As it happened: CFMEU workers walk off job across nation; international student caps announced

Thanks for reading the national news blog. This is where we’ll end today’s coverage.

Here’s a look back at the day’s major stories:

• Education Minister Jason Clare said students would be more evenly spread across the cities and regions, as he rejected claims the caps would destroy Australia’s higher education sector.
• Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has hit back at Treasurer Jim Chalmers saying he is dangerous and divisive in a speech, asking why the treasurer is “dedicating his speech to me?”
• Western Sydney Airport will add the Singapore flights to its existing plans for Qantas and Jetstar domestic flights, in a major win for the project.
• Meat-free Mondays, a jump in online sales and an ever-expanding range of home brand products helped push Coles’ profits to $1.1 billion as Australians cut down on dining out in the cost-of-living crush.
• Overseas, powerful explosions were heard in Kyiv on Tuesday, with Ukraine’s air defence forces saying the entire country was under the threat of a Russian ballistic weapons attack.

Thanks once again for tuning in to our live coverage, this is Caroline Schelle signing off.

A Chinese spy plane breached Japanese airspace on Monday, the first known incursion of its kind, prompting Tokyo to scramble its fighter jets in response.

The Chinese Y-9 intelligence-gathering aircraft entered Japanese airspace for two minutes from 11.29am near the Danjo Islands, off the southernmost main island of Kyushu, the Japanese Defence Ministry said.

“In response, the Self-Defence Forces scrambled fighter jets from the Western Air Defence Force and took other measures, including issuing notifications and warnings,” the ministry said in a statement.

Japan’s Ministry of Defence photo of a Chinese Y-9 reconnaissance plane.Credit: AP

The airspace breach was “not only a serious violation of Japan’s sovereignty but it also threatens our security”, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said on Tuesday.

The government continued to monitor increasing Chinese military activity near Japan and would be fully prepared for any airspace violation, Hayashi said, while declining to comment on the details of the diplomatic talks between Tokyo and Beijing.

Here’s more on the breach, from our foreign correspondent.

Nine’s top rating breakfast host Ben Fordham has been pinged by the media watchdog for failing to properly disclose an on-air commercial deal with ride-share giant Uber.

Fordham, the public face of Sydney radio station 2GB, breached the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) broadcasting rules after making favourable remarks about Uber on August 3 last year, but did not disclose a personal commercial deal.

During a segment with financial commentator Peter Switzer, Fordham said he had taken up a “side hustle”, taking his first customer as an Uber driver.

Jacqui Felgate and Ben Fordham

“I said I was going to become an Uber driver … guess what I’ve done this week?” Fordham said, while discussing statistics about Australians taking up second jobs.

Melbourne’s 3AW, a sister station to 2GB, also breached the rules when its afternoons presenter Jacqui Felgate made favourable remarks about German car manufacturer BMW without disclosing a commercial agreement she has with Berwick BMW.

The ACMA ordered both stations to take remedial action, including formal training on disclosing commercial relationships for its presenters, producers and sales staff.

The University of Melbourne has sent a “please explain” to the federal government after the institution was handed a cap today on the number of new international enrolments it can accept for the next academic year.

But both the prestigious “sandstone university” and education minister Jason Clare have refused to publicly disclose how many overseas students Melbourne will be able to recruit next year.

Clare said today, while announcing the cap of about 270,000 new international students across the entire third level sector, that the new limits would keep numbers on par with pre-Covid levels.

Education Minister Jason Clare announced the international student cuts today. Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald

But Melbourne University Vice Chancellor Duncan Maskell, who was informed of the details of the cap while Clare was fronting the media in Sydney on this morning, has issued a statement bitterly criticising the move.

“One of the first things we will have to do is seek clarity from the Government about the complex methodology that was used to inform their figures,” Maskell said.

“This methodology was never discussed with us and there has been no consultation process.”

The university said it remained strongly opposed to the cap on international student enrolments.

“It is staggering that we continue to have this debate while there is apparently no serious intent to address really major reform issues.”

Monash University, the other Victorian university expected to be hit hardest hit by the cap on international students, took a different approach to Clare’s announcement, refusing to say anything publicly.

“Monash will consider its response to the announcement over the coming days,” a statement from the university reads.

Wealthy countries like Australia must immediately phase out fossil fuels and block new coal projects and oil and gas expansion to drastically reduce greenhouse emissions, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in Tonga on Tuesday.

The UN issued a global SOS – what Guterres described as a “save our seas” – on Tuesday, releasing new data from NASA and the World Meteorological Organisation that showed sea-level rises had doubled since the 1990s.

