Dutton listens to locals sharing crime stories in NT; heavy rain to hit northern NSW – as it happened (2025)

That’s all for our Saturday blog – one week out from the federal election – here’s what we learned:

• Valerie the dachshund was finally caught after 529 days on the loose in Kangaroo Island, South Australia.

• Australia’s only cardinal, Melbourne-based Mykola Bychok, has spoken in Rome ahead of Pope Francis’s funeral. Bychok, who Francis made a cardinal late in 2024, said the period since the pontiff’s death had been “a most challenging time”. He will be part of the conclave to choose a new pontiff.

• Virginia Giuffre, a survivor of the disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein, died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia.

• The Greens announced a policy to lower the retirement age to 65, and boost the age pension above the poverty line. Adam Bandt said the change would particularly benefit older women, one of the fastest growing groups facing homelessness.

• At a press conference with Peter Dutton, the LNP candidate for Leichhardt, Jeremy Neal, was asked whether he still supported Donald Trump after social media posts surfaced during the campaign. Neal, who has since deleted the posts, said the views were from “a very long time ago”.

• Peter Dutton reaffirmed his policy as prime minister would be “to stand behind one flag … because I want our country to be united under one flag”.

• Campaigning in Victoria, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, pledged $25m to help Australian students learn a second language.

Thanks for joining us. Have a safe night, and see you back on the live blog tomorrow.

In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Car crashes into wall at pre-poll voting booth in Adelaide

A pre-poll voting booth in the Adelaide foothills suburb of Athelstone has been closed after a car drove into a wall.

Mark Basham, a local councillor for Port Adelaide Enfield who shared the news on his social media account, said:

No one hurt, thankfully.

Dutton campaign to head out of Darwin after less than two hours

The press pack following Peter Dutton is about to leave Darwin less than two hours after we first landed.

As we mentioned earlier, Dutton visited a small shopping centre to chat with some pharmacists who were worried about local crime.

He then ducked into a state politician’s office in the shopping centre to conduct a “roundtable”. A journalist and some cameramen were allowed in to report the initial remarks before being asked to leave so they could discuss issues more candidly.

The press pack were then told to get back on the bus to catch the plane to our next stop before the roundtable was finished.

The pace of the opposition’s campaign has really ramped up in the last week. For example, it took the travelling press pack more than two hours to fly to NT’s capital from Cairns and will jet off to the next destination having spent less than two hours on the ground.

Along the road back to the airport, there are a number of orange Country Liberal party-branded signs spruiking the Coalition’s fuel excise cuts.

Thanks for joining me on the blog this morning. I’m handing over now to Petra Stock, who will keep you posted with the afternoon’s news.

Storms and flash flooding forecast along NSW coast

Severe thunderstorms, heavy rain and flash flooding in New South Wales are expected to shift east, before spilling into parts of Queensland and Victoria on Sunday.

Miriam Bradbury, a senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said the low pressure system would act as a magnet for “moisture and strong winds pulling in from out over the ocean and being directed against the New South Wales coast”.

Thunderstorms could deliver locally heavy falls leading to flash flooding, she said, with northern inland NSW expected see the highest rainfall totals.

We could see widespread rainfall in excess of 40mm across the course of today, but thunderstorms may deliver locally higher falls in the range of 70 to 100mm.

Flash flooding was a risk, she said.

When a lot of rain falls in a short space of time, our gutters and drainage systems tend to get overwhelmed, and that’s when we see water moving quickly over roads, pathways, public areas and private property. This will quickly lead to some dangerous driving conditions where those heaviest falls occur.

We may also see some damage to crops, property and trees, as stronger winds combine with that heavy rain along the east coast tomorrow.

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has promised to work with the Country Liberal party Northern Territory government to get on top of youth crime in the Top End.

Dutton held a roundtable with the chief minister, Lia Finnochario, Lisa Bayliss, the candidate for the federal Labor seat of Solomon, and about 20 locals in a small room in the Karama shopping plaza.

Dutton claimed the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, had ignored the crime issue in the NT, as he listened to locals talk about finding meat cleavers left on the streets and having their cars stolen.

He invoked his time as a police officer as he pledged to focus on community safety if elected on 3 May.

“It instills in you, I think for ever, a real sense of what’s right and wrong, and what we’ve seen in the NT for a long time is just wrong,” Dutton said.

You need financial support and moral support to get on top of bail laws … and to provide a secure environment for people to lead their lives.

The current government is too focused on what’s happening in the inner cities of Sydney and Melbourne with the Greens.

Finnochiaro said her eight-month-old government had started to put downward pressure on crime rates.

