Key events
What we learned today, Wednesday 20 May
That’s where we’ll leave the blog for today. I hope you have a lovely evening. Here were today’s top stories:
Boy’s alleged plane hijack plan ‘politically motivated’
Prosecutors have claimed a teen accused of trying to hijack a commercial plane was politically motivated as they pushed for his case to be heard in a higher court, AAP reports.
The 19-year-old is accused of bringing a firearm and fake bomb onto an aircraft at Avalon Airport, southwest of Melbourne, in March 2025.
About 160 passengers were on board the Jetstar plane, which was due to fly to Sydney.
The teen, who was 17 at the time, appeared in a children’s court via video link on Wednesday as prosecutors applied for his case to be heard in either the county or supreme courts.
The prosecutor argued the penalties available in the children’s court – a maximum sentence of a two-year supervision order – were inadequate to reflect the seriousness of the alleged crime.
“It could not be said that it would be sufficient … to protect the community,” the prosecutor said.
There was an ideological or political motivation for the teen’s acts, the magistrate heard, although the details of the alleged motive were not discussed in open court.
The teen’s lawyer argued the purported motive was still unclear as he opposed the prosecution’s uplift application and flagged a potential mental impairment defence.
The defence lawyer argued the teen’s case should remain in the children’s court, where a magistrate could fairly and impartially decide on the facts.
The magistrate told the teen he would need some time to consider all of the material before making a decision.
The case is due to return to a children’s court in June.
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Adam Morton
Greens, David Pocock criticise climate impact of proposed job cuts at CSIRO
Politicians have reacted to Guardian Australia’s story that scientists have warned proposed job cuts at CSIRO would mean Australia would no longer be able to submit climate projections to form part of global reports and would have significantly reduced ability to forecast future damage to the country.
The specific scale and nature of the cuts are expected to be confirmed at a staff meeting on Thursday.
The Greens have accused Labor of cowardice for not speaking about the climate modelling impacts. The party’s science spokesperson, Peter Whish-Wilson, said the government’s silence in response to questions about the cuts was “cowardly” and that:
Scientists have made a dire warning that Labor’s cuts to the CSIRO mean Australia will no longer be able to submit climate projections to form part of global reports – including the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change].
These projections are relied on by governments, industry and farmers to manage critical risks including to our national security and losing them will significantly reduce Australia’s sovereign capability to protect the country’s interests.
Independent senator David Pocock said it was “tragically short-sighted” to underfund science, the case for investing in Australian climate science had “never been clearer”, and that:
Sovereign expertise, once lost, is slow and expensive to rebuild. In a country already living with worsening floods, fires and droughts, we should be strengthening this capability, not winding it back.
Government preparing ‘earliest opportunity’ to meet with 11 Australians on Gaza flotilla detained by Israel
Josh Taylor
Eleven Australians who attempted to deliver aid to Gaza as part of a global flotilla but were detained by Israeli forces off the coast of Cyprus are expected to arrive in Israel on Wednesday local time, with the Australian government seeking to meet them at the earliest opportunity.
The detained Australians are academics, doctors, students, activists and film-makers, including Anny Mokotow, Dr Bianca Pullman-Webb, Neve O’Connor, Violet Coco, Gemma O’Toole, Sam Woripa Watson, Zack Schofield, Helen O’Sullivan, Juliet Lamont, Isla Lamont and Surya McEwan.
A flotilla spokesperson said participants were understood to be arriving at Ashdod port on Wednesday, local time, from which they will be transferred to Ketziot prison.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the foreign minister, Penny Wong, said the government was preparing to meet the detained Australians at the earliest opportunity:
The Australian government is engaging with Israeli authorities on the welfare of detained Australians involved in the flotilla and making preparations to visit them at the earliest opportunity.
We want to see all detained Australians released as soon as possible.
Australian officials continue to make clear to Israel our expectation that any detainees receive humane treatment in line with international norms.
