As it happened: PM says ‘no plans’ to change negative gearing; Australia joins call for Israel, Hezbollah ceasefire

Good evening,

Thanks for reading the national news blog. This is where we’ll end today’s coverage.

To conclude, here’s a look back at the day’s major stories:

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has repeatedly insisted the federal government has no plans to make changes to negative gearing or capital gains tax after this masthead revealed the government requested modelling from Treasury on reforms.
• Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has vowed to oppose negative gearing changes, claiming Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers appear to be “at war” with each other.
• The watchdog of the National Anti-Corruption Commission will scrutinise the organisation’s decision not to investigate robo-debt.
• Aldi has again cemented itself as the cheapest supermarket for customers while grocery prices have increased at Woolworths and gone down at Coles, research reveals.
• In Victoria, the Allan government announced the state will pay another $837 million to complete construction on the Metro Tunnel rail project, bringing the total cost of the project to $13.84 billion.
• In NSW, the state government has ordered a parliamentary committee to investigate whether Gareth Ward breached his obligations as an MP when he showed up at parliament in a state of undress at 4am on a Sunday morning after locking himself out of his apartment.
• In world news, Albanese joined world leaders calling for an immediate 21-day ceasefire in Israel’s conflict against militant group Hezbollah, a move they say could open space for a diplomatic settlement that would allow Israeli and Lebanese civilians to return safely to their homes.
• In business news, Star Entertainment Group posted a $1.69 billion statutory loss for the 12-months to June 30 after finally securing a last-ditch loan to keep it solvent due to a lethal combination of increased costs and falling revenue.
• Qantas says strike action by its engineers will not affect AFL grand final weekend travel, rejecting union warnings it is likely to affect flights in all capital cities.
• Pop superstar Katy Perry has teased that a special Aussie guest star will sing I Kissed a Girl with her at this weekend’s AFL grand final, though she stopped short of divulging their identity.

Thanks again for joining us. This is Cassandra Morgan, signing off.

The Australian sharemarket posted strong gains on Thursday, boosted by cyclical stocks such as retailers and tech companies, while miners powered ahead for a third day on optimism for metals demand after the monetary stimulus package announced by China’s central bank earlier this week.

Sentiment was buoyed further in the afternoon when the Chinese government signalled it’s gearing up for additional measures to bolster the world’s second-largest economy.

The Dow Jones weighed on Wall Street on Wednesday.Credit: AP

The S&P/ASX 200 closed 77.3 points (1 per cent) higher at 8203.70, having shaken off a negative lead from Wall Street, with all of its 11 industry sectors advancing, bar energy.

You can read our full five-minute recap of the trading day here.

Strike action by Qantas engineers has not affected passengers, with plans in place to keep people moving over the AFL grand final weekend.

The action kicked off in Melbourne on Thursday and will spread across the nation in coming days.

Qantas says it has contingencies in place for the AFL grand final weekend.Credit: Steven Siewert

“As of early Thursday afternoon, we haven’t had any impact to customers as a result of the industrial action,” a Qantas spokesperson said.

“We have contingencies in place for the industrial action planned on Friday and the weekend and, like today, don’t currently expect this industrial action to have an impact on customers.”

Unions are pushing for a 15 per cent pay rise in 2024 and 5 per cent per year going forward, which they say would make up for 3½ years of wage freezes.

About 1100 aircraft maintenance workers are covered by the agreement under negotiation, which is about 45 per cent of the airline’s engineers.

Their unions warn the action is highly likely to affect Qantas flights in all capital cities, but the airline disagrees.

Qantas made a profit of $1.25 billion in the 2023-24 financial year, down 28.3 per cent on the previous 12 months.

AAP

Pop superstar Katy Perry has teased that a special Aussie guest star will sing I Kissed a Girl with her at this weekend’s AFL grand final, though she stopped short of revealing their identity.

