As it happened: Bruce Lehrmann settles News Corp defamation case; PwC tax scandal fallout continues as nine staff members stood down

Thank you for joining us today. Here’s a summary of our major headlines.

• Former federal Liberal political staffer Bruce Lehrmann has dropped his defamation case against News Corp after the parties reached an out-of-court settlement.
• Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy told a Senate estimates hearing that the cleanup from the PwC tax scandal is “far from over”.
• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has outlined plans to win over Coalition seats, in a sign of confidence that the party can increase its majority at the next election.
• Later this week he will make his first official visit to Singapore and Vietnam where he will take part in security talks and promote Australian business and education ties.
• Meanwhile, the Coalition decided today to try to amend the government bill to let the unemployed work more hours without losing benefits, but adopted a formal position to let the government get its way if the amendment fails.
• Crown Resorts is bracing to pay a $450 million fine following a lengthy AUSTRAC investigation, which will be one of the biggest financial penalties in corporate history incurred by a gambling group.

• In Sydney, police have been called to Macquarie Fields Public School after a bullet was fired through a classroom window.

• The remains of a heritage-listed building in central Sydney that went up in flames last week is being destroyed by a 60-tonne long-reach excavator.

• The Victorian Liberals have announced they will repeal the state’s tax hike for private schools should they win government in 2026.

• The aftershocks from Sunday night’s magnitude 4 earthquake continue to rattle Melbourne, with many residents taking to social media and calling radio stations to report they felt a tremor just after 5pm on Tuesday.
• In WA, multiple Labor MPs are vying for the job of premier after shocking resignation of Mark McGowan yesterday.
• Several residential buildings were damaged as a result of a Tuesday morning drone attack on Moscow, the city’s mayor said, in the latest sign that the war in Ukraine may be spreading beyond that country’s borders.

The aftershocks from Sunday night’s magnitude 4 earthquake continue to rattle Melbourne, with many residents taking to social media and calling radio stations to report they felt a tremor just after 5pm on Tuesday.

Geoscience Australia confirmed a fresh magnitude 2.3 tremor struck at a depth of four kilometres near Boronia at 5.03pm.

The scientific agency said it was small compared to Sunday night’s quake and only about 150 felt reports had been submitted.

Labor MPs have turned on major care economy gig platform Mable in the government’s next round of industrial reforms, with the chair of the employment committee accusing the company of “ripping off” workers through its use of independent contractors.

Mable, which provides workers for aged and disability care, is opposing the government’s proposal to give minimum standards to independent contractors engaged in employee-like forms of work, saying it will undermine the ability of the platform to serve vulnerable clients.

During a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday Labor Senator Tony Sheldon compared Mable to another disability care platform that employed its workforce.

Labor Senator Tony SheldonCredit: Alex Ellinghausen

He asked: “What are the consequences where you’ve got a company like Mable ... ripping people off, paying below the legal wage that employees would receive and undercutting every good employer who’s trying to do the right thing?“

A Department of Employment and Workplace Relations official said the government’s reforms were trying to guard against companies competing against one another on lower wages, and that there shouldn’t be a disincentive to employ people.

Sheldon said Mable’s model seemed “like a fundamental rip-off to me”.

Agriculture Minister Murray Watt, standing in for Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke in the hearing, said disparities between gig workers and employees were “exactly the kind of loopholes we’re seeking to close through this forthcoming legislation”.

The NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo, KFOR, has raised the number of its troops injured in fierce clashes with ethnic Serbs to 30.

The Serbs had tried to take over the offices of one of the municipalities in northern Kosovo where ethnic Albanian mayors took up their posts last week.

Old stone bridge and mosque in Prizren, Kosovo.

A statement said that 11 Italian soldiers and 19 Hungarian ones “sustained multiple injuries, including fractures and burns from improvised explosive incendiary devices.” It added that three Hungarian soldiers were “wounded by the use of firearms,” but their injuries are not life-threatening.

The Serbs clashed with NATO troops in the municipality of Zvecan, 45 kilometres north of the capital, Pristina.

“Both parties need to take full responsibility for what happened and prevent any further escalation, rather than hide behind false narratives,” said KFOR commander Major General Angelo Michele Ristuccia.

Ethnic Serbs plan to gather again on Tuesday.

AP

Police have been called to a Sydney primary school after a bullet was fired through a classroom window.

Campbelltown police were called to Macquarie Fields Public School at 12.45pm on Tuesday after reports a window had been broken by a metal projectile. Specialist police were called in to examine the crime scene and discovered the projectile was a bullet.

Specialist police were called in to examine the crime scene.Credit: Nine News

Students and staff at the school are understood to be unharmed, and the school was not placed into lockdown. Senior police are scheduled to address the media at Campbelltown on at 5:45pm.

NSW Police have asked for anyone with information to come forward.

