Australia news LIVE: Labor MP says AFL team’s Mad Monday celebrations ‘ridiculous’; US issues deadlines to countries to stop all financial dealings with Iran

Updated August 25, 2026 — 10:07am,first published August 25, 2026 — 6:45am

Hello and welcome to our national news live blog for Tuesday, August 25. Here’s what is making news today.

• A survey conducted by this masthead has shown immigration rather than living costs is the top concern for Aussies who have flocked to One Nation.
• Anthony Albanese yesterday promised to keep a special deal to protect Western Australia’s share of the GST as long as he is prime minister, effectively killing the recommendations of an independent inquiry that signalled the arrangement needed to change.
• The five Sydney Swans players at the centre of an allegation of sexual assault and multiple claims of sexual conduct without consent will not be welcome at the AFL’s night of nights, next month’s Brownlow Medal count in Melbourne, the league confirmed yesterday.
• The Richmond Tigers are also facing questions about its players’ conduct after footage emerged last night of the club’s playing group during a Mad Monday celebration at a pub in Gippsland.
• The Australian sharemarket is set to edge higher, with futures at 4.56am AEST pointing to a rise of 10 points, or 0.1 per cent, at the open. The ASX added 0.5 per cent yesterday. The Australian dollar was trading at US71.47¢.
• And the US has launched “Operation Economic Outcast” in an attempt to isolate Iran from the world. It issued deadlines to countries to cease all financial dealings with the regime in Tehran.

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Labor will not prioritise finalising its looming migration policy at today’s cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke abruptly cancelled a policy announcement he was to make at the National Press Club earlier this month amid pushback from cabinet – ministers had raised concerns over community pushback and financial consequences of a migration crackdown.

Albanese told ABC Perth radio that the contentious policy area – which is causing problems for each of the nation’s three most popular political parties – was not on the agenda.

“We won’t be finalising that today,” Albanese said.

“Migration policy, though, we’ve finalised our numbers. We’re headed to 225,000 in two years’ time.”

“Today we’ll be finalising the arrangements, including on AI national standards, that will go to national cabinet tomorrow. So that is the main agenda. There’s some other things on the cabinet agenda, of course, that we don’t talk about.”

A federal judge postponed a trial in the US for a Libyan man charged in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, citing the discovery of new evidence that defence attorneys want to examine.

Jury selection was scheduled to begin on Wednesday for the federal trial of Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi in Washington. His trial is the first in the US for the December 21, 1988, bombing.

US District Judge Dabney Friedrich’s order didn’t specify the nature of the newly discovered evidence.

Marimi, a former Libyan intelligence official, is charged in the US with making the bomb that downed the airplane over Lockerbie in Scotland, killing 270 people.

Two other Libyan intelligence agents were tried by a panel of Scottish judges on a former US military base in the Netherlands in 2000. The tribunal convicted one official and acquitted the other, but the bombmaker’s possible identity remained a mystery for years.

AP

Industry Minister Tim Ayres says tech giants building their own nuclear-powered data centres in Australia is a “dumb idea”, as the major parties near bipartisan consensus on AI standards but disagree on how they should be powered.

Appearing alongside Ayres on News24, Liberal frontbencher Jonno Duniam said he hoped the government was open to lifting the moratorium on nuclear energy as Australia tries to harness the economic benefits of the data centre boom.

“Nuclear is, of course, net zero. It does not produce emissions, and so it is worth having a conversation,” Duniam said. “If these companies brought their own small modular reactors, it wouldn’t actually cost consumers anything.”

While both senior MPs were at pains to point out where they agreed as the major parties try to avoid stoking community backlash against data centres, Ayres ridiculed the suggestion of using nuclear power.

“Nobody in the real world, with real money, is interested in investing in Australia with nuclear energy because it’s a dumb idea,” he said.

“It’s only on very small corners of the internet and our broadcast media, and in the Liberal and National and One Nation parties, that people are going on about nuclear power for data centres… It’s an ideological fantasy, and the net outcome of that would be higher household bills.”

The Gippsland hotel where a group of Richmond Tigers players held Mad Monday celebrations has responded to reports this morning questioning the conduct of the players after 7News released footage of the group last night.

The Garfield Hotel’s ownership group posted a statement on Instagram saying the team had booked out the venue for the afternoon.

“We could not speak more highly of the way they conducted themselves. For such a young group, they were extremely respectful and a fun group of boys to deal with,” the post said.

