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Australia news live: banks pass on interest rate hike to customers; Sydney ‘globalise the intifada’ forum held in park | Australia news
Big four banks lift interest rates
Adeshola Ore
Australia’s big four banks have all lifted interest rates after the Reserve Bank handed down a third consecutive rate hike yesterday.
The RBA lifted the cash rate from 4.1% to 4.35%, in a widely expected decision on yesterday afternoon.
Macquarie Bank was the first Australian bank to announce it would pass on the 0.25% interest rate rise to its variable home loan customers from 22 May.
The country’s big four banks – Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), National Australia Bank (NAB), Westpac and ANZ — followed suit, announcing they would all pass on the 0.25% increase to their customers.
Key events
Albanese convenes national cabinet on fuel
Tom McIlroy
State and territory leaders will hold talks with prime minister, Anthony Albanese, this morning as national cabinet continues to grapple with the international fuel crisis.
The PM is due to chair the virtual meeting mid-morning.
It comes a day after the US President Donald Trump threatened that Iran would be “blown off the face of the earth” if it attacks US vessels trying to reopen a route through the strait of Hormuz.
More than 800 ships and 20,000 crew members remain stranded in the region.
Federal government data shows Australia has 43 days of petrol supply on hand, along with 33 days of diesel and 28 days of jet fuel.
Budget to include $74m to fight terrorism and online threats
Tom McIlroy
Next week’s federal budget will fund a dedicated national centre to detect and disrupt the evolving threat of online violent extremism and terrorism.
The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, will announce the $74m in funding over two years for the project on Wednesday. It is part of the government’s response to the Bondi terror attack in December.
The centre will combine Asio and federal police officers and bring together work by state and territory police forces and overseas law enforcement agencies to better target online terrorists who threaten violence and manipulate vulnerable young people.
Specialist counter terrorism investigators and intelligence analysts will be able to monitor high-risk online spaces, assess credible threats and coordinate disruption of extremist content and activity, including through covert online engagement.
“The capability we’ve always had to monitor extremists in the meeting room, now extends to the chat room,” Burke said.
A bolstered online threat capability will give AFP and Asio the resources they need to target terrorists and violent extremists online.
Jordyn Beazley
State MP for Newtown, Jenny Leong, also spoke at the meeting. She raised comments made by Minns government member Ron Hoenig, who is Jewish, and distanced himself from the potential ban during question time yesterday.
After being asked by the opposition what he had done – as the minister of local government – to stop the event from going ahead in a council-owned venue, Hoenig said:
Just because I, and other people, might find it personally offensive does not mean that governments have unlimited power to constitutionally strike down the right of everybody else to freedom of political communication.
Sydney forum held in ‘park in the dark’
Jordyn Beazley
A pro-Palestine meeting that had their booking in a council venue cancelled after what the Sydney mayor called a “a persistent media campaign by the Murdoch press” was instead held in a “park in the dark”. Speakers spoke against criminalising saying the phrase “globalise the intifada”.
The meeting, attended by several dozen people and a large contingent of media, was held in a park in Darlington after Clover Moore announced on Monday evening she had requested the chief executive of the council withdraw the booking.
Discussing the decision, Moore said public events must not “contribute to hostility and fear”. The move was met with relief by the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies.
An organiser for the meeting, which was run by Stop the War on Palestine and was titled “why it is right to globalise the Intifada”, said the last minute cancellation meant the group had to have the meeting “in a park in the dark”.
Jewish man Ed Carroll was a speaker at the meeting. He was one of the first people to be arrested in Queensland after the state government placed a maximum two-year prison sentence on saying the phrases “globalise the intifada” or “from the river to the sea”.
He spoke from Queensland via zoom and was beamed onto a projector set up in the park. He said it’s likely he will be one of the lead plaintiffs in a planned constitutional challenge against the ban.
At one point during the meeting, a man wearing a shirt that said “FCK HMS”, stood nearby the meeting yelling at people to “go home”. He held a sign that said: “Globalise the intifada is Bondi Beach 14 December 2025!”.
Last week, the NSW premier, Chris Minns, said he would only ban the slogan “globalise the intifada” if a potential constitutional challenge to a similar ban in Queensland is unsuccessful.
It was the strongest indication yet that the state government may not seek to proscribe the contested phrase at all.
Big four banks lift interest rates
Adeshola Ore
Australia’s big four banks have all lifted interest rates after the Reserve Bank handed down a third consecutive rate hike yesterday.
The RBA lifted the cash rate from 4.1% to 4.35%, in a widely expected decision on yesterday afternoon.
Macquarie Bank was the first Australian bank to announce it would pass on the 0.25% interest rate rise to its variable home loan customers from 22 May.
The country’s big four banks – Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), National Australia Bank (NAB), Westpac and ANZ — followed suit, announcing they would all pass on the 0.25% increase to their customers.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and then Nick Visser will be your guide.
The “globalise the intifada” forum banned from taking place in a council venue on Monday night went ahead last night in a park in Sydney where participants discussed legal challenges to the ban on using the phrase, as well as the phrase “from the river to the sea”. More details coming up.
And Australia’s big four banks have all lifted interest rates after the Reserve Bank handed down a third consecutive rate hike yesterday. More reaction to the rate hike coming up.
