Car crashes into Russian consulate building’s gates in Sydney
Caitlin Cassidy
A man is in custody after a car crashed into Sydney’s Russian consulate building this morning.
In a statement, NSW police said about 8am on Monday, officers were called to the building on Fullerton Street in Woollahra following reports of an unauthorised car parked in the driveway.
They said when police arrived and attempted to speak to a man, 39, who was behind the wheel, he allegedly drove into the consulate’s front gate.
The man was arrested and taken to Surry Hills police station where he was assisting police with inquiries.
A 24-year-old constable injured his hand in the incident and was treated by paramedics at the scene. There were no other reports of injuries, police said.
“Inquiries are continuing,” police said.
A spokesperson for NSW Ambulance confirmed they received a call to attend the address just after 8am. The man was treated on the scene for a cut to his hand and did not require hospitalisation, they said.
Key events
Benita Kolovos
Deputy premier: the success of Victoria is the ‘secret sauce’ of migration
Victoria’s deputy premier, Ben Carroll, was also asked about yesterday’s rally at a press conference this morning in Flemington. He said immigration is Victoria’s “secret sauce”:
Our migrants should be celebrated. They shouldn’t be, in any way, frowned upon.
The success of Victoria is indeed the secret sauce of migration. We know our migrants are ambitious, that our migrants create jobs, that they’re innovators. We’ll always celebrate them. We know that our diversity is our greatest strength, and we’ll stand up and make sure we speak [out] loud and proud of anyone that tries to destroy Victoria’s diversity.
Carroll said he was “appalled” by the attack on Camp Sovereignty and to see the Aboriginal flag burned. He went on:
It just goes to show the level of ignorance that we’re dealing with that people that attend a march against immigration would then go and attack a camp and destroy a flag of the first inhabitants of our country.
These people are our Indigenous people… Our Aboriginal people have been here for 65,000 years. We are all immigrants. This was their land, and we need to respect that … It was appalling to see what occurred yesterday on the streets of Melbourne, an appalling attack on the First Nations people of our state.
Asked about concerns from police on the ground that there weren’t enough resources to tackle the rally and counter protests, Carroll says officers did an “excellent job”:
There were six arrests. Anyone watching that footage would have thought that was a small amount of arrests. However, having said that, there’s a lot of footage. I witnessed a lady being thrown to the ground. I witnessed other people with blood all over their faces. I witnessed someone just trying to calm the situation then set upon. So there is lots of footage, and I hope those perpetrators are brought to account.
Millions of Australians are continuing to abandon the Coalition: report
Millions of Australians are abandoning the Coalition as the Liberals continue to review their election drubbing and rebuild a fractured party, AAP reports.
More than half of voters who previously voted for the Coalition, approximately five million people, wouldn’t consider voting for them if a federal election were held now, according to the Blueprint Institute, an independent thinktank.
More than two-thirds of people said they wouldn’t consider giving their first preference to the Coalition, which included 44% of former Coalition voters, according to the commissioned YouGov poll of 5,000 people in July.
The Blueprint Institute’s report, Winning Back the Coalition’s Missing Middle, found:
If the Coalition is to regain government through an improvement in the primary vote, it will need to do more than appeal to its base or convince undecided voters. It must expand the number of people who are willing to consider its candidates as an option.
Half of those who had voted for the Coalition – but not at the 2025 election – were critical of climate change, renewable energy and housing affordability policy offerings.
Only 16% of former supporters believed the conservative alliance was serious about addressing climate change.
Opposition move to suspend standing orders in the Senate
It’s just past 10am and there’s already a little bit of drama bubbling away in the Senate.
Senator Michaelia Cash is trying to reinstate cross-portfolio Indigenous matters.
The opposition last week, accused the Albanese government of avoiding scrutiny of its Indigenous affairs agenda after axing a traditional standalone estimates hearing on the topic.
Cash has moved to suspend standing orders, and says that when it comes to “real accountability” the government won’t front up to scrutiny:
When it comes to facing hard questions about the failures of indigenous service delivery, about the outcomes on the ground for children, for communities, suddenly Senator [Penny] Wong and her counterparts fall silent … they actually vote to remove the ability of the Australian Senate and the opposition to ask questions to this portfolio.
While Cash is attacking the government, I’ve been told the Greens are trying to also suspend standing orders – but to talk about the anti-immigration rallies over the weekend.
