Australia news LIVE: Australia records housing approval spike; calls for ‘new direction’ on Indigenous affairs

Here’s what’s making news today:

• Australia has recorded the largest number of building approvals in five years – but the improvements will struggle to make up for pent-up demand for housing.
• The Albanese government has been told to do more for Indigenous Australians after the Voice to parliament failed, as Coalition frontbencher Julian Lesser makes a speech today calling for a “new direction for Indigenous affairs”.
• Up to 400 Defence Force personnel will be tracked during weapons training as part of a sophisticated study that follows years of growing complaints about a lack of action on alarming reports of blast injuries among military veterans.

• One of Australia’s leading constitutional law experts says One Nation’s proposal to create a new ban on foreign fighters would do nothing to block Australians with terror links from returning to the country.

• And in breaking news, Australia has just won a gold and silver medal in Glasgow: Rose Davies and Jess Hull finished in the top two spots of the women’s 5000m race. Follow the latest here.

Global bank HSBC is selling its $36 billion Australian home loan portfolio to private equity giant Blackstone, and it will wind down the rest of its local retail banking business over the next 18 months.

The banking group said today said it was quitting retail banking in Australia to focus on banking commercial and corporate clients, as part of a simplification push.

The bank, which has held a commercial banking licence in Australia since 1986, will sell its local mortgages to the US private equity behemoth Blackstone, while local non-bank lender Pepper Money will be the service provider for the mortgage portfolio.

Its move to exit retail banking in Australia follows global bank Citi’s decision to also quit this part of the market in 2021, when it sold its retail business to National Australia Bank.

Glenn A. Baker, an Australian rock music journalist, collector, commentator, author and broadcaster, has died. He was 74.

In 2024, the fierce collector of records, CDs, books, magazines, newspaper clippings and other rock music ephemera put his record collection, estimated at over 80,000 items, up for auction.

An eminent music journalist and commentator for over 200 magazines and the author of at least 16 books, Baker was known for always donning variously coloured fezes – Ottoman-era Turkish headwear.

More details here.

US President Donald Trump says the Board of Peace has reached an agreement for the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza, which will be carried out in phases and eventually lead to Israeli forces withdrawing.

In a post on social media, Trump described it as a “critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people”.

“As disarmament is completed, Israeli forces will withdraw, and the International Stabilisation Force will work with a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe for its residents and its neighbours,” he wrote.

“I want to thank the mediators — Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey — for their important efforts, and especially my outstanding team, whose tireless work made this historic breakthrough possible.“
Hamas and Israel are yet to comment.

Reuters

Health Minister Mark Butler has defended the government’s move to scrap the premium private health insurance rebate for over-65s, saying every dollar saved would go into aged care services.

“We’ve put an eye-watering amount of extra money into aged care over the last few years to get it out of the position that the royal commission described it, out of neglect. And to fund the extra demand that’s coming from the ageing and the Baby Boomer generation … that sometimes involves difficult decisions in a budget,” Butler told Seven’s Sunrise.

The minister took a swipe at the states that had rebelled against the policy, fearing the pressure it could add to their health systems.

“I’m a little surprised, frankly, that the state governments have swallowed the rather self-serving modelling that the insurance industry itself is putting out there,” he said.

Labor was warned that scrapping the over-65s private health rebate meant some pensioners would have to cut back on spending or go without cover, opposition health and aged care spokeswoman Anne Ruston has said.

The senator said documents released under freedom of information laws had revealed the Department of Health used fictional case studies to demonstrate the effects of Labor’s budget change on older Australians, with some reining in already strained budgets and others dropping their private health insurance.

Ruston also pointed to polling commissioned by Private Healthcare Australia showed more than a third of over-65s with private health said they were more likely to drop their cover without the premium rebate. Labor has estimated 44,000 people will give up their private health insurance and go back into the public system because of the budget changes.

“We know older Australians on fixed retirement incomes are the least able to respond to a price shock like this,” Ruston said in a statement. “No wonder pensioners are already telling pollsters they’re ready to walk away from their cover. Mark Butler has badly underestimated the damage his own policy will do.”

