Australia news LIVE: Labor sanctions neo-Nazi network; Top political donors revealed

Sam Kerr is set to appear in a London court on Monday night (AEDT) for the first day of a criminal trial in which she is accused of the racially aggravated harassment of a police officer.

Kerr is accused of calling a police officer a variation of “stupid white bastard” (according to the UK Newspaper The Sun) or “stupid white cop” (according to News Corp Australia) after a dispute over a taxi fare in south-west London.

Sam Kerr outside Kingston Crown Court on January 14, 2025.Credit: Nine

The Matildas captain could face time in jail if she is found guilty of the offence from the incident which occurred on January 30, 2023.

Read everything you need to know ahead of the first day of the trial here.

Hannah Hammoud, here. I’ll be helming our live blog for the rest of the day, taking over from Josefine Ganko.

If you’re just joining us, here’s what you need to know:

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has postponed an election commitment to create a new Environmental Protection Agency until after the upcoming election, stating the reform won’t be brought to parliament this term.
• Foreign Minister Penny Wong says she advocated for Australia’s continued free trade with the US during her meetings with key stakeholders in Washington last month for President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
• White supremacist network, Terrorgram, will be the first entirely online group to be slapped with counter-terrorism financing sanctions, in an unprecedented move by the federal government to combat antisemitism.
• Employment Minister Murray Watt has confirmed federal Labor will not be introducing mandatory minimum sentencing for acts of Commonwealth terrorism, despite the Coalition’s pre-election promise to legislate the measure in response to rising antisemitism.
• Data from the Australian Electoral Commission released on Monday morning revealed top political donors in the last financial year, with climate activists backing the teals and packaging mogul Anthony Pratt donating $1 million into Anthony Albanese’s campaign fund around the time he attended a Katy Perry concert at Pratt’s house.

A blockbuster trial to determine whether Antoinette Lattouf was illegally sacked by the ABC begins in the Federal Court in Sydney today.

The names of members of a private WhatsApp chat used to allegedly lobby the ABC chair and managing director into sacking Antoinette Lattouf have been suppressed following an application by Rebekah Giles, a high-profile defamation specialist, on Saturday in an attempt to keep the names of the members of the WhatsApp group “Lawyers for Israel” out of court.

Antoinette Lattouf arrives at court. Credit: Edwina Pickles

Members of the group made attempts to lobby both former ABC chair Ita Buttrose and outgoing managing director David Anderson into sacking Lattouf in December 2023 while she was employed as a stand-in radio presenter on a five-day contract.

Read more about the case here.

Australian consumers may have finally got their mojo back with new figures showing the biggest lift in the volume of retail sales in almost three years.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics on Monday reported that the value of retail sales edged down by a much smaller-than-expected 0.1 per cent in December.

More importantly, through the final three months of last year the volume of sales lifted by a full percentage point. It was the strongest quarterly increase since the March quarter of 2022 which was recorded before the Reserve Bank started lifting official interest rates.

In per capita terms, volumes lifted by 0.5 per cent, the first increase since mid-2022. Per person purchases had fallen for two consecutive years until the September quarter when they finally stabilised.

The volume growth was the strongest quarter since the Reserve Bank started lifting interest rates in 2022.Credit: Rhett Wyman

Despite that increase, the bureau noted retail spending is $34.60 lower per person over the past year and down $227.10 since their June 2022 peak. While down, spending is up by $129.70 from their pre-COVID levels.

Analysts had been expecting a pullback in sales, but with Cyber Monday falling in December it delivered a boost with the biggest lift across household goods. Sales of electronic goods were up by 2.9 per cent while furniture and houseware goods bumped up by 2.5 per cent.

The head of macroeconomic forecasting for Oxford Economics, Sean Langcake, said the figures suggested consumer pain was starting to ease.

“Slower inflation, easier policy settings and cost of living subsidies are all working to help boost discretionary spending,” he said.

“While growth is not spectacular, there are signs that consumer spending is turning for the better.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has expressed his concern at right-wing appeals to “toxic masculinity” in global elections, pledging not to engage in a Trump-like campaign ahead of the 2025 federal election.

Responding to a question about US President Donald Trump’s election victory, supported by the votes of young men, Albanese said, “What we won’t do is engage in some of the campaign strategies that we’ve seen from some of the right internationally.”

Speaking to The Daily Aus, Albanese said he wants to focus on the common interests of both young men and women.

“Toxic masculinity that is being appealed to is a concern. [It] doesn’t benefit societies as a whole,” he said.

“We need to work towards bringing together a common interest, from my perspective of young men and young women, both have an interest in a strong economy, both have an interest in equity, both have an interest in the planet that they are inheriting and that their children will inherit as well.”

The PM also touched on his government’s response to the conflict in Gaza, specifically how his government was combating antisemitism at home in Australia through “education”.

“Just this week we announced funding for a National Centre to be in Canberra, and increased funding as well in Western Australia, at the centre that I visited there for Holocaust education,” Albanese said.

He remarked that Australia was seeing a rise in antisemitism that he hadn’t seen in his lifetime,

“It’s beyond my comprehension how anyone either does or funds the fire attack, arson attack on a child care centre that is near a synagogue there in Maroubra. That, to my mind, is just appalling.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been briefed on the extreme weather events taking place around Australia, after one person died in floodwaters in northern Queensland over the weekend.

