Australia politics live: PNG PM James Marape praises legacy of Gough Whitlam in historic address to parliament

Marape hails Whitlam for ‘hearing the cries of the founding fathers of Papua New Guinea for our own self-determination’. Follow the day’s news live

David Littleproud continued:

But there needs to be greater architectural reform, which is also what Professor Fels articulated, which is what the Nationals have said. When there’s too much market concentration, you have too much power.

And all we’re saying is that whether it is in the supermarket [or farm gate], we want fair prices from the farm gate to the supermarket gate.

I think that he demonstrated the need and reinforced what the Nationals have been calling for, when there’s evidence, clear evidence around price gouging.

We saw that with meat prices where farm grade prices dropped by 60% or 70% in June. Yet, the checkout price only dropped by 18%. They put pressure all the way down through the supply chain. And what Allan Fels has said in his inquiry is that we need to have more ACCC price investigations, where there’s clear evidence. And that’s what we were calling for and the government ignored that. And I think shoppers have paid too much.

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Netanyahu rejects Gaza ceasefire deal and says victory is ‘within reach’

Israeli PM rebuffs US-led mediation efforts as order is given to commence ground assault in southern city of Rafah

Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the terms of a ceasefire in Gaza proposed by Hamas and rebuffed US pressure to move more quickly towards a mediated settlement to the war, saying there could be no solution to Israel’s security issues except “absolute victory” over the militant group.

The Israeli prime minister also confirmed that the Israel Defense Forces had been instructed to commence operations in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where the population has been swelled by hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

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‘Our last stop is Rafah’: trapped Palestinians await Israeli onslaught

Refugees crammed into the border city face a terrifying choice: stay for the expected attack, or flee back north through a war zone

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crammed into the small southern Gaza border city of Rafah are being forced to contemplate being displaced once more as an Israeli offensive looms.

Those who fled to the border city, almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, face a terrifying choice: stay in overcrowded Rafah – once home to 280,000 people – and wait for the attack, or risk moving north through an area of continued fighting.

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Australian Human Rights Commission staff say organisation’s position on Israel-Gaza war is inadequate

Open letter urges commission to take stronger action over Israeli actions in Palestine as organisation says focus is on issues within Australia

The Australian Human Rights Commission is facing pressure from staff over what they claim is an inadequate response to Israel’s war in Gaza.

Staff across eight of the commission’s teams – at least 24 of the 122 staff employed – wrote to the commission’s president, Rosalind Croucher, last week. The letter expressed “frustration at the commission’s failure to fulfil its mandate as an accredited national human rights institution in regard to Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank”.

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Hamas responds to Israel plan with three-stage proposal to end Gaza war

Israel almost certain to reject idea to exchange hostages for prisoners, reconstruct Gaza and withdraw Israeli troops

Hamas has responded to a US-backed Israeli ceasefire plan for the war in Gaza with its own far-reaching proposal for a permanent end to the fighting.

It is a position Israel is almost certain to reject, but which mediators are viewing positively, as it appears the group is willing to engage in further negotiations.

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Fiery debate as Labor accused of ‘trying to walk both sides of street’ on Israel-Gaza conflict

Greens say Israel’s actions ‘a slaughter’ and Labor says other parties trying to ‘divide our community’

The Australian government has demanded that Israel comply with orders issued by the International Court of Justice, but rebuffed the Greens’ calls to describe the war in Gaza as “a slaughter”.

In a fiery debate in parliament on Wednesday, the Greens said the government’s claim to be playing a constructive role was “a sick joke”, while the Coalition accused Labor of “trying to walk both sides of the street”.

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Israel confirms deaths of 31 hostages as Hamas responds to truce proposals

Qatar says Hamas ‘generally positive’ about proposals, while pressure grows on Netanyahu government over handling of crisis

Israel has said it has informed the families of 31 people held in the territory since 7 October that their relatives are dead. The news came as the Qatari prime minister said Hamas had given a “generally positive” response to proposals for a deal trading a break in the fighting and release of Palestinian prisoners for the return of more hostages.

The number of the dead equates to more than a fifth of the remaining 136 hostages being held by in Gaza, according to available intelligence collated by the Israeli military, and comes amid pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over its handling of the hostage crisis.

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Middle East crisis: IDF reportedly believes more than a fifth of remaining Israeli hostages are dead

This live blog is now closed. For more on today’s news, you can read our latest report:

At least 27,585 Palestinians have been killed and 66,978 wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said on Tuesday.

127 Palestinians were killed and 143 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.

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Rumoured split in Hamas leadership as hope grows for ceasefire deal

Qatar’s prime minister and US secretary of state say Hamas has responded to outlines of proposed deal

When the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, launched his devastating assault on Israel on 7 October, the militant group’s exiled leadership, like the rest of the world, was apparently caught unawares.

From plush penthouses in Beirut, Doha and Istanbul, they watched the carnage that killed 1,200 Israelis unfold, as well as Israel’s retaliatory campaign on the Gaza Strip. In the past four months Israel has killed an estimated 27,600 people, displaced 85% of the 2.3 million population and razed more than half of the besieged Palestinian territory’s infrastructure.

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Houthis claim fresh attacks on British and US ships in Red Sea

Two vessels not badly damaged but incident casts doubt on success of UK-US strikes on Yemen missile sites

Houthi rebels say they have successfully targeted a British and a US ship in the Red Sea, casting doubt on the effectiveness of three waves of US-UK strikes on missile sites belonging to the group in Yemen.

Neither of the two ships were badly damaged but the incident will underscore the need for commercial ships either to pay higher insurance premiums or take longer, more expensive routes to avoid the threat of Houthi attacks. A third ship was targeted on Tuesday afternoon, but not struck, at least reassuring Britain that the Houthi capabilities may have been degraded by the US-UK airstrikes.

