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Wrap-up of key headlines
By Caitlin Fitzsimmons
I’m Caitlin Fitzsimmons and I’m logging off for the evening. Thank you for joining me today.
In news just in, Human Rights Watch has determined that the explosion at Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza on October 17 was most likely caused by a faulty rocket fired by Palestinian militant groups, not an Israeli air strike. This has been one of the most hotly contested events of the Israel-Hamas conflict so far.
For those just catching up, here are the key headlines on the blog this afternoon:
- Michaela Whitbourn has been reporting on the Bruce Lehrmann defamation case against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson, including an admission the former Liberal staffer lied to his former boss and cross-examination about texts he sent to friends about cocaine.
- Tomorrow the High Court will hand down its reasons for the decision that immigration detainees who had served their time for crimes but could not be deported could not be indefinitely detained.
- The new New Zealand government is axing world-leading anti-tobacco reforms.
- Treasurer Jim Chalmers has appointed an outsider to be deputy governor of the Reserve Bank - Andrew Hauser from the Bank of England.
- Mike Pezzullo was sacked as Home Affairs secretary. Minister Clare O’Neil said in question time that the government insisted on integrity within the public service.
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Rio police investigate concert death, as Swift wraps up tour for 2023
By Caitlin Fitzsimmons
Taylor Swift has played her final Eras tour concert for 2023, with a massive event in Sao Paulo on Sunday night Brazil time.
Rio de Janeiro’s police have opened an investigation into the organisers of the Brazilian leg of Swift’s “The Eras Tour” for the death of a 23-year-old fan who fell ill at the show in Rio De Janeiro last week.
The police will investigate whether entertainment firm Time for Fun (T4F) committed the crime of endangering human life or health.
Taylor SwiftCredit: Invision
Fans and concert-goers said they had been banned from entering the venue with bottles of water despite the extreme heat in the city which hit 59.3 degrees Celsius on the day of the event.
Ana Clara Benevides fell ill last Friday, on the first night of Swift’s Rio tour in Rio, and later died in hospital. The extreme weather led the US pop star to postpone her concert the following day, just two hours before she was to go on stage.
“The organisers of the event will be called to give evidence and further investigations are under way to ascertain the facts,” Rio’s civil police said in a statement.
Police have also launched a separate investigation into the cause of Benevides’ death, which has not yet been concluded.
T4F said the company and its representatives were cooperating with the authorities and available for any clarifications.
The firm’s CEO Serafim Abreu acknowledged on Thursday that the concert organisers could have taken “alternative actions” to help fans cope with the extreme heat.
Swift is due to tour Australia in February. Frontier Touring and Ticketek declined to reveal how many tickets were resold by fans on Ticketek Marketplace since that facility opened on Friday.
With Reuters
Expansion of MP numbers on the cards
The federal parliament should be significantly expanded by up to 49 extra MPs to ensure the electoral system delivers “one vote, one value” for every Australian, according to a new committee report on electoral reform.
And Australia’s two mainland territories should each have twice the number of senators in federal parliament, under changes proposed in the joint standing committee on electoral matters’ report into the 2022 election.
A committee has recommended increasing the number of MPs and senators.Credit: Rhett Wyman
It also backs slashing to $1000 the threshold at which political donations are made public, up from the current level of $16,300. Donation details would be made in real time rather than more than a year after an election.
Shifting to 200 MPs would restore the principle of one vote, one value and ensure that every Australian is represented, on a per capita basis, by an equal number of MPs in the House of Representatives, but it would also represent the most significant redrawing of the electoral map since 1984, when Bob Hawke expanded the House from 125 to 148 seats.
Any change to the size of the House would not occur until after the next election and would be subject to a separate inquiry.
James Massola and Shane Wright have the details.
Strange senate bedfellows team up against government on gas deal
By Mike Foley
An unlikely alliance between One Nation, the Greens and lone Nationals Senator Matt Canavan were narrowly defeated in their bid to block a deal between the government and the gas industry.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen has struck deals with gas exporters Senex and Australia Pacific LNG to supply 300 petajoules into the domestic market over the next six years.
Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, in question time earlier today.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The extra gas will help plug potential shortfalls and put downward pressure on prices. It will be supplied by Senex and Australia Pacific LNG and in return, the government will exempt these companies from a $12 a gigajoule cap it has imposed on domestic prices.
The Greens today moved a disallowance motion in the Senate that would have stopped the government from cementing the deals.
Nationals and Liberal senators abstained from voting on the motion despite industry groups, including the Energy Users Association that represents some of Australia’s largest manufacturers, urging them to back the government’s deal.
The Greens disallowance motion was narrowly defeated 21 to 16.
Joining the Greens in support for the disallowance were One Nation Senators Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts, independent senators Lidia Thorpe and David Pocock, the United Australia Party’s Ralph Babet and Queensland Nationals Matt Canavan.
New Zealand to scrap world-leading smoking restrictions
By Caitlin Fitzsimmons
In case you missed it, the newly elected New Zealand coalition government is reportedly scrapping world-leading tobacco controls that would have banned smoking for the next generation.
If the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Act 2022 is repealed as planned, it will mean the end to laws that would ensure nicotine is removed from cigarettes, the number of tobacco retailers is reduced, and legally smoking is progressively phased out for younger Kiwis.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.Credit: Getty Images
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon did not campaign on the issue but struck the deal as part of the coalition between his National Party and two other parties, New Zealand First and ACT.
Luxon is reported in Stuff.co.nz as saying that tobacco sales being concentrated to fewer retailers would “drive to higher levels of crime and ramraids”.
“Equally, you know, the opportunity for a black market to emerge, will be largely untaxed, and then some of the age generation stuff was actually quite difficult... how do you determine-a 36-year-old can smoke and a 35-year-old can’t?”
Finance Minister Nicola Willis is reported in The Guardian, saying the measures would be axed before March 2024, with the revenue from cigarette sales going to tax cuts.
Former health minister Dr Ayesha Verrall took to X, formerly Twitter, today to criticise the decision.
Lehrmann grilled over texts to friends about cocaine
By Michaela Whitbourn
To the Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial, Michaela Whitbourn has the latest.
The former federal Liberal political staffer has told a court he was “spiralling” when he texted friends he needed cocaine after his former colleague Brittany Higgins accused a then-unnamed man of raping her in Parliament House.
Text messages in evidence in Lehrmann’s Federal Court defamation case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson reveal he wrote “need bags”, “you got any gear” and “let’s get lit” to friends after Ten aired Wilkinson’s interview with Higgins on The Project on February 15, 2021.
Former federal Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann outside the Federal Court in Sydney on Monday.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
“Was that because you’d decided to spend some time that night with some friends and that substance?” Ten’s barrister, Dr Matt Collins, KC, asked in the Federal Court in Sydney today.
“Yes, Dr Collins, I spiralled pretty quickly,” Lehrmann said.
Justice Michael Lee asked: “You what, sorry?”
Lehrmann replied: “Spiralled pretty quickly.”
Collins asked Lehrmann if his “reaction to spiralling was to ask for cocaine to be ... brought to you?”
“I was in a bad place, yes,” Lehrmann replied.
Asked if a text message in which he said “happy days” was a reference to cocaine being available, Lehrmann said: “I don’t know if it was or not. Probably.”
The case is ongoing. Read the full story.
High Court to hand down reasons for detention decision tomorrow
By Angus Thompson
The High Court will hand down its reasons tomorrow for its landmark decision overturning the government’s ability to indefinitely hold people in immigration detention.
The court tweeted it would publish its reasons at 2.15pm on Tuesday, which could pave the way for more legislation - including the prospect of preventative detention - after Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil foreshadowed its long-term response would be framed by the reasons.
“When we receive reasons for decision, we will be able to establish durable approaches to what is a very different way that the Commonwealth will have to manage people who we believe are a risk, but we cannot do that properly until the High Court gives us their reasons and that will come, I hope, shortly,” O’Neil said on Monday.
