Australia news LIVE: Coalition to slash immigration, Greens under fire for Ukraine stance

In the US, New York Governor Kathy Hochul issued an executive order declaring a state of emergency in response to rising measles cases, as infections skyrocket nationwide.

As of October 3, New York has recorded 108 total cases, including seven in New York City.

“No one should get seriously ill or die from a vaccine-preventable disease,” Hochul said in a statement.

It comes as the US is grappling with one of the worst measles outbreaks in decades, with the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention recording 3887 cases as of early October – the most reported in three decades.

Vaccination rates in the US have been declining and are now below the threshold needed to protect immunocompromised or vulnerable people in many areas.

Meanwhile, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr – who has championed the cause of people who believe immunisations cause complications far broader than those acknowledged by health experts – is set to announce a new research initiative to study vaccine injuries, according to people familiar with the matter.

Opposition home affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam is foreshadowing his party’s migration policy announcement today, contrasting the Coalition’s focus on the economy with One Nation.

“Being able to just pluck a number out of thin air and say you’re going to cut migration is something that has consequences if you happen to form government,” he told News24.

“To that end, we want to demonstrate how our plan, our numbers, our proposal for how we will get a broken system under control won’t destroy the economy – [it] will in fact enhance it.”

He said the Coalition would release the full costings closer to the next election.

“We’ve obviously been engaging with the [Parliamentary Budget Office], who have done much analysis on the proposal we’ve put forward in the usual way,” he said.

Jeffrey Archer, the best-selling British novelist and former politician who was jailed for lying in a high-profile libel case, has died aged 86, his publisher HarperCollins said.

Archer sold more than 300 million copies worldwide and was known for pacy thrillers like his 1976 debut Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less and Kane & Abel, with his final novel Adam and Eve due to be published this month.

He was also a prominent Conservative politician, who briefly served as a lawmaker before becoming a senior party official under prime minister Margaret Thatcher in the mid-1980s.

But Archer suffered a very public downfall when he was convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice in 2001, being sentenced to four years’ imprisonment.

Kate Elton, HarperCollins’ UK CEO and Archer’s editor, said in a statement: “We’re all devastated to have lost a writer who has brought joy to generations of readers - and a true friend.”

For 20 years, dementia researchers were stuck in a frustrating quagmire. Promising drug trials repeatedly collapsed. A practical diagnostic test remained elusive. Billions of dollars were spent – but nothing worked. Pharmaceutical companies began to pull out. And dementia surged to become Australia’s No.1 killer.

Now, however, that impasse has lifted. At clinics and labs around the world, staff are cautiously embracing a new word: Breakthrough.

The first two drugs to successfully modify Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, were approved by Australia’s medicine regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, last year. A blood test that can detect biomarkers up to 20 years before a patient’s first forgotten word with 92 per cent accuracy was approved two months ago.

These developments are game changers. The disease is “no longer universally described as untreatable”, according to the World Alzheimer Report 2026 released late last month, and we’re entering a period of “remarkable scientific momentum”.

Read the full story on these welcome developments here.

Celebrities, fitness trainers and businesses have begun cutting ties with from former Bachelor star Sam Wood as he remains behind bars on domestic violence charges.

Wood’s lawyer has indicated he will defend the charges.

High-profile trainer Tiffiny Hall, whose workout videos appear prominently on the 28 by Sam Wood social media pages, released a statement late yesterday saying she had “no ongoing role or involvement with the program”.

“I have zero tolerance for domestic and family violence, and for violence of any kind,” said Hall, who is an advocate for self-defence and women’s safety. It is unacceptable and entirely at odds with the standards, core values and culture I wish to cultivate.

A major review of Victoria’s mental health system and the billion-dollar levy used to fund it, along with an overhaul of youth services and the creation of a specialist standalone facility, are part of a sweeping election pledge aimed at improving Victoria’s struggling sector.

The Coalition will today announce a “mental health reset” if elected in November, promising separate reviews into the mental health and wellbeing levy, the sector’s independent watchdog and the state’s lagging delivery of its royal commission and commitments.

Within 100 days of being elected, a new strategy to boost the mental health workforce would be created and supported by a targeted $50 million fund to fill skills and staffing gaps. The Coalition will also commit to developing a world-leading Youth Mental Health Centre of Excellence overseen by Orygen, as well as $5 million to plan a new standalone youth mental health hospital in Parkville.

A months-long investigation by this masthead has exposed a series of systemic problems plaguing Victoria’s mental health system, more than five years after the state government accepted every recommendation handed down by the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System in 2021.

Read the full report here.

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce says his party is driving the agenda in Australian politics as the Coalition prepares to announce a plan for deep cuts to migration levels.

“I congratulate the Coalition for basically coming up with our policy. There’s a bit of a nuance in there, but yeah, what it shows [is] an endorsement of where One Nation’s off to. We are moving the agenda. We are moving both the Labor Party, we’re moving the Coalition,” Joyce told Nine’s Today.

Sources have told this masthead the imminent opposition policy would cut net overseas migration to about 100,000 people – roughly a third of current levels. One Nation wants net negative migration for three years before bringing in a ceiling of 130,000 net overseas migration.

Asked about what One Nation’s proposal would do to the economy, Joyce claimed Australians’ priority was bringing migration numbers down and dismissed the need to cost policies.

“If you want to be run by the public parliamentary budget office … let’s put them on the balance sheet, and you can go vote for them. If you want to be run by people who reflect what you wish, then One Nation is a very good place to go,” he said.

The flydubai co-pilot who allegedly stabbed his captain in a suspected attempt to crash the plane last week told interrogators in the United Arab Emirates he planned to do so before being hired by the airline, according to two Israeli officials with knowledge of the probe.

A third source briefed on the UAE investigation said the co-pilot, Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, planned to crash Wednesday’s flight into Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv. He had also operated a flight to Tel Aviv earlier this year and intended to hijack and crash the plane then, but chose not to, the source said.

It was not immediately clear why the co-pilot changed his mind on that previous flight, although he is thought to have known someone onboard, the source said.

The sources all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation. UAE and Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did flydubai.

Evidence heard in bipartisan artificial intelligence committee hearings will help shape Australia’s incoming AI standards, chair Jo Briskey said.

OpenAI’s chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, will appear before the joint select committee on AI today after it was revealed the tech company’s rogue agents breached a Medicare portal.

Briskey said the hearings would not just focus on the breach, noting OpenAI’s apology, but on what comes next for the rapidly developing technology.

“[The hearings are] about helping provide the parliament with the information it needs to consider where we go next for AI, in particular in reference to the Australian standards that the prime minister has announced will be coming to the Parliament,” the Labor MP told ABC TV.

Briskey said the committee would also hear from unions and employers about how AI could affect Australia’s workforce, and from creatives who are demanding copyright laws be upheld.

US President Donald Trump’s special envoy on antisemitism criticised Australia for failing to heed warnings about Jew hatred as he queried why alleged Bondi gunman Naveed Akram was able to access weapons while being on a terror watch list.

Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun said antisemitism envoys such as himself or Australia’s Jillian Segal must be empowered to take action. “You can’t neuter them or you have to respect their suggestions,” he said.

Segal, he said, had “numerous recommendations for years leading up to this attack in Bondi about how to protect students on campus, how to do things that – how to educate people against hate. [But] they fell on deaf ears.”

Kaploun said it had taken a “worldwide effort” to convince the Australian government to hold a royal commission into antisemitism in the wake of the December 15, 2025 massacre at Bondi Beach, which targeted Jews on the eve of Chanukah.