As it happened: Inflation hits 6.1 per cent; Pauline Hanson snubs Indigenous acknowledgement, dismisses validity as Labor introduces climate bill to parliament

Good evening and thanks for reading our live coverage today. Here’s the main stories from Wednesday, July 27.

• In the first question time of the new parliament, questions about Labor’s allegiance to the construction union were posed after they stripped powers and money from the building watchdog.
• The government introduced its signature climate legislation to the House of Representatives, declaring the 43 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030 is an “ambitious but achievable goal”.
• The annual inflation rate hit 6.1 per cent, slightly below expectations but still a 21-year high and that came after the International Monetary Fund conceded risks of a global recession next year are growing.
• Pauline Hanson stormed out of the Senate chamber saying the acknowledgement of country perpetuates racial division in Australia.
• Russia will pull out of the International Space Station after 2024. It is one of the last areas of cooperation between Washington and Moscow.
• After 110 days, and millions in costs, the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation trial has ended.

• Nearly half of all adults in Australia had caught COVID-19 by early June and more than a quarter of the population was infected with the virus within the previous three months alone.

• Face masks seem to be a new political divide in the 47th Australian parliament.
• Queensland has pulled the plug on their $600m government-funded quarantine sites.

• And finally NSW road workers will join rail staff in walking off the job on Thursday.

Thanks for reading our coverage, we will be back tomorrow morning with more news from 7am.

Of Australia’s 41 federal treasurers, Ted Theodore was the unluckiest.

Theodore was a member of Jim Scullin’s Labor government that came to power at the election held on October 12, 1929. A fortnight later, the Black Tuesday crash wiped almost 13 per cent off Wall Street and the Great Depression was on its way.

Australia’s unluckiest treasurer, Ted Theodore, faced enormous economic challenges. Jim Chalmers problems are almost as serious.Credit: Staff photographer

The Australian economy was already in recession. Black Tuesday just ensured the new government and its new treasurer faced the harshest of all baptisms.

Jim Chalmers may think he’s got a tough situation facing him right now, but it’s not at Theodore levels.

Wednesday’s inflation figures, showing prices climbing at a 21-year-high rate of 6.1 per cent, were bad. The underlying measures of inflation, both running above 4 per cent, were even worse as they confirmed price pressures are broad and wide.

Read more here.

Welcome to your five-minute recap of the trading day and how the experts saw it.

The numbers: The Australian sharemarket set a new 20-day high on Wednesday, gaining 0.2 per cent or 15.9 points to 6823.2 by the close, in a session that saw headline inflation hit a two-decade high of 6.1 per cent.

The market was boosted by the banks. The financials sector improved 1.1 per cent. Westpac lifted 1.3 per cent to $21.41 after announcing it was considering the closure of 100 branches, which chief executive Peter King said would achieve a “major cost saving”.

Wall Street fell across the board.Credit: AP

Commonwealth Bank improved 2.2 per cent to $98.90, NAB rose 1.4 per cent to $30.13 and ANZ gained 0.4 per cent to $22.73. The healthcare sector gained 1.4 per cent, while materials fell 1.2 per cent as BHP, Fortescue and Rio Tinto retreated between 2 and 2.8 per cent.

Zip charged to $1.24 with a 21 per cent rally. The mystery of the market was Sezzle, which rocketed by 95 per cent before entering a trading halt at 3pm AEST. The reason for the surge isn’t obvious given the sharemarket hasn’t heard from the buy now, pay later company since its merger with Zip was abandoned.

The lifters: Zip 21%, Clinuvel Pharmaceuticals 8%, Silver Lake Resources 6%

The laggards: Champion Iron -4.5%, Iluka Resources -4.3%, Bluescope Steel -3.8%

The lowdown: The sharemarket was undaunted by today’s consumer price index (CPI) figures. Inflation did fall slightly short of market expectations - hitting 6.1 rather than the predicted 6.3 per cent - but trimmed inflation is at its highest since 1991. The Commonwealth Bank is expecting headline inflation to peak at 6.75 per cent in December.

