Australia news as it happened: RBA cuts interest rate to 3.6 per cent; Apple, Google lose landmark federal court ruling; Netanyahu ‘in denial’ of Gaza suffering, says Albanese

There were many reasons to celebrate the Matildas before the home World Cup – they’d won the Oceania Football Confederation and the Asian Cup in the years before 2023 – but this felt like the moment women’s football truly arrived as a force in Australian sport.

After all, it’s not every day that Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles relinquishes his role to a goalkeeper!

Two years on, despite a challenging Paris Olympics and captain Sam Kerr’s regular absence from the team, the Matildas are still drawing large crowds, and hosting the AFC Asian Cup in Australia in March next year.

She believes drug-checking and early-risk detection, alongside rapid-access opioid treatment, can prevent avoidable deaths.

“These interventions aren’t optional – they’re essential public-health responses,” the academic said.

A significant proportion of the 2024 overdose deaths involved illegal drugs, with heroin, methamphetamine, MDMA, cocaine and GHB reaching 10-year highs.

AAP

Each case dealt with overlapping issues so were heard as one lengthy 16-week trial last year.

The trial centred largely around Apple and Google’s fee that it takes from app purchases – in many cases a cut of up to 30 per cent – and allegations that the companies maintained an illegal monopoly over their app stores.

“This judgment is a turning point,” said Kimi Nishimura, principal at Maurice Blackburn Lawyers. “It sends a clear message that even the most powerful corporations must play by the rules and respect the rights of consumers and developers alike.”

Joel Phipps, principal at law firm Phi Finney McDonald, said the victory could result in one of the largest class action payouts in Australian legal history, with potential compensation of several hundreds of millions of dollars.

He was also asked about tax reform ahead of the government’s productivity roundtable next week, and whether the onus was on the opposition to take big ideas to it.

“We are open to tax reform, although we have a different set of principles to what the treasurer outlined. He said any proposal for tax reform is to be budget-neutral or better, but what he means is better for him, higher revenues for him,” he said.

“The obligation is on us to be constructive, and if there are good ideas that come out of this process that the government wants to adopt, we will back them and support them to do that. But what they don’t have is a mandate for higher taxes because they did not say that at the last election. And in fact when we said during the campaign they might increase taxes, they said that was a scare campaign.”

Paterson said the opposition also had to exercise “fiscal discipline”, and say no to policies that would require higher taxes to fund them.

Among the dead were at least 12 aid seekers killed by Israeli gunfire while trying to reach distribution points, or awaiting aid convoys, according to officials at two hospitals and witnesses.

The Associated Press spoke to five witnesses who were among the crowds in central Gaza, the Teina area and the Morag corridor. All said that Israeli forces had fired toward the crowds.

“The occupation [forces] targeted us, as they do every day,” said Hussain Matter, a displaced father-of-two who was in the Morag corridor.

“Out of nowhere, you find bullets from everywhere.”

AP