Australia news LIVE: Australian soldier killed, five injured in NT military training exercise; temporary visas to be slashed by 650,000 under Coalition plan

The Australian sharemarket advanced in early trade after a tech-led rally pushed Wall Street higher as investors largely shrugged off concerns about bond yields at multi-decade highs. Oil prices fell.

The S&P/ASX 200 was up 33.90 points, or 0.4 per cent, at 8720.30 at around 10.30am AEDT, with eight of its 11 sectors in the green. The local bourse closed flat on Monday after a stronger US dollar weighed on commodity prices. The Australian dollar was flat at US69.69¢.

The broad-based early gains came despite a report that showed consumer confidence slumped last week after the Reserve Bank’s decision to raise the cash rate to 4.60 per cent, the highest in more than 15 years.

Confidence in current and future financial conditions and in the short-term economic outlook is now at lowest levels since late May, the ANZ-Roy Morgan Australian Consumer Confidence survey released this morning showed.

Read more here.

OpenAI will apologise to Australians for its AI models accessing government websites they were never directed to, and concede it “should have handled our response better”.

Chief strategy officer Jason Kwon will tell the parliament’s joint select committee on artificial intelligence in Sydney at 2pm today that the company is sorry and has “work to do to rebuild trust with the Australian people”, according to opening remarks seen by this masthead.

Kwon will say OpenAI has paused training on some frontier models while it strengthens its infrastructure, monitoring and approach to alignment.

He will commit resources to affected agencies through OpenAI’s $1 billion Daybreak cyber defence fund, and announce a local taskforce of independent Australian experts that will report by the end of the year.

His statement does not mention Medicare by name. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed last month that an OpenAI agent accessed public and non-public files on the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal in June.

Rival Anthropic fronts the same committee at 12.10pm.

Specialist home shopping broadcast network TVSN has informed customers of a shutdown sale beginning today after its parent company failed to find a buyer, but suppliers say they have been kept in the dark about the closure.

TVSN, which has been operating for more than three decades and advertises hundreds of fashion, homewares and accessories through Seven Network’s channels, as well as its own livestream, urged customers to stock up on Christmas gifts as the business prepares to wind up operations.

“Direct Group, the owner of TVSN, has spent recent months seeking new investment or a buyer for the business. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to secure a transaction that would allow TVSN to continue in its current form,” an email sent to customers on Sunday and Monday, seen by this masthead, said.

“Absent finding such a buyer, the board expects to close TVSN.”

The sale to liquidate stock will begin today, but will end if a buyer is found, the email continued. Customers are urged to use their gift cards, vouchers and store credit.

Read more here.

Pauline Hanson has joined One Nation counterpart Barnaby Joyce in claiming the Coalition is copying the right-wing party’s migration policy.

Coalition Leader Angus Taylor will announce a new policy today which is expected to slash migration to about a third of the current intake – a larger-than-expected reduction the party claims would not hurt Australia’s ailing budget and economy.

“The Coalition has turned up late to the grand final after both teams have headed back to the changerooms, waving a photocopy of One Nation’s immigration policy,” Hanson said.

“Their plan is to build more houses, then bring in more people to compete for them.”

The ABC has no plans to replace any of its on-screen newsreaders or journalists with artificial intelligence technology, representatives of the public broadcaster told a special inquiry this morning.

“To be very clear, the guidance that we give to our editorial staff makes very, very clear that they are not to create replicas of people or their voices, without very careful consideration,” the ABC ’s senior executive for policy and regulatory affairs, David Sutton said.

“I can envisage particular contexts in program making where that might be necessary. But fundamentally, there’s no plan to recreate our newsreaders or anything like that,” Sutton told the hearing.

The Joint Select Committee hearing into Artificial Intelligence is being held in Sydney this morning. Representatives from the ABC are the first to appear. Head of legal for content at the ABC, Kate Gilchrist said there is a “lot at stake” for media companies.

That includes ensuring audiences understand what content is produced by the ABC, and to ensure that there is a “financial return” on content that public money has been used to create.

Currently, the ABC has no control over how its content is being used by AI “to control the integrity, accuracy, impartiality of the content, and the independence of the ABC,” Gilchrist said.

A government-owned supermarket chain would sell groceries more than 20 per cent cheaper on average, under a plan hatched by the Greens’ think tank.

The idea for the federal government to buy up 200 Coles and Woolworths stores and open more than 400 extra shopfronts has been floated by the Green Institute and given the nod by the party’s freshly minted leader.

The average four-person household would save $60 a week, or $3134 a year, according to the Green Institute’s report, proposing to offer eggs, milk, fruit, vegetables, meat and cheese at about two-thirds of their current price.

The plan would cost $25.1 billion over five years.

An Australian soldier has died in a training exercise at a military training area in the Northern Territory, the Department of Defence has confirmed.

The soldier, yet to be named, was killed during the exercise at the Mount Bundey Training Area yesterday. Five other soldiers were injured. Defence is expected to provide further details at a later time.

Over the past five years, at least seven Australian defence personnel have been killed in training incidents or exercises.

Liberal frontbencher Jonno Duniam says AI investment is the “the opportunity of a lifetime for our country”, ahead of today’s parliamentary hearings.

“This committee will be a very, very swift one because time is of the essence, and I believe Australia needs to get this right, or else we will miss the boat, and we will be poorer for it for generations to come,” Duniam, who is the deputy chair of the joint select committee on AI, told News24.

Duniam said Australia had to strike the right balance to protect Australian copyright holders, and safeguards against rogue agents.

“We’ve got to make sure that the economic benefits and the national security benefits that will come with partnering with US-based hyperscalers and becoming the second home here in Australia will flow to Australia,” he said.

Barnaby Joyce has again defended One Nation’s new $8 million Brisbane headquarters bought by mining magnate Gina Rinehart.

Speaking on Today, the One Nation MP likened the arrangement to criticism of the Labor Party being “owned” by the union movement.

Asked whether that was a concession that One Nation was run by Rinehart, Joyce said: “The difference is that we pay a commercial rent at commercial terms.

“If we choose to rent it off a private individual, I don’t see the problem. We have Australia’s biggest taxpayer by far, personal income tax, biggest taxpayer by far, who’s got ahead, made Australia wealthy, and then people go, ‘Oh, that’s outrageous’,” he said.

“I like the idea of people being successful in Australia, and if people want to, from their success, support a political party, then that’s their right, for God’s sake.”

Veterans’ Affairs Minister Matt Keogh says he is concerned about distrust in the community towards service providers after ABC’s Four Corners revealed for-profit providers were targeting former defence personnel.

The program reported that the Veteran Benefits Australia organisation was enticing former military personnel to sign up to a for-profit benefit scheme and incorrectly billing taxpayers for services.

“Veterans should expect that, if providers are purporting to provide them with coordinated care and services, that they’re actually getting that care and that they’re getting those services instead of the government taxpayers being billed for a service that isn’t delivered,” Keogh told Radio National.

He said the government had already tightened rules around prescribing cannabis and was looking at further regulations for the sector to ensure ethical operation.

“We’re working to make sure that those medical providers that are doing the wrong thing, and companies that are working with them, trying to take advantage of veterans, are not able to do that.”