The spokesperson declined to state the location of the meeting.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade “strongly encouraged” the Australians not to participate, “given the risks to their safety and that of others,” the spokesperson said.
Cait Kelly
Former rooming house in Melbourne’s St Kilda converted into supportive housing site
The Victorian minister for housing and building, Nick Staikos, has announced a former rooming house in St Kilda, Madden House, will share in $15m in funding from the state budget with four other supportive housing sites in Melbourne, Seddon, Shepparton and Mildura.
Madden House has been converted into 26 self-contained units with on-site support services. Residents moved into apartments in December last year, and since opening, there has been a 12% reduction in local by-name lists.
The state’s budget delivers $47m to tackle homelessness, including $26m for services that tackle rough sleeping through outreach services.
Staikos said:
Madden House is getting vulnerable Victorians off the streets and into secure housing, and we’re proud to back it.
Safe housing plus wraparound support – that’s what gets people back on their feet.
Luca Ittimani
Webjet warns Australians avoiding Euro summer holiday, shares hit record low
Webjet has warned the oil crisis is squeezing Australian Euro summer travel, sending its shares crashing to a record low.
The company’s chief executive, Katrina Barry, told analysts Australians’ travel bookings over the last six weeks were running 12% below the same period last year, with travel switching towards nearby Asian destinations. She said:
We’re having to adapt and pivot all the time … No one’s buying international long haul – ‘Let’s pivot to focus on short-haul Asia and focus all our flights and package deals on that’.
The US-Israel war on Iran, rising air fares and cuts to airline capacity were to blame, Barry said. The loss of consumer confidence, though, was more severe and would not lift soon, even if the Australian government dropped its “do not travel” warning for the Middle East, she said.
It takes more than one drop of that [warning] to change people’s behaviours, particularly given people plan. The travel for European and North American summer, that is booked sometime between November to February … and there’s a lot more last-minute bookings.
Business travellers and “cashed [up] baby boomers” were still booking trips, Barry said.
Webjet reported its bookings and earnings had slumped in the year to March and it expected additional hits to revenue from credit card surcharge reforms and Virgin Australia’s plans to cut commissions to booking agencies. Traders sold out and Webjet’s share price dropped from 49 cents to 40 cents. It now sits at 44 cents, which would be a record low if sustained.
Luca Ittimani
Victoria’s free public transport brings 20% lift, boom in usage predicted
Victoria’s free public transport has seen trips rise by a fifth and the government expects network use will keep momentum.
Government data shows the network hosted 68m trips since free travel began on 31 March up to 11 May, a 19% increase from the same period in 2025.
April alone is estimated to have seen about 49m trips, in line with 2018 and 2019 numbers. Pandemic lockdowns crunched Victorian public transport use and April 2025 only recorded 42m.
The government has predicted the recovery in network use will continue into next year in its latest budget’s department projection.
Usage had been weakening slightly – 2024 saw 501m trips across the network but 2025 only had 490. Now free transport has the government predicting 510m trips for the year ending in June and 524m for the year after, with metropolitan train use in particular expected to pick up.
Victoria’s transport minister, Gabrielle Williams, said:
Free travel is taking pressure off the pump, with passengers making the most of more than 24,000 bus services, 3,500 train services and hundreds of tram services that have been added to the network.
The initiative will end on 31 May, to be replaced with half price fares until the end of 2026.
Pauline Hanson seeks funding for second Queensland electorate office
Andrew Messenger
One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson has asked the Department of Finance to investigate funding a second electorate office for her in the central Queensland seat of Capricornia.
Hanson already has an office in the Brisbane CBD. A spokesperson for Hanson said she was looking “at the possibility” of establishing a second, in Yeppoon, 700km north of Brisbane.
The Commonwealth funds electorate offices through the department of finance.
Hanson’s spokesperson said lower house MPs representing large electorates often had two offices but they were unsure if any senators – who represent an entire state – had similar arrangements.
The Hanson spokesperson said One Nation was also hoping to win the seat.
