News and politics live updates: Liberal Dan Tehan joins government’s rejection of Donald Trump’s Hormuz levy

Communication Minister Anika Wells says Telstra has disappointed customers and has an “awful lot of work to do” to regain Australia’s trust after a major outage.

The major nationwide Telstra outage last Wednesday caused by a software defect in its time-synchronisation systems left millions of Australians without mobile calls or internet data.

It severely disrupted public transport, payment systems, and some emergency Triple Zero calls before being resolved that afternoon.

“Telstra has an awful lot of work to do here to make it up to its customers and to Australians, and that will take a lot of time and it will take a lot of effort for Telstra to do that,” she said in Brisbane on Tuesday.

“I’m in regular contact with Telstra. I met with the triple zero custodian yesterday.

“I think one of the differences in the Telstra adage last week compared to the Optus outage in September, is that in September, many of those welfare checks took 13 hours to commence from the time that the triple zero call was dropped.

“Whereas last week calls to do welfare checks were taking place often within minutes of the call being dropped.”

US President Donald Trump said that a deal with Iran was “possible”.

The President made the comments while speaking at the White House after signing a number of executive orders.

“Yeah I think a deal is possible,” he said. “I do.”

The US military has struck Iran for a third straight night as tensions between the two countries reignite.

The Australian sharemarket dropped as US and Iran tensions in the Strait of Hormuz lifted oil prices to the highest level since June.

The S&P/ASX200 index fell 37.3 points, or 0.4 per cent, to 8,771.20 at 11.39am (AEST) on Tuesday.

US President Donald Trump placed a blockade against Iran over the Strait of Hormuz and announced plans for a 20 per cent shipping toll.

Donald Trump will address the nation on Thursday night at 9pm local time (Friday 11am AEST).

The US President didn’t provide any details about what the speech would be about when he made the announcement in a Truth Social post.

The United States Central Command (CENTCOM) says it has fired a third round of strikes at Iran under President Donald Trump’s direction.

“At 4:45 p.m. ET today, U.S. Central Command began launching the third consecutive night of strikes against Iran, at the Commander in Chief’s direction,” CentCom wrote on X.

“These strikes will continue imposing a heavy cost on Iranian forces and degrade their ability to attack innocent civilians and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Oil prices surged 10 per cent to a four-week high on Tuesday, raising fresh fears of another jump in Australian petrol and diesel prices as conflict in the Middle East intensified.

US President Donald Trump said Washington would reimpose a blockade on Iranian vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, while allowing ships sailing under other national flags to pass.

Mr Trump also said the United States would charge a fee equal to 20 per cent of cargo values in return for providing security through the strategically important waterway.

Brent crude jumped to $US83.86 a barrel following the announcement, while benchmark diesel prices surged 9.8 per cent to $US1106.75 a tonne.

NRMA spokesman Peter Khoury said movements in global oil markets typically took between seven and 10 days to flow through to prices at Australian service stations.

“Rising terminal gate prices would be the first indication to expect pump prices to rise again,” he said.

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Big tech has been accused of failing to detect sextortion with more than 8000 cases of image-based abuse made in Australia across the past year.

The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said overwhelmingly young men were being sexually extorted online and warned the “devastating” crime could be just the tip of the iceberg.

She said scammers would trick or coerce young men into sharing nude or intimate content before blackmailing them for money.

In the third and latest transparency report of big tech, Ms Inman Grant found platforms had blind spots in protecting youths online, such as a failure to deploy language analysis tools to detect it.

She said despite having some of the most sophisticated technology in the world, apps failed to identify well-known coercion scripts used by sexual extortion offenders.

“These are some of the most innovative companies on the planet. We would like to see some of this innovation going into the development of new technologies to tackle the worst-of-the-worst online content,” she said.

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Emergency Services Minister Kristy McBain has joined a chorus of politicians pushing back against Donald Trump’s plan to impose a 20 per cent levy on ships travelling through the critical waterway.

Ms McBain spoke out against the proposal, saying the government would continue to reject the plans and fight for “constructive engagement to prevent further escalation” in teh region.

“Australia’s long called for de-escalation and an end to this conflict. As we’ve said, the longer this war goes on, the greater the impact will be, particularly to Australian households and Australian businesses. So we really need to see some restraint here and constructive engagement to prevent further escalation,” she said, speaking to Radio National.

“I think it is really important that shipping continues to be free wherever it goes and make sure that there isn’t any adverse outcomes to people who are ultimately ferrying these ships around.”

The Trump Administration should be thanking Australia instead of demanding more defence spending, a leading Democratic Senator has said.

Both the US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby have demanded Australia raise its defence spending to the NATO standard of 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035.

The Trump Administration has successfully forced European nations into spending more on their own defences but have had less luck with Indo-Pacific allies, despite the threat posed by China, which last week tested a nuclear-capable missile from a submarine in the South Pacific.

Speaking exclusively to The Nightly on the sidelines of last week’s NATO gathering in Ankara, Turkey, Senator Chris Coons, who is the lead Democrat on the US Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defence, said Australia contributed more to the Alliance than headline spending figures suggested.

“Here’s what Australia does not get enough credit for, and more Senators and Congressmen need to spend time in Australia to appreciate this, percentage numbers are important, but so are capabilities,” he said.

“And Australia’s capability as an intelligence partner and as a development and diplomacy partner punch way above its weight.

“In the Pacific Islands Australia is the preeminent American Ally and partner and is pushing back against China’s active expansionism in a very effective way.”

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Opposition Energy spokesman Dan Tehan has joined the governemnt’s rejection of Donald Trumps’ proposed Strait of Hormuz levy.

The US President announced plans for a 20 per cent levy on shipping through the waterway as a looming blockade on Iranian shipping nears.

Mr Tehan urged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to inform the White House of the concerns.

“Freedom of navigation is an essential part of how our international waterways work and any long-term strategy or plan which would start to see international waterways tolled would be very alarming,” he told Radio National.

“We obviously need to hear more about whether this is now an official US government policy, whether it’s part of some sort of negotiation tactic to try and get Iran to properly free the waterway and allow international passage, especially of oil, through it. So we’ll have to wait and see what developments take place.

“I think they should be raising concerns if it does become the official position because the precedent that would set would be highly, highly damaging to our economic interests and I think to the globe’s economic interest if this then led to a further escalation of these types of tolling across the world.”