Australia news LIVE: Australia to fund Pacific renewables projects ahead of COP31; OpenAI staffer quits

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of national news for Monday, October 5. Here’s what is making headlines today.

• Sadistic and nihilistic online networks are using Australia’s most popular gaming platforms to coerce children into self-mutilating and committing violence against their siblings and pets, experts warn.

• Reality TV star and fitness guru Sam Wood is behind bars in Queensland after being charged with alleged domestic violence offences in Noosa. Queensland Police said they had charged a 46-year-old Victorian man with assault occasioning bodily harm (domestic violence) and strangulation in a domestic setting after they were called to an address in Noosa on Saturday at around 9pm.

• The federal government has thrown down a challenge to state premiers over the rampant illicit tobacco trade, dangling fresh cash and pointing to Queensland’s dramatic crackdown as a blueprint for the rest of the country.

• Tenants who rely on credit cards to pay their rent could soon be forced into arrears, advocates warn, after a major rental payment platform blocked the method of payment in response to a new ban on card surcharge fees.

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Labor MP Julie-Ann Campbell and opposition housing spokesman Andrew Bragg clashed on the Today show earlier this morning over Australia’s economic outlook.

Asked if the government’s spending was driving inflation, Campbell insisted Labor was focused on “responsible economic management” and “cost-of-living relief”.

Bragg countered, claiming Labor had lost control of the nation’s finances.

“Whatever savings Chalmers and Albanese come up with will be a pimple on the elephant’s ass compared to the disaster they’ve created,” he said. “They’ve pushed up spending from 24 to almost 27 per cent of GDP – which is, like, historically high levels. We’ve not seen anything like this in my lifetime. So they’ve got to radically change course, or just resign.”

Built-in radio has been scrapped from the cheapest Tesla ever sold in Australia, leaving buyers without access to crucial emergency alerts.

According to automotive website drive.com.au, the US company removed FM and digital DAB radio from its latest Model 3 RWD sedan.

The change will stop drivers from accessing certain emergency announcements, including during bushfires and other natural disasters or warnings of crashes and breakdowns in tunnels.

Internet-streamed radio stations will stop working once mobile phone signal cuts out.

The move follows the removal of AM tuners – which broadcast many emergency alerts over a longer range – from Tesla’s vehicles several years ago.

While it is one of several car manufacturers that scrapped AM radio to save money, drive.com.au reports that it is the first to cut FM and DAB digital radio.

The Pentagon has removed bombers based at the Royal Air Force base in the UK that was the centre of a suspected attempted terrorist attack last week.

Citing two unnamed US officials, The New York Times reported that the withdrawal was carried out with unusual swiftness and urgency after new threats of a plot linked to Iran had emerged.

A Defence Department official said all American bombers deployed at RAF Fairford had returned to their home bases in the US. American warplanes had used Fairford in the military campaign against Iran that began in late February.

Five British nationals and a UK-Iranian national were arrested on suspicion of terrorism and explosive offences over the incident and have since been bailed, a decision that drew criticism from US President Donald Trump.

An OpenAI employee focused on AI safety has quit the company and warned that top firms aren’t doing enough to mitigate the technology’s risks, joining a growing chorus of employees raising alarm from within the industry.

David Robinson, who previously led transparency work on OpenAI’s safety team, wrote in an essay for The Atlantic that the ChatGPT maker “has thrived by trial and error.”

However, he said the stakes of the inevitable failures that come from that approach are growing along with the technology’s capabilities, citing OpenAI’s failure to prevent its AI agents from going rogue during testing.

Robinson said AI firms should be run more like nuclear power plants, “with layers of redundancy and careful, time-consuming planning, so that the occasional and inevitable human error does not open a door to disaster”.

Opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan has described the Pre-Cop climate conference as a farce.

“We’ve got the prime minister leaving the country in a cost-of-living crisis to attend a leaders’ event, and we think there might be seven or eight leaders there, we don’t know,” he told ABC’s Radio National Breakfast.

“The whole thing has sort of become a farce”.

Asked if he agreed more attention should be paid to climate change in these island nations, he said Australia has to ensure it’s doing “good, practical things… in a sensible way”.

“And it’s very hard to see how this, in any way, is getting value for money for the Australian taxpayer, and the reason we know that is because the government won’t come clean with the costs,” he said.

Earlier on the program, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen dodged a question about how much the event was costing taxpayers before saying a reported $20 million figure was “keeping with estimates”.

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen says the government has sought to “elevate the importance of Pre-Cop” and lift Pacific voices ahead of COP31.

This includes going to Tuvalu, where “sea levels have risen already by around 15 centimetres over the last three decades, and the capital Funafuti is likely to be submerged at high tide by 2035 unless serious action is taken”.

“So we have around 4000 people coming, and we have an unprecedented series of events – 133 events… which is much more than a normal Pre-Cop,” he told ABC’s Radio National Breakfast.

Australia and its Pacific island partners hoped the conference would attract some of the world’s most recognisable leaders. However, few leaders from outside the region confirmed their attendance.

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen has defended Australia’s spending on the Pre-Cop meeting to be held in Fiji and Tuvalu from today.

He and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will attend the preparatory multi-day climate summit being held ahead of next month’s main UN Climate Change Conference (COP) in Turkey.

Asked this morning by ABC’s Radio National Breakfast host Sally Sara how much the event was costing taxpayers, Bowen said it was part of the broader $147 million set aside for climate issues in the Pacific.

Pushed on the actual cost of this event – which most world leaders will not attend – Bowen confirmed that reports of $20 million were “keeping with the estimates at this point”.

The woman who has alleged that she was drugged and raped by Cornell University students has been the target of threats, her lawyer said overnight.

The warning came as the university’s president called for stronger sexual assault laws in New York following a national outcry over her allegations.

Thomas Giuffra, who represents the woman known as “Jane Doe”, told CNN that people have threatened to silence or harm her if she did not withdraw her civil lawsuit alleging that several members of a Cornell fraternity drugged and raped her in 2024.

“She’s received multiple threats,” Giuffra said on CNN’s State of the Union.

Beirut: The Saudi-backed government of Yemen on Sunday announced a major military campaign against the Houthi militia, a key Iranian ally, plunging the Middle East even deeper into war.

In a televised speech, Rashad al-Alimi, the leader of the internationally recognised, Saudi-backed government, said that the government was seeking to reclaim all territory it had lost to the Houthis over the past 12 years.

The government and the Houthis have been engaged in fierce battles in recent weeks, after the Iran-allied militia took control of the country’s Red Sea coast, increasing pressure on shipping routes and energy markets unsettled by the US-Israeli war with Iran.

The Houthis and Saudi Arabia, which supports the government financially and militarily, have also attacked each other directly.

Alimi’s announcement appeared to eliminate any hope that a truce would be reached.

Read the full story here.

Brazilians queued in long lines to vote on Sunday in the first round of a tight presidential election, following a campaign dominated by corruption scandals, economic anxiety and accusations of US meddling.

The field of 13 candidates has been led by two clear frontrunners — leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 80, who is seeking a fourth term, and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the 45-year-old son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who hopes to return his father’s right-wing movement to power.

A victory for the senator would extend a wave of wins across Latin America by right-wing candidates aligned with US President Donald Trump, while Lula’s reelection could create a headache for Washington, which has clashed with his government over trade and security.

Despite growing worries over the public finances and sluggish economic growth of Brazil, the campaign has offered meager policy discussion, as both leading candidates skipped the major TV debates.