Australia news live: defection speculation as ex-Liberal senator Hollie Hughes prepares to host Pauline Hanson at her NSW pub

Former Liberal senator to host Pauline Hanson at pub

Josh Butler

Pauline Hanson continues to attract support from Liberal ranks, with former Coalition senator Hollie Hughes to host the One Nation leader at her pub in Rydal, New South Wales this weekend.

Hughes was a federal senator from 2019 to 2025, but left the parliament after losing a preselection fight and not being re-elected last year. Hughes quit the Liberal Party in November and was strongly critical of her former colleagues for undermining then-leader Sussan Ley, who was later replaced by Angus Taylor in a party room coup.

Hughes owns a pub in Rydal, outside Lithgow. On Saturday, Hughes said Hanson would appear at the hotel for an event called “Pauline In The Pub”. A poster published on Hughes’ Facebook page states the event is sold out, and advertises: “join us for a big night!”

Hughes wrote alongside it: “Well I think Saturday night might be even more of a party!”

Several people commented on Hughes’ post, asking if she was joining One Nation. Guardian Australia has contacted Hughes to ask if she was planning on joining another party.

Rydal is in the federal seat of Calare, held by independent Andrew Gee, a former Nationals member who quit the party in 2022.

Updated at 04.58 CEST

Key events

Show key events only

Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature

Man charged over swastika tattoo in Alice Springs

A 25-year-old man has been charged over a “visible swastika tattoo” on his leg after visiting a business in Alice Springs in December 2025.

Northern Territory police yesterday arrested the man and executed a search warrant at his home, where items indicative of drug supply were seized.

The man was taken to the Alice Springs watch house and has been charged with public display of a prohibited Nazi symbol.

He has been remanded in custody to appear in Alice Springs local court today.

Updated at 05.01 CEST

Labor MP says bailout of Spirit of Tasmania operator ‘shocking’

Kerry Vincent, the state minister for infrastructure and transport, said the cash injection was to cover past capital cost overruns and was not TT-Line spending additional money, AAP adds.

Vincent said:

double quotation markWe know these decisions come at a difficult time, and it’s no secret the capital cost overruns have put a strain on TT-Line. This is about ensuring our vital infrastructure and a key tourism and freight link is supported and continuing to function as Tasmanians need and deserve.

Labor MP Dean Winter said the bailout was “shocking”:

double quotation markThe half-a-billion dollar bailout is the most shocking chapter yet of the horror novel known as the Spirits fiasco.

Tasmanians will be paying the price for the Spirits for generations to come, and every job and essential service that Eric Abetz cuts in next week’s budget is just the tip of the iceberg.

Dean Winter. Photograph: Chris Kidd/AAPShare

Tasmania government will give ferry operator $506m bailout

An embattled Bass Strait ferry operator, which has suffered delays and cost overruns in the delivery of two new ships, has been given a $506m government bailout, AAP reports.

The equity injection from the Tasmanian government to state-owned Spirit of Tasmania operator TT-Line will be provided over four years.

TT-Line’s delivery of two new replacement ferries, which are set to sail in October, is years behind schedule and $717m over the initial project estimate.

The saga made international headlines in 2024 after it was revealed the new ferries would have to sit idle because a new berth in northwest Tasmania wouldn’t be ready in time for the ships.

TT-Line has been forced to fork out millions to hold the ferries in berths while the new berth is being constructed. The operator was given $75m by the government in November’s interim budget, with the $506m to be included in Thursday’s 2026/27 budget.

Updated at 04.43 CEST

Former Liberal senator to host Pauline Hanson at pub

Josh Butler

Pauline Hanson continues to attract support from Liberal ranks, with former Coalition senator Hollie Hughes to host the One Nation leader at her pub in Rydal, New South Wales this weekend.

Hughes wrote alongside it: “Well I think Saturday night might be even more of a party!”

Several people commented on Hughes’ post, asking if she was joining One Nation. Guardian Australia has contacted Hughes to ask if she was planning on joining another party.

