Coalition frontbencher Andrew Hastie has called One Nation’s proposed policy to divert superannuation payments into workers’ pay packets a distraction from the party’s other issues.

Speaking on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, Hastie questioned whether the policy would work.

I think Pauline Hanson is trying to address a real cost-of-living pressure for Australians. If you look at real wages since the pandemic, they have crashed and not recovered. Go to the outer metropolitan parts of this country, people are doing it really tough, no matter what state or territory.

One Nation are seeking to address cost-of-living pressure, that’s great. The question is, will it work? And that is a question for which I have not seen the modelling or the costing.

The comments come as One Nation’s Victorian leader, Warren Pickering, continues to attract scrutiny over allegations made against him by an ex-partner about alleged drug use.

Hastie said:

Warren Pickering, the One Nation candidate, has questions to answer about his past, and Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce have questions to answer about what they have known about his past. You could argue this is a magician’s trick.

Pickering has rejected his ex-partner’s claims as “false”. “They are extremely hurtful and I just hope the public can see through them,” he said in a statement, according to The Australian.

Police have confirmed two people have died following reports of a light aircraft crash after the plane plunged on to a property at Chambers Flat in Logan after 11am on Monday.

The crash sparked a fast-moving grass fire which saw at least a dozen fire trucks and multiple crews work to contain the blaze, which burned close to a farmhouse before being brought under control about 12.50pm.

Police have yet to release further information surrounding the circumstances of the pair’s deaths and are awaiting further details.

At a press conference, Ch Supt Mel Adams from Queensland police said officers are in the process of identifying and contacting the deceased’s next of kin.

It was a very confronting scene as you can imagine. So, our care at the moment is to our emergency service responders and of course the family when we can make contact with them and notify them.

Police have called on any witnesses of the incident to come forward to assist in investigations.

We’re still searching for witnesses in that matter. So I reiterate my call to the public. Please contact police if you have information to share in relation to this tragic incident today.

Workers at Australia’s largest performing arts venue, Arts Centre Melbourne, have taken industrial action for the first time in its history, with multiple work stoppages delaying performances last week, and more expected to come.

Ushers, food and beverage attendants, stage managers, ticketing staff, programmers, electricians, technicians, and other unionised employees of the VVictorian government-run Arts Centre walked out of the building as audiences took their seats for five shows last week.

The workers are calling for a 7% annual pay rise to make up for wage stagnation since 2022. The previous enterprise agreement saw wages increase by 1% every six months, and many of the band 1 wages in the expired agreement are now below the national minimums. The Arts Centre had to increase affected workers’ pay after the recent minimum wage review to ensure they were not paid less than the national baseline. The Arts Centre told the Guardian none of its workers were paid below minimum wage, and has offered a pay rise of 3% annually, the equivalent of the Victorian government wages cap.

Members of MEAA, the Community and Public Sector Union Victoria, and the Electrical Trades Union have been bargaining with the Arts Centre on a new enterprise agreement since March.

Footage posted to social media by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) last week showed audiences applauding a worker announcement explaining that the delay to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s performance of How to Train Your Dragon 2 was caused by industrial action.

The Symphony Orchestra Musicians’ Association, part of MEAA, has also expressed its support for the striking workers.

A union petition that had nearly 3000 signatures at the time of writing called on the Victorian government to “increase funding to Arts Centre Melbourne and give workers a real pay increase that reverses years of real wage decline”, linking worker pay to the broader issue of cultural funding.

A spokesperson for Arts Centre Melbourne said the organisation respected workers’ rights to take lawful industrial action, and continued to bargain in good faith with union representatives to reach an agreement that was “fair and financially sustainable outcome that is consistent with the Victorian Government Wages Policy”.

The spokesperson said:

Arts Centre Melbourne has reached agreement with unions on a range of detailed conditions within the proposed Enterprise Agreement. The main outstanding issue is wage increases … During this period of industrial action, our priority is to minimise disruption for presenters, artists, and audiences, while maintaining a safe working environment for our team.

