Australia news LIVE: Albanese wants to block livestream of US execution in Australia; Chalmers says progressives have to take One Nation’s rise seriously

Hello and welcome back to our live coverage of national news this Wednesday, October 14. Here’s what is making news today.

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants to block the planned livestream of a US execution by firing squad after US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth promised the public would be able to watch it. The PM said yesterday he would do whatever he could to stop the stream from being available to watch in Australia, and called it “completely abhorrent”.
• Treasurer Jim Chalmers confronted One Nation’s rise during a speech to the Australia Institute last night in which he said voters were turning to the minor party as a response to genuine economic hardship. He urged the government not to take a passive approach to the far right, and said leaders had a responsibility offer solutions to the real challenges faced by Australians.
• Cornell University is suspending parties and other social events at fraternity houses for the rest of the academic year as it faces mounting outrage over its handling of allegations that a female student was sexually assaulted at a fraternity house.
• And climate campaigner Greta Thunberg has joined thousands of French school students at a rally in Paris to back their calls for more education funding.

NSW Premier Chris Minns says he hopes the Federal Court rules in favour the McPhillamys gold mine this morning, telling reporters he believes former environment minister Tanya Plibersek made the wrong decision to block the project.

The central-west NSW gold mine was put on hold after Plibersek issued a ban in 2024, swayed by an Indigenous group who argued the site was key to a local dreaming story.

c challenged the ban in the Federal Court, which is due to hand down a decision this morning.

“I want that mine to go ahead, I understand that that’s not the view of the federal government but we need the investment,” Minns said today.

“There are more people in mining jobs in NSW today than there were when we were elected in March of 2023. We’re proud of that.”

When asked if the then environment minister made the wrong call when she made the order blocking the mine, Minns replied: “Yes”.

Staying with Plibersek on ABC radio in Melbourne this morning, the social services minister says men who believed that women fighting for equality are launching an attack on them should be mindful that the pursuit of gender equality “does not come at the expense of men”.

“Gender equality frees men and women. Gender equality is good for women because it gives us economic security and independence. That means we can support ourselves. It means we have more choice in life about the type of work we do, the types of relationships we have,” she said.

“That’s true for men too. Gender equality is freeing for men. It allows them to, you know, work in areas that traditionally aren’t male areas, it allows them to have the benefit of better balancing work and caring responsibilities. It allows men to be free of restrictive gender stereotypes as well.”

Plibersek said one of the problems with the framing of gender equality in manosphere content is that it is presented to young men as “a zero-sum game”.

“If women do better, men do worse. That’s not true. If women do better, men do better too. They have more equal, caring, loving, satisfying relationships.”

Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek said today she was unsure exactly how the government would prevent the livestreaming of a US execution from being shown on social media platforms in Australia.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty right now about exactly how we would prevent this being shown on social media,” she told ABC radio in Melbourne. “It is a very difficult issue.”

She said most Australians would be shocked to see such violent material on their social media feeds, and that the government were exploring all possible avenues it could to “deal with this sensibly”.

“The proposal is that this would go ahead in December, and there’s plenty of things that could happen between now and December. It’s not even clear that the president of the United States supports the broadcasting of this shocking event,” Plibersek said.

“We, of course, absolutely oppose the death penalty wherever it is, whoever’s subject to it. And the idea that someone being put to death would be broadcast, I think, adds to the absolute abhorrence of the death penalty itself.”

Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs Julian Hill says he can’t think of another parliamentarian who had endured as much hate or vitriol as Anne Aly and urged people to reflect on the reality that words can translate into real-world violence.

“I’d struggle to identify another person in Parliament who’s put up with such a consistent stream of hate, the vitriol, the death threats, the social media messages that stream in day after day. It’s vile, but it goes to a bigger point here,” he told News24 this morning.

“I really encourage Australians, particularly people who, you know, keyboard warriors online who pose vile stuff all day with an increasingly toxic atmosphere in parts of our community, the extreme left and the extreme right, just to reflect.”

Hill said he found Bell’s comments “reprehensible”, and that he was relieved she had withdrawn them.

