Australia news LIVE: One Nation support grows among women, according to polls; Trump confirms fiery, expletive-laden call with Netanyahu

Hello and welcome to our national news live blog for Thursday, June 4. My name is Emily Kaine, and I’ll be helming our coverage for the first part of the day. Here’s what is making news.

• Pauline Hanson’s One Nation now has more women supporters than men, according to an analysis of a year’s worth of polling by the Resolve Political Monitor, while the number of young people and people living in the inner city who support the party has surged in the last year.
• The first tranche of the government’s budget tax reform legislation is expected to pass the lower house today. We will bring you the latest out of Canberra throughout the day.
• Former prime minister and frequent AUKUS critic Malcolm Turnbull said parliament needs to apply harsher scrutiny to the deal, calling on the government to acknowledge the risk that Australia will get no submarines. But former prime minister Scott Morrison – whose government signed the pact – said that renewed criticism of the submarine deal is the Left playing politics.
• Donald Trump confirmed he had a fiery, expletive-laden phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu this week as the Israeli prime minister prepared to launch a fresh assault on Lebanon, telling him the attacks had to stop.
• Iranian attacks on Kuwait damaged its airport, killing one and injuring dozens, while the US military carried out strikes near the Strait of Hormuz, with diplomacy to halt the war showing little sign of progress.
• And Ukrainian drones have hit an oil terminal in St. Petersburg, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media, a day after Moscow launched a major drone and missile attack on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

Meta, the parent company of major social media platforms Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook, has attacked the government’s pursuit of the News Bargaining Incentive.

The incentive, an extension of the former Coalition government’s News Media Bargaining Code, includes a 2.25 per cent charge on the Australian revenue of Meta, Google and TikTok if they refused to strike voluntary deals worth hundreds of millions to pay Australian news companies for article links.

“Our position is clear: this law is poorly designed, grossly unfair, and will fail to deliver a diverse and sustainable news industry,” Meta wrote, in a blog post first reported by The Australian Financial Review.

“Call it what it is: a discriminatory, retroactive tax targeting a handful of foreign companies while competitors offering comparable services face no equivalent obligation.”

Asked at the announcement of the incentive about repercussions from the US administration, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: “We’re a sovereign nation and my government will make decisions based upon the Australian national interest”.

The US House of Representatives backed a Democratic-led resolution aiming to stop the Iran war until hostilities are authorised by Congress, reflecting growing congressional concern, even among President Donald Trump’s Republicans, over the war.

The House voted 215 to 208, as four Republicans voted with Democrats in favour of the war powers resolution.

It was the latest setback for Trump in Congress despite his party’s slim majorities in both chambers.

The vote is largely symbolic. Any resolution would also have to pass the Senate to become effective, and garner the two-thirds majorities in both chambers to overcome an almost certain Trump veto.

However, it comes after three previous war powers resolutions had failed in the House by increasingly slim margins. And the Senate advanced a separate, but similar resolution last month in a procedural vote, after seven previous attempts had failed.

Reuters

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has said the US should not impose fresh tariffs after Trump threatened Australia and 53 other countries with a 12.5 per cent tariff.

The US president’s threats follow an investigation by US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer that found Australia had “failed to impose and effectively enforce a forced labour import prohibition”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has already vocalised his government’s strong opposition to the tariffs this morning, calling them “unjustified”.

Speaking at a press conference in Canberra just now, Taylor said the Coalition would fight the tariffs.

“They’re wrong, there shouldn’t be tariffs like these imposed on Australia by the United States ... They’re a great friend, and they shouldn’t be doing it,” he told reporters.

“It’s not what we want to see. We’ll fight against these rotten tariffs.”

Senior ministers have continued their defence of the AUKUS pact today, amid increased scrutiny casting doubt over the viability of the agreement after the US went back on its promise to provide a third new Virginia-class submarine to Australia as part of the deal.

One of three Virginia-class submarines the US will provide to Australia will be second hand.

“The government as a whole supports AUKUS, of course,” Environment Minister Murray Watt told Today.

“Individual backbenchers are entitled to have their say, but we still think that this is the best arrangement for Australia’s national security.”

This week, senior ministers have come out in strong support of AUKUS, and insisted Australia will stay in the deal despite pressure from inside and outside the government.

On Tuesday, Labor MP Ed Husic said the government needed to “rethink” its participation in AUKUS, and argued it was no longer the same pact Australia had agreed to back in 2021.

Albanese has brushed off recent polling that placed One Nation’s primary vote higher than the Labor Party’s, saying the government was focused on delivering its agenda.

