Australia news live: Greens propose $74bn plan to wipe all student debt; Raygun says she is ‘not retiring’ from breaking

Greens to announce plan to wipe all student debt

Sarah Basford Canales
The Greens will announce its $74bn plan to wipe all student debt as it looks to snatch a seat off Labor in inner-city Melbourne.
The minor party will reveal the proposal in Wills, held by Labor’s Peter Khalil, with their candidate, Samantha Ratnam, who led the party in Victoria for nearly seven years.
Costings from the Parliamentary Budget Office show the policy to wipe all student debt would cost $55bn over the next four years and $74bn over the decade. The Greens estimate this will save someone with a debt of $27,600 about $5,500 a year.

The Greens’ education spokesperson, Mehreen Faruqi, said the policy would make a “real, tangible difference to so many people doing it tough”.
Student debt can’t be fixed because student debt shouldn’t exist. All student debt should be wiped. If Anthony Albanese can go to uni for free, so should everyone else.
It comes as Labor announced last week it would slash Hecs debts by 20% if it wins at the next federal election.
The Greens say they would pass any bill to reduce student debts in this term if Labor were to bring the proposal forward.
Key events
More than 7,000 employers have reported new information to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, following the introduction of the positive duty to provide a safe workplace for all employees as part of the Respect@Work report.
While nearly 99% of employers have a formal policy on work-related sexual harassment and discrimination, the new data shows more than 1 in 4 employers (28%) are not monitoring how prevalent it is. WGEA CEO Mary Wooldridge said:
While we are seeing comprehensive policy coverage, this is only a critical first step. Long-term culture change within organisations also requires employees and company leaders to know the policy, understand what’s in it and the part they play in its implementation.
One of the insights from the Respect@Work report is that proactive engagement by leadership is critical for long-term change. WGEA’s new results show that most CEOs are highly engaged in reviewing, signing off on, and then communicating these policies (85%), however just over half (55%) of their Boards are similarly involved.
The data also showed that while there are comprehensive processes to disclose sexual harassment to HR (98%), anonymous disclosure processes are less available (68%).

Josh Taylor
Senate hearing under way into misinformation and disinformation bill
A Senate committee is conducting a hearing today on the federal government’s controversial misinformation and disinformation bill, hearing from legal experts, religious groups and federal departments.
Constitutional law expert Prof Anne Twomey is up first and tells the committee she is concerned about the definition of disinformation in the bill, arguing that intent to deceive including that someone has been told something is false before is not sufficient:
I would imagine in many circumstances, the person is not intending to deceive. In fact, they disagree with what the fact checkers have said and want to put their disagreement out in the public realm and deciding that is disinformation simply on the basis that some fact checker has decided on the basis of one or two experts that something is false, it’s not necessarily false.
Just because you’ve checked with some experts, or even if there’s an expert consensus that something is false doesn’t actually mean it really is. People can still believe genuinely what they are saying is true, and I don’t think one should necessarily assume that they are deliberately trying to deceive people, even if they keep disseminating material that other people say is false.
Twomey’s point was backed by the Victorian Bar’s James McCormish.
NSW police investigating suspicious death
NSW police have launched an investigation after a man’s body was found in the Central West yesterday.
About 1.40pm emergency services were called to Parkes after the discovery of the man’s body in a home. He is yet to be formally identified, but is believes to be in his 70s.
The death is being treated as suspicious, police said. Officers established a crime scene, a report will be prepared for the coroner and anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers.
Dutton’s Remembrance Day statement: ‘May our memory of them hold us to the mark’
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has also issued a statement for Remembrance Day. In a video posted to X, he said:
The reason why evil didn’t prevail – why tyranny didn’t crush freedom – is because everyday Australians chose to serve and sacrifice for a greater good. We remember our fallen, so we don’t forget who we are. May our memory of them hold us to the mark.
PM issues statement for Remembrance Day
Anthony Albanese has released a statement to mark Remembrance Day. Posted to X, the prime minister said “we think of every Australian who has answered the call through the decades”.
We think of everywhere they have gone across the world to confront the unimaginable as it became reality .. We remember every name. Every face. Every future lost and every future changed forever.
And we think of the many who were cast into the ranks of the unknown soldier as they were torn from life.

Elias Visontay
Transurban CEO: we need to convince drivers of the value of tolls
The chief of Transurban, Michelle Jablko, has said the tolling giant needs to do more work to convince drivers of the value they get from taking its paid roads, amid scrutiny on how the company’s tolls affect the New South Wales economy and the cost of living.
Jablko’s comments come as her company finds itself in prolonged negotiations with the NSW government about overhauling the contracts for 11 of the state’s 13 toll roads amid deep public dissatisfaction at the rising cost of tolls in Sydney and questions from the business community about how tolls in the city are adding to supply chain costs.
Jablko told the Australian Financial Review’s infrastructure summit in Sydney this morning that Transurban was exploring more rewards for customers such as discounts for fuel and car servicing.
I hope when customers hear the beep, they go ‘oh, that’s extra value’.
A review into NSW’s patchwork toll network commissioned by the Minns Labor government in July recommended a declining distance-based toll to simplify pricing and cheapen commutes to and from Western Sydney, to more equitably spread the city’s estimated $195bn toll burden over the next 37 years.
While the government is now hoping to negotiate an overhaul with Transurban, who hold long term contracts for 11 toll roads in Sydney, questions remain about whether the tolling giant will agree to changes that decrease its overall projected revenues, with the government potentially taking legal action to force the changes.
Jablko today said that declining distance based tolling, recommended by the review, would actually bring negative effects for the city, because it promotes people to do longer trips and would add to congestion. She also claimed the company’s data showed western Sydney drivers would be worse off, because more commuted locally as opposed to those who drive eastwards to the CBD.
Burst of renewable energy commitments in September quarter