It follows two rounds of legislation designed to place tough new restrictions on former detainees, some with violent criminal histories, introduced over the past fortnight, including mandatory ankle bracelets and curfews.
So far 138 people have been released, however more could be freed, depending on what the court’s reasons are.
Watch: Leaked video shows confrontation in immigration detention
By Charlotte Grieve
To Victoria, where leaked video footage from Melbourne’s immigration detention centre in Broadmeadows shows a tense confrontation between guards and detainees.
Among swearing and pushing, detainees can be heard shouting “leave him alone” and calling the guard response “not necessary”.
One detainee can be heard shouting “excessive use of force” through the chants, shouting and shoving, in the video filmed last week, according to two sources.
According to two detainees, speaking anonymously due to fear of retribution, the confrontation followed an incident between a guard and detainee that left the detainee with a broken rib and bloodied face.
“The [Emergency Response Team] came into the room and there was a struggle, they fractured my rib number five on the right-hand side. I was taken to hospital by ambulance,” said one detainee.
The detainee said this was not the first time force had been used on him during the 11 years he has spent in immigration detention, describing injuries from handcuffs and violence from guards.
“They [Serco guards] abuse their position,” the detainee said. “I’m a welder by trade. They’ve ruined my career.”
Serco has declined to comment on individual cases but said the “safety and wellbeing of all detainees in our care is of paramount importance” to the company.
It follows revelations by this masthead about widespread violence, drug-taking and poor medical care within the facilities.
A confidential report prepared by the Australian Human Rights Commission found another detainee shouted “I can’t breathe” after six officers pinned him to the ground.
The preliminary finding was that the detainees rights had been breached, and he was not “resisting”, as claimed by the guards.
The word of the year for 2023 is ‘authentic’
In lighter news, the Merriam-Webster word of the year for 2023 is “authentic.”
The dictionary staff chase the data on lookup spikes and world events that correlate. This time around, there was no particularly huge boost at any given time but a constancy to the increased interest in “authentic.”
The rise of generative AI has occurred alongside increased interest in the word “authentic”.Credit: Reuters
This was the year of artificial intelligence, but also a moment when ChatGPT-maker OpenAI suffered a leadership crisis. Taylor Swift and Prince Harry chased after authenticity in their words and deeds. And Elon Musk, at February’s World Government Summit in Dubai, urged the heads of companies, politicians, ministers and other leaders to “speak authentically” on social media by running their own accounts.
Editor-at-large Peter Sokolowski said: “Can we trust whether a student wrote this paper? Can we trust whether a politician made this statement? We don’t always trust what we see anymore. We sometimes don’t believe our own eyes or our own ears. We are now recognising that authenticity is a performance itself.”
This year marks Merriam-Webster’s 20th anniversary choosing a top word. The winner in 2022 was “gaslighting.”
AP
Schoolyard bullying among rising Islamophobia reports
To NSW, where Premier Chris Minns said he was concerned about overt acts of racism after a Palestinian child in Sydney was called a terrorist.
The slur against the year six student comes on the back of the Islamophobia Register Australia reporting a flood of activity since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7.
“We have a successful multicultural, multi-faith community in this state that’s come about because of generations of understanding, working across faiths and a general recognition we live in the best country in the world,” Minns told reporters on Monday, before going home sick with COVID.
Premier Chris Minns said he was concerned about community cohesion and overt racism.Credit: Louise Kennerley
“So if there are overt acts of racism in our community, that’s a massive concern for me.”
While the school incident involved a Christian boy, the Islamophobia Register considered it an example of Islamophobia due to a likely perception that the boy was Muslim in the perpetrator’s mind.
The register’s executive director Sharara Attai said a similar thing happened after the September 11 attacks in 2001 when Sikhs were targeted alongside the Muslim community.
The case was in addition to the 227 cases reported to the register in the seven weeks since October 7, a 13-fold increase in reporting rates.
Recent cases in the register include the harassment of worshippers at mosques, Muslim women being spat at and verbal abuse.
AAP
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2023-11-27 07:43:36Z
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