Pilot stabbed on Israel-bound flight + The fallout from Hanson's press ban

Sacha Barbour Gatt (0:06)

Hi, Sacha Barbour Gatt with you, welcome to The Briefing. Should the media have unfettered access to every political party? And what happens when journalists have their ability to cover stories taken away?

Peter Greste (0:18)

It's those principles, including press freedom, that have made Australia one of the most successful, prosperous, safest and freest places on earth. We mess with those things at our peril.

Sacha Barbour Gatt (0:29)

In today's Deep Dive, we explore press freedom and protection with Peter Greste and why it needs to be prioritised. That's coming up in the second half of this episode, but first, as always, it's time for the headlines, and once again, you're stuck just with me, Chris is still off sick. It is Thursday, the 1st of October.

Starting overseas, where investigations are underway into an incident onboard a flight from Dubai to Israel, which saw a pilot allegedly stabbed by his co-pilot, authorities are trying to determine if it was an attempted terror attack with reports the man tried to crash the plane. Here's what we know so far, according to passenger reports and a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister, is that a brawl broke out in the cockpit, prompting three emergency signals to be sent out. The commercial flight then plummeted around 16,000 feet in just two minutes before a number of people managed to enter the cockpit and neutralize the situation. The plane, with around 180 people on board, then made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. Both pilots have since been taken to hospital. The alleged attacker, who is from Oman, according to Reuters, is now under arrest and being questioned by Saudi authorities.

Meantime, passengers have since arrived in Israel on a repatriation flight. One man met Benjamin Netanyahu in a blood-covered T-shirt. Here's what Netanyahu said following that meeting.

Benjamin Netanyahu (1:56)

He told me that the plane entered a tailspin and began to dive. He told me that, against all odds, he managed to break into the cockpit along with one of the crew members, and together they neutralised the stabbing pilot while he was trying to sabotage the plane's systems. Additional flight crew on board entered the cockpit and managed to stabilise the aircraft. I salute these heroes who showed exceptional resourcefulness and courage.

They saved many lives. They prevented a heavy disaster.

Sacha Barbour Gatt (2:28)

The motives behind the attack will now be the subject of an investigation.

Back home now, and house prices across the country have dropped for a sixth month straight. That's according to the latest data from Kotality, which showed the Home Value Index fell by 1.1% in September, shedding a total of 5.2% from March's peak. Brisbane, previously one of the strongest performing capital cities, saw the biggest decline. It was down 1.5% last month. Sydney, meantime, was down 1.4%, Melbourne 0.7%. Adelaide Home Values shed 1.3%, Perth 1.2%, Canberra 1.1%, and Hobart was down 0.5%.

Now, Darwin has been the only market to avoid a drop. It was up 0.4%.

Experts are warning we are on track to see as much as 15% wiped from Australia's property values into 2027, driven by interest rate rises and cuts to housing tax breaks. So when might things ease? Possibly not until the RBA starts cutting the official cash rate, and I'll have more on that in the next story. But if you want to know a little bit more about what falling house prices means for you, we did actually deep dive this in July. I'll pop a link to that in the show notes for you.

Sticking with interest rates, it's come as no surprise, but all of Australia's major banks have now passed on Tuesday's interest rate rise to customers. Variable home loan rates will lift by 0.25% from next month, after the RBA's fourth hike this year. The cash rate is now the highest it's been in 15 years since November 2011 Now a number of banks have also announced an increase to their savings variable rates, including Macquarie Bank, Westpac and U Bank. NAB, ANZ and Commonwealth are still considering changes and haven't moved on that yet. Now the blame game has been in full force since Tuesday's decision with pressure mounting on the government to curb its own spending. And that is something we discussed in yesterday's Deep Dive with Koshy. Just jump back one episode in the feed and you can have a listen to that. But something else that came out yesterday was the latest inflation data. And this is what will be the major indicator of when we might see holds to the cash rate and even cuts. Now, initially, there were fears this week of an all but guaranteed interest rate rise again in November, but that's on shakier ground now after the data showed trimmed mean inflation– that's the RBA's preferred measure of underlying inflation– remained steady at 3.6% and that was for the third month in a row. Annual inflation was up, though, to 4% in August from 3.5% in July, but it was still slightly lower than economists had been predicting. So what that means is that the chance of a rate hike next month has now dropped to about 20%, according to the latest market data. It's worth pointing out that we were talking after the last interest rate rise about the possibility of some holds going forward. In fact, I saw a number of economists saying that they don't expect there to be any future rate rises, at least in the immediate future, and that we could expect to see things stay on hold for a little while. And that changed pretty quickly. We saw the war in Iran escalate. We saw oil prices continue to go up, and that has driven this decision this week by the RBA. So things can change. We'll be waiting until November next month to find out what happens next. But it's worth noting in terms of what has been the biggest contributors to inflation in the latest data, so from last month, housing and fuel prices. And interestingly, in the previous story, I was just talking to you about how housing prices' national values have fallen for the six month in a row. However, the cost of new dwelling prices rose 5.4%, and that's being driven by builders who are having to pass on increased costs for materials and labour onto their customers. So it is quite a complicated picture when it comes to housing in this country. And we saw fuel prices go up 14.8% in August. So plenty of inflationary pressure still in the market in Australia.