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Telstra must ‘face the music’ over outage, minister says

The communications minister, Anika Wells, is speaking about the Telstra outage, saying the company has provided formal notice to the triple-zero custodian that the outage has been fully resolved.

She said all welfare checks that Telstra referred to the state emergency services have been completed, and there were “no adverse outcomes” linked to those efforts.

“That is a huge relief to all Australians. I want to thank those who provided support to those seven individual who did need assistance,” Wells said. “Their quick and diligent work on this occasion may well have saved lives.”

She then moved to terse words for Telstra, saying:

double quotation markThe last few days have been really difficult for many Australians and now that Telstra has resolved its outage, it is time for Telstra to face the music. Telstra has a lot of questions to answer …

Telstra has held special trust from Australians. It has been respected as the premium service. It is an iconic company. It has a rich history. But that trust really stands in peril today. It is going to take Telstra a lot of time and a lot of work to rebuild that trust with Australians.

Key events

• 2d ago

  What we learned, Friday 10 July

• 2d ago

  Telstra must ‘face the music’ over outage, minister says

• 2d ago

  Derryn Hinch dies aged 82

• 2d ago

  Body of missing girl found in bushland near small town in Victoria

• 2d ago

  SA confirms first case of bird flu detected in local wildlife

• 2d ago

  Press Club bills GetUp over Hanson stunt

• 2d ago

  Telstra CEO apologises for letting ‘Australians down’

• 2d ago

  Albanese to miss Garma festival for first time as PM

• 3d ago

  Jayson Gillham loses legal bid against Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

• 3d ago

  Taylor not entirely ruling out One Nation preferences

• 3d ago

  NSW man charged with advocating terrorism online

• 3d ago

  Alliance with One Nation ‘not our plan’, Angus Taylor says

• 3d ago

  Victorian premier demands Telstra reimburse rail passengers affected by outage

• 3d ago

  Qantas tops airline punctuality table

• 3d ago

  Pauline Hanson defends UK ‘fact-finding’ trip

• 3d ago

  Welcome

What we learned, Friday 10 July

Ima Caldwell

We’re bringing our live news blog to a close now.

Here are today’s top headlines:

• The first case of deadly H5 bird flu in local wildlife has been recorded in a bird found on the South Australian coast, with experts saying the discovery is an escalation of the disease’s arrival in the country.

• Derryn Hinch, the former journalist and senator, has died aged 82.

• South Australia police have completed an investigation into a death reported by Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle and ruled out a link to Wednesday’s triple zero outage.

• The body of a 13-year-old girl who went missing on the weekend has been found in bushland in regional Victoria after an extensive search, with police saying they are treating the death as “suspicious”.

• A classical pianist who sued the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has lost his case after alleging he was unlawfully discriminated against because of his views on Israeli forces killing Palestinian journalists.

• The Northern Territory children’s commissioner has resigned over controversial changes to child protection laws, saying the Finocchiaro government had “sidelined” her in going ahead with amendments that are strongly opposed by First Nations organisations, human rights groups and legal advocates.

• The New South Wales government and police have spent almost half a million dollars in legal fees on cases they lost against pro-Palestine groups, including when unsuccessfully defending constitutional challenges against protest laws expected to be struck down.

• The entity that benefited from vast land and property transfers from the Christian Brothers will fight a move by abuse survivors to make it liable for compensation claims, triggering a potentially costly battle that has “high court written all over it”.

Thanks for joining us, we’ll be back with a live blog on Sunday.

Anne Aly calls on Telstra to provide more clarity over compensation for small business owners

The minister for small business, Anne Aly, has called on Telstra to provide clarity on compensation for small business owners.

On ABC’s Afternoon Briefing today, Aly said she met with small business ministers from around the country on Wednesday to discuss the affect of the telco’s outage this week.

double quotation mark… the message that we should be sending to small businesses is that they should keep records of how these outages have affected them so that they can put in a claim to Telstra.

I did hear the Telstra CEO this morning apologise and rightly so to the Australian people.

