Australia news LIVE: Voters give budget worst marks in five years; Trump says planned attacks on Iran called off; WHO sends experts to the Congo as Ebola death toll reaches 110

Good morning and welcome to our national news live blog for Tuesday, May 19. My name is Emily Kaine, and I’ll be helming our coverage this morning. Here’s what is making news today.

• Jim Chalmers’ fifth federal budget handed down last week was the worst-received economic statement since this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor began tracking voter perceptions of the budget in May 2021. Just 24 per cent of people polled following last Tuesday’s budget agreed with the proposition that the policies announced this year would be “good” or “very good” for them and their household.
• The World Health Organisation has sent a team of experts and 4.7 tonnes of aid to the Democratic Republic of Congo to address the Ebola outbreak it has declared a public health emergency of international concern. A rare strain of the virus has killed more than 110 people.
• US President Donald Trump says he is holding off on a military strike on Iran that had been planned for Tuesday (Washington time) because “serious negotiations” are underway. Trump did not offer details about the planned attack but said in a social media post on Monday that he had instructed the US military “to be prepared to go forward with a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice, in the event that an acceptable Deal is not reached.”
• Overnight, the Israeli Defence Forces intercepted an activist flotilla in international waters off Cyprus, halting the latest attempt to challenge a naval blockade of Gaza and draw attention to the living conditions for Palestinians in the war-battered coastal territory.
• And a specialist team has located the bodies of four missing Italian scuba divers who died in an accident in underwater caves, Maldives officials said this morning. It is believed the bodies were found deep inside an underwater cave in a Maldive atoll.

Liberal senator Jonno Duniam says the government’s changes to the capital gains tax discount will not improve equity but will mean “everyone’s going to be worse off”.

“It’s not a sound or coherent policy. The reality is that they’re applying equity across the board, which means everyone’s going to be worse off,” he told Sky.

“The people that invest to do well, who are now being disincentivised, will pay half what they accrued in wealth in tax to this government when they didn’t before, so how can that help people get into a house? I have no idea. It’s just a tax grab.”

Assistant Treasurer Dan Mulino insisted the adjustments meant taxpayers would be “compensated or adjusted for high inflation”.

“What we’re introducing is a means of compensation or adjustment, which is more equal and more neutral across all asset classes.”

A Liberal senator has accused his party of alienating migrant communities through the delivery of its migration and housing policies at last week’s budget reply speech.

“I don’t think our rhetoric meets the needs of the broader community. I think our rhetoric used alienates migrant communities. I don’t think we should take a negative approach to migration,” Senator Andrew McLachlan told the ABC this morning.

“Certainly, it should be controlled, and we don’t want to invite people here without giving them a society that can accommodate them both economically and culturally, but we cannot continue to blame migrants for the problems of our economy, including housing.”

Last Thursday, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor delivered his budget reply speech in which he announced Coalition policies of: linking immigration numbers to housing completion; barring non-citizens from accessing certain welfare benefits; and “processing and deporting 70,000 overstayers”.

“It creates anxiety and fear in the community. Leaders have to explain to the community how we’re going to meet the challenges of the nation, and we have to have a positive vision going forward, and I’m concerned that the rhetoric of many people on my side of politics is being misinterpreted,” McLachlan said.

The government will not back down on its decision to cut private health insurance rebates for over 65s, a decision Health Minister Mark Butler said was taken to re-establish equity in the system and support the aged care system.

About $3 billion of subsidies to seniors purchasing private health insurance will be diverted to the aged care sector over the next four years to provide 5000 additional beds each year and additional funding for the Support at Home program.

“I recognise this is an unwelcome change for many older Australians, but at a time where, given what we’ve just been talking about, we need to find every dollar we can to plow into aged care services. I think continuing to pay people a higher subsidy for their private health insurance based not on difference in income, but difference in age was just difficult to sustain,” Butler told ABC radio this morning.

“We’ve taken this hard, but I think responsible decision to re-equalise, if you like, private health subsidies based on household income rather than household age, and putting every single dollar we save there back into aged care.”

Butler said the decision was carefully considered and the government did not intend to change its mind.

Staying with Butler’s appearance on Today this morning, he was asked to defend the government’s decision to reform the NDIS, including scrapping the higher private health insurance subsidy for Australians aged 65 and over.

“What we’re doing is a series of hard but necessary reforms in this area,” he said.

“We’re setting up a new process of establishing plans, rather than having 760,000 different plans with different budgets, a more equitable and frankly more rational approach to the development of plans and budgets, and obviously, like any social program, there’s got to be budget sustainability, whether that’s aged care, childcare, or disability care, through the NDIS.”

The government has projected the cuts will generate savings of $37.8 billion over four years.

Health Minister Mark Butler has dismissed the Coalition’s “scare campaign” over “death taxes”, insisting the accusations had no basis.

