Australia news LIVE: Labor grapples with detainee crisis; Albanese calls Zelensky ahead of Ukraine peace summit

In business news, the Australian sharemarket is set to open lower in the next hour after US stocks sank overnight under the weight of higher yields in the bond market.

The S&P 500 dipped 0.7 per cent and fell further from its record set last week, trimming its gain for May, which had been on track to be its best month since November. The Dow Jones lost 1.1 per cent and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.6 per cent after setting its latest all-time high.

ASX futures point to a fall of 52 points, or 0.7 per cent, at the market open. The local bourse slumped by 1.3 per cent on Wednesday.

Overnight, Australian mining major BHP walked away from its $75 billion takeover bid for rival Anglo American after a plea to extend takeover talks was turned down. It would’ve been one of the biggest deals ever for an ASX-listed company, but is now dead.

Keep updated with our market wrap here.

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters has warned Australia against deporting people who have little connection with New Zealand after the Albanese government moved to scrap a policy linked to foreign-born criminals being allowed to stay in the country.

Ministerial direction 99 was issued on January 23, 2023, to assuage the New Zealand government’s long-held concerns that its citizens were being deported in large numbers even when they had stronger ties to Australia than to New Zealand.

But the government yesterday announced it would be reworked after the direction was used by a tribunal to justify reinstating the visas of serious criminals.

Following the news, Peters said New Zealand was speaking to Australia over its decision, and noted: “Prime Minister Albanese’s previous commitment to take a ‘common sense’ approach to deportation of people to New Zealand who had effectively spent their entire lives in Australia.”

“We accept that Australia has the right to determine what level of offending by non-citizens is unacceptable. But we do not want to see deportation of people with little or no connection to New Zealand, whose formative experiences were nearly all in Australia,” Peters said in a statement.

Scott Morrison has taken a new role at a deep-sea mining fund linked to AUKUS tech and treasure hunters, as pressure grows on Australia to oppose the controversial new mining frontier.

Morrison is now listed as a strategic advisor at the newly created Seafloor Minerals Fund (SMF), alongside former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo.

Four of the fund’s most senior people, including Morrison and Pompeo, are behind venture capital firm DYNE, which says its fund was set up to support the strategic goals of the AUKUS defence pact with the US and UK announced by the Morrison government in 2021.

DYNE has itself invested millions of dollars in experimental deep-sea mining projects in the Pacific.

Morrison’s new role comes at a time when Australia and the world are poised to make a landmark decision on deep sea mining as the West follows China in the race to be first to the treasure trove of rare metals beneath the sea.

Read the full exclusive story here.

Briefly to state news, the Victorian government has announced women’s safety reforms that would extend intervention orders and strengthen police powers to block perpetrators from contacting victims.

Violence against women recently emerged as a major national issue after several high-profile deaths shocked the country.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes, Minister for Women Natalie Hutchins, and the Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence Vicki Ward were announcing the package on Thursday morning.

Consultation will be done to work out the specifics.

The government is proposing to lengthen the amount of time that a family violence intervention order can be issued. They currently generally last six to 12 months, requiring victims to return to court.

The way they are served could also change so that they can be enforced more quickly.

Police are also expected to get the power to issue longer family violence safety notices, which are issued by officers on the spot for seven days.

Shadow immigration minister Dan Tehan has accused Andrew Giles of being “asleep at the wheel” after reports emerged that the embattled minister was warned his directive could affect the visa cancellations of thousands of immigrants – including convicts who a tribunal allowed to remain while citing the order.

The immigration minister is under pressure to fix the detainee crisis and save his job as he scrambles to rewrite the rule used to allow violent criminals to stay in Australia. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) has revoked several government visa cancellations of convicts, citing Direction 99.

That direction, implemented by Giles earlier in his term to address concerns from New Zealand that its citizens were being deported despite living in Australia for a long time, states: “Australia will generally afford a higher level of tolerance” based on the length of time a non-citizen has spent in the Australian community.

The government claims the AAT misinterpreted this directive when citing it to rule that some violent criminals could stay in the country, despite the government’s efforts to cancel their visas on character grounds due to their convictions.

But this morning, The Australian reported Giles was alerted that this could occur in a submission on Direction 99 from within the Department of Home Affairs given to him in August 2022. The newspaper reported that submission warned him that up to 2800 cases could be ­impacted.

Speaking on ABC Radio National this morning, the Victorian MP said Giles “goes into hiding whenever things get tough”.

“The revelations today are completely and utterly damning,” Tehan said.

Tehan, a former trade minister under the last Coalition government, also welcomed China easing restrictions on Australian beef exporters overnight. But he claimed Scott Morrison’s former government was owed some credit for the news, despite trade tensions escalating under the Coalition.

“I give the previous Coalition government credit. I give the current government credit. Because what we’ve seen is a continuity of approach whereby we’ve been very clear with China that wouldn’t be intimidated by these trade sanctions,” Tehan said.

Murray Watt, the Queensland senator and government minister for agriculture and emergency management, has defended Immigration Minister Andrew Giles and lashed Opposition Leader Peter Dutton over their respective handling of immigrants allowed to stay in Australia after being convicted of a crime.

On ABC News Breakfast this morning, Watt was first asked why his ministerial colleagues were hesitant to appear on the show today. (The government is currently under pressure to stop immigrants convicted of crimes being allowed to stay in Australia and Giles is under pressure to keep his job).

