Australia news LIVE: PM creates AI office amid dire warning from experts on jobs, data centres; uni fees to hike for hundreds of thousands of students

Good morning and welcome to our live national news coverage for Wednesday, July 15. I’m Clare Sibthorpe. Here’s what’s making headlines today.

Albanese in charge of AI revolution as experts release dire warning: Anthony Albanese will stamp his prime ministerial authority on Australia’s response to the AI revolution amid fears of mass layoffs and energy-guzzling data centres, creating an office within his own department to deal with the technology as he assures US firms Australia is open for business.

Hundreds of thousands more students to be slugged with high fees: Education Minister Jason Clare has categorised the Job-ready Graduates scheme as “Unfair” and “failed”. He described it as an unsuccessful attempt by Scott Morrison’s government to steer students away from the humanities through lowering the costs of degrees such as nursing and teaching and sending law, commerce and arts costs skyrocketing. After more than four years in power, Anthony Albanese’s government has yet to commit to undoing the fee hikes.

NSW Police investigate source of dirt sheet linking ALP figures to ICAC inquiry: The youngest councillor ever elected to Bayside Council has emphatically denied emailing a dirt sheet about his ALP colleagues to Labor MPs and media.

Trump abandons plan to toll the Strait of Hormuz after ‘calls from emirs’: Donald Trump has abandoned his plan to charge ships a fee to use the Strait of Hormuz, but says the United States will still protect the waterway in exchange for additional investment from its Gulf partners.

A man has been shot dead in Sydney’s north-west as police investigate the latest public place shooting to hit the city.

The man, believed to be aged in his 30s, was found with significant injuries inside a car on North Rocks Road, Carlingford shortly after 7am on Wednesday, NSW Police said.

He was unable to be revived and died at the scene. He has not yet been formally identified.

North Rocks Road has been closed and the public are advised to avoid the area as the investigations begins.

The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted on a bill to make daylight saving time year-round and end the twice yearly practice of changing clocks.

The 308-117 vote sends the bill to the US Senate for consideration. US President Donald Trump strongly backs the measure.

If approved, US clocks would not to return to standard time in November, while states would have the option of opting out of year-round daylight saving time.

Representative Gus Bilirakis, a Florida Republican, said Americans are ready to “ditch the switch,” saying that changing the clock twice a year creates unnecessary disruption. More importantly, he said, it would give families more daylight time in the evening to spend outdoors and support local businesses.

Detractors said permanent daylight saving time would lead to darker and potentially more hazardous winter mornings, where children will be waiting for school buses and parents will be driving to work in darkness.

Reuters, AP

As mentioned earlier, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is due to give a speech in Sydney today about embracing artificial intelligence in line with Australian values and standards.

Assistant technology minister Andrew Charlton was on RN Breakfast earlier and asked if the government was now taking a more interventionist approach to AI. Here’s a taste of his response:

“The prime minister is bringing national leadership to the issue. He is well-placed to bring together the states and territories, bring together different parts of government, and make sure that we have a consistent national framework”.

“We had our national plan out, we had our data centre expectations out, and this is about making sure that those expectations of large AI data centres are nationally consistent”.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has ruled out forming a coalition with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party, after he was repeatedly asked if he would go further than saying there was no plan for a deal.

Appearing on ABC’s 730 Report on Tuesday for the first time since he said the rival party’s policies would lead to “an eternity of pain”, Taylor was asked four times by host Sarah Ferguson if he would categorically reject the possibility of forming government with One Nation.

Initially insisting that the Coalition had “absolutely no plan for a deal with One Nation to form government”, Taylor was asked again: “Doesn’t leaving it unruled-out, leave it on the table?”

“I’m ruling it out,” Taylor replied. “There’s no plan,” adding that “The reason is simple: that they would, One Nation would, as a government, leave us with an eternity of pain, and they have a grab bag of policies where even a small subset of them would take this country into a fiscal crisis.”

Last month, Taylor was obliged to step in and shut down a proposal from South Australian Liberal frontbencher Tony Pasin, who suggested the party should work “hand in glove” with One Nation to defeat Labor, even going as far as agreeing not to compete in the same electorates in a form of “seat swap”.

While Taylor and many senior Opposition MPs have, until recently, been careful not to alienate voters drifting to One Nation by being too harsh, many in the party have sharpened their attacks, including West Australian MP Andrew Hastie, whose own seat is under direct threat.

