Australia news LIVE: National cabinet to meet in Queensland; Migration changes for skilled workers announced

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy are holding a press conference in Sydney. (Ed: This was due to start at 10.30 AEST but it looks like it’s running late. Apologies for the delay.)

You can watch it live here:

We mentioned earlier this morning the fragile ceasefire in Sudan, where fighting has killed at least 512 people and left more than 4000 injured.

Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs Tim Watts spoke to Patricia Karvelas on ABC’s RN Breakfast and said Sudanese people visiting Australia may be able to extend their visas if they couldn’t return home, but the government’s main priority as evacuating Australians from the African country.

There are 134 Australians registered as being in Sudan, and at least 88 Australians and their family members have already evacuated. Watts said the ceasefire was a welcome chance for more Australians to leave, either via flights out of the country or road convoys.

This situation is dangerous and volatile and you can only imagine how scary it is to have family members in those situations. And I’ve spoken to many Australians who have partners, who have close family members, who have children in this situation. It’s really scary. They want advice [and] they want ways out of the country.

As I say there are plenty of seats on flights out of the country, but everyone’s individual circumstances depend on where they are in the country.

You know, this is a suburb-by-suburb issue in [Sudan’s capital] Khartoum, as to whether you can safely get to an airport. So the important thing is, is that people are registering with the DFAT free online crisis registration portal, so that we have the specific details of people’s individual circumstances and we’re able to provide the latest information, the best advice on flight and road departure options as soon as possible.

Australia Post boss Paul Graham says the boom in e-commerce and parcels is not enough to save the ailing business burdened with ballooning losses in its letters business, with the fixed costs associated with delivering mail daily too high to be sustainable.

Graham told an audience at an event for the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia on Thursday that the postal service was at a crossroads as it spent more and more money to deliver fewer letters to Australians, while foot traffic was declining across its post office network.

Australia Post has been a beneficiary of the nation’s growing obsession with online shopping, with the group delivering over 500 million parcels in the 2022 financial year. But Graham said the boost wasn’t enough to counter the mounting costs of fulfilling Australia Post’s obligations to deliver paper mail across the country.

“We have a fixed cost network, we have community service obligation [on] which we spend $348 million, primarily focused on the mail business. Our whole organisation is geared towards meeting that 98.5 per cent on-time mail delivery,” he said.

“It sucks up a lot of resources, we are delivering to ever single community, every single day. We have 15,000 street posting boxes that have to be cleared every single day. A lot of those boxes are empty because people aren’t posting stuff.”

Australia Post is careening towards a loss for this financial year after losses from delivering letters increased to $189.7 million over the past six months.

The future sustainability of the carrier is the subject of a government review and a discussion paper on the modernisation of Australia Post.

Read more: Our online retail obsession won’t save Australia Post, boss says

A climate protester has scaled the spire of the Arts Centre Melbourne in an early morning demonstration.

Just after dawn on Friday, the climber unfurled a giant banner promoting climate activist group Extinction Rebellion as supporters watched on.

The banner promotes three days of climate rallies set to be held in late May.

The Extinction Rebellion group is known for disruptive, high-profile protests staged around the world.

The group says the May demonstrations will include daily acts of civil disobedience.

Supporters set up tents outside the performing arts centre at Southbank in inner Melbourne to watch the climb on Friday.

The man appeared to attempt to light a flame.

Spokeswoman Jane Morton told Nine’s Today program the purpose of the demonstration was to draw attention to climate change.

“We are looking at societal collapse, that is what scientists are saying. It’s not really on the news. That is why Extinction Rebellion is going to try to sound the alarm,” she said.

Victoria Police says it’s aware of the situation and is responding to the protest.

Arts Centre Melbourne representatives have made no comment while a live police operation is underway.

AAP

We mentioned that Prime Minister Richard Marles appeared on Nine’s Today this morning, where he also spoke about changes to migration, announced by Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil yesterday.

O’Neil said the government would dramatically boost the minimum pay for temporary migrant workers, tighten the entry requirements for international student programs and overhaul the points test for skills in a global race for talent.

