Australia news live: US approves first major Aukus submarine contract; Harvey Norman facing class action for alleged ‘misleading’ ads | Australia news
US approves first major Aukus submarine contract
The United States has approved the first major submarine contract under the Aukus security deal, Press Association reports.
The $275m deal, awarded to American company Electric Boat, was announced by the US government on Thursday.
Under the 2021 security deal, Australia will acquire nuclear-powered submarines with support from the UK and the US, alongside cooperation on military technology.
It will be funded by Australia and cover “support engineering, technical, design agent and design transfer activities” from the United States.
Key events
Penry Buckley
Rural owners would pay lower premiums under NSW emergency services funding model
Rural property owners would pay less towards the funding of fire and rescue services under one of five models proposed for the reform of the emergency services levy (ESL) in NSW.
The Labor government announced its intention to scrap the ESL in 2023, to reduce premiums to encourage more people to insure their homes in the face of greater fire and flood threats. The former Coalition government dropped planned changes in 2019. Today the Minns government has released five potential models for reform which will be considered by a parliamentary inquiry.
The government has committed to introducing a new levy across all property-owners, in line with other states. Under one model, the charge would be determined according to property type, while under another, rural property-owners would pay less than those in regional towns and cities and metropolitan areas.
Under the current levy, households and businesses who take out property insurance contribute 73.3% of the funding for the NSW SES and fire agencies. Local councils contribute 11.7%, and the state government 14.6%. It says all five of its models deliver an average saving of about $65 per residential property.
The NSW treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, says:
double quotation mark Every time a mortgage-holder renews their insurance policy, they’re paying a price no homeowner in any other state has to pay.We’ve got to try to remove pain-points like this tired, old levy, whenever we can. Especially as the pressures on working families get worse, as the oil shock continues.
US approves first major Aukus submarine contract
The United States has approved the first major submarine contract under the Aukus security deal, Press Association reports.
The $275m deal, awarded to American company Electric Boat, was announced by the US government on Thursday.
Under the 2021 security deal, Australia will acquire nuclear-powered submarines with support from the UK and the US, alongside cooperation on military technology.
It will be funded by Australia and cover “support engineering, technical, design agent and design transfer activities” from the United States.
Harvey Norman facing class action for ‘misleading’ ads
Angry customers are taking on retail giant Harvey Norman in a class action over claims they were misled by false promises of interest-free loans, only to be slugged with hefty fees and charges, AAP reports.
A directions hearing over the upcoming legal battle was held in the Brisbane supreme court on Friday, and will return to court on 24 June.
Carter Capner Law launched the challenge on behalf of customers after the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic) successfully prosecuted Harvey Norman and credit provider Latitude Finance Australia in the federal court.
“The consumers seek the payment of damages and refunds of the price paid for the goods acquired as a result of the defendants’ misleading conduct,” Carter Capner Law director Peter Carter told AAP.
The class action seeks to recover financial losses, including fees and charges.
Consumer watchdog ASIC had earlier taken the retail giant and Latitude to court over the store chain’s national ad campaign which promoted “no-deposit” and “interest-free” payment methods between January 2020 and August 2021.
In October 2024, the Federal Court found them guilty of misleading people with the ads, saying customers entered a “fundamentally different financial arrangement” than the one promoted. An appeal by Harvey Norman and Latitude was dismissed in September 2025.
Josh Taylor
Commbank deploys AI agents to find fraud
Commonwealth Bank says it has deployed an agentic AI system to detect fraud and scam patterns on transaction and payments data.
The AI agent monitors 80 million transaction, card and online payments on Commbank’s platform every day. Where suspicious patterns are identified, the system analyses the severity and proposes detection rules to intercept them.
Commbank’s executive general manager of fraud and scams, James Roberts said:
double quotation mark The agent operates around the clock, continuously monitoring activity and adapting to emerging threats.
The new rules are reviewed and approved by Commbank staff before being implemented. The agent has contributed to three-quarters of Commbank’s fraud rules, the bank said.
Commbank sends over 40,000 warning alerts to customers per day on the Commbank app, and fraud detection has led to a reduction in fraud losses by 20% in the first half of the 2026 financial year, compared to the same period in 2025.
Cait Kelly
Anglicare Australia says raise in jobseeker needed before more people pushed on to the program
Anglicare Australia has joined calls to raise jobseeker, after the latest report from the economic inclusion advisory committee (EIAC) warned of rising unemployment.
