As it happened: Thorpe suspended from Senate; Inflation holds steady at 2.1 per cent

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:

• The Senate has erupted in an angry argument over racism after independent senator Fatima Payman accused One Nation leader Pauline Hanson of spreading hatred, while Indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe was suspended from the chamber for a day for throwing papers at Hanson in fury.

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has intervened to scupper a deal with the Greens over environmental reform that Labor promised at the last election, addressing business concerns but circumventing his Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.

• Monthly inflation figures released today showed prices rose 2.1 per cent in the 12 months to October, unchanged from the previous month and slightly lower than expected by economists.

• In NSW, a police officer remains on full pay after being found guilty today of the manslaughter of 95-year-old Clare Nowland, whom he Tasered inside a nursing home.

• In Victoria, the list of compromised VCE exams was released today, more than a week after it emerged that some questions had been included in online practice material.

• In Queensland, an anonymous donor has gifted $3 million to a Brisbane school – setting a state record for the largest donation to a girls’ school by a living alumna.

• In Western Australia, it has been revealed that Basil Zempilas’ mayoral campaign manager Cam Sinclair facilitated polling that spruiked the Perth lord mayor as an electoral saviour for the Western Australian Liberals, triggering further turmoil within the decimated state party.

• In world news, Israel and Hezbollah began a ceasefire today in a major step towards ending nearly 14 months of fighting.

Thanks for your company. Have a good night.

Independent senator Lidia Thorpe has just been suspended from the Senate until the end of the sitting week for her outburst towards One Nation leader Pauline Hanson earlier today.

Senate President Sue Lines sanctioned Thorpe on Wednesday night by formally “naming” her for her disorderly conduct, a move that led Foreign Minister Penny Wong to move that Thorpe be suspended from the upper house on Thursday – the final sitting day of the year.

Lidia Thorpe appears to throw papers towards Pauline Hanson, with Fatima Payman (back left) seated behind them.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Labor and the Coalition backed the motion, while the Greens voted against. Hanson and her One Nation colleague Malcolm Roberts voted for the suspension, as well as United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet and independents Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock.

Thorpe threw papers at Hanson in an extraordinary confrontation between crossbench senators including Labor rebel Fatima Payman.

The Senate president said she wrote to Thorpe at 4.30pm today, offering her a chance attend the Senate to explain herself or apologise. However, Lines said Thorpe indicated she wouldn’t attend.

Read more about this story here.

A leader of Australia’s first state-based Indigenous Voice to parliament has delivered a historic address, urging the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” be seized to achieve meaningful change for First Nations people.

Speaking to a joint sitting of the South Australian parliament, Voice presiding officer Leeroy Bilney noted there had never been an elected member of parliament whose origin story begins in the storylines of First Nations people of South Australia.

“In this place … stories are triaged into material for committees for submissions, for debates,” he said. “It’s transactional, though. It’s about us, not with us. The First Nations Voice Act brings us into parliament, into government buildings, and offers us a seat at the table where decisions are made.”

The South Australian Voice gives Indigenous leaders the right to address parliament, cabinet and department chiefs on Indigenous issues.

South Austraian Premier Peter Malinauskas moved to establish the body before the Albanese government’s national Voice to parliament referendum failed last year.

AAP with Lachlan Abbott

The Australian sharemarket closed in the green on Wednesday as investors digested the news of headline inflation holding steady in October, lower than economists expected.

The S&P/ASX Index 200 rose 47.3 points, or 0.6 per cent, to 8406.7 points at the close.

The Australian sharemarket rose on Wednesday.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

All 11 industry sectors advanced in a broad rally, but the consumer and real estate sectors did the most heavy lifting. Early gains on the ASX were driven by a strong performance by the big four banks, which enjoyed a strong open after a difficult day of trading on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Australian dollar added 0.1 per cent, to trade at 64.78 US cents at 4.37pm AEDT.

Read the full market wrap here.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met the Czech Republic President Petr Pavel in Canberra today.

A statement from the prime minister’s office said it was the first time a Czech president had visited Australia in 29 years.

“Prime Minister Albanese and President Pavel reaffirmed their steadfast support for Ukraine against Russian aggression, and reiterated this support would continue from both countries for as long as it takes,” the statement said.

This was the first meeting between Albanese and Pavel since the Czech president assumed office in March last year.

Lidia Thorpe may be suspended from the Senate as soon as tonight, a rare and drastic step sparked by her antics in the Senate this morning.

As reported in this blog earlier today, Thorpe appeared to throw papers at One Nation leader Pauline Hanson in an extraordinary confrontation between crossbench senators including Labor rebel Fatima Payman.

Lidia Thorpe and Pauline Hanson after a division in the Senate earlier on Wednesday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The fury came at the end of several days of growing tension in the Senate after Thorpe offended Indigenous senators on both sides of the chamber by calling them “native police” – a remark that suggested they supported government policies that harmed First Australian people.

Thorpe has been on thin ice since she protested against King Charles when he visited Canberra last month.

