Pauline Hanson says she regrets calling Indigenous Australians “the most primitive race on Earth”, adding it wasn’t her intention to cause hurt with the widely derided remarks.

But the One Nation leader still insisted in a News24 interview on Tuesday that Indigenous Australians were “primitive” compared with the first English settlers.

Senator Hanson was pressed in the interview on whether she stood by recently resurfaced comments made on the Jamie J podcast in 2025, where she criticised the study of Indigenous history and culture in schools.

“I regret saying that because I don’t want to upset people,” she said.

“That’s not my intentions. That wasn’t my intention to hurt people. My intentions are caring to pull people together.”

“I’ve always put my foot in my mouth when I come out and say things … I’m not the most eloquent speaker in how I deliver something.”

Senator Hanson’s comments in the podcast, along with recently exposed remarks criticising Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s mother for spending decades in public housing and her posting of a video which labelled former special forces soldier and Liberal MP Andrew Hastie a traitor, have sparked widespread condemnation.

Northern Territory senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price rebuked Senator Hanson, saying making Australia better was about working together rather than tearing people down on the basis of race.

“When you say ‘the most primitive race on Earth,’ you are speaking about a race of people,” she told Sydney radio 2GB on Tuesday.

“I don’t care what excuses are being made. She did absolutely demonstrate wilful ignorance because there’s a hell of a lot more to Australia’s first people than simply what her remarks suggest.”

Australia’s First Peoples had shaped and enriched the nation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Katie Kiss said.

“This country prides itself on shared values of fairness, dignity and respect. The senator’s comments utterly contradict these values and have no place in the national conversation,” she said in a statement.

“Such commentary is a tactic to divide us at a time when we need to come together.”

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce said he has “great respect” for Indigenous Australians and didn’t agree with the remarks.

“We’re growing this party. We have to make it a viable alternative for Australia,” he told ABC radio.

“Aboriginal people … they lived in an incredibly harsh environment, and an incredibly harsh environment. You got to be pretty ingenious to survive.”

Addressing the coalition partyroom, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said Senator Hanson’s comments did not meet a basic test of decency.

Pointing to a rare show of unity among the upper house’s four Indigenous senators, Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy said it “speaks volumes” as to why the One Nation leader should apologise.

“Clearly the Senate can act, but I am personally calling out to Senator Hanson saying this is important,” she told ABC TV.

“What (she) said is deeply hurtful. It’s completely wrong.

“Those comments were completely baseless. They harm. They dehumanise First Nations people in Australia.”

The One Nation leader was banned from parliament for seven parliamentary sitting days in November after she wore a burqa in the Senate, leading to her being censured.

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Australia’s share market has slumped to 11-week lows as oil prices, interest rates and fading hopes of an artificial intelligence infrastructure boom pummel investor confidence.

The S&P/ASX200 dropped 77.4 points on Tuesday, down 0.88 per cent, to 8,672.5 , as the broader All Ordinaries lost 74.6 points, or 0.84 per cent, to 8,849.3.

“It’s been another horrendous day,” IG market analyst Tony Sycamore told AAP.

Mining stocks weighed heavily after calls for AI safety guardrails dented copper prices, along with hopes the technology’s massive infrastructure spend will reinvigorate global growth.

Financials also dragged as bets narrowed on a September Reserve Bank interest rate increase, while stubbornly high crude prices and subsequent inflation expectations propelled Australian 5-year and 10-year bond yields to levels not seen since 2011.

The Australian dollar is buying 71.22 US cents, down from 71.37 US cents on Monday at 5pm ahead of a widely-tipped US interest rate hike later in the week.

Karl Stefanovic denies conduct oppressing his business partner after their relationship soured and has agreed to buy her out of their controversial podcast company.

The long-time face of Nine’s flagship Today program, 52, and the joint owner of podcast company 123 Podcast, Keshnee Ibrahim, 36, have irreconcilable differences, a NSW Supreme Court hearing was told on Tuesday.

Ibrahim filed an urgent application for the court to defer a meeting scheduled for Friday, fearing she would be removed as a director of the company.

Both she and Stefanovic own 45-per-cent stakes in the company that oversees The Karl Stefanovic Show.

The short-lived podcast has been on hiatus since August 24, when its namesake interviewed Stefanovic interviewed a de-aging expert.

