Victoria premier says Sussan Ley only focused on ‘politics and division’ with comments about crime

Benita Kolovos
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, accused the federal opposition leader, Sussan Ley, of following in Peter Dutton’s footsteps as she visits Melbourne today to talk about crime.
Ley told the Today Show earlier this morning she was in Melbourne to call for tougher sentencing laws and described crime in the state as “out of control”.

When Allan was asked about the visit, she acknowledged there was “more to do” in tackling the “repeat pattern of brazen, dangerous and shocking behaviour” causing community concern but described Ley’s visit as “purely politics”.
She went on:
We’re seeing from the current leader of the opposition that she’s following the same anti-Victorian pattern of behaviour that the federal Liberal party have perpetrated on Victoria year after year after year … We know she’s not focused on what’s best for Victoria. She’s only focused on bringing politics and division, which is so typical of the Liberal party, whether it’s the federal Liberal party or the state Liberal party, they’re all about punching down on Victoria and Victorians.
We’ve got a lot of work to do here in Victoria and Victorians deserve better than this reckless, divisive politics that we’re seeing time and time again from federal and state Liberal party members.
Key events

Andrew Messenger
Queensland follows other states with plans to update defamation laws
Queensland’s attorney general, Deb Frecklington, has introduced new legislation updating the state’s defamation laws.
The state follows New South Wales, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory, which have already passed the changes into law.
The legislation was introduced on Tuesday and will now go through a parliamentary inquiry before going before parliament for a final vote. Frecklington said:
It is vital that Queensland’s laws keep pace with the changing ways Australians communicate, particularly the evolving influence of digital and social media.
Bringing our laws in line with other states and territories is crucial to prevent forum shopping and provide certainty when publications are made across borders.
The laws make minor changes to the law, allowing moderators of social media pages to avoid a lawsuit by taking down defamatory content. Courts will also have a slightly expanded power to take down defamatory content online.

Josh Butler
AEC says increasingly challenging to monitor social media influencers around elections
The Australian Electoral Commission says it’s becoming “increasingly challenging” to monitor online communications around elections, including social media influencers, and says parliament should consider new rules about online content around elections.
In the AEC’s submission to the federal parliament’s electoral inquiry, it said it reviewed more than 7,400 pieces of electoral communications during the 2025 election period, finding 1,677 breaches of authorisation rules.
That included reviewing 2,606 social media communications including 18 podcasts or influencer posts. It found 38% were in breach of electoral rules.
The AEC’s submission said issues around electoral communications had “changed significantly since the authorisation requirements were updated” last in 2018, noting evolving communication methods and technology issues.
The AEC commissioner, Jeff Pope, told the committee it was becoming “increasingly challenging” for the AEC to address the issue.
The AEC suggested the parliamentary committee should consider updates such as changing electoral communication rules, strengthening the AEC’s powers to investigate and make quicker decisions about non-compliant material including removing offending signs, requiring disclosures of “deepfake” or AI-generated material, and deciding whether podcasts and influencers should be subject to electoral rules.

Benita Kolovos
Victorian opposition leader says Ley ‘only pointing out the facts’ about crime in the state
Victorian Liberal leader, Brad Battin, has backed Sussan Ley’s visit to Melbourne to talk about “out-of-control crime”.
Asked about the premier’s criticism of the trip as “purely politics”, Battin says Jacinta Allan would’ve also criticised Ley if she didn’t visit the state:
Sussan Ley’s got a role across the whole of Australia, and if she doesn’t come to Victoria, the premier says she’s not the prime minister for the whole country. Now she’s here, she wants to bag her. Sussan Ley is only pointing out the facts, and the facts are, crime is up. We’ve got 106,000 victims here in this state in the last 12 months. More and more people are afraid in their own homes. Car thefts are at the highest level, double that of New South Wales. These are all issues here in Victoria under Jacinta Allan’s watch. Of course, people are going to start pointing it out.
Asked why he wouldn’t appear with Ley at a press conference this afternoon, Battin says he has responsibilities at parliament:
I was out with Sussan, and I can’t remember the exact date, but it was only in the last two or three weeks when I was out with Sussan Ley. I’ve been with her, I’ll always go out with her. I support her. I think she’s doing a fantastic job. But today she’s come down here on a parliamentary sitting day. It’s obviously very difficult to get out.