Marles said the changes were about making the system far more ordered rather than moving towards a ‘Big Australia’.

What we are trying to do with migration is make sure we have a much more ordered migration system which can work for the country. So be it family reunion, or skilled migration but there are clear pathways where the country can make sure that we’re managing the front door in a way in which we have a migration system that contributes to the country.

I think over a long period of time, the migration system has become very hard to manage and you’ve got a visa system which is really all over the place and for governments to try and get a hold of that is actually quite difficult, which is why Clare O’Neil is doing this review. So that if we’re talking about family reunion, there are clear rules. If we are talking about having skilled migration, there are clear pathways.

Australia is the country with the second highest number of our citizens who are born outside of our shores. We are deeply invested in a nation, in migration and making sure we have a migration system that works and that is what this review is about.

National cabinet is under way, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reiterating that the under-pressure health system would be a priority in today’s talks, along with housing.

Today we’re talking about a better future for the Federation, making sure that we get better health outcomes, particularly how do we improve, from the Commonwealth’s perspective, GPs and primary health care in order to take pressure off the public hospital system - how do we get more efficient outcomes.

We’ll also talk about housing service delivery across the board in the lead up to our budget, which is now just less than two weeks away. So I’m very confident about really positive outcomes today, and I just want to thank all the Premiers and Chief Ministers for continuing to make sure that this National Cabinet really functions in all of our interests.

The PM also made a cheeky dig at NSW Premier Chris Minns, who is attended the meeting for the first time after winning office at the last election. “I tried to say last night that Chris as the new guy had to pay for dinner last night, that bill’s on its way,” Albanese said.

Mary, the Hobart-born Crown Princess of Denmark, will cycle through Sydney this morning in her first official visit to the country in more than a decade.

She’ll embark on a brief tour of Sydney’s cycle ways before hopping on a light rail — all elements of Sydney’s decade-long “Copenhagenisation” of the city.

She is visiting Australia as part of a whirlwind Pacific tour of Vanuatu and Fiji, focused on responding to the challenges of climate change.

In Vanuatu, recently hit by two cyclones and two earthquakes, the royal visited crisis response centres and met with locals who led the response to the disasters.

Denmark is currently campaigning for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. In a statement announcing the tour, the royal’s statement said: “As a candidate for the UN Security Council, Denmark emphasises that the small states have a strong voice in the global climate negotiations and in matters of international peace and security”.

After leaving the country, the Crown Princess will travel to London for the coronation of King Charles III.

The US Coast Guard has taken the difficult decision to suspend the search for an Australian man who went overboard from a Hawaii-bound cruise ship.

The passenger went overboard from the Quantum of the Seas on Tuesday night, local time, nearly two weeks after the cruise left Brisbane for its journey to the Hawaiian islands.

Discussions with the man’s next of kin and the Australian consulate, as well as relevant case information, helped inform the the decision, search and rescue mission coordinator Kevin Cooper said in a statement.

“The coast guard has made the difficult decision to suspend the active search for the passenger aboard the Quantum of the Seas,” he said.

The incident happened in the Pacific Ocean about 800 kilometres south of Kailua-Kona, on the west coast of Hawaii’s Big Island.

The cruise ship deployed six life rings and stayed in the area for two hours before continuing on its way, with the coast guard taking over the search on Wednesday morning.

A Coast Guard C-130 Hercules aircrew completed five searches over the course of six hours while on scene.

The operation came as passengers left the cruise ship in Honolulu, where it docked after 15 days at sea.

One of those on board, Susan Whittington, said passengers were given little information about what had happened after they were woken at night by the ship shuddering to a halt.

“We were wondering what was going on and it was followed by an announcement over the intercom saying that a passenger had gone overboard,” she told Nine’s Today program.

“You couldn’t really see much, just the lights searching the area, but then it was very late at night.

“It was almost impossible to see anything in the water, so we didn’t hold hope for there being an outcome from it. It was quite distressing and there weren’t a lot of details after that.”

AAP