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Ukrainian-Australians rally around the country calling for Russian state to be declared terrorist organisation
The Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations has condemned the latest Russian missile attacks, which have rained down on Ukrainian cities largely targeting civilians.
The federation is holding a series of rallies around Australia, with first ones held in Sydney and Hobart outside state parliaments. Another rally is just ending outside the Russian embassy in Canberra while Melbourne’s Federation Square will see a demonstration later this evening.
At these rallies the federation says it will renew its call for the Australian government to declare the Russian government, armed forces and FSB secret service organisation terrorist organisations under Australian law.
Stefan Romaniw, the federation’s co-chair, says:
The latest massive wave of Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian civilians are acts of pure evil. They make clear the genocidal intent of the Russian state, which already stands accused of over 21,000 registered military war crimes, the mass murder of civilians at Bucha and Izium, and individual atrocities such as bombing shopping malls, civilian train stations and hospitals.
Current sanctions have failed to stop the slaughter. It is time for Australia to draw a line and designate the Russian state a terrorist organisation.
Putin’s reign of terror in Ukraine must be stopped. Ukraine must be given more military aid so it can defend itself and bring peace to its people and the world. Australia can play a significant role here – our Bushmasters have been hailed by President Zelenskiy and Ukrainian soldiers as being extremely effective in real combat situations.
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Parliamentary inquiry launched into anti-corruption commission’s access to metadata
We brought you the news a little earlier on the blog about the new investigations into the massive Optus data breach launched by the Office of the Information Commissioner and the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
Now, a parliamentary inquiry has been launched into the proposal to give the national anti-corruption commission (NACC) access to metadata. The government only just revealed the legislation around the highly anticipated NACC at the last parliamentary sitting – shortly after the details of the Optus breach were emerging.
At the time my colleague Paul Karp put together this nifty explainer if you’re still a bit hazy about how the NACC will actually work.
Here’s what WWF Australia spokesman Stuart Blanch told reporters today announcing that new plan from Queensland environmental groups to halt deforestation:
We’re losing koalas in Queensland, by 2050 most projections say there will not be koalas across most of Queensland.
That’s a future we don’t want, I don’t think the beef industry wants it, the real estate industry doesn’t want it.
We need to find a way that we have koalas, and beef, and homes, and I guess what the alliance is saying: we need a peace deal for koalas in our forests.
The four groups also want to government to pay farmers to protect trees on their land, which they say will sequester carbon and ensure local beef is produced without deforestation. Queensland Conservation Council director Dave Copeman said farmers must be part of any new plan to protect forests.
Copeman told reporters:
We do know that most farmers care for their country and they want regenerative agriculture that actually restores habitat.
What they need is the government to act so that a small number of bad actors don’t ruin their reputation, and it’s critical for the future in the beef industry.
The government’s expert panel, led by Chief Scientist Professor Hugh Possingham, held consultations and was due to hand down its draft discussion paper outlining causes and solutions for deforestation in August. However, a government spokesperson told AAP it is yet to receive that report.
AAP has sought comment from the Chief Scientist’s office.
Environmental groups in Qld form coalition to halt deforestation in the name of the koala
There won’t be any koalas left in Queensland within 27 years if the state doesn’t start halting deforestation, green groups are warning, AAP reports.
Queensland has been clearing more land, more quickly than any other Australian jurisdiction for at least a decade.
More than 6,800 sq km of land, an area bigger than Brunei, was cleared in 2018-19, according to the state government’s latest report.
An expert panel has been probing why deforestation is happening quickly despite the state passing stricter land clearing laws in 2017.
Conservation groups warn native species such as the koala are being pushed to brink of extinction, and Queensland is one of last states where land use is still contributing to carbon emissions.
The Queensland Conservation Council, Australian Conservation Foundation, the Wilderness Society and WWF Australia have launched a joint campaign to halt deforestation.
The alliance wants the government to come up with a plan to manage, regulate and restore 100 million hectares of forest and woodland.
State and territory leaders continue to pay tribute to International Day of the Girl Child.
The minister for international development and the Pacific, Pat Conroy, took to social media to remind Australians of the importance of continuing aid to the Indo-Pacific region to advance initiatives including educating young women.
My colleague Helen Sullivan wrote this article last year about how the pandemic meant gender equality took a step backwards in south-east Asia and the Pacific, with many girls forced out of school and into marriage.
CSIRO pledge to help industry pivot to curb emissions
More on that announcement from the CSIRO, who says the nation not only needs to cut industrial pollution, but also change the way all sectors operate to make sure greenhouse gas emissions don’t grow in the future.
