As it happened: Labor touts new plan to help casual workers become permanent; inflation tipped to fall to lowest level since 2021

A man accused of making online threats against Brittany Higgins, her fiance and their dog will return to court in September.

David William Wonnocott, 49, is charged with using a carriage service to menace and threaten to kill in separate incidents relating to NSW politician Alex Greenwich and Higgins.

Wonnocott’s charges were mentioned briefly in the Tweed Heads Local Court today.

The case was adjourned for mention on September 11 for charge certification over the allegations.

Police documents allege Wonnocott’s threats are considered real and taken seriously.

“There is a serious threat that he may in fact try and carry out a threat of violence in the near future,” court documents said.

“It is the police view that he would be in contact with far right-wing thinking groups with radical views that practice and endorse violence towards members of specific minority groups.”

Greenwich is openly gay, while Higgins galvanised a women’s political movement when she went public with a rape claim. The man accused of raping her vehemently denies the claim.

AAP

Senator Deborah O’Neill says the problems with the big four accounting and consulting firms could be rooted in the partnership model.

The ALP senator for NSW told ABC Radio Melbourne:

There’s a darkness and an opacity that is built in to the partnership model that operates.

In Australia there’s a law that allows a partnership of 20 people. Now these entities got a big carve-out, and they’re allowed to have up to 1000 people.

I’ve had a whistleblower contact me today. He said that one of these big companies was actually pressing Treasury to try and become more than 1000 partners in the partnership.

They don’t have to report the way corporations do so there’s very, very little scrutiny and all the money that they earn, they share amongst the partners with deals that they make amongst themselves.

There’s nowhere  they have to declare who they’re servicing, there’s nowhere they have to show what they’re doing.

In that hiddenness we’ve seen, certainly with PwC and certainly with their tax avoidance sector, which is called the transfer pricing sector, unbelievable information sharing that shocked the Australian people.”

O’Neill said PwC took confidential information and turned it into a product to sell to Silicon Valley firms to undermine the government’s plans to get multinational companies to pay more tax.

She said all Australians should care if the big consultancies were doing their jobs properly because the firms audited the companies that superannuation funds invested in.

In international news, as wildfires ravage Greece, climate activist Greta Thunberg is set to appear in court today.

She faces a charge of disobeying police at a protest in southern Sweden last month.

Local newspaper Sydsvenskan reported that Thunberg and other activists were detained after they stopped traffic in the oil terminal of the port in Malmö on June 19.

Thunberg was charged because she refused to comply with police orders to leave the scene during the protest, according to Swedish Prosecution Authority spokeswoman Annika Collin and a statement from prosecutors.

Prosecutor Charlotte Ottosen told the newspaper that the crime of disobedience is typically punishable with fines.

Thunberg inspired a global youth movement demanding stronger efforts to fight climate change after staging weekly protests outside the Swedish Parliament starting in 2018.

In Australia, Blockade Australia activists have also targeted ports over the past few months, mainly targeting coal exports.

With AP, AAP

The Australian War Memorial has installed plaques next to displays honouring disgraced former soldier Ben Roberts-Smith that say the museum is considering what further content should be added to the exhibits after a landmark defamation case found he was a murderer and war criminal.

Signs featuring a statement by War Memorial Council chair and former Labor leader Kim Beazley have been included next to two displays in the museum after Beazley last month confirmed Roberts-Smith’s uniform, medals and portraits would remain in place despite the court ruling.

According to photos supplied to and verified by this masthead, the plaques read:

The memorial assists in remembering, interpreting and understanding Australia’s experience of war and its enduring impact. This includes the causes, conduct and consequences of war.

The memorial acknowledges the gravity of the decision in the Ben Roberts-Smith VC MG defamation case and its broader impact on all involved in the Australian community. This is the outcome of a civil legal case, and one step in a longer process.

Collection items relating to Ben Roberts-Smith VC MG, including his uniform, equipment, medals and associated artworks, are on display in the memorial’s galleries.

