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Australia news live: Gina Rinehart and rival heirs await court verdict on mining riches; petrol prices fall every day for two weeks in biggest cities | Australia news
Judgment day as Gina Rinehart and rival heirs await court ruling on claim to mining riches
Caitlin Cassidy
We are expecting a court verdict in the coming hour or so on whether Gina Rineheart must share the spoils of some of Hancock Prospecting’s most lucrative iron ore projects with the family of her late father’s business partner.
Australia’s richest person faces the possibility of losing billions of dollars in riches from her Pilbara iron empire if the Western Australian supreme court rules against her.
We will bring you the outcome when it is handed down, but in the meantime, you can read more about the case here:
Key events
Sarah Basford Canales
Marles to tout extra defence spending after ‘tough decisions’
Richard Marles will use his National Press Club speech on Thursday to tout an additional $11bn in defence spending over the last four years since taking over government from the Coalition.
The defence minister will use the address to forewarn of tough future decisions to cancel, divest, delay or re-scope projects failing to be delivered on time, within budget or no longer prioritised.
Priority areas for defence’s multi-billion dollar budget are mapped out within its integrated investment program (IIP), which allows funding to shift between projects depending on priority.
The IIP was last updated in 2024 and a revised version for 2026 will be released this week.
Marles already flagged the government will spend between $2bn and $5bn more on drones as part of Australia’s new national defence strategy.
Ahead of his announcement on Thursday, Marles said this morning:
We have already done so much of the hard work to make sure we can invest where it is needed, but this work does not end with the 2026 Integrated Investment Program.
While these are not easy decisions, they are necessary to ensure that the ADF and its people have the capabilities needed, as soon as possible to meet our strategic circumstances and keep Australians safe.
Judgment day as Gina Rinehart and rival heirs await court ruling on claim to mining riches
Caitlin Cassidy
We are expecting a court verdict in the coming hour or so on whether Gina Rineheart must share the spoils of some of Hancock Prospecting’s most lucrative iron ore projects with the family of her late father’s business partner.
Australia’s richest person faces the possibility of losing billions of dollars in riches from her Pilbara iron empire if the Western Australian supreme court rules against her.
We will bring you the outcome when it is handed down, but in the meantime, you can read more about the case here:
Luca Ittimani
Uber fuel surcharge kicks in from today for non-EV rides
Uber’s fuel surcharge has arrived today, adding an extra fee of 5 cents a kilometre on trips in petrol, diesel and hybrid vehicles.
Battery electric vehicles are not attracting the surcharge and now we can see how it looks in practice.
A 15km trip from the Sydney Opera House to Burwood, Australia’s coolest neighbourhood, this morning costs $41.69 in UberX but $40.94 in the Uber Electric option. However, electric riders face a longer wait time of eight minutes, compared to just two minutes for UberX, likely because there are more fuel-powered Ubers roaming the streets.
A 7km trip from Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station to St Kilda’s Luna Park costs $21.97 in an UberX but $21.60 in an Uber Electric, again with a two minute wait compared to a seven minute wait, respectively.
Customers will be weighing up whether the extra wait time and reduced emissions are worth saving a few cents.
You can read more about the changes here:
Luca Ittimani
Petrol prices fall every day for two weeks in biggest cities
Petrol prices have fallen for two consecutive weeks in Australia’s biggest cities, data this morning shows.
Average unleaded prices in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane on MotorMouth have fallen every day since the fuel excise was cut on 1 April, sitting at 215.2 cents a litre in the two biggest cities and 218.5 cents in Brisbane.
Adelaide’s unleaded prices picked up on 9 April but have otherwise been falling steadily, while prices in Perth are easing but have bounced each Wednesday (including today) thanks to the city’s unique price cycles.
Diesel prices have been falling steadily since 9 April, to less than 311 cents a litre in Sydney and Melbourne and 316.4 cents a litre in Brisbane.
Strangely, Brisbane retail fuel prices are higher than Sydney’s and Melbourne’s even though Brisbane’s wholesale prices are consistently cheaper. A Brisbane premium appears to be emerging in average pricing.
Josh Taylor
Telstra legal chief, consumer group fire off letters over triple zero survey
The Australian Communication Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) earned the ire of Telstra and the telco network industry group last month when it released the findings of an Essential survey reporting that “1 in 10 Australians (10%) reported that they or a member of their family were unable to reach triple zero from a mobile phone in the last 12 months due to a mobile outage.”
In letters tabled in the Senate inquiry into the triple zero outage overnight, Telstra’s group general counsel, Lyndall Stoyles requested ACCAN chief executive Carol Bennett remove the media release, cease claiming that “10% unable to connect” and publish a corrective statement.
In her letter, Stoyles noted that 97% of triple zero calls are answered within five seconds, with 98% answered within 10 seconds. If referring to mobile network outages, Telstra said ACCAN’s figure would mean at least 6m calls were failing per day:
We are disappointed you would mislead consumers in this manner.
The press release is still up, and Bennett replied to Stoyles the figures do not represent extrapolated figures, and Telstra was misrepresenting ACCAN’s comments.
“In the release we make clear that the 10% figure represents the ‘level of concern’,” Bennett said.
The Australian Telecommunications Alliance chief executive Luke Coleman accused ACCAN of being “more interested in scoring cheap points in the media” than being part of the solution, and rejected Bennett’s suggestion that Coleman’s criticism of the release was “shooting the messenger” in a letter tabled in the Senate inquiry.
The inquiry into triple zero has delayed its reported to the end of June.
Israeli ambassador says country feels sorrow at death of Australian aid worker, but says blame for her death ‘complex’
Hillel Newman, Israel’s ambassadors to Australia, said the country has “deep sorrow” over the death of Zomi Frankcom, an Australian aid worker killed in a humanitarian convoy in Gaza in 2024, but would not condemn the attack until a full investigation is complete.
