<gu-island name="KeyEventsCarousel" priority="feature" deferuntil="visible" props="{"keyEvents":[{"id":"65303b038f0858f6e93c8a63","elements":[{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":"
Thank you to Martin for getting us started this morning – you have Amy Remeikis with you now for the last parliament sitting this week.
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The Canberra team will be with you very soon – that’s Katharine Murphy, Daniel Hurst, Paul Karp, Sarah Basford Canales and Josh Butler.
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You’ll also be treated to some Mike Bowers magic and be kept up to date by the entire Guardian brains trust.
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It’s a three-coffee morning so far. Hope your Thursday (always the worst day of the week) has started off kind.
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Ready? Let’s get into it.
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About 200 Australians and their family members are back in the country after leaving Israel and arriving on a government-assisted flight, AAP reports.
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A Qantas flight landed in Sydney on Wednesday evening with 126 Australian passport holders and their immediate family – a further 43 passengers – completing onward travel for those who departed from Tel Aviv in recent days.
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Passengers were welcomed home by family and friends after arriving at Sydney airport.
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Foreign affairs minister Penny Wong has warned Australians to leave Israel and take any opportunity possible as the situation remains “highly challenging and rapidly changing”.
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Officials say more than 1,500 Australians registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs have left Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
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About 1,200 Australians are in contact with the government and are receiving updates about returning home amid the conflict in the Middle East.
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A Qatar Airways flight from Dubai carrying 222 people including 164 Australians landed in Sydney on Tuesday evening.
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The government is also working to support Australians to leave the West Bank as it liaises with international partners to arrange transport to Jordan.
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The safety of the 46 Australians in Gaza remains unknown after a barrage of Israeli missiles hit the territory, strikes Israeli authorities say are in response to Hamas attacks from the territory that killed 1,400 people on 7 October.
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Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the day in Canberra and beyond. I’m Martin Farrer and I’ve got some of the breaking overnight stories before my colleague Amy Remeikis takes the controls.
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As the violence continues in the Middle East, echoes of the conflict are felt on this side of the world by Australia’s Arabic and Jewish communities. A surge in hostility towards Palestinians and towards Australian Jews is causing alarm among advocacy groups as they seek to deal with the ripple effects of the Israel-Hamas war on these shores.
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A galvanised opposition, the yes campaign’s poor messaging and disjointed organisation, Indigenous leaders voting no, and yes deciding to change to a more aggressive campaign too late in the day all contributed to the referendum failing. Katharine Murphy and Josh Butler dissect the two campaigns and offer insight where it went wrong for yes but right for no, whose “divisive algorithms of social media” worked their “dark magic”. Thomas Keneally, who is writing for us today to mourn the loss, agrees as he lays into the “fables” spread by a brutal press campaign.
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Defence minister Richard Marles has said that the “the shadow of war still haunts us” and warned there was still potential for conflict in the region, including if Taiwan becomes a flashpoint between the US and China. Speaking last night during a visit to South Korea, Marles pushed back pushed back at the idea that Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest. The biggest risk to Australia was a new great power conflict, he said in an address to the Seoul Defence Dialogue, and nowhere would be more important than Taiwan. More coming up.
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And another repatriation flight has landed in Sydney, with 200 Australians and family members from Israel.
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Key events
More than 74 civil society organisations have signed a statement demanding the Australian government push for an immediate cease fire and “for an end to the targeting of civilians in Gaza”.
The organisations include human rights organisations, trade unions, aid organisations, faith groups, and organisations representing Jewish people and Palestinian people. Among them are Amnesty International Australia, the Australian Centre for International Justice, the Australian Council for International Development, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, the Australian National Imams Council, Arab Council Australia, and the Human Rights Law Centre.
Josh Taylor
… continued from last post
Ticketek has agreed to a three-year undertaking to appoint an independent consultant to review its compliance with the Spam Act.
A spokesperson for the company said it took its obligations seriously and dedicated significant resources to ensure compliance:
In the relevant period of ACMA’s investigation, we sent over 375 million commercial electronic messages, with ~98,000 classified by ACMA as non-complying. We have determined that many of these messages were inadvertently sent in circumstances where customers with multiple accounts linked to one electronic address were unsubscribed from one account, but not from the other linked accounts.
Ticketek said it was also surprised that the social and website links in event information emails required consent, and suggested many businesses may be falling foul of the act.
Josh Taylor
Ticketek fined half a million dollars for breaching spam laws
Ticketek has been issued with a $515,040 fine by the Australian Communications and Media Authority for sending 98,000 text messages and emails in breach of Australian spam laws.
The regulator found that Ticketek had sent 41,000 marketing texts and emails without the consent of the recipients and about 57,000 texts and emails to people who had previously unsubscribed.
The Acma had previously warned Ticketek to comply with the laws, and chair Nerida O’Loughlin said there were no excuses. Some of the emails Ticketek had claimed were non-commercial because they had information for ticket holders, but also contained links to Ticketek’s website and socials, so were considered to contain advertising material.
O’Loughlin said:
Even if the purpose of a message is to provide factual information to customers, if it also includes marketing content, or links to marketing content, it can only be sent with consent.
Good morning
Thank you to Martin for getting us started this morning – you have Amy Remeikis with you now for the last parliament sitting this week.
