Queensland to cut all public transport trips to 50c in six-month trial
The Queensland premier, Steven Miles, has announced a six-month trial of charging just 50c for all public transport trips in the state, regardless of trip length, in an ambitious move aimed at getting more commuters out of cars and delivering cost-of-living relief ahead of the October state election.
On Sunday, Miles said the initiative has been something he had wanted to do for a long time before becoming premier.
Miles said:
These days you can’t get much for 50c, but soon you’ll be able to go anywhere on our public transport network. This is all about getting cars off the road, easing congestion, making it easier to get around the south-east as well as our provincial cities and addressing cost of living.
For people who already catch public transport, this could save them thousands. But for people who don’t and decide to catch public transport, it could save them even more. Think of all of those savings on petrol, on car parking, on time stuck in the car, when you could instead be reading a book or listening to a podcast. Public transport usage has never returned to its pre-Covid levels. And that’s one of the things contributing to congestion, particularly in the south-east.
Key events
Natasha May
The health minister, Mark Butler, is representing Australia at the 77th World Health Assembly in Geneva today where landmark reforms to improve global health cooperation are being proposed.
Butler, along with health ministers and officials from the 194 member states of the World Health Organization (WHO), will consider a proposed international agreement on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, and amendments to the International Health Regulations.
Both measures aim to ensure the global community, including Australia, acts on the lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic and is better equipped to co-operate on future health emergencies.
While in Geneva, Butler will also “compare notes and share advice” with his ministerial counterparts and health experts on domestic health issues including digital health, primary care reforms, youth mental health, nicotine dependency, and rheumatic heart disease.
Butler said:
Global cooperation on health issues means the Australian Government is better equipped to protect the health and wellbeing of the Australian community.
We know certain health threats are more likely to arise overseas and global cooperation helps Australia monitor and respond to these challenges.
Our domestic health challenges are shared by many of our partners around the world. Representing and advancing Australia’s interests at the World Health Assembly will be an important opportunity to compare notes and share advice.
Daniel Hurst
Chris Bowen: ‘Rafah should not be attacked’
Further to our last blog post on the international court of justice’s latest interim ruling, cabinet minister Chris Bowen gave the Australian government’s initial response on Saturday.
At a press conference, Bowen described the southern Gaza city of Rafah as “the closest thing we have to a haven for people escaping within Gaza” and said the Australian government had been “very consistent that Rafah should not be attacked”.
He said the government had been “very consistent that the rulings, the binding rulings of the ICJ should be abided by all parties, including Israel”.
Asked whether it would undermine the ICJ if Israel did not abide by the ruling, Bowen said:
Unquestionably, if the ruling is ignored, then that undermines the rule of law.
An Israeli government statement said Israel “has not and will not conduct military actions in the Rafah area which may inflict on the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in party”.
Daniel Hurst
Executive Council of Australian Jewry criticises ICJ ruling
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) has criticised the international court of justice’s latest ruling, which cast doubt on whether Israel’s evacuation plans were “sufficient to alleviate the immense risk to which the Palestinian population is exposed as a result of the military offensive in Rafah”.
On Friday night, the ICJ ordered Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive and any other action in the Rafah governorate which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that would bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.
The ECAJ co-chief executive, Peter Wertheim, said in a statement today:
For the Israeli hostages being held incommunicado in Gaza under the most horrific conditions, the ICJ’s ruling is tantamount to a death sentence, or at the very least an indefinite prolongation of their agony.
Wertheim said Israel had “taken more precautions than any other country fighting a war in an urban setting to avoid harm to civilians”, and added:
No democratic country faced with similar circumstances would disempower itself in the face of terrorists, or should call on Israel to do so.
On Saturday the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network welcomed the ruling and said Israel should stop “operating with blatant impunity”.
The group’s president, Nasser Mashni, called on the Australian government to “stop hiding behind diplomatic niceties and preaching about human rights, and instead take meaningful action” to pressure Israel to comply with the orders.
Cait Kelly
Funerals are pushing grieving families into debt amid the cost-of-living crisis.
Australians have been turning to DIY funerals, crowdsourcing and buy now, pay later loans – with more people getting into debt.
Read more:
Aston Brown
Study hubs attracting uni students in regional Australia
Online university students across regional Australia are turning to study hubs.
From Broken Hill to Cooktown to Port Hedland, the 35 centres support people who may not otherwise be able to pursue higher education, and give people studying online access to study spaces, high-speed internet, computers and pastoral advice.