“All countries are dealing with the highest inflation rates in decades and Australia is no exception” said Commonwealth Bank chief economist Craig James. “Workers keep succumbing to Covid or influenza, restraining production of goods. At the same time, the war in Ukraine is lifting prices of a range of commodities, notably oil.”

Read more here.

Mining giant Rio Tinto has reported a 30 per cent fall in half-year profit and halved its interim dividend after the price of the steel-making ingredient, iron ore, Australia’s most valuable export, dropped from last year’s record highs.

Rio Tinto, the nation’s second-largest mining company, told shareholders on Wednesday it had achieved an underlying profit of $US8.6 billion for the six months to June 30, while delivering a reduced half-year dividend of $US2.67 per share.

The dividend, which is down from $US5.61 last year, was lower than the $US3.05 a share that most analysts had been expecting.

Rio Tinto is Australia’s largest producer of iron ore, the key steel-making raw material.

Chief executive Jakob Stausholm said iron ore prices for the period were half of what they were in the first half of 2021.

“Market conditions were good, albeit below last year’s record levels,” Stausholm said.

Iron ore – the raw material processed in steel-making furnaces to churn out molten pig iron – is Australia’s largest export, bringing in $133 billion to the nation’s overall export earnings in the past financial year.

Read more here.

Almost 1 million people have been locked down in a district on the outskirts of Wuhan, the first time the Chinese city that saw the world’s first COVID-19 lockdown has imposed such a measure since 2020, underscoring how far the country is from post-pandemic normalcy.

More than two years since Wuhan was sealed off to contain what was then a mysterious pneumonia, residents of Jiangxia district have been told to stay in their homes and not go out unless necessary. Public transport has been stopped and entertainment venues shut for three days after four asymptomatic cases were found in the district on Tuesday.

Workers in PPE overalls guard an entrance to a community under lockdown in Beijing in March.Credit: AP

While so far the restrictions are contained to just the one district, the move is likely to spark concerns about a widening of curbs. Life in the pandemic-scarred city of 11 million people had largely returned to normal since its initial lockdown in 2020 - which set a precedent for how Chinese authorities would handle flare-ups in other parts of the country - with a small outbreak in April and a handful of cases in the past month.

China is sticking to its COVID Zero strategy of lockdowns, movement restrictions and mass testing despite it being challenged like never before, with more contagious variants circumventing the strictest of curbs. The country reported 604 local cases for Tuesday, down from 868 a day earlier.

Read more here.

Bloomberg

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has declared a regulatory proposal from NBN Co, which would dramatically increase the cost of internet, “unacceptable”, forcing the broadband network operator to rethink its long-term pricing model.

NBN Co chief executive Stephen Rue said the federal government had confirmed the organisation would remain in public ownership for the forseeable future as it requested the company withdraw a proposal that would shape how it determines wholesale prices.

NBN Co has enraged TPG Telecom and other telco providers over plans to dramatically raise wholesale prices.

The intervention comes as TPG Telecom became the latest telco provider to publicly urge NBN Co against raising wholesale access prices.

“At the core of the Albanese government’s priorities are the long-term interests of Australian consumers,” Rowland said.

“This means affordable prices and a quality, resilient network. In contrast, the SAU (special access undertaking) variation lodged in March 2022 under the former government would have allowed NBN price increases of inflation plus three per cent a year on some products. This was underpinned by unrealistic revenue expectations, and reflected a view to privatisation.

The SAU variation process offers the best prospect of a regulatory outcome that serves the long-term interests of consumers, but I have formed the view that the current NBN Co variation proposal is not acceptable.”

Rowland said she expected a new proposal by early 2023.

Read more here.

Hundreds of NSW road workers, construction crews and other transport staff will strike for 24 hours from early on Thursday over the government’s public sector wage offer, which they argue amounts to a pay cut due to surging inflation.

The industrial action from 6am across the state will coincide with rail workers walking off the job early on Thursday for four hours, which the government warns will cause significant disruption to Sydney’s train network in the morning.

