As it happened: CFMEU places Victorian branch into administration; King Charles, Queen Camilla to visit Australia

Thanks so much for reading the national news blog. This is where we’ll end today’s coverage.

Here’s a quick look back at the day’s major stories:

• Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has asked the Labor Party to suspend the CFMEU from the state branch and to bar all political donations from the construction division during this period, following the investigation by this masthead which included unprecedented details of senior bikie figures and criminals being parachuted into lucrative union roles. She said the rotten culture needed to be “pulled out by its roots”.

• Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto called Allan’s response “pathetic”, calling for the CMFEU to be pulled off major taxpayer-funded projects and removed from the Labor Party permanently.

• In NSW, Premier Chris Minns called for the state’s CFMEU secretary, Darren Greenfield, to step down from his position and flagged that he was prepared to launch an inquiry into the union if any specific allegations came to light in his state.
• Former union boss and federal minister Bill Shorten told ABC Radio the CMFEU revelations provided a once-in-a-generation chance to “straighten out” the union movement, noting unions should not use “middle men and hack gangers” to secure better conditions for workers.

• Donald Trump says he’s “supposed to be dead” as a sprawling investigation began into his attempted assassination and how a 20-year-old gunman was able to get within firing range of the former president, Farrah Tomazin writes. Investigators were still trying to work out what motivated the gunman, nursing home worker Thomas Matthew Crooks, to carry out the attack.

• Australia is facing an unprecedented threat from three different strains of bird flu. The CSIRO revealed on Monday genetic sequencing had revealed three different strains of H7 – a highly pathogenic avian influenza – had hit Australian farms at roughly the same time.

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed that King Charles III and Queen Camilla will visit Australia in October, with New South Wales and Canberra on the itinerary.
• The embattled Star Entertainment Group switched off all electronic gaming machines and electronic table games in its three casinos after planned upgrades to its systems ran into performance issues.
• Former Liberal Party staffer Brittany Higgins announced she is expecting her first child with husband David Sharaz.

The Australian sharemarket set yet another record high on Monday after Wall Street’s main indices surged on the weekend, fuelled by bets of coming US interest rate cuts.

The S&P/ASX 200 Index closed out the trading session above the 8000 barrier for the first time. It jumped 58.3 points, or 0.7 per cent, to 8017.6, after pulling back slightly from its intraday high of 8037.3. Every sector finished higher. The Australian dollar was fetching US67.7¢.

Commonwealth Bank shares rallied another 0.8 per cent after the company eclipsed BHP on Friday to become Australia’s largest public company. The other three major banks also saw significant share price gains.

Earlier today Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan was grilled by Nick McKenzie, the investigative reporter who broke the CFMEU story which has dominated headlines today.

You can watch the exchange below.

Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto has weighed in on Jacinta Allan’s response to CFMEU intimidation and standover tactics on the state’s Big Build sites.

Here’s a taste of what Pesutto had to say at a press conference a short time ago:

The pathetic actions of the Allan Labor government today will leave the CFMEU alive and well on taxpayer-funded projects. That’s not acceptable.

I would kick the CFMEU off every taxpayer worksite in Victoria. As for donations to the Labor Party … well, the money should be returned. [It] is dirty, rotten money.

We want the CFMEU [permanently] kicked out of the Labor Party.

As reported earlier, Allan has asked Labor officials to suspend the CFMEU from her party’s state branch and called for an immediate pause on all political donations from the construction union.

Victoria has also asked the federal government to review CFMEU enterprise bargaining agreements on state construction sites and use its powers under the Fair Work Act, if necessary, to terminate them to prevent criminal activity.