The finance minister, Katy Gallagher, says the government has put an extra three days on the Senate estimates calendar for December and says the Coalition should pursue progress on Closing the Gap through all Senate estimates hearings over those three days.
Turn up and ask the questions over the entire allocation of estimates.
Natasha May
NSW Health team begins work to transition Northern Beaches hospital to public facility
From today a specialist NSW Health team will be on site at the Northern Beaches hospital to prepare for the hospital’s eventual transition out of a public private partnership.
Northern Beaches is the only hospital in the state where public services are provided by a private company, Healthscope, under a complex contract.
After years of mounting debt and a string of complaints about care standards – including the death of two-year-old Joe Massa, a woman whose baby died in childbirth because an emergency caesarean was offered too late and a woman whose baby was born at 25 weeks via emergency caesarean after she says the hospital failed to diagnose her appendicitis – the hospital went into receivership in May. The NSW government is trying to buy it.
A transition assessment and planning team from the Northern Sydney Local Health District (NSLHD) will be working alongside staff at Northern Beaches hospital as the negotiations between the government and private operator Healthscope continue.
The health minister, Ryan Park, made the announcement on 2GB this morning:
One of the things we need to do is send in a transition team of around 15 staff that will get to know the hospital better, how its IT systems run, how its staffing runs. What’s the clinical safety around what happens out of that hospital? What are the issues in relation to equipment? Things like that that are very clinically focused, that are very operationally focused.
They won’t be nurses and doctors performing actual procedures, but they will be behind the scenes getting to know how that hospital runs as it starts to prepare for the transition out of that PPP arrangement.
Park confirmed negotiations continue, led by the treasurer, and “we hope to get a negotiated outcome.”
Josh Butler
Age-assurance tests will offer ‘appeal rights’ if automated options gets it wrong, Wells says
Older Australians will have “appeal rights” online if they are inadvertently locked out of social media under the Albanese government’s under-16s social media ban, with concern that some of the age assurance technology can get it wrong.
A major report into the government-run age assurance trial has found that while there are effective options, errors are inevitable with the tools on offer and recommended that companies provide multiple “fallback options” – such as ID checks.
There has been a lot of focus on the potential for under-16s to evade the ban and get online, but less public and media focus on the potential for people above 16 to be wrongly assessed as being under 16.
The report found accuracy issues for older adults, non-Caucasian users and female-presenting people near the age levels tested, as well as underrepresentation of Indigenous people in the training data.
Anika Wells, the communications minister, said this morning the government was mindful of that issue. She said platforms would likely use a “pick and mix” combination of various technologies – including biometric scanning, and “age inference” from the content that someone interacts with. At a doorstop press conference, she said:
It means that kids who are in that 13 to 16 bracket might need a more layered approach from platforms, but it also means that for older Australians, there needs to be appeal rights.
We have put in the rules that there needs to be a way, if there’s a social media decision that you disagree with, you can appeal it. And the onus would be that that happens quickly …
It is in these social media platforms’ interest to keep as many people online as possible, and they’ll be doing their best to keep granny online.
Benita Kolovos
Victorian police minister says Dezi Freeman signs shows ‘abhorrent nature’ of some protesters at anti-immigration rallies
Continuing from our last post …
Carbines was also asked by co-host Sharnelle Vella about protesters displaying signs with images of Dezi Freeman on them. Have they broken any laws? He replied:
I did see that in reports over in South Australia, and if there were such signage there [in Melbourne] yesterday, if there’s any action police can take and be assured that they will.
But I think it just goes to the abhorrent nature of the sorts of people who want to associate together at rallies when police, at this time, are hunting down an alleged double murderer who’s still at large in regional Victoria, and they’ve had to babysit some people in the community who want to cause violence and intimidate people [through] a range of racist gripes that are not shared by the majority of Victorians.
Benita Kolovos
Victorian police minister condemns March for Australia rally
The Victorian minister for police, Anthony Carbines, was on ABC Radio Melbourne’s breakfast program earlier. He was asked what he made of the March for Australia protests and he responded that they were “disgraceful”.
Carbines went on:
People who choose to attend such rallies – addressed by convicted criminals and members of neo Nazi groups, as we saw yesterday – need to be called out and condemned for their associations at those rallies. Victorians need to continue to call it out, Victorians need to continue to have a positive attitude, to celebrate our diversity and wrap their arms around people in the community who feel that they’re being blamed for the sort of petty whingers and gripes and the discrimination and racism of a fringe element.