“We need a federal government that understands the root causes of crime,” she said.

– Pool copy

Dutton turns focus to cost of living and crime in Darwin

Peter Dutton is in Darwin this afternoon to visit the community about cost-of-living and crime issues.

His first stop is a small shopping centre in Karama with the Northern Territory chief minister, Lisa Finocchiaro, Liberal candidate for Solomon, Lisa Bayliss, and Indigenous affairs spokesperson, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

The Labor MP Luke Gosling holds Solomon, which takes in Darwin and some outer suburbs, on a 9.4% margin.

Democracy sausages and photo opps

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, health minister, Mark Butler, and finance minister, Katy Gallagher, enjoyed some snags at a barbecue event with Labor supporters at Punchbowl Reserve in the Launceston electorate of Bass.

Australia’s only cardinal has spoken in Rome hours before the funeral of Pope Francis, AAP reports.

The Melbourne-based Cardinal Mykola Bychok, Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic official, opened up about what he said was “a profoundly sacred moment for the church and the world”.

The 88-year-old pope, who had led the church since 2013, died on Monday after suffering a stroke.

More than 200,000 people are expected to attend his funeral outside St Peter’s Basilica from 6pm AEST on Saturday.

Bychok, who Francis made a cardinal late in 2024, said the period since the pontiff’s death on Easter Monday had been “a most challenging time”.

“As a newly appointed cardinal, this experience is still very new to me,” he said.

I have only just arrived here in Rome after spending several days in the Holy Land – days that were marked by silence, prayer and reflection in the very places where our lord walked.

Bychok will be part of the conclave to choose a new pontiff, expected to start early in May.

Some 160 foreign delegations will attend the funeral alongside world leaders including Donald Trump.

Australia will be represented by the governor general, Sam Mostyn, ambassador to the Holy See Keith Pitt, cabinet minister Don Farrell and Riverina MP, Michael McCormack.

Valerie the dachshund treated to roast chicken after 529 days on the run

Kangala Wildlife Rescue has revealed Valerie the dachshund’s first meal after 529 days on the run.

In a social media update, Lisa Karran from the Kangaroo Island wildlife rescue organisation said:

We had her favourites – roast chicken and her favourite dog food as well – to help her recognise that we were safe and that we were not a threat.

Jared Karran, also from Kangala Wildlife Rescue, said:

She looks quite big on the camera. When I saw her in real life, she is tiny.

He said they were being extremely careful not to let Valerie out of the cage.

There was no way we were letting that sausage dog run away on us again.

They said Valerie’s owners, Josh and Georgia, were “over the moon” to receive the news that their dog had finally been secured and would be on her way home soon.

‘Negative narrative’: co-author of Senate submission with Liberal candidate distances herself from claims Hazaras not persecuted due to ethnicity

An Afghan-Australian who co-authored a controversial Senate submission with the Liberal candidate for Bruce, Zahid Safi, says she had no involvement in its creation and wants to no longer be associated with it.

The 2021 submission to an inquiry into Australia’s involvement in the Afghanistan war suggested the Hazara community in Afghanistan was not persecuted on the basis of its ethnicity. This contradicted the Australian government and drew rebuke from international human rights groups.

The allegations led members of the Hazara community, which has a significant presence in the electorate of Bruce, to lodge their own dissenting submissions to the inquiry, alleging the claims sought to erase the “well-documented persecution of an entire ethnic group”.

Tamkin Hakim has told her social media followers that while she was aware the submission was being written, she “did not write it” and “did not endorse it”.

I did not consent for my name to be added to anything that created a negative narrative about the Hazara community. I have requested that my name be removed from any such statements, publications or submission that I did not personally author or endorse.

Hakim has previously accused the submission, which still carries her name, of “betraying” the Hazara community.

When contacted by Guardian Australia, Safi defended the submission and said he was “a staunch advocate for freedom of religion or belief for all individuals worldwide”:

A full and fair reading of my submission makes clear that I advocated for every single living individual at risk from the national atrocity and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

The Australian Hazara Advocacy Network has called on Safi to apologise for the contents of the submission and to be disendorsed. The petition has 15,000 signatures, although it is not known how many of these are from the electorate of Bruce or Victoria.

Wet and cloudy day in S-E Qld and northern NSW

South-east Queensland and northern New South Wales are looking at a wet and partly cloudy Saturday.

There is a high chance of showers for the southern border ranges in Queensland’s south-east, the Bureau of Meteorology says. There is medium chance of showers elsewhere, a chance of a thunderstorm in the south, and temperatures will get to the mid to high 20s.

