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Here’s a quick recap of today’s top stories:
The drums were muffled and draped in black, the pipers played The Flowers of the Forest and rank upon rank of police blue stretched out of sight down the long hill of View Mount Road, Glen Waverley: a guard of honour a kilometre long.
A mother from across the world sat in an Australian chapel overwhelmed by grief, her husband and a remaining son battling through their own suffering to try to grant her some form of comfort.
More than 3000 people came to the Victoria Police Academy on Friday to farewell Senior Constable Vadim de Waart-Hottart, a young man shot dead last week when he visited a property near Porepunkah in the state’s north-east for what should have been the simple task of delivering a warrant.
So many police and other guests – including the prime minister and the Victorian premier – came to honour him and mourn him that the great chapel at the academy couldn’t accommodate more than a third of them.
Labor’s signature policy to lift taxes on people with $3 million in superannuation is in limbo, with no plans to debate it in parliament and growing expectations within the government it might roll back elements of its plan to tax paper profits.
Shadow treasurer Ted O’Brien labelled the government “cowards” for going slow on its plan to double the concessional tax rate from 15 to 30 per cent on superannuation earnings for those with high balances, in a move expected to raise $2.7 billion in its first full year of operation.
Any watering down would undermine the federal budget, as the change is one of the government’s only revenue-raising proposals, but could address pushback from the opposition, former prime minister Paul Keating and long-serving former union movement chief Bill Kelty.
A source familiar with the super tax plan said the government was thinking about how to refine the policy to avoid creating worry among future retirees and undermining confidence in the retirement savings system.
Read more on this story here.
NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey, who is of Indian heritage, has condemned Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s recent comments on Indian migration as “utterly wrong”.
“They were utterly wrong. I felt they were divisive. I felt that singling out one group of Australians above others and suggesting political motivation as to why they are here, it is quite an insult,” Mookhey told the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing program.
The NSW treasurer said it was equally disappointing that Price was still scheduled to address a 200-person fundraiser for state MP Tim James tonight.
“I do think the Liberals should be rethinking the timing and sensitivity around having Senator Price headlining a fundraiser for them tonight in the wake of those rather divisive comments,” he said.
A national election in the Pacific island nation of Samoa has resulted in a resounding win for the incumbent FAST party, but will deliver a new leader, after Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa split from FAST before the poll.
Official results released by Samoa’s electoral commission on Friday showed that FAST, led by Laaulialemalietoa Leuatea Schmidt, won 30 of the 50 seats contested. The new Samoa Uniting Party, formed by Fiame, won only three seats, including her own.
The opposition Human Rights Protection Party won 14 seats and independent candidates won four.
Fiame, Samoa’s first female leader, was expelled from FAST in January after she dismissed Laaulialemalietoa, the party’s founder and chairman, from cabinet.
Laaulialemalietoa is expected to be sworn in as Samoa’s next prime minister.
Reuters
An “anti-corruption” protest backed by anti-vaxxers and COVID conspiracists planned for September 13 will be challenged by NSW Police at an urgent court hearing.
Buoyed by the Supreme Court’s decision to allow a pro-Palestine march to cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge last month, one-time senate candidate Mary-Jane Liddicoat told police last week of her intention to organise another mass protest on the bridge.
Promoting the event on social media, Liddicoat said the protest was “demanding a fair go for all”.
On Friday, police launched action in the court to prevent the protest. An urgent hearing will proceed on Monday afternoon.
The march is backed by the same group behind the Millions March rallies that protested the roll-out of COVID vaccines in 2021.
Embattled former federal Labor MP Craig Thomson has pleaded guilty to migration fraud, four years after his arrest.
Australian Federal Police officers searched Thomson’s home in Wamberal on the NSW Central Coast in July 2021 and arrested him three months later under a multi-agency investigation into an alleged major visa and migration scam dating back to 2019.
Thomson was accused of facilitating fraudulent visa applications in the food service and regional farmworker industries.
The matter was listed for a NSW District Court trial next month, but court records show that the 61-year-old pleaded guilty to various fraud offences on Friday.
Colombo, Sri Lanka: A passenger bus veered off a road and plunged into a precipice in a mountainous region in Sri Lanka, killing 15 people and injuring 16 others, a police spokesman said on Friday.
The accident occurred near the town of Wellawaya, about 280 kilometres east of the capital Colombo, on Thursday night. The bus fell into a precipice of about 300 metres, police spokesman Fredrick Wootler said.
Five children were among the injured.
Wootler said an initial police investigation revealed the driver was driving the bus at high speed and lost control, and hit another vehicle and crashed into guardrails before toppling off the cliff.
Television showed footage of the severely damaged bus lying at the bottom of the precipice while soldiers were trying to remove the wreckage.
AP
Did Australia’s richest person bankroll Ben Roberts-Smith’s failed defamation appeal? That’s the question media outlets at the centre of his multimillion-dollar lawsuit are seeking to answer – but billionaire Gina Rinehart has proven tricky to track down.
The former Special Air Service corporal reached the end of the line on Thursday, when the High Court refused an application for special leave to appeal against his damning defamation loss, after seven years of litigation and tens of millions of dollars in legal costs.
Roberts-Smith, a Victoria Cross recipient, launched the defamation case against The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald in 2018, alleging the newspapers defamed him in a series of articles alleging he was a war criminal and a bully.
The trial started in 2021 and concluded in July 2022 after 110 days, 41 witnesses and a combined $30 million in legal costs. An appeal to the Full Court of the Federal Court, which required more than a dozen hearing days and concluded this year, cost the parties a further $5 million. It is those costs that are in focus.
Read the full story from legal affairs reporter Michaela Whitbourn here.
Jalalabad, Afghanistan: Two powerful aftershocks shook eastern Afghanistan in a span of 12 hours, the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) said, triggering fears of more deaths and destruction on Friday in a region where about 2200 people died in quakes in four days.
Survivors in the earthquake-prone region are scrambling for basic amenities as the United Nations and other agencies warn of a critical need for funds, food, medical supplies and shelter, with the World Health Organisation seeking funds of $US4 million ($6 million).
The latest aftershocks follow two earthquakes that ravaged the South Asian nation, crushed by war, poverty and shrinking aid. The Taliban administration estimated 2205 deaths and 3640 injuries by Thursday.
Friday’s earthquake of magnitude 5.4 struck at a depth of 10 kilometres, GFZ said, hours after one late on Thursday night.
Reuters