Leeser urges Labor to offer asylum to Iranian women’s football team - as it happened

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What we learned; Sunday 8 March

And that’s where we’ll leave you this Sunday. Here’s a snapshot from today:

Australia is not participating in an “offensive action against Iran” and will not deploy ground troops, but may play a defensive military role in the conflict in the Middle East, Penny Wong said.

Nine direct flights have repatriated 1,549 Australians from the Middle East as of 5.30am, with five more en route to Australia from Dubai today.

The shadow attorney general, Julian Leeser, has called for the Australian government to offer asylum to the Iranian women’s football team now competing in the Women’s Asian Cup on the Gold Coast.

Flooding continues throughout the Top End, with the entire community of Nauiyu (Daly River) evacuated and Katherine still cut off.

Emergency declarations remain in place for the Katherine, Beswick and Daly River regions, but Beswick has been downgraded to a watch and act alert.

About 1000 people are taking shelter from the floods in the Northern Territory.

In Queensland, a severe weather warning is in place for the north-west, with a tropical low gradually expected to move to the south-east by tomorrow. Isolated six-hourly rainfall totals of up to 100mm are likely, along with falls as high as 170mm on the Sunshine Coast.

Alleged members of a secret online child exploitation group have been charged with more than 1,000 offences in what police are describing as “one of the most significant online child abuse investigations in Australia”.

The NSW government has opened expressions of interest for the location and management of a prospective new major film studio in Sydney.

Three teenagers have been charged with murder after a good Samaritan was killed in an allegedly “savage” stabbing attack while trying to help a 14-year-old schoolboy.

Two men have died after being pulled from the water on the NSW Central Coast yesterday evening.

Thanks so much for your company today. Look after yourselves, and I’ll see you next time.

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Updated at 23.31 EST

Tom McIlroy

One Nation candidate calls Julia Gillad a ‘non-productive old cow’

Pauline Hanson’s candidate in the byelection for Sussan Ley’s seat likened former prime minister Julia Gillard to a “non-productive old cow” that should be destroyed before suggesting the comments were tongue-in-cheek.

David Farley, an agriculture businessman, was picked on Saturday as the One Nation candidate for the 9 May byelection for Farrer, which Ley held for 25 years.

The race – a critical first test of the party’s surging public support, and of the Liberals under Angus Taylor – was triggered by Ley quitting parliament last month after being ousted as Liberal leader.

Farley, 69, is a Narrandera-based irrigator, father of three daughters and grandfather of seven.

As the chief executive of the Australian Agricultural Company in 2012, he made a reference to the then Labor leader as he spoke about cows being destroyed using new abattoir technology.

Read the full story here:

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Updated at 23.24 EST

Man stabbed to death in inner west Sydney, police allege

A man is in police custody after another man was allegedly stabbed to death in Sydney’s inner west today, NSW Police say.

Emergency services were called to a house in Concord about 12.10pm today, police said, after a welfare concern report. Officers found a man, in his 30s, with a stab wound to his chest. He was treated by NSW Ambulance paramedics but died at the scene.

A second man, 41, was arrested at the house and taken to the Burwood police station.

Burwood detectives are investigating.

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Updated at 23.13 EST

Liberal MP urges Labor to offer asylum to Iranian women’s football team

The shadow attorney general, Julian Leeser, has called for the Australian government to offer asylum to the Iranian women’s football team now competing in the Women’s Asian Cup on the Gold Coast.

They are due to return to Iran after their final match of the tournament tonight.

The Liberal MP said in a statement today:

double quotation markOn International Women’s Day we must stand up for the women in our midst.

We know that in recent days serious threats have been made against the courageous Iranian Women’s soccer team who are currently playing in Australia.

Given the serious threats, members of the Iranian team should be offered asylum if they want it.

The Australian Government should not turn a blind eye to the danger these women face.

Leeser’s statement comes after refugee advocates urged the government to allow the players to remain in Australia after a state-aligned conservative commentator in Iran described them as “wartime traitors” and said they must be “dealt with more severely”.

You can read more about that here:

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Updated at 23.02 EST

Floods force NT school closures

Schools in the flooded areas will remain closed until the circumstances allow for them to be reopened, Finocchiaro said.

In Katherine, schools are being used as shelters at the moment. Wurst said once the emergency response teams have been able to properly survey the situation, they may be able to set up a proper evacuation centre and allow schools to reopen.

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Updated at 22.38 EST

Private helicopters come to NT towns’ rescue

Eighteen helicopters were involved in the rescue and recovery effort in the Daly River region, with almost all being private and commercial, Wurst says. The remaining were supplied by the Australian Border Force.

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Updated at 22.33 EST

Katherine residents warned not to leave town

People in Katherine have been advised not to attempt to travel out of town, as the Stuart Highway remains closed in both directions despite the rail corridor likely reopening.

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Updated at 22.30 EST

‘Do not make our lives any more difficult’: NT Police

The NT’s assistant police commissioner, Travis Wurst, has urged people in flooded areas not to “do something silly” and enter the flood waters after CCTV footage showed people jumping off bridges into them.