That came two months after his controversial interview with far-right figure Stephen Yaxley Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, triggered public backlash and Nine terminating his role as Today host.

Stefanovic’s lawyer told the court on Tuesday the former TV host had agreed not to go ahead with Friday’s meeting and wanted the court to decide the issue of a buyout, as early as next week.

Stefanovic agreed there had been an “irreconcilable breakdown” in the relationship and that a buyout of the shares was appropriate, lawyer Samuel Murray told the court.

But he disagreed that the company was run in a way that was oppressive of Ibrahim’s interests, as she alleges.

Stefanovic instructed Mr Murray he wouldn’t be seeking a valuation for the shares in the company after August 7, from which time he argued Ibrahim had no economic interest in the continued running of the company.

“The seventh of August date is important because seventh of August is before the majority of the conduct that’s complained about actually occurs,” Mr Murray said.

At that time, Stefanovic was promoting an interview on his podcast with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, posting a picture of the Senator along with himself and his wife Jasmine, with the caption, “Luckiest girls in the world”.

Shortly after, the channel fell silent.

The show had garnered about 23 million views on YouTube.

The parties had agreed to hire an independent valuer to determine what the company was worth and facilitate a buyout, Mr Murray said.

The former TV host agreed to hold the company meeting instead the following Friday, to which Justice David Hammerschlag objected.

“That’s your client putting pressure on me, which is an invitation I’ll kindly decline,” Justice Hammerschlag said.

“I’ll just stop the meeting until such time as the proceedings are resolved.”

The matter has been set for a hearing on October 13.

One Nation’s leader is adamant a policy to deliver “net-negative” migration won’t push Australia into recession.

Pauline Hanson dismissed concerns the party’s migration policy, which would lower immigration numbers by hundreds of thousands of people, had not been modelled for its economic impact.

Senator Hanson said she was “sick of listening” to bureaucrats, politicians and big business, adding they get it wrong on migration numbers and only care about cheap labour.

“We’re not addressing real concerns here,” she told News24 on Tuesday.

“Do you trust these economists, what they come out and say? Because I don’t.”

But Senator Hanson said she had no problem with the Parliamentary Budget Office looking at the policy, which would cut migration back to 2017 levels.

“Did the economy crash at that time? No,” she said.

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce rubbished the Parliamentary Budget Office on Monday night, while defending the decision to release a migration policy without including the possible cost.

One Nation plans to reduce the number of temporary visa holders and overstayers by more than 750,000 over three years.

International student visas would bear the brunt of the cuts, with visa grants set to be reduced from more than 290,000 to 115,000 per year and secondary visas for family members eliminated.

Mr Joyce dismissed criticism for not modelling the economic impact of the policy or using the Parliamentary Budget Office to do so.

“They’re not elected. I am,” he told the ABC’s National Forum on Monday night, questioning the quality of the analysis provided by government agencies.

“I’ve never seen forward estimates in any budgetary paper being even close to the mark of what it’s supposed to do, and so the will of the Australian people is so pronounced. This has to be dealt with.”

Experts warned One Nation’s pledge to deliver three years of negative migration has only happened in times of severe economic stress and during World War II.

Industry Minister Tim Ayres said if the police was implemented, it would be a wrecking ball through regional economies.

“It would hurt the agriculture sector. It would hurt the hospitality and the aged care sectors in particular,” he said.

Labor’s decision to slow working visa applications has prompted criticism from the Australian Tourism Industry Council.

Chief executive Erin McLeod said the reduced intake of backpackers threatens the viability of many regional towns.

“Working holiday-makers fill critical roles where there are labour shortages across our regional destinations,” she said.

International pressures from higher fuel prices had already hit the regional tourism sector hard, due to lower visitor numbers during peak seasons, Ms McLeod said.

Nationals MP David Littleproud offered an “ironclad” pledge that the coalition’s policy will not include changes to any working holiday visa.

Intensifying debate over migration levels comes as the government is yet to announce how it will meet an annual net overseas migration forecast of 225,000 a year in the May budget.

The immigration minister was due to front the National Press Club earlier in August to outline changes to reduce migration levels, but he pulled out at the last minute over policy concerns that erupted during a Labor caucus meeting.

The global leaders of artificial intelligence clearly think the technology poses a greater risk to the world than anticipated, the boss of a major bank says.