However, I would call on Telstra to have more clarity and more certainty for small businesses around the compensation scheme …

… We know that small businesses are already doing it tough.

Cashflow is a big issue, and this has directly impacted their cashflow, and they deserve to be compensated, and they deserve compensation scheme that works for them as well …

I will certainly be seeking to speak to Telstra and ensure that they take their responsibility in this respect to small businesses seriously.

Aly said she hadn’t yet received data confirming exactly how many businesses were affected by the outage.

Listen: Meet Darcy Byrne, the Labor mayor taking on pokies reform – Australian Politics podcast

Darcy Byrne is the Labor mayor of Sydney’s Inner West council and he’s helping lead a grassroots movement on curbing gambling harm in the community – including pushing for a reduction in the number of poker machines in licensed clubs in New South Wales. This momentum comes while the federal Labor party continues to face criticism about the scale of its commitment to online gambling reform.

The rising Labor star speaks to Guardian Australia political editor, Tom McIlroy, about why he compares the poker machine lobby to the US National Rifle Association, and his successful motion at this month’s NSW Labor conference on gambling policy at the next state election.

Aussie shares snap losing streak but end week lower

Australia’s share market has broken a four-session losing streak but ended the week lower as a global rally in artificial intelligence and chip stocks largely skipped the local bourse, AAP reports.

The S&P/ASX200 rose 43.5 points on Friday, up 0.5% to 8,806, as the broader All Ordinaries advanced 42.4 points, or 0.47%, to 9,003.7.

The muted advance was outshone by major rallies in other indices in Asia, the US and Europe, as investor excitement about chip and AI firms outweighed worries about renewed conflict in the Persian Gulf.

Local mining stocks rebounded after tumbling more than 4% during the week, the bounce led by BHP, Rio Tinto and gold stocks on the back of stronger commodity prices.

The Australian dollar is buying 69.49 US cents, up from 69.39 US cents on Thursday as the greenback softened on improving risk sentiment.

This huge, hairy-legged Australian arachnid may be the fastest spider on the planet

If arachnophobes were not frightened enough by the horrific ability of Australia’s huntsman spiders to drag dead mice up the sides of fridges, they now have another reason.

They might be the fastest spiders on the planet.

One member of the huntsman family, the brown huntsman Heteropoda jugulans, was clocked as the quickest of more than 250 spider species analysed by a team of scientists in the UK and Germany.

Reaching a peak speed of 3.59 metres per second (13km/h or 8mph), the humble and hairy-legged huntsman appears to be faster than the current world record-holder, the Moroccan flic-flac spider and its comparatively pedestrian 1.7m/s (they don’t so much run as tumble downhill to reach that speed).

Can you outrun the world’s fastest spider?

Just in case you were wonderng, my colleagues Graham Readfearn, Nick Evershed and Andy Ball have created an interactive chart to provide some clarity …

Australia backs NZ getting aboard Pacific peace train

The foreign minister has welcomed plans by New Zealand to join a defence alliance between Australia and Fiji, AAP reports.

The Ocean of Peace Alliance was signed on Monday by Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese and Fijian counterpart Sitiveni Rabuka, with each country committing to come to the other’s aid if they were attacked.

The text of the agreement also opened up the possibility of other Pacific nations joining.

On Thursday, New Zealand prime minister Christopher Luxon said the country was considering signing up to the alliance, aimed at curbing Chinese influence in the Pacific.

Foreign minister Penny Wong said the inclusion of the trans-Tasman ally to the partnership would be a good step forward.

“We welcome the New Zealand government’s interest in joining the Ocean of Peace Alliance with Australia and Fiji once it enters into force,” she said in a statement.

double quotation markAs Australia’s longstanding ally, and a key defence partner in the Pacific, New Zealand would make a valuable contribution to the Ocean of Peace Alliance in support of regional peace and security.

We look forward to engaging with Fiji and New Zealand in the discussions.

New Zealand’s only formal alliance is with Australia, while Australia has four: New Zealand, the US, Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

The Ocean of Peace Alliance will be backed up by $1bn to be spent over the next 10 years.

