As it happened: Paul Keating slams AUKUS, calls Taiwan ‘Chinese real estate’; Details of planned Taylor Swift concert attack revealed

A large number of potential buyers have expressed an interest in embattled regional airline Rex as administrators work to keep the embattled carrier flying while weighed down with $500 million in debt.

EY Australia has been appointed to chart a path forward for the five companies in the Rex Group since the airline called in the administrators and grounded its Boeing 737 fleet on major metropolitan routes.

Rex’s regional flights have continued because of continued funding from private equity firm PAG Asia Capital as the airline desperately seeks a buyer or financial lifeline.

EY partner Samuel Freeman, a corporate turnaround expert, on Friday told a first meeting of Rex creditors administrators were contacting “a large number of likely interested parties” in a bid to find a buyer or investor for the airline.

“The process has formally commenced,” he said.

“Some are already executing on disclosure agreements ... there’s been quite some interest, which is really positive”.

Mr Freeman said the airline, which was carrying about $500 million debt across the group, was in daily discussions with the federal government.

Labor figures have said they will back Rex as long as it prioritises regional flights.

In NSW, where Rex is based, Premier Chris Minns has kept open the possibility of state government assistance, but early in the week he said no meeting had taken place with administrators.

Mr Freeman said an asset-sale program had started as part of turnaround efforts, with company land and buildings, spare parts and a flight simulator all potentially up for grabs.

AAP

Independent Senator Fatima Payman has hired veteran political operative Glenn Druery as her chief of staff, formalising a partnership that began in the weeks before the former Labor senator sensationally quit Labor over its response to the war in Gaza.

This masthead first revealed last month that Payman had teamed up with Druery, who is widely known as “the preference whisperer” for his success in securing seats for upper house independents and minor party candidates.

Druery has also been working with Muslim groups on a plan to stand candidates in lower house seats with a high proportion of Muslim residents, amid growing disquiet within some communities over the federal government’s stance on the war in Gaza.

Druery, who has been informally advising Payman, joked the pair would “raise the Titanic” together as he confirmed the appointment to the newly-independent senator’s office.

His appointment means he will play a key role in helping Payman determine her legislative priorities.

“I hope to help the senator achieve her goals and those goals will become clearer as time goes by,” he said.

“For the duration of her term in parliament, senator Payman will be focused on the good people of Western Australia.”

Druery said Payman had the potential to be as consequential a balance of power senator as former Tasmanian Senator Brian Harradine and Nick Xenophon from South Australia.

Both of those men held a share of the balance of power for decades and earned reputations for driving a hard bargain on behalf of their states and, for the most part, being reliable centrists who were prepared to with the government of the day on legislation.

“I have worked with politicians for decades not all of them know how to work in parliament to achieve their goals. Harradine and Xenophon did and achieved a lot for the states. You can’t just sit there, you have to work with the government of the day,” Druery said.

But he struck a note of caution for the Albanese government, adding it could not take Payman’s vote for granted.

“All legislation will be taken on its merits and dealt with on a case-by-case basis.”

Labor currently holds 25 seats in the 76 member senate and to pass legislation needs to secure a majority of 39 votes meaning it needs to secure the support of the Coalition, or the Greens and a handful of crossbenchers to pass laws.

The Coalition holds 31 seats, the Greens hold 11 seats and there are nine senators sitting on the cross bench, including the ACT’s David Pocock, two Pauline Hanson senators and Tasmanian Jacqui Lambie.

Australia and New Zealand will help build and stock warehouses across the Pacific with disaster relief supplies to improve emergency responses.

The two nations announced a combined $42.6 million in aid as Pacific foreign ministers met in Fiji on Friday.

The warehousing program will store and manage disaster relief supplies needed to respond to an emergency within the first 48 hours.

Warehouses will be built in 14 Pacific island nations and East Timor and include supplies to help women, children and people with disabilities who are more vulnerable during disasters.

It’s supported by the US, the UK, Germany and Japan.

“The increasing frequency of natural disasters in the Pacific, compounded by the impacts of climate change, means there is a pressing need for this initiative,” Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said.

Natural disasters in the Pacific, including cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and disease, resulted in “immense humanitarian need,” New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said.