ANZ chief executive Nuno Matos was asked about the threat to humanity after a US scientist warned there was a greater than 10 per cent chance AI “could kill all humans” within the next decade.

The warning by Anthropic’s Evan Hubinger was amplified by former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, ahead of three of the biggest names in the sector coming out with their own concerns.

Anthropic boss Dario Amodei, OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Elon Musk on Sunday called for a major development slow-down, including independent monitoring of AI models and global regulation.

“Musk, Amodei and Sam saying that they think they have to cool down the pace, it should tell us something very clear,” Mr Matos told the Australian Financial Review’s Asia summit in Sydney on Tuesday.

“They are thinking that the risk of this technology is well above what they expected.”

The summit discussed the shifting economic influence from American to Asian markets amid the US-China race to dominate AI technology, shaping economic futures and geopolitical power.

AI adoption is being led by the United States, where about 30 per cent of firms have a paid subscription to market leaders OpenAI or Anthropic to use ChatGPT or Claude.

Countries such as Japan, China and India are slightly behind because their economies have more manual labour or blue-collar type work, which means adoption is a little harder.

“AI is a reality. No more debate,” Mr Matos said.

“Three or four years ago, there was still a debate about if this is real or not. It’s real.”

While the full impact on jobs is not overly clear, those who don’t adopt AI technologies will lose their job to someone who does, he said.

“Is it possible that we are all going to lose our jobs? It is possible”.

Asked if the around 9000 ANZ employees in India will be disrupted by AI, Mr Matos said, “Nobody knows”.

“Human beings are not made to stay at home. That’s not a way of living,” he said of the impact of job losses.

His appearance was disrupted by a protester who rushed the stage and began yelling that the ANZ banking boss was profiting off destroying the planet.

Security tackled the intruder standing next to an unfazed Mr Matos.

“No worries. It’s part of the job,” he told the audience.

The fallout from the Middle East war is prompting Asian countries to rethink switching from coal to gas to meet their energy needs, a major Australian producer of the fossil fuel says.

The comments were made by the boss of New Hope Corporation, which produces mostly thermal coal and has operations in NSW and Queensland, where it operates a bulk handling facility at the Port of Brisbane.

“In recent days, we’ve seen impacts for gas supply and heightened concern over that, which will make countries think about the switching potential,” chief executive Rob Fisher told a results briefing on Tuesday.

“Certainly, from a stability of shipping lanes, coal from Australia is a much safer bet than some of the other sources for gas.”

Korea had essentially turned to Russian coal on the back of the Ukraine crisis, and wasn’t taking much, if any, Australian coal, Mr Fisher said.

“That’s now changed, and we’ve had some inbound requests for supply to Korea,” he added.

At the same time, Indonesian coal quotas and production stoppages in China are also impacting prices.

Australian coal going through the Port of Newcastle in NSW in recent days has been selling for about $US146.75 a tonne – the highest level since the US and Iran were engaged in intense fighting in June.

New Hope revealed on Tuesday that while it had beaten its full-year production guidance, it had posted its smallest profit in five years due to higher mining costs and new equipment purchases.

It posted a $161 million net profit for the 12 months to July 31, down 63.4 per cent from the $439 million it made in 2024/25.

The owner of the Bengalla coalmine in the NSW Upper Hunter region and the New Acland Mine in southeast Queensland faced higher costs associated with “prime overburden movement”, or the excavation of rock and soil to expose mineral deposits.

It also had higher depreciation associated with plant and equipment purchases at its two mines.

The group produced 11.5 million saleable tonnes of coal, up 7.6 per cent from 2024/25, while its actual coal sales rose 11.8 per cent to 11.8 million tonnes.

New Hope believes coal’s share of global power generation will reduce over time, but the sheer increase in global power demand will support coal prices in the meantime.

Existing coalmines were aging and there had been underinvestment in new projects, suggesting a potential supply shortfall and an attractive pricing outlook for the industry, Mr Fisher said.

New Hope declared a final dividend of 30 cents per share, taking the total payout for the year to 40 cents, up from 34 cents a year ago.

New Hope shares were more than four per cent higher at $6.54 in afternoon trading.

Queensland has usurped Western Australia at the top of Australia’s state economic rankings, as cracks emerge in the resource-rich state’s performance.

