As it happened: Major overhaul of defence and veterans’ affairs; Joe Biden pardons son Hunter

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

To conclude, here’s a look back at the day’s major stories:

• Sex offenders will be kicked out of the Australian Defence Force and potential leaders tested for emotional intelligence under a sweeping overhaul to combat the crisis of military personnel taking their own lives at alarming rates.
• Empty shelves across Woolworths supermarkets as set to persist as attempts to break the strike of warehouse workers failed on Tuesday.
• President Joe Biden has pardoned his son, sparing the younger Biden a possible prison sentence for federal felony gun and tax convictions and reversing his past promises not to use the extraordinary powers of the presidency to benefit his family members.
• Following an investigation by this masthead, social media giant Meta has vowed to tackle scam ads targeting Australians on Facebook and Instagram with a new requirement forcing advertisers spruiking investment schemes to be verified.
• A suspected gunman remains on the run after a 29-year-old man and a yet-to-be-identified woman were killed during a fight at a home on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula early on Monday morning.
• The Comancheros’ bikie gang Brisbane vice president is allegedly among 11 men and two juveniles charged over a multimillion-dollar attempted import of cocaine into Australia, the largest in the nation’s history.

Indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe has apologised to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson for calling her a “convicted racist” during a fiery debate in the Senate last week, admitting on Monday it was wrong to make the claim.

“Sorry about that Pauline!” Thorpe said on social media to acknowledge that Hanson had lost a civil court case rather than being found guilty of a criminal conviction over her behaviour.

“My comments about Hanson last week referred to the Federal Court ruling that found she racially vilified a senator, contravened the Racial Discrimination Act and exhibited a strong form of racism,” Thorpe wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“To clarify, I was mistaken that she was ‘convicted’ because it was a civil case.”

Hanson’s lawyers wrote to Thorpe last week after she appeared on the Nine Network on Thursday morning and claimed the One Nation leader was a “convicted racist” but without explaining what that meant.

The court dispute centred on a remark Hanson made to Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi on social media in November 2022 when she told her to “piss off back to Pakistan”. The court ruled in November 2024 that Hanson had racially vilified Faruqi.

United Workers Union national secretary Tim Kennedy said Woolworths shelves could be replenished “very quickly” so long as the supermarket giant addresses staff concerns.

“The reality is, shoppers have already decided they’re going to shop at other supermarkets to get what they need. There’s no shortages anywhere else,” Kennedy said.

United Workers Union national secretary Tim Kennedy.Credit: Eamon Gallagher

“Woolworths can fix this by simply sitting down and listening to what the workers legitimate concerns are and meeting them. It’s well within their remit to meet them on this. These are not radical proposals being sought. If they did that, then all warehouses open again, people are back to work, and shelves are full.”

Nearly two weeks have passed since 1500 Woolworths warehouse workers walked off the job at four distribution centres in Victoria and NSW, demanding improved terms to their workplace agreement.

Central to the dispute is the company’s new performance management system, the “Coaching and Productivity Framework”, which workers say places unreasonable pressure on them to meet productivity targets while compromising their safety.

Kennedy said negotiations were currently underway between the union and the supermarket giant.

“It’s our intention and our aim to reach an agreement as quickly as possible and have workers be able to go back to work on fair and just terms,” he said.

“Our workers don’t want to be out on strike and not being paid. They’re there to try and get an agreement.“

Social media giant Meta has vowed to tackle scam ads targeting Australians on Facebook and Instagram with a new requirement forcing advertisers spruiking investment schemes to prove they have a financial license.

Meta has been facing mounting pressure to improve its advertiser verification after an investigation by this masthead found that the tech titan was accepting money to publish ads promoting notorious scams.

Most of the advertisers behind these ads were clearly not legitimate investment companies. Most were pages with only a handful of likes. Some of the ads featured manipulated videos of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Australia’s Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones has since asked his department and office to probe whether Meta was breaching existing laws, including its criminal and civil obligations.

“It’s not good enough that they don’t have a system which enables blatantly criminal material to be removed,” Jones said in an interview last month.

Stephen Jones has asked Meta to lift their game when it comes to scam advertisements.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

On Tuesday, Meta announced several new requirements for advertisers promoting financial products or services to Australians. This will include those selling insurance products, mortgages, loans, investment products and opportunities and credit cards to Australians

Advertisers will be required to verify their beneficiary and payer information, including their Australian Financial Services Licence number, which is required for those who provide a financial service business in Australia.

“Meta recognises the devastating impact that finance and investment scams can have on Australian consumers,” said Will Easton, the managing director of Meta Australia and New Zealand

“The introduction of financial advertiser verification is an important additional step towards protecting people in Australia from these sophisticated scammers, who try to impersonate legitimate financial institutions and advertisers.”

The NSW’s Environmental Protection Authority has today confirmed earlier reports from this masthead that the grimy black spheres that washed up on several Sydney beaches in October were lumps of congealed oil and debris, which possibly originated from a ship.

In a statement issued on Tuesday afternoon, the EPA said the balls contained mainly fatty acids, a small portion of petroleum hydrocarbons (commonly found in fuels), and other materials, including human hair, various fibres and bacteria commonly associated with wastewater.

Black balls washed ashore at Gordons Bay in Sydney.Credit: Janie Barrett / SMH

Further testing found that the petroleum hydrocarbons in the balls, which washed ashore at Coogee and other eastern suburbs beaches, were similar to intermediate or heavy fuel oils, often used in shipping.

