Australia news LIVE: Beaconsfield mine disaster survivor Todd Russell dies; Consumer confidence among homeowners plummets
Updated ,first published
Hello and welcome back to our live coverage of Australian and world news this Tuesday, November 10. Here’s what is making headlines today.
- Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen is leading UN climate talks in Turkey as president of negotiations. In his opening remarks, Bowen warned every delay in taking action on climate change adds to its human and economic toll.
- One Nation’s former campaign director, convicted rapist Sean Black, quit the party voluntarily rather than being sacked as Pauline Hanson claimed, a leaked text message seen by this masthead suggests. Hanson told The Australian Financial Review yesterday she had “sacked him” – but the party’s general manager Kelvin Morton sent a text message to staff in April saying Black made the decision himself.
- Todd Russell, a survivor of the Beaconsfield mine collapse, has died at the age of 54 after an undisclosed physical illness, his family confirmed. Russell was one of two Tasmanian miners who became trapped by a rockfall on Anzac Day in 2006. The pair were presumed dead after the body of another miner was found among the rubble.
- And Russell Brand has been sentenced to 10½ years in a British prison for raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others. Justice Joel Bennathan denounced Brand’s “casual and arrogant disregard” for any woman who said no to him, and castigated him for the series of lies he told in testimony denying assaults that dated back to 2004.
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Nvidia, one of Wall Street’s most influential stocks, sank in overnight trading, even though the US stock market rallied and recovered most of its big loss from last week as oil prices swung lower.
The S&P 500 jumped 2.3 per cent for a second straight gain following a wipeout on worries that Democratic victories in the US midterm elections could lead to a slowdown in the construction of AI data centres. The best day for the index since April has it sitting just 3.4 per cent below its all-time high set last month.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average leaped 1104 points, or 2.2 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite rose 2.7 per cent. The Australian sharemarket is set to jump, with futures pointing to a rise of 96 points, or 1.1 per cent, at the open. The ASX edged up 0.9 per cent on Monday. The Australian dollar was stronger at US69.13¢.
Stocks broadly got a lift from a 5.8 per cent drop for the price of a barrel of Brent crude to $US92.57. It’s been coming down from more than $US112 at the start of the month amid uncertainty about what will happen with the war with Iran.
Nvidia fell 4.3 per cent. The chip company said it was investigating its CEO, Jensen Huang, after he acknowledged an intimate relationship with a business executive whom US intelligence determined was gathering information for China.
Nvidia’s board said it had “no reason to believe” that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised but that its inquiry would examine all available information.
More than 1500 aged care residents at 19 facilities around Australia will be left without a provider after the Salvation Army announced it was pulling out of residential aged care after more than 100 years.
The Salvos made the announcement over the weekend, with territorial commander commissioner Miriam Gluyas saying in a statement that the decision has not been an easy one.
Nearly 2000 people receiving care at home from the Salvation Army would also be affected, according to a report in The Daily Telegraph yesterday.
ABC Radio this morning reported the decision was based on the high cost of care.
Consumer confidence among people paying off a mortgage has fallen to the lowest level on record after the Reserve Bank’s most recent interest rate hike.
The ANZ-Roy Morgan weekly measure of consumer sentiment, released this morning, showed overall confidence among the nation’s army of shoppers fell by almost five per cent. It is now at its third-lowest level since the measure began in 1973.
But among people with a mortgage, confidence dropped to the lowest level since it started being tracked on a weekly basis in 2008.
ANZ economist Sophia Angala said the RBA’s move to take the cash rate to an 18-year high of 4.85 per cent last week was a key factor in the drop in consumer sentiment, noting it was likely to weigh on the nation’s households.
“Together, elevated rates and historically weak confidence are likely to weigh on household spending,” she said.
Other measures of current and future financial conditions both fell, but there was some positive news, with expectations about inflation easing slightly.
Trump, at his snap news conference, said he spoke with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang earlier today to see if he was okay.
He said he asked Huang whether he knew the woman he was having an affair with, Chinese citizen Alice Huang, was a spy (as concluded by US intelligence).
“He said he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy,” Trump said.
The president was vague when asked when he found out about the allegations concerning Huang’s affair.
Asked whether he read a memo on which he was reportedly briefed last year, Trump said: “It could have been mentioned. Certainly, it didn’t make much of an impact on me.”