WA slid two places to third in CommBank’s revamped State of the States rankings for the June quarter, after holding top spot in four of the past six quarters.

While the state’s economy was still strong, coming in second for household consumption and third for dwelling investment, WA’s aggregate performance was being propped up by strong migration levels.

On a per capita basis, consumption fell 0.1 per cent over the year, the worst of any state except for Victoria.

Cost pressures had been weighing on West Australian households, report author Harry Ottley said.

“Since (the fourth quarter) 2019, Perth has recorded the highest annualised inflation of any capital city, on both headline CPI and housing, while Perth dwelling prices have more than doubled – the largest increase nationally,” he said in the report.

WA’s loss was Queensland’s gain, with the Sunshine State taking top spot off the bank of strong business and dwelling investment.

“Queensland’s expansion has changed engine,” Mr Ottley said.

“Through 2025 the consumer did much of the work – consumption growth peaked at 3.3 per cent annually in Q1 2026 – but it is now investment providing support.”

The strength in the broader Queensland economy came despite a weakening in the state’s public finances, with the Crisafulli government copping the first cut to its credit rating with S&P Global in 17 years as a result of growing deficit and debt.

South Australia was the quarter’s big improver, jumping two spots to second, while NSW slipped from third to fourth.

Victoria held onto sixth spot, with its unemployment rate among the country’s highest and household consumption among the weakest.

The ACT was in fifth, while the Northern Territory and Tasmania came seventh and eighth, respectively.

Despite Victoria’s overall softness, it was ranked third for business investment as data centre construction drove a 22 per cent jump in new building over the year.

Victoria claimed a sizeable 22.8 per cent of Australia’s 6GW data centre pipeline, but was dwarfed by NSW, which is home to 50.7 per cent of planned data centre capacity.

Despite topping the overall economic rankings, Queensland only claimed three per cent of the data centre pipeline, with only the ACT having a smaller share.

“Data centres are becoming an increasingly important part of the investment story, particularly in NSW and Victoria,” Mr Ottley said.

“The June quarter showed that activity is shifting from equipment and fit-out towards construction, while interest is also spreading beyond the two largest states.”

Domestic travellers risk paying more for airfares leading into the busy Christmas and New Year holiday period.

The prospective increases by Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia on major routes are being driven by capacity cuts and ongoing management of higher fuel costs linked to the Middle East conflict, the competition watchdog says.

“Together with planned capacity reductions, resilient demand and high load factors, this suggests that airfares may increase,” the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said on Tuesday, as it released its latest quarterly report on the domestic aviation market.

The document covering the three months to the end of July comes after Qantas Group, which includes Jetstar, and Virgin released their annual results in August.

Commission chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb noted that both groups reported strong annual results for 2025/26, despite a rise in jet fuel prices since late February.

“These results highlight the financial resilience of the two largest operators in Australia’s highly concentrated domestic aviation market,” she said.

Qantas posted underlying annual earnings of $2.4 billion, down 11 per cent from the prior year, while Virgin increased its underlying earnings by 13.4 per cent to $753 million.

The groups have already said they expect to earn more revenue from each plane seat, the chair added.

Virgin has forecast revenue per available seat kilometre to grow by between six and eight per cent in the first half of 2026/27.

Qantas Group has forecast a rise between eight and 10 per cent for both its domestic and international segments. 

Meanwhile, the regulator found that the average industry domestic airfare rose in recent months from a year earlier, with fares up 3.5 per cent in May and four per cent in June, before moderating in July.

Seat capacity fell by 2.3 per cent in May and June, with the latter month marking the lowest level of capacity in four years.

At the same time, domestic passenger volumes remained relatively stable in the quarter.

“As passenger demand remained relatively stable and fewer flights were offered, airlines were able to fill more than 80 per cent of seats,” the regulator said.

Some of that was due to demand for school holiday flights as well as general leisure travel.

The busiest domestic routes remained relatively unchanged, with most passengers taking the Melbourne to Sydney route, followed by Brisbane to Sydney and Brisbane to Melbourne.

Qantas and Jetstar have the greatest share of the domestic passenger market with 65.2 per cent, followed by Virgin (33.3 per cent) and Rex (1.5 per cent).

