Albanese says Australia will decide what it needs on defence spending
The prime minister was asked about US defence secretary Pete Hegseth’s call that Australia increase its military spending to 3.5% of the country’s GDP, as we reported earlier. Albanese reiterated Australia would make its own decisions on how best to invest in defence. He said:
What you should do in defence is decide what you need, your capability, and then provide for it. That’s what my government is doing. Investing to our capability and investing in our relationships. That’s what we’re doing.
That’s what we’ll continue to do.
Key events
22-year-old woman dies after alleged domestic violence incident
NT police say a 22-year-old woman has died in hospital after an alleged domestic violence incident last month.
Police initially responded to reports that a man was assaulting the woman in Palmerston near Darwin on 21 May. They arrested the man and transported the woman to Royal Darwin hospital in critical condition.
Officials said this weekend she had died, although police said the cause of death remains unknown and an investigation was ongoing. A report will be prepared for the coroner.
The alleged offender, a man who is also 22, was charged with aggravated assault and recklessly endanger serious harm. He appeared in court before her death on 26 May and is scheduled to appear again in late July.
The 2025 Mullewa muster and rodeo – in pictures
Thousands gathered at the Mullewa recreation grounds in Western Australia’s midwest region for the town’s annual muster and rodeo. The event showcases traditional rodeo contests including bull riding, saddle bronc and barrel racing, alongside live country music.
Check out some photos below, and see more here:
Home prices to grow up to 6% this year, analysts say
Luca Ittimani
Earlier today this liveblog reported on Australia’s median home price climbing a few thousand dollars in May to reach a new high of $831,288, Cotality data showed.
That 0.5% national rise was broad-based, with housing costs rising at least 0.4% in every capital city last month. In fact, if you split each state into metro and regional markets, the only area where prices aren’t rising is regional Tasmania.
Separate Cotality data showed further momentum in the market, with nearly 3,000 homes hitting the market in the last week of May, the second highest figure for 2025. The auction clearance rate reached 65.1% the week before that, the highest since July 2024, which Cotality attributed to the Reserve Bank’s interest rate cut in mid-May.
The market slowed at the end of last year but that’s been offset by rate cut-fuelled bidding since February, driving home prices up nationally by 3.3% over the last 12 months. That’s close to the current pace of wage growth, which was 3.4% annually in March and should sit at 3.3% over 2025 on Reserve Bank forecasts.
But analysts expect price growth will speed ahead of wages by the end of the year. Commonwealth Bank is predicting an increase of about 4%, as long as the RBA cuts interest rates twice more this year, while Shane Oliver, chief economist at AMP, thinks it could be more. Oliver wrote this morning:
With the RBA looking like it might cut rates faster than we had been expecting, it now looks like home prices will rise around 5 or 6% this year, up from our expectation for a 3% rise.
Likely meteor flashed blue-green across Sydney sky last night
A likely meteor flashed across the sky over parts of Sydney and NSW last night. Video footage shows a bright green light streaking across the dark sky for several seconds. Tom McCallister had this to say on Instagram:
How amazing to capture this incredible #meteor on the way back to my hostel in Sydney. I was lucky to be able to capture the last few seconds as I had my phone to hand.
Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist with Australian National University, told ABC News it was almost certainly a meteor. The space phenomenon have “lots of iron and nickel”, which light up blue-green in the atmosphere when they burn up. He told the ABC:
It would have been a good-sized meteor, maybe anywhere between a tennis- and basketball-sized.
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Time-lapse video shows fog rolling over Sydney harbour this morning
Amanda Meade
Former AFR editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury to lead centre-right thinktank
The former editor-in-chief of the Australian Financial Review Michael Stutchbury has been appointed chief executive of centre-right thinktank the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS).
A former editor of the Australian, Stutchbury, 68, has been in a writing role at the Financial Review since stepping down as editor-in-chief in July.
He told staff, in a note seen by Guardian Australia, that the Financial Review and the CIS have a long association and “have mostly shared an intellectual worldview which I am keen to continue at my new digs”.
“Since being founded nearly 50 years ago, the CIS has had an association with the Financial Review, from Paddy McGuinness and Bert Kelly to more recent oped editors and leader writers including outgoing CIS chief executive Tom Switzer, Luke Malpass, Jeremy Sammut and Anjali Nadaradjane,” he said.
The CIS mission says its mission is to promote free choice and individual liberty, and defend cultural freedom and the open exchange of ideas.
Switzer, a former opinion editor for the AFR, is executive director of the CIS.
Jordyn Beazley
NSW expands prison funding as number of people on remand increases
The NSW government is expanding funding for prisons after the number of people on remand increased in the wake of Labor’s bail reforms.
On Monday, the government announced as part of a broader $500m justice package that $100m of that would go towards addressing the rising demand in the correctional system.
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, said the remand population had jumped by about 1,000 since Labor won power in 2023. It introduced laws that make it harder for DV offenders to get bail after Molly Ticehurst was allegedly murdered by a former partner while he was on bail.
