The South Australian Liberals have elected Vincent Tarzia to take over the party’s leadership after David Speirs resigned last week.

Addressing the media earlier today, Tarzia thanked his predecessor, describing him as a “warrior for our party”.

“This is the greatest privilege of my professional life, and I’m going to work hard every day with a strong team behind me to take up the fight to Labor and to make sure that the Liberal Party wins the state election in 2026,” Tarzia told reporters.

Responding to questions, Tarzia said he did not undermine Speirs, after the former opposition leader suggested somebody undermined him.

“I consider David a friend and I want to work with David in the Liberal Party,” Tarzia said.

The first independent, pro-Palestinian candidate to challenge a sitting Labor MP is expected to announce his candidacy on Tuesday.

Western Sydney doctor Ziad Basyouny will stand for the safe Labor seat of Watson, which is currently held by cabinet minister Tony Burke, The Australian reported.

Burke, who has held the seat since 2004 and who won with 65 per cent of the two-party preferred vote at the last election, is one of a number of MPs expected to face a challenge at the next election, which is due by May 2025.

Basyouny is a frequent critic on social media of the federal Labor government for its response to the war in Gaza but declined to comment – or confirm his candidacy – when contacted by this masthead.

His candidacy is expected to be the first of several to be announced, with other Labor MPs including minister Jason Clare, Chris Bowen and backbench MP Anne Stanley also potentially facing challenges.

Anger has been building in diverse Australian Muslim communities over the government’s response to the war in Gaza, prompting former Labor senator Fatima Payman to resign from the caucus and move to the crossbench last month.

At that time two groups, Muslim Votes Matter and The Muslim Vote, signalled they were working up plans to help support independent candidates who could challenge government MPs.

Turning to the WA Supreme Court now, and Liberal senator Linda Reynolds’ long-time partner, Robert Reid, is recounting the “media frenzy” that has persisted since claims she “covered up” former staffer Brittany Higgins’ alleged rape in 2019.

Reid told the court the first he knew the former staffer was allegedly raped by colleague Bruce Lehrmann in Reynolds’ ministerial suite was in February 2021, when an advertisement for Higgins’ tell-all interview with The Project was aired.

Lehrmann has long maintained his innocence.

Reid said his partner of 11 years declined to share her knowledge of the incident, a security breach he found “almost impossible to believe” because of strict security criteria.

“I wanted to know who Linda told and when,” Reid told the court.

“She just kept saying, ‘It’s not my story to tell’. She said she had promised not to talk about it.”

Reid told the court he saw first-hand the toll the saga was taking on the person he loved, recounting Reynolds’ many sleepless nights and her anger at the publication of a version of events she couldn’t reconcile against her own.

He became emotional describing how the “unrelenting attack” in parliament and the media culminated in a public breakdown that led to Reynolds being hospitalised over an undiagnosed cardiac condition, before a speech at the National Press Club in Canberra. Reid recalled how a doctor told him he might “lose her”.

Reid said the constant media attention continued when he returned to Perth.

“I was basically a prisoner in my own house,” Reid told the court, as he described scaling a ladder from his neighbour’s property to escape the media camped outside his Perth home.

“The [TV reporters] were there for a long time, and they stayed there for a number of days and would ring the bell. I would leave to get milk and groceries and return via the ladder – that was my life.

“Our relationship has been affected by this whole saga, this never-nding saga.”

Reynolds sued Higgins in July 2023 over a series of social media posts she claims were defamatory of her, brought her into public hatred and caused her distress and embarrassment.

Higgins is defending the action on the basis the content in the posts was true, and that Reynolds mishandled her rape allegation and used the media to harass her.

Today is the sixth day of evidence in the defamation trial.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has defended his government’s track record to reform gambling advertisements.

Last week this masthead reported federal Labor is set to allow gambling advertisements to remain on TV for years to come after the Albanese government shunned a high-profile campaign, championed by late Labor MP Peta Murphy, for a blanket ban.

Today, the husband of the late Murphy – Rod Glover – urged Albanese to commit to a full ban.

In question time this afternoon, in response to independent MP Zoe Daniel, Albanese backed his government’s approach to gambling.

“There’s a fair bit of hypothetical in there about what our alleged position was,” Albanese said.

“The Minister for Communications [Michelle Rowland] and the Minister for Social Services [Amanda Rishworth] are getting on with tackling gambling harm comprehensively. And we’re doing that in a way that will ensure that there aren’t unintended consequences of it.

“I have every respect for Rod Glover, he’s been a friend of mine for a long period of time. He’s a great Australian who has had to deal with the tragedy of losing his life partner – something that is felt by so many people in this chamber, not just on this side of the chamber.”

Facebook parent company Meta is blaming an error for blocking Australian news websites from its Instagram and Threads platforms.

Users on both Threads and Instagram are currently unable to link to local news publishers including The Age and Sydney Morning Herald and are met with a “post failed to upload” message when attempting to do so. Links on the Facebook platform are able to be posted successfully.

A spokeswoman for Facebook parent company Meta said the issue is an unintended error and the company is working to resolve it.

The company is currently embroiled in a stand-off with the Australian government over the news media bargaining code, which was designed to compensate local publishers for content, and address a perceived power imbalance between Australian news businesses and the US-based tech giants.

In February 2021 Facebook briefly banned users globally from reading any Australian news, while also removing Facebook pages for hospitals, charities, emergency services and government departments.

Earlier this year Meta said it won’t renew its commercial deals with Australian news media companies, which were worth up to $200 million for the likes of the ABC and Nine, publisher of this masthead.

Meta said its users were not coming to its platform for news.

“This is part of an ongoing effort to better align our investments to our products and services people value the most,” Meta said in a statement at the time.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has not answered a question on why the government would continue funding a Makarrata commission after ruling it out.

Last week on ABC’s Insiders, Albanese said that instead of a formal Makarrata body, the government must focus on engaging with Indigenous communities to find new ways to deal with chronic problems facing First Nations people.

Asked in question time about why there continues to be budget funding towards the commission, Albanese spoke about his visit to the Gama festival and that Makarrata translates to coming together which he urges the opposition to consider.

“What we know is when it comes to closing the gap, we are not achieving the outcomes that I’m sure everyone here would want to see. We need to reduce the suicide rates. We need to reduce the incarceration rates,” he said.

“Makarata is ‘coming together’, I seek for Australians to come together in order to advance the interests of Indigenous Australians and I invite those opposite to actually stop with the attempts to divide, and to try to come together in order to close the gap, because that is our objectives.”

Earlier in question time, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton yelled at Treasurer Jim Chalmers to resign in the middle of the treasurer giving an answer.

Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor asked when Chalmers would take responsibility for “driving up home-grown inflation”.

“I take responsibility for the decisions that we’ve made in our budget, I do that proudly,” Chalmers said.

Mostly scrolling on his phone to that point, Dutton looked up and shouted, “resign then, resign”, causing the house to erupt into heckling.

Chalmers continued to give his answer, saying he takes responsibility for all cost-of-living policies.

Newly appointed Housing Minister Clare O’Neil has apologised for making a false claim that Treasury had done modelling for the government’s build to rent scheme.

Earlier this morning on ABC Radio National, O’Neil attempted to dismiss an argument from the Property Council that the build to rent scheme would be ineffective in attracting investors.

“What I can tell you is that the Treasury modelling for this bill tells us that we are going to have an additional 160,000 rental units online in a period of a decade,” she told the ABC.

However, this afternoon O’Neil said she incorrectly sourced the modelling.

“I did source the modelling incorrectly. My apologies,” she said in a statement.

The modelling referenced this morning was from the Property Council, not Treasury.