Australia news LIVE: PM activates disaster recovery allowance; Labor’s WA election win gives federal government hope

Former Liberal Party staffer Bruce Lehrmann has changed solicitors months before he’s expected to stand trial accused of two counts of rape.

Sydney-based lawyer Zali Burrows has confirmed that she is now acting for Lehrmann in the Queensland District Court at Toowoomba.

Lehrmann is accused of raping a woman twice during the morning of October 10, 2021, after they met at a strip club the previous night in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane.

Sunshine Coast-based lawyer Rowan King has appeared for Lehrmann throughout his criminal matter in Queensland, which was first mentioned in court in January 2023.

Lehrmann was committed to stand trial at a mention hearing in Toowoomba in January this year.

King earlier told Judge Dennis Lynch that Lehrmann’s barrister would apply for a judge-alone trial.

In Queensland, the grounds for holding a trial without a jury include that the hearings would be lengthy or complex, or both, or “there has been significant pre-trial publicity that may affect jury deliberations”.

Burrows has previously represented Lehrmann at the Federal Court in Sydney over Lehrmann’s appeal after losing a defamation case he brought against Network Ten, and his attempts to avoid paying costs and sureties.

Lehrmann’s Toowoomba case is due for a pre-trial directions hearing on March 27.

AAP

A caravan laden with explosives and a list of possible Jewish targets found on a suburban street in Sydney’s north-west this summer was not a potential mass casualty terror event, but a plot by organised crime to further their own ends, police say.

Officers from NSW Police and the Australian Federal Police have given a press conference this afternoon after conducting raids and making a number of arrests today, following the discovery on a property in Dural in mid-January after reports a caravan had been dumped on the side of the road.

NSW Police Deputy Commissioner David Hudson said it was apparent from today’s arrests that incidents being investigated by strike forces Pearl and Kissinger, set up following a spate of antisemitic incidents, as well as the Dural caravan incident, “were orchestrated by an organised crime element and conducted to further their own causes”.

“None of the individuals we have arrested during Pearl have displayed any form of antisemitic ideology,” he said. “However, the threats [to] the community through the use of arson and the presence of explosives was very real.

“I understand the angst these incidents have had on the Jewish community, who we have been in constant contact with. We don’t believe there is any ongoing threat to the community from a terrorist act.

“However, outside of Pearl, we are continuing to see antisemitic incidents, and each of these will be fully investigated.”

Scott Marshall, his partner Tammie Farrugia and their friend Simon Nichols were named on the warrants executed by police in the days after the discovery of the caravan. None of the three have been charged with terrorism-related offences.

Progress in the investigation had been closely guarded since, but last month this masthead revealed organised crime had emerged as a major investigative theory.

And now to Victoria, where Australian businessman Lindsay Fox has broken a lifetime habit of sitting on the political fence to erect a campaign poster of local Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer on his Toorak wall.

Thanks to the Australian Electoral Commission’s decision to abolish the seat of Higgins, Fox’s Toorak home is now in the electorate of Kooyong, the seat won by independent Monique Ryan from former treasurer Josh Frydenberg at the 2022 election.

Fox’s decision to put up a royal blue billboard of Hamer promising to “get Australia back on track” has added to the intrigue about whether, just three years after the teal rebellion, the empire could strike back in Kooyong.

Fox told this masthead his support for Hamer had more to do with mateship than his personal political leanings.

Hamer’s great uncle was Sir Rupert Hamer, a long-serving Liberal premier of Victoria known to his friends as Dick. Fox counted himself as one of those friends.

Read the full story here.

NSW Police Deputy Commissioner David Hudson and Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Krissy Barrett are about to address the media about the investigations into antisemitic incidents in Sydney.

Watch the press conference live by using the player below. Please refresh your browser if you experience any issues.

And back across the Nullarbor to Perth, where state Opposition Leader Shane Love has called for West Australian Electoral Commissioner Robert Kennedy to be suspended, and a parliamentary inquiry launched over conduct concerns during Saturday’s state election.

Love, a Nationals MP, said there were increasing reports of irregularities after the WAEC outsourced the election to a private company based in Singapore.

