Australia news LIVE: PM pays tribute to Keir Starmer after resignation; NSW, Queensland state budgets to be handed down today

David Oldfield says One Nation needs to remain a “standalone” party as support surges in opinion polls, but has cast doubt on whether the support will translate into government.

“They can certainly come to arrangements when it comes to who’s going to be in power or who might be assisting them, but the party itself, to stay true to the people who support it, needs to be operating as their own entity,” Oldfield told 2GB this morning.

The party never had an expectation of forming political coalitions with other parties, he said.

“One Nation needs to stand on its own, and it is,” Oldfield said.

The party’s recent surge in support meant coalition partner the Nationals would be “wiped out” in the lower house and Liberals would be “really struggling” if an election was held this weekend, Oldfield said.

A federal election is not due until 2028. But rising support for One Nation also posed a risk of further defections from the coalition parties to One Nation, posing a distraction for the opposition until then, Oldfield said.

Francisco Guterres, a former president of Timor-Leste and a leading figure in the country’s independence movement, has died. He was 71.

Guterres, widely known by his nom de guerre Lu Olo, died on Sunday at Prince Court Medical Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he had been in intensive care, his family said on the late president’s official Facebook account. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.

Guterres served as president from 2017 to 2022, capping decades of involvement in the political and armed struggle that led to independence for Southeast Asia’s youngest nation in 2002.

Fretilin, the party Guterres led for years, said his death was a “profound loss” for all those who shared the goal of building a free, democratic and sovereign Timor-Leste, also known as East Timor.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese should follow UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and resign, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson said this morning.

“I’d love it, and so would the Australian people, as it’s proven,” Hanson said to journalists in Canberra this morning.

“I started up [the] Fire the Liar [fundraising campaign] with $4.8 million in funding from Australian people donations. It’s clear that the people don’t want Anthony Albanese as prime minister in this country any longer.”

Hanson claimed the UK was facing a “mass migration” crisis which had led to Starmer’s downfall, and that similar issues were reflected in Australia.

“People don’t feel they’re British anymore, they can’t fly the flag, and I see the same thing happening here in Australia,” she said.

“So [Albanese] wants to take a few lessons from that. Our economy is in, is in the toilet, actually. I think it’s a mess of trillion-dollar debt, the government spending is out of control, so it needs to be changed.”

Andy Burnham is about to achieve an astonishing rise to power in a way rarely seen in the Westminster system in Britain or elsewhere, including Australia, Europe Correspondent David Crowe writes.

This is a bizarre turn of events for Labour, which was elected to government just two years ago. It is only happening because Keir Starmer could not lead, and his MPs could not hold their nerve. A leadership change like this, just as in Australia, is an admission of failure – not just for the leader, but for the party room.

While Starmer took Labour to a landslide victory at the 2024 election, he and his MPs were unready for government. And it showed. When he attempted difficult changes such as welfare reform, MPs rebelled and he backed down. Then Labour sources would complain in the press that he was weak.

Read Crowe’s full analysis here and the latest news on Starmer’s downfall here.

Six people who were aboard a cruise ship at the centre of a hantavirus outbreak have been released from quarantine after 42 days.

The group has been living in a quarantine station on the outskirts of Perth after being escorted from the virus-stricken MV Hondius in May.

The group – which contains four Australians, a permanent resident and a New Zealander – are well and have all tested negative for the virus.

Three people from the cruise ship died in the outbreak.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has walked back her controversial comments on parental leave, saying her views were “taken out of context” after she addressed the National Press Club last week.

While speaking last week, Hanson said: “If women take time off and they are not paid their wages because they’re not working, fair enough. Why should business pay? But they’re not at work. That’s the difference. That’s why the pay gap is there,” Hanson told the press club.

Speaking to Seven’s Sunrise this morning, Hanson said she supported government-funded paid parental leave but didn’t want small businesses to have to pay for parental leave.

“It’s up to companies if they want to have it in their policy to give it to their workers. So, there’s no way, shape, or form that I am actually saying to get rid of it. I’ve seen it’s been very beneficial to women to get back in the workforce,” Hanson said.

“There are businesses that cannot afford it. All right, it’s OK for government taxpayers [to] pay for it, but there are businesses, smaller businesses that cannot afford it. You put another pressure on the small businesses to pay for maternity leave, they’ll actually fold.”

Australians have nominated the nation’s relationship with China as more important than its partnership with the US, as trust in Donald Trump hits a record low.

Some 51 per cent of respondents to the 2026 Lowy Institute Poll said Australia’s partnership with Beijing is more vital than the bond with Washington, marking an eight-point rise from the previous year.

Confidence in the US president to do the right thing in global affairs stands at 21 per cent, the lowest level for any American leader in the survey’s 22-year history. Six in 10 Australians say they have “no confidence at all” in Mr Trump.

But support for the US alliance has endured and, despite experiencing a drop, almost three in four people say the relationship is important for the nation’s security.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles has distanced his government from UK Labour, as the latter grapples with leadership change and a populist challenge from the right wing.

“I think there are different circumstances here,” Marles told Nine’s Today this morning. “The way politics plays out is very specific to particular parts of the world, and what we’re seeing happen with what’s playing out in Britain is obviously a matter for them.

“Pauline Hanson and Angus Taylor can keep talking about what they will. What’s really clear is that neither of them can govern without the other. They will need to help each other.

“When it comes to all of the issues that we’re facing around cost of living, we’re focused on cutting taxes, on making sure that there’s bulk billing, that we’re increasing that on making childcare more affordable. Pauline Hanson and Angus Taylor are opposed to all of that.

“They literally voted against all of those things in the parliament, that’s what they stand for.”

A cap on tolls for Sydney motorists will be cut to $50 a week for 12 months as part of a suite of targeted cost-of-living measures to be unveiled by the Minns government in its final budget before next year’s NSW election.

Dropping the weekly cap on tolls temporarily from $60 to $50 from July 6 will be one of the centrepieces focused on transport in the budget today.

Budget documents seen by this masthead show that despite the removal of the public sector wages cap, the growth in employee expenses compares favourably with the final term of the former Coalition government, when employee expense growth averaged 6.4 per cent.

The budget documents say the relatively constrained growth is a result of reforms, including a 15 per cent reduction in senior public service executives, cuts to workers’ compensation entitlements and changes to the police insurance scheme.

Treasurer Daniel Mookhey has talked down the prospect of a big-spending budget ahead of the election in March, instead focusing on the government’s record of spending restraint and deficit reduction.

Read more here.

Agriculture Minister Julie Collins has said the government is doing “everything that we can” to protect primary producers from H5N1 bird flu, but did not say whether consumers can expect the price of chicken or eggs to increase as a result of the disease’s presence in the country.

“This is obviously concerning, but not unexpected,” Collins told ABC television this morning. “We have invested well over $100 million in our preparedness in terms of getting ready for the H5 bird flu, should it arrive in Australia.”

“We’ve always known we could not stop it, because it would arrive by migratory birds. What we’re talking about now is two confirmed cases of migratory birds that have been found on an isolated area on a beach in Western Australia,” she said.

“We’re still in the investigation stage, we’re still determining whether or not this is widespread in Australian wildlife, or whether it is just a few isolated cases at this point in time from migratory birds.”

“We’ll know within ... a few days to a couple of weeks whether or not this is embedded in Australian wildlife, or whether these are isolated cases,” Collins said.