Jim Chalmers is quoting the shadow treasurer, Tim Wilson – who was just booted from the chamber for being rowdy – saying he would “like to slow the growth in the price of housing”.

“Then he says he wrote a whole book about it,” Chalmers says.

And we’re back to another demand the government join the Coalition to “crush the organised crime gangs”.

The health minister, Mark Butler, talks about the opposition increasing the tobacco excise by far more than Labor did when they were in power.

“And they trousered every single dollar,” he says.

He says Queensland and South Australia have put extra enforcement powers in place and there’s a “completely different picture” to that playing out in NSW and Victoria.

Now to the tobacco excise wars, sparked by the explosion in illegal tobacco.

Opposition leader Angus Taylor talks about the firebombing of small businesses and the need to “crush the organised crime gangs”. The opposition wants to cut the excise cut on cigarettes, so they would be more competitive on price.

Leader of the house Tony Burke says “the last thing this parliament should ever do is outsource its health policy to organised crime”.

It has to be dealt with through law enforcement, he says, adding:

They know all too well that the exact impact of what they are proposing would be an increase in tobacco consumption in Australia.

The shadow treasurer, Tim Wilson, says Sydney house prices are “plummeting so fast that they are on track for the biggest crash in 40 years” in a question to the government.

The housing minister, Clare O’Neil, says the government was transparent about the changes in the budget, with Treasury modelling suggesting there will be 75,000 new owner occupiers and a “small and temporary slowing in house price growth”.

House prices grew 400% in the past 25 years, she says:

[Wilson] is accurate in one sense that house prices are softening across the country … this is the fourth time that we have seen this occur in a decade in our country.

After a moment of silence for Nepal, question time is up and running.

Up first is Angus Taylor, who asks Anthony Albanese about comments from the Property Council about the government’s taxes being “a ram raid on house prices”.

Albanese says the budget made no changes for people who already negatively gear property, and that investors are “borrowing to build more new homes than ever before”, citing a Herald Sun report and ABS data:

Going forward, negative gearing and the 50% capital gains tax can still be used for investment properties, but only on new builds, so when people choose to invest in housing, they’re not investing in their future wealth and assets, they’re investing in the future wealth and assets of the nation.

Anthony Albanese is making a statement to the house about the Nepal-Tibet flood disaster.

It was “breathtaking in its horror”, he says:

Consider the noise, the fury, the terror. While the scale was vast, the impact has been all too recognisably human.

Many hundreds are dead. Thousands are still missing. Locals, travellers, workers, and pilgrims alike. While our hearts are being lifted by the wonder of individuals being rescued alive many days later, the burden upon our sense of hope is growing exponentially.

One Nation’s leader, Pauline Hanson, says her plan to let workers struggling with cost of living access some of their superannuation savings would not push up inflation.

The party’s new policy, released on Monday, would let anyone paying rent or a mortgage take up to a quarter of contributions to their super account as a “pay boost” for up to three years.

It would keep the same tax rate as it would have in super, giving someone on $90,500 an extra $44 a week.

Despite economists warning the plan would hurt the economy and weaken Australia’s system for compulsory retirement savings, Hanson claims it would be “neutral”. She said in a doorstop at Parliament House:

So you won’t pump up inflation with it at all. It will affect seven million people that will be open to taking their super out. So it won’t be inflationary.

There would be no restriction on who can access the super cash. She said:

If they want to access that and get one quarter of their superannuation, they’re putting away each week. Like I said, $44 can mean that people can pay their bills, their electricity, put food on the table or get medical attention, so that means a lot to a lot of people.

If it comes to a point of someone being out in the streets, living in a tent or can’t pay the bills in their home, I would rather see them get the help and assistance that they need now, not later in life.

The Greens have accused the New South Wales government of failing to tackle gambling harms after new data showed residents lost a record $2.38bn on poker machines in the last quarter.

Figures from the NSW office of liquor & gaming show the state’s gaming machine losses totalled a record $4.75bn in the first six months of this year.

The figure is more than $311m above the same time last year and remains above $1m an hour for the eighth consecutive quarter for two straight years.

