Key events
Australian Conservation Foundation has X account reinstated
On yesterday’s blog, we brought you news that the Australian Conservation Foundation had its X account suspended for the second time – with little explanation.
The account was suspended for “breaking” the X rules, but was not told which tweets in question did so. ACF’s engagement director, Jane Gardner, said she believed they were being report-bombed by pro-nuclear groups.
(“Report bombing” is the practice of submitting large volumes of user-based reports to a platform saying a particular user’s content should be removed. It is often weaponised to try to remove content.)
Last night, the account was reinstated by X. While pleased with the decision, the ACF said there “remains no word from X about why we were suspended.”
The environment and energy minister, Chris Bowen, weighed in on the situation last night and said:
This is another outrageous example of social media trying to shut down voices for climate action. I don’t agree with [the ACF] about everything but they are an important and credible voice in the climate debate…
Universities rally against international student caps
Universities and businesses are lobbying against laws to give the education minister the power to cap the number of international students, AAP reports.
They argue it will stifle financial viability and put thousands of jobs at risk, but the government says the laws are necessary to better manage a migration system where people are using student visas as a backdoor into Australia.
The proposed changes would add extra repercussions for dodgy education providers found to flout visa rules and take advantage of international students.
The laws were rushed and “designed to deal with a political issue around migration ahead of the next federal election,” Universities Australia said in its submission to an inquiry into the bill.
International student revenue was crucial for research efforts, the Business Council said as it opposed caps.
Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi called the proposal “a migration policy disguised as an education policy” as the government worked to reform immigration levels.
Labor is crushing universities in a bid to look tough on borders.
The home affairs department said there had been a growth in “non-genuine students and unscrupulous providers” using the sector as a backdoor to enter Australia.
The universities, business groups, unions, legal experts and the department will on Tuesday give evidence to a parliamentary committee scrutinising the bill. The committee will report by August 15.
Good morning
Emily Wind
And happy Tuesday – Emily Wind here, signing on for blogging duty. Thanks to Martin for kicking things off!
As always, you can get in touch via X, @emilywindwrites, or via email, emily.wind@theguardian.com, with any thoughts, questions or feedback.
Let’s get started.
Mostafa Rachwani
Finally, Mike Burgess was asked about foreign interference and espionage, where he revealed that Asio has caught Iranians “surveilling individuals” in Australia.
Burgess said Asio was concerned that Iran was a “country who is capable of dealing with threats to their country as they see them, including through surveillance or potentially worse”.
Asked what “potentially worse” looks like, Burgess said it included potential assassinations:
Up to and including lethal operations, as in killing someone.
Asked if that meant assassinations, Burgess said “yes”.
We keep an open investigation but, of course, I would not disclose what we know because obviously it may stop us from doing our job well.
Mostafa Rachwani
More from Mike Burgess on the ABC last night
Burgess was asked about the war in Gaza and its influence on the decision to raise the threat level, saying that it did not have a direct impact on the decision.
He said the war had an “indirect impact” on threat levels, saying it had created its own “weather system” that drives “strong emotions and strong reactions”:
We did not raise the threat level in direct response to the conflict in Gaza. But of course, it has an indirect impact.
It has driven protests, it has driven division, and those protests are getting very emotional and there has been spontaneous violence. It becomes a bit of its own weather system and the wrong thing happens and it fires up the wrong things and is driving strong emotions and strong reactions and again, that’s our concern.
He added that politicians have an “exceptional role” in diffusing tensions, pointing to a statement he released in October that called for political leaders to be “careful” in how they speak on the issue.
Asio chief details decision to increase terror threat level
Mostafa Rachwani
Asio boss Mike Burgess was on ABC’s 7.30 Report last night, where he discussed the increased threat of terrorism, after his agency raised the risk level to probable yesterday.
Burgess said the decision to raise the threat level was after a series of violent incidents in Australia reflected “what we are seeing in society”. He said of the eight incidents that contributed to the decision, there was an “equal mix” of religious motivation, nationalism, racism and in one case a “mixed ideology that goes to the left and right”.
This is the new thing, people will go to violence with no warning and will not be known to us with little or no planning in the cases of some of these I’ve talked about. They are symptomatic of what we are seeing in society: increased temperature, violence is more permissible and a range of ideologies. Minors are also in the mix, youth are particularly vulnerable, driven by social media.
Less than half of the examples were religiously motivated, he said, adding that Sunni Islamic extremism was not much a driver to the raised threat level. He also said neo-nazism was a “big portion of the mix” which has “long been a thing in this country”.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our rolling news coverage. I’m Martin Farrer and I’ll be running through some of our top stories and looking out for what’s coming up later today.
Our top story this morning is a new Guardian investigation. A 15-year-old boy was charged with murder and spent almost a year in custody after Victoria police used a process described by a judge as “corrupted” to gather identification evidence against him. The case then collapsed during a pre-trial hearing in which the judge said she was “incredulous” that the prosecution was pushing ahead with it despite flaws in the evidence used to identify the boy as the murderer.
Victoria police have denied the investigation into the alleged murder of 17-year-old Aguer Akech was improperly conducted. Read the full story here.
Shares in New York and London have fallen heavily amid a global stock market rout triggered by fears of a recession in the US, where Wall Street suffered its worst day in nearly two years.
It points to more potential losses when the ASX opens later today. Australia’s share market had its worst day yesterday since the onset of the pandemic as fears of a US recession prompted investors to exit their positions, erasing more than $100bn in value from local stocks. It’s expected to shed 2.6% when trading opens and some pundits think that makes it more likely that the Reserve Bank will cut rates when it completes its monetary policy meeting at 2.30pm. We’ll have more on this over the morning.
Australia’s spy chief, Mike Burgess, has been explaining why the country’s terror threat was increased yesterday from “possible” to “probable”. Burgess was on the ABC last night to outline how eight attacks or disruptions that involved alleged terrorism had been investigated in the past four months fuelled by a volatile and unpredictable mix of issues such as the war in Gaza amplified by divisive social media. More coming up.