The ownership group also labelled behaviour of media waiting outside the hotel this morning “disappointing”, and said the incident had been “blown out of proportion”.

Read the hotel’s statement here.

Opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan says the Coalition will work with the government on its AI data centre rollout and gas reservation scheme if the government is prepared to negotiate.

He pointed to the Coalition’s agreement to pass a series of Labor legislation, including the NDIS overhaul, gambling advertising and the news media bargaining code, in the past sitting fortnight as evidence of the cross-party collaboration.

“When it’s in the national interest to do so, we will work with the government,” Tehan told Radio National.

He said the Coalition wanted a gas reservation scheme that encouraged investment in the sector but ensured Australian gas was used to support domestic manufacturing.

“What we need is the government to reach across the table and say to us they’re prepared to work with us in the national interest to meet the types of principles that we think are absolutely fundamental. Now, so far, we haven’t seen the government do that, but we have seen and made it quite clear that we’re prepared to do it.”

Resources Minister Madeleine King has questioned how methodical the Productivity Commission was in examining the WA GST deal before it labelled the scheme a costly mistake.

King was defending the prime minister’s pledge yesterday to keep the $60 billion GST agreement despite criticism from other states.

“I’m glad that WA’s share of the GST is assured, and there won’t be any changes,” she told Radio National.

King said she was surprised at the report’s findings, and said the prime minister made the call when he did because the interim report was “so far away from any expectations of what might be leading into a final report”.

“There’s no kind of halfway house in that report. It was all about winding back the arrangements that the Productivity Commission itself had recommended in 2018 to the government of the day,” she said.

“I don’t actually quite agree that it has gone through it as methodically as it might have. When you look through the report, you’ll notice there’s zero reference to suggestions made by the WA government, and this is the government representing the population that will be the most widely affected by any changes.”

The Richmond Tigers will be forced to field questions about its players’ conduct after footage emerged last night of the club’s playing group during a Mad Monday celebration at a pub in Gippsland.

The players have been accused of reenacting alleged scenes from the ongoing Sydney Swans saga after five players were stood down for breaching club standards last week.

The five Swans players face a separate police investigation into an allegation of sexual assault that reportedly took place in the early hours of last Monday morning at the Pullman East Melbourne hotel.

The footage of the Tigers’ controversial Mad Monday celebration prompted this comment from Labor MP Dan Repacholi this morning: “Right now we need good blokes out there having the conversations around this and calling this out for what it is because this is unacceptable, and we need to make sure we do better.”

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has spoken this morning about taking a tumble yesterday during the Pollie Pedal bike ride.

“Everything is pretty sore at this moment,” Taylor told Seven’s Sunrise. “But look, a great cause here ... We’re supporting our veterans.

“It’s not the first bike crash I’ve had. I’ve been riding for many, many years, so I’ve had some worse ones than that. But it’s never fun. You just get back up and go again.”

The opposition leader was not asked about reports in this masthead that he arranged $33,000 in federal government grants for the Brethren-backed religious charity which provides food for the Pollie Pedal event.

Labor MP Dan Repacholi says the Richmond Tigers “missed the mark” as footage emerged of players from the AFL team during a Mad Monday celebration at a pub in Gippsland.

Users on social media have accused the players of appearing to reenact alleged scenes relating to the ongoing Sydney Swans scandal. The footage shows midfielder Josh Smillie pulling down his pants, covering his mouth and feigning shock.

“Mad Monday is meant to be a day where they could all let their hair down a little bit, but this is bloody ridiculous … These guys out there doing this sort of thing and mocking and taking the piss generally is just not the right look for AFL or for anyone,” Repacholi told the Today show this morning.

“Right now we need good blokes out there having the conversations around this and calling this out for what it is because this is unacceptable, and we need to make sure we do better.”

Toronto: US President Donald Trump told Canadian leaders to “fall in line” or face consequences that would be “far WORSE” than the tariffs he has already imposed as Prime Minister Mark Carney accused Washington of trying to subordinate Canada.

Trump’s warning on social media came as he threatened new 50 per cent tariffs on Canadian vehicles, auto parts and steel amid escalating tensions between the two countries.

Carney said US trade demands had confirmed Canada’s fears that Washington was seeking to dismantle its auto industry. Nonetheless, he said his country remained willing to negotiate, but only if the US approached the talks as a partnership between sovereign countries.

“An attitude at the negotiation table that Canada is a subsidiary of the United States” is “not something we’re going to accept,” Carney said.