Rydal is in the federal seat of Calare, held by independent Andrew Gee, a former Nationals member who quit the party in 2022.

Updated at 04.58 CEST

Josh Taylor

PM rejects calls for Australia to boycott Eurovision over Israel’s inclusion

Following Delta Goodrem’s success in moving to the Eurovision grand final overnight, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has said Australia should not boycott the event over Israel’s continued inclusion in the song contest.

Albanese told ABC Radio Melbourne that he spoke with Goodrem earlier in the week and hoped she would win Eurovision.

double quotation markI think she’s a ripper. She’s so proud. I’ll say this about Delta Goodrem.

She’s at the stage of her career – she doesn’t need to do this at all. She’s doing this because she wanted to represent Australia. The Australian government supported her doing this as well.

Asked by host Raf Epstein if Australia, like several other countries, should have boycotted Eurovision while Israel was allowed to compete, the prime minister said: “No.”

double quotation markBecause we should participate. And you know, the idea – you can have a disagreement with a policy of a government. As I’ve been critical and will continue to be critical of what has happened in Gaza. That doesn’t mean that I believe Israel doesn’t have a right to exist. It does. I want it to exist side by side with a Palestinian state.

SBS drew criticism late last year when it confirmed Australia intended to compete in the competition.

Updated at 04.19 CEST

Tory Shepherd

Dingoes distinct from ‘wild dogs’, research shows

Dingo DNA from before colonisation has been used to show Australia’s canines are almost 90% dingo, with just 11.7% of their DNA coming from domestic dogs.

Researchers from Adelaide University’s Australian Centre for Ancient DNA and Environment Institute tested 300 dingoes and said the results resolved a disagreement over how much European dog ancestry was in the animals.

A 2023 study found more than half of Australia’s dingoes were genetically pure.

Photograph: Chris Putnam/Alamy

A new documentary tells how dingoes have been shot, trapped and poisoned since colonisation, penned in (or out) by the 5,614km dingo fence, and often grouped with “wild dogs” so they can be treated as pests. It argues for better human/dingo coexistence.

The Adelaide University research, published in Conservation Letters, also found there are eight genetically distinct populations of dingo, and says the technique they used is affordable and scalable, which would allow large-scale ancestry screening to be feasible for the first time.

Senior author Dr Yassine Souilmi said:

double quotation markThe ‘wild dog’ label hides important biological and cultural differences. A predominantly dingo individual is not the same as a stray domestic dog.

Future management should be regionally informed, and developed in close partnership with Indigenous Australian communities, for whom dingoes have been companions and kin for thousands of years.

Updated at 04.07 CEST

Petra Stock

Australia’s housing affordability expected to worsen as homelessness soars under fossil-fuelled future

Global heating could worsen housing affordability, push up rents and quadruple homelessness in a decade without fairer housing policies and action to reduce emissions, new research has found.

Home prices and rents in Australia are influenced by a complex mix of factors, from incomes and mortgage rates to insurance premiums, available land and population.

University of Sydney researchers modelled the housing market system, using two decades of public data, and tested its response under different climate scenarios, publishing their results in Cities.

They found climate change affected housing and rental affordability under both high and low-emission scenarios, but vulnerable households were worst-hit under a fossil-fuelled future.

One Nation scores higher primary vote than Labor in one post-budget poll

Krishani Dhanji

In a turn of events this morning, One Nation has recorded a higher primary vote than Labor and the Coalition, in post-budget polling by Roy Morgan, which finds that if an election were held tomorrow, Australia would see a hung parliament.

The two-party preferred count, according to polling of 2,348 voters between 13 and 14 May, shows Labor just ahead of One Nation on 51% to 49%. Labor polls 55% against the Coalition’s 45% on a two-party preferred count of the two major parties.

The Coalition’s primary vote sits at a meagre 16.5%.

Of the key themes tested by the poll, immigration was the most dominant issue, with respondents linking migration to “housing pressure, cost of living, cultural change, infrastructure strain and loss of national identity”.

