As it happened: PM unveils antisemitism taskforce after Melbourne synagogue firebombing deemed ‘terrorism’; Unions protest outside RBA

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:

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed a new federal police antisemitism taskforce after authorities deemed an arson attack on one of Australia’s busiest synagogues a “likely” terrorist attack.

• Australia will be able to use a new treaty to block China and other countries from striking any security or telecommunications deals with Nauru in exchange for $140 million in financial support from Australian taxpayers to the tiny Pacific island.

• Energy Minister Chris Bowen has rubbished the Coalition’s advisers on nuclear power despite his own department paying $1.2 million to a consulting firm for analysis, as Peter Dutton accused the CSIRO of bias in its findings that nuclear is the most expensive energy source.

• In NSW, the severely decomposed body of a woman has been found covered in plastic in dense bushland near Sydney Airport.

• In Victoria, Premier Jacinta Allan’s inaction on a pledge to consider overhauling electoral laws is likely to trigger a High Court challenge by independent candidates who say the rules create an unconstitutional constraint on political communication.

• In Queensland, it has been revealed underground blasts in the heart of Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast that sparked chaos and shut down part of the tourist hotspot on Sunday afternoon were caused by an electrical fault.

• In Western Australia, officers from the police riot squad rushed to Rottnest Island to control around 400 high school students who were congregating in large groups, leading to the assault and abuse of other holidaymakers and police.

• In business news, ANZ has tapped an international banker to replace its long-serving chief executive Shayne Elliott.

• In world news, ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow, Russian media has reported, after a stunning rebel advance took over the capital of Damascus and ended the Assad family’s 50 years of iron rule.

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The Australian sharemarket closed flat on Monday, after losses driven by the energy giants and ANZ were curtailed by growth in the consumer discretionary and healthcare sectors.

The S&P/ASX 200 rose 2.1 points, up less than 0.1 per cent, to 8423 points at the close. Eight of the 11 industry sectors traded positively.

The Australian dollar saw marginal losses and was valued at 63.82 US cents as of 4.24pm (AEDT) on Monday.

ANZ – which on Monday announced the coming departure of chief executive Shayne Elliott after nine years in the role – saw its shares slide by 3.6 per cent.

Read the full market wrap here.

The family of a Melbourne teenager killed in a high-profile mass methanol poisoning in South-East Asia has thanked Australians for their support as their daughter is laid to rest.

Holly Bowles, 19, was farewelled in a funeral in Beaumaris today. She was among six tourists killed after they are believed to have consumed methanol-laced alcohol during a night out in the Laos party town of Vang Vieng last month. Her best friend Bianca Jones was buried on Friday.

Guests arrive at the funeral service for Holly Bowles.Credit: AAP

“We would like to thank the people of Australia, Canada and the rest of the world for the outpouring of love, support, and compassion during this extremely difficult time,” the Bowles family said in a statement before this afternoon’s funeral.

“Your kindness has been a source of strength and comfort for our family.”

In state news, the severely decomposed body of a woman has been found covered in plastic in dense bushland near Sydney Airport.

Homicide Detective Danny Doherty said NSW Police were now working to identify the woman, discovered by a passerby at 7.30am on Monday, only metres away from a footpath off Foreshore Drive in Botany.

Doherty said the body may have been there for “days, weeks, if not longer” and police were yet to establish how, where or when the woman he described as “someone’s mother, daughter, sister, friend” was killed.

He said police believed the woman had been dumped in an “attempt to dispose and hide the body”, and were looking through missing persons databases.

Keep updated about this story here.

Jumping back to Anthony Albanese’s press conference earlier, the prime minister also said the federal government was monitoring the unfolding turmoil in Syria, but indicated it wasn’t moving immediately to rescue Australian children of slain and defeated Islamic State fighters that remain in the country.

Given the changed security situation after the collapse of Bashar Al-Assad’s authoritarian regime, Albanese was asked if new efforts were underway to repatriate Australians that have been stuck in northern Syrian camps since the fall of ISIS.

In response, the prime minister said:

With regard to Syria and the concerns there, we have received a briefing on Syria. Obviously, these are difficult times and it’s a moving situation there in Syria. So, at this stage, there’s no change to the assessment that has been made there.

The plight of the dozen Australian women and their 22 children confined in the bleak desert environment of the al-Roj detention camp in Kurdish-controlled north-east Syria spurred an application from Save the Children to the High Court in September.

The charity sought a writ of habeas corpus to force the federal government to repatriate the families, but the court refused their special leave application.

Read more about the Australians languishing in a Syrian detention camp here.

Australians are forking out hundreds of dollars more for their health insurance as companies exploit a loophole allowing them to raise costs for some customers.

Private health insurers are only allowed to raise their premiums once a year, and each increase must be approved by the federal health minister. But the Commonwealth Ombudsman said in a statement today that some companies are getting around this through a practice known as “product phoenixing”.