Carbines said most rallies in Melbourne’s CBD, including pro-Palestine rallies that have been held every Sunday for almost two years, were “largely peaceful”. But yesterday “brought violence to the streets of Melbourne”, including Camp Sovereignty at King’s Domain. He said:
Police will be investigating those matters, they’ll also be in contact with members of Camp Sovereignty and a lot of our First Nations, people who are deeply distressed and upset with that activity yesterday, and this is what happens, isn’t it, when you have bullies in the community who roam in packs to intimidate others, it’s gutless, and it needs to be called out, and we will hold those people to account.
Car crashes into Russian consulate building’s gates in Sydney
Caitlin Cassidy
A man is in custody after a car crashed into Sydney’s Russian consulate building this morning.
In a statement, NSW police said about 8am on Monday, officers were called to the building on Fullerton Street in Woollahra following reports of an unauthorised car parked in the driveway.
They said when police arrived and attempted to speak to a man, 39, who was behind the wheel, he allegedly drove into the consulate’s front gate.
The man was arrested and taken to Surry Hills police station where he was assisting police with inquiries.
A 24-year-old constable injured his hand in the incident and was treated by paramedics at the scene. There were no other reports of injuries, police said.
“Inquiries are continuing,” police said.
A spokesperson for NSW Ambulance confirmed they received a call to attend the address just after 8am. The man was treated on the scene for a cut to his hand and did not require hospitalisation, they said.
Lambie criticises ‘thugs’ at anti-immigration protests but takes aim at ‘double standards’ on migrant values
Jacqui Lambie says people who turned up to protest the anti-immigration rallies should have “stay[ed] home with their loved ones”, and alleviated some of the pressure on police.
She told Sky News a little earlier that police were used as “meat in the middle of the sandwich”, and that we should have let the “thugs go out there and make idiots for themselves”.
You have to ask what sort of people are standing up with those Neo Nazis and the thuggery that is going on? Because you’re embarrassing the country and you’re embarrassing yourselves. And quite frankly, I think most Australians have had a gut full of it.
Like other politicians, Lambie said there needs to be more debate on immigration. But she also criticised face coverings, and said some migrants were coming to Australia without Australian values.
When you have your full face covering, if it is not for artistic and safety purposes, we have to ask why you’re allowed to do that. You can’t go into a bank with a motorcycle helmet on. So it is the double standards that are really starting to grind the gears of normal Australians out there.
Hume calls for Coalition to ‘get behind’ the Cop31 climate summit
Jane Hume has called on the Coalition to back Labor’s bid to host the Cop31 climate summit in 2026.
The Liberal senator, who was demoted to the backbench post-election, says it’s “low-hanging fruit” and calls it a “giant trade fair”.
Australia has been locked in a standoff with Turkiye for the bid.
Hume told ABC News Breakfast a little earlier that the summit would be “important economically” for Australia:
I think this is low-hanging fruit. Let’s face it – Cop, while it does bringing in world leaders to make some pretty serious decisions about a low-emissions future – most importantly, it’s a giant trade fair. It’s a trade fair that attracts financiers, tech companies, energy companies from right around the world.
This is a great opportunity for Australia. It’s something that we should be wholeheartedly embracing. Because, let’s face it – the world has moved on. They want a low-emissions future. It’s time that the Liberal party gets behind Cop so that we can talk about it in a sensible way.
Pocock joins condemnation of anti-immigration rallys but says Australia must have ‘sensible debate’ on migration
The anti-immigration rallies have dominated the morning interviews, with all politicians from across the divide (minus the few that attended the rallies) on a unity ticket to condemn them.
The independent senator David Pocock told ABC News Breakfast earlier this morning that some of the behaviour at the rallies was “totally unacceptable”.
But he also said Australia needs to have a sensible debate about migration:
I think this is really damaging when it comes to the message it’s sending to migrants across the country. And some of the slogans and behaviour we saw are totally unacceptable…
On the broader point, one of my frustrations has been that there is a real lack of appetite from the parliament to actually have a debate about this in a sensible way and then come up with a plan when it comes to migration and population that actually wards off some of the … feelings of ‘Well, there is no plan’.
It’s a point that the shadow immigration minister, Paul Scarr, made a bit earlier too – when there isn’t a sensible discussion, the fringe extremists gain control of the debate.
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