Australia’s leading challenger telecommunications brand. We expect Stephen’s operational and financial background to lift service standards significantly for the benefit of our customers.”

Rue said he was honoured and excited to join Optus after a decade at NBN Co, where has served as CEO since 2018.

He resigned from NBN Co today.

“My job will be to take care of Optus’ customers, people and business and to provide strong competition and choice,” he said.

“I look forward to accelerating the transformation at Optus so fellow Australians continue to have the choice of a strong alternative telecoms provider and the country as a whole can harness the power of digital connectivity to drive economic participation and social inclusion.”

Former CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin departed late last year after receiving widespread criticism for a November outage that affected 10 million Australians and crippled the communications networks of small businesses, hospitals and railway lines.

Optus’ parent company Singtel, which is based in Singapore, has also revamped the telco’s governance model, with Optus’ CEO and executives to report to the Optus board going forward, rather than Singtel.

The Optus board and executives will “work together to reset strategy and rebuild customer trust in the Optus brand,” the telco said in a statement.

There are fears a passenger on a cruise ship may have gone overboard just off the coast of Sydney, as police scan the water and a rescue helicopter is brought in for the search.

Police received reports from the ship at 4am on Monday that the person had gone missing in water 10 nautical miles from Sydney Heads.

The Pacific Adventure was due to dock in Sydney in the early hours, but was delayed as police searched for the missing passenger.

“NSW Police Marine Area Command have deployed a number of resources to search for the person and are leading the co-ordination of the water search,” a police spokesperson said.

Here’s the latest on the search.

Returning to Education Minister Jason Clare, who has spoken about the protests at university campuses and pro-Palestinian encampments.

He said protests were part of democracy, but there was no place for hatred.

“There’s always going to be protests … that’s part of being a democracy,” he told RN Breakfast earlier.

“What there’s no place for, though, is hate, or violence, or prejudice, or discrimination, and certainly no place for antisemitism or Islamophobia.”

He said, “we’ve just got to lower the temperature”, and that it was important that politicians, religious and community leaders, as well as students and the media, joined forces to keep the country together.

Clare said he had heard reports from some students and their parents that they were concerned about going to university.

“I’ve spoken to Jewish students who feel like they’re afraid to go to university … and if people feel afraid to go to university, then that’s intolerable,” Clare said.

“I want more people to [go to] university, not less.”

Qantas has agreed to pay $100 million in penalties to the consumer watchdog after admitting it misled customers over advertising tens of thousands of airfares for flights which had already been cancelled last year.

It will pay a further $20 million in payments to 86,000 customers who were sold the tickets.

Qantas will pay $225 to domestic ticket holders and $450 to international ticket holders.

The payments are in addition to any remedies the consumers have already received from the airline, including alternative flights or refunds.

The ACCC and Qantas will now jointly ask the Federal Court to approve the settlement deal and penalties.

Staying with the education minister, who has been speaking about the government’s move to help end placement poverty for students training for critical occupations like teaching, nursing and social work.

This masthead reported those students would get $300 a week to supplement their incomes while they finish their degree to ease the burden.

Jason Clare told ABC Radio National the supplement would be means tested to ensure fairness, and noted that students able to live at home while they studied had an advantage.

“We’ll look at that, we’ll look at young people who are currently receiving financial support, but also young people that have to work, for example,” he said.

He said the plans would help them complete the practical component of their course, and the government would work with unions as well as universities.

The minister said many people studying could afford the degree, but couldn’t afford doing the practical part of the course.

“That’s what this is designed to tap into.”

Education Minister Jason Clare has labelled the actions of four boys from a private school in Melbourne’s east who rated their female classmates as “disgusting and appalling”.

Clare said he was glad the students had been suspended.

The minister was speaking on Nine’s Today program to spruik the announced $3 billion to be wiped off millions of Australians’ student debts for tertiary education, which will save the average graduate $1200.

Clare said the behaviour of the four boys ranking their classmates showed Australia had a long way to go when it came to respecting women.

“It is disgusting and appalling, I’m glad that the students have been suspended. I also understand that the female students are receiving counselling from the school. That’s what I would expect the school to do,” he said.

Here’s what else he had to say:

After all that we have seen over the last not just week, but years here, it demonstrates that there is still a lot more work to do. It’s a job not just for schools, but for parents and political leaders like me as well.

Part of that is providing funding to schools right across the country for respectful relationship courses and consent courses. I’m signing agreements with all states and territories at the moment to do that, and that’s about $77 million that will roll out across the country.”

In major international news, Israeli officials seized Al Jazeera equipment, hours after the nation’s cabinet approved a decision to shutter the Qatar-based TV news network’s operations in the country.

Inspectors from the communications ministry, accompanied by police, arrived at Al Jazeera offices in Jerusalem, confiscated equipment and cut off access. Al Jazeera’s broadcasts and access to its website has been blocked throughout Israel.

Shlomo Karhi, Israel’s communications minister, posted a video clip of the raid on X, formerly Twitter, where the inspectors can be seen and heard naming the equipment they found.

Karhi has been a key advocate for the termination of the network’s activity within Israel. He’s also called Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, biased and threatened to cut its budgets.

Al Jazeera denounced Israel’s move, calling it a “criminal act that violates human rights in access to information”.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) has petitioned the move to Israel’s Supreme Court.

“This is a dark day for the media and a dark day for democracy,” Israel’s Foreign Press Association said in a statement.

“Israel joins a dubious club of authoritarian governments to ban the station.”

The association expressed concern that Israel’s government “may not be done” as the prime minister now has the authority to target other foreign media he deems to be “acting against the state”.

Bloomberg