“Whether or not you are studying the same subjects at the same university, it somewhat doesn’t matter – you get this sense of camaraderie, you get a cohort,” said Prof Verity Firth, the vice-president of societal impact, equity and engagement at the University of New South Wales.
Read more here:
Queensland’s 50c public transport ‘virtually free’, premier says
The 50c trip trial will come into effect on 5 August and apply to all Translink public transport services around the state, with the government claiming some regular commuters will stand to save thousands a year.
The government arrived at the 50c figure because it was “virtually free” but would still require users tapping on, which was required to collect data on the trial to determine if it was successful and should be continued, the premier, Steven Miles, said.
Miles noted that public transport usage remains about 13% below pre-Covid levels and hopes the trial will help restore patronage. He also said it would have a deflationary effect, claiming it would help to lower transport CPI and inflation in Queensland during the second half of the year.
Miles gave the example of someone catching the train to work in Brisbane from Mango Hill, where he made the announcement on Sunday. He said it costs up to $96 a week currently, but from August, “that same trip from Mango Hill to the city and back would only cost $5 for the whole week – that’s nearly $90 back in your pocket every week”.
“And if you drive to work, you’re stuck in peak-hour traffic every day and paying a lot more than that,” Miles said.
The transport minister, Bart Mellish, said that for someone in his portfolio “this is like winning state of origin, winning a grand final and winning a grand slam all in the same day”.
“This will save real people real money every single day,” Mellish said.
Queensland to cut all public transport trips to 50c in six-month trial
The Queensland premier, Steven Miles, has announced a six-month trial of charging just 50c for all public transport trips in the state, regardless of trip length, in an ambitious move aimed at getting more commuters out of cars and delivering cost-of-living relief ahead of the October state election.
On Sunday, Miles said the initiative has been something he had wanted to do for a long time before becoming premier.
Miles said:
These days you can’t get much for 50c, but soon you’ll be able to go anywhere on our public transport network. This is all about getting cars off the road, easing congestion, making it easier to get around the south-east as well as our provincial cities and addressing cost of living.
For people who already catch public transport, this could save them thousands. But for people who don’t and decide to catch public transport, it could save them even more. Think of all of those savings on petrol, on car parking, on time stuck in the car, when you could instead be reading a book or listening to a podcast. Public transport usage has never returned to its pre-Covid levels. And that’s one of the things contributing to congestion, particularly in the south-east.
Exports worth $1.8bn fly out of Melbourne airport in three months
Ever wondered what exactly goes in the belly of a passenger plane, or on cargo-specific aircraft?
In addition to passengers’ luggage, cargo holds carry freight, and it’s often perishable or more expensive goods that justify the higher cost of sending by air instead of sea.
The Melbourne airport has announced that the value of freight exported from its runways has surpassed pre-pandemic levels, with more than $1.8bn worth of locally made produce flown out of the airport to foreign markets.
In the first three months of 2024, 44,700 tonnes of local cargo were exported from the airport, which represents 40.2% of Australia’s total air freight export volume.
Fresh meat was the most exported product by volume, with 15,649 tonnes delivered to foreign tables. Meanwhile, the most valuable export was pharmaceutical products, with more than $258.4m worth of locally made goods sent overseas, the airport said.
Melbourne airport’s chief of aviation, Jim Parashos, said the cargo data highlighted the benefits that extra flight capacity brings to local jobs even outside the airport, which is Australia’s largest without a curfew limiting its operations. He said that the average daily international flight is worth $154m to the state economy.
To this end, Parashos has raised the airport’s plans for a third runway, which it has submitted to the federal government for approval in February last year. Some residents neighbouring the airport had raised concerns about the noise effects of the proposed runway. The government’s response to the plan is overdue, with the airport and industry eagerly awaiting approval.
You can read my colleague Adeshola Ore’s story about Melbourne airport’s plans for a third runway here:
Bandt condemns antisemitic graffiti on school, calls for end to Gaza invasion
Adam Bandt was also asked about the threatening graffiti discovered at Mount Scopus Jewish day school in Melbourne on Saturday, where the words “Jew die” were painted on the school’s front fence.
Bandt, appearing on Insiders, said:
I condemn those words. There’s of course no place for that and we’ve said from the very beginning, from the first moment this got debated in parliament, no to antisemitism, no to Islamophobia, no to the invasion.
I think what you are seeing across the country is a very strong push for peace. People are fighting not only against antisemitism, but fighting to end the invasion of Gaza as well.