He says:

double quotation markThrough the CCTV network we’ve seen people jumping off the Katherine Bridge, running around in the CBD area [at] the edge of the Katherine River. Not only is the water flooding, flooding and flowing fast, swiftly, but [you] also have crocodiles and other things that will make your life difficult [if] you were to get into trouble.

Do not make our lives any more difficult than they already are. We have all of our emergency services working hand in hand to bring this response effort to the community. And if you are dragging us away to recover you because you’ve decided to do something silly, it impacts on people’s lives. Please, if it’s flooded, forget it.

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Updated at 23.05 EST

Flood waters peak at 19.2m in Katherine River

Jude Scott from the Bureau of Meteorology says the Katherine River peaked overnight at about 19.2m and is expected to begin receding in the coming days.

Scott continues:

double quotation markIn terms of the Daly River, the Daly is currently at 14.4m. It reached classification last night. Now the Daly River is expected to continue to rise in the coming days towards the 15m and beyond, and it is expected to remain in major flood level for at the next week.

In terms weather, that’s [the] forecast for the rest of today, we have seen a slight movement of the focus of the weather towards the north-west coastal areas, but we can still within this active monsoon trough, expect to see showers and storms bubble up. That may lead to some isolated totals in excess of 100mm, although around the 50mm mark is the probable widespread rainfall total for today.

That rain is not expected to increase river levels but may keep them high, Scott says.

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Updated at 22.44 EST

NT announces disaster assistance payments

Disaster assistance payments will be made available for people in the Katherine area, the NT chief minister, Lia Finocchiaro, says:

double quotation markThat support will [be] available as soon as they’re able to utilise it. What this looks like is an immediate relief payment of $611 per adult, $309 per child, capped at $1537 per family.

And also there is a re-establishment assistance fund available for eligible households of up to $8,847, and that is for things like white goods, furniture, bedding and all of those things you can imagine are underwater for a lot of people at a really difficult, stressful and heartbreaking time for that community.

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Updated at 22.40 EST

NT town evacuated as floods prompt emergency warnings

The Northern Territory chief minister is giving an update on flooding in the region.

Lia Finocchiaro says emergency declarations remain in place for the Katherine, Beswick and Daly River regions, but Beswick has been downgraded to a watch and act alert.

About 120 calls for help have been received in the last 24 hours, with about 1000 Territorians taking shelter.

After a survey of the rail, trains will again be moving from Alice Springs to Darwin with the hope that they make it through to Darwin overnight.

Finocchiaro says:

double quotation markIf I move to Daly River to give an update on that community – yesterday we reported that we had a massive evacuation effort under way. We were successful in being able to evacuate 220 people yesterday, and I can confirm now that since then we have been able to get everyone out of Daly River, which is excellent news.

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Updated at 22.23 EST

Dan Jervis-Bardy

South Australian Liberal insiders fear for the party’s existence as polls point to an election catastrophe

The sound of The Killers’ song The Man was blaring at Adelaide’s Hackney hotel as Steven Marshall waded through a throng of supporters to celebrate a drought-breaking triumph for the South Australian Liberal party.

Marshall had defeated Jay Weatherill’s Labor government and seen off the threat of Nick Xenophon’s SA Best, to end the party’s 16 years in opposition.

“A massive thank you to the people of South Australia who have put their trust, their faith in me and the Liberal team for a new dawn, a new dawn for South Australia,” Marshall told the crowd late in the evening of 17 March 2018.

Four years later and the Marshall government was wiped out in a Labor landslide led by Peter Malinauskas.

Now, another four years has passed and the optimism of 2018 has been replaced with a mix of trepidation and resignation as catastrophic opinion polling puts the Liberal party in a battle for its continued existence on 21 March.

Some downcast party insiders fear Ashton Hurn’s Liberals could be reduced to fewer than five of the 47 lower house seats, and wiped out in metropolitan Adelaide in a political earthquake on the scale of their Western Australia’s counterparts’ landslide defeat in 2021.

Read the full story here:

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Updated at 21.40 EST

Twenty-six men charged as part of ‘one of most significant online child abuse investigations’

Alleged members of a secret online child exploitation group have been charged with more than 1,000 offences in what police are describing as “one of the most significant online child abuse investigations in Australia”.

In a statement today, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said a year-long joint investigation with Victoria police had begun in late 2023, following intelligence shared by Queensland police.

Police said this led to the infiltration of an online group allegedly using encrypted messaging to share abuse material. The group was shut down and 26 alleged members, all Victoria-based and male, have been charged with offences including the possession, access, transmission, solicitation and production of child abuse material.

Some have been convicted and sentenced to terms of imprisonment, while others remain before the courts. A further nine alleged offenders have been arrested by NSW police.

About 65,000 unique child abuse images and videos, including more than 300 hours of footage, were seized during the investigation. The statement said the material shared by this group was “was truly among the most depraved ever seen by law enforcement”. AFP detective superintendent Bernard Geason said:

double quotation markI am extremely proud of the persistence of the investigators involved in this extremely distressing investigation. I would like to thank them for their unwavering dedication to identifying the alleged offenders and stopping further abuse. This is a hard reminder of how pervasive this crime can be.

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Updated at 21.32 EST

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