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Grieving families identify child, teacher victims of Uvalde massacre
By Amelia McGuire and Tyler Clifford
Screams could be heard throughout the night from the Willie de Leon civic centre in Uvalde, Texas, as distraught families were told the awful news of the mounting death toll at Robb Elementary school.
At midnight Tuesday (Wednesday AEST), the toll stood at 19 children shot dead, two adults at the school slain, the 18-year-old shooter Salvador Ramos killed and his own grandmother in critical condition after he fired at her too.
Victims: Uziyah Garcia, Xavier Lopez, fourth-grade teacher Eva Mireles, and Amerie Jo Garza.
By nightfall, names of those killed during the attack at Robb Elementary School in the town of Uvalde had begun to emerge.
Two 10-year-olds, an 8-year-old and one teacher have been identified as victims of the massacre, with more names to come as the grieving post their tributes.
One man at the civic centre walked away sobbing into his phone “she is gone”.
Behind the building, a woman stood by herself, alternately crying and yelling into her phone, shaking her fist and stamping her feet.
Texan grandfather Manny Renfro said he got word in the hours after the shooting that his grandson, 8-year-old Uziyah Garcia, was among those killed.
“The sweetest little boy that I’ve ever known,” Renfro said. “I’m not just saying that because he was my grandkid.”
Read more here.
Solomon Islands’ media will boycott Chinese foreign minister’s trip
By Nigel Gladstone
The Chinese foreign minister’s restrictions on the local Solomon Islands media, who were set to cover Wang Yi’s visit tomorrow, have caused them to boycott the trip.
A program setting out the schedule for the minister’s press conference says there will be no questions taken from the local press.
That caused Georgina Kekea, president of the Media Association of Solomon Islands, to boycott coverage of the state visit.
Victorian government moves to fine or jail native-forest-logging protesters
By Bianca Hall
The Victorian government has moved to slap people protesting native forest logging with $21,000 fines or 12 months in jail.
Activists accused the government of seeking to criminalise peaceful protest in the lead-up to the November state election, while Agriculture Minister Mary-Anne Thomas said protesters were putting the lives of forestry workers at risk.
Activists Owen Hanson (left) and Chris Schuringa in a logged coupe near Congerah in 2020.Credit:Justin McManus
“We respect the right to protest safely but want to make sure workers go home to their families each day,” she said.
“Every Victorian has the right to be safe at work. Protests are becoming increasingly dangerous, particularly for workers, which is why this legislation will support them to get on with their job and minimise disruption to the industry.”
Read more here.
McGowan blasts Andrews government’s Commonwealth Games bid
By Hamish Hastie
After an extraordinary spray on Monday labelling Peter Dutton a conservative “extremist”, Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan has turned his ire to the Victorian Labor government over its $2.6 billion bid to host the 2026 Commonwealth Games.
McGowan lashed poor management of state budgets, including by his fellow Labor premier, Daniel Andrews, after being asked whether he thought the Albanese government would cave to pressure from other states to reverse changes to the GST formula enacted by the Coalition government in 2018.
“States need to manage their budgets,” he said. “I know Victoria, they’re fellow travellers and the like, but they just went and spent $2.6 billion on getting the Commonwealth Games to put it in Bendigo.
“I mean, if they want to spend that amount of money on the Commonwealth Games in Bendigo, and then complain about not having enough money, well, maybe they should make different decisions.”
City of Perth Mayor Basil Zempilas had urged for a Perth bid for the 2026 Commonwealth Games, but it was rejected by the McGowan government.
Perth Mayor Basil Zempilas was keen to host the 2026 Commonwealth Games.Credit:Peter de Kruijff
“We decided not to go for the Commonwealth Games because I didn’t want to, in an uncertain world, go and spend $2.5 billion dollars on something that is a nice [thing] to have,” he said.
“What we want to do is fund our hospitals properly, deal with important health issues, pay down debt, [and] diversify the economy.”
Mark McGowan said on Monday that potential new Liberal leader Peter Dutton was too conservative for modern Australia.Credit:Hamish Hastie
Earlier this month, the WA budget revealed the state had an operating surplus of $5.7 billion for 2021-22, mostly thanks to strong iron ore prices.
The GST formula change was struck by the Coalition government in 2018 after WA’s budget bottom line was hammered by years of depressed iron ore prices.
The reversal in fortunes, coupled with billions more than expected in GST cash, has prompted discontent from other states.
This included NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, who famously described McGowan as “the Gollum of Australian politics”.
McGowan has freely criticised the NSW government’s handling of its budget, but today’s comments were his harshest indictment yet of the Victorian Labor government, whose net debt is expected to be $101.9 billion by the end of this financial year.
Thousands of excess deaths in Omicron wave as dementia, strokes, heart disease kills more people
By Dana Daniel
Australia recorded thousands of excess deaths in the first two months of 2022, which included people who died from conditions other than COVID-19.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday published a report showing that there were 4732 more deaths than expected in January and February, as the Omicron wave swept the nation.
There were 25,084 total deaths from all causes during the period, a mortality rate 23 per cent higher than expected – a bigger spike than predicted by the Actuaries Institute earlier this year.
The ABS, which uses doctor-certified deaths for its analysis, last month reported that 2491 deaths were attributed to COVID-19 in January and February.
In its latest release, the bureau said people with health conditions correlated with a higher chance of dying from COVID-19 also died in higher-than-expected numbers during that period, even if they were not positive at the time of death.