Greens MP and gambling harm reduction spokesperson, Cate Faehrmann, said:

These staggering figures are the real report card on Labor’s gambling policies, and they show the government is failing. While people are struggling to pay rent, mortgages, power bills and groceries, poker machine operators are taking more than $26m a day out of communities across NSW.

The government talks about reform while clubs and pubs continue making billions from addiction and financial distress.

NSW is heading towards $10bn a year in poker machine losses. The question for Chris Minns is simple: how much more harm is he prepared to tolerate before he stands up to the gambling lobby?

Faehrmann has reignited the Greens’ calls for greater gaming restrictions, including mandatory cashless gambling, a midnight-to-10am shutdown of poker machines and a plan to significantly reduce machines across the state.

Queensland’s attorney general won’t say if her proposed new bail laws reverse the presumption of innocence.

At a press conference on Monday, Deb Frecklington conceded the laws are expected to lead to more people being jailed longer, but refused to reveal the state’s estimates of the effect the legislation will have on the state’s already overcrowded jail system.

The legislation was tabled in state parliament last month. It will make it much more difficult for some alleged offenders to get bail, requiring them to prove to a court that it should have “high degree of confidence they will not commit a prescribed offence”.

It also creates a new offence applying to some people who breach bail with a mandatory 12 month sentence.

Its explanatory notes show that the change may reverse the onus of proof in criminal proceedings, and may limit the right to the presumption of innocence. Frecklington said:

What I’m presuming is that if you commit an offence whilst you’re on bail, you will face mandatory minimum 12 months in juvie or in the criminal correction centres.

That’s what we’ve said. Now this this bill will be before the (parliamentary) committee - and it’s currently before the committee. There will be experts left front and centre.

The organisation that runs former Christian Brothers schools says it has formally agreed to pay out abuse survivors and is fast-tracking payments to those who have already been promised compensation.

The Christian Brothers, a Catholic order that ran schools and orphanages across Australia, announced earlier this year that it was going broke and would no longer be able to meet the claims of child abuse survivors. The decision infuriated survivors and lawyers, particularly given the Christian Brothers horrific track record of clergy abuse and the Catholic church’s vast wealth.

It prompted scrutiny of the controversial transfer of asset wealth from Christian Brothers to the Trustees of Edmund Rice Education Australia (TEREA), an organisation set up in 2007 to take over the running of Christian Brothers schools.

TEREA initially resisted efforts to take on responsibility for survivors’ abuse claims but changed its position following public pressure.

On Monday, ahead of a report by the ABC on the affair, TEREA issued a statement saying it had now formally agreed to compensate Christian Brothers victims and would fast-track payments to those who had already been promised compensation, either through court decisions or settlements.

Dr Stephen Brown, chair of TEREA, said it was “simply the right thing to do”. He said:

We do not want victim-survivors with approved claims to wait any longer and are fast-tracking finance and hope to be able to make an announcement soon.

In July, Guardian Australia revealed the Christian Brothers order had kept nine convicted child abusers within its order and was providing them with financial support, including by using its properties to house two brothers with horrific histories of preying on children.

Brown told the ABC he only learnt of that fact when told by the ABC during an interview three weeks ago, despite repeated prior reporting by the Guardian.

More than 200 workers at Bathla Group have been stood down as the administrator of the embattled property developer seeks emergency funds to stave off a company-wide collapse.

The insolvency advisory Teneo said today that new short-term funding arrangements would only allow Bathla to continue construction on some of the 45 construction sites. It said in a statement:

Construction on other projects will be suspended today, resulting in approximately 213 employees being stood down.

Bathla is a major Sydney headquartered developer that also has operations in regional NSW, South Australia and Victoria.

Thousands of homebuyers were left in the lurch by the announcement on 25 August that the developer had gone into voluntary administration, weighed down by almost $3.6bn in debt.

Teneo has previously said its immediate priority was to finish the estimated 2,000-2,500 homes on which construction had already begun, and that it was not in a position to refund any deposits.

Administrator Stephen Longley said today that short-term funding arrangements with five lenders would allow construction to continue on some projects. He said:

Significant work remains to secure the funding required to progress and ultimately complete all projects currently under construction.

The government’s proposed digital duty of care legislation, part of its crackdown on social media, gives too much power to the communications minister, the deputy opposition leader, Jane Hume, told the ABC this morning:

We don’t feel that the minister should have the powers to determine what is and is not online harm.

You could understand why there would be a natural suspicion. When the government tries to control the internet, it inevitably fails.

Andrew Bushnell from the Institute of Public Affairs echoed Hume’s claim, quipping that Australians would be trading the algorithm for the “alborithm”.

New laws being introduced in New South Wales aim to tackle organised crime by giving police more power and creating a new aggravated offence for conspiracy to commit gang-related murder. The maximum penalty will be increased to life imprisonment.

Police would also be able to use new interim serious crime prevention orders to restrict people suspected of serious and organised crime. Those would be applied while the supreme court considers the full order.

Children’s indictable offences would include activities linked to organised crime, and public shootings and firebombings would be added to the scheme.

Police would also have more access to encrypted devices. The NSW premier, Chris Minns, said:

Organised crime doesn’t stand still, and neither can the laws and powers we give police to fight it.

We want to hit these criminal networks at every point – the people who organise the violence, the people who facilitate it online and the people who ultimately carry it out.

If you conspire to arrange a gangland murder, you should face the prospect of spending the rest of your life behind bars.

One Nation’s proposal for people to be able to divert some of their super into their pay packet is a “full-frontal attack” that will “make Australian workers tens of thousands of dollars worse off in retirement”, the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said this morning.

One Nation is “anti-worker” and they “vote the way that [billionaire backer] Gina Rinehart tells them to”, he said, adding that the next election will be a “referendum on super”:

Every time One Nation is asked to support the financial interests of Australian workers, they oppose the financial interests of Australian workers.

By ending super as we know it, by making Australian workers poorer as a consequence, One Nation is showing once again: this is exactly why One Nation poses an unacceptable and dangerous risk to Australian workers.

The health minister, Mark Butler, is canvassing a wide range of topics this morning on RN.

Asked about speculation that he is “Labor’s leader in waiting”, he says the media always runs these sorts of stories and that he doesn’t think anyone in Labor is entertaining the notion:

The only thing I think about in the morning when I’m getting ready for work … is what I can do to better support Australians in their health needs, or with disability, and with ageing. And that’s a big job. It’s a job I love.

Butler says One Nation’s superannuation plan – for a portion of employer’s mandatory super contribution to be redirected to pay packets – is “absolutely terrible”:

Occupational superannuation is one of the great reforms of our country over the last few decades.

It will provide security in retirement to millions and millions of Australians who otherwise would not have it.

One Nation has come up with a plan to give people their superannuation earlier, reducing the amount they’ll have at retirement in exchange for a current cash boost.

Pauline Hanson says under their plan anyone paying rent or a mortgage can take up to a quarter of their super as a “pay boost” for up to three years.

It would keep the same tax rate as it would have in super, she says, saying someone on $90,500 would get $44 a week.

Hanson has been targeting super for a while. The government points out that people can access their money for financial hardship or compassionate reasons, while experts say that super forces people to save and gives us a sustainable retirement system:

Good morning, all – Tory Shepherd here for today’s blog.

Parliament is, of course, sitting. Much of the focus will be on the government’s crackdown on social media.

They’re planning to beef up the eSafety commissioner’s powers and to release draft legislation for a digital duty of care, which will force big tech to stop harmful content and to allow users to opt out of algorithms.

There’ll be more to come, but you can read Tom McIlroy’s piece here.

In an opinion piece, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, argues the existing ban on social media for under-16s is working (not everyone is convinced of that), and says they will strengthen it.

He says the digital duty of care legislation will “put the onus on services providers to take reasonable steps to create a safe online environment for all Australians” and give people control over algorithms:

They are driving users – often young people – down rabbit holes of harmful content.

We also know harmful algorithms can be devastating for young people and body-image issues.

For young men, those paths far too often lead to misogynistic voices detached from the values and expectations of our societies.