However, the exact source of the waste still remains a mystery, despite what the EPA described as a “significant” investigation by a dedicated team, involving multiple lines of inquiry, several NSW government agencies and scientists in two laboratories

“Transport for NSW Maritime closely examined weather patterns and ocean currents in the days before the event to determine whether the balls could have resulted from a marine fuel spill but did not find anything conclusive,” the EPA statement said.

The clean-up operation on Coogee Beach in mid October.Credit: Janie Barrett

“Sydney Water also confirmed soon after the balls were reported that there were no issues with the Bondi or Malabar water resource recovery facilities.”

The EPA said it was still awaiting results of tests on similar balls, which were collected and provided to the EPA by a Kiama community member on the weekend of November 16. Kiama is a coastal town, more than an hour south of Sydney.

“Initial results indicate these balls contain the same materials as those washed up on Sydney beaches, but further analysis is needed,” the EPA said.

Today, hundreds of readers have shared their stories of feeling dismissed or ignored when seeking healthcare as part of a special investigative series by this masthead into medical misogyny.

Medical misogyny is rooted in a long history of failures to study and understand female bodies. Women report that their pain has been dismissed or misdiagnosed, while doctors say the Medicare system gives them insufficient time and funding to manage complex women’s healthcare issues.

You can read the launch story here, which features the experience of primary school teacher Nikki Purtill.

Purtill visited the same GP clinic more than 10 times over 11 months and her symptoms caused by a life-threatening brain cyst were brushed off as “COVID stress”.

Teacher Nikki Purtill was lucky to survive a missed diagnosis of a cyst on her brain.Credit: Simon Schluter

The crowdsourcing project is a little different from how we usually do things. Instead of seeking feedback from readers once a series is complete, the stories to come will be shaped by the submissions received by readers.

If you’d like to contribute, you can share your story with our team of investigative and health reporters below.

In the early hours of Monday morning, Woolworths loaded up a bus full of warehouse workers in Melbourne’s south-east, ready to break an almost-fortnight-long strike.

The supermarket giant expected most of its usual workers to return to a distribution centre at Dandenong South, after more than 1500 staff from four sites went on an indefinite strike on November 21.

Woolworths said the majority of workers at the centre wanted to come back and be paid “in the lead-up to Christmas”. The first shift there was due to start at 6am today.

Woolworths workers man a picket line outside a distribution centre in Dandenong on Monday. Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

Another three sites – two more in Victoria and one in NSW – remained shuttered.

But as of Monday afternoon, the bus was yet to arrive, and protesters – primarily from the United Workers Union and Victorian Socialists – held the line outside, blocking driveways to the centre.

“The thing that’s quite saddening to me is the division,” one worker on the picket line, who asked not to be named out of fear for her job, told The Age.

“I went to watch the bus get loaded this morning, and it breaks your heart. To me, that’s not a ‘non-unionised’ person. That’s my friend with their head down, embarrassed, because they know where they want to be and they know what we’re fighting for.”

You can read the rest of Cassandra Morgan’s updated story here.

Good afternoon. My name is Aisha Dow, and I’ll be joining you this afternoon as we continue the national news blog.

Here’s what’s been making news today.

• US President Joe Biden has pardoned his son, Hunter, despite previous pledges not to. The younger Biden was facing a possible prison sentence for federal felony gun and tax convictions. The backflip comes less than two months before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House.
• The Albanese government has released its response to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veterans Suicide’s final report, accepting all but one of the 122 recommendations. The royal commission found sexual misconduct remained a systemic issue for the Australian Defence Force. The government has agreed to a future standalone inquiry into the issue.
• The Australian Federal Police have charged 11 men and two juveniles with conspiring to import 2.34 tonnes of cocaine into the country by sea. The “billion-dollar haul” is the largest attempted importation of cocaine in Australia’s history.
• Police in Melbourne are still searching for a suspected gunman after a man and woman were shot dead in Rye, a popular summer holiday destination, in the early hours of Monday morning.

Meanwhile, the Australian Bureau of Statistics data on building approvals showed total dwellings approved rose 4.2 per cent to 15,498 in October and 6.1 per cent over the year.

While private sector house approvals dropped 5.2 per cent accounting for seasonal factors, they were still higher in trend terms and higher over the year.

NSW showed the strongest growth in dwelling approvals.Credit: Louie Douvis

Other dwellings including apartments picked up 24.8 per cent, signalling a recovery for the apartment market.

NSW powered ahead with 3939 total dwelling units approved, a 34.8 per cent increase from September.

Shoppers loosened their purse strings in October, spending more on television sets and audiovisual equipment and boosting overall retail sales, ahead of Black Friday sales this month.

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today showed retail sales picked up 0.6 per cent in October and 3.4 per cent over the year – the fastest annual pace since May last year.

ABS head of business statistics, Robert Ewing, said some retailers enticed buyers to spend early with discounting, particularly on discretionary items.

Australians spent more on televisions and other electronics as they went on sale.Credit: Domenico Pugliese

Household goods retailing rose 1.4 per cent in October as customers lifted their spending on electronics by 2.7 per cent and hardware, building and garden supplies by 0.6 per cent.

“The rise in discretionary spending was driven by online discounting events while people also spent more on electrical goods, particularly televisions and other audiovisual equipment,” Ewing said.

All states saw spending step up over the month, with South Australia (up 1.3 per cent) and Tasmania (up 1.1 per cent) leading the way.

Food retailers also bounced back, driven by liquor sales.

However, spending on clothing, footwear and personal accessories slipped 0.6 per cent and spending at department stores dropped 0.3 per cent.