Relative sea-level rises in the Pacific were more than double the global average, with melting glaciers and ice sheets from Greenland and the Antarctic causing accelerating sea-level rise.

Fiji residents are among our Pacific Island neighbours under threat from rising seas.Credit: Eddie Jim

At the Pacific Islands Forum, where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will formalise a new climate migration agreement with Tuvalu, Guterres said the very future of island states in the Pacific region was under existential threat.

“Without drastic cuts to emissions, the Pacific islands can expect at least 15 centimetres of additional sea-level rise by mid-century, and more than 30 days per year of coastal flooding in some places,” Guterres told reporters at the forum.

Especially hard hit were low-lying Pacific nations, which faced relative sea-level rises more than double, in some instances, global averages.

Catch up on the full story here.

Staying with the environment minister, who has also been questioned about Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ comments calling the opposition leader dangerous and divisive.

In a speech to mark the anniversary of John Curtin’s 1943 federal election victory, Chalmers labelled Dutton the most divisive leader in Australia’s modern political history at a time when communities needed leadership from their elected representatives to help deal with major economic challenges.

Tanya Plibersek told ABC radio Melbourne that she believed the opposition leader “very divisive”.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer, Alex Ellinghausen

“In politics, there’s this kind of conventional wisdom that you can, you can win people’s support through hope or fear. Peter Dutton will choose fear every single time,” she said.

She said Australians preferred hope, and wanted to know his plans for improving the country.

“Peter Dutton spent most of the last two weeks in parliament when we’ve got cost of living, absolutely top of the line for most Australians, not talking about cost of living, but talking about visas,” Plibersek said.

She said the Australian people wanted to know what Dutton’s plan was to deal with cost-of-living, and plans for “secret budget cuts” and no costed policies.

“Of course he’s having to rely on fear because he’s got no hope to offer.”

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has been questioned on ABC Radio Melbourne about the CFMEU rallies around the country.

She was asked whether the people who were out on the streets to protest against the Albanese government’s decision to put the CFMEU into administration were “misguided”.

“It’s a question for them, I can’t tell you why other people are making the choice they are,” she said this afternoon.

But the minister said it was a good thing for Australians to recognise the value unions brought to Australia, including the eight-hour day and protections from industrial manslaughter and sick leave.

“I am the first to say that they play a critical role in our democracy and in our community. What we can’t allow criminals to penetrate unions through their own ends.”

CFMEU protests across the country have wrapped up for the day and police suggest they were peaceful.

Melbourne had the country’s biggest protest, with Victoria Police estimating up to 50,000 people attended. No arrests were made.

NSW Police estimated there were 8000 people at Sydney’s rally at the peak of the protest. They confirmed officers did not arrest anybody at the event.
In Queensland, up to 4000 people attended a peaceful protest in Brisbane and no issues arose.

The CFMEU rally in Melbourne.Credit: Jason South

Canberra’s protest was also without incident, with up to 400 demonstrators attending.

South Australia Police do not provide crowd estimates but said there were no incidents at today’s CFMEU rally.

Western Australia Police Force also does not estimate crowd numbers but up to 1000 workers attended that state’s rally. Officers did not make any arrests during the event.

Find out what else happened at the national rallies here.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has hit back at Treasurer Jim Chalmers saying he is dangerous and divisive.

Speaking earlier today at a press conference in Brendale, Queensland, Dutton disagreed with being labelled as the most divisive leader of a major political party in Australia’s modern history.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Treasurer Jim Chalmers.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“Well, surely not, because there’s nothing that he [Chalmers] can point to – apart from the fact that he wants to talk about everything but his failure in the economy,” he said.

“If Australians were doing it so well, and the economy was running as great as Jim Chalmers claims it is, why is he dedicating his speech to me?

“It’s one thing to be carrying on like Jim Chalmers is, but his job is to try and address the cost of living crisis … I just don’t think the government has anything positive to talk about.”

As you just heard, shadow treasurer Angus Taylor has hit out at Jim Chalmers and argued he is fighting “everything and everybody” except homegrown inflation.

Taylor told reporters in Sydney that the treasurer was even arguing with his mentor Paul Keating over superannuation taxes, which would mean younger Australians would pay more tax as they got older.

“He’s fighting Peter Dutton today. He’s playing the man and not the board.”

The treasurer needed to focus on beating inflation, and managing the growth in government spending, Taylor added.

He said that was the reason the Coalition opposed more than $92 billion in spending, and why the Albanese government had to focus on fighting inflation.