“We’ve already signalled publicly that there are certain seats that we’re going to be targeting strongly in Queensland. Capricornia is one of them,” he said, adding that
the electorates of Flynn, Groom, Maranoa and Kennedy were also on the party’s radar.
Capricornia has been held by LNP MP Michelle Landry since 2013.
Landry accused Senator Hanson of playing “little games” and said she would stand by her record if One Nation decided to run.
She told AAP:
It’s interesting when you have a celebrity politician that thinks they’re going to drop in and take the seat off a hard-working member that’s been in her fifth term.
Victorian premier defends bringing Land Forces weapons expo back to Melbourne
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, has defended her government’s decision to bring the controversial Land Forces weapons expo back to Melbourne in 2028.
The Greens criticised Labor’s decision to host the defence conference again, saying the state government was “completely out of touch”.
However, at a press conference this morning, Allan threw her support behind the defence industry, which she said “protects our freedom and protects our way of life here in this nation and in other democratic nations around the world”. She went on:
Having a major event like Land Forces continues to strengthen Victoria’s international reputation which is very important when it comes to securing industry contracts and work for the tens of thousands of people who work in the industry.
I also really firmly believe that if we as a nation are making a decision to send our young men and women into areas that are not safe then we need to ensure that they are equipped with the very best of equipment and vehicles [and] clothing.
And a lot of that is manufactured here in Melbourne and Victoria.
Allan also strongly backed the police, saying her government had given the force additional powers to crack down on “extremist” behaviours and the “small number of people who have used the cloak of protest to behave in an unacceptable way”.
In 2024, there was a public outcry over the expo. Protests outside the conference at the Melbourne Convention Centre turned violent and resulted in allegations police used excessive force against demonstrators.
While Victoria police denied the accusation, activists said at the time that several people protesting Land Forces expo are in hospital with serious injuries.
You can read some of our reporting from 2024 here:
Josh Taylor
Over 100 large Australian businesses report paying ransoms over cyber attacks in 11 months
Last week, we reported that experts believed it is likely that Instructure – the company behind the education platform Canvas – paid hackers in a bid to prevent the release of personal information of over 200 million students and school staff across the globe following a ransomware attack.
It’s something the company hasn’t confirmed or responded to questions about, but it is not uncommon.
We reported on Saturday that as of the end of January, the number of Australian businesses with a turnover of $3m or more per year that had been required to report to the Australian government since May 2025 if they paid a ransom sat at 75.
The home affairs department has now updated us on the figure. As of the end of April, it now stands at 113 – an increase of 38 in three months.
A spokesperson for the department said the Cyber Security Act prevented disclosure of information about the amount paid and which businesses had reported making a payment.
Since the scheme came into effect, the government had been focusing on education of the industry first before enforcing compliance on the reporting obligations. But the spokesperson said that going forward the government would “further its regulatory posture for compliance and enforcement of the regime”.
Melissa Davey
Government considering updating screening and travel advice as Ebola spreads
The federal government is considering updating screening arrangements for travellers as the Ebola outbreak spreads throughout the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda, the health minister, Mark Butler, said.
The DRC has been listed as a “do not travel” country on the Smartraveller website “for quite a period of time,” Butler told Sydney’s 2SM morning program on Wednesday.
“The World Health Organization has provided some updated advice overnight that I’ve looked at,” Butler said.
They’re very worried about the sharp increase in case numbers … the fatality rate of Ebola is very, very high … and the numbers are climbing alarmingly.
The strain of Ebola driving the outbreak is the Bundibugyo virus, for which there are no vaccines or antiviral treatments.
There is concern the virus may have spread into South Sudan, Butler said, “but because of the state of that country, it’s hard to get accurate reporting from that”.
“We’re talking about whether we need to consider different screening arrangements at the border,” he said.
It’s quite a complex trip back from the DRC or Uganda back to Australia, so [it is] obviously not as significant an issue for us as it would be for countries that are closer to the centre of this outbreak.
