Afternoon update: Dutton’s ‘completely hypocritical’ Gaza rhetoric; Seven’s profits plummet; and a glorious artistic adventure | Australian News

Welcome to the afternoon update.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton today said Australia should not accept any Palestinians fleeing Gaza “at this time” because of an unspecified “national security risk”.

His rhetorical escalation was immediately rejected by senior Albanian government officials, who stressed that security checks were the same as when the Coalition was in power.

The Albanian government is looking at ways to allow Palestinians who fled to Australia to stay longer, with new Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke saying no country should be sending people back to Gaza at this time.

Independent senator David Pocock criticised Dutton’s comments, saying they were “completely hypocritical” and “only served to exacerbate the strain on our social cohesion”.

Main news

• Seven profits fall amid allegations of toxic work culture | Seven West Media’s full-year profits fell 69 per cent to $45 million, in what chief executive Jeff Howard described as a “challenging” year for the conglomerate. Mirroring a decline in advertising revenue across the media sector, Seven’s group revenue fell 5 per cent to $1.4 billion from a year earlier, while net debt soared to $301 million.

• Gold Coast mother charged with daughter’s murder | The mother of a 10-year-old schoolgirl found dead in a Gold Coast unit on Tuesday night has been charged with her murder. A police detective leading the investigation said the discovery of the girl’s body in a home in the exclusive Emerald Lakes area of ​​the Gold Coast suburb of Carrara was “one of the most distressing scenes I have seen”.

• Optus and Telstra delay 3G network shutdown | The two major carriers have delayed the shutdown of their 3G mobile networks by two months, fearing that hundreds of thousands of mobile phones and other connected devices could suddenly be cut off. The two companies were due to shut down their networks at the end of August, but have now pushed back the shutdown to October 28, 2024, they announced on Wednesday.

• Victoria Premier urges Melbourne council to reconsider e-scooter ban | Jacinta Allan has not ruled out intervening to force Melbourne City Council to overturn its ban on e-scooter rentals, but says she hopes the council “will make its own common sense decision”.

• Commonwealth Bank posts $9.8 billion cash profit amid growing mortgage stress | Commonwealth Bank defied the economic slowdown to post a full-year cash profit of $9.8 billion, a strong result achieved amid rising household costs and mortgage lending strains.

• New Zealand charity unknowingly distributes sweets containing deadly levels of methamphetamine | A charity working with Auckland’s homeless population unknowingly distributed sweets laced with a potentially lethal dose of methamphetamine in its food parcels after the items were donated by a member of the public.

• Japanese Prime Minister Announces He Will Resign in September | Fumio Kishida has said he will not run for president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party next month – a decision that will see the appointment of a new leader of the world’s fourth-largest economy.

• Is it Harris or Harris’s? An apostrophe dispute divides grammarians in the United States | Debate is raging in the United States over how to designate possessive proper nouns ending in s, particularly after the selection of his running mate Tim Walz with a last name that resembles an s.

Full story

The Forces Threatening Labor’s Re-Election Platform – Full Podcast

The federal parliament is back after the long winter break and already the debate is raging on key issues such as housing, gambling and the cost of living.

And with less than a year to go until the elections, pressure is mounting on the government to gain ground and woo voters.

Guardian Australia’s chief political correspondent Paul Karp and political reporter Amy Remeikis discuss what Labor wants to achieve before going to the polls.

Full story

The Forces Threatening Labor’s Re-Election Platform – Full Podcast

What they said…

“Well, quod erat demonstrandum. If I call a tall person short or a genius an idiot, they tell me so. But if you call a person who is easily offended by the harmless a sook and he gets offended, well then it’s because he’s a sook.”

ignore newsletter promotion

after newsletter promotion

Barnaby Joyce, when asked how he performed in the House of Representatives during today’s question session.

In figures

Intergenerational inequality, unregulated social media, wage theft, precarious employment and the climate crisis are driving a “dangerous” and “alarming” global rise in mental health problems among young people, according to a study by The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on Young People’s Mental Health.

Before going to bed, read

Before Claude Monet began his world-famous series of water lilies, the painter spent several months in central France where he was captivated by the spectacular landscapes.

The writer Eddi Fiegel embarks on a glorious artistic adventure – or as Fiegel puts it, “a quest to find the landscape that inspired the painter… a landscape that, unlike his landscapes of Rouen, Paris and London, which he painted on numerous occasions, remains relatively unknown.”

Daily Word Game

Today’s opening word is: CONFYou have five attempts to get the longest word, including the starting word. Play Wordiply.

Register

If you’d like to receive this afternoon update in your inbox every weekday, sign up here or start your day with curated analysis of the key stories you need to know with our Morning Mail newsletter.

And check out the full list of our local and international newsletters, including The Stakes, your guide to the twists and turns of the US presidential election.