Australia news LIVE: Chalmers eyes 50 per cent CGT for start-ups after backlash; Trump says Iran shot down US helicopter as he vows to retaliate

Hello and welcome to our national news live blog for Wednesday, June 10. My name is Emily Kaine, and I’ll be helming your coverage for the first part of the day. Here’s what is making news today.

• Treasurer Jim Chalmers is eyeing a proposal for start-ups to keep using the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount as he moves to address concerns Labor’s budget would hurt high-growth firms and productivity.
• Disability advocates have told an inquiry that the government’s proposed changes to the NDIS would rob people of dignity as they slammed the huge overhaul of funding to the scheme that was slated in the May budget.
• Opposition Leader Angus Taylor suggested yesterday the Coalition would be open to working with One Nation to oust Labor from government. During a press conference yesterday, he did not reject the idea of working with Pauline Hanson, but said, “… we’ll work with others to get rid of this rotten Labor government”.
• US President Donald Trump blamed Iran for shooting down an American Army helicopter close to the Strait of Hormuz and said the US “must respond” to the attack. The US said a drone boat rescued the two aviators who were aboard the helicopter when it went down near the critical shipping lane that Iran has effectively closed during its war with the US and Israel.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that Australia had to take US President Donald Trump at his word that he wanted an end to the conflict in Iran.

“President Trump has said – and you’ve got to take it at face value, but also because of the consequences for the US economy as well – that he does want an end to the conflict,” Albanese told ABC Melbourne.

“President Trump is clearly responding to the downing of the Apache helicopter that occurred by Iranian fire. We want to see peace break out in the region in a permanent way because this is obviously having a human impact on the region, but it’s having an impact on the entire globe.”

Albanese said, when asked whether Trump’s plan in Iran was clear to him, that the president had stated two clear objectives.

“One, stop Iran having access to a nuclear weapon, that’s obviously something that we support, given the nature of that regime. The second is an end to the conflict, and I think that is in the interests of people in the United States, but throughout the world,” he said.

“What we’ve got to do is make sure that actually happens. We’ve had a number of declarations, as you know. I wake up in the morning and get a readout that says Strait of Hormuz is opened, then a couple of hours later it’s closed, then it’s open, then it’s closed.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he was “very worried” about the human and economic impact of the latest outbreak of violence in the Middle East.

The US military said it had started launching strikes against Iran this morning in response to the downing of an American Army helicopter.

“This is a volatile global environment. I’ve received personally two security updates this morning. We’re not at 9 o’clock yet, and so this is a changing situation,” he told News Breakfast.

Asked whether he had received advice that a ceasefire was imminent, as President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed, Albanese said:

“On many occasions that has been declared, but we have a caveat, of course, which is that it’s uncertain, but that’s creating a great deal of difficulty as well. I mean, economic markets respond to these news statements that are made in the United States or other places. What we certainly want to see is a preliminary ceasefire.”

Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs Julian Hill has urged Australians to carefully consider who they are giving their money to, as One Nation launches its own drive for political donations following Labor’s calls for donations to fight the populist party’s influence.

We reported yesterday that the Labor Party were running advertisements on social media asking supporters to chip in from $10 to $27 “to prevent One Nation from turning polling momentum into seats”.

Speaking to Sky News this morning, Hill said it was routine for political parties to ask for donations, but encouraged people to properly “reflect … before deciding whether they hand over cash”.

“Anyone thinking of donating to One Nation, I would encourage them not to be scammed and to actually have a look at the website. The core business of political parties is to put forward policies that are realistic and costed, that might make people’s lives better.

“And look, Senator Hanson has now a 30-year track record of voting against wage rises, against the interests of working people, and there’s seriously not a single costed policy anywhere on the website,” he said.

An Australian mum whose 15-year-old daughter took her own life after being bullied online said the teen social media ban had succeeded in sparking a national conversation.

Independent children’s lawyer Emma Mason said six months on from the introduction of the ban, it was not perfect but had made society more safe.

“What we wanted is ultimately to get children offline from particular platforms, and so certainly that’s a work in progress, as you would expect,” Mason told Radio National.

“We’re on the track, but at the same time, the question is really not about whether or not every child under 16 is offline. The question is, did these reforms make our environment, our country safer for children, and is there now a really clear national conversation about children online, rather than parents just like me going, this is too hard, I can’t beat this algorithm? So there is success in this.”

Mason said there was still more to do, including boosting digital literacy education in schools and giving more support to the eSafety commissioner to hold tech giants to account.

“I understand there are 10 current investigations on the eSafety commissioner about systemic breaches by the big tech companies, but unfortunately, it’s just not a quick process … it has to go through due process.”