Used electric cars drive records as fuel prices bite

Electric vehicles are making inroads into Australia’s secondhand market, a report has found, as more drivers take action to avoid rising fuel costs, AAP reports.

Pickles revealed details of the trend on Friday in a report that showed electric car auction sales lifted in June and were expected to rise further in the coming year.

The findings come after the Australian Automotive Dealer Association reported EV sales jumped by more than 50% in the first six months of 2026, bucking a downward trend affecting most other vehicle types.

The results also follow record-breaking new electric car sales in June, with the vehicles making up more than one in every five sold during the month.

The Pickles Quarterly Automotive Report, with figures from Datium Insights, showed motorists bought more than 50,000 electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles during June.

Electric car sales rose by 11% during the month, while their average price peaked in May.

Ramingining fashion: a celebration of Yolgnu culture and design – in pictures

A remote arts centre in Ramingining, East Arnhem Land has staged its inaugural fashion week, providing an opportunity to celebrate local Aboriginal artists, models and community.

View the full picture gallery here:

Jennifer King

Derryn Hinch, a fearless interrogator, remained candid and controversial as a journalist and senator – obituary

With a timeline that featured imprisonment, politics, a rags-to-riches twist, multiple marriages and several serious health challenges, all played out in the public sphere, the Australian journalist, broadcaster and former senator Derryn Hinch embodied his nickname: the human headline.

Hinch, who has died in 2026 aged 82, gained the epithet, of which he was not a fan, for his strident opinions delivered in a bombastic manner over radio and television airwaves and later, aged 72, in the halls of parliament, where he claimed to be “the oldest person ever elected to the Senate”.

In his 1980s heyday, Hinch was one of the most powerful broadcasters in Australia, ruling the Melbourne radio airwaves and drawing record ratings for 3AW with his gregarious personality and candid and controversial commentary on every subject.

Read the full obituary:

Nick Visser

That’s all from me. Ima Caldwell will guide you into the weekend. Take care.

Amanda Meade

Derryn Hinch died in his bed as was ‘his wish’, assistant writes in social media post

Derryn Hinch’s personal assistant, Annette, posted on Hinch’s Facebook page that he died in his sleep.

double quotation markIt is with great sadness that I let you know our dearest Derryn passed away in his sleep this morning. He got his wish and passed away in his own bed. To every one of his online friends and followers he loved the interaction and looked forward to every post. As he would say, “That’s Life”.

Hinch had 41,000 followers on his Facebook page where he often posted about his simple home cooked meals and included photographs. Earlier in the week he said:

double quotation markAnother soup experiment. A can of pea and ham, a can of corn. Some bread crumbs, black pepper and chicken stock to thin it down. It worked.

Telstra CEO Vicki Brady faces questions on nationwide outage

Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady has faced a barrage of questions for the first time since the company’s nationwide outage on Wednesday affected train services, payment systems and triple zero calls.

Josh Taylor

SA police rule out link between death and Telstra outage

South Australia police have completed an investigation into a death reported by Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle and ruled out a link to Wednesday’s triple zero outage.

SA police commissioner, Grant Stevens, said it was “incorrect” to report the link between the death and the outage.

He said:

double quotation markAt about 10:00am on 8 July a woman was found unresponsive by her partner. Her partner then contacted a neighbour using his Telstra mobile phone and asked that neighbour to come to his house because that neighbour had [a] medical background.

The person who attended did so immediately, assessed the woman, and then used her Telstra mobile phone to contact triple zero to arrange for an ambulance. Both of those calls went through without any difficulty. The woman was then conveyed to a local hospital where she later passed away.

Stevens said there were no issues in getting through to triple zero and the incident “has put an unnecessary strain” on the family.

double quotation markThis is a tragedy where a family has lost a loved one, and in the ordinary course of events, they would not have had such significant involvement with the South Australia police and … this particular person’s passing would not have been the subject of such significant scrutiny.

Tory Shepherd

Media watchdog’s ‘bizarre limitation’

A “bizarre limitation” on the media watchdog means it can’t investigate complaints about streaming content, the antisemitism royal commission has heard.