The Anglicare Australia executive director, Kasy Chambers, said:
double quotation mark With unemployment expected to rise, more Australians will be pushed on to jobseeker at the worst possible time.Right now, these payments don’t even cover the basics. People are being forced to skip meals, delay medical care, and go without essentials just to get by. That is the reality of living on jobseeker. As more people rely on these payments, more people will be pushed into poverty.
Chambers said the EIAC report makes clear that raising the rate is the most urgent step the government can take.
double quotation mark This is the moment to lift these payments before more people have to live on them.
Luca Ittimani
ANZ estimates inflation rose to 4.7% annually in March
ANZ has estimated inflation will be shown to have raced to 4.7% in March, when new consumer price index data is released in five days’ time.
Most of that will be from the surge in fuel prices, which the bank economists believes rose 35% from Feburary to March, according to a note today.
The Reserve Bank’s rate-setting board will gather five days after that to make its next call, with financial markets this morning betting on a 60% chance it will increase interest rates once more.
The RBA will be watching the the less volatile trimmed mean measure of inflation. ANZ believes that will rise to 3.3% on a monthly basis but 3.6% on a quarterly basis. Had fuel prices been flat, that measure would have been 3.5%.
Penry Buckley
Police didn’t need new hate speech laws to move neo-Nazis from NSW parliament, inquiry hears
The NSW government has moved to expand hate speech laws to include Nazi slogans, but the inquiry heard submissions that police should have moved on the rally under existing powers. The co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Peter Wertheim, told the inquiry:
double quotation mark With every other application where objections have been taken—and rightly so in most cases, in our view—the rationale has been expressed in terms of public safety considerations, not legality considerations.Clearly there was a blind spot somewhere by whoever approved this in terms of understanding that having a phalanx of neo-Nazis standing outside the NSW parliament and bellowing antisemitic rhetoric constituted a public safety issue, regardless of whether that rhetoric fell afoul of the law.
Penry Buckley
Inquiry into NSW parliament protest calls for policing of neo-nazism under existing laws
An inquiry into a neo-Nazi rally on the steps of New South Wales parliament has recommended police improve training to better deal with far-right protests under existing laws.
The inquiry, which was commissioned following the rally in November last year in which more than 60 members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network (NSN) stood in formation, bearing a large banner with the slogan “Abolish the Jewish Lobby”, released its final report yesterday.
Among its recommendations are for police to develop internal training to guide the enforcement of offences that target right-wing extremism, after police did not oppose an application for the rally on the grounds the slogan did not meet the legal threshold for hate speech, or move on protesters on the day. The police’s response led to accusations of a double standard when it came to the policing of pro-Palestine protests, which the police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, and the NSW premier, Chris Minns, have denied.
The police opposed applications for pro-Palestine marches on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House. A Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (Lecc) inquiry will examine alleged police brutality at a protest against the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, in February.
Ima Caldwell
Kyle Sandilands leaves federal court
Kyle Sandilands has left the federal court after attending a joint case hearing.
He told the media “don’t believe the bullshit you hear and read.”
“They say they don’t want to be in the same courtroom, that is their legal strategy,” Sandilands said of his former colleague.
His former co-host Jackie “O” Henderson was a no-show to court today. Both are suing ARN Media for more than $80m each.
With that, he stepped back into his Rolls-Royce and drove away.
Luca Ittimani
Queensland attorney general cheers Vyleen White killer’s lost appeal
Queensland’s attorney general, Deb Frecklington, has welcomed the news the teenager who killed Vyleen White has lost his appeal against his 16-year prison sentence.
Frecklington released this statement this morning:
double quotation mark No sentence will ever bring grandmother Vyleen White back, and my thoughts and prayers remain with Victor and the White family on what continues to be an incredibly difficult day.I welcome today’s decision which dismisses the killer’s appeal to reduce his sentence.
The devastating loss of Vyleen revealed the horrifying reality of Labor’s Youth Crime Crisis.
Vyleen’s murder is exactly why the Crisafulli Government’s first act in office was to strengthen laws and deliver Adult Crime, Adult Time.
Under our laws, this killer would have faced life imprisonment.
Queensland’s parliament yesterday passed the latest stage of those “adult crime adult time” laws, with 55 offences now covered by the laws, which make young people face the same sentencing provisions as adults if convicted.
Queensland boy who killed grandmother in car jacking loses appeal
A teenager who killed a grandmother and triggered landmark youth justice laws has lost an appeal over his 16-year sentence, AAP reports.
The boy was 16-years-old when he fatally stabbed Vyleen White in a carjacking outside a shopping centre west of Brisbane in February 2024, sparking statewide outrage.