“This path we’re going down, we’re going to see violence. I fear for the day that someone does get murdered, and it might not be a political leader; it might be other public officials. You need to lower the temperature, and you can’t just dismiss this stuff. It needs to be aired. It needs to be put in context and stopped.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said his “thoughts and prayers” are with Pope Leo following news the pontiff was diagnosed with lung cancer.

In a statement released this morning, Albanese said:

Pope Leo XIV is a source of inspiration to Catholics right around the world – and here in Australia.

He is a voice for peace, humanity and reason in our modern world.

My thoughts and prayers are with him as he recovers from his recent surgery.

We hope and pray for a quick recovery.”

Riyadh: A ballistic missile has hit the headquarters complex of Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, the world’s largest and the backbone of the kingdom’s economy, a company source told Reuters, amid an escalating war between Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthis and a Saudi-led coalition.

An office tower in the Saudi Aramco complex in the eastern city of Dhahran was struck on Tuesday night (Saudi time) and the top three floors were damaged, the source said. The source and two other people with knowledge of the matter said the building was on fire.

The complex hosts a major operations centre for Aramco, which oversees a vast network of onshore and offshore oil rigs, pipelines, refineries and export terminals.

Earlier, six sources told Reuters they heard loud booms near the complex. There was no official comment from Saudi Aramco.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has urged parliamentarians to turn the temperature down after Minister for Small Business Anne Aly said Liberal MP Angie Bell’s comments calling for her and the PM to be “shamed and stoned in the square” were racist and misogynistic.

Bell, speaking in the House of Representatives yesterday in favour of shadow treasurer Tim Wilson’s proposed bill to force the ATO to reinstate the payment method, said: “This minister [Aly] and this prime minister should be absolutely shamed and stoned in the square.”

Aly responded in a post on her Instagram, and said: “In the past week alone, I’ve had 19 death threats on my social media and in the past I’ve had death threats that are couched in that exact same language: ‘stone her’.”

“Look, I think there’s just words said in the heat of the moment,” Hanson told reporters outside Parliament House this morning.

“I think everyone just calm down, all right? I’ve been dealing with this many, many years. Just calm down.”

Bell withdrew her comments a few minutes after she made them, following a request by the Speaker.

The Greens want to close a “loophole” in Labor’s tax on trusts that exempts private school fees paid from the financial vehicle, according to the ABC, in the latest challenge to face the government’s budget reforms.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers will today introduce the legislation to put a 30 per cent minimum tax on discretionary trusts, but needs the Greens’ support in the Senate for it to pass.

The minor party called for an inquiry into the changes yesterday, concerned about an exemption to the tax for trust money paid to charities and other tax-exempt entities, including private schools.

“People who are wealthy enough to set up trusts should not get a tax break to pay for private school fees when this option is denied to people who can’t afford expensive accountants,” economic spokesman Nick McKim told the ABC.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers says he and the prime minister had already discussed intervening on the ATO credit card ban before Anthony Albanese said he made the call.

Albanese told business leaders last night that the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive had texted him directly about his concerns the ATO’s ban would harm small business.

“Andrew [McKellar] did text me last Thursday morning, and by Friday morning we had an announcement,” Albanese said.

But Chalmers has told Radio National this morning: “On the Wednesday, I had discussions with the prime minister. We agreed that it would be appropriate to find a better way through for small business.”

“It is true that there were discussions between the government and the business community last Thursday. We were part of those discussions as well. My office was engaging with the Chamber of Commerce,” he said.

Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has a habit of forcing his treasurer to take the fall for the government’s mistakes after the PM said during an address to the Australia Institute last night that he had intervened to delay the ATO’s credit card ban.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has been criticised by his colleagues and the opposition over the proposed ban, and fronted up to the media last week to explain the reversal.

Albanese made the remarks to an audience of business leaders at the Australian Chamber of Commerce Gala Dinner.

“The prime minister has a kink for punishing small businesses, and a fetish for humiliating his treasurer,” Wilson told News24 this morning.

“I see this as a consistent pattern of behaviour where the prime minister constantly goes in, overrides his treasurer, humiliates him in public.”