Here is how Watt handled that question earlier:

I’m not sure. I’m not sure what other people have on. But obviously having been in Senate estimates for the last couple of days handling questions about Home Affairs, I thought that it was really important to ensure that people are getting the full story here, and the full story includes the fact that when Peter Dutton was the home affairs minister, over 100 convicted sex offenders were released from immigration detention and not one of them had an electronic bracelet or a curfew – the kind of measures that the government has taken with the cohort released after the High Court decision.

Watt later added: “Minister Giles and the government are taking firm action to make sure that now, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and other government officials will be directed that community safety is to be the highest priority when it comes to their decisions.”

In breaking news, Agriculture Minister Murray Watt has confirmed the Chinese government has lifted restrictions on Australian beef exporters, further cooling trade tensions that flared under the previous Coalition government.

Speaking on ABC News Breakfast this morning, Watt said the bans were lifted from five beef processing plants.

Here is Watt’s full answer when asked about the apparent easing of trade restrictions:

The details are still emerging but we found out last night that China has lifted, with immediate effect, the bans that it had on five different beef processing sheds in Australia or beef processing operations. We had already seen a couple of other processing operations have their trade bans lifted but now another five. That is fantastic news for the cattle producers, for the meat processing industry and for the workers in those industries. And, of course, for Australian exports. What we’ve worked out is that even so far over the last few months with the different export bans lifted by China, that has turned out to $3 billion of extra exports for Australia. So the work that we’ve done to stablise our relationship with China is paying real dividends for the farmers and processors.

Australia’s lobster exports are the last agricultural commodity to remain barred from the massive Chinese market.

The Asian superpower in 2020 imposed bans on Australian agriculture exports of barley, wine, lobster and eight major beef exporters – following former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s push for an independent coronavirus inquiry.

China cited labelling and health certificate requirements as reasons for the beef bans. Since then, bans on barley and wine have been removed, while late last year three Australian beef processors were permitted to resume exports.

Today’s change means bans against the remaining five meat processors were lifted.

Watt said large operations in south-east Queensland were among those that could now immediately resume their Chinese trade.

“Those places already employ hundreds of people to do that processing, and I would be looking forward to a lot more jobs being created there now as well,” he said.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has cancelled seven visas as he works through a total of 30 needed for urgent review.

Giles has been forced to defend his job as he scrambles to fix the detainee crisis and rewrite the rule – called ministerial direction 99 – used to allow violent criminals with close ties to Australia to stay, including serial rapists and paedophiles.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was forced to defend his immigration minister in question time on Wednesday, and on ABC’s AM program, Giles was prompted to justify why he still had his job.

“[I have my role] because there’s so much work to do to clean up the mess, to rebuild a migration system that was left in tatters,” he said as he was repeatedly pressed by host Sabra Lane this morning.

Albanese told the chamber during question time yesterday that they would be rewriting ministerial direction 99, and Giles said this morning it would be released as soon as it was ready.

“I’ve been meeting with my senior officials of the department last night to ensure that the expectations that I’ve set out to the parliament are put into practice,” he said.

“We believe that these decisions [on whether to allow visa holders to stay in Australia] need to be guided by two clear principles, the protection of the Australian community and by common sense.”

Giles also confirmed there were about 30 visas under urgent review.

“In the last few days, I’ve cancelled seven visas, I’m considering as we speak … there are around 30 that I’ve pulled up as a matter of absolute urgency, I’ve dealt with through the day and night,” he said.

Department of Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster told estimates on Tuesday and Wednesday that her department had failed to warn Giles about these cases, putting the blame on budget restraints.

“What has been unacceptable is the fact that these AAT decisions to set aside cancellations that were made under direction 99, that were made by this government, by my department … I was not told that these cancellations had been overturned by the tribunal. That’s the issue that I’m deeply concerned about and that’s what I’m focusing on fixing now,” he said.

London: Australia’s governor-general designate, Samantha Mostyn, has met with the King at Buckingham Palace ahead of her swearing in on July 1.

Mostyn, a long-time supporter of an Australian republic, travelled to London before officially taking up her position as Australia’s 28th governor-general at the weekend.

Charles, 75, accepted Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s recommendation in April to appoint Mostyn, who will be the second woman to serve in the post. She has been a long-time champion of women’s economic equality and climate action and served on various non-profit boards.

The King is also expected to meet with outgoing Governor-General David Hurley in the coming weeks following his five years in office. Hurley will be Australia’s official representative at the 80th commemoration of the D-Day landings in Normandy.

Despite the King’s ongoing treatment for cancer, the palace remains hopeful he will visit Australia later in the year as part of a broader trip to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in October in Samoa. He last toured Australia in 2018 to open the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast.

London: Volodymyr Zelensky has used a phone call with his Australian counterpart, Anthony Albanese, to help build momentum behind next month’s critical peace summit in Switzerland, as the Ukraine president’s frustration with fellow world leaders reached a boiling point.

With Russian troops making advances in recent weeks, Zelensky has pinned a breakthrough on the set piece event to show that the world is still on Ukraine’s side.

Putin’s forces have captured two more villages in eastern Ukraine – one in the Donetsk region, and another in the northeastern Kharkiv region – this week in the latest in a string of Russian territorial gains.

The conversation between the pair followed Zelensky comments on Tuesday that US President Joe Biden’s unlikely attendance at the summit in mid-June would “only be applauded by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin”.

Read more about the Australian PM’s call with Ukraine’s leader here.