TRANSCRIPT
In this bulletin;
- Hamas now reviewing a Gaza peace plan;
- The Communications Minister meeting with Optus' major shareholder after two devastating triple zero outages;
- And in sport, Mitch Brown unhappy over a Mad Monday post he says is homophobic.
Britain's government has thrown its support behind a new White House plan to end the war in Gaza after it was presented to the Israeli government and Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has released a statement saying the UK supports efforts to end the fighting, release the hostages, and ensure the provision of urgent humanitarian assistance for the people of Gaza.
Hamas itself is yet to respond to the proposal, but Reuters and Al Jazeera are both reporting that Hamas’s negotiating team is reviewing the terms.
Meanwhile, in an interview with SBS Arabic conducted prior to today's announcement, Palestinian Authority foreign ministry spokesperson Varsen Aghabekian has said they would back efforts to end the fighting as soon as possible.
"We support any plan that leads to an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. The priority is to halt the fighting and allow aid to enter; only then can we consider the days ahead for Gaza."
—
Federal Communications Minister Anika Wells has rejected calls for an independent investigation after meeting with representatives of Optus and its parent company Singtel.
She says two Triple-Zero outages linked to four deaths are a compliance issue, and don't necessarily point to a need for broader reform of the emergency call service system.
Singtel CEO Yuen Kuan Moon says his board has commissioned an independent review to be led by Dr Kerry Schott, and has agreed to share the findings publicly.
Opposition leader Sussan Ley has maintained her calls for an independent investigation without saying who should conduct it, but Ms Wells says the ACMA is already investigating the failures and is best placed to do so.
"I have said that Optus will face significant consequences as a result of what has happened here, but it is for me as the minister to take those decisions after the ACMA investigation is complete."
—
France, Germany and Sweden will send military personnel and anti-drone systems to Denmark to boost security at this week's European summits in Copenhagen, after drone incursions that forced Denmark to shut several airports.
Drones disrupted air traffic at six Danish airports last week, including at Copenhagen, the Nordic region's busiest, in what Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called a hybrid attack on her nation.
Denmark has already said it has increased security around the events after the drone sightings.
—
A group of Indigenous people are launching a class action against the federal government over a controversial work for the dole program in the Northern Territory.
Law firm Maurice Blackburn is running the class action, which they say is asking for compensation and an apology to those who were in the Community Development Program in Maningrida between July 2015 and May 2021.
One of the plaintiffs - senior elder Baru Pascoe - has told Principal Lawyer Miranda Nagy in a video published on the firm's website that he received five penalties in the six months he was involved in CDP.
He says the program was forced on the community and created considerable distress and hardship.
"Maningrida has experienced a history of culturally inappropriate policies in the past. These policies have come from Canberra. Canberra thinking; not our thinking. People didn't know what CDP is, how it looks like, what are the outcomes, the risks, the failure and things like that. People didn't understand in the broader community."
—
To sport and in AFL news,
A controversial social media post from Geelong star Bailey Smith has drawn the ire of Mitch Brown, who has called it homophobic.
Smith made a series of Instagram posts from the Cats' Mad Monday function, which he had attended with captain Patrick Dangerfield in a pose referencing the movie Brokeback Mountain that depicted the story of a complex romantic relationship between two American cowboys.
Mitch Brown has called for the players to 'do better' in his own post on Instagram.
He has written that while losing a grand final doesn't make you gay, being homophobic definitely makes you a loser.
