Australia news LIVE: Treasurer delivers a record $22 billion surplus; Daniel Andrews ‘happy to appear’ at COVID inquiry

That’s all from us for tonight, my colleague Caroline Schelle will be back with you next. For now, here’s what made headlines this afternoon:

• Regional Express airline has scrapped seven additional routes and accused Qantas for “pillaging” its pilots.
• The federal government has announced an independent review into Australia’s national intelligence agencies to ensure the bodies remain well-placed to service the country’s national interest.
• A federal court judge has labelled a $2.1 million penalty for National Australia Bank (NAB) as “woefully insufficient” after the bank wrongfully and knowingly charged fees to thousands of customers.
• Leading No campaigner Nyunggai Warren Mundine will quit the race for the NSW Liberal senate position vacated by former foreign minister Marise Payne.
• Virgin Australia has extended the expiry on $120 million in unused COVID-19 credits to June 2025, after the consumer watchdog put airlines on notice over looming expiry dates.

Have a good weekend, goodbye for tonight.

Foreign affairs and national security correspondent Matthew Knott writes on the rise of first term senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and what it could mean for the future political landscape.

Garth Hamilton knew something unusual, something seismic, was stirring in conservative Australia when Jacinta Nampijinpa Price came to town last month.

When it was announced that Price, the Coalition’s Indigenous Australians spokeswoman, would appear at Toowoomba’s main convention centre to speak against the Voice to parliament on a Monday night all 1250 tickets, priced at $5 each, were snapped up by the day of the event; when organisers hustled to lift capacity to 1400, those seats sold out too.

“If we’d had more time, we could have doubled that easily,” says Hamilton, who represents the southern Queensland electorate of Groom, ranked the third most conservative in the country by the ABC’s Vote Compass.

What most struck the Liberal National MP, though, was not the size of the crowd but the attendees’ reverence for Price, a first-term senator from the Northern Territory who only entered parliament last July. More than a politician, he says Price has become a political phenomenon.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in politics – they were cheering on her every sentence,” he says. “It was extraordinary.”

Read the full story here.

Rex has reduced its regional network by nine routes and blamed Qantas for “pillaging” its pilots.

It’s the second major reduction to its network in a matter of months, following the axing of seven regional routes in April.

Regional Express scraps seven additional routes, accuses Qantas of pilot ‘pillaging’. Credit: Peter Rae

“The airline is forced to make further reductions to its regional network as the major carriers, particularly the Qantas Group, continued their relentless pillaging of Rex’s pilot group,” Rex said on Friday.

From the end of next month, Rex will scrap seven routes from Sydney to the following destinations: Albury, Coffs Harbour, Griffith, Narrandera, Orange, Parkes and Port Macquarie. It has also withdrawn from the Cairns to Bamaga route in Far North Queensland.

It will also temporarily suspend services from Sydney to Armidale until “at least” March 2024.

The consumer watchdog recently issued a report which accused Qantas and Virgin of benefiting from the lack of competition in Australian airspace. Together, Qantas and Virgin carry 95 per cent of domestic passengers, with Qantas making up more than 60 per cent of this amount.

Rex is not the only carrier to be forced to cut routes in the past couple of months. Bonza cut five routes from its schedule in July, less than six months after the company launched, following weak uptake by passengers.

Insidious, traumatic but less-visible forms of abuse are in the spotlight as the federal government attempts to tackle family and domestic violence.

Coercive control is a form of abuse where perpetrators display a pattern of controlling and manipulative behaviour designed to intimidate, isolate or control.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.Credit: Justin McManus

About 3.6 million Australians - 2.2 million women and 1.4 million men - have experienced emotional abuse by a partner at some point since the age of 15, a 2022 analysis by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found.

The abuse underpins domestic and family violence and can have traumatic and pervasive impacts on survivors and their loved ones, although its less-obvious signs can make it harder to recognise and address.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus is expected to the release of a set of national guidelines on coercive control after a meeting with his state counterparts in Perth on Friday.

“Though coercive control is almost always present in instances of family and domestic violence, we don’t currently have a shared understanding of its nature or impacts on individuals,” he said.

