As it happened: PM urges Australians in Lebanon to leave; Rex banks on government bailout

A shareholder activist group is demanding that Woodside Energy extracts more value for investors from its capital, not more oil and gas.

The Australian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) on Thursday said Woodside was under pressure to improve, following a majority (58 per cent) vote against its climate plan at the last annual general meeting.

Releasing a report, What’s Next For Woodside?, the centre said share buybacks would deliver 140 per cent more value for shareholders than proceeding with the Browse project off the coast of Western Australia and Sunrise in the Timor Sea.

Developing Browse was more expensive than 70 per cent of the world’s unapproved gas projects, and the recently acquired Driftwood project was more expensive than three quarters (76 per cent) of those in the US, the report found.

The shareholder activist organisation holds a mere 322 Woodside shares, of a total 1,898,749,771 on issue, which means it has 0.00000017 per cent of issued shares, Woodside told AAP.

But the group also enlists the support of other shareholders in its campaign to release free cash flow to investors that would otherwise bankroll fossil fuel production growth.

Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill says the company has listened carefully to investors and is providing information about market demand and important updates to emissions reduction plan.

AAP

Up to 20,000 Australians in Lebanon have been told to leave immediately as fears rise that conflict in the Middle East will escalate into a major region-wide war.

Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs Tim Watts revealed the government’s estimation of Australians that could be in the Middle Eastern country on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing program moments ago.

Earlier today, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong led the government’s calls for Australians to urgently return home after the deaths of key Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Israeli airstrikes recently.

Politicians and diplomats fear that retaliatory strikes from Hezbollah and Iran could spark an all-out regional war as the conflict in Gaza continues. So far, Hezbollah, a Lebanese proxy of Iran, and Israel have limited their strikes to the Israel-Lebanon border. In April, Iran launched a drone strike on Israel, marking their first direct attack the country since their decades-long proxy conflict began. Iran said that strike was in retaliation for Israel bombing an Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria.

Speaking shortly after 4pm, Watt acknowledged many Lebanese-Australians may have heard similar warnings before.

“Can I just say to them: don’t push your luck. Don’t wait and see how this turns out,” Watt said.

“If Beirut airport closes, we are saying to Australians that we cannot guarantee our ability to evacuate you. You may need to remain in Beirut for an extended period of time … and that is why we are giving very strong advice.

“Take the options available to you now to leave via commercial flights that are still operating from Beirut airport.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed Australia’s next auditor-general, who will scrutinise government spending for the next decade.

Dr Caralee McLiesh will begin a 10-year term on November 4, the prime minister said in a statement released shortly after 3pm today.

McLiesh will take over the leadership of the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) from Rona Mellor, who was acting auditor-general since February this year after Grant Hehir left the position.

The prime minister said McLiesh had more than 25 years’ experience across government, international, not-for-profit and commercial sectors.

She served as the secretary and chief executive of the New Zealand Treasury since 2019. Before then, she was managing director of TAFE NSW and deputy secretary of the NSW Treasury.

This year, the nation’s audit office has released several reports that revealed Commonwealth mismanagement of taxpayer funds.

The Victorian opposition has marched out of question time in state parliament after expressing outrage at the way Premier Jacinta Allan responded to a grilling about the CFMEU saga.

The walkout occurred more than halfway through Victorian question time on Thursday.

Leader of opposition business James Newbury, in at times testy exchanges, said on the floor that “question time is a joke, question time has become a joke”.

The opposition then walked out after their sixth question about the CFMEU. The government broke out into laughter as the opposition left.

Shortly after, Greens leader Ellen Sandell opened a question by joking: “We always knew the Greens were the real opposition.”

Last month, this masthead, The Australian Financial Review and 60 Minutes published a special investigation into the construction union that revealed infiltration by bikies and organised criminals, intimidation and allegations of corruption. In one story, this masthead revealed that Allan, as deputy premier and minister for transport infrastructure, was sent detailed evidence in 2022 of CFMEU officials threatening violence on Victorian government sites part of its Big Build infrastructure program.

Speaking to reporters on the steps of parliament after today’s walkout, Opposition Leader John Pesutto said his team had asked 24 questions related to the CFMEU this sitting week and had received an unsatisfactory response each time.

“Under Jacinta Allan, question time has become a joke,” Pesutto said. “We’re not going to accept it.”

Nationals leader Peter Walsh accused the premier of running a CFMEU “protection racket”.

“She just won’t answer questions that are relevant to Victoria.”

The National Gallery of Australia has paid $9.8 million for an important painting by controversial French artist Paul Gauguin.

The blue roof or Farm at Le Pouldu (1890) is the first painting by Gauguin to become part of an Australian public collection.

The purchase was announced during the gallery’s major exhibition on the influential artist, titled Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao.

Gauguin was a violent paedophile who abandoned his wife and five children in Europe, moving to French Polynesia and marrying three native teenage girls, the youngest 13 years old.

“In today’s context, Gauguin’s interactions in Polynesia in the later part of the 19th century would not be accepted and are recognised as such,” the NGA said in a statement.

The acquisition is a coup for the gallery, according to art historian Emeritus Professor Sasha Grishin from the Australian National University.

“It’s a good thing to have – whether something else could have been acquired, well, that’s always the question,” he told AAP.

Whether the gallery should have held the Gauguin exhibition, or has acknowledged Gauguin’s past sufficiently in the show, are separate questions to its decision to buy the painting, Grishin said.

“Whether when you enter the exhibition, you should have a little plaque up saying this person is a really, really nasty piece of work – perhaps that should be brought to the forefront,” he said.

The artwork is certainly an important acquisition, agreed National Gallery Director Dr Nick Mitzevich.

“It captures a key point in art history – the moment when the artist emerged as an intensely original master, taking Impressionist colour schemes and transcending them to be bolder and more daring,” he said.

AAP

The Australian sharemarket has traded higher today after technology stocks drove a rally on Wall Street, where Fed comments fuelled expectations that long-sought cuts to interest rates will be arriving soon.

The S&P/ASX 200 index was up 39.10 points, or 0.5 per cent, to 8131.40 points as of 2.21pm AEST. Thursday marked the first time the index had risen above 8100 points.

Mining stocks, energy and information technology companies led the gains, with industrials and financials tracking lower.

The gains came after the local market surged 1.8 per cent surge in the previous session following key inflation data, which showed signs of disinflation in Australia’s economy.

The better-than-expected data has raised hopes the Reserve Bank could start cutting rates in November, having lifted the cash rate 13 times since March 2022.

With AAP

Keep updated with the market wrap here.

Andrew Forrest has appointed high-profile Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson to the board of $58-billion iron-ore miner Fortescue.

Forrest said he admired and respected Pearson, who he had known for more than 20 years.

“Noel is an innovative thinker and passionate and formidable Australian who will bring enormous benefit and insight to our board,” Forrest said.

Pearson joins eight other directors under board chair Forrest, including UK Olympic runner Sebastian Coe and former CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall.

The appointment comes two weeks after Fortescue announced 700 job losses, mainly from its energy division, and a dramatic scaling back of its plans to produce green hydrogen, a nascent clean fuel Forrest had aggressively promoted.

Shares in Fortescue fell 14 per cent on Tuesday after reports that a major investor was looking to dispose of about $2 billion of stock at a discount.