Australia news LIVE: Albanese admits regret over podcast for the first time; Woman at centre of Sydney Swans allegation breaks silence

Hello and welcome to our national news live blog for Friday, August 21. Here’s what is making news today.

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has conceded for the first time that his decision to participate in a podcast episode with comedian Nikki Osborne on her show Bush Deep in July was an error. Speaking to ABC’s 7.30 last night, Albanese said: “If I had my time again, which you don’t, then I wouldn’t have done that podcast.”
• Foreign Minister Penny Wong has expressed her “outrage” at Israel’s decision not to pursue criminal charges against the soldiers who launched a fatal strike on Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and six of her colleagues in Gaza. Yesterday, Israeli ambassador Hillel Newman was hauled before Wong to explain how Israel had reached the decision. Albanese vowed that the government would continue to demand justice for Frankcom and her family.
• Labor’s News Bargaining Incentive, which will tax social media giants who do not strike deals with news companies, passed the Senate yesterday. Digital platforms will now have to pay a 2.5 per cent levy on their digital advertising revenue if they do not strike deals with Australian news outlets for their journalism.
• And the woman at the centre of an allegation of sexual violence that occurred while she was inside a Melbourne hotel room with a group of Sydney Swans players has spoken publicly. The woman reportedly told the Herald Sun: “I don’t want money. All I care about is justice.” Swans star Isaac Heeney is the focus of the investigation by Victoria Police’s sexual crimes squad. It involves an allegation of touching beyond what was agreed.

Latest Posts

The Liberal Party deputy chair of the committee is leaning into the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church’s narrative that they are the victims here, and had been subject to “religious discrimination” in the 2025 election campaign.

Senator Richard Colbeck has asked church spokesman Lloyd Grimshaw to describe “the victimisation that your church has suffered”, and whether that had motivated individuals to “be active within the political process”.

It was the Liberal and National Parties that Plymouth Brethren Christian Church overwhelmingly supported. Grimshaw takes the opportunity offered.

“I think it does fire people up, you know, when they’re publicly called out and targeted for their faith. It makes them naturally want to defend their faith and defend their beliefs and practices and what they stand for.

“So I think what you say is entirely correct,” he tells Colbeck, “that during the 2025 election campaign, we saw an extraordinary rise of media reporting and name-calling and all sorts of things directed against the church, seen for political purposes”.

“Well, I think the result of that was that many decided to get involved and help out.”

The timeline here seems a little off – the reporting was prompted by the sudden appearance of thousands of people hiding their affiliation on polling booths.

The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church spokesman Lloyd Grimshaw has started his evidence at a parliamentary inquiry into interference at the 2025 federal election with familiar denials that his church has been involved in any campaigning.

Describing the campaigning – which involved payments to far-right figures to launch stunts and heckle politicians, and thousands of people on the ground – as the “private affairs of its members”, not the church.

Grimshaw denies being part of the chat groups that organised the campaign. He also said the church had not issued any sanctions to its members because, “the church wasn’t involved in it”.

Grimshaw, sounding nervous and under pressure, also started with a robust attack on this masthead for its reporting.

“It references no church member specifically at all. As I recall, this story doesn’t come to one amount of money, one detailed transaction, one quote, one communication between my church or even an individual member of my church and one politician or political party or third party.”

“When you write an article about the brethren, the collective noun for more than one member of the church, The Age gets clicks, and they can tell their advertisers about it.”

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has sounded the alarm on what he said was a threat to Australia’s democracy after this masthead revealed a secretive Christian sect had funded far-right agitators to disrupt the 2025 election campaign.

“Today’s report deals with the concept of people being paid to engage in physical intimidation. Australia hasn’t had that before, and we shouldn’t have it,” Burke said after calling a press conference on the issue.

He said the Liberal Party needed to explain why this behaviour formed part of a broader campaign to elect the Coalition in 2025, and “whether they are now welcoming these same individuals”.

He said the parliamentary inquiry into election interference, being held in Canberra today and before which the church formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren is scheduled to appear, needed to expose what happened.

“We need to draw a line under this. We need to make sure that if this is what has happened in the 2025 election, that it is an aberration that is rejected by everybody today, and a line is drawn under it. There’s too much at stake.”

Washington: The Asia-based USS George Washington aircraft carrier is now operating in the Middle East, relieving a long-deployed carrier following reports of mental health challenges and supply shortages aboard while it was supporting the Iran war.

US Central Command said on social media that the carrier arrived in the region on Wednesday. It was not clear when the USS Abraham Lincoln would arrive back in the United States, or whether it would make a port stop along the way, but the journey takes just over a month.