He said people thinking of travelling to affected areas should check the Smartraveller website for updates. Currently, people are urged to exercise a high degree of caution if travelling to Uganda.
But Butler said travel to affected areas “would not be advisable right now … this is one of the more serious outbreaks we’ve seen for a while”.
Nobody has ever been diagnosed with Ebola in Australia.
According to the Australian Centre for Disease Control, “Australia has strong border health measures to screen for people who may be symptomatic with very serious communicable diseases like Ebola disease”.
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Penry Buckley
NSW treasurer backs Minns’ bracket creep comments
Returning to the NSW treasurer, Daniel Mookhey has said he supports the premier, Chris Minns’ comments about bracket creep.
As we reported earlier, the premier said working families were being “stung” by income tax, including those in the highest marginal bracket of with earnings over $190,000. He has said federal changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing should have been accompanied by greater income tax reform.
At a Q&A after his pre-budget speech this afternoon, Mookhey was asked if he supported changes to capital gains and negative gearing, and if he agreed with the premier’s comments on income tax. He said:
I would remind everyone that the [capital gains and negative gearing] tax code we had a week ago wasn’t fit for purpose, wasn’t helping us build productive enterprise, wasn’t helping people convert work into wealth, wasn’t helping us build new businesses. It’s totally legitimate for there to be a debate about how do you change things like capital gains and others to help us do that, and I’ll let the federal government engage in the detail of that debate …
Which brings me to the second part … I’m going to confess, I haven’t seen exactly what the premier said, but I support it.
Mookhey went on to say that he supports “any federal tax change” that helps people who only earn their income through work.
Catie McLeod
Hi, I’ll take you through the rest of the news this afternoon.
That’s all from me. Catie McLeod will take things from here. Take care.
PM shares condolences of the nation after meeting with family of Kumanjayi Little Baby
Prime minister Anthony Albanese is speaking in Alice Springs after meeting with the family of Kumanjayi Little Baby.
Albanese said Australia had lost a young person far too early under “unbearable” circumstances. He said the family was trying to “bear their way through this with dignity [and] with respect”.
It will remain something that is with them for ever …
They’re proud of their much-loved daughter and granddaughter, of who she was, but also that sense of regret that she won’t get to be the young woman and woman that she should have become.
They’re going through a grieving process, and they’ve asked to be able to do that with respect.
The prime minister went on:
This is a time where, what I want to see, is the different levels of government coming together with the community in the same way that the community has come together itself.
Kelly Burke
Opera Australia back in the black after years of losses
Opera Australia has returned a small operating surplus for 2025 following years of steep post-pandemic losses.
The result marks a substantial improvement from 2024, when the nation’s largest performing arts company suffered a $10.1m operating deficit. On a consolidated basis, which includes the Opera Australia capital fund, the company recorded a surplus of $3.6m for the 2025 financial year.
CEO Alex Budd attributed the turnaround to tighter cost controls, disciplined corporate decision-making and a “carefully balanced repertoire of work”.
The 2025 season staged 25 productions across opera, musical theatre and concerts, relying on commercial musical theatre to cross-subsidise its core operatic offerings.
Total revenue reached $122.8m, bolstered by a surge in box office income that climbed to $65.3m from $50.7m the previous year. Attendance rose almost 60% to 574,809 patrons across 457 performances, up from 362,430 attendees in 2024.
Just before the pandemic hit, Opera Australia posted a modest operating surplus of almost $200,000 and record attendances of more than 660,000 people.
But the Covid lockdowns were closely followed by the closure of the Sydney Opera House for the next two years for a $150m acoustic and structural upgrade and over the ensuing years the company managed to stay afloat by selling its Alexandria warehouse facility and securing $21.1m in combined state and federal government pandemic support.
Luca Ittimani
Unions call for 6% minimum wage boost with decision just weeks away
The Australian Council of Trade Unions says a 6% increase to minimum wage is “absolutely necessary” as the Fair Work Commission approaches its final decision for the wages of 3 million workers.