Newman spoke to RN breakfast earlier this morning, saying the issue remained “complex”.
The complex issue here is that, first of all, Zomi, we’re sorry about Zomi and the family, but Zomi was in a convoy from which there were shots, they were shooting against Israel.
It brings a complexity to the judicial process. Because you have soldiers who were shot upon and they responded. So you can’t always give punity to such soldiers. Therefore, it’s under very prudent research.
Newman added:
We express deep sorrow for the family, but you must understand that while we [are] still checking this issue, there’s a problem in implicating the soldiers themselves until we know exactly what happened and what the findings of the investigation are.
Victoria’s election donations laws are unconstitutional, high court rules
Benita Kolovos
The high court has ruled that Victoria’s election donations laws are unconstitutional.
The case was brought by Paul Hopper and Melissa Lowe, two independent candidates who contested the 2022 state election. They had argued the major parties’ exemption to electoral laws – that allowed them to access unlimited funds via their “nominated entities” – was a breach of the constitution’s implied freedom of political communication.
This morning, all seven judges of the court agreed the section of the electoral act “impermissibly burdens” freedom of political communication.
Hopper and Lowe said:
This is a victory for all Victorian voters and for the quality of our democracy, ensuring a more level playing field so that they are more likely to have the representative in parliament that they would prefer.
The premier, Jacinta Allan, said the government would need time to consider the decision:
The decision has just been handed down, whilst we’ve be addressing you here today, so it would not be appropriate for me to comment.
Taylor followed up that line noting there won’t be discrimination based on country by saying:
We don’t want people coming to this country who are a threat to our country.
We saw over 1,000 people coming from Gaza recently, many on tourist visas. And there are serious questions about whether some of those people don’t believe in what we believe in as a country. Were they screened? Well, these are questions for the government.
All Palestinians granted Australian visas have undergone standard security checks, the federal government has confirmed.
Taylor is sticking with his discrimination line from yesterday, which an interviewer noted at the time would be one of the key lines from his announcement.
He said just now of his immigration plans:
It will be a discriminatory policy, but based on values. We won’t discriminate based on race or religion or country.
Taylor says Australia should do ‘whatever’ it can to support opening of strait of Hormuz
Taylor added:
Australia should be providing whatever support we reasonably can to get the strait of Hormuz opened up. … And we want it done as quickly as possible as that will put downward pressure on the bowser for all Australians.
Taylor says Labor government ‘has not got control of the economy’
Angus Taylor, the opposition leader, is holding a press conference in Brisbane. He’s speaking about his immigration plans, announced yesterday, saying the country needs more from the government on housing and migration.
He said today’s report from the IMF on the risk of a global recession was troubling:
We see reports out today about what the economy might look like in the coming years, and it tells us what we already knew. Inflation is out of control. Interest rates are going up, not down.
This is a government that is has not got control of the economy.
Taylor added the upcoming budget needs to be responsible to deal with inflation.
Read more here:
Benita Kolovos
Victoria premier says new cabinet has ‘tremendous energy’
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, is holding a press conference after her cabinet reshuffle. She said the “new team” has “tremendous energy and a singular focus on driving new solutions”. She went on:
We are united in that purpose of making life easier for Victorians and working people, making our community safer, and also to making things more affordable for working people and Victorian families.
Paul Edbrooke, who was elevated to cabinet yesterday, was also handed the new portfolio of men and boys. He says as a former educator he’s seen a “definite change in how young boys become men,”:
This portfolio is firmly focused on how we make young boys into healthier men, and that has so many repercussions across our whole community, whether it be family violence, whether it be suicide rates, there’s a lot of work to be done there, and I look forward to that opportunity.
Allan added:
For a long time, we’ve had a minister for women sitting around the cabinet table, recognisingthat women needed not just equal representation, but there were some structural changes that needed to be broken through to give women a greater equality of opportunity.
We now need to take an approach with men and boys … we cannot deny that there has been societal change with the way we support young boys to become good, strong men, and there are some real challenges and pressures that men and boys are facing today that weren’t there five or 10 years ago.
Victorian premier unveils her new cabinet
Benita Kolovos
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, is about to hold a press conference after the swearing-in of her new cabinet at Government House in Melbourne this morning.
Among those receiving promotions are several of Allan’s most loyal ministers, including Harriet Shing, who will become the new health and ambulance services minister and return to the water portfolio, Nick Staikos, who takes on housing, building and the Suburban Rail Loop and attorney general and minister for planning, Sonya Kilkenny, who adds finance to her already hefty responsibilities.
Ingrid Stitt gains government services and “special minister of state” – a role absent from the ministry for some time – while Ros Spence takes on roads and road safety and First Peoples. Gabrielle Williams adds the role of minister for “women and girls” – a portfolio that used to be named just minister for women.
Enver Erdogan gains the environment and outdoor recreation portfolios, and Natalie Suleyman gains tourism – the three are Steve Dimopoulos’ former responsibilities. Dimopoulos gets economic growth and jobs.
The four new cabinet entrants were also handed their portfolios, with Paul Edbrooke given consumer affairs as well as three new portoflios – renters, cost of living and “men and boys”. Luba Grigorovitch takes on youth, carers and volunteers, Paul Hamer gets local government, youth justice and corrections and Michaela Settle, regional development and agriculture.
The reshuffle followed Monday’s announcement by ministers Mary-Anne Thomas, Danny Pearson and Gayle Tierney that they would not recontest at the November election and would immediately step down from cabinet. They joined Natalie Hutchins, who moved to the backbench in December.
