Australia news LIVE: Sydney developer bypasses council 250-home approval; ‘Gatto tax’ for Victorian unit buyers; Labor racks up millions in gambling donations

Good morning and welcome to our national news live coverage for Wednesday, July 22. I’m Ellie Busby, and I will be bringing you the news from around Australia and the world as it happens this morning.

Here are our top stories so far today:

• Eastern suburbs developer Arash Tavakoli bypassed Sydney’s Woollahra Council to gain approval for a 25-storey tower in Edgecliff. It’s a win not only for Tavakoli, but also for former premier-turned-lobbyist Morris Iemma, given his work in recent years shepherding the development through the state’s planning approval processes.
• Victorian apartment buyers are forking out a “Gatto tax” as plastering, precast and other businesses allegedly pay gangland figure Mick Gatto for CFMEU-backed, privileged access to the state’s high-rise housing sector.
• The Labor Party collected more than $4 million in gambling donations in five years, including $1.5 million around the last election, as it dithered on reform before backing down from a full crackdown on betting advertising. On Wednesday, the party’s left faction will consider whether they should make a last-ditch effort to push Prime Minister Anthony Albanese into a tougher position on reducing gambling harm.
• Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has killed off the idea of a merger with One Nation, as Senator Malcolm Roberts’ fringe views continue to attract scrutiny and party leader Pauline Hanson returns to Australia.

President Donald Trump said he was directing his government to allow all US airlines to fly directly to Lebanon, after meeting with the nation’s president, Joseph Aoun.

All US flights were suspended in 1985 after the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 from Athens, Greece, en route to Rome, Italy. The flight was forced to land in Beirut. During the 17-day ordeal, a US Navy diver was killed.

Before flights to Lebanon could resume, US officials would need to conduct an extensive security review of the Beirut airport and certify its safety. It was unclear if US carriers would be willing to resume flights. The major US airlines – American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines – have halted flights to nearby Tel Aviv, citing security concerns.

The FAA said it looked forward “to working with airlines and our interagency partners to implement the president’s directive and support the safe return of flights to Lebanon”.

The US State Department has a “do not travel” advisory for Lebanon for Americans, citing high tensions in the Middle East.

Reuters

NSW Premier Chris Minns said he doesn’t think all One Nation supporters are racist, as he criticised Pauline Hanson over racist remarks.

Minns was asked if he thought One Nation was a racist, discriminatory party on ABC Radio National this morning.

“Certainly, some of the things Pauline Hanson says are definitely racist, [like] when she said there are no such there’s no such thing as a good Muslim. I mean, how else do you characterise that?” he said.

“You’ve got to be straight with people, and that clearly is, but I don’t think everyone who’s supporting them currently is racist at all. I think that there are a lot of people who are probably concerned about the level or rate of immigration.”

Senators in both parties are questioning a plan by President Donald Trump’s media company to sell real-time access to Truth Social posts to Wall Street firms.

The sharpest criticisms have come from Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who blasted the move as “the exact definition of insider trading”. But even within the president’s own party, several key senators raised concerns about the propriety of the move.

“The president is the president of the United States, he’s not in a position to use the position to enhance your own personal wealth,” said Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. “I hope he’s not thinking about that.”

Republican Thom Tillis, who has frequently sparred with Trump, warned that the president could be “wading into a grey area”.

Sticking with Barnaby Joyce for a tick – after apologising for yelling at his dog on TV the other night, the One Nation MP continued his janitorial work mopping up messes around the party he joined in December.

This morning he was defending Senator Malcolm Roberts’ right to speak his mind as footage emerges of Roberts claiming deaths were “staged” during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Joyce does not agree with what Roberts said but said he has a right to say it.

“I don’t think those visions were staged. I think that, obviously, it’s a tragic circumstance for families that lost members during COVID,” Joyce told Nine’s Today program this morning.

But there were questions to ask about whether the Australian government, which Joyce was part of, “went too far at the time with the restrictions”, he said.

He has not spoken to Roberts about the issue and “that’s more Pauline’s realm”, Joyce said.