Andrew Messenger
Huge spike in child homelessness in Brisbane: report
There are more than 2,000 homeless children in Brisbane, an increase in 48% in the last financial year. About half of them are under four.
The number of families facing homeless has also nearly tripled, according to the new figures, released today by homeless service Micah Projects.
The chief executive officer, Karyn Walsh, said the city had recently recorded a new record low rental vacancy rate of 0.7%, the lowest since 2023, which means the problem with get worse over the next week.
She said the crisis had been “brewing for 10 years, ever since, probably the floods [in 2022]”:
I think poverty is growing in Australia, inequality is a major issue, and we can’t take our eye off it. People’s lives are impacted. People die from it. It’s something that we’ve really got to not take our attention from, because it’s getting harder for everyone to get a house.
A group of homelessness services operating as the Brisbane Zero collaboration assisted 2,125 children and 1,230 families in emergency crisis accommodation such as hotels and motels in the last financial year, compared with 734 children and 403 families the year before.
Walsh said that, as a result of state government changes, not all homeless people were eligible for state funding support, forcing services to pay to house them with charitable donations.

Andrew Messenger
Three dead after house fire in Gladstone, Queensland
Three residents have died in an early morning house fire in Gladstone, Queensland.
Ch Supt Luke Peachey confirmed the three deaths in a press conference on today. He said they have yet to be identified.
Earlier on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the police said police were investigating the fire.
Police and emergency services were initially called around 5.56am to reports the Whiting Street property at Toolooa was on fire.
Upon arrival, the house was fully engulfed.
The fire has since been extinguished and a crime scene has been declared.
Mustafa says he has to be ‘hopeful’, but worries about flow of aid, medicines and doctors needed in Gaza
Israel rejects a UN commission of inquiry finding of genocide and denies allegations of wrongdoing, justifying its actions as self-defence following Hamas’s 7 October attacks that killed about 1,200 people, AAP reports.
Dr Mohammed Mustafa, better known as Dr Mo or his Instagram handle “Beast from the Middle East”, became globally known by posting heartbreaking clips while working at Gazan hospitals.
He remains worried about the flow of aid, medicines, doctors and machinery needed to start the massive rebuild, which remains under Israel’s control.
Still, “I have to be hopeful,” he said:
Three years ago, many people didn’t understand Gaza or the occupation or the history. Now, world opinion has changed.
Doctor who worked fly-in, fly-out in Gaza worried about prospect for peace
Dr Mohammed Mustafa, the Perth-based doctor who shared video clips of his work as a fly-in, fly-out emergency medico in Gaza, holds grave fears for the prospect of peace.
A ceasefire is in effect but Mustafa said it shouldn’t be mistaken for a long-term solution.
“It’s a ceasefire, not a peace plan,” he told AAP.
Central to his concerns are the lack of accountability for Israel’s military offensives, both before and after Hamas’s 2023 attack that began the two-year war.
“It is important to understand that this peace plan does not address the conditions that led to 7 October,” he said, adding:
It has nothing on Palestinian self-governance, the end of occupation or lifting the siege. There’s nothing in this peace plan addressing two years of war crimes.
My people, family, have been through a genocide by the neighbours, as recognised by the UN and every major human rights organisation. You can’t have peace without justice.

