Australia news LIVE: Paid parental leave extended; Labor strikes tax deal with Greens; Iran-US disagree on nuclear inspections

An expansion of paid parental leave will provide parents with nearly $30,000 across six months.

Speaking on Nine’s Today, Minister for Social Services Tanya Plibersek said the changes, which will give Australians six months' paid parental leave at an increased rate of just over $1000 a week, were good for families.

“From the first of July, Australians will get the full six months to have home with their tiny, beautiful new baby,” she said.

“That’s good for mums, it’s good for dads, and it’s very good, of course, for little babies.”

The reforms, which also include increased income-threshold eligibility, come into effect on July 1.

Shadow Housing Minister Andrew Bragg has called for a “revolution” to address Australia’s housing shortage.

Speaking on Sky News this morning, Bragg criticised the government’s five per cent deposit scheme for first home buyers, saying increased supply was the only way to fix the shortage.

“House prices are too high for young people, and I think if you’re a younger person looking at a house as a multiple of your salary at 10 or 15 times, it’s ridiculous,” he said.

“We need to see a supply side revolution, where we cut the cost of building, where we are able to get a lot more houses supplied.”

Bragg said the lack of skilled workers arriving in Australia, coupled with productivity issues with the CFMEU and a 2000-page construction code, made building houses “uneconomic”.

Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson has said he supports paid parental leave while accusing the government of “punching down” on small businesses.

Speaking on Sky News this morning, Wilson was questioned about his previous comments stating it wasn’t “his choice” that women had babies, but that it was “genetic”.

Wilson said he supported paid parental leave in general, but didn’t support the government’s proposal at the time.

“Women should have choices about how they live their lives, whether they wish to pursue motherhood, where they pursue working and getting ahead, or, of course, a combination of the two,” he said.

“[The government] is just focused on punching down on small businesses.”

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil has slammed Opposition Leader Angus Taylor after a press conference yesterday in which he repeatedly refused to say whether he supported multiculturalism as a policy.

“If you can’t stand up and defend multiculturalism in our country, you should not be the leader of a mainstream political party in Australia. We are the proudest and most successful multicultural country in the world. I am so sick of watching the Liberals and the Nationals get eaten alive by One Nation, and they are inert, they are cowardly, they are frozen,” O’Neil told ABC Radio National this morning.

“When are they going to stand up and fight against the absolutely outrageous nonsense that One Nation are spreading right around this country, you know. Pauline Hanson says there are no good Muslims in Australia. Why can’t Angus Taylor stand up and call that racism?“

Taylor’s Coalition has faced sustained drops in the polls at the hands of One Nation. In the most recent Resolve Political Monitor, published by this masthead, the Coalition was polling at 20 per cent, behind Labor at 28 per cent and One Nation at 29 per cent.

“I want to see some leadership. I don’t want it just to be left to Labor to defend Australian values against what One Nation is doing to this country. Angus Taylor and the Nationals need to stand up and start punching back,” O’Neil said.

O’Neil said that migration to Australia had remained too high and Labor was moving to lower the rate.

Composer, songwriter, comedian, actor and musician Tim Minchin met politicians at Parliament House in Canberra this week, pushing for theatre industry tax incentives alongside peak body Live Performance Australia.

“Ticket prices are insane, and the way the arts economy works at the moment, Taylor Swift comes to town, charges 300 bucks a ticket, and that’s all people can afford for that quarter or that year,” Minchin said.

“In Australia costs have soared in the last five years, we just don’t have the room to move, and it gets harder and harder.”

The organisation is calling for a 40 per cent offset or rebate on live theatre production costs, which their modelling shows would be revenue-positive for the government. The tax break of 40 per cent would create more than 4000 jobs, it said.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s politics have brought “chaos and division” to Australians, Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs Julian Hill has said.

Hanson previously insinuated she wanted to scrap paid parental leave but walked back that statement, flagging concerns it would place a burden on small businesses. Paid parental leave is taxpayer-funded, and businesses are not obligated to offer additional payments.

“[Hanson] said 10 years ago that women only have babies to get the money,” Hill said on Sky News.

“[Hanson] wants to cut the wages of working Australians. She wants to make it easier to sack people, to cut conditions for working Australians, [and to make] massive cuts to the health system. This is cooker stuff,” he said.

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil has labelled falling house prices and auction clearance rates a “market correction”, as the government finds support in the Senate to pass its changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount.

“I think the housing market’s cyclical in Australia, a very uncontroversial comment. We see periods of very significant house price growth, and then we see the market make a correction, and that’s what we’re seeing at the moment,” O’Neil told ABC Radio National this morning.

“I don’t think that’s controversial at all. We’ve just been through what has been extremely high house price growth in the period from COVID, basically before COVID to today. House prices have gone up, just in that time, by more than 50 per cent, and we are seeing a correction on that,” she said.

O’Neil said the “main” aim of the budget was not to lower prices, but rather to assist first home buyers entering the market. The minister returned to Treasury modelling that said housing price growth would slow by 2 per cent per year.

Auction clearance rates fell to a six-year low last week, at 47 per cent, and house prices are likely to fall by up to $100,000 over the next year.

“We are already seeing more first home buyers in the market, and that is a very, very good thing, and a very important thing for our country,” O’Neil said.

Alibaba, the Chinese technology and e-commerce giant, sued the US government over being placed on a list of businesses from China that the Department of Defense linked to that country’s military.

The complaint was filed in the San Jose, California, federal court after the Pentagon expanded its blacklist of alleged “Chinese military companies” on June 8 to 188 entities, reflecting concern that China’s military could tap that country’s private sector for advancements.

Alibaba was accused of being a “military-civil fusion contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base” through an affiliation with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The Pentagon also said Alibaba is indirectly affiliated with China’s state asset regulator, known as SASAC.

“The determinations have no basis in fact or law,” Alibaba said. “Alibaba is governed by an independent board, none of whom has any military affiliation,” it continued.

Minister for Social Services Tanya Plibersek has said a drop in auction clearance rates is not cause for alarm, calling for Australians to “take a deep breath”.

Questioned on ABC Breakfast about some forecasts showing house prices could decrease by 10 per cent, Plibersek said any decreases would be temporary.

“Our treasury estimates are that house prices will continue to grow, they’ll grow more slowly. That gives people the chance of home ownership,” she said.

Plibersek said the five per cent deposit policy had helped 260,000 first home buyers purchase a home.

Opposition Senate Leader Michaelia Cash has accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of making a “dirty deal with the ‘socialist Greens’” .

Speaking on Seven’s Sunrise, Cash criticised Labor for striking a deal with the Greens to expand an inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme reforms in exchange for tax reforms banning self-managed super funds from borrowing to invest in property.

“Labour have done, despite telling you that they would not, a dirty deal with the socialist Greens, and those toxic taxes will go through the parliament tomorrow,” she said.

“Say goodbye to aspiration and hard work in Australia because Albanese is about to kill it.”