Several Senate sources said leaders of the three parties in the Senate were this afternoon discussing disciplinary action against Thorpe, including a possible suspension.

Details of the action will be learnt later today.

Parliamentarians have been put on notice to rein in racist remarks and policies after the release of a major report.

Author and Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman said Australia still had a high mountain to climb to remove “entrenched” racism and dismantle embedded white privilege.

Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The Australian Human Rights Commission report, billed as the most comprehensive plan in the nation’s history, was delivered to the federal government yesterday.

It calls for several major legal and policy changes such as the introduction of a national framework with 10-year commitments that include acknowledgement of the “systemic and structural nature of racism” and “historical and ongoing impacts of settler colonisation on First Nations peoples”.

Among the 63 recommendations, the framework calls for political accountability and increased racial literacy.

They included a call for the regular anti-racism training for parliamentarians and their staff, and a relevant behavioural code of conduct to be developed by the federal Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission.

AAP

Independent MPs, the Greens and human rights advocates have condemned the bipartisan support to pass a trio of hardline migration bills they say are “anti-migrant” and akin to the White Australia policy.

However, appearing on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing today, opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said deporting people to paid third countries was a “necessary power because we do have a problem with people who can’t go anywhere else in the world, and who we do not want to stay in Australia”.

Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“But the government has not been transparent – either with us or with the public – about which countries they are negotiating with, about what the terms of the arrangement are, or when they will be settled,” the Liberal senator said.

Paterson rejected the suggestion the Coalition was giving the government a blank cheque by supporting the bills without knowing these details.

“We have signed up because we think it is an important principle that deals with a long-standing problem in the migration system,” he said.

Paterson said Labor had given the Coalition assurances the legislation was constitutional, despite several recent High Court rulings overturning Commonwealth laws.

Independent senator Lidia Thorpe lambasted the measures as characteristic of “a racist government” pursuing “oppressive legislative reform”.

“We might as well go back to the White Australia policy ... it’s absolutely disgusting behaviour,” Thorpe told reporters at parliament earlier today, while flanked by crossbench colleagues and refugee rights advocates.

Lidia Thorpe addresses the media today.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Asylum Seeker Resource Centre chief executive Kon Karapanagiotidis said the Albanese government was indistinguishable from the Coalition in its migration policies that ultimately penalise refugees and asylum seekers.

“The Labor Party ... the party that once stood for multiculturalism ... has moved to the far right,” he said at Parliament House today. “There is no difference between the two major parties. I need people [to] understand the gravity of this.”

With AAP

Student activist traditions like sit-ins and making political statements at the start of lectures are “from a different time” and should be banned, a review into Sydney University’s handling of a pro-Palestinian encampment earlier in the year has found.

The report by barrister Bruce Hodgkinson, SC, commissioned by the university, said the institution should also introduce a new “civility” rule which would require people on campus to make their intended meaning of contested words or phrases – for example “intifada” – clear.

The pro-Palestine encampment at the University of Sydney this year.Credit: Kate Geraghty

It said many review submissions made complaints about the long-standing university tradition of students addressing the start of lectures with political statements.

“Many students find this disturbing, including students with disabilities, who have complained that in addition to it being upsetting, that it makes it difficult to prepare for the lecture,” the review read.

“Since 7 October 2023 some have described announcements being made regarding the war in Gaza and the messages being delivered as antisemitic. Some have described being harassed and yelled at.”

Hodgkinson’s review said such traditions grew up in a different time when the legal framework with which the university must comply was less complex.

“There does not appear to be a reason for their continuation particularly in light of social media communication methods,” it read.

Groups like the students’ representative council should face sanctions, including a loss of funding, if they don’t comply with the campus access rules such as the posting of unauthorised posters, the report said.

The review, released today, followed a two-month pro-Palestinian encampment on the university’s lawns which led to allegations of antisemitism and that Jewish students felt unsafe on campus. It was one of many similar protests at universities in Australia.

In an email to staff, chancellor David Thodey said the university had accepted the report’s recommendations in principle and would start consultation on the rule changes.

West Australian Premier Roger Cook has revealed his role in the frantic internal Labor fight over the nature positive laws and new environmental protection agency that led Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to intervene in Environmental Minister Tanya Plibersek’s negotiations with the Greens to get the laws through parliament.

West Australian Premier Roger Cook today.Credit: Hamish Hastie

Cook has been lobbied heavily by the state’s resource sector against the laws and last month led a delegation to Canberra that included members of the Chamber of Minerals and Energy to warn the Commonwealth about the impact the laws could have on resource companies.

Speaking at a press conference, Cook said he had conversations yesterday “with the highest levels of government” to press his concerns about the laws’ impacts on his resource sector-reliant state.

“I had conversations with the federal government yesterday. I reiterated the Western Australian government’s point of view that the nature positive laws in their current form should not be progressed. I am confident that particular situation has prevailed,” he said.

“There was difficulties with it in its current form. It was going to disadvantage Western Australian industry. It was going to be a risk to Western Australian jobs and so that was obviously a point of concern for us.

“I simply made sure that Western Australia’s view was put forward.”

Read more about this story here.