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has issued a warning to foreign forces in proximity to Iranian territory, and said they are “at constant risk on account of their own human errors, plain accidents, or potentially being caught in crossfire”.

“To reduce risk, [the] best solution is for them to leave,” he wrote in a post on X.

The fresh threat comes after US President Donald Trump blamed Iran for shooting down an American Army helicopter close to the Strait of Hormuz and said the US “must respond” to the attack.

The US military said it had started launching “self-defence” strikes against Iran in response.

Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie did not rule out the possibility of working with One Nation to oust the Labor government as Pauline Hanson’s party continues to surge in the polls.

Asked on Seven’s Sunrise whether she was open to a coalition with the Liberal Party, the National Party and One Nation, McKenzie said:

“I’m open to getting rid of the Australian Labor Party and getting Anthony Albanese out of the Lodge in Canberra.”

Yesterday, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor gave a similar response to the same question during a press conference.

A Sudanese asylum seeker has been charged with attempted murder after a brutal stabbing attack left a man fighting for his life in a Belfast hospital from wounds likened to an attempted beheading, sparking violent protests against migration.

A graphic online video showed an assailant kneeling over the victim and yelling while brandishing a knife above his head, moments before onlookers rushed to help by wielding makeshift weapons against the attacker.

Protesters took to the streets of Belfast and other cities on the night after the attack, with masked activists setting fire to a bus and others halting traffic in the Northern Ireland capital.

Hundreds of people gathered at the protests in Belfast, some lighting flares, after anti-immigration groups called for rallies across the United Kingdom.

Outrage spread online throughout Tuesday after the graphic video showed the attack on the Belfast street on Monday night, as leading conservative political leaders called on the police to reveal the ethnicity of the suspect and the details of the injuries to the victim, described as a man in his 40s.

Read the full story from our Europe correspondent David Crowe.

Recent US sanctions targeting Cuba’s leadership and the indictment of former President Raúl Castro are a “pretext” for the Trump administration to persuade the American people to support a military intervention, Cuba’s top diplomat to the US said.

Ambassador Lianys Torres Rivera complained bitterly that the US was targeting Cuban civilians with its decades-old embargo and new blockade of energy shipments to the island.

“The sanctions against our leaders, we see as a pretext to make the American people think we are a threat,” she said at Cuba’s embassy in Washington. “We are not a threat to the US, and we don’t want confrontation.”

Torres Rivera described the situation as “a war without bombs”.

Innovative businesses could keep using the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount under a proposal being reviewed by Treasurer Jim Chalmers as he moves to address concerns that Labor’s budget would hurt high-growth firms and productivity.

As Labor confronts parliamentary deadlock over its tax overhaul, government MPs in inner-city marginal seats say younger voters are giving the government credit for trying to make housing affordable as they see investors desert auctions and property prices come down.

Behind the scenes, Chalmers is locked in talks with business groups and investors who have pleaded with Labor to reverse course on the decision to overhaul the capital gains discount for all assets. They want to confine a new inflation-adjusted discount to residential property, not shares and private business.

While Labor had anticipated resistance to the budget changes from property investors, they were surprised by the outcry about the CGT tax changes on social media, fanned by young businesspeople.

Several sources familiar with the government’s thinking said it might retain the Howard-era 50 per cent discount to firms that fit the criteria of a start-up. These businesses would be taxed at higher rates under the new inflation-adjusted model, so the government may allow them to use the 50 per cent model or formulate a new discount, closer to the 50 per cent version.

Hello and welcome to our national news live blog for Wednesday, June 10. My name is Emily Kaine, and I’ll be helming your coverage for the first part of the day. Here’s what is making news today.

• Treasurer Jim Chalmers is eyeing a proposal for start-ups to keep using the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount as he moves to address concerns Labor’s budget would hurt high-growth firms and productivity.
• Disability advocates have told an inquiry that the government’s proposed changes to the NDIS would rob people of dignity as they slammed the huge overhaul of funding to the scheme that was slated in the May budget.
• Opposition Leader Angus Taylor suggested yesterday the Coalition would be open to working with One Nation to oust Labor from government. During a press conference yesterday, he did not reject the idea of working with Pauline Hanson, but said, “… we’ll work with others to get rid of this rotten Labor government”.
• US President Donald Trump blamed Iran for shooting down an American Army helicopter close to the Strait of Hormuz and said the US “must respond” to the attack. The US said a drone boat rescued the two aviators who were aboard the helicopter when it went down near the critical shipping lane that Iran has effectively closed during its war with the US and Israel.