Speaking to Nine’s Today show this morning, Butler said: “You can almost set your watch ... Every few years, this scare campaign about a death tax. There hasn’t been a tax on inheritances for 40 or 50 years, and there’s not going to be one for 40 or 50 years, at least.

“That’s just not a place that Australia’s going to go, and there’s not one in our budget.”

Independent MP Monique Ryan appeared alongside Butler and came to the government’s defence.

“I think there are three certainties in life. The first is death, the second is taxes, and the third is politicians running scare campaigns around death taxes. This is not a death tax, but I think it’s probably fair to say that there are a lot of people out there who have concerns about the potential impact of the change,” she said.

The accusations from the opposition that Labor had attempted to stealthily introduce a “death tax” came after Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced in the budget that a 30 per cent rate would soon apply to all discretionary trusts to better align earnings from investments with income tax.

San Diego police have just addressed the media following a shooting at a mosque, and have said they are investigating the shooting as a hate crime.

Police also confirmed during the press conference that three victims and two shooters were dead.

The FBI San Diego Field Officer told the media: “What we know at this time is that there are three deceased adult males, and those are the presumed victims at this time.

“There were two suspects, both teenagers, both are confirmed to be deceased.”

San Diego: An active shooter opened fire at a San Diego mosque earlier today, and authorities said multiple people were shot while two suspects were dead.

Officer Anthony Carrasco said people reported multiple shots at the Islamic Centre of San Diego, about 14 kilometres north of downtown San Diego. It was unclear if the shooter was outside or inside. The San Diego Police Department posted that the scene was “still active but contained”.

The Islamic Centre is the largest mosque in San Diego County, according to its website. The campus includes the Al Rashid School, which the website says offers courses in Arabic language, Islamic studies and the Koran.

Aerial TV footage showed more than a dozen children holding hands and being walked out of the centre’s car park which was surrounded by scores of police vehicles. The white mosque is in a neighbourhood of homes, apartments and shopping strips with Middle Eastern restaurants and markets.

AP

Washington: US President Donald Trump said he was holding off on a military strike on Iran planned for Tuesday because “serious negotiations” were underway.

Trump did not offer details about the planned attack but said in a social media post overnight that he had instructed the US military “to be prepared to go forward with a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice, in the event that an acceptable Deal is not reached.”

The president had not previously disclosed that he was planning a strike for May 19, but over the weekend he warned, “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them.”

Trump has been threatening for weeks that the ceasefire struck in mid-April could end if Iran did not strike a deal, with shifting parameters for striking such an agreement.

Trump said in his social media post that he was calling off the planned strike at the request of allies in the Middle East, including the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Trump has repeatedly set deadlines for Tehran and then backed off.

AP

Jim Chalmers’ fifth federal budget handed down last week was the worst-received economic statement since the Resolve Political Monitor began tracking voter perceptions of the budget in May 2021.

Just 24 per cent of people polled following last Tuesday’s budget agreed with the proposition that the policies announced this year would be “good” or “very good” for them and their household, while 35 per cent of people said it would be “poor” or “very poor”, and 41 per cent of voters said they were unsure or neutral over the document.

That contrasts unfavourably with the five previous budgets tracked by Resolve, with Josh Frydenberg’s March 2022 budget and Chalmers’ May 2024 budget both registering overall ratings of 40 per cent in favour.

About 35 per cent of voters said the May 2021 budget was “good” or “very good” for them and their households, while the budgets of October 2022 and March 2025 both registered scores of 28 per cent.

Good morning and welcome to our national news live blog for Tuesday, May 19. My name is Emily Kaine, and I’ll be helming our coverage this morning. Here’s what is making news today.

• Jim Chalmers’ fifth federal budget handed down last week was the worst-received economic statement since this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor began tracking voter perceptions of the budget in May 2021. Just 24 per cent of people polled following last Tuesday’s budget agreed with the proposition that the policies announced this year would be “good” or “very good” for them and their household.
• The World Health Organisation has sent a team of experts and 4.7 tonnes of aid to the Democratic Republic of Congo to address the Ebola outbreak it has declared a public health emergency of international concern. A rare strain of the virus has killed more than 110 people.
• US President Donald Trump says he is holding off on a military strike on Iran that had been planned for Tuesday (Washington time) because “serious negotiations” are underway. Trump did not offer details about the planned attack but said in a social media post on Monday that he had instructed the US military “to be prepared to go forward with a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice, in the event that an acceptable Deal is not reached.”
• Overnight, the Israeli Defence Forces intercepted an activist flotilla in international waters off Cyprus, halting the latest attempt to challenge a naval blockade of Gaza and draw attention to the living conditions for Palestinians in the war-battered coastal territory.
• And a specialist team has located the bodies of four missing Italian scuba divers who died in an accident in underwater caves, Maldives officials said this morning. It is believed the bodies were found deep inside an underwater cave in a Maldive atoll.