The PM said national aerial assets and the Australian Defence Force had been deployed to assist with evacuation and rescue efforts.

Both state and federal emergency funding has been activated for residents, as regional centres including Townsville and Ingham continue to be threatened by floodwaters.

Albanese also acknowledged the ongoing heatwave stretching from Western Australia to Tasmania, including active bushfires still raging in Victoria, before thanking emergency service workers across the country for their efforts.

Young Australians can expect further cost of living policy announcements in the lead-up to the federal election, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed.

In an interview with youth publication The Daily Aus, Albanese promised more help was on its way, but wouldn’t go into details.

“I’m not going to make announcements now. But I will say that one of the things that we’ve done is not just talk about what we have done this term, but we’ve already foreshadowed our action in the second term,” Albanese said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“So we’ll cut student debt by a further 20 per cent because we want to address these issues. We think that it is unfair. And we’ll also change where it kicks in and the amount that has to be paid back as a measure as well.”

The PM said he believes intergenerational inequality is the biggest issue facing young people, citing buying a home and the influence of technology as reasons for the phenomenon.

Elaborating on the housing crisis, Albanese said there was no short-term fix, and that increases to supply were being held up by state and local government planning and delays in passing the Build to Rent legislation, which only got through the Parliament in December last year with support from the Greens.

Familiar faces dominate the top echelon of political donors in the last financial year, with climate activists continuing to bankroll the teals and packaging king Anthony Pratt tipping $1 million into Anthony Albanese’s campaign fund around the time he attended a Katy Perry concert at Pratt’s house.

The Australian Electoral Commission on Monday morning released data showing the money raised and spent by Australian political parties and campaign organisations for the 2023-24 financial year.

Investors Rob Keldoulis and Marcus Catsaras were the strongest backers of the teals last year, donating more than $1 million each to Climate 200 and making them the joint-biggest donors in the country.

Rob Keldoulis was the top donor to Climate 200, the Simon Homes a Court founded initiative that supports teal candidates.Credit: Steven Siewert

Pratt, the Visy chief who has got behind Donald Trump’s campaign, gave $1 million to the Labor Party in January 2024. The next month, he held a private event at his Raheen mansion at which Perry performed to a crowd of influential business and political leaders including the prime minister. At the time, this masthead reported Pratt’s hosting of the event would likely coincide with a donation.

As they gear up for an election year, the Liberal and Labor parties and their state branches raked in more than $64 million each, nearly an identical amount. Labor’s national office took in $15 million compared to the Liberal’s $11 million.

Climate 200, which funds the teal movement, received $5.9 million.

These figures include donations as well as public funding from the AEC and some other types of payments that are not donations.

Other figures rounding out the top ten donors include mathematician and long-time Greens donor Duncan Turpie who gave more than $900,000 to the Greens and $300,000 to Climate 200. William Taylor Nominees, a private company directed by venture capital investor, James Taylor, gave $533,000 to the teal movement; First Australians Capital gave $500,000 to GetUp!, Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting gave $500,000 to Coalition parties, Climate 200 provided $432,000 to teal MPs, and the Pharmacy Guild donated $402,000 to various branches of both parties.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says someone will die if antisemitism in Australia is not stopped.

Speaking on Melbourne radio station 3AW just after 9am, Dutton reiterated the Coalition’s call for mandatory minimum sentencing for Commonwealth terrorism offences amid ongoing antisemitic attacks across the country – including the discovery of a caravan full of explosives in Sydney last week.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.Credit: Louie Douvis

“We’ve had this momentum build up now over 15 months, and it’s escalating. Somebody is going to lose their life at some point if these people are not stopped,” Dutton said.

However, minister Murray Watt ruled out introducing such sentencing requirements earlier today.

Dutton also suggested graffiti of swastikas and the Star of David on Jewish homes also warranted mandatory sentencing laws, which legal groups argue impose unacceptable restrictions on judicial discretion. “I think there should be a mandatory penalty for that as well,” Dutton said.

“This is not graffiti. This is not a couple of kids with a spray can on a Saturday night. This is a targeted attack. It’s an attack intimidating people of Jewish faith. It is disturbing for family, friends, neighbours, and every decent person who sees this horrific graffiti. It escalates because it starts with the graffiti, and then the firebombings come, and then the attempted terrorist attacks take place. And it’s unacceptable.”

Employment Minister Murray Watt has confirmed federal Labor will not be introducing mandatory minimum sentencing for acts of Commonwealth terrorism.

Earlier this morning, shadow attorney-general Michaelia Cash called on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to legislate the Coalition’s proposed laws. Speaking later in Canberra, Watt said Labor would not be introducing laws this week for mandatory minimum sentencing.

The government isn’t planning to do that this sitting week. What we are planning to do though ... is crack down on the online activity of certain neo-Nazi and other terrorist organisations.

We’ve taken a number of steps now over the last year or so to strengthen our government’s responses towards antisemitism and terrorism, and we think that they are making a difference and will continue to act as required now on terrorism more broadly.

I’ve seen the comments from Peter Dutton again over the weekend and over the last week, hysterical comments from Peter Dutton demanding that the prime minister and the police put into the public domain confidential information about police investigations and national security briefings.”