The latest out of Nepal's flash floods + How to stop your TV spying on you

**Chris Spyrou** (0:08)
Hey, Chris Spyrou with you. Happy Friday and welcome to The Briefing. Ever wondered why you can nab a new tele for a couple hundred dollars now and not a couple thousand? Part of it's thanks to clever manufacturing, but the other part, well, your smart TV is watching you, taking screenshots every second and selling it off to the highest bidder.

**Ramon Lobato** (0:27)
It's not really like anything we've ever experienced with TVs before. People need to be able to make an informed decision about whether they're comfortable with that, and they need to be able to opt out easily when they're setting up the TV.

**Chris Spyrou** (0:38)
That deep dive into the tech hiding in plain sight and how you can disable it is coming up in the second half of this episode. First though, let's get into the headlines with Sacha Barbour Gatt on Friday the 28th of August.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (0:52)
Thanks, Chris. We start today in Nepal, where authorities have this morning confirmed the death toll from a devastating flash flood has risen to 392 people. 35 Australians remain missing following the disaster, which has decimated communities along the border with Tibet, wiping out roads, bridges, communications and entire villages. A couple from Western Sydney are the first of the missing Australians who have been identified. Venkatraman Balakrishnan and his wife Chitra Venkatraman were among 15 Aussies travelling to Mount Kailash in Tibet on a spiritual trip, according to their son.

**Chris Spyrou** (1:27)
Two boys aged 11 and 14 also from Australia were on the same tour. Foreign Minister Penny Wong had this to say to the loved ones of people missing.

**Penny Wong** (1:36)
I would say to you at this stage, access and information are very limited, given the scale of disaster.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (1:42)
We will do our best to ascertain whatever information we can.

**Chris Spyrou** (1:46)
Now, close to 1,400 people are missing, and this all comes as authorities in Nepal and China grow increasingly concerned about the possibility of a second round of flooding. And that's due to barrier lakes that have formed high up in the Himalayas as a result of the disaster. The worry is that they will continue to fill with water and then overflow, sending another torrent of water and debris down the river towards the already decimated region.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (2:13)
Back home, and Anthony Albanese has stepped in to guarantee Australia's refugee intake will not go backwards, just hours after one of his own ministers suggested it would be cut by almost a third. It started yesterday morning when a spokesperson for Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke confirmed reports Labor wanted to strip the humanitarian program back to just 13,750 places a year. That's a cut of more than 6,000, not seen since the coalition was in government. Now that sparked a backbench revolt on an issue party members call sacred and a tradeoff for years of swallowing hardline border policies.

**Chris Spyrou** (2:51)
The Prime Minister then came out with a statement to say the intake would stay right where it was and that's at 20,000. Earlier in the day when asked about possible changes at a summit in Dubbo, he said the reports around the cut shouldn't be believed and that his government's migration rethink is all about post-pandemic fluctuations, not the rise of Pauline Hanson's party.

**Penny Wong** (3:12)
There is a current spike in the support for One Nation. We started lowering the numbers well before that occurred.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (3:21)
Now, speaking of One Nation, the party could be about to make history in Western Australia in an upcoming by-election. Now, this Saturday, voters in the outer Perth seat of Secret Harbour will have a vote after long-serving Labor MP and Senior Government Minister Paul Pappalia retired mid-term. Now, this is a safe Labor seat, and while One Nation polled just over 8% in last year's state election in WA, one exit poll on the first day of early voting in this by-election at Secret Harbour had half of voters putting Hanson's party first. So, they could be on track to win this by-election at Secret Harbour, which would mean they'd pick up their first ever lower house seat in the state.

**Chris Spyrou** (4:02)
Yeah, it's interesting because Andrew Hastie, the federal member for Canning, his seat, he's a Liberal Minister, his seat covers Secret Harbour, and One Nation has been very clear that they want Andrew Hastie's seat come the federal election. So, he's been talking a lot about this seat and how, you know, he's been pretty critical of the Liberal Party because the Liberal Party is saying, well, so long as it's not Labour that wins this seat again, we're happy. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.