“It’s not sufficient to allow the electoral commission itself to review this matter, that would be like asking a fox to review the security of a henhouse,” Love said.

“We actually need to ensure that the West Australian public has confidence in their electoral process, and I think many West Australians would be surprised to know that a private company had been involved in the conduct of their election, and they would also be very concerned to know that voters had been turned away from polling booths after having been instructed that they would be ticked off as if they had voted.

“It’s not a matter of whether or not someone is ticked off the roll, it’s whether they have had a right to have a democratic expression through their vote, and not allowing that to happen is an abject failure of the commission.”

Love also claimed he had heard stories of election staff not being trained in their roles, some voters being asked for identification that is not required, and ballot boxes not being secured.

Accusations of censorship and misinformation are flying around parliament as senators duel over offshore wind farms, foreshadowing high-stakes battles in the coming federal election.

The two main parties think the issue will play in their favour in marginal seats in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia, where local groups are campaigning against wind farms.

Offshore wind became an election flashpoint for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese when he was heckled by anti-wind farm protesters at a press conference in Wollongong in February.

In Canberra, Nationals senator Ross Cadell drew a furious response when he accused his fellow members of the Senate environment committee of “grave disregard” for concerned community members after they decided to “mothball” a hearing of an offshore wind inquiry with just 24 hours’ notice last week.

The chairwoman of the powerful committee, Labor’s Senator Karen Grogan, rejected all of Cadell’s claims and accused him of “deliberate misinformation” that amounted to “nothing more than a self-serving political stunt”.

The deputy chairwoman of the committee, the Greens’ Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, also weighed in on the debate, saying Cadell’s claims may constitute contempt of the Senate, an offence that applies to senators who issue “any false or misleading report” of a committee.

Offshore wind farms, which can harness stronger and more reliable winds than onshore turbines, are one of the world’s fastest-growing renewable energy sectors.

Read the full story here.

US President Donald Trump has lashed former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in a late-night social media post just as he is poised to decide whether to exempt Australia from tariffs and steel and aluminium imports.

Trump wrote: “Malcolm Turnbull, the former prime minister of Australia who was always leading that wonderful country from ‘behind’, never understood what was going on in China, nor did he have the capacity to do so.

“I always thought he was a weak and ineffective leader and, obviously, Australian’s [sic] agreed with me.”

Turnbull had just appeared on Bloomberg television in the US, speaking about the planned tariffs and arguing Trump was playing into China’s hands.

Turnbull declined to respond to Trump’s barb: “His post says it all, doesn’t it?”

Earlier on Sunday night local time, Trump flew into Washington from Mar-a-Lago and did not answer when asked whether he would exempt Australia from the tariffs.

He previously said he would give it great consideration, but in recent days Trump’s top economic adviser Kevin Hassett said he doubted any exemptions would be granted.

Ailing casino operator Star Entertainment’s rescue efforts have taken a new twist, with the company receiving a new funding offer from a US gambling giant.

Star avoided collapse on Friday after signing a deal to offload its stake in the Queen’s Wharf casino resort in Brisbane to the Hong Kong-based Far East Consortium and Chow Tai Fook enterprises.

Under that deal, Star would receive a $53 million payment for agreeing to sell its 50 per cent stake to its Queen’s Wharf partners, allowing them to take full ownership of the venue.

However, Star today confirmed it had received a rival rescue offer from the US-based gambling, betting and entertainment company, Bally’s Corporation.

Under the proposal, which had been reported in The Australian, Bally’s has proposed to inject a minimum $250 million into Star by March 28. It is an alternative to the Queen’s Wharf deal and offers Star a path to longer-term funding and securing the future of almost 9000 jobs in NSW and Queensland.

Star has been racing to shore up its finances and avoid falling into administration. Its earnings remain under pressure from a cost-of-living crisis, and analysts expect Star to lose money for years in its current state.

There’s also a looming penalty from Australia’s financial crimes regulator – a fine in the region of $330 million, according to some analysts – for alleged breaches of anti-money laundering laws.