Minister for Health and Aged Care Mark Butler at a press conference today.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The practice involves discontinuing a policy for new customers and launching a nearly identical one at a higher cost.

Millions of Australians have fallen victim to insurers’ secret premium increases, with the average new customer paying $38 more each month in premiums and $184 more in excess fees, according to one analysis.

Health Minister Mark Butler called the practice a “sleight of hand” that makes it harder for customers to move from insurer to insurer, limiting their choices.

“It is clearly against the spirit of the law and it is an under-handed, largely secret, way of health insurers raising their prices,” he told reporters in Canberra today.

“If two members of an existing fund with essentially the same product are paying prices that might be 20 per cent different ... you have to describe that as price gouging.”

AAP

Hundreds of trucks carrying groceries will arrive at Woolworths supermarkets by the end of today as the supermarket giant rushes to restock shelves before Christmas after a warehouse worker strike crippled supply chains.

On Saturday, the United Workers Union declared victory after striking a deal with Woolworths to stop workers from being disciplined for failing to meet targets under a controversial performance management program that monitors them. The 17-day strike and picket line caused severe shortages at the company’s supermarkets.

In an update on Monday afternoon, Woolworths said 1 million “cartons” of goods had been processed in the past 48 hours across four distribution centres.

“By the end of today, 312 truck deliveries will have been made from the four reopened sites to 249 supermarkets across Victoria, ACT and southern NSW,” a spokesperson said.

“The largest site, Melbourne South Regional Distribution Centre, is close to operating at full capacity. We expect that all four sites will be back to full capacity in the next 24 to 48 hours.”

The nation’s union movement has accused the Reserve Bank of failing to do its job by not cutting interest rates while holding a protest outside the institution’s Sydney headquarters.

ACTU secretary Sally McManus used the first day of the RBA board’s final two-day meeting of the year to argue the bank was again wrong about the Australian economy.

ACTU secretary Sally McManus on Monday called for interest rate cuts outside the Reserve Bank.Credit: Louie Douvis

The bank has held the official cash rate steady at 4.35 per cent since November last year even as inflation and wages growth has eased. Last week’s national accounts revealed living standards suffering their biggest fall on record with growth over the past year at just 0.8 per cent.

McManus, alongside rank-and-file members of several unions, said the national accounts should have been a wake-up call for the RBA about the plight facing many Australians. She said the biggest cost-of-living pressure was now the RBA’s previous interest rate increases, which were forcing many consumers to cut their spending.

“It’s the Reserve Bank that needs to do its job and start cutting interest rates,” she said. “We believe the Reserve Bank is out of step and out of touch.”

McManus said the bank had been wrong about a possible wage-price spiral which concerned the RBA through 2022 and 2023. She accused the bank of ignoring the role of price gouging in inflation, while it now wanted to drive up unemployment to bring inflation down.

“It is wrong for the Reserve Bank to want unemployment to go up before they consider cutting interest rates,” she said.

The bank will announce its final decision of the year on Tuesday afternoon before governor Michele Bullock explains the RBA’s thinking about the economy.

Papua New Guinea’s prime minister has confirmed he expects his nation’s entry to the NRL to get the green light on Thursday, as officials prepare to turn a pipeline dream into a bona fide rugby league club.

Speaking at an economic conference in Sydney today, PNG leader James Marape launched his latest sponsorship pitch ahead of a crucial week for the nation’s bid.

PNG Prime Minister James Marape earlier this year.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“On Thursday, hopefully, some of you potential sponsors of our NRL team can join me as the NRL completes its process in making a potential announcement of the team,” Marape told the PNG CORE conference.

The NRL was initially expected to announce expansion clubs in both Perth and PNG by the end of this year, before talks broke down with the West Australian bid.

PNG’s entry will still be set for 2028, allowing a Perth side to come in as an 18th team in 2027 if expansion to the west is brokered.

The announcement of PNG’s entry will mark the culmination of two years of talks between the nations’ hierarchies and the NRL, with the bid propped up by $600 million of Australian government assistance.

AAP

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has just visited the Melbourne synagogue that was firebombed on Friday.

In a short statement to the press at the scene, he said the arson attack on a place of worship was “an abomination”.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton arrives at a Melbourne synagogue and meets with the local Jewish community.Credit: Eddie Jim

“This is obviously, now a terrorist attack, as has been acknowledged eventually by the prime minister,” he said.

“And I want to thank the authorities here in Victoria, as well as the Australian Federal Police and others, who will be working day and night to bring people to account for this atrocious act.”

Peter Dutton reads notes left outside the burnt synagogue.Credit: Eddie Jim

Dutton said antisemitism had become “commonplace” and needed to be repelled.

“We need to make sure, as a society, we stand united with the Jewish community and let them know we do not tolerate any act of antisemitism in our country. And that’s the reason for my presence here today,” he said.