As it happened: Government steps in to save Rex Airlines; PM, Jewish leaders condemn health workers’ antisemitic video

Thanks for reading our national news blog. This is where we’ll end today’s coverage, but here’s a look back at the day’s top stories:

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has condemned a video of two NSW nurses apparently bragging of killing Israeli patients, as NSW Health launches an investigation and calls in police.
• During question time in Canberra, the PM defended the government’s plan to buy embattled regional airline Rex if another private buyer can’t be found, despite jeers of “Albo Air” from the opposition.
• Matildas star Sam Keer was cleared of racially abusing a UK police officer by a British jury, and Football Australia has welcomed her back to the pitch, but not commented on her captaincy of the national team.
• The government was still feeling positive about Australia’s chances of being exempted from US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium, even after the White House accused Australia of breaking a Turnbull-era promise to limit aluminium exports.
• Speaking of the White House, tech billionaire Elon Musk just got even more power to slash jobs and spending across the US government, though Musk admitted he’d already made errors of fact (and would again).
• And in sports news, Australian tech giant Atlassian signed a major deal with Formula 1 racing team Williams to become its title sponsor.

We’ll be back tomorrow with all the day’s big stories. Have a great night!

The federal government has released $2.2 billion for Victoria’s controversial Suburban Rail Loop project, the state government says.

In a statement released a short while ago, Suburban Rail Loop Minister Harriet Shing announced the “good news”.

“Australia’s largest housing project, our Suburban Rail Loop, has just received $2.2 billion in good news from the Albanese government. This means more homes and more opportunities, closer to where people want to live,” Shing said in the statement.

“As the federal government again made clear today, this is a good project. This is an important project. We agree.”

The federal and Victorian governments have been at loggerheads over funding for the project, which has a $35 billion price tag for its first stage.

As of September last year, the Allan government was yet to convince the Commonwealth that the flagship project was worth building, with its failure to submit a credible business case holding back the $2.2 billion in promised federal funds.

Before today’s question time in Canberra descended into taunts about “Albo Air” (and pleas from the House speaker for MPs to keep their replies brief), there was a rare moment of unity in the chamber.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and his wife, Lucy, dropped in to hear a condolence motion for the late Tom Hughes, Australia’s former attorney-general and Turnbull’s father-in-law.

Turnbull shook hands with old foes, from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to those in Turnbull’s own party, including Liberal leader Peter Dutton, and the Nationals’ Barnaby Joyce, before speaking at length with Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton shakes hands with Malcolm Turnbull after a condolence motion for the late Tom Hughes.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Albanese led the tributes for Hughes, describing the late barrister known as “Frosty” as a man of wit, courage and conviction “far ahead of the curve”, with a reputation for ferocity both celebrated and feared.

Dutton spoke of Hughes as a family man with a formidable mind, a “giant of our party”.

Barnaby Joyce approaches Lucy and Malcolm Turnbull to shake hands and offer condolences.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Some big news in the corporate world: mining giant BHP has appointed former NAB chief executive Ross McEwan to take over as chair of its board of directors.

McEwan ran NAB for five years and was chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland from 2013 to 2019 before that. Outgoing chair Ken MacKenzie joined BHP in 2016 and has been chair of the global resources giant since 2017. The appointment of McEwan follows a formal succession process.

Former NAB chief Ross McEwan serving as a director at his first BHP general meeting in Brisbane in November.Credit: Jamila Filippone

As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hosted teal MPs for drinks last night, the Liberals and Labor secretly struck a deal on an election funding overhaul.

The two major parties have agreed to strip big money out of Australian politics – lowering donation caps and forcing more contributions to be disclosed – in a move that will infuriate independent MPs who worry the changes are locking in the funding dominance of Labor and the Coalition.

The pact, set to become law on Wednesday or Thursday, was sealed on Tuesday evening as Albanese hosted teal and other independent MPs at his Canberra residence.

Labor agreed to a Coalition demand to raise the amount MPs and parties can receive from one source from $20,000 to $50,000, according to sources on both sides who could not speak publicly.

Independent MPs were dealt out of the negotiations after they opposed most of the bill.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Read the exclusive story from our political correspondent Paul Sakkal here.

Australians are being misled into believing that low-quality carbon offset schemes will lead to a net-zero future, despite evidence that only reducing fossil fuels will work, iron ore mining giant Fortescue says.

The federal government’s Safeguard Mechanism forces companies to either begin decarbonising or buy carbon offsets to meet legislated net-zero goals.

But Fortescue’s chief climate scientist, Dr Shanta Barley, said in a speech in Canberra today that many of the offsets they were forced to buy were “dodgy”, leading to a lack of trust in the system.

The comments add to questions now being raised by scientists about whether schemes such as farmers supposedly growing forests achieve any real carbon reduction in the atmosphere.

Fortescue instead has a policy of reaching “real zero” by building renewable energy and battery storage schemes to power its multibillion-dollar Pilbara iron ore operations.

Fortescue was founded by its billionaire chairman, Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest.Credit: Trevor Collens

Read the full story from our senior writer Michael Bachelard here.