Perry revealed the news to a select group of media and fans at the MCG on Thursday morning, after being asked about her “amazing, extra raunchy” performance at the MTV Video Music Awards earlier this month and whether she would be “toning it down” on Saturday.

Praying for a positive reception: Katy Perry at the AFL grand final press conference on Thursday.Credit: Eddie Jim

“Which part of it was raunchy?” Perry asked the male journalist with a grin. “I will be singing I Kissed a Girl – with an Australian artist that you don’t know about.”

That artist, she said, would only be announced when coming on stage this weekend.

But speculation has been rife all week, partly because Perry has dropped clues, leading many to assume it is Melbourne’s own Tina Arena.

You can read the full story here.

Back in world news, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has joined world leaders calling for an immediate 21-day ceasefire in Israel’s conflict against militant group Hezbollah, a move they say could open space for a diplomatic settlement that would allow Israeli and Lebanese civilians to return safely to their homes.

US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron led the push for a ceasefire on Thursday and were quickly joined by Albanese and the leaders of Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

Locals in Sa’ar, Israel, pick through the rubble of a house hit by a rocket fired from Lebanon.Credit: Getty Images

Israeli air strikes have killed more than 600 people in Lebanon this week following last week’s dramatic pager and walkie-talkie attacks last week targeting operatives of the Islamic militant group.

Hezbollah has been firing rockets over Israel’s northern border for almost a year in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, forcing almost 70,000 Israelis to flee their homes.

“The situation between Lebanon and Israel since October 8th, 2023 is intolerable and presents an unacceptable risk of a broader regional escalation,” Albanese and the fellow leaders said in a statement.

“This is in nobody’s interest, neither of the people of Israel nor of the people of Lebanon.

“It is time to conclude a diplomatic settlement that enables civilians on both sides of the border to return to their homes in safety.”

You can read more here.

The Reserve Bank of Australia says the “significant” growth of the nation’s $4 trillion superannuation sector poses new threats to the stability of the financial system.

The central bank released its half-yearly Financial Stability Review on Thursday morning, noting the country’s financial system continued to display a high level of resilience, but warned of the increasing risks of the ballooning super sector.

Funds hold almost a third of Australian banks’ short-term debt securities and more than a quarter of equity issued by domestic banks.

“The sector has historically posed little risk to the financial system owing to its smaller footprint in funding Australian banks and corporations, limited use of leverage, and steady inflows of defined contributions that simply pass-through (rather than guarantee) returns to members,” the RBA said.

“However, the sector’s rapid growth (now making up one-quarter of the financial system), the rise in herding around common benchmarks and increased exposure to margin calls (including from the hedging of foreign asset exposures) mean the sector’s investment decisions and liquidity risk management practices have a greater potential than before to amplify shocks in the financial system.”

Australia’s superannuation assets are expected to top $9 trillion in 2041, according to Deloitte, and industry funds are among some of the biggest fund managers on the local bourse.

Australian Super, which manages $340 billion in retirement savings, is the largest active manager on the ASX. As of last month, it had substantial shareholdings in 60 equities, of which about 45 are in the ASX300.

Regulators have been warning funds they are taking a closer look at their investments given the large volumes of money they are controlling.

Mosaic Brands, the struggling women’s retail group behind Katies, Noni B, Rivers and more, is desperately hoping to stave off financial collapse by asking global suppliers to accept terms where they will be paid as little as one-third of what they are owed.

Mosaic Brands chief executive Erica Berchtold and the company’s chief financial officer, David Clarke, have engaged in negotiations with suppliers from China, India and Bangladesh – owed tens of millions of dollars – over the past month, with some suppliers asked to accept reduced payment terms.

Noni B owner Mosaic Brands is in a trading halt. Credit: AAP

In most cases, Mosaic Brands, which also operates Rockmans and Millers, has sold the garments received from the suppliers and banked the proceeds without paying for them.

