Australia news LIVE: Government ramps up its attacks on One Nation; Trump calls off Iran strikes; World Cup kicks off in Mexico City

Hello and welcome to our national news live blog for Friday, June 12. My name is Emily Kaine, and I’ll be helming our coverage for the first part of today. Here’s what is making news.

• This week, Labor has ramped up its economic argument against Pauline Hanson as it prepares to fight an election within the next two years against both One Nation and the Coalition, while Opposition Leader Angus Taylor scrambled to kill off talk of a partnership with Hanson.
• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appeared to imply yesterday that he doubted One Nation had raised more than $1.5 million in political donations on the first day of a fundraising campaign, and implored journalists during a press conference to investigate whether the figure was real.
• US President Donald Trump called off new military strikes on Iran, saying the “final points” of an initial peace deal had been approved and details of a signing ceremony would be announced shortly, just hours after he had threatened to escalate the war. Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that Tehran was likely to approve the agreement, though it has yet to give a formal response.
• Extra police officers have been deployed to Northern Ireland after further violent unrest following a brutal stabbing attack in Belfast on Monday night. The Police Service of Northern Ireland said 16 people had been arrested in relation to the anti-migration protests, in which vehicles were set on fire and properties destroyed.
• And the 2026 FIFA World Cup has kicked off in Mexico City, with host nation Mexico facing South Africa for the first match of the tournament. The Socceroos will play their first match on Sunday against Turkey.

Jenny McAllister, Minister for Disability and the NDIS, has refused to say whether the government will implement recommendations from a Senate inquiry into its proposed NDIS legislation, which will cut about $36 billion from the scheme over the next decade.

When asked three times if the government would be open to changing the legislation if that was what the report recommended, she said the government would be “examining” the recommendations.

“We’ll definitely be examining the recommendations in the report. That’s the purpose of the committee, and examining intended, if there are unintended consequences,” she told ABC AM.

“If there are unintended consequences, of course we’ll look to action those. But the approach we’ve taken is to work through this over a long period of time.”

Health Minister Mark Butler has played down the significance of One Nation’s “Fire the Liar” fundraising campaign, which this morning hit $2.7 million.

“These online fundraising campaigns are pretty common, and this will probably pale in comparison to the money that One Nation receives from a billionaire like Gina Reinhart,” Butler told Sunrise.

He cast the minor party’s surge in popularity as a reshaping of conservative politics in Australia.

“It’s not at the end of the day a big story beyond this week, and maybe next week as well. I get that it’s funding a good personal sledge that One Nation is driving through the prime minister’s own electorate, but at the end of the day, what we’re seeing here is a remaking of the Coalition, with some different faces for the same agenda,” Butler said.

“You can see the awkward dance happening this week about the terms of that, whether they’ll make way for each other in particular seats, whether there will be preference exchanges in particular seats, and all this jockeying about who’s going to be where in the pecking order, that is the real story.”

Deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume has ruled out a preference deal with One Nation despite party leader Angus Taylor and president Tony Abbott keeping the door open to an agreement with the minor party earlier this week.

Asked whether the Coalition would preference One Nation, meaning place them above other parties on how to vote cards at an election, Hume said: “No, that’s not on the cards.”

“An election is now 18 months to two years away. To begin with, we never, ever talk about preferences before an election is actually called because you don’t know what policies they have, you don’t know what candidates they have, you don’t know what One Nation are going to be doing in two years’ time,” Hume told Seven’s Sunrise.

Asked about Abbott’s openness to the proposal, Hume said: “Angus Taylor said yesterday, we are not carving up seats, we are not talking about preferences.”

Yesterday, Taylor ruled out carving up seats with One Nation after frontbencher Tony Pasin suggested that the parties should make a deal so they would not run against each other, effectively giving up on winning swaths of seats.

But asked about preferences on Tuesday, Taylor said he would “work with others to get rid of this rotten Labor government”.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has rejected claims from the government that her party’s fundraising campaign is not legitimate, and said the PM was “lying again” by casting doubt over the supposed donation amount.

“Albo claims the last 24hrs of donations are fake. He’s lying again,” she wrote in a post on X last night.

Hanson posted what she claimed was an “independent audit” of donations to the fundraiser so far.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese implied he was sceptical about claims that One Nation had raised so much money in such a short time frame.

The president of the Australian Labor Party, Wayne Swan, has labelled One Nation’s public fundraiser for political donations “a complete smoke screen” and “a farce”.

A new fundraising campaign, launched by Hanson’s party earlier this week, claims to have raised more than $2 million.

“We’re in favour of disclosure … I can tell you it won’t be $2 million,” Swan told Nine’s Today show.

He said the public fundraiser was a “cover-up” of One Nation’s billionaire donors, such as Gina Rinehart.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers doubled down on the attack he launched on Opposition Leader Angus Taylor yesterday, insisting he did not have a problem with wealthy Australians, but that Taylor did not understand the challenges faced by Australians undergoing financial hardship.

The comments last night on ABC’s 7.30 program came after the treasurer had delivered the most impassioned defence of his controversial budget yet, in which he zeroed in on the opposition leader and claimed he was out of touch.

Chalmers said yesterday that the position of the Coalition and One Nation was absurd as they claimed the government was pulling up the “ladder of aspiration”.

“Not everybody is born already at the top of the ladder like Angus Taylor was, not everybody fails upwards like he has,” he said.

US President Donald Trump called off new military strikes on Iran, saying the “final points” of an initial peace deal had been approved and details of a signing ceremony would be announced shortly.

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that Tehran was likely to approve the agreement, though it has yet to give a formal response.

Just hours after he threatened to escalate the war, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday (US time) that he had made a “great settlement of the war with Iran”.

He said that Vice President JD Vance would attend a US-Iran deal signing, which was expected to take place in Europe this weekend, and that the Strait of Hormuz would open as soon as it was signed.

Hello and welcome to our national news live blog for Friday, June 12. My name is Emily Kaine, and I’ll be helming our coverage for the first part of today. Here’s what is making news.

• This week, Labor has ramped up its economic argument against Pauline Hanson as it prepares to fight an election within the next two years against both One Nation and the Coalition, while Opposition Leader Angus Taylor scrambled to kill off talk of a partnership with Hanson.
• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appeared to imply yesterday that he doubted One Nation had raised more than $1.5 million in political donations on the first day of a fundraising campaign, and implored journalists during a press conference to investigate whether the figure was real.
• US President Donald Trump called off new military strikes on Iran, saying the “final points” of an initial peace deal had been approved and details of a signing ceremony would be announced shortly, just hours after he had threatened to escalate the war. Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that Tehran was likely to approve the agreement, though it has yet to give a formal response.
• Extra police officers have been deployed to Northern Ireland after further violent unrest following a brutal stabbing attack in Belfast on Monday night. The Police Service of Northern Ireland said 16 people had been arrested in relation to the anti-migration protests, in which vehicles were set on fire and properties destroyed.
• And the 2026 FIFA World Cup has kicked off in Mexico City, with host nation Mexico facing South Africa for the first match of the tournament. The Socceroos will play their first match on Sunday against Turkey.