Adam Bandt refuses to be drawn on two-state solution
The federal Greens leader, Adam Bandt, has dodged questions about whether his party supports a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Bandt, appearing on ABC’s Insiders, was asked if he supported a two-state solution and said “our view is that Israelis and Palestinians are both equally entitled to live in peace and security and exercise their rights to self-determination in accordance with international law”.
Pushed on the question of a two-state solution, Bandt said:
It’s up to Palestinians and Israelis to equally enjoy those rights. And if that’s what they choose to self-determine, then that’s what they choose to self-determine. Our point is that the international community can no longer pretend that the slaughter and the invasion is not happening.
Asked if he supports the idea of a Jewish homeland state, Bandt said:
Well, support for Israelis as well as Palestinians, as I’ve said, both having their rights to self-determination under international law. Now, at the moment, what is happening at the moment is that we are seeing over 34,000 people killed. A region brought to the brink of starvation and this is a manmade famine.
Bandt won’t say if Greens support cut to immigration
Bandt has refused to state whether the Greens supports a cut in immigration levels.
The party’s leader, appearing on ABC’s Insiders, repeatedly refused to directly answer questions from host David Speers whether the Greens support Labor’s planned cut to net overseas migration of about 250,000 arrivals next financial year.
I’m not going to give you a yes or no and I’ll tell you why. When a renter turns up to an auction, their opposition is not someone who has come here from another country seeking a better life. It’s a wealthy property investor with a big fat cheque in their pocket from Anthony Albanese that they use to push up the price of housing to a point where renters and first home buyers.
He later added:
I’m not going to engage in this race to the bottom that Labor and Liberals are engaging in. I believe that in this country of ours, working together – I’m proud of our multiculturalism. And that working together, we can build enough homes for everyone to have an affordable place to live.
Greens call for government stake in Labor’s Future Made industries
Adam Bandt has called for an element of government ownership in the industries that flourish out of Labor’s proposed Future Made in Australia policy.
Bandt said that the Greens would need to see the legislation before determining if they would support the policy, but said the potential for green hydrogen and critical minerals industries provided job opportunities for miners who lose their jobs from the energy transition.
Bandt said:
What is actually being proposed? Are they going to create the same kind of problems for critical minerals that they’ve created for gas where Australia is awash with the stuff, but it’s all going overseas and there’s not enough left for us to make the transition?
Is the public going to get a good return on any investments that are made? Does the public get an ownership stake in the corporations that we’re going to be putting the money into.
Government and public ownership of these critical industries in the future is going to be very important to avoid making the same mistakes that Labor has made with gas where they allow the big corporations to do whatever they like and all of a sudden, it creates a series of problems.
Bandt criticises NSW decision to extend Eraring coal power station
The federal Greens leader, Adam Bandt, has echoed criticism from environmental groups of the New South Wales government’s decision to extend the life of Australia’s biggest coal-fired power station, the 2.88GW Eraring plant, for at least two more years to ensure supply of energy.
Bandt, appearing on the ABC’s Insiders, said
This isn’t about Labor keeping the lights on. This is about Labor making the floods and fires worse. Coal and gas are the main causes of the climate crisis. And this is what happens when a government talks a big game on renewables, but then spends their time expanding coal and gas.
He called for the Albanese government to do more to help Australians install solar panels and batteries at their homes as something that would alleviate pressure, and was also critical of rules for gas exports.
Bandt said Australia was “awash with gas”, but that “the problem is that we send about four times as much or use about four times as much in the overseas processing and sending as we do using it domestically. We’re sending the gas offshore and the profit as well is tax free”.
Daniel Hurst
ICC an independent court, Rowland says
Michelle Rowland was also asked during her Sky News interview about the international criminal court.
The Coalition has suggested that Australia should consider withdrawing from the ICC if it ends up approving the prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and defence minister (in addition to the application for warrants for three Hamas leaders). A pre-trial chamber has yet to decide whether to approve the prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants in whole or in part or reject them.
Rowland emphasised the ICC’s independence:
The key issue is that they make their decisions, they do that independently, and we’re not here to give running hypotheticals on what may or may not happen. If [the opposition leader] Peter Dutton wants to take forward a policy to the next election to pull out of the ICC, he should take it forward.