The corrections minister, Anoulack Chanthivong, said part of the money would fund the hiring of 80 more community corrections officers.
He said it would also go towards an increase in operational expenses for the department that oversees prisons, and that:
This funding of over $100m will ensure that Corrective Services has the resources it needs to keep those that should be off the streets behind bars, for the benefit of the whole community.
The package also included more than $270m for domestic violence services.
This will include money for the justice system to implement Serious Domestic Abuse Prevention Orders, which will allow the courts to impose strict monitoring and supervision conditions on offenders.
It also includes a reform package to develop a DV workforce strategy, a data strategy to analyse gaps in funding, and an Aboriginal Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence plan.
Advocates have criticised the announcement as “once again” overlooking the urgent needs of the sector.
Delia Donovan, the chief executive of Domestic Violence NSW, said:
For over five years, we have consistently called for a 50% increase to baseline funding to enable frontline services to meet demand, retain staff, and deliver safety and healing to those in crisis.
Yet this announcement once again overlooks that urgent need.
Albanese says Australia will decide what it needs on defence spending
The prime minister was asked about US defence secretary Pete Hegseth’s call that Australia increase its military spending to 3.5% of the country’s GDP, as we reported earlier. Albanese reiterated Australia would make its own decisions on how best to invest in defence. He said:
What you should do in defence is decide what you need, your capability, and then provide for it. That’s what my government is doing. Investing to our capability and investing in our relationships. That’s what we’re doing.
That’s what we’ll continue to do.
Albanese: ‘Climate change is real and we need to respond to it’
The prime minister has said that while Australia has always had droughts and flooding rains, “the truth is that there are more extreme weather events, and they’re more intense now”. He went on:
Science told us that that was the case. The science has been proven, unfortunately, to be playing out …
The thing is that climate change is real and we need to respond to it. And we need, I think, to respond to it across the board. That’s why my government has a comprehensive plan to deal with climate change.
SA premier on ‘the driest start of any year’ in the state
SA premier Peter Malinauskas has said the state’s farmers are struggling after yet another dry year. He said:
We haven’t just seen the driest start of the year, we’ve seen the driest start of any year on the back of a very dry year last year. In fact, in many places it’s the driest on record.
So this is a combination of a bad run for a couple of years in a row.
Albanese government will boost counselling support for farmers amid drought in SA
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, just announced the government will provide more funding for the Rural Financial Counselling Service to support farmers affected by drought in South Australia and other southern regions. Parts of the state have recorded record-low rainfall on the back of another extraordinarily dry year, with some farm dams drying out.
Albanese spoke to the media from Fischer, SA:
We know that at times like this, it has a real impact on mental health, and that is understandable. People put their heart and soul into their farms.
It’s not just a business, it’s a way of life.
Catie McLeod
Coles to cut prices of hundreds of items after Woolworths reductions
Coles has announced it will reduce the prices of 307 grocery items from Wednesday in categories including meat, cleaning products and frozen goods.
In addition to expanding the number of products included in its “Down Down” promotion, the supermarket giant has also said its customers will collect 10x bonus Flybuys points every time they shop from a selected range of more than 800 products in June.
Coles’ announcement comes about a fortnight after rival Woolworths announced it would cut prices on hundreds of items.
The Woolworths announcement raised hopes the supermarket sector could be entering a new period of intensifying competition, after intense public scrutiny amid the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s inquiry into the sector.
Some media outlets have reported the Coles and Woolworths announcements as a “price war”. But, as Guardian Australia has previously reported, the issue is more nuanced:
Smartraveller site updates advice for travel to Indonesia to address drownings, drinks and crocodiles
The Australian government has updated warnings for travel to Indonesia, urging tourists to be wary of rough seas and strong rip currents, as well as dangerous drinks.
The updated guidance on the Smartraveller website – which lists Indonesia as a destination to exercise a “high degree of caution” over – notes many beaches are not patrolled, including in Bali. Australians have drowned in coastal areas and saltwater crocodiles are in rivers throughout Indonesia.
Officials also note that drinks may be spiked or mixed with toxic substances and urged travellers to be alert to the risks of methanol poisoning via alcoholic drinks.
Cases of methanol poisoning in drinks have previously been reported in Indonesia, including in Bali and Lombok.
Lambie says it would be ‘nice’ to lift military spending but focus should be on waste
Tasmania senator Jacqui Lambie told Sky News this morning that it would be “nice” to lift defence spending after the US Pentagon secretary called on Australia to up funding to 3.5% of the country’s GDP. But Lambie said it would be better to focus on the way money is already being spent on the military here.
I think it’s about waste. We waste so much money. We have a lot of waste going on in defence.
She pointed to the ongoing cost to buy nuclear submarines as one example.
You’ve only got to see those submarines mate. Four billion dollars so far and we haven’t got one scrap of bloody steel sitting in a harbour yet ready to go. I mean, that is just disgusting waste at its best.