Australians should have the right to sue big tech platforms for causing them harm, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has said, as Labor’s Digital Duty of Care bill go before a Senate inquiry this week.
“The eSafety Commissioner needs to have the laws in place to hold them to account for systematic mistakes and errors, and companies that are flouting the rules,” she told ABC’s News Breakfast.
Hanson-Young called for laws similar to those in the US, which enable individuals and groups to take action against platforms for inflicting harm.
“In the United States, where big actions have taken place, it’s because civil society community groups have been able to take action against these big tech companies, Meta, TikTok, and others. And we think Australians should have the same rights as they do in America.”
The Senate inquiry into the legislation commenced yesterday.
Washington: US President Donald Trump called a snap news conference at the White House just now.
Ultimate Fighting Championship chief executive Dana White has joined him in the press briefing room, a couple of days after the president floated appointing White as his new press secretary, which was apparently a joke.
Trump is defending his record on the war in Iran. He says he doesn’t believe further military action will be necessary but the US is “locked and loaded” in case it is required.
Todd Russell, a survivor of the Beaconsfield mine collapse, has died at the age of 54 after an undisclosed physical illness, his family confirmed.
Russell was one of two Tasmanian miners who became trapped by a rockfall on Anzac Day in 2006. The pair were presumed dead after the body of another miner was found among the rubble.
Russell and Brant Webb were discovered alive inside the basket of the vehicle they had been working in. They were trapped for five days before rescuers could make contact.
Russell had detailed his battles with mental health in interviews in 2022 and 2024, and said he had sought professional help to deal with the trauma following his experience in the collapsed mine.
On November 3, Russell posted to his social media to announce that “years of pain, uncertainty, appointments, treatments, setbacks, and endless battles plus the emotional exhaustion of having to pick myself up time and time again, have left me with nothing left to give”.
Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff said in a statement posted on social media this morning: “Vale Todd Russell. Thoughts this morning are with Todd’s loved ones and everyone who had the absolute pleasure of knowing him.”
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas is leading the states in demanding the federal government invest more in aged care.
Malinauskas, a Labor Party star, said there was not enough federal funding for the 10,000 aged care beds needed to meet demand every year. He said federal governments had known for decades that an ageing population was going to see a surge in demand for aged care services in the middle of this decade.
“The freight train has now arrived at the station, and the country is not ready for it,” he told Radio National.
“To be fair to the federal government, they know how acute the problem is, but it’s about having the will to invest the funds that need to be prioritised in order to see a change.”
State health ministers wrote to their federal counterpart, Mark Butler, and Aged Care Minister Sam Rae on Friday to say it was unacceptable for so many older Australians to be living in hospital because they could not get into aged care.
“We’ve seen the number of beds in South Australia go from 89 aged care beds per 1000 people in South Australia down to 62, so that is a massive reduction at a time when we’ve got an ageing of the population, and now we’re seeing our hospitals paying the price,” Malinauskas said.
Nationals leader Matt Canavan has accused Labor of “wasting” money sending Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen to UN climate talks in Turkey while ignoring the economic hardship facing everyday Australians.
“Over there at this latest climate conference is while your power bills are high, your power bills are higher because this federal Labor government is wasting [money] and not focused on the domestic power pressures, power price pressures here in Australia,” Canavan told News24 this morning.
He said the Coalition would reverse Australia’s net zero commitments if elected.
“We’ll end this ridiculous net zero commitment. No longer will we take lectures from international climate conferences about what we should do in this country, we have enormous energy resources that should be unleashed for the benefit of the Australian people. And our principal approach, first and foremost, will be to run our energy system to deliver the lowest possible power prices for you.”
The Duchess of Sussex has scrapped plans to make a joint speech with Prince Harry about online child safety because she is “not strong enough” after her father’s arrest, London’s Telegraph has reported.
Harry and Meghan had both been due to deliver the keynote address to the European Parliament in Brussels today.
She will still join Harry at the event, but has decided not to speak after Thomas Markle snr appeared in a US court on Friday charged with possession of child abuse material.
Harry will make the speech alone at the opening of an art installation honouring children who have died after being subjected to harm online.
“She’s just not strong enough, emotionally, to be doing any public speaking right now,” a source told the Telegraph.
The event will be the first time Meghan will have been seen in public since the allegations surrounding her father.
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