Counsel assisting, Richard Lancaster SC, asked the Australian Communications and Media Authority chair, Nerida O’Loughlin, about the different treatment, saying it “seems a bizarre limitation”. O’Loughlin said:

double quotation markIt certainly presents some challenges to us, and I think it also presents some challenges to complainants. We’ve had a range of complaints come to us over the last few years which have been out of our jurisdiction. [It] must be very frustrating for a complainant when they’re proposing to complain about something which is on broadcast on the ABC, where they can come to us [but] it was actually a streamed version of a television program.

The rules applied to broadcasting services should be the same when they are delivered online, she said.

O’Loughlin also said Acma would “revisit” some of their investigations since 2023 and after the deadly Bondi attack to make sure they haven’t missed anything of an antisemitic nature, but also to check on the potential “cumulative nature” of coverage.

Sarah Collard

NT children’s commissioner resigns over child protection changes that remove Indigenous placement principle

The Northern Territory children’s commissioner has resigned over controversial changes to child protection laws, saying the Finocchiaro government had “sidelined” her in going ahead with amendments that are strongly opposed by First Nations organisations, human rights groups and legal advocates.

Shahleena Musk was appointed to the role in December 2023. In a resignation statement posted online on Thursday night, the Larrakia woman said her position was now untenable.

“In particular, I have been unable to support the NT Government’s approach to substantial and wide-reaching changes to child protection laws,” she said.

Read more here:

Telstra could face civil penalties up to $30m, Acma says

Adam Suckling, the deputy chair of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma), said Telstra could face civil penalties of up to $30m over the outage.

“We will be working very hard to hold them to account,” Suckling told reporters.

He went on:

double quotation markOne of the things we are looking at under our investigation is that it needs to ensure that people can get through to triple zero. That includes maintaining their network. So one of the questions we will inevitably look at and ask them about is how they configured their network.

Telstra must ‘face the music’ over outage, minister says

The communications minister, Anika Wells, is speaking about the Telstra outage, saying the company has provided formal notice to the triple-zero custodian that the outage has been fully resolved.

She said all welfare checks that Telstra referred to the state emergency services have been completed, and there were “no adverse outcomes” linked to those efforts.

“That is a huge relief to all Australians. I want to thank those who provided support to those seven individual who did need assistance,” Wells said. “Their quick and diligent work on this occasion may well have saved lives.”

She then moved to terse words for Telstra, saying:

double quotation markThe last few days have been really difficult for many Australians and now that Telstra has resolved its outage, it is time for Telstra to face the music. Telstra has a lot of questions to answer …

Telstra has held special trust from Australians. It has been respected as the premium service. It is an iconic company. It has a rich history. But that trust really stands in peril today. It is going to take Telstra a lot of time and a lot of work to rebuild that trust with Australians.

Derryn Hinch dies aged 82

Derryn Hinch, the former journalist and senator, has died aged 82.

Hinch had reportedly been in poor health since a recent fall.

He was a newspaper reporter before moving into television and radio, perhaps most prominently as a presenter on Melbourne radio station 3AW.

The radio station reported on Friday that Hinch died overnight at home.

One of Hinch’s friends, 3AW host Darren James, told the network on Friday he was “yet to process” the death.

“He messages me every morning … I didn’t get the messages this morning.”

Hinch served as a senator for Victoria in his eponymous Justice party between 2016 and 2019.

He was also well-known for campaigning against paedophiles, and was repeatedly found in contempt for breaching court orders.

Body of missing girl found in bushland near small town in Victoria

The body of a 13-year-old girl who went missing on the weekend has been found in bushland after an extensive search by police, who say the death is suspicious, AAP reports.

Police found the remains in Donald, a small town in rural western Victoria, late on Thursday afternoon. A large-scale search was conducted in bushland after the teen was reported missing on 5 July.

“While the remains are yet to be formally identified, they are believed to be that of the missing girl,” Victoria police said in a statement on Friday.

Detectives from the missing persons squad have launched an investigation into the girl’s death.