Australia news LIVE: Terror police hunt for synagogue fire suspects; Dutton won’t use indigenous flags as PM

Tech giant Google released its snapshot of the Australian zeitgeist on Tuesday, detailing the most popular terms and questions asked of its search engine during 2024.

Politics and sport dominated online queries for Australians, Google found, with the US election the top search topic of the year, followed by the Paris Olympics medal tally and results from the UEFA European Football Championship.

As she continued her record-breaking Eras Tour, Taylor Swift claimed the fifth-most popular search query in Australia and was also named the top global figure in Google Australia searches, besting US President-Elect Donald Trump in second place and US Vice-President Kamala Harris in fourth.

Among Australian public figures, entrepreneur John Singleton was named the most-searched individual, after suffering a personal tragedy during the Bondi Junction stabbing attack. Freed journalist Julian Assange came in second, while Raygun, also known as academic and breakdancer Rachael Gunn, earned third spot on the list.

The Bondi Junction stabbing, which claimed seven lives, ranked among the most searched news events of the year, in addition to the disappearance of Victorian woman Samantha Murphy, the Crowdstrike outage that disrupted computers and stores, and Cyclone Kirrily that hit Queensland early in the year.

Other search trends revealed Australians’ curiosity about words such as demure, made popular in a TikTok video, interest in do-it-yourself car maintenance and Halloween costumes and how to make Crumbl cookies and “oatzempic”.

Edgy entertainment choices such as the movie Saltburn and the TV series Baby Reindeer ranked highly in Google’s search trends, although Brisbane production Boy Swallows Universe, based on Trent Dalton’s bestselling novel, ranked in fourth spot.

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A new business taskforce unveiled on Tuesday by the Victorian government will be chaired by former Australia Post boss Ahmed Fahour and act as the direct line to industry.

The taskforce, dubbed the “Premier’s Business Council” will include AFL boss Andrew Dillon and Visy billionaire Anthony Pratt. Other notable members include NAB CEO Andrew Irvine, Reserve Bank board member Caroline Schwartz, and Melbourne Lord Mayor Nick Reece.

Premier Jacinta Allan said the purpose of the council would be to “continue to listen, consult and engage with business leaders across the state”.

Allan defended the appointment of Pratt - who is moving to the US - and the mayor to the new council.

“It just makes sense to have that collaborative partnership with the Lord Mayor of the City of Melbourne, who shares that focus on diving business investment, driving jobs into the city,” she said.

As part of the government’s Economic Growth Statement, Allan also unveiled Victoria’s growth sectors, which include manufacturing and defence, health tech and medical research, digital tech, and agribusiness.

“They’ve come from listening to business and industry, and they’re focused on sharpening Victoria’s competitive advantages into the future,” she said.

“We can’t rest upon our laurels. It is a globally competitive environment. We have to look at how do we plan for the decade ahead, looking at what we have here in Victoria that gives us that edge, and how do we support those businesses and industry to grow into the future.”

The long-running inquest into the disappearance of William Tyrrell will not sit next week as previously scheduled. The coroner will now deliver her findings on how the three-year-old seemingly vanished when it reconvenes.

The inquest into Australia’s highest-profile missing persons case has been running since March 2019 and has been beset by delays and controversy.

Last month, police applied to recall William’s foster mother to give further evidence after the inquest was played a secret phone tap in which she said the little boy’s remains would be found “in 40 years” during bushland clearing.

The inquest was due to run all of next week, but the Coroner’s Court on Tuesday confirmed that deputy state coroner Harriet Grahame had closed evidence and vacated next week’s hearing.

A date for the delivery of the findings, which were due three years ago, has not yet been fixed.

Australian consumers’ inflation expectations have eased, but confidence has slipped after national economic growth data last week showed a crawling economy.

Weekly consumer confidence data from ANZ today showed consumer confidence fell 2.9 percentage points last week to 85.5 points.

ANZ economist Madeline Dunk said the weaker confidence reading came after the end of Black Friday-related sales and softer-than-expected third-quarter GDP data, with the biggest falls in households’ confidence in their financial conditions, especially over the next 12 months.

National accounts data last week showed the economy grew 0.3 per cent in the three months to September, notably slower than economists had been expecting, with household spending remaining flat.

Meanwhile, inflation expectations eased 0.5 percentage points over the past fortnight to 4.5 per cent. Inflation expectations have not been below 4.5 per cent since August 2021.

