Australia news LIVE: China missile test ‘destabilising’, says Wong, Marles; bird flu cases grow as poultry farmers advised to house birds indoors

Hello and welcome to our national news live coverage for Tuesday, July 7. Here’s what’s making headlines today.

Geopolitics: The launch of a nuclear-capable long-range missile from a Chinese submarine in the South Pacific with just hours of notice has angered Australia and New Zealand, who labelled the test destabilising and concerning. It came just hours after Australia and Fiji struck a new defence alliance.

Pacific deal: Australia and Fiji’s new $1 billion defence alliance could be expanded to other nations in a major victory for the Albanese government as it seeks to limit China’s influence in Pacific security affairs.

Housing: Decades of property prices rising far faster than incomes has left young people facing a bleak future and a fall in living standards, the head of the Productivity Commission has warned.

Bird flu: Free-range poultry farmers may need to keep their birds indoors due to the risk of the deadly H5N1 bird flu, as another seabird became Australia’s seventh case of the highly transmissible virus.

World Cup: Donald Trump admitted to calling FIFA president Gianni Infantino to ask for a review of a US player’s red card.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has landed in the Solomon Islands, where he will join in Independence Day celebrations and meet with the nation’s newly elected prime minister, Matthew Wale, to progress talks on a new treaty.

Wale called for a Pacific-wide alliance when he visited Canberra last month.

He said he sought a “reset” in the relationship with Australia after a difficult period dominated by the Solomons’ deepening ties with China, including the secretive security deal struck in 2022.

“We acknowledge that there’s been problems over the last few years,” Wale told reporters in Canberra.

Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles has outlined the government’s broader concerns about China’s military buildup after the test launch of a nuclear-capable missile into the Pacific.

Marles, the defence minister, finished up a round of morning television appearances on Sunrise by emphasising that the launch of the missile from a submarine signalled China’s nuclear range had expanded, and that the nation had not justified its rapid military expansion.

When we look at what China has done over a long period, we are seeing them engaging in a very significant military buildup, but it’s doing so without providing strategic reassurance, which is to say it’s not really explaining to the world why it is engaging in this military buildup.

That’s very different to the way in which we go about things. When we increase our defence spending or get a new capability, we spend a lot of time talking to countries around the world about why we’re doing it and what our intent is. We don’t have that from China, and that is what’s fundamentally destabilising, and that’s our concern.

The test-firing by China of a missile from a nuclear-powered submarine into the Pacific on Monday sends a message to NATO, the alliance’s Secretary General Mark Rutte said.

“This, again, is evidence that we cannot be naive,” Rutte told reporters when asked about the Chinese action on the eve of a NATO leaders’ summit in Ankara. “And we are not.”

Rutte also referred to China’s support for Russia as a “key enabler” in its war against Ukraine.

The launch of the nuclear-capable long-range missile – fitted with a dummy warhead – in the South Pacific with just hours of notice angered Australia, New Zealand and Japan, which labelled the test destabilising and concerning.

It came just hours after Australia and Fiji struck a new defence alliance committing them to come to each other’s aid if they come under attack.

Reuters

Minister for Pacific Island Affairs Pat Conroy said Australia had been tracking a Chinese naval task force involved in yesterday’s launch of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile “for quite some time”, suggesting the test was not a direct response to the treaty signed with Fiji yesterday.

“This has been planned for longer than that,” Conroy, who also holds the defence industry portfolio, told the ABC’s Radio National.

“I think it’s more likely to be coincident rather than linked, but obviously that’s ultimately a question for the Chinese government.”

Conroy rejected China’s claim that the test complied with international law and practice.

“It’s not consistent with The Hague convention on ballistic missile testing, which would require more notice and greater information provided to countries. So, we would continue to call on China to abide by The Hague convention, [which] provides instructions or guidance on how to do these sorts of tests,” he said.

The nuclear-capable missile that China fired from a submarine in the Pacific yesterday crossed over the Philippines and landed near the island nation of Nauru, according to the Secretary-General of Taiwan’s National Security Council, Joseph Wu.

He posted a map on X in the early hours of Tuesday morning showing what he says was the trajectory of the ICBM.

Chinese media outlet Global Times has reported defence experts speculating that it was a test of the JuLang-3 submarine-launched missile, which was debuted at last year’s military parade.

Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles declined to confirm the location of the missile in an interview on the ABC, other than to say “it wasn’t particularly close to Australia”.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said China’s testing of a ballistic missile in the Pacific yesterday was destabilising for the region.

“I’ll leave it to China to speak to its intention, I’ll simply indicate that Australia’s view is this test is destabilising for the region and raises the risk of miscalculation,” Wong told the ABC’s Radio National.

“We do not believe this test is consistent with the view that Pacific leaders have very clearly expressed – that this, the Pacific, should be an ocean of peace.”

Asked whether Australia had aspirations to bring more Pacific nations into the Ocean of Peace agreement signed with Fiji yesterday, Wong said important discussions between leaders were under way about how best to ensure regional security.

“The fact is, we all know we live in a more contested world. We all know we live in a world where there’s greater competition. We all know we live in a world where there is greater risk of miscalculation,” she said.

“You’ve seen that played out in the various agreements Australia has entered into – the alliance with Papua New Guinea and the alliance with Fiji [yesterday], but also the agreements we have with Tuvalu and Nauru, and the Nakamal agreement [with Vanuatu], which was signed recently.”

Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles said the launch of a nuclear-capable missile from a submarine signals China may be “extending” its nuclear weapons range.

“This is a long-range missile test, which China itself said would be nuclear capable, which has been launched from a submarine, which also implies something in terms of extending China’s range to deploy nuclear weapons,” Marles said on Today.

“All of that is very concerning and deeply destabilising, and we’ve expressed those concerns to China. I mean, what we are about is trying to establish a peaceful Pacific, and what this is about is undermining that.

“We are building defence capability, and at the same time, we are expanding our defence relationships with our friends and partners, and all of that are really important steps in terms of meeting the strategic moment that we face.”

Marles said the defence pact signed yesterday with Fiji was the fourth such alliance signed in Australia’s history.

The controversy surrounding Prime Minister Anthony Albanese agreeing he would “date, shag and marry” pop icon Kylie Minogue continues this morning, with more condemnation from politicians across the spectrum.

“We really do, I think, have the right to expect more from our leaders,” Independent MP Monique Ryan said on Today this morning.

“This sort of embarrassing, really cringey sort of engagement with social media commentators doesn’t reflect well on the prime minister. It doesn’t reflect well on our administration, and [I] would really like to see better from leaders on both sides in the future.”

Liberal Senator James Peterson said the comments were disrespectful to all Australian women, and criticised Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek for defending Albanese yesterday. Albanese apologised unequivocally for the comments yesterday.

Shadow defence minister James Paterson said China’s missile test in the Pacific shortly after Australia signed a defence pact with Fiji may have been a coincidence given military exercises take weeks to plan, but the “incredibly minimal” warning of two hours received by neighbours was concerning.

“China is engaging in behaviour which it knows is threatening, which it knows is coercive. One of the reasons why militaries conduct exercises like these is for the demonstration effect,” he said on Today.

“They want others to know they’ve got the capability to do so, and their decision to do so in the Pacific is particularly unwelcome, because the Pacific Island leaders have made very clear they want their region of the world to be a conflict-free zone, and they also want it to be a nuclear-free zone.

“Now, while this particular missile is obviously not equipped with a nuclear warhead, it is capable of being equipped with a nuclear warhead, and that’s why the PRC should seriously reconsider actions like those.”

He said the government had responded appropriately by seeking an explanation from China as to why they undertook the provocative exercise.

Young Australians’ hopes of well-paying jobs and starting a family are being frustrated by a dysfunctional housing market, the head of the Productivity Commission has warned, while arguing that the nation’s long-standing “intergenerational bargain” was fraying.

Danielle Wood, who is due to present evidence to a parliamentary inquiry into the state of the property market this week, said that decades of property prices rising far faster than incomes had left young people facing a bleak future and an effective fall in living standards.

The government has argued that its hotly contested changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing concessions in the budget are aimed at improving the chances of younger people getting into the property market.

House prices were already falling in Sydney and Melbourne before the changes, but tax and industry experts believe values will slip further over the rest of the year.

Wood said it was clear that the 30-year surge in house prices had disproportionately hit younger Australians, who were increasingly frustrated by an economy that was not working for them.

Read more.