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French diplomat to review UNRWA after claims of staff role in Hamas attack

Catherine Colonna will lead inquiry after Israel’s accusation that at least 12 UN agency workers were involved in 7 October assault

A former French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, is to lead an independent review of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees after accusations by Israel that at least 12 staff members were involved in the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October.

The review was ordered by Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), last month before the publication of the Israeli allegations and a subsequent mass exodus of donors led by the US and UK.

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Middle East crisis: Drone strike in Syria reported to have killed six members of US-backed Kurdish-led group – as it happened

Six members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have reportedly been killed at a base which also houses US forces

Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum report for the Guardian:

Shaadi Muqtasen’s family live in the centre of old Hebron, one of the most heavily contested, heavily militarised places in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. For Palestinian residents there, life all but stopped when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October.

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Dearborn ramps up police patrol after ‘bigoted’ WSJ op-ed as Biden condemns anti-Arab hate

Mayor Abdullah Hammoud increases law enforcement near places of worship after piece calls Michigan city the ‘jihad capital’ of US

The mayor of Dearborn has ordered more police officers onto the streets, ramping up law enforcement presence across places of worship and major infrastructure points this weekend following an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal that called the Michigan city the “jihad capital” of the US.

And on Sunday Joe Biden weighed in, denouncing anti-Arab hate and, without referring specifically to the newspaper, saying “it shouldn’t happen to the residents of Dearborn – or any American town.”

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US says strikes on Iran-linked militias just ‘the beginning’ of its response

National security adviser refuses to rule out targeting Iran after 85 sites were attacked in Iraq and Syria

US airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias in the Middle East were just the beginning of a sustained response, the White House national security adviser warned on Sunday, as he refused to rule out strikes on Iranian soil.

Jake Sullivan said the strikes on Friday night against 85 targets in Iraq and Syria, designed as retaliation for the killing of three US soldiers, “were the beginning, not the end of our response, and … there will be more steps, some seen, some perhaps unseen, all in an effort to send a very clear message that when American forces are attacked, when Americans are killed, we will respond and we will respond forcefully”.

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Overnight Israeli airstrikes kill scores in Gaza as fears grow of push into Rafah

More than 127 reportedly killed in bombings, including in Rafah where more than a million people are sheltering

Israeli airstrikes across Gaza killed scores of people overnight, as fears grow of the military campaign intensifying in the southern city of Rafah, a tiny pocket of the territory where more than a million people are sheltering.

Amid intensifying divisions in Israel’s government over the war, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was expected to arrive in the region on Sunday, his fifth trip since the militant group attacked Israel on 7 October, killing at least 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage.

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CNN staff say network’s pro-Israel slant amounts to ‘journalistic malpractice’

Insiders say pressure from the top results in credulous reporting of Israeli claims and silencing of Palestinian perspectives

CNN is facing a backlash from its own staff over editorial policies they say have led to a regurgitation of Israeli propaganda and the censoring of Palestinians perspectives in the network’s coverage of the war in Gaza.

Journalists in CNN newsrooms in the US and overseas say broadcasts have been skewed by management edicts and a story-approval process that has resulted in highly partial coverage of the Hamas massacre on 7 October and Israel’s retaliatory attack on Gaza.

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US and UK hit 30 Houthi targets to further weaken Iran-backed groups

Joint operation to further disable militias follows attacks on US and international interests amid war in Gaza

The United States and Britain struck at least 30 Houthi targets in Yemen on Saturday in another wave of assaults meant to further disable Iran-backed groups that have attacked US and international interests in response to the Israel-Hamas war.

Ships and fighter jets on Saturday launched strikes against the Houthis. It followed an air assault in Iraq and Syria on Friday targeting other Iran-backed militias and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in retaliation for the drone strike that killed three US troops – William Jerome Rivers, Kennedy Ladon Sanders and Breonna Alexsondria Moffett – in Jordan last weekend.

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US House to vote next week on standalone $17.6bn bill for aid to Israel

Speaker Mike Johnson is pushing for the package without addressing aid to Ukraine or security for the US-Mexico border

The US House of Representatives plans to vote next week to advance $17.6bn in military aid to Israel without any accompanying spending cuts or assistance for Ukraine, according to Mike Johnson, the chamber’s speaker.

Johnson announced to his fellow House Republicans on Saturday that the vote would take place, while also criticizing a parallel move in the US Senate to pair funding for Israel in its military strikes in Gaza with aid for Ukraine as it fends off Russia’s invasion. The Senate measure also aims to attach a raft of tough border and asylum measures favored by rightwingers to aid for Israel.

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‘Shockingly amateurish’: Australian government delivers veiled rebuke to Israel over UN agency comments

Exclusive: Canberra insider hits back at Amir Maimon who accused Australia of forgetting ‘Hamas culpability’ for 7 October attacks

An Australian government insider has accused the Israeli ambassador of making “shockingly amateurish and counterproductive” comments in a rift over the potential to reinstate funding to a key UN agency.

The Israeli ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon, said on Friday that Australia had previously backed “a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza that would only help Hamas to reorganise” and now seemed to have forgotten “Hamas’s culpability” for the crisis in the territory.

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What does Biden’s order against Israeli settlers mean and why did he do it now?

Some see the US president’s executive order imposing sanctions on settlers who violently attack Palestinians as a bid to win support

Was Joe Biden’s announcement of unprecedented US sanctions against Israeli settlers in occupied Palestine a sign of political weakness at home, or of a newly found willingness to assert American influence over Israel?

The president signed the executive order imposing financial and travel sanctions on settlers who violently attack Palestinians shortly before a campaign rally in the swing state of Michigan, where the largest Arab American population in the country has rounded on Biden over his largely blanket support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.

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