The communications minister, Anika Wells, has challenged the Coalition and the Greens to pass legislation strengthening powers for the eSafety Commissioner related to the social media ban for under 16s.

Labor will try to secure passage of the legislation in parliament this week. It would toughen information-gathering powers to investigate non-compliance by social media platforms related to the ban, and double the maximum penalty for breaches to nearly $110m.

A Senate committee recommended the bill be passed in August. Wells said:

It’s been more than two months since the Albanese government introduced an urgent law to strengthen eSafety’s powers to enforce the social media minimum age law.

Australian kids and parents needed these laws eight weeks ago, but the Coalition and Greens teamed up to send our four-page bill to an eight-week inquiry.

This is the kind of dawdling and delay that has enabled social media companies to get away with harming our kids for so long.

Two more Australians will join humanitarian and rescue efforts in the devastating Nepal-Tibet floods.

Two social workers have joined a total of 49 Australian personnel assisting in the disaster.

Monday has been declared a National Day of Mourning in Nepal, with the death toll reaching nearly 1,400.

Some 36 Australians are among the nearly 5,000 people who remain unaccounted for.

A cross-party group of dad MPs in federal parliament will champion new data showing the importance of fathers spending quality time with their kids, as they push for new progress on parental leave.

A new “Dads Caucus” will launch on Monday in Canberra, including Labor’s special envoy for men’s health, Dan Repacholi, the assistant minister for immigration, Matt Thistlethwaite, and MPs including Josh Burns, Jerome Laxale, Peter Khalil and the Liberal shadow minister Aaron Violi.

Supported by Movember, the launch event will include appearances by Wiggle Lachlan Gillespie, Jebediah frontman Kevin Mitchell, Joel Phillips (the film-maker father of the Eastern Rosellas song’s young composer) and author and Movember ambassador Zach Perez.

Movember’s More Time With Dad Report shows 70% of fathers who take parental leave said it was good for their mental health, 83% said it helped them bond with their child, and 78% said it was beneficial for their relationship with their partner.

But currently almost a third of fathers take no parental leave at all, and of those who did take leave, a majority (56%) said it wasn’t enough.

Movember wants to work with the Albanese government to establish a cross-departmental working group and to lead a review of the next phase of paid parental leave rules in Australia.

A coalition of 75 charities, social service organisations and transparency campaigners have called on the federal government to introduce a national lobbying act, to better control efforts to influence decision-makers in Canberra.

Representing millions of members, the groups span advocates for the environment, human rights, regional communities, faith organisations and online campaigners. Together, they argue the federal lobbying register and controls from the attorney-general’s department and Parliament House are badly insufficient for the public interest.

Australian Democracy Network’s chief executive, Saffron Zomer, said the breadth of support showed that lobbying reform was no longer a specialist integrity issue.

“Organisations working on very different issues share the same experience: well-resourced interests have greater access to government, while much of that influence remains hidden from public view,” she said.

“If the same professional lobbying activity is taking place, the same rules should apply. We have a crisis of public trust in government, and we can’t rebuild this trust without transparency.”

The parents of Australian brothers Callum and Jake Robinson, who were killed in Mexico in 2024, will fly to Ensenada to attend the aggravated homicide trial of their accused killers.

The two surfers, aged 33 and 30, and their friend, Jack Carter Rhoad, 30, a US citizen, had been camping in a remote beachside area when they were killed in what investigators believe was an attempt to steal their vehicle.

Writing on Facebook, Debra and Martin Robinson said attending the trial felt “overwhelmingly difficult” but that “being in that courtroom is one of the last things we can do for Callum and Jake”.

We are going because we need to be there, not only for ourselves, but to represent the immense love, heartbreak and unimaginable loss felt by their families, friends and everyone who loved these three extraordinary young men.

We want to hear the truth. We want to understand what happened. And most importantly, we want to be their voices, because they can no longer speak for themselves.

In 2025, a Mexican court sentenced a woman to 20 years in prison for her involvement in the incident.

Welcome to Monday’s live coverage. Tory Shepherd will be with you shortly for the day’s news.

Let’s begin.