The data comes as the Reserve Bank makes its final interest rate decision of the year at 2.30pm today. Markets are broadly expecting the RBA to keep rates on hold at 4.35 per cent.

A little earlier, opposition home affairs spokesperson James Paterson responded to Labor MP Josh Burns’ claim around their joint press conference at the Adass Israel Synagogue on Friday.

Burns, who is Jewish, says he had lost his voice and that Paterson initially agreed to read a statement on his behalf at the press conference. The Labor MP then claimed this morning that Opposition Leader Peter Dutton intervened to stop Paterson from reading it.

Paterson issued the following statement in response to Burns’ claim:

I feel very sorry that Josh Burns and his community have been abandoned by the Labor Party in the wake of this terrorist attack, but it is not the role of a Liberal frontbencher to act as a spokesman for a Labor MP.

One of the many senior Albanese government ministers from Victoria should have been there to speak if Josh was not able to.”

You can read more about the incident in our full story here.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has weighed in on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s decision to play tennis in Perth on Saturday, as he faced criticism for taking to the court a day after the Adass Israel Synagogue firebombing.

Albanese was in Perth when the terror attack took place on Friday, where he remained through the weekend before returning to Canberra. On Monday, the PM defended the tennis match, saying that after he concluded six appointments on Saturday, including a private visit to a synagogue, he “did some exercise”.

“That’s what people do,” he said.

Dutton came to the PM’s defence when he was asked about the tennis match on Sydney’s 2GB radio on Tuesday morning.

“I think the prime minister deserves some downtime; he’s got a busy job and deserves some time with his family and friends,” Dutton said.

“I don’t begrudge him that.”

But Dutton criticised Albanese for being slow in “calling this out as a terrorist attack”.

“I think the prime minister has been trying to win Green votes in inner-city Melbourne and Sydney, and I think he’s taken a decision, a very deliberate decision, to hedge his bets when it comes to Israel and the Jewish community,” he said.

“I think it’s divided our country.”

Jumping back to opposition home affairs spokesperson James Paterson’s interview on ABC News Breakfast, where he was questioned on Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s declaration that he would not stand in front of Indigenous flags as prime minister.

Dutton currently stands in front of only the Australian flag in press conferences, a precedent he says he will continue if the Coalition wins government. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese set a new standard in 2022, when he stood in front of the Australian, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flags.

Host Bridget Brennan, who is a Yorta Yorta and Dja Dja Wurrung woman, asked Paterson why Peter Dutton wouldn’t want to stand in front of a flag that “means so much to Aboriginal people”.

“[The flags] have a very important place in Australia, they’re an important symbol for our country. But I think it’s important for any country to have one national flag ... we need to have unifying symbols,” Paterson said.

Paterson said we should acknowledge and be proud of our “remarkable heritage” but that he “couldn’t think of another county with multiple flags”.

“The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags have an important place in our country, in the right setting and time, they have an appropriate role. They will always be a feature of public life,” he said.

“But when the prime minister of Australia is standing up to make a statement to the country, this is a unifying symbol to say we have one national flag and we stand beside it.”

Labor MP Josh Burns has elaborated on his claim that Opposition Leader Peter Dutton personally intervened to stop Liberal senator James Paterson from reading a statement on his behalf when he lost his voice.

Burns, who is Jewish, and Paterson held a joint press conference on the site of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Burns’ electorate in Melbourne just hours after it was targeted by a terror attack on Friday morning.

Burns joined ABC News Breakfast this morning, where he provided further details of what he says transpired.

“I was the first MP on the scene that morning, I came first thing, Friday morning,” Burns said.

“I couldn’t speak. You might be able to hear I’m still a bit croaky. I was grateful to James who agreed to read out a statement. I wanted to make sure that my community knew I was there that there was a strong condemnation of this and that we do this in a bipartisan way because at that moment I wanted to show unity.”

Burns referenced Dutton’s criticism of him on Monday, where he accused the MP of “losing his voice long before Friday” by failing to stand up to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on his response to antisemitism.

“[Dutton’s] team member actually agreed to read out a statement and then Peter Dutton intervened and told James [Paterson] he couldn’t read out the statement,” Burns continued.

“If we’re going to play those sorts of politics, I don’t think it’s in our best interests. I compare that with community leaders who have been working with people across the Parliament regardless of political stripes.”

Burns said he was willing to stand up with anyone from any side of politics because he only cares about his community and the “unimaginable pain” they are experiencing right now.

Read more about the incident here.