Mosaic Brands, which employs 4000 staff and has about 700 stores, failed to lodge its financial accounts last month with the Australian Securities Exchange, and its shares were suspended from trade.

Mosaic has prepared a document, titled Deed of Repayment and Forbearance, seen by this masthead, that has been presented to many suppliers. The document asks suppliers to accept terms where in some instances they will be paid one-third of what they are owed, and that Mosaic will repay the outstanding amount monthly over three years starting from October 2024.

You can read the full story here.

Former Australian treasurer Joe Hockey says the federal government is putting its “dead hand” into the market if it makes changes to negative gearing.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said this morning he has no plans to make changes to negative gearing or capital gains tax.

Former treasurer Joe Hockey at the National Press Club on Thursday. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

However, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton claimed Treasurer Jim Chalmers had made it known the government was considering changes to negative gearing before flying to China.

Addressing the National Press Club earlier today, Hockey said: “If you’re going to tinker with negative gearing, don’t look first at the housing stock, look at the impact on rents.”

“Landlords who are struggling to pay the interest on a loan against a property will increase the rents, so then you go down the path of Europe and others with rent control, and rent subsidies,” Hockey said.

“So the government is putting its dead hand right into the market.

“I’ve always believed — and it applies in our foreign investment and residential real estate —you want to try and skew the system towards new real estate. That, is if you can have additional incentives for anyone who buys a new property, then it will stimulate the housing market, but it’s got to be a comprehensive plan.”

Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto has rejected suggestions he sought to expel his MP Moira Deeming from Victoria’s parliamentary Liberal Party room to protect himself in his third day of cross-examination in the Federal Court.

You can watch the Federal Court case live here.

Opposition Leader John Pesutto and his wife Betty arriving at the Federal Court on Monday.Credit: Simon Schluter

Deeming’s barrister Sue Chrysanthou, SC, suggested Pesutto should have stood up for his MP, “rather than attacking Mrs Deeming because you were afraid of [then-premier] Daniel Andrews”, and urgently acting to remove her from the party room.

Chrysanthou said: “It was an act of cowardice and self-preservation, wasn’t it?“.

Pesutto responded: “I disagree entirely.”

Deeming helped organise the Let Women Speak rally on the steps of Victorian parliament on March 18, 2023. Neo-Nazis were among several groups of protesters that attended that day.

Pesutto moved to expel Deeming from his party room in the days after the rally. Deeming alleges he defamed her as a Nazi sympathiser, which he rejects.

Chrysanthou put to Pesutto that he created a false urgency to move against Deeming and then publicly aligned himself to the expulsion motion to make it about his leadership.

“You did that deliberately to try and pressure the members to vote in favour of the expulsion,” Chrysanthou put to Pesutto this afternoon.

Pesutto rejected this.

“It was going to continue to build and become a critical issue in the party,” he said.

Chrysanthou continued: “What you’re saying is that you wanted to protect yourself.” Pesutto said it was about the party’s credibility.

The watchdog of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) will scrutinise the organisation’s decision not to investigate robo-debt.

The inspector of the NACC, Gail Furness SC, is independent of the corruption commission and has the role to ensure it complies with the law and acts fairly.

In June, the NACC revealed it would not launch an inquiry after a royal commission into the welfare debt recovery scheme last year referred six unidentified individuals for further investigation.

Furness said a week later she had received 900 complaints about the commission’s decision not to start a corruption investigation, and said at the time she would look into its decision.

This afternoon, the inspector released a statement saying they are now conducting an investigation into the NACC’s decision not to investigate the referrals from the robo-debt royal commission.

“Between June and August 2024, the National Anti-Corruption Commission provided the Inspector with documents the inspector had requested. On 3 September 2024, the inspector asked the National Anti-Corruption Commission to provide submissions on a range of specified matters,” the statement said.

“The National Anti-Corruption Commission has advised that it anticipates that it will provide those submissions by 21 October 2024.”

Furness will prepare a report once she completes her investigation.