As it happened: Youth curfew announced in Alice Springs amid widespread crime; Labor’s deportation bill blocked by Greens, Coalition

That’s where we’ll leave the blog today. Thank you for reading.

To wrap-up, here’s what we covered today:

• In a tense press conference, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil accused the opposition of playing politics after the Coalition and Greens teamed up to block Labor’s drastic new deportation laws in the Senate.
• O’Neil was then repeatedly grilled in question time about whether she reduced Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster to tears in a meeting after the department boss released details of ex-detainees’ criminal records.
• The Northern Territory government declared a 14-day youth curfew in Alice Springs in an attempt to curb a recent spate of crime.
• Inflation has remained at 3.4 per cent for the third month in a row, figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show.
• A controversial change to offshore gas project assessments, which was expected to be debated in the Senate this week, has been paused.
• And in major overseas news, a UK court wants the US government to provide assurances WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would not face the death penalty before it rules on his extradition appeal.
• In the US, the search for six maintenance workers who were on a Baltimore bridge when it collapsed has been suspended as they are presumed dead.

Thanks again, and have a great evening.

Independent senator Lidia Thorpe has given her view on the two-week youth curfew in Alice Springs, announced by the Northern Territory government this afternoon.

Posting to X, Thorpe said the “curfew will only lead to more kids in prison”.

Here’s the first part of her statement:

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NDIS Minister Bill Shorten has fought back against a rebellion from state premiers who claim the federal government’s plan to overhaul the $42 billion National Disability Insurance Scheme has gone “far beyond” the scope of the deal they struck with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in 2023.

Shorten introduced the sweeping legislation today, which includes new powers such as the ability to remove children from the scheme if satisfied by evidence that early interventions have been successful.

NDIS Minister Bill Shorten introducing the legislation on Wednesday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Shorten appeared on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing to discuss the bill.

Here’s what he had to say about pressing forward despite protests from the states:

I think it’s important that when we talk about the NDIS we’re transparent with the people on the scheme. In other words, whilst I know the states see themselves as important, the states and indeed the federal government, we’re a means to an end. The end is actually a better life for a person with a profound and severe disability.

We tabled the bill. We had some discussions with the states. They want more detail, they want more discussion. We’ll do that but … the alternative would have been to hang on to this bill ’til budget and all of a sudden we’d have had a couple of weeks to deal with it before winter.

We either rushed it now or we’re accused of rushing it later so, process is important but let’s get to the substance of it I say to the states.”

The Commonwealth should fund and manage a national hotel quarantine system for any future pandemics, senior NSW government officials have said.

A submission to the federal COVID inquiry from the Minns government’s cabinet office argued the absence of national quarantine arrangements meant states and territories had to fund and deliver border control measures “beyond their constitutional remit”.

The NSW Cabinet Office’s submission was among more than 2000 submissions made public on Wednesday.

It said the pandemic challenged Australia’s federated system of government in “unprecedented ways”, while raising concerns about the lack of consistency between different jurisdictions and levels of government regarding the approaches to vaccine rollout, public messaging, aged care, cruising, and freight.

The government officials said the hotel quarantine system had “required significant ongoing state and territory resources which had to be diverted from other aspects of the public health response and was in addition to other public safety responsibilities”.

NSW quarantined more than 265,000 returned Australian citizens and travellers from March 2020 to April 2022, more than any other jurisdiction, they said. This included a “substantial” number of citizens from other states and territories.

They suggested a “Commonwealth-delivered, centralised approach to managing hotel quarantine in the event of a future pandemic, in line with the Commonwealth’s role in managing internation al border arrangements and biosecurity risks”.

The inquiry, announced by the federal government last year, will scrutinise the response of federal and state governments to the pandemic since January 2020.

Earlier this afternoon, June Oscar, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, gave an address to the National Press Club in which she said public violence in Alice Springs would continue as long as communities were excluded from decision-making.