Read the full story here

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will make his first official visit to Singapore and Vietnam where he will take part in security talks and promote Australian business and education ties.

First stop will be Singapore from Thursday where Albanese will meet with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and deliver the keynote address at the 20th Shangri-La Dialogue, outlining Australia’s vision for the Indo-Pacific region. The Dialogue, convened by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, will discuss regional security challenges.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Sydney last week.Credit: Janie Barrett

In a statement, Albanese said meetings would focus on strengthening bilateral cooperation, implementing the Singapore-Australia Green Economy Agreement, signed in October 2022 and strengthening mutual food and energy security, defence cooperation and trade and investment ties.

The Prime Minister will then travel to Vietnam from June 3 to 4 to mark 50 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Leaders were expected to discuss ways to boost trade, investment and education links and expand cooperation on climate, energy and the environment.

“Australia is committed to expanding and deepening ties with our partners in Southeast Asia to address shared challenges and ambitions,” Albanese said.

“My first official visit to Vietnam is an opportunity to celebrate the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations and agree on new areas of economic, trade and other cooperation to deliver a stronger relationship into the future.”

Several residential buildings were damaged as a result of a Tuesday morning drone attack on Moscow, the city’s mayor said, in the latest sign that the war in Ukraine may be spreading beyond that country’s borders.

“In the early hours of this morning, a UAV attack caused minor damage to several buildings,” Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said, according to RIA Novosti, using a common acronym for drones. He added there were no casualties.

Videos shared across Russian social media showed air defences shooting at drones in various parts of Moscow and the Moscow region. Two residential houses in different parts of Moscow were hit by drones, RIA reported earlier on Tuesday, citing an unidentified emergency service official.

The apartment block in Moscow that was reportedly damaged by a Ukrainian drone, and inset, the drone. Credit: AP

“This morning, residents of some districts of the Moscow region could hear the sounds of explosions — it was our air defense system working. Several drones were shot down as they approached Moscow,” Moscow Region Governor Andrey Vorobiev said in his Telegram channel.

While Russian regions have faced intensified attacks this month, the drone attack Tuesday morning may be the most intense against Moscow since Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year.

Two drones also exploded over the Kremlin on May 3, an attack that Moscow blamed on Ukraine, which denied involvement.

Read more on this news story here.

Geoscience Australia has upgraded its assessment of the earthquake that shook Melbourne and other parts of Victoria late on Sunday evening, saying manual analysis revealed the tremor was a magnitude 4 quake, not 3.8 as originally estimated.

The scientific body also said a 2.6 magnitude aftershock took place two minutes after the initial tremor shook many Melburnians awake at 11.41pm.

More than 26,700 “felt reports” have been lodged with the earthquake monitoring authority, with reports coming in from as far afield as southern NSW and Tasmania.

A government minister says BHP should explain how the company stands to lose $1.3 billion under the government’s new workplace reforms as a senior Workplace Relations department official questioned how the mining giant had come to the figure.

In a submission to the federal government’s consultation on its Same Job Same Pay reforms, BHP said the proposal designed to give labour-hire workers the same rights and conditions as colleagues employed by companies under the same roles would cost the company up to $1.3 billion a year.

The submission has formed part of an ongoing public relations war against the government’s proposed changes ahead of their introduction to parliament in the second half of the year.

Agriculture Minister Murray Watt.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Agriculture Minister Murray Watt, who is standing in for Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke before a Senate committee, said if companies like BHP were going to put figures into the public domain, “I think the onus is one them to justify those figures rather than the onus being on the government to disprove them”.

Departmental deputy secretary Martin Hehir said BHP’s modelling equated to about $260,000 per employee, adding the estimate was a large figure the government needed to get its head around.

“I know the mining industry’s paid well but when we’ve been talking to the mining industry they haven’t been talking $260,000 per employee,” he said.

First assistant secretary Jody Anderson said the government had asked BHP for the underlying assumptions for those costs but hadn’t received them.

The Victorian Liberals have announced they will repeal the state’s tax hike for private schools should they win government in 2026.

But Opposition Leader John Pesutto will not commit to repealing the other tax measures contained in last week’s state budget - such as hitting the owners of beach houses with a land tax increase - despite opposing them, arguing the Liberals need to be “fiscally responsible” and assess Victoria’s finances closer to the next election.

Speaking to the media on Tuesday, Pesutto said the promise to repeal the private school tax hike was made because past governments of all persuasions had never considered it “fair or just” for not-for-profit independent schools to pay payroll tax.

“We commit to repealing that tax after we win the 2026 election,” he said. “We don’t believe Victorians who work hard and send their kids to independent schools should be punished for the financial incompetence of the Andrews government.“

Pesutto also confirmed the opposition intended to legislate a state debt cap, but would not say what the cap should be, again citing the need to assess Victoria’s finances closer to the 2026 election.

The Coalition only holds 28 seats in Victoria’s 88-member lower house.