For more on this issue, see this recent explainer:
Michelle Rowland says Labor hate speech laws ‘should be above politics’
Daniel Hurst
The federal communications minister, Michelle Rowland, has spoken about the government’s planned laws against hate speech. She told Sky News this morning that the details remained under “active discussion” but the government “will not tolerate … hatred and abuse on the basis of race or religion”.
Rowland said she had received a phone call from a friend whose child attends Mount Scopus in Burwood in Melbourne, a Jewish day school where threatening graffiti was found on the front fence yesterday:
I’ve never had someone on the phone, a friend like that, so distressed about that what’s happened. She said: ‘My grandparents and my husband’s grandparents fled the Holocaust and now we are here in Australia seeing this.’ So it is completely unacceptable.
Again, the counterfactual is for governments to do nothing. We have determined to operate not only within the [attorney general’s] portfolio but there has been strong engagement across the comms sector as well.
I talked about the review of the basic online safety expectations. They also go to hate speech. So your viewers can be very assured that we are operating as a proper functioning cabinet government where ministers work collaboratively with one another on evidence we identify where there needs to be further penalties in place and where they need to be strengthened. And we’re determined to do that. And this should be above politics.
Rowland declined to specify what penalties were on the table, saying they were under “active discussion”.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said in February that the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, was looking at how to “strengthen laws against hate speech”.
National Sorry Day marked across Australia
Indigenous communities will gather to mark Sorry Day across the country, amid ongoing calls to implement all of the recommendations of a 27-year-old report into the stolen generations.
National Sorry Day events are being held today in major cities, including in Sydney, where Coota Girls Survivors – the former residents of the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls – their families and descendants will meet in the Royal Botanic Garden.
26 May marks the 1997 tabling in federal parliament of the Bringing Them Home report, which examined the history of First Nations people who were forcibly removed from their families as part of the stolen generations.
It documented the experience of survivors and made 54 recommendations, some of which have not yet been implemented.
Reconciliation Week also marks the anniversary of the 1967 referendum on 27 May, which allowed Indigenous people to be counted in the census, and Mabo Day on 3 June, which celebrates the high court decision overturning the principle of terra nullius and paving the way for native title.
– AAP
Josh Butler
New government campaign aims to educate adults about sexual consent
Parents should educate themselves about sexual consent so they can teach their children about it, Anthony Albanese’s government says, with a new $40m national campaign encouraging adults to learn about the issue to address “confusion”.
The social services minister, Amanda Rishworth, will launch the new consent campaign today. The campaign centres on the message “if we don’t know the answers, how will our kids”, asking adults to inform themselves so they can have appropriate conversations with their children.
“Australians know that sex without consent is wrong. However, there can be high levels of confusion around the definition of consent and who is accountable in non-consensual scenarios,” Rishworth’s office said in a statement.
The government pointed to statistics showing one in five Australian women and one in 16 men had experienced sexual violence since the age of 15. Women were most likely to experience sexual violence at the hands of an intimate partner.
Rishworth said many parents may not feel comfortable talking to their kids about consent, even as she pointed to research showing the vast majority of Australians thought adults needed to talk about it.
You can read more about the campaign here:
Welcome
Good morning, Elias Visontay here with some of the top stories of the day so far.
Western Australia police are investigating the circumstances of an apparent double murder-suicide after a man looking for his former partner at a home in Perth’s west instead shot dead the woman’s female friend and teenage daughter before taking his own life.
Police were called to a home in the suburb of Floreat on Friday afternoon after reports of gunshots. Detectives said a 63-year-old man arrived at the property about 4.30pm looking for his former partner, who was not there at the time.
Instead, the man shot dead a 59-year-old woman, who was his ex-partner’s friend, and critically wounded her 18-year-old daughter, police said. He then took his own life.
Police arrived to find the two bodies and paramedics rushed the 18-year-old girl to Royal Perth hospital, where she later died.
The federal attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, is reportedly drafting new hate speech laws that will increase federal protections for minority groups by imposing criminal penalties for serious instances of vilification based on a person’s sexuality or race, gender or religion.
“The Albanese government is committed to promoting and supporting respect, acceptance and understanding across the Australian community,” Dreyfus told the Sydney Morning Herald. “We are committed to protecting the community from those who promote extremism, hatred or seek to incite violence.”
And the Central Coast Mariners are back-to-back A-League champions after striker Ryan Edmondson’s late double clinched an A-League Men championship for the side with a 3-1 extra-time triumph over Melbourne Victory.
It was a historic moment for the Mariners, claiming their third championship at Industree Group Stadium on Saturday.