Benita Kolovos
Victorian emergency services minister says ‘every call got through’ during triple-zero power outage
Victoria’s emergency services minister, Vicki Ward, has provided a further update on the power outage at triple zero overnight, which meant call takers weren’t able to use the service’s computer-aided dispatch system for several hours.
She told reporters outside parliament:
There was a power outage last night at triple zero. Call takers, dispatchers responded very quickly, they were straight on to it. They were able to use the systems that they have in place when such a situation happens, and that’s exactly what they did.
She says the power was off for “about an hour and a half”, with an investigation into the matter now under way. She says a key focus will be finding out why the backup power system didn’t take over during the outage:
We’re investigating that at the moment. It’s never happened before … What should happen is the backup service should come in and work. We don’t know why it didn’t.
She said the dispatch system was incrementally brought back on line over a couple of hours.
The issue is unrelated to an outage on 18 September, when Optus customers were unable to call triple zero.
Ward said “every call got through” during this power outage.

Patrick Commins
Central bank will be slower to cut interest rates in the future, RBA chief economist says
Poor productivity growth means the central bank will be slower to cut interest rates in the future, the Reserve Bank’s chief economist, Sarah Hunter, says.
In a speech this morning, Hunter outlined how Australia’s poor productivity growth meant that “trend” economic growth – essentially the economy’s speed limit – was now 2% per year, versus a previous estimate of 2.25%, and well down from more than 3% in 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s.
Once upon a time a quarterly GDP growth rate of 0.5% would have been “seen as subdued”, she said, but “would now signal demand and capacity growing largely in line with each other and inflationary pressures holding steady”. Hunter said:
Weaker productivity growth means the RBA will be slower to cut rates in response to slower growth, and faster to hike when the economy expands more quickly.
Similarly, the bank assesses that the sustainable wages growth is now 3.2%, against 3.5% previously.
Financial markets and a number of economists have pushed back expectations for the next rate cut until 2026.
With their forecasts already baked in, Hunter said the updated assessment on Australia’s potential growth rate had “very little” impact on what the RBA would do over the coming year or two.
Rightwing US commentator Candace Owens loses appeal over 2024 visa rejection
Rightwing commentator Candace Owens lost her high court appeal against a decision to deny her an entry visa to Australia. The court found the minister for home affairs, Tony Burke, was within his right to knock back the visa after saying the provocateur may “incite discord” during her planned national speaking tour.
Australia rejected Owens’ visa application last October, ahead of a planned five-date tour in November, with events proposed in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. Owens, whose full name is Candace Owens Farmer, has courted controversy with incendiary claims about Jewish, transgender and Muslim people, and Burke said last year it would be better for Australia’s national interest “when Candace Owens is somewhere else”.
Owens filed a suit earlier this year saying the rejection went against implied freedom of political communication.
In a lengthy ruling, the high court upheld Burke’s findings. The court said:
In the absence of evidence, or agreed facts, it is not obvious that the opportunity to hear Ms Farmer speak in Australia (the so-called “lightning bolt” effect) could add anything to political communication in Australia.
Owens will have to pay the costs of the appeal.
Victoria premier says Sussan Ley only focused on ‘politics and division’ with comments about crime

Benita Kolovos
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, accused the federal opposition leader, Sussan Ley, of following in Peter Dutton’s footsteps as she visits Melbourne today to talk about crime.
Ley told the Today Show earlier this morning she was in Melbourne to call for tougher sentencing laws and described crime in the state as “out of control”.
When Allan was asked about the visit, she acknowledged there was “more to do” in tackling the “repeat pattern of brazen, dangerous and shocking behaviour” causing community concern but described Ley’s visit as “purely politics”.
She went on:
We’re seeing from the current leader of the opposition that she’s following the same anti-Victorian pattern of behaviour that the federal Liberal party have perpetrated on Victoria year after year after year … We know she’s not focused on what’s best for Victoria. She’s only focused on bringing politics and division, which is so typical of the Liberal party, whether it’s the federal Liberal party or the state Liberal party, they’re all about punching down on Victoria and Victorians.
We’ve got a lot of work to do here in Victoria and Victorians deserve better than this reckless, divisive politics that we’re seeing time and time again from federal and state Liberal party members.