The Washington arrived as concerns have grown about the Lincoln’s lengthy deployment, which has included a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 250 days, and about reports of crew stress and poor mental health, as well as supply shortages, including food and hygiene products.

Several Democratic lawmakers have pressed the Department of Defence for accountability over conditions aboard the Lincoln, which Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has said were “completely misrepresented”.

US President Donald Trump this week played down reports about conditions on the Lincoln, which left its home port in San Diego in November and arrived in the Middle East in January.

Extended deployments of carriers wear on service members who are away from home for long periods and increase strain on the ship and its equipment.

While hostilities between the US and Iran have calmed in recent weeks, the US Navy is enforcing a reimposed blockade on Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz.

AP

Deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume has avoided questions over this masthead’s revelations that the Exclusive Brethren paid far-right figures to disrupt the 2025 election campaign as part of a multimillion-dollar campaign for then-Liberal leader Peter Dutton.

Hume told reporters in Canberra that the party would respond after the reclusive Christian sect appeared before an inquiry into election interference at Parliament House today.

“I think we’ll hear probably more about that at the hearing today and we can respond once
we understand what’s actually going on,” Hume said.

Asked whether the AFP should investigate cash being paid to hecklers, she said: “I think that’s being unpacked today in the Senate inquiry”.

Pressed again, she said it was the first she had heard of the allegations.

“If that’s happened at an election it is unacceptable, but to be honest, I didn’t see that on a single booth that I was on, not a single booth. I have experienced on the booth … intimidation by unions that are standing on the booth next to people that are handing out on behalf of the Coalition.”

Health Minister Mark Butler said that Senator Jacqui Lambie’s plea for a looming $5000 annual cap for veterans’ allied health services to be scrapped had been raw and powerful, and that the government was listening to her carefully.

Lambie, herself a veteran, unleashed in a speech yesterday in which she reflected on her medical battles.

“I’m begging you, prime minister. We are already suffering enough,” she said.

Bengaluru: Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been shifted from jail to the Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad, local media outlets ARY News and Geo News reported.

It followed a Supreme Court ruling that allowed the former cricket star – who has not been seen publicly since his imprisonment in 2023 in a graft case – to be taken there for treatment.

The court directed this week that Khan, 73, be moved from the jail in the garrison town of Rawalpindi – where he has been held since August 2023 – to a private hospital in the capital, Islamabad, fulfilling a longstanding demand of his party and family, who had raised concerns over his health.

Health Minister Mark Butler has called for an investigation into election interference after this masthead revealed that the wealthy Christian sect formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren secretly paid far-right activists to disrupt the 2025 election campaign.

“We certainly want [the allegations] investigated, and frankly, I think we want some answers from the Liberal Party organisation about their involvement in organising these disruptions,” Butler told Radio National.

In the Brethren’s wider multimillion-dollar election effort for the Coalition, its members turned out to campaign undercover at polling booths in blue Liberal T-shirts despite their usual edict to shun the outside world.

“This could get quite dangerous if random people are being paid to go in and create trouble,” he said.

“Everyone needs to have a good look at themselves who is involved in the sort of activity we saw at the last election, which I’ve never seen in my long involvement in politics.”

Health Minister Mark Butler has defended Anthony Albanese after the prime minister’s latest apology over a controversial podcast appearance in which he made a suggestive gesture while talking about crown melons gifted by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, and nominated Kylie Minogue for “all of the above” in a game of “marry, date, shag”.

Albanese issued the apology on ABC’s 7.30 on Thursday: “If I had my time again, which you don’t, then I wouldn’t have done that podcast,” he said.

“We have a view which is trying to talk to as many people as possible, but clearly, that was an error.”

Butler rushed to the defence of Albanese, who has faced weeks of criticism for the remarks on the Bush Deep podcast.

“Last night what he did was indicate that although he has tried to use all the forms of communication to speak to as many people as possible, he recognises he got that one wrong,” Butler told Seven’s Sunrise moments ago.

“I think that’s what Australians want from their leaders, whether they’re political, business, football leaders. When they get things wrong, admit it, and he did.”

Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy says the prime minister made a mistake by agreeing to participate in a widely criticised podcast with comedian Nikki Osborne in July, but that it is not a concern for everyday Australians.

“Well, the prime minister has made it clear that he regrets doing the show, and he’s human like everyone else … ultimately, he said what he said,” Conroy told the Today show this morning.

“The Australian people want to focus on what the Australian government is doing to help them, whether it’s cost of living, investing in healthcare, from the range of services they expect governments to deliver. They’ll judge us on that.”

Conroy’s remarks come after Anthony Albanese told ABC’s 7.30 last night that his decision to appear on Osborne’s show Bush Deep was an “error”.