Australia news as it happened: Butler says NDIS ‘not the right fit’ for children with autism; Labor responds after Netanyahu blasts ‘weak’ Albanese

In media-related news, the ABC has introduced new “public comment guidelines” for its 4000-plus staff, two months after it lost a legal case against Antoinette Lattouf, who was sacked over a social media post while in casual employment at the public broadcaster.

The broadcaster’s editorial director, Gavin Fang, told staff on Wednesday morning its social media rules would be scrapped and replaced with the new guidelines.

The guidelines document circulated to staff outlines a tightening of the rules around any comments that undermine the ability of employees to perform their role, the integrity or independence of the ABC, or that imply an endorsement of personal views.

In an email, the ABC’s news boss, Justin Stevens, urged staff to consider what they say publicly, with a compromised public perception of its impartiality hurting “all of us at the ABC – and the organisation itself”.

“There are plenty of media outlets where you can be as publicly partial, political and opinionated as you like – the ABC isn’t one of them,” Stevens said.

“We all have unconscious biases. The notion that only certain groups are at risk of this, such as people from culturally diverse backgrounds, is blinkered and offensive. We all have to challenge our own automatic assumptions, reactions and beliefs.”

Read more here.

To Melbourne, where one of the country’s leading universities has been found to have violated students’ privacy when it used surveillance technology to track protesters at a campus sit-in against the war on Gaza.

The University of Melbourne committed a serious breach of legislative privacy principles when it used the location data of students who were connected to the institution’s internet network to identify those participating in a protest in May 2024, the state’s privacy authority said on Wednesday.

The university has continued to defend its conduct, arguing it had acted in the interests of on-campus safety.

Students who faced suspension or expulsion over the protests were emailed CCTV images of themselves inside the Arts West Building on the university’s Parkville campus during the multi-day sit-in.

Privacy and Data Protection deputy commissioner Rachel Dixon found the university had introduced the tracking capability with the “reassurance it would not be used to surveil individuals”.

Staff emails were also accessed after the protests, which the deputy commissioner found had happened “after the urgency of protest passed, and could have been dealt with more carefully”.

Now to the Federal Court, where former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann is appealing against a Federal Court finding that he raped his then-colleague Brittany Higgins in Parliament House.

Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyer has told a court that Lehrmann has become a “national joke”, as he fights to overturn a damning finding.

Lehrmann is appealing against Federal Court Justice Michael Lee’s landmark decision last year dismissing his defamation case against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson.

Lee was satisfied that Ten and Wilkinson had proved to the civil standard – on the balance of probabilities – that Lehrmann raped Higgins in the office of their then-boss, Liberal senator Linda Reynolds, in the early hours of March 23, 2019. This is lower than the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt.

The Full Court of the Federal Court – Justices Michael Wigney, Craig Colvin and Wendy Abraham – started hearing the three-day appeal in Sydney on Wednesday.

Lehrmann’s solicitor, Zali Burrows, apologised to the court that he was not represented by a silk. She said Lehrmann “really wanted” Sydney barrister Guy Reynolds, SC, but “couldn’t afford” him.

Burrows said the appeal court should reassess damages if his appeal was successful. Lee had concluded Lehrmann would only have been entitled to $20,000 if he had won the case.

She said her client was the subject of intense media scrutiny and had been harassed on social media.

“He’s pretty much become the national joke, and … he’s probably Australia’s most hated man,” Burrows said.

You can read a report on today’s proceedings here.

Now to NSW, where Premier Chris Minns says he “reserves the right” to implement legislation barring the Sydney Harbour Bridge from being used for future protests.

Minns reiterated his earlier concerns that legislation could be knocked down in the High Court because of the implied infringement on political communication.

“I don’t want to have a situation, given the volatility of the circumstances, where I committed to introducing legislation that then gets knocked over in the High Court. We’re back to square one. There’s another protest on the bridge,” he told budget estimates on Wednesday.

Minns alluded to his own experience demonstrating against the Australian government’s involvement in the Iraq War in 2003, saying the march did not take place over the Sydney Harbour Bridge despite being attended by hundreds of thousands of people.

“So I reserve the right to effectively look at actions that balance competing rights, the right to protest alongside the right to enjoy a big city like Sydney and not have it interrupted,” he said.

“I know everybody’s got a different view here, but can I just make the point that everyone would have one group that they don’t want protesting on the Harbour Bridge.”

Moving briefly to the Top End, where the trial of reality TV “croc wrangler” Matt Wright is under way in Darwin.

Wright offered $10,000 to the family of a helicopter pilot badly injured in a fatal crash, but it was declined, a jury has heard.

The Outback Wrangler star is on trial in Darwin Supreme Court having pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

The charges follow a helicopter crash in February 2022 that killed Wright’s friend and co-star, Chris “Willow” Wilson, on a crocodile-egg collecting mission in the Northern Territory’s Arnhem Land.

Pilot Sebastian Robinson, 32, was left a paraplegic after the crash.

On Wednesday his mother, Noelene Chellingworth, was questioned about her diary entries in the weeks after the crash, agreeing she had recorded Wright had offered her $10,000 to “tide her over” and pay bills.

“We told him we didn’t want it,” she said under questioning by crown prosecutor Jason Gullaci, SC.

Chellingworth told the court she had met with a lawyer in March 2022 to discuss whether her son could sue for negligence and explored claiming workers’ compensation.

She agreed the legal advice was that Robinson was an independent contractor so making a claim as a direct employee was not an option.

One of the diary entries made when she was with her son in Royal Brisbane Hospital read: “Matt Wright came in today and tried to persuade Sebastian to put hours on his helicopter.”

Wright has been accused of trying to get Robinson to fake flying-hour records because he was concerned crash investigators would find out he and his pilots had disconnected flight-time meters and faked paperwork.

AAP

Childcare centres appear set to get access to unsubstantiated allegations against workers in Victoria as the Allan Labor government announces that it will act urgently on every recommendation of a rapid review into the sector.

Allan ordered the “rapid child safety review” in July after Melbourne childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown was charged with sexually abusing babies and toddlers in his care.

The review made 22 recommendations, some of which Victoria will need to take to the federal government and other states and territories.

The review also said Australia should assess the early learning sector’s reliance on the private market.

“Over the past decade, the ECEC [early childhood education care] system has undergone rapid growth. This growth has occurred without a coherent plan,” the report said.

“Rather, the market has been left to respond to financial incentives that do not drive investment in quality, safety, or in a stable and well-supported workforce.”

Former South Australian premier Jay Weatherill and Pamela White, chair of the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, also recommended every centre be randomly inspected once a year, that staffing levels and qualifications be strengthened, that the state should establish an independent regulator, and that more state and federal funding should be poured in.

Read the full story here.

Minister for the NDIS Mark Butler’s announced changes to the NDIS could affect tens of thousands of Australian children. This masthead exclusively revealed yesterday that seven in 10 people who joined the National Disability Insurance Scheme in the past year had a primary diagnosis of autism, and most of those were children.