“In One Nation, you have great latitude to speak your mind, which is a good thing, which is what democracy is about, I don’t think it’s hurting our vote that people do, but that doesn’t mean because somebody says it, you agree with it. And on this instance, I don’t agree,” Joyce said.

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce has apologised for “verbally assaulting” his dog, saying the dog stopped him hearing questions from a journalist during a live television interview.

“I couldn’t hear the questions and I’m sort of winging it, and [ABC 7.30 presenter] Sarah Ferguson’s getting a fair run up and giving me some media chin music … I’m not playing the good shots, so I’m getting a little bit angry,” Joyce told Nine’s Today program this morning.

“And then I verbally assaulted the dog, which I’m incredibly sorry for,” Joyce said.

The dog appeared at Joyce’s feet during the interview.

It “remains to be seen” whether a jailed and previously-thought-dead Islamic State doctor will be allowed to return to Australia.

Environment Minister Murray Watt has reiterated the government’s position to provide no assistance to people who “made the absolutely awful decision to go and join a foreign terrorist organisation” when asked about reports in The Australian that Perth-born paediatrician Tareq Kamleh is alive in an Iraqi prison, not killed in the 2017 siege of Raqqa as previously thought.

But if he is still alive it remains to be seen if he can return to Australia.

“We’ve obviously just got this early reporting about this point, but we won’t be providing assistance, just as we haven’t provided assistance to others to come back,” Watt told Nine’s Today program this morning.

A judge will allow the BBC to issue subpoenas to members of President Donald Trump’s inner circle as part of its response to a $US10 billion ($14 billion) defamation lawsuit.

US Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett said at a hearing in Miami that the subpoenas were reasonable given the breadth of Trump’s lawsuit, though the information sought by the broadcaster may need to be narrowed.

Trump sued in December over a 2024 BBC documentary that included a misleading edit of a fiery speech he made shortly before his supporters attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, making it appear that he’d made a direct call for violence. The BBC apologised in November but failed to prevent Trump’s suit.

The BBC has argued that in order to prove defamation, Trump must show that he did not incite the violence. It argues that the subpoenaed communications will show Trump’s state of mind that day.

The stage is set for the final curtain to fall on a fiery defamation battle between A-lister Rebel Wilson and her up-and-coming co-star.

The Pitch Perfect star is being sued by Australian actor Charlotte MacInnes, who played the lead role in Wilson’s directorial debut film The Deb.

MacInnes claims Wilson defamed her in a series of social media posts that implied she was a liar and a sellout who walked back a sexual harassment complaint to further her career.

The posts claimed the young actor confided in Wilson – and later recanted – that she felt uncomfortable when the film’s co-producer Amanda Ghost asked to have a shower and a bath together.

San Francisco: A US judge has approved a $US1.5 billion ($2.1 billion) copyright settlement in which artificial intelligence company Anthropic will pay thousands of authors about $US3000 per book after using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot.

District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a ruling that the class-action settlement provides “meaningful relief” to affected authors and publishers.

About 91 per cent of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment.

US District Judge William Alsup issued the preliminary approval in San Francisco federal court last September and has since retired. Alsup had dealt the case a mixed ruling finding that training AI chatbots on copyrighted books wasn’t illegal but that Anthropic wrongfully acquired millions of books through pirate websites.

Bestselling thriller novelist Andrea Bartz first brought the suit with two other authors in 2024. It’s the first major settlement in dozens of AI copyright lawsuits that are still working their way through US courts.

AP

Kyiv: President Volodymyr Zelensky has fired General Oleksandr Syrskyi as commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, following days of mass protests in Kyiv and other cities nationwide demanding his removal.

Zelensky appointed Mykhailo Drapatyi as the new army chief, according to a statement on social media.

In an evening address, Zelensky also said that he had offered former defence minister and so-called drone mastermind Mykhailo Fedorov – whose surprise dismissal sparked a political crisis – a “decent post” to oversee defence technology.

Ukraine would continue its deep strikes on Russia under the new commander in chief, Zelensky said.

AP, Reuters