Australia news LIVE: Trump touts ‘very friendly’ talks with Iran; Cheek Media founder to run against PM in Grayndler at 2028 federal election

Hello and welcome to our national news blog. It’s Tuesday, July 28. Here’s what is making headlines.

• Victorian Premier Jacinta Allen is expected to lose leadership of the Victorian Labor Party. Follow the spill at our live blog here.
• Schools have been warned it is no longer safe to share images and videos of students online, as the eSafety regulator moves to combat a spike in AI-generated deepfakes targeting children and teachers.
• Podcaster and Cheek Media founder Hannah Ferguson has announced she will run against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the seat of Grayndler at the next election.
• Rose Davies has pulled off a stunning run to claim Australia’s first gold medal in the 10,000 metres
• Singer Carly Simon has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The 83-year-old star is most famous for her 1972 hit single You’re So Vain, which she later said was about three men, one of whom was her former boyfriend, Hollywood star Warren Beatty.
• Australia’s favourite comedy is headed to the theatre, with The Castle set to be transformed into a modern stage show.

Motorists are facing a petrol price hike next week with the fuel excise cut due to end, just as oil prices surge again because of the US war on Iran.

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said the government was not planning to continue the cost of living relief measure - currently 16 cents off per litre of fuel - beyond its scheduled end on August 2.

“It’s not in our current plans to continue the excise [cut]. We said it would step down,” she told ABC TV.

“What we are focused on is assuring continued fuel and fertiliser coming into Australia, and we are calling... for there to be ceasefire negotiations and an end to this conflict, which has caused so much global turmoil,” Wong said.

Resources Minister Madeleine King, however, told ABC radio that the situation would be reviewed over the coming week.

“We won’t rule anything out… the treasurer and the prime minister and the [Expenditure Review Committee] will consider that over the course of the week,” she said.

Some Australians may have eaten horse meat in products sold as beef or lamb, or consumed food tainted with mouse fur or metal shavings, secret government documents reveal.

New South Wales politician Abigail Boyd used parliamentary powers to compel the NSW Food Authority to produce thousands of documents.

“There were metal shavings found in bread products … products that were supposed to be dairy-free, that were not dairy-free, [which] were only caught by accident,” Boyd told an ABC Four Corners investigation.

The investigation into Australia’s food industry show hundreds of businesses, including aged care homes, hospitals and catering companies, were issued notices for food safety breaches between 2022 and 2026. 

The Victorian government may avoid a bruising leadership challenge, with Jacinta Allan understood to be reconsidering her position within hours of an expected caucus vote.

While Premier Allan on Monday vowed to “fight all the way” any challenge to her leadership, overwhelming numbers supporting Deputy Premier Ben Carroll have increased pressure on her to resign.

Follow the leadership spill here.

Hello and welcome to our national news blog. It’s Tuesday, July 28. Here’s what is making headlines.

• Victorian Premier Jacinta Allen is expected to lose leadership of the Victorian Labor Party. Follow the spill at our live blog here.
• Schools have been warned it is no longer safe to share images and videos of students online, as the eSafety regulator moves to combat a spike in AI-generated deepfakes targeting children and teachers.
• Podcaster and Cheek Media founder Hannah Ferguson has announced she will run against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the seat of Grayndler at the next election.
• Rose Davies has pulled off a stunning run to claim Australia’s first gold medal in the 10,000 metres
• Singer Carly Simon has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The 83-year-old star is most famous for her 1972 hit single You’re So Vain, which she later said was about three men, one of whom was her former boyfriend, Hollywood star Warren Beatty.
• Australia’s favourite comedy is headed to the theatre, with The Castle set to be transformed into a modern stage show.

Cheek Media founder Hannah Ferguson has announced she will run against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the seat of Grayndler at the next election.

The podcaster and commentator said Australians were fed up with the major parties and felt they weren’t being listened to.

“He’s been the member for 30 years, and I feel like, as a young person in Australia, that I do not feel represented at a local level by him. I think this is an incredibly progressive electorate that demands and deserves more than a politician who is beholden to the interests of the gambling lobby and the fossil fuel industry,” Ferguson told Sunrise.

“More people need to be standing up, putting their head above the parapet, and challenging people like the prime minister,” she said.

Ferguson said she planned to step away from the company she founded, Cheek Media, next year to campaign full-time.

The 28-year-old had previously indicated she would run as an independent candidate for the Senate, but said community members had urged her to take on Albanese in the lower house.

New York: Singer Carly Simon has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, she said in a statement provided to The Associated Press. “So many people have written to me, kindly wondering about my relative silence, asking how I am and what I have been doing. The truth is, I’ve been learning how to live with Parkinson’s disease,” Simon’s statement on Monday read.

The 83-year-old star is most famous for her 1972 hit single You’re So Vain, which she later said was about three men, one of whom was her former boyfriend, Hollywood star Warren Beatty.

She said she had been experiencing arthritis in one of her hips and both her knees, resulting in replacement surgeries for those three joints. But her mobility continued to decline.

“My family and I knew that something more was going on. After an extensive evaluation at the Mayo Clinic, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s,” she said.

President Donald Trump has called on the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, saying the US should have the lowest interest rate in the world.

“Rates should be lowered ... We have other countries that are paying less interest rates,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

“We should have the lowest interest rate in the world,” Trump said.

“Kevin is fantastic, but he’s got a board, and the board members are very political,” Trump said, referring to the US Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, adding he knew what Warsh wanted to do.

When Trump selected Warsh to replace Jerome Powell earlier this year, he made it clear that lower interest rates were his preference.

Reuters

US diplomats walked out as their French counterparts spoke on Monday at the United Nations, accusing America’s close European ally of “disingenuous grandstanding” for criticising the Trump administration’s human rights record.

The surprise walkout was sparked by a social media post by France’s UN Mission in Geneva criticising US opposition to a second term for UN human rights chief Volker Türk. The General Assembly voted 144-10 with 13 abstentions in support of Türk, with the US among the “no” votes.

“The US used to be a beacon of human rights. Not any more. Today, it stands alongside North Korea, Nicaragua, Mali & Russia, isolated. And the world no longer listens to it,” the French Mission tweeted.

After the brief walkout, deputy US ambassador Dan Negrea accused France of feigning “moral outrage” and pretending to lecture the world about every topic, including human rights.

Milford, Michigan: US President Donald Trump said the US has been having “very friendly” talks with Iran.

“You can’t bribe them. You’ve got to beat them, and we’ll beat the hell out of them. But we’ll see how it turns out,” he said at a rally in Michigan on Monday (US time).

“Right now, there are very friendly negotiations going on,” he said.

Washington abruptly suspended a two-week campaign of air strikes against Iran on Saturday in Trump’s latest strategic U-turn in the five-month-old conflict. Earlier, Trump warned that US strikes would resume if the negotiations failed to deliver.

“I think there’s a good chance that something could happen, and if it does, good. If it doesn’t, we go back to doing what we were doing two days ago,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

Reuters