Australia news as it happened: Inflation outpacing real wage growth for first time since 2023; Albanese insists government not aiding IS brides and children to return home to Australia

Thanks for reading the national news blog. This is where we’ll end today’s coverage. We will be back tomorrow with the latest news.

To conclude, here’s a look back at some of the day’s major stories:

• Queensland Premier David Crisafulli said he doesn’t agree with the controversial comments made by Pauline Hanson, who earlier this week claimed there were no good Muslims in Australia. He also denied his state is the weakest link in Australia’s efforts to reduce guns after refusing to partake in a national buyback scheme.
• Jim Chalmers has held a press conference after Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed two years of real wages growth has come to an end. Figures from the ABS this morning showed the wage price index – which measures changes in the wage bill of businesses – lifted by 0.8 per cent in the December quarter. Both public and private sector wages grew by 0.8 per cent. It took the annual rate to 3.4 per cent, a 0.1 percentage lift on where it was in the September quarter.
• Anthony Albanese said he would speak directly to the Laotian prime minister next week to lobby for justice for the Australian teens who died when they drank methanol-poisoned drinks while backpacking in the south-east Asian nation.
• Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke banned one of the “ISIS brides” trying to leave the el Roj camp in Syria from returning to Australia for two years, using new laws meant to bar citizens considered a terrorism risk.
• Sydney-based fintech youX confirmed a significant data breach after a hacker released stolen data allegedly containing the personal and financial records of more than 444,000 Australian borrowers.

Thanks again for joining us. This is Isabel McMillan signing off.

Victoria has lost the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix after three decades, ending the race’s long connection to Phillip Island and dealing a blow to the Victorian government.

A government source familiar with the situation told this masthead that Victoria had lost the event and confirmed it would be moving to South Australia.

The Australian Grand Prix Corporation has for months been locked in tense negotiations with Dorna Sports to extend a contract to host the race at the famed Phillip Island circuit.

On Tuesday, the Allan government ruled out a request from MotoGP rights holder Dorna Sports to move the event to Albert Park.

Read the full story here.

Victorian Labor ministers have launched a blistering and personal attack on barrister Geoffrey Watson, SC, accusing the corruption expert of chasing headlines and describing his evidence that the government turned a blind eye to CFMEU corruption as florid ramblings.

The extraordinary comments prompted a fierce rebuke from Watson, who accused Police Minister Anthony Carbines of partaking in Trumpist politics and attacking him rather than the problems plaguing Victorian worksites.

Watson’s Rotting from the Top inquiry was made public last week following revelations by this masthead that conclusions reached by Watson that were highly critical of Labor were secretly stripped from the report’s pages shortly before its release.

His redacted report accused Victoria’s Labor government of turning a blind eye to CFMEU corruption and organised crime on infrastructure projects at a cost to taxpayers of $15 billion. Watson then gave similar evidence at a Queensland inquiry.

Read the full story here.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had not spoken to Premier Jacinta Allan this week as ongoing CFMEU revelations continue to rock the Victorian Labor government, before backing in his handpicked administrator tasked with cleaning up the union.

“Mark Irving is doing a terrific job. And I tell you what, before we came to office, there was absolutely no handbrake from the Commonwealth government about any of these issues, none whatsoever. The CFMEU and John Setka increased their influence over the period of the former Coalition government. We’ve intervened. We appointed the administrator. That administrator has gotten rid of dozens of organisers and officials who weren’t serving the interests of their members, but were serving their own interests,” he told 3AW.

This masthead revealed last week that Irving had ordered politically explosive sections from a landmark corruption report be stripped, removing findings that Victoria’s Labor government turned a blind eye to CFMEU graft on job sites at a cost to taxpayers of $15 billion.

Albanese declined to comment on the Victorian police commissioner’s remarks criticising the author of the stripped sections, and said a royal commission was not necessary.

The prime minister said he was supportive of the Victorian government’s response to corruption in the union.

“They’re doing their job, but importantly, they’re doing it in the context of the administrator being established and being allowed to do his job.”

Anthony Albanese said he would speak directly to the Laotian prime minister next week to lobby for justice for the Australian teens who died when they drank methanol-poisoned drinks while backpacking in the south-east Asian nation.

Albanese said that while in Melbourne he had met the families of Holly Morton-Bowles and Bianca Jones, who died in 2024.

Asked whether he had apologised to the families for the failure to keep them abreast of updates in the case, Albanese said: “Certainly DFAT needed to have done better, and we made that clear to them, but they’re seeking justice.”

The Australian families learnt from a UK family who also lost a loved one that those responsible for serving the drinks had been fined just hundreds of dollars.

“I agreed with them that I would talk directly to the prime minister of Laos, and we’ll be trying to establish that at this stage. That discussion will take place next week, just to assert Australia’s very clear position that we want justice to be done here,” Albanese said.