“The Liberals, the Nationals, and One Nation are openly discussing being a right-wing partnership. Increasingly, we see them mould into one point of view, and I think that Australians, when they consider that, will look towards what chaos that would represent in Australian politics,” Albanese told ABC radio.

Asked whether the traditional two-party system was being rewritten, Albanese said: “For the Labor Party, we will always give voters respect, and we’ll always look towards how we can deliver higher wages, how we can decrease their income taxes, how we can be a party of reform”.

In the most recent Resolve Political Monitor, One Nation received 24 per cent of the primary vote. In polls published by The Australian Financial Review and The Australian newspapers, the party received between 27 and 31 per cent of the vote. The Financial Review poll was the first major one to place One Nation above Labor in its share of the primary vote.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said there is an “ideological disagreement” between the American and Australian governments, saying the free-trade agreement between the two countries must be relied upon as Australia is threatened with new tariffs.

“There is an ideological disagreement where the United States administration has broken with what was [a] decades-long understanding that tariffs are not positive for the country that is imposing them,” Albanese told ABC radio.

“They increase the costs of goods and services in the country that is applying them to its consumers, and free trade is in the interests of the global economy. It’s in the interests of Australia. It’s also in the interests of the United States.”

Albanese said the newest tranche of tariffs do not single Australia out, and that none of the 54 countries threatened with the tariff were given a warning.

“Australia and the United States are important allies. We have important economic security relationships, and it is unfortunate that there have been a rolling series of decisions, some of which have been changed from time to time,” Albanese said.

“All of which do have a common theme, which is that the United States is a supporter of tariffs, argues that it is to its benefit. We actually think, not only is it not in the interests of the United States, importantly it undermines the global trading system.”

The federal government has used “every opportunity” to fight against tariffs applied on Australian exports by the United States as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese calls the extension of a new 12.5 per cent tariff applied to countries for allegedly failing to prevent slavery to Australia “unjustified”.

“They’re inconsistent with our free trade agreement, and also with regard to the specifics that have been put forward by their trade representative. Australia has robust, comprehensive, and world-leading legislation addressing forced labor and modern slavery,” Albanese told ABC radio this morning.

“We continue to use every opportunity that we have to advocate that US tariffs imposed in Australia are unwarranted, and of course, our view is that tariffs are actually a penalty on consumers in the United States,” he said.

An investigation by United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer found that Australia had “failed to impose and effectively enforce a forced labour import prohibition”.

Fifty-four countries including China, Vietnam, Japan, the United Kingdom and New Zealand have been hit by the same 12.5 per cent tariff, with the investigation using similar language for dozens of countries.

Albanese said Australia produces “very good products” that are in demand in the US, and that the country had a trade surplus with Australia that make the tariffs unjustified.

Environment Minister Murray Watt has this morning accused Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie of “making figures up”, after she claimed 2 million new migrants had entered Australia under Labor.

During a debate about the government’s budget on the Today show, McKenzie said: “The quiet thing that your budget says that no one wants to hear is you are still letting in 2 million people over the forwards that actually all need somewhere to live, so until you address that issue, the demand side, those housing prices, everything you are saying will not make a difference.”

Watt hit back. “You are making figures up, Bridget,” he said.

“We have nearly halved overseas migration over the last couple of years.”

Gulf hostilities flared again as Iranian attacks on Kuwait damaged its airport and injured dozens while the US military carried out strikes near the Strait of Hormuz, with diplomacy to halt the war showing little sign of progress.

The attacks are the latest to test a shaky ceasefire, sending oil prices up nearly 2 per cent, as the strait remains largely closed more than three months after the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran.

Flights at Kuwait International Airport were suspended after an Iranian drone and missile attack damaged airport facilities and diplomatic missions, killing one person and injuring more than 60 others, Kuwaiti authorities and state media said.

Kuwait Airways and Jazeera Airways later resumed flights after taking safety measures, the civil aviation authority said.

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said they did not fire at Kuwait’s airport and blamed the destruction on US interceptor missiles that failed to hit their targets, according to Iranian state media.

The US military said that was not accurate, and that Iranian drones targeted the airport deliberately.

Donald Trump confirmed he had a fiery, expletive-laden phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu this week as the Israeli prime minister prepared to launch a fresh assault on Lebanon, telling him the attacks had to stop.

The US president reportedly told Netanyahu “you’re f---ing crazy” and “everybody hates Israel because of this”, according to an account of the call given to American news site Axios by a US official.

Trump appeared on The New York Post’s podcast Pod Force One with American-Australian journalist Miranda Devine, who asked whether he spoke to Netanyahu in those terms.

“I did,” he said. “I wouldn’t say [I was] angry. I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon. At some point, I said, ‘Bibi, we’ve got to stop this. We’ve got to stop it’.”