“A consistent, national approach is critical to creating better community awareness, which is the first step toward eliminating this insidious threat.”

AAP.

The federal government is investing in a stockpile of emergency shelters that can be deployed around the country when disaster strikes.

Emergency managers detailed the new national asset during a briefing on Friday about the severe weather that’s looming for Australia, as hot, dry conditions return and increase the risk of bushfires and heatwaves.

Orangeville residents defend their property during the 2019 bushfires.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Joe Buffone, from the National Emergency Management Agency, said it would be a complete, turnkey solution for disaster-hit communities.

As well, the shelters could be used when emergency services personnel have to deploy in large numbers to aid disaster recovery efforts.

“This is a specific capability that the Commonwealth will own, store and deploy at the request of a state or territory,” the agency deputy coordinator general said.

He couldn’t estimate the cost but said talks were underway with manufacturers and they would be a bit like a mining camp.

“They are portable facilities that can be moved into an area, that have a degree of privacy - toilet and bathroom facilities, kitchen sort of areas - so you’ve actually got a whole capability that can be deployed,” Mr Buffone said.

AAP.

The federal government has announced an independent review into Australia’s national intelligence agencies to ensure the bodies remain well-placed to serve the country’s national interest.

The review will be completed in the first half of 2024, focusing on the ten agencies of the National Intelligence Community such as the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Federal Police, the Department of Home Affairs and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.

The federal government has commissioned a review into Australia’s intelligence agencies.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Independent reviews of the intelligence community have been commissioned periodically, with the last completed in 2017. Since then, the National Intelligence Community has undergone significant structural changes.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the intelligence agencies underpin Australia’s national security objectives, including to help safeguard sovereignty in an increasingly uncertain security environment.

“This Independent Review will make sure that our intelligence agencies are best positioned to serve the Australian national interest, respond to future capability and workforce challenges, and continue to protect our security, prosperity and values,” he said.

Co-leading the review will be Dr Heather Smith PSM, currently a professor at the Australian National University National Security College and Richard Maude, an executive director of policy at Asia Society Australia and a Senior Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

“Dr Smith and Mr Maude are highly capable individuals with the specific skills needed to lead this Review,” Albanese said.

The reviewers will consult widely and welcome public submissions, with findings of the review expected to be provided to government in mid-2024.

A federal court judge has labelled a $2.1 million penalty for National Australia Bank (NAB) as “woefully insufficient” after the bank wrongfully and knowingly charged fees to thousands of customers.

On Friday, the federal court said NAB had engaged in “unconscionable conduct” by continuing to charge periodic payment fees on 74,593 occasions, totaling $139,845 across 2888 personal banking customers and 513 business banking customers.

Federal court justice Sarah Derrington said NAB had unjustifiably advanced its self-interest whilst knowing that its customers were oblivious to the wrongful charging that was taking place.

A federal court judge has labelled a $2.1 million penalty for National Australia Bank (NAB) as “woefully insufficient” after the bank wrongfully and knowingly charged fees to thousands of customers.Credit: Natalie Boog

“It deliberately and cynically took advantage of its customers’ unawareness, and was prepared to allow the overcharging to continue whilst it searched, admittedly in good faith, but without any great diligence, for a solution,” she said.

“Such moral dereliction would seem to reflect an inherent sense of entitlement, possibly precipitated by a view that no real harm would come to the bank even if its conduct was detected. It is, perhaps, also a product of a corporate culture that places a low priority on the observance of the law and on respect for its customers’ legal rights.”

The court found that NAB continued charging these incorrect fees between January 2017 and July 2018 despite knowing it had no contractual entitlement to do so, and that the central cause was the bank’s inability to manage its own computer systems and its unwillingness to allocate sufficient resources to address the problem in a timely manner.

Derrington said NAB had received the maximum penalty for a single contravention, but that it was “without question, woefully insufficient” for the circumstances.

“Some solace can be taken in the fact that, in the time that has passed since the contravening conduct in this case occurred, the relevant provisions of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) Act have been updated to permit the imposition of a substantially higher penalty,” she said.

