News and politics recap: Marles says US will determine length of AUKUS submarine deployments

We are wrapping up another day of our live coverage of Australia’s news and politics.

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In the meantime, read the latest edition of The Nightly here.

The ABC’s managing director has vowed to make “relevant changes” after admitting the airing of a skit involving a sexualised attack on Australian businesswoman Gina Rinehart was “wrong” and he wanted the broadcaster to reach a “higher standard”.

Anticipation is growing of further upheaval at the ABC after the public broadcaster finally apologised to Mrs Rinehart on Thursday and its high-profile investigations boss departed following a growing scandal at the Four Corners program.

Facing legal threats from Hancock Prospecting, ABC chief Hugh Marks apologised to Mrs Rinehart — 25 days after airing the controversial remarks by contestant Kate McGuinness on the “Race Around the World” program.

Mr Marks said the depiction of Mrs Rinehart in the short film titled “A Very Relaxing Video” which aired during the July 12 episode was “not fair” and fell short of “community expectations”.

McGuinness’ remarks included joking about assaulting the mining billionaire with a stick to mix her “guts” into a “big sausage roll”.

Read the full story here.

Pauline Hanson could potentially succeed in having a key plank of the Racial Discrimination Act declared unconstitutional if she launches a High Court challenge, legal experts say.

The One Nation leader last month lost an appeal in the Federal Court against an earlier ruling in 2024 that found she had breached Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act with a 2022 tweet telling Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi to “pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan” after she declared she could not “mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples” following the Queen’s death.

Louise Clegg, a former barrister and the wife of Opposition Leader Angus Taylor, is arguing the law is unconstitutional.

The Samuel Griffith Society, a constitutionally conservative group in favour of retaining the British monarch as Australia’s head of state, argues the law from 1995 — making it illegal to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” an individual or a group of people based on their race — could potentially be unconstitutional because it infringes on the implied right of political communication in the Constitution.

“It was a political debate — you had two senators who were both making political statements and that fact that we’re now censoring certain political statements whilst letting others through the gate, that’s the concern,” the group’s executive director Mia Schlicht told The Nightly.

​Read the full story here.​

Senior Labor figures insist there are no Cabinet splits over the Government’s tightening of migration policies as Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke finalises measures aimed at countering growing community concerns on the number of new arrivals to Australia.

A Cabinet meeting on Monday chaired by Richard Marles as acting prime minister is understood to have given broad approval to the policy details but Labor’s leadership group then decided more work was needed before it could be announced.

One senior Albanese Government figure involved in the high-level discussions on the migration policy tells The Nightly that “there are still a few holes in the changes that we need to fix before we announce it”.

“You don’t want to make any mistakes when unveiling something this important, you have to make sure it is ready and designed correctly before it comes into effect,” the senior figure explained, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Facing growing political pressure from One Nation and the Coalition, Labor is working to reduce the net overseas migration rate from the current level of about 300,000 people a year, to the Budget targets of 245,000 this financial year and 225,000 the following year.

Asked whether Labor’s Cabinet remained “pretty divided” on how to tackle immigration to bring down the number of arrivals, Mr Marles on Friday insisted the suggestion was “not right”.

Read the full story here.

The iron ore game has traditionally never been a particularly risky business.

For most of its 60-year life in Australia, the sector has been steady and one with low margins.

The politicians and business analysts who clutch their pearls at the prospect of a tonne of iron ore dropping under $US100 should remember that up until the mid-1990s the companies mining it were happy to get a fifth of that price.

BHP and Rio Tinto had to deal with the usual risks faced by any exporter — dangers linked to currency fluctuations, the credit worthiness of customers, Government decisions and whatnot.

China’s industrialisation saw the price of iron ore surge up to ten-fold and few executives could see any downside to hitching their wagons to Beijing.

Perhaps they missed the emerging “concentration risk” because they couldn’t see over the stacks of money they were making for shareholders, governments and (most importantly) themselves.

It took a while for the perils of this new risk to come into focus.

Read the full opinion here.

Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie has demanded any donations to One Nation’s “fire the liar” campaign should be used against the Labor party in elections, The Australian is reporting.

“Guaranteeing it for the federal election gives me no comfort because how do I know that the ‘fire the liar’ won’t be used in Bendigo, won’t be used Shepparton against National Party candidates,” she said.

The Nationals Senate leader claimed One Nation’s federal election plans were “false advertising” because the funding “wouldn’t remove the Prime Minister from office” unless they use it against Labor.

“They have a right to run wherever they want. . . but the people who donated to that campaign donated to remove the prime minister and win Labor Party seats and that’s what One Nation needs to guarantee.”

For almost two decades, Abdul has been trying to play the immigration system. Abdul was finally called out by a tribunal recently for repeatedly lying to authorities about his identity. His citizenship application was refused.

But even though Australia doesn’t know who he is, where he was born or how old he is, Abdul (a pseudonym) remains one of the world’s privileged few: his protection visa allows him to live in Australia permanently, access welfare and sponsor relatives overseas to join him.

As Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke prepares an immigration crack down designed to staunch support for One Nation, Abdul’s case is an unusually blatant example of how the Government is forced to spend precious resources policing dishonest applicants while immigrants who could contribute to the economy are forced to wait years for visas.

The lies started in 2007, when his mother applied for humanitarian visas for the family on the basis they were Afghan and Abdul’s father had been taken by the Taliban and never returned during Afghanistan’s civil war.

Not only was the father alive, he had a taste for life. He would have three wives, raise at least six children and pursue an affair with a friend’s 22-year-old wife in Afghanistan, according to evidence presented to the Administrative Review Tribunal.

Read the full story here.

House prices are now plunging in more affordable suburbs of Australia’s biggest cities with the downturn contagion spreading as rate rises deter first homebuyers and Budget property tax changes turn off investors.

The biggest falls are no longer just in Sydney’s wealthy suburbs by the beach and the harbour with postcodes in the western suburbs now seeing steep declines, despite being within the price cap for the Federal Government’s scheme to help property newcomers.

Blacktown’s median house price has fallen by 6.7 per cent during the past three months to $1.083 million, Cotality data showed.

In the city’s south-west, Punchbowl prices have dived by 7.5 per cent to $1.349m.

Both suburbs are within the $1.5m cap for Sydney for first homebuyers to qualify for the Federal Government’s 5 per cent deposit scheme.

​Read the full story here.​

Defence Minister Richard Marles says the US will determine the duration of its AUKUS submarine deployments to Western Australia’s HMAS Stirling naval base.

Last week his colleague and Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy suggested the Submarine Rotational Force-West program, scheduled to begin next year, would be limited to five years.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Mr Marles insisted the “rotational” arrangement for up to four US submarines under SRF-West did not represent an American base but left open the prospect that each boat could be based in Perth for years.

“The Submarine Rotational Force West and the duration of those rotations is going to be a function of the operational requirements of the US submarines, and that is going to vary … potentially from submarine to submarine,” Mr Marles said.

The anticipated findings of a Federal inquiry into triple-0 outages across Australia have been delayed by more than five weeks.

The Environment and Communications References Committee were set to hand down their recommendations on August 7.

However, committee chair Sarah Hanson-Young confirmed in a Friday statement that the findings had been delayed. Instead, the report will be delivered on September 14.

“Given the massive Telstra failure in the last month, the committee requires more time to consider our next steps,” Senator Hanson-Young said.

The inquiry was originally established after a major Optus outage on September 14, 2025 left hundreds of Australians unable to call triple-0.

Last month, a Telstra network outage was also wrapped into the probe after the disruption blocked access to triple-0, as well as impacting businesses and transport.

with NCA Newswire