Australia news LIVE: One Nation support stalls in new poll, Australian man suspected of murdering teenager in Thailand

The third block of hearings of the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion begins today as the commission turns focus to the spreading of hate speech and antisemitism through online and traditional media.

Witnesses appearing today include Arsen Ostrovsky, a survivor of the Bondi attack who was subjected to internet conspiracies after the tragedy, and businessman Steven Lowy.

The royal commission will examine the way antisemitism spreads on online communities, the way it impacts Australia’s Jewish community, and the effectiveness of existing policies to prevent hate speech.

A representative from social media giant Meta is expected to appear at some point during this block of hearings to answer questions about Meta’s social platform like Facebook and Instagram.

A man has been charged with murder after a woman was shot and killed on the Gold Coast.

The 23-year-old woman was found with life-threatening injuries by emergency services about 8pm on Sunday at a home in Loder Street in Biggera Waters on the Gold Coast.

She died at the scene.

A man, also 23, was arrested and charged with domestic violence murder and unlawful possession of weapons used to commit an indictable offence.

The man will appear at Southport Magistrates Court today.

Federal deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume has called for worksites across Victoria to be shut down and a royal commission called into corruption on taxpayer-funded projects.

This masthead has revealed that a two-year attempted clean-up of Victoria’s Big Build has failed to stop large sums of money flowing from state- and federally-funded projects to the underworld.

“I do believe that you need to remove the corrupt elements before you can continue to give taxpayer money,” Hume told Radio National.

“Is that a choice that we should either continue on and allow … the corruption to continue, or halt it and deal with it? I personally think halting it and dealing with it is the only way to do it, and the best way to deal with that would be through a royal commission in Victoria.”

Paris: France recorded about 1000 excess deaths last week because of an “exceptional” heat wave that’s continuing to scorch Europe.

Record temperatures pushed daily deaths above 1400 on Thursday and Friday, from 900 to 1000 per day in April and May, Santé Publique France said in a statement on Sunday (French time).

The figures are likely to be revised higher because they’re based on digital certificates, which typically account for about 60 per cent of fatalities nationwide, the public health authority said.

Of the deaths recorded since Wednesday, 85 per cent were people aged 65 or higher, it said.

Record-breaking heat that’s blanketed western Europe for more than a week has strained public health services and disrupted transport, food and energy production. It’s receding in France and sweeping east, with searing temperatures in countries including Germany and Italy.

Bloomberg

Environment Minister Murray Watt said Australians got a “bit of a reality check” after Pauline Hanson’s speech at the National Press Club, where she called for a monocultural society and attacked workers as lazy.

“They got to see that, as much as people are under pressure at the moment, things could get a whole lot worse under One Nation with all of the cuts that they were talking about imposing,” Watt told ABC TV, after two polls showed a stalling in One Nation’s surging support.

“It’s a little bit like a shopper at a supermarket who reaches out for a product because they like what the label looks like, but then they have a look at the ingredients of the product and realise it actually doesn’t look that appetising after all – you know, the cuts to health care, the cuts to wages, making it easier for people to be sacked by their boss.”

He said while the polls would bounce around until the next election, there appeared to be a change in the public mood towards One Nation.

“They are simply not on the side of working people, and all they ever put forward is division and chaos,” he said.

Health Minister Mark Butler has chalked up Labor’s improved polling to a positive response to the budget, rather than backlash against One Nation.

Butler told Nine’s Today that there was always a “frenzy” after the budget, but insisted voters are actually coming back to Labor because of cost-of-living relief coming from the government.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Ted O’Brien brushed off Redbridge polling showing One Nation still ahead of the Coalition, saying politicians would be fools for looking too deeply into poll results.

“You don’t change the fundamentals of your business based on daily fluctuations in the stock exchange,” he said.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor says the public is not just angry with the Coalition he leads, as its support in the polls falls even further.

“The voting public’s angry. They’re angry with everything and everyone at the moment, and understandably so,” Taylor told 2GB this morning.

Support for the Coalition fell to a new low of 17 per cent in the latest polling. Taylor said the poll that matters – the election – is “a long way off”.

“But we do know that we’ve got some real work to do to rebuild trust with the Australian people, and that takes time.”

Taylor did not directly answer when asked if his colleagues will give him time, amid speculation about how long he can remain the leader after support fell below the lowest level reached by his predecessor Sussan Ley.

“Australia needs time to fix this mess that Labor is putting us in, and I am absolutely committed,” Taylor said.

Paul Hogan has responded to Pauline Hanson’s invocation of his image as an Australian ideal, saying the One Nation leader’s demand for a monoculture was racist.

“Bring back Paul Hogan and Norman Gunston ... These are the essential features of Australian monoculture, and there’s nothing remotely exclusionary about them,” Hanson said last week, doubling down on her National Press Club speech the week prior.

The Australian Financial Review reports that Hogan has slammed the comments, saying Hanson was living in the past.

“She’s a pelican, yeah. Outrageous, so racist. It sounds very much like this stupid boofhead over here, Trump,” the actor told the paper from Los Angeles.

“How can it be a monoculture? We’re all migrants, except the Aboriginals, who as far as we know, have been [in Australia] for 60,000 years.”

Auction clearance rates are plummeting in Australia’s major cities, forcing Tanya Plibersek to defend the government’s tax reforms this morning.

Plibersek was asked on Sunrise if first home buyers were the winners, but home owners were the losers. Property research firm Cotality reported a preliminary clearance rate of 47.3 per cent in Sydney, the lowest since 2020. In Melbourne, the clearance rate was 50.2 per cent, the lowest since the city was in lockdown in 2021.

It comes after Domain reported house prices falling in the major cities, including Sydney, where house prices could fall by $122,000 by 2027.

When asked on Sunrise if these downturns were what Labor wanted, Plibersek said things needed to change in Australia.

“If young people feel locked out of home ownership, as they have been, that really has an impact on the cohesiveness of our nation, so we are so pleased that first home buyers are back in the market, and they’re back in a big way,” she said.

Nationals leader Matt Canavan said there were auctions where no buyers showed up on the weekend.

“If we don’t have a healthy profit in property market everybody loses, our economy loses, first home buyers lose, home owners lose, everybody goes down,” he said.

Fresh polling has revealed Pauline Hanson’s popularity has fallen after the One Nation leader’s sprawling Press Club speech in which she declared multiculturalism a “failed policy” and called for a monocultural society.

Hanson’s net favourability dropped 10 points in the past month, according to The Australian Financial Review’s Redbridge poll.

Labor retook the lead in the poll, gaining two points to 30 per cent of the primary vote, while One Nation dropped two points to 29 per cent. The Coalition did not benefit from One Nation’s slide, falling to 18 per cent, and Opposition Leader Angus Taylor’s personal rating fell five points to minus 9.

The Australian’s Newspoll showed similar gains for Labor, from 30 to 33 per cent, while One Nation dipped from 31 to 29 per cent. Again, the Coalition failed to gain any ground, sliding to 17 per cent.