The Supreme Court has declined to let the US ‌Postal Service enforce a rule targeting mail-in ballots, dealing a setback to President Donald Trump’s effort to restrict voting by mail ahead of November’s mid-term elections that will determine control of Congress.

The decision allows states to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes they’ve used for years.

Republicans are locked in a tight battle ‌to retain control of Congress ‌in the mid-terms. Restricting mail-in ballots ⁠would stand to benefit Republicans given that Democratic voters disproportionately use mail-in ballots, according to various surveys.

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas publicly dissented from the brief order on Monday.

The Trump administration had asked the court, once again at the centre of a roiling political controversy, to clear the way for restrictions before the pivotal November contests for control of Congress. The case has major implications because nearly one-third of the country votes by mail.

The Supreme Court majority did not detail its reasoning, as is typical on the high court’s emergency docket. Alito, meanwhile, said in the dissent that the Postal Service “has broad authority to regulate the mail” and likely does have the power to enforce Trump’s restrictions.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed that the restrictions should not go into effect for the mid-terms but indicated he might rule in favour of the Trump administration if the issue comes back before the court.

Election officials have said there was simply no way to carry out a complete overhaul in the weeks before the mid-terms. Indeed, Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin began sending mail ballots to voters over the past week while the new system was still not active.

The Trump administration plan would require states to adopt a uniform envelope style and submit lists of eligible voters to an online portal. The Postal Service could refuse to deliver ballots to states that didn’t comply.

A whistleblower report, though, said the postal system’s requirements could lead to millions of mail ballots never being sent, because the portal wasn’t properly built and a single bar code error could result in an entire batch of ballots being tossed out.

Democratic state officials and voting rights groups challenged the restrictions in court, arguing that the president had no constitutional authority to set election rules that would “virtually eliminate mail voting on the eve of a major election”.

Lower courts agreed and blocked Trump’s plan, including a preliminary injunction issued by a judge nominated by the president.

Trump has long opposed mail voting and falsely blamed it for his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, even though he often uses that method to cast his own ballot, including as recently as this year.

with Reuters

The ageing Whyalla blast furnace was doomed to close, but timing is to blame for the hundreds of job losses it implies, the South Australian premier claims. 

Peter Malinauskas also told ABC Radio National on Tuesday he was unable to state how much taxpayers have spent trying to keep the ageing blast furnace operating. 

The facility, which has been offline since April, was permanently shut down in a surprise announcement on Monday, with more than 500 jobs lost. 

Mr Malinauskas said he had hoped the blast furnace could have continued to operate until a sale was secured and new technology installed. 

But the furnace, which was first commissioned in the 1960s, was already living on borrowed time. 

“Ideally, that closure would have happened later … but alas, that wasn’t able to be achieved,” he told the program. 

“Timing is the issue here.”

The South Australian and federal governments have provided support to keep the site running since it entered administration in 2025. 

Pressed on how much of the $2.4 billion support package was spent on keeping the blast furnace operational, Mr Malinauskas could not say. 

Federal industry minister Tim Ayers told the program it would have included “many millions of dollars” including workers’ wages. 

But calculating the precise figure was difficult given it formed just one element of a broader funding package, he said. 

“We are not in a position today to put a dollar figure,” he said. 

He also pushed back on the coalition’s claims the closure was the result of energy policy, instead shifting the blame to its former owner. 

“It’s got everything to do with the previous owner who has underinvested in that facility,” he said. 

Whyalla is one of two Australian primary steelworks and the only local manufacturer of long products, including hot rolled structural steel sections and rail.

Negotiations are ongoing to find a new owner for the site, with the final two bidders Matt Latimore’s M Resources and India’s third-largest steelmaker Jindal Steel.

The sale is expected to be finalised by the end of 2026.

Mr Malinauskas insisted the closure of the blast furnace would not affect the sale, given any new buyer would have intended to turn it off.

Neither would the loss of the furnace undermine the goal of retaining steelmaking at Whyalla, he said. 

“This is where we make our structural steel as a nation,” he said, claiming the capability was important to Australia’s sovereignty. 

Australian Industry Group chief executive Inness Willox agreed steelmaking was critical to core capabilities but said the site’s history was a case study in the limits of government-subsidised industry. 

“Industry doesn’t want and shouldn’t rely on … subsidies and props from government,” he told the program. 

“It wants government policy that enables it to succeed.”