Workers who rely on award wages, particularly prevalent in hospitality, retail and care, will receive a pay boost when the national wage review is finalised in coming weeks.
After the budget forecast inflation would hit 5%, the ACTU boosted its wage claim from a 5% lift to 6%. Secretary Sally McManus today said workers would have to cut back on food and medical treatment if their wages fell behind inflation, as happened in 2022 and 2023. She told reporters:
This 6% pay increase is absolutely necessary to keep people’s heads above water, to keep ahead of inflation, at a time when Donald Trump’s war is pushing up prices. … We’ve been here before, it’s not our first rodeo, unfortunately, with inflation spikes.
Business groups have rejected those calls, saying costs are rising too fast and the wage increase should be less than 4%, while some have called for any wage increase to be delayed to the end of the year. McManus said that approach was “cruel and wrong” and employers should be ready to pay for a bigger increase.
It should not be that the lowest paid workers in Australia are the ones that suffer the most … It could well be afforded by all of the companies in question.
Melissa Davey
Package of support coming to help with diphtheria outbreak
The federal health minister, Mark Butler, has described the latest diphtheria outbreak – which began in the Northern Territory and has spread across borders – as “unlike anything we’ve seen” in the 35 years the infectious disease has been tracked in Australia.
He told Sydney’s 2SM morning program about 60% of the 226 cases are in the NT, which he described as “really the centre of this outbreak”, with a quarter of cases ending up in hospital.
Butler said:
A few cases have been found south of the border in the APY Lands in the very far north of South Australia, a few cases in Queensland, and then quite a number in the northern part of Western Australia as well.
We’ve been working very hard with the Northern Territory Government, and we’ll be finalising a package today, not only to get more and more vaccines into the area, but we need to surge the workforce to get the needles into people’s arms.
Guardian Australia reported on Tuesday that a lack of nurses, doctors and other clinical staff had slowed down vaccine rollouts. Overcrowding, declining vaccination rates – especially in adults due for a booster diphtheria shots – are also thought to have all contributed to spread, which is mainly occurring among adults.
The federal government response will include support for boosters, Butler said:
We need boosters every five years or so. So that’s really going to be the centrepiece of the response. But we’re really concerned about this. It is by far the biggest outbreak we’ve had for many, many decades. We’ve been tracking numbers for 35 years, and this is unlike anything we’ve seen in that period of time.
There are two types of diphtheria – respiratory and cutaneous (skin), with respiratory the more deadly of the two as it has a death rate of up to 30% without treatment. Cutaneous diphtheria is rarely fatal. Both are bacterial infections.
“The concerning thing for me and all of us, is that we’re seeing the bigger increases happening in respiratory cases of diphtheria,” Butler said.
So about a quarter of all cases are ending up in hospital right now.
Read more:
NSW treasurer flags $8bn drop in stamp duty and land tax earnings
Penry Buckley
The NSW treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, says the government has revised down its forward estimates for stamp duty and land tax earnings by $8bn, amid the impact of rising inflation and the global oil shock.
In his keynote speech to the McKell Institute today ahead of next month’s state budget, Mookhey said the impact to the state’s forecasted tax receipts for the next four financial years was “substantial”, including a drop in stamp duty collections of $5bn and land tax of $3bn on its predictions from six months ago.
The treasurer said “a lot has changed” since the government published its mid-year review in December:
Consider this: 152 days ago, the typical working family had just seen their wages rise, their interest rates fall, and their grocery prices finally begin to level out, all in time for Christmas. Since then, that same working family have felt their wallets burn as fuel prices have risen by 50%.
The RBA has added about $415 to their monthly mortgage, and their grocery bill is no cheaper. That family did not expect to be living through the greatest oil shock since the 1970s last December, and in truth, NSW treasury did not either.
Mookhey says the budget will include “relief for the immediate cost of living pressures working families are facing today reform to curb their fundamental causes for tomorrow”, including investment in public hospitals and education, further steps to combat the housing crisis and a “$100bn plus” infrastructure program.