A man running from an encounter with immigration and other federal agents at a petrol station in Florida was struck and killed by a truck, authorities said.

The 28-year-old was among four occupants of a vehicle that stopped in the parking lot of the service station and convenience store in St. Augustine before 7am on Tuesday (Florida time).

During an encounter with agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Homeland Security Investigations, the four fled on foot, with one darting across a busy road into the path of the semi, Florida Highway Patrol Sergeant Dylan Bryan said in an emailed statement.

It was the third death in about a week involving encounters with ICE agents, following shootings in Texas and Maine.

Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security immediately returned emails from The Associated Press seeking comment.

AP

Independent MP Allegra Spender has backed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s office taking a greater role in artificial intelligence policy ahead of a speech outlining plans to embrace AI in line with Australian values and standards.

“I wish they had done this earlier,” Spender told Nine’s Today program this morning.

People want Australia to seize the opportunities of AI, she said, but also have concerns about the impacts.

“We don’t want to just be takers of technology from overseas, but there’s also a lot of concern out there, whether it be on data centres, whether it be on privacy, whether it be on protecting our kids,” Spender said.

The Trump administration is blocking American citizens in the Democratic Republic of Congo from travelling to the US on commercial flights, according to a White House official.

The order, which is being taken under a transportation authority known as Title 49, will place US citizens in DR Congo, or those who have recently been there, on a “do-not-board” list until they have spent at least 21 days in a third country, the person said.

The new restrictions come amid a widening Ebola outbreak, which has spread to multiple provinces within DR Congo. The number of confirmed Ebola cases across the country had risen to 1926, including 702 deaths, official data showed late on Sunday.

About two dozen Americans were set to board flights to the US on Tuesday after having travelled to DR Congo, according to the official, who said the State Department would support them and others affected during the waiting period.

The writer E. Jean Carroll has collected more than $US5.6 million ($8 million) that a jury awarded in her sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump, court records and her lawyers said.

The payment – representing the $US5 million jury award, plus interest – was made on Monday from an account where it had been held in escrow since the 2023 verdict, according to court records. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, confirmed the payment.

“We are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment,” Kaplan said in a statement. Carroll herself later wrote on Substack that “the eagle has landed”.

Trump’s lawyers have vowed to continue appealing.

Investing in more fossil fuels and limiting the rollout of wind and solar farms could cut 5 per cent from Australia’s electricity costs by 2050, the CSIRO says, but the strategy would require the nation to abandon all climate commitments and allow a massive surge in atmospheric pollution.

The trade-off, which has been modelled for the first time in the national science agency’s latest electricity generation cost scorecard to be released on Wednesday, is set to inflame Australia’s decades-long climate wars.

According to the CSIRO, new coal-fired power plants and more gas use could generate electricity at $124 per megawatt hour by 2050, measured in today’s dollars. By contrast, electricity would cost $131 a megawatt hour under the current plan for a net-zero-compliant grid powered mostly by renewable energy and backed up by batteries, transmission lines and gas.

The price gap has been mapped out as conservative political parties clash over renewables and emissions targets with the Albanese government, which has set a legally binding target for net zero by 2050 and an ambitious goal for renewables to reach 82 per cent of the grid by 2030 and more than 90 per cent by 2050.

Experts including the Grattan Institute and analyst Rystad have said the renewables rollout will fall significantly short of its 2030 target.

Mike Foley and Nick Toscano explain more here.

The Minns government has been urged to take up billions of dollars worth of Commonwealth-backed funds to build essential infrastructure, which advocates say would support more than 133,000 homes across NSW.

The Labor government announced $10 billion in grants and concessional loans under the 100,000 Homes for First Home Buyers program ahead of the 2025 federal election. The scheme was designed to support the construction of “new, well-located housing” by funding infrastructure – such as roads or water piping – necessary to support these communities.

Despite broad planning reforms, NSW housing supply has remained anaemic since the 2023 state election, with just 44,500 new dwellings completed in the year to the March quarter, lower than the year prior, and languishing behind the state’s commitment to build 377,000 homes by mid-2029.

The program requires a dollar-for-dollar commitment from states to match the Commonwealth’s funding contribution. So far, five states and territories have signed up to packages worth around $4.1 billion, with Queensland and Western Australia negotiating $2.4 billion and $1 billion deals, respectively. Around $5.9 billion of the $10 billion housing program remains unallocated.