Deaths due to dementia were 24 per cent higher than expected with 493 extra deaths; diabetes was 14 per cent higher with 99 extra deaths; coronary heart disease was 29 per cent higher with 474 extra deaths; and cerebrovascular diseases such as strokes were 20 per cent higher with 226 extra deaths.
There were also 164 people who died from these diseases who were COVID-19 positive at death, but the infection was not the cause of death.
Excess mortality measures can account for deaths due to COVID-19, potentially misclassified or undiagnosed COVID-19 deaths, and other mortality that may be indirectly related to the pandemic, the ABS said.
Examples of indirect pandemic contributors to mortality include social isolation or changed access to health care.
The spike in excess mortality for January and February contrasts with Australia’s experience earlier in the pandemic.
Deaths from all causes were slightly (2 per cent) lower than expected in 2020 and only marginally (3 per cent) higher in 2021, when lockdowns prevented transmission of both COVID-19 and other viruses such as influenza.
The ABS approach of using only deaths certified by a doctor means the analysis takes in 87-89 per cent of deaths across the country.
The expected number of deaths in 2022 was projected using 2016 as the beginning of the baseline period.
Excess mortality is typically defined as the difference between the observed number of deaths in a specified time period and the expected number of deaths in that same time period.
Labor to rein in outsourcing in public service
By Angus Thompson
Outsourcing jobs in the public sector will be reined in under the new government as it searches for budget savings.
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said she would focus on labour-hire arrangements in the public service when addressing spending cuts under inherited government debt. She said there was no “baseline data” on the extent of the use of consultants and contractors by the government.
Katy Gallagher wants to reduce contractors in the public sector.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
“I’ve indicated that I think labour-hire is a sensible place to focus on because they are in those areas where there is high use of labour-hire in permanent jobs, [and] where they are more expensive than permanent jobs, we can start looking at that rebalancing work there,” Gallagher said.
Labor campaigned on a promise that it would become a model employer by only using non-permanent employees where essential, “and not as a way of simply minimising its permanent workforce numbers”.
“The federal government employs nearly a quarter of a million people and can play a significant role in raising the standards around employment but, over the last eight years under the Liberals and Nationals, has itself been a perpetrator when it comes to insecure work,” the Labor campaign website says.
Chinese-Australian voters punished Coalition for hostile rhetoric
By Matthew Knott and Paul Sakkal
The Liberal Party suffered a massive backlash in suburbs with large numbers of Chinese-Australian voters at the federal election, a sign the Coalition paid a high price for its occasionally bellicose rhetoric and the deterioration in Australia’s relationship with China.
A swing away from the Liberal Party by Chinese-Australian voters played an important role in the outcome in marginal seats such as Bennelong, Reid, Parramatta and Chisholm, a booth-by-booth analysis of the election results shows.
Felix Lo, president of the Australian Asian Association of Bennelong, said frustration over Chinese-Australian relations played an important role in the outcome in Bennelong.Credit:Steven Siewert
The swing against Liberals in Sydney and Melbourne suburbs with sizable Chinese-Australian communities was up to three times larger than the statewide average.
The party also recorded big losses among Chinese-Australian voters in seats it narrowly retained, such as Banks in Sydney and Menzies in Melbourne.
Read more here.
Biloela community debunks QLD stereotype: Chalmers
By Zach Hope
Jim Chalmers says he has already made “substantial progress” in fulfilling Labor’s election pledge to allow a Sri Lankan asylum seeker family return to their adopted hometown of Biloela in central Queensland.
The Queensland-based treasurer, who is acting as home affairs minister before the full ministry is sworn in, said he would speak to Anthony Albanese once the new prime minister returned from Tokyo.
The town of Biloela and the Murugappan family.Credit:Paul Harris
“Obviously, there are a series of steps that I would need to appropriately take in order to give effect to our long-held view that the family get home to Biloela to the warm embrace of one of the most wonderful Queensland towns,” Chalmers said, adding he expected to make an announcement “very, very soon”.
The Murugappan family is currently in community detention in Perth following stints of harder confinement on Christmas Island and the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation centre.
Nades, Priya and their Australian-born daughters, Tharnicaa and Kopika, were taken from their home in Biloela by Border Force agents in March 2018 and have since been living in fear of deportation to Sri Lanka, where they say they face persecution.
The outgoing Coalition government tried to deport the family in 2019 but was blocked by a dramatic last-minute court injunction. Labor has promised to allow the family to go home to Queensland.
“If you will forgive me a moment of parochialism as a Queenslander born and bred, I am so sick and tired of Queensland being caricatured in a certain way when it comes to some of these issues,” Chalmers said.
“It warms the heart to see the way that the town of Biloela has gotten around this beautiful family and campaigned long and hard for this family to be returned … where they are making such a terrific contribution to the local community.”
Foreign Minister Penny Wong to fly to Fiji tomorrow
By Nigel Gladstone
Australia’s new foreign minister, Penny Wong, will make her first stand-alone trip tomorrow to Fiji in hopes of deepening the government’s relationships with Pacific nations.
Senator Wong is expected to meet Fiji’s prime minister and foreign minister.
The trip comes less than 24 hours after returning from the Quad leaders’ summit in Tokyo, and Wong is planning to travel widely across the region leading up to the Pacific Islands Forum in July.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is also touring the Pacific and is expected to meet Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare in Honiara tomorrow.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has signalled the new Labor government will be increasing its official visits to South Pacific nations to counter China’s influence in the region.
Watch: Dominic Perrottet’s state of the region address
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2022-05-25 06:42:59Z
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