Australia news LIVE: Opposition to deliver budget reply tonight; Australia’s trade minister ‘very positive’ China will lift restrictions

Thanks for reading our live coverage today. I’m Angus Dalton, signing off and leaving you with these headlines.

• The ACT Director of Public Prosecutions, Shane Drumgold, SC, has acknowledged he mistakenly believed there had been political interference in Bruce Lehrmann’s trial in a sensational backdown during an inquiry into the handling of the high-profile case.
• Drumgold told the inquiry today that the juror whose misconduct caused the trial to be aborted was the only one he believed hadn’t been convinced of the accused man’s guilt.
• Trade Minister Don Farrell has been welcomed to Beijing to attend highly anticipated trade talks. Farrell believes China could drop all major restrictions on Australian imports by the end of the year.
• Foreign Minister Penny Wong lashed Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather, the ballast of the minor party’s brinkmanship over Labor’s signature $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund.
• US Vice President Kamala Harris may be sent as a substitute for President Joe Biden to the Quad leaders’ meeting in Sydney as a debt debate in the US casts doubts on Biden’s ability to visit Australia.
• The McGowan government has used a $4.2 billion iron ore-fuelled surplus to throw the kitchen sink at cost-of-living pressures in Western Australia.
• Rebel Victorian MP Moira Deeming has fired off a defamation threat to Opposition Leader John Pesutto, less than 24 hours before Liberal MPs are due to vote on whether to expel her from the parliamentary party.

Caroline Schelle will be back on to anchor the blog in the morning.

The ACT’s top prosecutor, Shane Drumgold, has told the inquiry into the abandoned Lehrmann trial that the juror whose misconduct caused the trial to be aborted was the only one Drumgold believed wasn’t convinced of the accused man’s guilt.

When asked by his lawyer Mark Tedeschi whether his impression was one of the 12 jurors was “holding out” while the rest were inclined to convict Lehrmann of sexually assaulting Brittany Higgins, Drumgold responded, “That was the conclusion that I had reached.”

ACT Chief Justice Lucy McCallum aborted the trial in late October after one of the jurors had been discovered bringing their own research material into the jury room, contrary to the judge’s directions.

During another explosive day of evidence in the public inquiry, Tedeschi then asked whether that same juror was the one he perceived was holding out, to which Drumgold replied, “Yes.”

This masthead makes no suggestion regarding the correctness or otherwise of Drumgold’s belief.

Question time is under way in the House of Representatives at Canberra.

Watch live below:

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin has welcomed Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell’s arrival in China.

“It is in the fundamental interests of the two countries and the two peoples to improve, maintain and develop well Sino-Australian relations,” Wang said at a regular press briefing tonight.

“I can tell you here that China and Australia are both important countries in the Asia-Pacific region, and the economic structures of the two countries are highly complementary.”

The tone from the Foreign Ministry, its ambassadors and Chinese state media has shifted markedly over the past year as China pushes for a shift in relations despite making few substantial trade or diplomatic concessions.

It was only in December 2021 that Wang accused the Australian government of “abusing the concept of national security” and “hurling unsubstantiated accusations and attacks against China, provoking tensions and instigating confrontation”.

There has been a change in government but no real policy changes from either side since then. Both sides are playing for a rhetorical reset hoping it might lay the ground for policy shifts in Beijing and Canberra without either side losing face.

In case you missed it, former US president Donald Trump used a town hall meeting broadcast on CNN to press his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, praise the rioters who violently attacked the Capitol and suggest Congress allow the federal government to default on its debt, at the risk of a global economic crisis.

The outburst came a day after a Manhattan jury ordered Trump to pay $US5 million ($7.4 million) in damages to E. Jean Carroll, after he was found liable of sexually abusing and defaming her.

CNN had been criticised by some Democrats for giving Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, such a platform.

Trump had not appeared on a major television channel outside the conservative media bubble since 2020.

Read the full story.

Turning to Victorian state politics, rebel MP Moira Deeming has fired off a defamation threat to Opposition Leader John Pesutto, less than 24 hours before Liberal MPs are due to vote on whether to expel her from the parliamentary party.

A spokesman for Pesutto confirmed a letter had been received this afternoon, telling The Age its contents foreshadowed legal proceedings.

“As the matter is likely to be before the courts, he will not make any further comment,” the spokesman said.

But a Liberal source with knowledge of the letter’s contents, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter, confirmed it was a defamation concerns notice.

The Age reported last week that Deeming intended to sue Pesutto for defamation and launch legal action challenging her nine-month suspension from the parliamentary team.

The Western Metropolitan MP was suspended from the Liberal party room in March after she attended the controversial Let Women Speak rally on the steps of state parliament. That protest was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.

Pilbara mines supplying Asian steel mills are expected to deliver $9.3 billion in royalties to WA this financial year but the budget delivered on Thursday assumes this will plummet to $6 billion in the 2023-24 financial year.

When one commodity delivers 21 per cent of a state’s budget as iron ore has done this year, a wrong assumption can quickly unbalance a budget, writes Peter Milne in an analysis piece.

McGowan said he did not want to be caught out and see his projected $3.3 billion surplus turn into a deficit.

“What the last government did, they forecast heroically on the iron ore price and spent accordingly,” McGowan said.

While iron ore fetched an average of $US112 a tonne this financial year the budget assumes just $US74 a tonne for the 12 months from July and a lower $US66 for the following three years.

The federal government’s Tuesday budget was even more conservative, assuming an iron ore price of $US60 a tonne this coming financial year before dropping to $US55.

President Joe Biden’s visit to Australia for the Quad meeting this month has been placed in doubt because of ongoing negotiations between the White House and the Republican Party in Congress over lifting the US debt ceiling.

Asked in a White House press conference if the debt ceiling debate could prevent him travelling abroad for the G7 meeting in Japan, a stop on the same trip to Australia, Biden said: “It is possible, but not likely.”

“In other words, if somehow we got down to the wire and we still hadn’t resolved this, and the due date was in a matter of – when I was supposed to be away, I would not go. I would stay until this gets finished.”

Biden told reporters he was still committed to the trip. “But obviously this is the single most important thing that’s on the agenda.”

Read the full story.