One Nation has enjoyed a meteoric rise in recent months, having just swiped the seat of Farrer from the Liberals at last weekend’s byelection. But there is more than a year to go before the next national vote – so plenty can change.

There is also a lot of uncertainty in polling, so until we see more results from other pollsters aggregated together, it’s hard to say how definitive this result is for One Nation.

Pauline Hanson. Photograph: Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty ImagesShare

Updated at 03.25 CEST

Pauline Hanson cut off after running out of time delivering One Nation’s budget reply

One Nation’s Pauline Hanson said yesterday Australians were simply asking for a “country that works again” in her budget reply speech in parliament that lambasted renewable energy efforts and the Labor party, before she was cut off for running out of time.

Hanson, the leader of One Nation, claimed in her remarks that any tax offsets proposed by Labor would be “completely rubbed out” by bracket creep, saying the policies were a “trap for the next election and an advertising slogan for 2028”.

Pauline Hanson making her budget reply speech yesterday. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

As she continued to attack the Albanese government, moving on to a section about solar panels, she was cut off.

The official Hansard of the speech reads:

double quotation markIt is perverse that a government and an opposition believe they can change the weather, and are prepared to waste ultimately hundreds of billions to do it …

We are covering the land with windmills and solar panels and, in turn, delivering– (Time expired)

Hanson sought leave to finish her speech, but it was not granted. The Senate was then adjourned.

Updated at 03.08 CEST

Luca Ittimani

House prices to fall, economists predict

A growing number of economists have predicted house prices will fall across Australia in the coming year.

The Reserve Bank’s three interest rate hikes have pushed buyers out of the housing market, and a fourth is expected later this year. Investors are now expected to step back even further after the budget scrapped their tax breaks.

HSBC’s chief economist, Paul Bloxham, is the latest to downgrade forecasts. After prices rose nearly 9% in 2025, he had expected them to rise by up to 7% in 2026. Now Bloxham thinks they’ll fall in the next few months, unwinding earlier gains this year to stay flat by December, then fall further in 2027.

The government expects house prices to continue to rise, just slower, with prices 2% lower than they would otherwise have been, thanks to the taxes

Commonwealth Bank’s Trent Saunders thinks the drag is probably just a touch stronger, which would see house prices rise just 3% over 2026, and warns it could be almost three times stronger, leaving prices about flat this year. But if investors go scrambling for the exits, more out of fear than from the fundamentals of the tax reforms, a downturn becomes possible, he says.

Macquarie analysts are also warning of the risk of a “negative immediate impact”; NAB expects a “small decline” in prices; and AMP and UBS believe a 5% fall in the short term is credible. AMP’s Shane Oliver said:

“This will no doubt be chalked up as a win for the policy change.”

Updated at 02.34 CEST

Ben Doherty

Asylum seekers advocacy group says Angus Taylor’s speech ‘divisive and misguided’

The Asylum Seekers Centre in Sydney said the opposition leader’s budget-in-reply speech, linking housing supply to migration levels, was “sadly predictable, divisive, and misguided”.

“The opposition leader has found a scapegoat, not a solution,” Elijah Buol, chief executive of the ASC said.

double quotation markHousing is a human right, and everyone in Australia should have access to safe, secure shelter – regardless of their visa status.

Buol said already, many people seeking asylum are denied income support, shut out of crisis accommodation and left with no path to stability. On some estimates, one in five people sleeping rough are non-residents on uncertain visas, including people seeking asylum.

The ASC’s own data shows that 55% of its clients have experienced homelessness since arriving in Australia.

Buol said political leaders must stop misdirecting the housing crisis towards migration for short‑term political gain:

double quotation markBlaming people seeking asylum or migrants for structural housing shortages is not only misleading, it distracts from the real policy solutions we urgently need.

The consequences are severe and predictable: people who have fled persecution and trauma are pushed into homelessness, exploitation and ongoing harm.

Updated at 02.19 CEST

Source

Visited 1 times, 1 visit(s) today