After her address, The Australian’s Sarah Ison asked whether federal intervention was needed to curb violence in Alice Springs.

Oscar said:

We will continue to see that disquiet and those types of behaviours in public, if we continue to exclude people and not really see and hear and learn from them what are the measures that we, collectively, can be developing and designing that work for these communities.

It can’t happen with someone else’s ideas that sit in Canberra or Perth or Darwin. It has to be the people from the places where these matters are real issues.”

Oscar made her stance on the lost Voice referendum clear. When asked whether Anthony Albanese lost or Peter Dutton won the vote, Oscar said, “I think the nation lost an opportunity.”

Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney has thrown her support behind the Northern Territory government’s decision to place a curfew on young people in Alice Springs following a number of violent incidents.

Posting to X, she said she “welcomed the announcement” and hoped the curfew would be a “circuit breaker that will improve community safety”.

NSW Police Minister Yasmin Catley has launched a fierce defence of her office’s involvement in the controversial hiring of veteran news figure Steve Jackson to a high-paying public service job, saying she did not see any issue with her chief of staff putting forward his friend’s name for the position.

Catley has found herself at the centre of a storm of controversy over the hiring of Jackson, a former Channel Seven producer hired as NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb’s chief media adviser after a “suggestion” from Catley’s chief of staff, Ross Neilson.

Police Minister Yasmin Catley with Assistant Commissioner Brett McFadden.Credit: Louise Kennerley

Neilson is a personal acquaintance of Jackson and put the latter’s name forward as a potential candidate for the $300,000 public service job after a request from Webb for help in filling the role.

But the recommendation has come under intense scrutiny after photos began circulating of Jackson sitting next to a naked Sydney socialite taken in her apartment after an interview in December 2019.

Jackson was also involved in Seven’s Spotlight controversial interview with Bruce Lehrmann.

But Catley today denied there was an issue with Neilson’s involvement in Jackson’s hiring and refused to say whether Jackson should still fill the role, saying it was a matter for the police.

“Well, I don’t see a problem here. My chief of staff was asked for names, he provided them,” she said.

Neilson’s friendship with Jackson was unremarkable, she said, because he “has been in and around the media for over 30 years”.

“Look, quite frankly, it would be difficult for my chief of staff to … not know a name he put forward,” she said.

“He’s been in the media for more than 30 years. I mean, he knows a lot of people in the media.

“It is in accordance with the government employment conditions to have those conversations. There was no direction.”

Northern Territory Police Commissioner Michael Murphy has explained a decision to introduce a youth curfew in Alice Springs for the next two weeks.

Murphy said the death of an 18-year-old man had sparked an outbreak in violence in the town:

We saw really violent behaviour yesterday associated with the death of an 18-year-old male on the 20th of March. That’s led to family feuds and that’s what erupted in Alice Springs yesterday.

It led into another quite serious fight with 150 people involved, armed with weapons. Our police responded to that and they were attacked and we have seized 50-plus weapons, arrested five people so far.

The operation will be swift and we’ll identify who’s responsible and they’ll be delivered to the court, where they can answer for their behaviours.”

Murphy also says Alice Springs residents would see “a real increase in tempo and visibility engagement to drive down the crimes associated with youth activity”.

The brawl overnight resulted in broken windows, smoke damage to a house and a car set on fire.

Three people, aged 19, 31 and 50, have been arrested.

Northern Territory Chief Minister Eva Lawler has declared a 14-day curfew for children in Alice Springs in an attempt to curb a recent spate of youth crime.

Under 18s will not be allowed to enter the Alice Springs CBD between 6pm and 6am under the orders.

NT Police Commissioner Michael Murphy said violent incidents last night “absolutely warranted us stepping in”.

“Of course it’s going to be difficult for us to manage a curfew, but I think the people in Alice expect government to step up and that’s what we’re doing,” he said.

Nine News reporter Georgie Dickerson was at the press conference in Darwin, and reported that the orders will mean 58 additional officers are called in to enforce the curfew.