The Canberra team will be with you very soon – that’s Katharine Murphy, Daniel Hurst, Paul Karp, Sarah Basford Canales and Josh Butler.
You’ll also be treated to some Mike Bowers magic and be kept up to date by the entire Guardian brains trust.
It’s a three-coffee morning so far. Hope your Thursday (always the worst day of the week) has started off kind.
Ready? Let’s get into it.
Catie McLeod
NSW to appoint commissioner for biosecurity to help farmers tackle pests
New South Wales is set to appoint an independent commissioner to oversee biosecurity after farmers complained their work dealing with pests and weeds on their properties was threatened by government agencies failing to properly look after public land.
The agriculture minister, Tara Moriarty, will on Thursday introduce legislation to NSW parliament to enshrine the commissioner’s position in law.
Moriarty said:
We know that our farmers work hard to fight invasive pests and weeds on their land, so we need to make sure other landowners are doing the same – and that includes government.
Labor had promised before the state election in March to create the commissioner’s role if it won government.
Moriarty acknowledged the work of Dr Marion Healy, who stepped into the interim commissioner’s role in June, in consulting with industry stakeholders, to help with coming up with the new legislation.
The government says weeds cost the agriculture industry about $1.8bn a year and invasive animal species cost the sector about $170m annually.
Repatriation flight touches down in Sydney
About 200 Australians and their family members are back in the country after leaving Israel and arriving on a government-assisted flight, AAP reports.
A Qantas flight landed in Sydney on Wednesday evening with 126 Australian passport holders and their immediate family – a further 43 passengers – completing onward travel for those who departed from Tel Aviv in recent days.
Passengers were welcomed home by family and friends after arriving at Sydney airport.
Foreign affairs minister Penny Wong has warned Australians to leave Israel and take any opportunity possible as the situation remains “highly challenging and rapidly changing”.
Officials say more than 1,500 Australians registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs have left Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
About 1,200 Australians are in contact with the government and are receiving updates about returning home amid the conflict in the Middle East.
A Qatar Airways flight from Dubai carrying 222 people including 164 Australians landed in Sydney on Tuesday evening.
The government is also working to support Australians to leave the West Bank as it liaises with international partners to arrange transport to Jordan.
The safety of the 46 Australians in Gaza remains unknown after a barrage of Israeli missiles hit the territory, strikes Israeli authorities say are in response to Hamas attacks from the territory that killed 1,400 people on 7 October.
Daniel Hurst
Australia cannot be ‘passive bystanders’ in a war over Taiwan, Richard Marles says
A war between the US and China over the future of Taiwan would be “so grave” that Australia cannot be “passive bystanders”, the defence minister has said.
Richard Marles pushed back at the idea advanced by some commentators – including the former Labor prime minister Paul Keating – that Taiwan is “not a vital Australian interest”.
Speaking during a visit to South Korea, Marles said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “a failure of deterrence” and “our job is to ensure we experience no equivalent failure in our region”. In an address to the Seoul Defence Dialogue on Wednesday evening, he said:
The most consequential risk we face is the resumption of great power conflict in our lifetime. Nowhere will this be more important than on the issue of Taiwan.
Marles emphasised that Australia had not changed its position on Taiwan – a self-governed democracy of 24 million people that Beijing claims as its own and has not ruled out taking by force:
Australia does not take a position on the final status of Taiwan other than it must be arrived at peacefully, consistent with the will of peoples on both sides of the strait, and not though the use of force or coercion.
But the consequences of US-China conflict over Taiwan are so grave that we cannot be passive bystanders.
Marles’s comments are not a precommitment of Australian forces to a future war, but a call for Australia to work with its allies and partners to ensure such a conflict is prevented.
His predecessor as defence minister, Peter Dutton, was accused of straying from longstanding bipartisan policy when he said in November 2021 that it “would be inconceivable that we wouldn’t support the US in an action if the US chose to take that action”.
Read the full story here:
Welcome
Martin Farrer
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the day in Canberra and beyond. I’m Martin Farrer and I’ve got some of the breaking overnight stories before my colleague Amy Remeikis takes the controls.
As the violence continues in the Middle East, echoes of the conflict are felt on this side of the world by Australia’s Arabic and Jewish communities. A surge in hostility towards Palestinians and towards Australian Jews is causing alarm among advocacy groups as they seek to deal with the ripple effects of the Israel-Hamas war on these shores.
A galvanised opposition, the yes campaign’s poor messaging and disjointed organisation, Indigenous leaders voting no, and yes deciding to change to a more aggressive campaign too late in the day all contributed to the referendum failing. Katharine Murphy and Josh Butler dissect the two campaigns and offer insight where it went wrong for yes but right for no, whose “divisive algorithms of social media” worked their “dark magic”. Thomas Keneally, who is writing for us today to mourn the loss, agrees as he lays into the “fables” spread by a brutal press campaign.
Defence minister Richard Marles has said that the “the shadow of war still haunts us” and warned there was still potential for conflict in the region, including if Taiwan becomes a flashpoint between the US and China. Speaking last night during a visit to South Korea, Marles pushed back pushed back at the idea that Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest. The biggest risk to Australia was a new great power conflict, he said in an address to the Seoul Defence Dialogue, and nowhere would be more important than Taiwan. More coming up.
And another repatriation flight has landed in Sydney, with 200 Australians and family members from Israel.
