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Pandemics, disasters, defence: Details of the Australia-Tuvalu deal
By Matthew Knott
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has hailed a “groundbreaking” agreement between Australia and Tuvalu under which Australia will commit to help the Pacific nation in the event of emergencies and create a new visa for Tuvaluans to live and work in Australia.
At a press conference with Albanese in the Cook Islands, Tuvalu Prime Minister Kausea Natano described the announcement as “not just a milestone, but a giant leap forward in our joint mission to ensure regional stability, sustainability and prosperity”.
Under the arrangement, Australia will:
- Commit to providing assistance to Tuvalu in response to a major natural disaster, pandemic or military aggression
- Commit to mutually agree any partnership, arrangement or engagement with any other state or entity on security and defence-related matters in Tuvalu
- Establish a dedicated intake – known as a special mobility pathway – to allow Tuvaluans to come to Australia to live, work and study. There will be an initial cap of 280 Tuvaluans eligible per year.
Albanese described the arrangement, known as the Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union, as “the most significant agreement between Australia and a Pacific Island nation ever”.
Woman attacked by shark expected to live
A woman who sustained serious head injuries after a suspected shark attack south of Adelaide is now in a stable condition.
Paramedics were called to Port Noarlunga Jetty at 1.20pm on Friday following reports a woman had been bitten by a shark.
The 32-year-old woman was initially said to have suffered life-threatening head injuries.
The victim was rushed to the Flinders Medical Centre and is in a stable condition, an SA Health spokeswoman said.
Emergency services evacuated people from the water to search for the shark but have since reopened the beach after no trace of the animal could be found.
The suspected attack marks the third shark-related incident in two months in South Australia.
A 55-year-old man surfing at Granites Beach on the state’s west coast on October 31 disappeared and is believed to have been taken by a shark.
The man’s surfboard was all that remained of the attack, witnesses said.
Pamela Cook, 64, was taken to Mount Gambier hospital in a serious condition after a shark bit her leg at Beachport on South Australia’s southeast coast on October 2.
The incidents follow the suspected fatal attack of 46-year-old teacher Simon Baccanello in May who disappeared without a trace while surfing at Walkers Rock Beach, about 365km west of Adelaide.
AAP
$2 million fine over crash that killed four police
The boss of a trucking company involved in the tragic roadside deaths of four Victorian police officers knew about workplace safety breaches, but thought they had been resolved, a court has heard.
Connect Logistics and Corey Matthews pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges brought by the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator, relating to failures to properly monitor driver fatigue and drug and alcohol use.
Senior Constable Kevin King (left), Constable Josh Prestney, Leading Senior Constable Lynette Taylor and Constable Glen Humphris were killed on the Eastern Freeway in 2020.Credit: Victoria Police
Mohinder Singh was high on methamphetamine and lacking sleep when his semi-trailer ploughed into officers who’d stopped a speeding Porsche driven by Richard Pusey on Melbourne’s Eastern Freeway in April 2020.
Singh is serving more than 18 years behind bars for his role in the crash.
On Friday in Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court, Matthews was personally fined $22,500 while the now defunct Connect Logistics was ordered to pay a total of $2,310,000.
Both penalties are less than half of what could have been imposed by the court.
As head of the Sydney-based company, Matthews admitted having failed to exercise due diligence in ensuring the compliance of his drivers.
The scene of the crash on the Eastern Freeway, Kew, in Victoria, which claimed the life of four police officers.Credit: Simon Schluter
NHVR prosecutor Jennifer Single told the court in the months before the crash, one of the companies’ customers, poultry supplier Inghams, had raised concerns about the hours drivers were working, believing them to exceed the legal limit of 12 hours a day.
Four months before the crash, Inghams filed a formal issue relating to Melbourne supervisor and driver Simiona Tuteru, whose time sheets showed on multiple occasions worked between 18 and 20 hours a day.
Matthews was made aware of the issue and sent national executives Cris Large and Shane Chalmers to Victoria to deal with it, the court was told.