Speaking of question time, Federal Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic was fielding plenty of queries on tariffs as he fronted the Press Club today.

“In the last 24-48 hours it has been a massive issue here in Australia,” Husic acknowledged, with his colleagues still scrambling to convince Donald Trump to grant Australia an exemption from new US tariffs on imported steel and aluminium.

But there is still “a healthy future for Australian aluminium,” insisted Husic.

The real question, he thinks, is “for our American friends: ‘Do you want to pay more for that product that you have got a big demand for?’

“We will work through all those issues.”

Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic talks Trump tariffs at the National Press Club.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Meanwhile, in the US, tech billionaire Elon Musk just gained even more power to slash jobs and spending across the federal government.

He made a rare public appearance in the Oval Office beside Donald Trump (and his own occasionally interrupting son, X Æ A-Xii) as the president signed an executive order giving Musk’s team greater powers to shrink the government workforce.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk defended his work as President Donald Trump’s chief savings finder.Credit: Bloomberg

Musk defended the work of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) against critics who say he has aggressively wielded extraordinary power with little oversight. While he admitted to making errors of fact as the head of Trump’s razor gang, he denied having a conflict of interest over the billions of dollars worth of government contracts already secured by his companies.

Trump, meanwhile, lashed out at courts that have temporarily blocked his agenda, including a New York district judge who has paused DOGE’s march through Treasury’s sensitive federal payments system. “An activist judge wants to try and stop us from doing this,” Trump said, in remarks that speak to growing concerns among legal scholars, civic institutions and Democrats about the Trump administration pushing the limits of its power.

Read more from our US correspondent Michael Koziol here.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has lashed the Coalition in question time, describing Liberal MP Michael Sukkar as a clown who is “not fit to represent a serious job in this parliament”.

Sukkar had asked Albanese a cheeky question: “Will the prime minister rule out appointing his close friend Alan Joyce as CEO of the new Albo Air?” in reference to the government’s announcement this morning that it would buy regional airline Rex if the carrier does not find a private buyer.

Albanese grew increasingly frustrated in response as he accused the Coalition of being the reason so many regional airlines have gone out of business. He rattled off a list of regional towns he claimed the Nationals and Liberals had failed to properly represent. “Every one of them is being represented by those people over there, but they have this contempt for them that this clown asks a question like that, Mr Speaker,” Albanese shouted, pointing a finger at the Coalition.

Manager of opposition business Michael Sukkar.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The prime minister also invoked former Nationals leader Michael McCormack in justifying the government’s plans for Rex.

“Here’s what a serious member of the National Party had to say [about regional airlines],” said Albanese, launching into McCormack’s quote. “‘If not for Rex, they wouldn’t be able to get doctors, nurses, vaccines and most importantly medication. People in those towns would also then not be able to make it to their capital city medical appointments. But it’s more than just health and we all know that. It’s business. It’s tourism. It’s so many aspects of modern living.’

McCormack himself had raised the “possibility of the federal government having an equity stake in Rex to ensure the airline’s future,” Albanese said.

Of the Nationals MP, the PM added: “That’s a real leader sitting down the end over there for the National Party. And you, sir, [pointing to Sukkar] are not fit to represent a serious job in this parliament.”

Residents of Portland in south-west Victoria, a city which relies heavily on its biggest employer, Alcoa’s Portland Aluminium, appear to have nothing to fear from US President Donald Trump’s plan to place tariffs on aluminium.

Every ingot of aluminium produced at Portland’s smelter – Victoria’s biggest – is shipped to Asia, which means potential US tariffs do not apply. The Portland plant is capable of producing up to 358,000 tonnes of aluminium a year.

But its entire output is in rectangular moulded ingots, each of which weighs 22.5kg. They are designed specifically for the Asian market, where large and small companies melt the ingots for a multitude of uses, from wire to computer frames to engine blocks and bicycles. The US market tends to import large aluminium slabs or cylindrical billets, neither of which are produced at the Portland plant.

Around 2019, when aluminium producers were suffering from low prices, Alcoa’s Portland Aluminium tried to sell a shipment of its product to the US. The price offered was so low the attempt was abandoned, and has never been revisited.

Industry Minister, Ed Husic (left) and head of Alcia Australia, Alsabe Muller (right) at Alcoa’s Portland Aluminium Smelter.Credit:

Portland has a population of about 10,000. The aluminium plant is estimated to support about 1600 workers, including those employed directly at the smelter, plus maintenance contractors, employees of engineering, trucking and other companies that serve the business, and those in hospitality and service industries.

The Mayor of the Glenelg Shire, Karen Stephens, said the shire had advocated for many years to ensure the aluminium company received crucial state and federal support because the community relied so heavily on its continued operations.

Ships sail from Portland loaded with ingots to markets in China, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.

The Port of Portland’s chief financial officer, Mark Riley – who was previously employed as financial controller at Portland Aluminium – said that any Portland residents concerned about Trump’s tariff decisions could breathe easily. “From our perspective, US tariffs on aluminium would have zero effect on Portland,” he said.