NAB has paid about $9 million in remediation to affected customers who incurred incorrect periodic payment fees from August 1, 2001.

Justice Derrington also ordered NAB to publish an adverse publicity notice on its website and pay ASIC’s costs.

A NAB spokesman said the issue related to the incorrect selection of a fee by NAB when setting up a payment arrangement within personal and business banking accounts.

“We apologise to all impacted customers,” they said.

“We have completed a remediation program to set things right and repaid more than $8.3 million of fees plus interest to affected customers.”

Leading No campaigner Nyunggai Warren Mundine will quit the race for the NSW Liberal senate position vacated by former foreign minister Marise Payne.

Mundine’s decision to withdraw comes after an awkward week in which his positions on treaties with Indigenous Australians and whether the date of Australia Day should be changed were exposed as contradictory to his anti-Voice colleagues.

Warren Mundine is pulling out of the race for a NSW senate seat vacancy created by Marise Payne’s decision to quit politics.Credit: Trevor Collens

He said on the ABC’s Insiders on Sunday that he supported a treaty with Indigenous people and wanted to change the date of Australia Day, two agenda items the No side has claimed the Yes camp would pursue through a Voice to parliament. Mundine’s comments caused angst among conservative NSW Liberals who were supporting his Senate run.

The prominent No campaigner, who stood for the NSW seat of Gilmore for the Liberal Party in the 2019 election, confirmed to this masthead he planned to withdraw.

“It looks like I am going to be pulling out and I will stay in the business sector,” he said.

Read the full story here.

Today Treasurer Jim Chalmers revealed the government had delivered the first budget surplus in 15 years, and at $22.1 billion, the largest ever surplus in dollar terms.

It’s significant, given the $77.9 billion deficit forecast for 2022-23 in the pre-election fiscal outlook from May last year, and a significant improvement from this year’s May budget forecast of a $4.3 billion surplus.

So how did the the budget go from the red to the black?

Firstly, the government got more tax than it expected. It collected $13.9 billion more in receipts, and $13.2 billion of that was tax receipts.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Friday announcing the government had delivered the first budget surplus in 15 years.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The majority of that - $12.7 billion - was from a higher corporate tax take, thanks to higher prices for resources such as iron ore. Those prices have been driven up as the war in Ukraine disrupted (and continues to disrupt) supplies of commodities.

The government also gained more income tax receipts, and that was thanks to a combination of more people in jobs (and therefore, more people paying income tax) and people earning more money in their work.

Another factor that helped was that government payments were $4 billion less in 2022-2023 than originally expected, and that was largely due to lower-than-expected demand for COVID-related products and services.

That includes spending $700 million less than expected on Medicare Benefits Scheme services such as COVID-related pathology, and $500 million less on PBS products driven by a lower uptake in COVID vaccines.

The treasurer said the federal government also found $40 billion in savings over its first two budgets, which has helped the bottom line.

“Even in this financial year something like $7 billion in savings, just in this financial year alone,” he said earlier today.

“And that’s making a bigger contribution to this surplus than I think people appreciate, as is spending restraint and all the rest of it … We’ve taken the most responsible approach.”

Virgin Australia has extended the expiry on $120 million in unused COVID-19 credits to June 2025, after the consumer watchdog put airlines on notice over looming expiry dates.

Travellers had been restricted to redeeming their credit by the end of this year, to the dissatisfaction of customers and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission which called on all airlines last month to amend their policies towards COVID-19 refunds.

Virgin extends COVID-19 expiry on credits by two years after consumer watchdog push.Credit: Peter Rae

Any traveller with a booking which was cancelled by the airline due to pandemic induced border closures between April 2020 and July 2022 will now have until July 2025 to use their credit. Virgin has previously extended the expiry three times and has issued more than $1.2 billion in credits.

Virgin’s bigger rival Qantas recently scrapped COVID-19 credits indefinitely after the watchdog formally expressed concerns with its travel credit policy.

The airline is also sitting on about $300 million in unredeemed “Future Flight” credits, which were issued to those whose flights were cancelled during Virgin’s 2020 stint in administration. These credits are still set to expire at the end of the year.