“This initiative places Pacific countries at the centre of responses - it will give countries access to humanitarian relief supplies within 48 hours of a disaster to help meet immediate needs following an emergency.”

Australia will put a further $16.7 million towards cyber security and fund measures to modernise hardware and software to better protect against online threats.

The deployment of rapid cyber assistance across the Pacific to respond to threats and attacks has also been funded.

About $18.5 million will also flow to surveillance and enforcement of illegal fishing and $25 million will go towards building a research vessel.

AAP

Former prime minister Paul Keating has doubled down on his criticisms of the Albanese government’s foreign policy, declaring that its deepening relationship with the United States will turn Australia into an American protectorate in Asia.

Albanese suggested earlier today Keating’s views were not relevant to Australia’s current strategic circumstances.

“Paul has his views, they’re well known,” Albanese said.

“My job as Prime Minister is to do what Australia needs in 2024. The world is different. The world has changed between 1996 and 2024 and my government is doing what we need to do today.”

Keating responded in a statement by saying: “The fact is, the Albanese government is returning to the Anglosphere to garner Australia’s security.

“In effect, the Albanese government is doing the very thing that all my life, I had trenchantly opposed, and in the post-War years, Labor had opposed.

“And that is, finding our security from Asia rather than our security in Asia.”

Keating said that while global politics had changed since his prime ministership, Australia’s geography remained “the primary factor in geo-strategic settings” and had not changed.

Criticising recent announcements about an increased US military presence in Australia, Keating said: “The strength and scale of the United States’s basing in Australia will eclipse Australia’s own military capability such that Australia will be viewed in the United States as a continental extension of American power akin to that which it enjoys in Hawaii, Alaska and more limitedly in places like Guam.

“Such an outcome is likely to turn the Australian government, in defence and security terms, into simply the national administrator of what would be broadly viewed in Asia as a US protectorate.”

Rather than treat Beijing as a threat, Keating said the government should be “celebrating the rise of China, twenty per cent of humanity, from the abject poverty of its past, and dealing with it diplomatically”.

Albanese was responding to an interview on 7.30 on Thursday night Keating said that the AUKUS submarine pact was turning Australia into the “51st state” of the US by leaving the nation dangerously dependent on its closest security partner.

He also downplayed concerns about a Chinese invasion of the self-governing island of Taiwan, describing it as “Chinese real estate” and “not a vital Australian interest”.

In case you missed it in world news earlier, Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris have agreed to a September 10 presidential debate, setting up a widely anticipated face-off in an already unparalleled presidential election.

Trump gave an hour-long news conference on Wednesday in which he recommitted to debating Harris and taunted her while also repeating old lies and lashing out at questions about the enthusiasm her campaign is receiving.

Trump said he had proposed three presidential debates with three television networks in September.

The September 10 debate will be broadcast on ABC.

The debate announcement sets up a highly anticipated moment in an election in which Biden’s catastrophic performance in the last debate set in motion his withdrawal.

Harris leads Republican Donald Trump 42 per cent to 37 per cent in the presidential race, according to an Ipsos poll published on Thursday (US time).

You can read more here.

AP, Reuters

A cooling tower in North Laverton has been confirmed as the source of the worst Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Victoria in more than two decades.

Chief Health Officer Dr Clare Looker said there were now 107 confirmed and five suspected cases of Legionnaires’ disease, with weather patterns believed to have dispersed the Legionella bacteria a number of kilometres away from the tower in Melbourne’s west.

She said genomic testing confirmed the North Laverton cooling tower was responsible for the outbreak.

“This means that I can now say with a great deal of confidence that we have identified and already treated the source of this outbreak,” Looker told reporters minutes ago.

“I’m confident that we are now past the peak of cases.”

Of the people infected, 103 were hospitalised.

Most of the people were aged in their 40s, and were more vulnerable to the disease because of their age, smoking, chronic lung disease, weakened immune systems or underlying conditions, Looker said.

Authorities first visited the cooling tower on July 30 and disinfected it within 24 hours.

They visited it another two times this week for resampling, and disinfected it again as a precautionary measure, Looker said.

Most of the people infected were exposed to the disease between July 5 and 20, and started showing symptoms on or after July 15.

Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Dr Clare Looker updated the media about the state’s worst Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in more than two decades this afternoon.

Watch what she had to say below: