As it happened: Election speculation ramps up; Worsening extreme weather fuelling insurance crisis

That brings us to the end of the national live blog today. It’s been a big day of national, and international news, which ended with a major security breach at Avalon Airport in Victoria.

Here’s a quick run-down of the major stories of the day:

Here’s a quick run-down of the major stories of the day:

• Passengers and a pilot wrestled an armed man to the floor of a plane as he boarded a Jetstar flight at Avalon Airport bound for Sydney. Police are investigating the incident at the airport, about 50km south-west of Melbourne, after officers arrested the young man, who appeared to be dressed as a maintenance worker, just before 3pm on Thursday. The airport went into lockdown after the incident. Vision obtained by Nine News shows officers leading a young man wearing hi-vis to a waiting police van. Read the full story here.
• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has pushed back on calls from the Trump administration for a major boost in defence spending, as the Coalition promised to spend a “much higher proportion” of gross domestic product on defence if it wins the federal election. Elbridge Colby, US President Donald Trump’s choice to be head of policy at the Pentagon, told a congressional committee he expected Australia to spend at least 3 per cent of gross domestic product on defence to combat the rise of China, as this masthead revealed on Wednesday.

• The Bureau of Meteorology is expecting the centre of the Cyclone Alfred to cross the Southern Moreton Bay Islands, near Brisbane, very late on Friday or in the early hours of Saturday. Delivering an update at 3pm (Brisbane time) on Thursday, Bureau of Meteorology Brisbane manager Matthew Collopy said the cyclone was expected to hit the outer edge of the Bay Islands as a category 2, with winds near the centre of about 95km/h, and gusts up to 150km/h. You can continue following live coverage of Cyclone Alfred on our dedicated live blog here which is being run out of our Brisbane newsroom. If you are in the area expected to be impacted by the cyclone, please stay safe.

More details continue to emerge following a major security breach at Avalon Airport after an armed man attempted to board a commercial flight on Thursday afternoon.

Vision obtained by Nine News shows officers leading a young man wearing hi-vis to a waiting police van.

Nine News reporter Mimi Becker told 3AW that the man had entered the plane dressed as a maintenance worker and was carrying a knife and a shotgun.

When passengers realised he was armed, they wrestled him to the ground with the assistance of the pilot.

“It was a very frightening incident for all on board,” Becker said.

Flight JQ610 was due to leave Avalon at 2.55pm but did not depart as scheduled.

Victoria Police confirmed they arrested a man at Avalon this afternoon.

“Police were called to the airport about 2.50pm after reports a man with a firearm attempted to board a commercial flight,” Victoria Police said in a statement.

“The man was detained before getting onto the plane and police called.

Follow our rolling story here. 

In more cyclone news, the Bureau of Meteorology is expecting the centre of the Cyclone Alfred to cross the Southern Moreton Bay Islands, near Brisbane, very late on Friday or in the early hours of Saturday.

You can follow rolling coverage of Cyclone Alfred in our dedicated live blog here. 

Delivering an update at 3pm (Brisbane time) on Thursday, Bureau of Meteorology Brisbane manager Matthew Collopy said the cyclone was expected to hit the outer edge of the Bay Islands as a category 2, with winds near the centre of about 95km/h, and gusts up to 150km/h.

Daily rainfall of 300 to 400mm are possible from Friday to Saturday, with total rainfall for the severe weather event up to 800mm, which could cause flash and river flooding.

Waves of 12.3 metres have been recorded off the Gold Coast, and Alfred is expected to produce a significant storm surge on its southern side, with sea levels 0.5 to one metre above the normal highest tide.

Collopy was asked how certain he was Alfred would cross the coast as a category 1 or 2.

He said Alfred was expected to be a category 2, but when it arrived at the outer islands of Moreton Bay it would start to decay.

“The strength as it crosses the island is expected to be somewhere between that category 1 and category 2,” Collopy said.

“It is too early to say exactly what side of that threshold it will fall, and it will likely weaken further as it crosses the bay through that more complicated environment.”

During the fraught wait for Cyclone Alfred to make landfall, millions of Australians are relying on the Bureau of Meteorology to update them on the storm’s expected trajectory.

But as our journalists Nick O’Malley and Bianca Hall report, increasingly, people are looking elsewhere for information too, including a range of online independent and even amateur forecasters.

“We like to see ourselves as a weather family,” says Thomas Hinterdorfer, chief forecaster for Higgins Storm Chasing, an independent weather service that grew out of the social media accounts and blogs of a small group of storm chasers which now has around 1.3 million followers online.

That’s more, says Hinterdorfer, than the Bureau of Meteorology.

Hinterdorfer, a 30-year-old who admits to being “addicted to extreme weather” for a decade, believes the group’s popularity is born of the interactive nature of their work as much as its forecasts.

“People hate seeing the damage caused by extreme weather,” he says, but they are “drawn into the wow factor of the storms and what they look like. They love the reports. They love seeing how much rain people are getting ... the size of the hail.

“I think with our social media page, people are definitely loving the fact that they can see all the storms. Whenever there’s a storm in Queensland, we’re going to see a photo of it; there’s gonna be someone that sends a photo in.”

But can people trust the predictions of amateur forecasters analysing a threat such as Cyclone Alfred compared with the staff of the BoM? Hinterdorfer reckons they can, boasting that though untrained, Higgins’ three full-time employees have 60 years of experience in forecasting and storm chasing between them.

“We know how to forecast, and we’re good at forecasting,” he says.

Read the full story here. 

In breaking news coming out of Victoria, an armed man attempted to board a commercial flight at Avalon Airport on Thursday afternoon.

The man was stopped and detained by police before he was able to get on the Sydney-bound Jetstar plane.

Police are investigating the incident at the airport, about 50km south-west of Melbourne, after the man was detained at 3pm.

A Jetstar plane at Avalon Airport in 2023.Credit: Eddie Jim

“Police were called to the airport about 2.50pm after reports a man with a firearm attempted to board a commercial flight,” a Victoria Police statement said.

“The man was detained before getting onto the plane and police called.

“Officers attended and took the man into custody. Fortunately, no one was injured, and the investigation into the incident is ongoing.”

Jetstar confirmed an incident had occurred but referred all media inquiries to Victoria Police and Avalon Airport officials.

Read our rolling story here.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has pushed back on calls from the Trump administration for a major boost in defence spending, as the Coalition promised to spend a “much higher proportion” of gross domestic product on defence if it wins the federal election.

Elbridge Colby, US President Donald Trump’s choice to be head of policy at the Pentagon, told a congressional committee he expected Australia to spend at least 3 per cent of gross domestic product on defence to combat the rise of China, as this masthead revealed on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese defended his government’s spending on defence.Credit: Dan Peled

Responding to Colby’s intervention, Albanese told reporters in Canberra that “Australia determines our national interest” and that Labor had already boosted spending on the military.

“My government is allocating significant additional resources for defence,” he said.

“That is being rolled out, including missiles, including a range of assets that improve both our capability, but also importantly, our delivery.”

The government announced last year that it would spend an extra $50 billion on defence over the next decade, with spending as a proportion of GDP projected to rise from 2.02 per cent currently to 2.33 per cent by 2034 – still well below the target set by Colby.

Read the full story here.

Speculation about when the next federal election will be called is rife.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has left the door open on the prospect of calling the election this weekend, as Tropical Cyclone Alfred bears down on Queensland and northern NSW.

Albanese must call an election by May 17, and this weekend was long considered a favoured date to do so by experts.

Earlier, Albanese was asked repeatedly by Sky News whether he would delay calling an election due to the escalating situation with Cyclone Alfred. Albanese batted away the questions.

“I’m focused not on votes, I’m focused on lives, I’m focused on Australians,” he said.

What do you think? Take our poll below.

Flood-weary residents have been told to prepare for the worst and hope for the best as Tropical Cyclone Alfred approaches, with 20,000 people at risk of flooding in the worst-case scenario.

The category two cyclone is expected to lash northern NSW with heavy rain and wind, which is forecast to peak late on Friday and early Saturday.

Looking out at a Byron Bay beach before Cyclone Alfred lands.Credit: Danielle Smith

The State Emergency Service has issued 24 prepare-to-evacuate orders for the Northern Rivers, including towns such as Ballina, previously devastated by record-breaking floods three years ago.

Acting Chief Superintendent Stuart Fisher said the weather events could be worse than the 2022 floods that smashed the region.

“I cannot stress enough this is a significant weather event, not like 2022, where we had a single event,” he said on Thursday.

Rainfall of 700mm is expected to hit the region, with authorities stressing to “pray for the best but prepare for the worst”.

More than 2000 emergency volunteers armed with drones, high clearance vehicles and water pumps have been deployed, but Premier Chris Minns stressed they cannot be everywhere and urged everyone to use common sense.

“(Cyclone) Alfred is behaving like a completely unwanted house guest,” the premier told reporters in Lismore.

“Unfortunately, that means the window for destruction in our community – heavy rains, winds, powerful surf – is longer than we would have otherwise liked.

“Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”

Fourteen evacuation centres have been established in areas such as Lismore, Mullumbimby and Murwillumbah.

SES Commissioner Mike Wassing said some 20,000 people across 10,000 homes could be affected in the “worst case scenario”.

Farid Farid AAP

Let’s take a look at global news. In a potentially sweeping move, President Donald Trump is expected to issue an executive order aimed at abolishing the US Department of Education, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The order may come as soon as Thursday (Washington time), the newspaper said.

“The experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars – and the unaccountable bureaucrats those programs and dollars support – has failed our children, our teachers, and our families,” the draft order reads, the WSJ reported.

In a potentially sweeping move, President Donald Trump is expected to issue an executive order aimed at abolishing the US Department of Education, the Wall Street Journalreported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.Credit: AP

However, the draft had been labelled as “pre-decisional”, which leaves open the possibility it could change.

Public education, long considered the backbone of functioning liberal democracy, has been a consistent target of right-wing rhetoric in the US.

In recent decades, conservatives have increasingly promoted a variety of alternatives to public schools, including charter schools (publicly funded institutions that operate independently of the public system), school vouchers (which allow families to choose the educational institutions their children and tax dollars flow to), and homeschooling.

Nearly 70 per cent of public school teachers are in unions or employees’ associations, according to the non-partisan National Centre for Educational Statistics, which have historically been viewed with suspicion by Republicans.

With Reuters

In health news today, The Age’s Wendy Tuohy has reported on landmark Australian study that is likely to change how bacterial vaginosis is understood and treated globally.

The common infection that can cause miscarriage, premature birth and newborn deaths, and was previously considered a female bacterial problem, has been found to be a sexually transmitted infection also carried by men.

Bacterial vaginosis – or BV as it is commonly known – is experienced by one third of women and is not caused by an imbalance in natural bacteria, but instead transferred between sexual partners, breakthrough Australian research has shown.

Men are “the missing link” in the riddle of why many women are often reinfected by BV, which can cause pain and discomfort, the study by Monash University, Alfred Health and researchers at the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre found.

The paper, just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is likely to change how BV is understood and treated globally.

Earlier attempts to discover why women experience repeated bouts of BV had not included treatment of male partners.

Read the full story here.