For those in NSW’s northern rivers, expect cloudy skies, a very high chance of showers, a chance of a thunderstorm and light winds. Temperatures will reach the low to mid 20s.

There’s only a week to go, and polls are showing that the gap between the two major parties is widening in favour of Anthony Albanese – but with such a high number of soft voters, can we count the Coalition out?

Barrie Cassidy and Tony Barry discuss the big issues of the last week.

Listen here:

Woman dies after falling at Mapleton Falls national park

Queensland police will prepare a report for the coroner after a 36-year-old woman died after reportedly falling 80 metres at Mapleton Falls national park on the Sunshine Coast yesterday.

A Queensland police spokesperson said:

Emergency services were called to Mapleton Falls around 3.30pm following reports a woman had fallen.

She was located deceased around 4.30pm.

The spokesperson said the death was not being treated as suspicious.

Virginia Giuffre, a survivor of the disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein, has died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia, a statement from her family, attorney Sigrid McCawley and PR Dini von Mueffling says.

The statement reads:

It is with utterly broken hearts that we announce that Virginia passed away last night at her farm in Western Australia. She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking.

Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors. Despite all the adversity she faced in her life, she shone so bright. She will be missed beyond measure.

The light of her life were her children Christian, Noah, and Emily. It was when she held her newborn daughter in her arms that Virginia realized she had to fight back against those who had abused her and so many others.

There are no words that can express the grave loss we feel today with the passing of our sweet Virginia. She was heroic and will always be remembered for her incredible courage and loving spirit.

In the end, the toll of abuse is so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight. We know that she is with the angels.

At the press conference earlier with Peter Dutton, the LNP candidate in Leichhardt, Jeremy Neal, was asked whether he still supported Donald Trump after social media posts surfaced during the campaign.

Neal said “those views are [from] a very long time ago, and they were deleted a very long time ago”.

He added the US president’s decision to place tariffs on Australian exports had left a “sour taste” in his mouth.

‘We can win this election,’ Dutton tells LNP supporters in Cairns

Earlier this morning, Peter Dutton stopped by the Barr Street Markets in Cairns for breakfast with his supporters in the seat of Leichhardt.

The opposition leader was joined by the LNP candidate, Jeremy Neal, as they worked their way through the early morning crowd of poll booth volunteers.

Dutton thanked supporters and joked the breakfast was put on to feed them up quickly and get them to pre-poll stations as quickly as possible.

He said:

We’ve got all seven days ahead of us, but there’s no doubt in my mind, we can win this election, and we must for our great country.

After his press conference, Dutton and the media pack following his campaign travelled to Mount Sheridan, south of Cairns, to visit a new housing estate.

There he announced $33.8m in funding for the estate as part of the Coalition’s broader $5bn package to build the required infrastructure for houses, such as connecting sewerage and water.

Dutton said many places around the country faced “growing pains” in regards to new housing and the funding “provides support to those blocks of land being developed more quickly and coming on to market more quickly”.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, says mainstream politics needs to speak out against a rise in far-right figures.

I condemned what happened yesterday with someone associated with neo-Nazis. I have had some of those figures confront me, as you may be aware, here in Melbourne.

I think it’s good that across the board, the political spectrum condemned what occurred yesterday. It was condemned by Mr Dutton as well. That’s a good thing.

Mainstream politics needs to speak out against far-right figures and the rise … We know from the Asio director general, Mr Burgess, he has publicly spoken about the threat … We know the consequences of this. We need to take this seriously. These threats. Because they are real.

The prime minister says it is “fantastic” that media organisations “have come together to speak out against hate”.

“I just think we as a society have got to come together.”

He also points to algorithms that encourage “people to go to more extreme views”.

Dutton avoids questions about Leichhardt candidate’s online history

Looking back to Peter Dutton’s press conference from the must-win seat of Leichhardt in Cairns earlier this morning, where the opposition leader vouched for his candidate Jeremy Neal.

Dutton said:

People know if they vote for Jeremy Neal, they’ll get more local doctors. They’re also going to get $6m more for local Headspace – and Headspace is something we’ve invested in for a long period of time … it provides that primary care response for young people presenting with mental health conditions, and it has made a big difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Australians.

On Wednesday, Neal’s online history, including controversial posts about China, Covid-19 restrictions and “feminists” who helped “kick out” Donald Trump in 2020, resurfaced.

Dutton avoided answering questions about Neal’s online history.

Neal is in a fight to retain the seat as Labor attempts to capitalise on the retirement of the veteran Liberal MP Warren Entsch.