China admits to firing flares near Australian chopper: PM

That’s all for the Need to Know news blog today, thanks for reading. Here are some of the day’s top stories:

Commonwealth liable for sacred site damage: High Court: The High Court has ruled that government agencies can now be prosecuted for damage to Indigenous sacred sites as the traditional owners and custodians of Kakadu National Park won a test case over a walking track built near Gunlom Falls.

White House optimistic of a ceasefire agreement after ‘limited’ Rafah operation: The White House is expressing confidence that the limited Israeli action at Rafah has opened the door for a ceasefire agreement.

China admits Australian helicopter in international waters: Albanese: China has admitted the Australian helicopter it fired flares in front of was in international waters, says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

New $566m map of what is under Australia: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has unveiled a $566 million plan for Geosciences Australia to map what is under Australia’s soil and sea beds.

Extending Privacy Act to small business a key reform: Privacy reform is urgent, says Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind calling for the privacy regime to be extended to small businesses currently exempted from privacy laws.

Slow housing pipeline worries Chalmers: Next week’s federal budget will contain more initiatives to meet chronic housing shortages with Treasurer Jim Chalmers admitting the slow pipeline of new housing construction is worrying him.

Outspoken Queensland MP Bob Katter has slammed a Senate report recommending the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission get new legal powers to prosecute supermarkets found to be price gouging customers.

The committee chaired by the Greens senator Nick McKim split over calls for break-up rules for Coles and Woolworths.

Katter, the member for Kennedy, says farmers and other suppliers to the big retailers are being sent to the wall through unfair trading agreements and the supermarkets should be broken up.

“How much time and money has been wasted on these reports? Over the past 15 years, we’ve had 15 reports,” he said.

The Kennedy MP has pushed for supermarket divestiture laws for more than a decade. He said the inquiry had shown growers were being paid too little for their produce, while the supermarkets made massive profits.

He said the recommendation on price gouging was “ridiculous”.

“How is the federal government going to prove price gouging is actually taking place?

“The people are just hurting bad and they’re just going to hit out and kick out whoever is there.

“You just can’t walk into parliament and say ‘affordability, affordability, affordability’ and then do nothing about it.”

Katter wants mark-ups by the big supermarkets to be limited to 100 per cent of the price paid to suppliers.

“A farmer is getting 45 cents per kilo for their potatoes, meanwhile Coles and Woolworths are charging over $4.50 – more than 800 per cent mark up.”

Katter said he did not believe the combined market share of Coles and Woolworths was 65 per cent, suggesting they actually made up 80 per cent of the $133 billion sector.

The transfer of income and wealth from the Millennial generation to Baby Boomers is a national tragedy, says Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas.

Pallas committed the state government to an economic growth statement including more efficient taxes and regulatory reform.

“Young Victorians are contributing more to older generations by the national tax and transfer systems,” Pallas told a budget lunch hosted by the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

“Transfers from households aged 25 to 34 years of age to those over 65 years have increased by 88 per cent since the late 1980s.

“What is happening is nothing short of a national tragedy.

“We are effectively seeing the greatest transfer of wealth from one generation to another in the wrong direction.”

He said Australia would have to acknowledge young people are finding it much harder to break into the housing market than their parents did.

Pallas signalled the state would be developing an economic growth statement.

The statement would be aimed at stimulating economic growth, including a more efficient tax system, regulatory reform and more efficient public services.

An external advisory committee will be established to give advice in the development of the statement.

The GST revenue sharing system is a “huge, cumbersome, complex, bureaucratic process” that does not work in this century, says former WA premier Colin Barnett.

Barnett has told the National Press Club the system is failing, and GST revenue sharing should be based on population.

“After all, the major expenditures of state governments are health and education and they are driven by population virtually alone. That is the logic,” Barnett said.

“It is a huge, cumbersome, complex, bureaucratic process and running this system that dates back for over 100 years.

“It just does not work in this century. There are lots of anomalies in the GST system.

“The fact that you have royalty income treated and included in GST allocation calculations, revenue from poker machines not included. Where is that for social policy?

“Western Australia doesn’t have poker machines, so basically is penalised because of that.

“In fact in 2014 when I was premier, the four big states, NSW, Victoria, Queensland and WA, all agreed we go to a population basis for distributing it.”

The White House is expressing confidence that the limited Israeli action at Rafah has opened the door for a ceasefire agreement.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the operation along the Gaza-Egypt border in eastern Rafah was not a full-on Israeli invasion of the city that President Joe Biden has repeatedly warned against on humanitarian grounds.

Kirby said Israel described it as “an operation of limited scale and duration” aimed at cutting off Hamas arms smuggling.

Kirby expressed optimism about the ceasefire negotiations, saying Israel and Hamas “should be able to close the remaining gaps” to complete an agreement.

He said CIA chief William Burns will attend further talks in Cairo with representatives from Israel, Egypt and Qatar. Hamas also sent a delegation to Cairo, which will meet separately with the Arab mediators.

Israeli troops seized control of Gaza’s vital Rafah border crossing in what the White House described as a limited operation, as fears mount of a full-scale invasion of the southern city and talks with Hamas over a ceasefire and hostage release remain on a knife’s edge.

The Israeli foray came after hours of whiplash in the now seven-month-old Israel-Hamas war, with the militant group saying on Monday it accepted a ceasefire proposal that Israel insisted fell short of its own core demands.

The high-stakes diplomatic moves and military brinkmanship left a glimmer of hope for a deal to bring at least a pause in the war, which has killed more than 34,700 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and has devastated the Gaza Strip.

The Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings are critical entry points for food, medicine and other supplies for Gaza’s 2.3 million people. They have been closed for at least two days, though the smaller Erez crossing between Israel and northern Gaza remains open.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the capture of the crossing an “important step” towards dismantling Hamas’ military and governing capabilities, and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel would “deepen” the Rafah operation if talks on the hostage deal failed.

Osama Hamdan, a Hamas official based in Beirut, said the militant group would not respond to military pressure or threats and would not accept any “occupying force” at the Rafah crossing.

China has admitted the Australian helicopter it fired flares in front of was in international waters, says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

“The ambassador has already been spoken to about this issue, as has people in Beijing,” Albanese tells media in Perth.

“The explanation given overnight by Chinese authorities does not satisfy any change to the position that we’ve taken.

“Indeed the wording that they have used by saying that they were near Chinese airspace is confirmation that there’s no question that the Australian Defence Force personnel were both in international waters, and in international airspace, and now we’re undertaking work on behalf of the international community, and enforcing UN sanctions against North Korea.”

The Chinese foreign ministry accused an Australian navy helicopter of flying “within close range” of Chinese airspace in a “provocative move”.

The Australian government claims China fired flares in front of a helicopter from HMAS Hobart. The ship is participating in an international operation to enforce United Nations sanctions against North Korea.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has unveiled a $566 million plan to map what is under Australia’s soil and sea beds.

“Today I’ve announced $566 million to map the whole of Australia,” Albanese told media in Perth.

“No state will benefit from that more than Western Australia.

“It’s rather extraordinary that we haven’t had this planning done, which can provide important information for businesses and communities about where critical minerals are, about what is under our earth and our waters.”

The funding means Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity (RAP) will be fully funded for 35 years – setting the resources industry up for decades of exploration and future economy-making discoveries, he said in an associated statement.

Albanese said the RAP will map offshore areas of Australia as well, pointing the way for sites for carbon capture and storage, as well as possible sites for clean hydrogen projects.

“It will provide a deeper understanding of the resource potential of our regions by mapping out all of Australia’s groundwater systems, supporting climate resilience, our agricultural sector, and water security for communities and the environment.”

RSM Australia says next week’s federal budget should permanently incorporate business loss carry-back tax offset rules, making them an ongoing element of Australia’s income tax regime to encourage investment and bolster business resilience.

The professional services firm has outlined six tax reform proposals for the budget, due to be handed down on Tuesday night.

They include reducing the corporate income tax rate to 25 per cent for all corporate tax entities, targeted incentives for businesses that embrace clean energy, and their investors, and changes to the GST and managed investment trust rules to stimulate housing development.

RSM also says tax incentives should be included to encourage greater business investment in research and development; and changes to the rate of the GST.

National tax technical director Liam Telford said the changes would help boost the Australian economy.

“We have recently seen developments at the level of the executive and legislature that have created business uncertainty and made Australia less attractive for investment which is counter to tax reform objectives to expand the economy and improve living standards,” Telford said.

“While understandably this budget is expected to provide cost-of-living pain relief for Australian households who are doing it tough, measures that also address mounting ‘cost of business’ pressures should also be prioritised.”

Under temporary loss carry-back rules, eligible entities were allowed to claim losses in 2019-20 to 2022-23 against tax paid in income years from 2018–19.

Less than 2 per cent of documents in the My Health Record system are being looked at by doctors, with incomplete records, poor interoperability and clunky usability frustrating patient and clinical use of the $2 billion federal portal, according to a new Productivity Commission report.

The commission’s report said My Health Record (MHR) was intended to be a central access point for a patient’s most important health data, but despite an investment of more than $2 billion, it continued to be “plagued by incomplete records and poor usability”.

The report said there were an estimated $5.4 billion of benefits from getting the My Health Record working for clinicians and patients.

There are now 23 million records with 1.2 billion documents in the federal portal, but the report said only a fraction were being accessed by clinicians.

“Commission estimates suggest that around 2 per cent of documents uploaded by healthcare providers are viewed by other healthcare providers,” the report says.

“For clinicians who do use MHR, it is not clear that they regularly use it as a source of information.”

The High Court has ruled that government agencies can now be prosecuted for damage to Indigenous sacred sites as the traditional owners and custodians of Kakadu National Park won a test case over a walking track built near Gunlom Falls.

The court on Wednesday overturned a ruling of the Northern Territory Supreme Court that the Director of National Parks in the Northern Territory could claim crown immunity for breaches of the Sacred Sites Act.

The 7-0 decision means charges laid by the Chief Executive Officer of the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority against the DPP over changes to the walking track can now proceed.

Gunlom Falls has been one of Kakadu’s most popular tourist attraction, but since 2019 it has been closed at the request of the traditional owners.

The case had centred on damage to Gunlom Falls within the national park, after the construction of a walkway was built too close to a sacred men’s site.

The cascading waterfalls at Gunlom Falls had gained prominence in the classic Australian film Crocodile Dundee.

The ruling is set to create a precedent of how Indigenous sacred sites are protected.

After a legal challenge by the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority against the Director of National Parks, the NT Supreme Court found while the track works weren’t properly authorised, the Commonwealth could not be held legally responsible for the damage under territory.

The Director of National Parks had previously pleaded not guilty to charges due to arguing that as a government body, it held the privileges and immunities of the Commonwealth.

But following an appeal to the High Court, it found the Director of National Parks can be held criminally liable for breaching the Sacred Sites Act.

“It is not a presumption against construing a statute to impose criminal liability on a natural person or a body corporate, such as the (Director of National Parks),” the court said in its ruling.

With AAP