Ruston said Queensland, Tasmania, and NSW were rebelling against the change and the pressure it could heap on state health services.

“We will do everything we can in the parliament to block these changes and have called for a Senate Inquiry to pursue the truth about who will be most affected by this new tax,” she said.

The federal government is trying to stop a loophole in the NDIS that allows providers to claim for unproven therapies including wellness treatments and animal therapy.

Jenny McAllister, the federal minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, has just been speaking on ABC Radio National.

She has told AM host Sally Sara that people had used the loophole to claim golf lessons.

“This is totally inappropriate. We’re cracking down on this through a number of means: changing the price guide, increasing our analytic capability, and seeking support from the parliament for new powers so we can continue to investigate providers who are doing the wrong thing.

“We made it very clear in 2024 that therapy needs to be delivered by a qualified practitioner, and that wellness supports or alternative therapies are not suitable.”

The loophole has existed since 2019 – but McAllister said when Labor had come into government, they were told the body administering the NDIA had “essentially no compliance mechanisms built into the NDIA by the Liberals”.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has just been speaking on Nine’s Today about her organisation’s new legal fight against encrypted messaging app Telegram.

She says the app, which is run from the United Arab Emirates, has failed in its legal obligations to remove terror content, including that of the Christchurch shooting.

“There are about 1.5 million visits by Australians each month onto Telegram,” she told Today’s Samantha Armytage.

“We want them to clean up their act, first of all. If they’re going to be serving content into our market and gathering revenue, they need to be following our laws.”

The esafety regulator is pushing for penalties in the Federal Court of up to $54.6 million per breach.

“We’ve been engaging with Telegram for over two years, they failed to work with us for the first six months. We took them to court. We won, and they did not pay the infringement notice. So we’re upping the ante.”

Attorney-General, Michelle Rowland, has refused to answer questions about whether Luke Gosling, the federal MP for Solomon who was yesterday charged with assault of the Northern Territory’s administrator, should be stood down.

Rowland, who is in the NT today for a meeting with attorneys-general about reforming working with children checks, has been on ABC News Breakfast this morning and was just asked whether Gosling would retain his position as a special envoy for defence, veterans’ affairs, and Northern Australia.

“I am aware of the charges that have been laid against Luke Gosling,” Rowland said. “However, I know you will appreciate that as attorney general, I’m limited in what I can say, considering this matter is currently before the courts. That will run its course. It is due for hearing before the court on 1st September. So I am applying the same principle that I apply to every other matter that I’m asked about, which is that I cannot comment on specific details or provide commentary around that.”

She was asked twice whether Gosling should remain in government and whether she’d meet him while she was in Darwin today.

She said she hasn’t seen him.

Thousands of migrants have rushed across the border from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in a startling move that was relayed on social media and triggered a political row about migration into Europe.

One security official declared the border checkpoint had “totally collapsed” under pressure from the crowd, as young men spread instructions on social media on how to enter the Spanish territory on the northern coast of Africa. Authorities said at least nine people had died trying to reach Ceuta from Morocco.

Read more here.

Here’s what’s making news today:

• Australia has recorded the largest number of building approvals in five years – but the improvements will struggle to make up for pent-up demand for housing.
• The Albanese government has been told to do more for Indigenous Australians after the Voice to parliament failed, as Coalition frontbencher Julian Lesser makes a speech today calling for a “new direction for Indigenous affairs”.
• Up to 400 Defence Force personnel will be tracked during weapons training as part of a sophisticated study that follows years of growing complaints about a lack of action on alarming reports of blast injuries among military veterans.

• One of Australia’s leading constitutional law experts says One Nation’s proposal to create a new ban on foreign fighters would do nothing to block Australians with terror links from returning to the country.

• And in breaking news, Australia has just won a gold and silver medal in Glasgow: Rose Davies and Jess Hull finished in the top two spots of the women’s 5000m race. Follow the latest here.