Peter Hannam
We’re heard various warnings about the relative lack of new renewable energy investments in the past year or so – at least if we’re to manage the exit of aging coal-fired power plants and meet our clean energy targets.
The September quarter, it turns out, was one of the most promising quarters for some time, the Clean Energy Council reports today.
In the July-September months, more than 1,400 megawatts of new wind and solar farms worth $3.3bn reached financial sign-off, the best since the end of 2022. CEC chief Kane Thornton said:
If we sustain the level of investment for new wind and solar power plants which we have seen in the third quarter of this year, we can get back on track to achieving Australia’s target of 82% renewable energy generation by 2030.
Most of the new projects were either onshore wind (offshore not actually happening – yet) or big batteries. Rooftop solar has tended to make solar farms a bit less attractive.
According to the council, there are 89 renewable electricity generation projects that have either reached financial commitment or are under construction, representing 13.9 gigawatts of capacity in the pipeline. There are also 49 storage projects working their way forward from financial commitment, equivalent to 9.7GW/ 24.3GW-hours in capacity/energy output.
While that sounds good, it’s notable that not a lot of capacity has lately come online. The council notes the September quarter saw just three renewable electricity generation projects, totalling 168MW of new capacity, were actually commissioned in Q3 2024.
We’ll get the summer readiness report soon from the Australian Energy Market Operator, and it won’t be surprising to hear we may face a few tight spots particularly if there are extended heatwaves and coal-fired plants drop out for unscheduled reasons.
Raygun says she is ‘not retiring’ from breaking, despite reports
Breaker Rachael Gunn, better known as Raygun, has said she is not retiring from breaking despite reports suggesting she would.
Last week she told 2DayFm she was “going to keep competing, for sure, but that seems a really difficult thing for me to do now, to approach a battle”, due to the scrutiny she received after her performance at the Paris Olympics.
Speaking on the Today Show this morning, Gunn said she never used the word retire and that her comments had been misinterpreted:
I was talking on 2DayFm about how I’m not going to do certain competitions anymore – which didn’t seem like such a big deal because breaking is not going to be in the Olympics anyway. But you know, I’m still going to be part of community jams … and still dance and still break. [I never used] the word retire, but, you know, it just caught on to the news cycle … I’m not retiring.
Her comments also come after she made a cameo appearance at Tones and I’s show at Rod Laver Arena on Saturday, brought on stage to perform during Dance With Me.
Full Story podcast: Students are drowning in debt. Will Labor’s plan help them?
Last week the prime minister delivered a pitch to young Australians: Labor will slash their student debt by 20% next financial year if the Albanese government is re-elected.
The surprise announcement is part of a major federal government overhaul designed to boost access to education and address ‘intergenerational unfairness’. But while the move has been welcomed by many, it has also been widely criticised for not doing enough to help students as well as unfairly penalising all taxpayers.
Chief economist at the Australia Institute and Guardian columnist Greg Jericho gives his take on why Labor’s plan isn’t perfect but why the feigned outrage over ‘fairness’ is wrong. You can have a listen below:
Parts of Queensland and NSW facing ‘almost daily thunderstorm risk’
Central Australia is set to face a concentration of showers and thunderstorms, with south-east Queensland and north-east New South Wales facing “an almost daily thunderstorm risk at the moment”.
Senior meteorologist Miriam Bradbury from the Bureau of Meteorology spoke with the Today show earlier and provided a forecast update:
Today we’re going to see the concentration of showers and thunderstorms through central parts of the country, largely impacting South Australia and southern parts of the Northern Territory, as well as southeast Queensland and northeast NSW, which are seeing an almost daily thunderstorm risk at the moment … [This could bring] heavy rainfall that could lead to flash flooding, large hail or damaging winds.
She said in recent days, heatwave conditions had been contracting away from southern Queensland and is less extensive than it was over the weekend.
Even where we don’t have those heatwave warnings, we’re continuing to see very hot weather across the northern parts of Australia, with temperatures 2 to 5 degrees above average – which for many areas, particularly inland, equates to temperatures in the high 30s at least, if not the low to mid 40s.
Naplan scores remained stable amid Covid school closures: new study
New research from UNSW and the University of Sydney suggests that Naplan scored remained stable during Covid-related school closures, while other countries reported learning losses.
The research, published earlier this year, analysed Naplan test scores across Australian states – comparing differences in student performance based on varying periods of remote learning between 2020 and 2021, with school closures ranging from nine days to 157 days.
Dr Nalini Prasad said students in schools that operated remotely for an extended time “performed similarly to students in schools which were closed for a relatively short period”.
Australia adopted a zero-Covid policy which used lockdowns – and other non-pharmaceutical interventions –pre-emptively to eliminate the transmission of Covid-19.
Per capita Covid case numbers and deaths were considerably lower in Australia. Low Covid case numbers meant that students did not have to miss school due to contracting the virus.
Researchers used Naplan test scores from 2013-2019 as baseline data, comparing them with scores from 2021 and 2022. The data also suggested remote attendance rates were comparable to, and sometimes exceeded, typical in-person schooling levels.