Australia news LIVE: Right-wing politicians say government’s social media laws are politically motivated censorship; Number of Australians missing in Nepal revised down to 35, says DFAT

by · WAtoday

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What you need to know

By Emily Kaine

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of national news for Wednesday, September 9. Here’s what is making headlines today.

  • Another Australian citizen has been located in Nepal after devastating flooding, bringing the number of missing Australians in the region down to 35, according to DFAT.
  • Social media companies will have to prompt users to choose whether they want to have algorithm-driven feeds under Labor’s Digital Duty of Care bill. Communications Minister Anika Wells and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pitched the laws as a middle ground between an opt-in model that would make the default feed algorithm-free, and an opt-out model, which would require users to seek out the exclusion function themselves. The legislation has already drawn criticism from Coalition and One Nation MPs, who accused the government of political censorship.
  • One Nation’s Victorian leader, Warren Pickering, said during a press conference yesterday that he had made mistakes as a young man and had “utilised illegal drugs” including speed, amphetamine, ecstasy and marijuana in his 20s, after initially denying allegations made by his former partner in a report in The Australian.
  • And Israel has slammed a move by a dozen countries to impose trade sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, launching a furious diplomatic response after Britain accused it of allowing “ethnic cleansing” in the contested lands.