Following the intervention Tuteru continued to work longer hours but instead of putting run sheets in his own name, began putting them in the names of other drivers, the court was told.
Lawyer for Connect and Matthews, Trish McDonald, said while Large and Chalmers allegedly knew of the falsified time sheets, Matthews did not and believed the issue had been solved.
“He should have gone back and double-checked that everything was alright,” McDonald told the court.
“He failed to exercise the due diligence to ensure the company complied with its obligations.”
AAP
Pocock criticises ‘expanding’ gas industry while handing out climate visas
By Angus Dalton
Independent senator David Pocock has criticised the government for announcing climate visas for Tuvalu’s citizens, who are threatened by rising sea levels, while attempting to pass legislation he said would facilitate the expansion of the fossil fuel industry.
He referred to Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek’s Sea Dumping Bill, which would allow carbon pollution to be exported, imported and stored in Australian waters in a move critics say would facilitate more oil and gas development.
Independent Senator David Pocock at a press conference yesterday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Here’s what Pocock said just now on the ABC:
At the very same time that the prime minister was announcing [the Tuvalu climate visa agreement], the Labor government was trying to ram through a bill in the Senate that would allow Santos and other companies to continue to expand the gas industry.
For us to say to our Pacific Island neighbours, ‘We’re with you, we’re taking action, we’re going to be good neighbours’, and having the PM over there talking about climate change ... and then here back in Australia, Labor and the Coalition are devising ways to allow the fossil fuel industry to keep expanding. It’s just so, so disappointing.
One of my concerns is that the major parties haven’t been willing to tell the truth and be upfront about what climate inaction means.
There’s still a window to act, to preserve 1.5 to 2 degrees [of warming], but that is quickly closing.
First charges laid using Victoria’s Nazi salute ban
By Angus Dalton
Melbourne white supremacist Jacob Hersant has become the first person charged with breaching new Victorian laws that ban the Nazi salute, after he allegedly performed the gesture outside court last month.
Hersant said “Heil Hitler” outside Melbourne County Court and allegedly raised his arm in an action comparable to the salute after he avoided additional prison time for assaulting bushwalkers in regional Victoria.
Thomas Sewell and Jacob Hersant (right) outside the Melbourne County Court last month.Credit: Con Chronis
Today police charged Hersant with the public display or performance of Nazi symbols or gestures, and confirmed it was the first time the charges had been laid since the new legislation came into force on October 21.
Hersant will face Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on December 8.
Australian citizenship for Pacific nations once rejected as ‘neo-colonialism’
By Matthew Knott and Nick O'Malley
Matthew Knott and Nick O’Malley have more on the prime minister’s announcement of special climate visas for citizens of Tuvalu, designed to help residents threatened by climate change move to Australia.
In September, Tuvalu enshrined a new definition of statehood in its Constitution stating the nation will remain in perpetuity, notwithstanding the impacts of climate change or anything else that results in the loss of its physical territory.
Funafuti atoll on Tuvalu is threatened by global warming induced sea rises.Credit: Alamy Stock Photo
In 2019, Kevin Rudd proposed in an essay that Australia should offer citizenship to residents of the small Pacific nations of Tuvalu, Kiribati and Nauru if climate change rendered their home islands uninhabitable, in exchange for control of their seas, exclusive economic zones, and fisheries.
“Under this arrangement, Australia would also become responsible for the relocation over time of the exposed populations of these countries [totalling less than 75,000 people altogether] to Australia where they would enjoy the full rights of Australian citizens,” Rudd wrote.
The suggestion was rejected by Tuvalu’s then prime minister Enele Sopoaga, who told the ABC that Rudd’s vision amounted to a form of neo-colonialism.
Plane that plunged into the Pacific had lost an engine
By Cloe Read and Cameron Atfield
Two men have survived after they pulled themselves from a plane that lost one of its engines and was forced to ditch in the sea off Queensland’s Sunshine Coast on Friday morning.
Emergency services responded to a distress call about 9am from a twin-engine Cessna 421C that had departed the Sunshine Coast Airport, bound for Pago Pago in American Samoa.