We are considering carefully the additional content and context to be included in these displays. The memorial acknowledges Afghanistan veterans and their families, who may be affected at this time.”

Read the full story.

Circling back to federal political news, and Treasurer Jim Chalmers has announced the government would deliver a record surplus of just above $20 billion for the last financial year.

Chalmers also announced Chris Barrett would be the next chair of the Productivity Commission, taking over from Michael Brennan in September.

Chalmers said Barrett has been tasked with renewing the commission as part of the government’s shake-up of the country’s major economic institutions.

“Chris’s appointment recognises that if we want to build a stronger economy, then we’ve got to build stronger economic institutions, and that means renewing and refocusing and revitalising the Productivity Commission,” he said.

But the appointment will be heavily scrutinised by the Coalition, with shadow treasurer Angus Taylor saying the Coalition was not consulted.

Read the full report by Rachel Clun.

Australian singer John Farnham is cancer-free and “doing fantastic” after recovering from a 12-hour surgery in August last year to remove a cancerous tumour from his mouth, along with part of his jaw.

The 74-year-old music legend’s son, Robert Farnham, shared the news today during an interview on Seven Network’s Sunrise to promote the TV release of the documentary John Farnham: Finding the Voice.

“Cancer is a terrible, terrible thing. It’s his time to walk that road, but he’s cancer free,” the singer’s son said.

“He’s doing really, really good. He sings at home again, the whole thing.

“Just the other day he was walking around with his cane and did a little bit of a dance, which was pretty fabulous. He is walking with his dog a lot. He is really, really happy.”

At the time of Farnham’s mouth cancer diagnosis Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wished the singer a fast recovery.

“All Australians love John Farnham,” Albanese said. “John Farnham has been and continues to be a great Australian. He has not only provided entertainment for Australians over many decades, he also has been a contributor to the nation.”

To Western Australia and a much-anticipated courtroom drama.

More than 30 lawyers have filled a courtroom remodelled for the long-awaited showdown between the rich-lister descendants of West Australian mining pioneers Peter Wright and Lang Hancock as the trial over their most lucrative find begins.

Lawyers for Wright Prospecting, billionaire Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting, her children Bianca Rinehart and John Hancock and the heirs to the estate of often-forgotten prospector Don Rhodes assembled in WA’s Supreme Court for the first day of hearings.

While Rinehart and the multibillionaire heirs to the Wright fortune were notably absent, including Wright’s daughter Angela Bennett, and his late son Michael’s billionaire children Leonie Baldock and Alexandra Burt, the gallery was brimming with advisers for both camps.

At the heart of Wright Prospecting’s 2010-launched claim is that both parties were supposed to share equally in the spoils of any “Hanwright” partnership assets developed, including the sprawling Hope Downs tenement Hancock Prospecting now co-owns with operator Rio Tinto.

Wright Prospecting’s lawyer Julie Taylor spent today poring over 50-year-old documents and letters unearthed between Hancock and Wright showing their substantial investment into securing rights to the Hope Downs tenements.

Former top bureaucrat Kathryn Campbell has resigned from her $900,000 AUKUS role after damning findings were made against her by the robo-debt royal commission.

The Department of Defence issued a statement today confirming it had accepted Campbell’s resignation, effective from last Friday.

“Defence will not provide further comment on this matter,” the statement reads.

Campbell was suspended from her AUKUS advisory role on July 10, three days after royal commissioner Catherine Holmes released her findings into the former Coalition government’s unlawful welfare crackdown.

The royal commission found Campbell, the head of the former department of human services from 2011 to 2017, kept the true nature of the income-averaging scheme secret when advising cabinet because she knew Scott Morrison – at that time the social services minister – wanted to pursue the program.

It also found Campbell deliberately instructed her own legal team to discontinue a request for legal advice on the scheme and that she shelved a damning $1 million audit by PwC into the welfare crackdown, just as it was about to finish because she feared its contents would be damaging.

Campbell went on leave shortly before the findings were delivered.