The crime was the catalyst for controversial “adult crime, adult time” laws, ensuring juveniles face at least 20 years in custody for serious offences like murder. However, they were not retroactive and the boy was sentenced under the state’s previous laws, receiving a 16-year jail term.
The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, appealed, claiming his jail term was excessive for a non-premeditated murder and that the sentencing judge had made an error.
The boy received the highest sentence ever handed down in Queensland to a 16-year-old for a single stable murder, defence barrister Matthew Hynes told the court of appeal justices in March.
“This is a case where there is a single stab with fleeting attention,” he said.
However the court dismissed the appeal, rejecting the arguments.
The teenager pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced in November 2025.
He is likely to be released from custody in late 2033, about the time of his 26th birthday, after 60% of his sentence is completed with time already served.
Sydney man faces court over $1.5m NDIS fraud
Luca Ittimani
A Sydney man was set to face court over allegedly fraudulently claiming $1.5m for providing non-existent services through the national disability insurance scheme.
The 33-year-old man came to the attention of the government’s fraud fusion taskforce in January 2024. Investigators searched an apartment in Bankstown, Sydney in June 2024, where they found evidence allegedly linking the man to 80 claims submitted from January to March against 22 unknowing NDIS participants.
In August 2024, the man was banned for two years from NDIS activities. The national disability insurance agency, which administers the NDIS, obtained an arrest warrant in February this year and the Australian Federal Police found and arrested the man on Thursday in Tahmoor, Sydney.
The man was charged with 22 counts of obtaining a financial advantage by deception and 10 counts of attempting to obtain a financial advantage by deception, facing a maximum of 10 years in prison.
He is set to face Parramatta court on 19 June, an AFP spokesperson said on Friday.
The Albanese government has cited NDIS fraud as a reason for its sweeping cuts to the scheme which will cut off 160,000 participants. It had formed the taskforce to address the exploitation of the NDIS by organised crime, as you can read here:
Pocock says government ‘ignoring the needs’ of vulnerable Australians as independent report calls for jobseeker to be lifted
Krishani Dhanji
As Cait Kelly brought you a moment ago, the government’s independent economic inclusion advisory committee has released its annual report before the budget, calling for an increase to jobseeker to 90% of the aged pension over four years, and an increase to commonwealth rent assistance.
The committee, which was established by Labor in 2022 as part of a deal with independent senator David Pocock, made the same recommendation to increase jobseeker and other income supports in 2025, 2024 and 2023. The government is unlikely to increase jobseeker in the coming budget.
Its fourth report states there are now 3.6 million Australians, including 1 million children and young people, who are now living in poverty.
It recommends actions to decrease the number of children living in poverty through family payments and child support systems and calls for an immediately end to all Centrelink payment penalties, including suspensions and cancellations related to compulsory activities.
Pocock says that months into the crisis in the Middle East, the government still hasn’t taken any “meaningful action” to support the most vulnerable Australians.
double quotation mark We’ve seen the prime minister jump to the defence of multinational gas companies while ignoring the needs of the most vulnerable Australians … Australia should be proud of the safety net we provide to those who have fallen on hard times and help them to build a better life rather than condemning them to economic and social exclusion.
David Pocock accuses government of ‘rolling out’ talking points from the gas industry
Independent senator David Pocock spoke earlier about the government’s reported ruling out of a gas export tax. He had this to say:
double quotation mark We now have the vast majority of Australians that say ‘that’s a finite resource that belongs to us, we want a return on that resource’.And yet we have a prime minister and others who are just rolling out the talking points from the gas industry.
We had politicians parroting those talking points, those numbers. We now have people in the media giving us those numbers with no interrogation of where they come from.
Surely the PM should be giving us the ATO’s figures, not the gas industry’s figures.
Cait Kelly
Rise in unemployment would mean Australians need higher welfare payments, government’s expert committee warns
The government’s independent expert economic inclusion advisory committee has called for an increase to jobseeker, youth allowance and related payments and remote area allowance in this budget.
Released today, it also recommends reform of employment services to stop punishing people and provide genuine help for people to get into decent paid work.
Cassandra Goldie, the chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service, said:
double quotation mark With some predicting unemployment could rise to between 5 and 6.5% by the end of the year, we urgently need a stronger safety net and employment services that don’t punish people but help them to get paid work.Cost-of-living support must be targeted to people already living in poverty, who face severely rising costs of fuel, food and rent.
Income support payments are so low that people cannot meet their needs, let alone look for paid work with any dignity or stability. That has to change in this budget.