Rescue crews saw the tail of the aircraft bobbing in the water before it sunk.Credit: RACQ LifeFlight
The men, two pilots aged 51 and 59, have described how the plane, with a full tank of fuel, lost one of its engines and was unable to maintain height.
The man at the controls made the distress call to air traffic control, explaining they would attempt to return to the coast but would not be able to make the full flight, and would instead be forced to do a controlled emergency ditching into the ocean.
The plane then slowly descended into the sea, about 30 nautical miles off the Australian coast.
“As it happened, there was an aircraft nearby that was able to circle the aircraft that was ditching and provide us some accurate [co-ordinates] for the exact location of where the aircraft was going to ditch,” Queensland Ambulance Service critical care paramedic Michael O’Brien said.
Staff were watching movies when teenager self-harmed in detention cell
By Jesinta Burton and Holly Thompson
Warning: this report contains the name and image of a deceased Indigenous person, with his family’s permission.
An internal probe into the circumstances surrounding 16-year-old Cleveland Dodd’s death has uncovered serious failures in Western Australia’s notorious Unit 18 youth wing of its maximum-security Casuarina Prison, with revelations staff were watching movies while he took his own life last month.
Cleveland died in hospital on October 19, one week after self-harming in his cell, becoming the first West Australian to die in youth detention.
New Corrective Services Commissioner Brad Royce, Cleveland Dodd, and WA Corrective Services Minister Paul Papalia.Credit: Marta Pascual Juanola/Supplied/Jesinta Burton
Corrective Services Minister Paul Papalia said the “disturbing” report had uncovered serious failures and confirmed the need for serious change.
“Cleveland should be alive today. The fact he is not is, without question, a devastating tragedy. Put simply, we let him down,” Papalia said.
“Swift action has been taken to address some serious failures.”
The revelations come amid conflicting reports about what happened in the moments before Cleveland, 16, was rushed to hospital after self-harming in his cell.
Papalia admitted there had been toilet paper covering the CCTV camera in Cleveland’s cell from 3pm until 1.53am on the night he self-harmed, and was only removed after CPR had commenced in an attempt to save his life.
“Operational procedures were not followed on the night. Record-keeping was poor and not up to standard,” Papalia said.
“Two of the five staff required to wear body worn cameras on the night did not sign out their devices. It appears staff were resting or watching movies at the time Cleveland self-harmed.”
Shark attack leaves woman with serious head injuries
By Angus Dalton
Turning to breaking news out of South Australia, a woman has serious head injuries after a suspected shark attack south of Adelaide.
Paramedics were called to Port Noarlunga on Friday afternoon following reports a woman had been bitten by a shark.
The woman in her 30s suffered life-threatening head injuries from the suspected attack, an SA Ambulance spokeswoman said.
She was rushed to the Flinders Medical Centre by road.
Last week, a 55-year-old man was killed by a shark near Streaky Bay on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula.
with AAP
What they said: Albanese and Tuvalu’s PM on the concept of Falepili
Pandemics, disasters, defence: Details of the Australia-Tuvalu deal
By Matthew Knott
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has hailed a “groundbreaking” agreement between Australia and Tuvalu under which Australia will commit to help the Pacific nation in the event of emergencies and create a new visa for Tuvaluans to live and work in Australia.
At a press conference with Albanese in the Cook Islands, Tuvalu Prime Minister Kausea Natano described the announcement as “not just a milestone, but a giant leap forward in our joint mission to ensure regional stability, sustainability and prosperity”.
Under the arrangement, Australia will:
- Commit to providing assistance to Tuvalu in response to a major natural disaster, pandemic or military aggression
- Commit to mutually agree any partnership, arrangement or engagement with any other state or entity on security and defence-related matters in Tuvalu
- Establish a dedicated intake – known as a special mobility pathway – to allow Tuvaluans to come to Australia to live, work and study. There will be an initial cap of 280 Tuvaluans eligible per year.
Albanese described the arrangement, known as the Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union, as “the most significant agreement between Australia and a Pacific Island nation ever”.
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2023-11-10 06:25:00Z
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