The 24-hour strike by mostly road workers who are members of the Australian Workers’ Union comes three weeks after the state’s industrial umpire ordered them to abandon a planned day-long stoppage.

Workers who maintain roads and bridges including the Harbour Bridge will strike for 24 hours from 6am on Thursday.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

However, union delegates held a meeting on Wednesday at which they decided to push ahead with a 24-hour strike across the state after the order had expired.

Most of the workers who will walk off the job on Thursday maintain highways, roads and bridges, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Australian Workers’ Union NSW branch secretary Tony Callinan said the transport workers were striking because of the government’s cap on wages amid surging inflation, which meant their real wages would drop significantly.

“It is a wage cut, given inflation. These workers are emergency responders … and worked right through the COVID pandemic,” he said.

Read more here.

As new Greens MP Stephen Bates stood up to deliver his first speech in federal parliament late on Wednesday afternoon, he recognised the symbolism went well beyond the rainbow-coloured “bin chicken” over his left breast.

Bates, 29, prevailed in a three-way contest between the Greens, the LNP and Labor in the inner-city seat of Brisbane in May, giving the party its third lower house seat in Queensland, and fourth overall.

Brisbane Greens MP Stephen Bates delivering his first speech in the House of Representatives.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

It was the icing on the cake for the party, which had already claimed Ryan from the LNP’s Julian Simmonds and Griffith from Labor’s Terri Butler, prompting some to bestow the “Greensland” moniker on the Sunshine State.

“There have been two pivotal moments for me that have shaped who I am and my politics,” Bates said in his emotional speech to the House of Representatives.

“My experiences of working poverty-wage jobs, and my coming out as gay. Both impacted me deeply and forever changed how I saw the world.”

While Bates is no trailblazer in that latter regard, his election did make some minor Australian political history.

Read more here.

Queensland will mothball its go-it-alone privately owned regional quarantine site and has told the federal government that a separate unfinished facility near the Brisbane airport will also not be needed, citing new health advice.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles has also used a budget estimates session to reveal the $223.5 million cost incurred for the Wellcamp site, which took the first of its 730 guests so far in February, saying it “pales in comparison” next to the expected $400 million Pinkenba bill.

The purpose-built quarantine facility, dubbed the Queensland Regional Accommodation Centre, at Wellcamp near Toowoomba. It will cease hosting guests from August 1, but “remain available should the pandemic response settings change”.

“With increased vaccination coverage and community acceptance of COVID-19, the need for dedicated isolation facilities or for any contingency capacity to be held has decreased,” Miles told the state development and regional industries committee on Wednesday.

“Queensland’s Chief Health Officer and Queensland Health have advised the Queensland government there is no longer a public health requirements for dedicated government provided quarantine and isolation facilities.”

Miles said he understood this was consistent with the health advice given in other jurisdictions, and his government had advised its federal counterpart it would not need the Pinkenba site. The state’s quarantine management taskforce and quarantine management program board will also be disbanded.

Read more here.

Former Northern Territory chief minister Michael Gunner is expected to quit politics in the Top End after more than a decade on the job.

Gunner has been on the backbench since May when he resigned from the top job, saying his head and heart were no longer in the role.

Outgoing Labor state MP Michael GunnerCredit: Nine News

AAP understands the member for Fannie Bay will stand down from the NT Legislative Assembly on Wednesday night during the parliamentary sitting.

If the 46-year-old does resign it will spark a byelection in his Darwin seat, which he has held since 2008. The margin in his seat is slightly less than 10 per cent, but only 833 votes because of the NT’s small electoral districts.

Gunner, who was the first Territory-born Top-End leader, became opposition leader in 2015.

He led Labor to a landslide victory in 2016 before his government was returned easily in 2020, partly on the back of its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gunner also attributed his decision to leave the top job in May to the birth of his second son, Nash, in April and wanting to spend more time with his family.

He also said a heart attack in 2020 and the pandemic had taken a toll, and he was tired.

AAP