Dr Larry Marshall said their new project would help Australia’s hardest to abate sectors, including agriculture, aviation and steel, halve their emissions by 2035.
The industry minister, Ed Husic, told AAP the CSIRO commitment is:
A signal to industry that we want to work together, that there’s been a new government that recognises this is an issue that needs to be confronted.
There’s a lot of opportunity there to build commercial value and jobs.
He said the CSIRO mission gave industry a partner to problem solve with on their road to net zero.
The project lead, Dr Michael Battaglia, said heavy emitters like the farming sector and iron ore processors needed help to reach their targets. He told AAP:
We will specifically deal with these sectors and assist them to reduce their emissions.
In working with them, we will start to develop all sorts of analytic frameworks and collaborative approaches that help us apply it to other sectors as well.
Battaglia said the CSIRO was looking at how farmers reducing emissions and increasing sustainability could be rewarded for their work.
Embedding those into supply chain credentials starts to put a price on sustainability and allows some of the benefits to be passed back to farmers, he said.
As part of its mission strategy, the CSIRO worked with the Queensland agriculture department on how the farming sector could reduce emissions.
The report found methods to reduce methane from cattle could be the best way to lower emissions in the state’s $18bn agricultural food industry, and feed the world with sustainable food.
The red meat sector, of which Queensland contributes almost half of the herd, has a target of reaching net zero by 2030.
CSIRO commits $90m for research to achieve net zero
The nation’s top scientists have launched a mission that takes aim at the heart of the challenge facing Australia – cutting emissions while growing the economy, AAP reports.
The CSIRO boss, Dr Larry Marshall, says regions living with drought, flood and job losses don’t need another challenge, and that’s why the $90m plan focuses on the farming and resources sectors that Australia is built on.
In a keynote speech to a business summit today, he said:
This mission isn’t just about working with the hard-to-abate industries.
It’s done in deep consultation and close partnership within the communities across Australia, particularly regional Australia, where these industries exist.
Marshall said cutting harmful methane emissions can be fast-tracked by “future feed” livestock supplements made from seaweed and developing technologies that take carbon out of the atmosphere.
Low-emission steel and iron ore, sustainable aviation fuel and projects to offset emissions are also part of the plan, with leading companies on board.
He said CSIRO is “convinced” hydrogen is part of Australia’s future, whether that’s used to create ammonia fuel or other derivatives.
CSIRO is also working on Australia’s first stocktake of carbon sequestration potential, where soil and vegetation management could be key. That includes contentious carbon capture and storage methods that critics say attract more than their fair share of taxpayer subsidies for little result. Marshall said:
Countries across the world have shown, despite the criticism, that carbon capture and storage or carbon capture and utilisation is a necessary bet on the future. There is no silver bullet for this massive two-thirds of our emissions challenge, so we’re looking at everything.
Ukrainian-Australians rally around the country calling for Russian state to be declared terrorist organisation
The Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations has condemned the latest Russian missile attacks, which have rained down on Ukrainian cities largely targeting civilians.
The federation is holding a series of rallies around Australia, with first ones held in Sydney and Hobart outside state parliaments. Another rally is just ending outside the Russian embassy in Canberra while Melbourne’s Federation Square will see a demonstration later this evening.
At these rallies the federation says it will renew its call for the Australian government to declare the Russian government, armed forces and FSB secret service organisation terrorist organisations under Australian law.
Stefan Romaniw, the federation’s co-chair, says:
The latest massive wave of Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian civilians are acts of pure evil. They make clear the genocidal intent of the Russian state, which already stands accused of over 21,000 registered military war crimes, the mass murder of civilians at Bucha and Izium, and individual atrocities such as bombing shopping malls, civilian train stations and hospitals.
Current sanctions have failed to stop the slaughter. It is time for Australia to draw a line and designate the Russian state a terrorist organisation.
Putin’s reign of terror in Ukraine must be stopped. Ukraine must be given more military aid so it can defend itself and bring peace to its people and the world. Australia can play a significant role here – our Bushmasters have been hailed by President Zelenskiy and Ukrainian soldiers as being extremely effective in real combat situations.
Thanks very much, Mostafa!
First up, we’ve been bringing you a lot of news about flooding on the blog – this map from meteorologist Jane Bunn is pretty handy to see where the flooding is occurring.
OK, and with that I will hand the blog back over to Natasha May. Thanks for reading.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has offered his retort to the treasurer’s bleak assessment earlier today, saying the government shouldn’t be so negative.
Unperturbed by the practicalities of the situation, Dutton said the government’s “negative rhetoric” had dampened confidence in the economy.
Speaking in Queensland, the opposition leader claimed Labor had inherited a strong economy, and that Australia would only go into recession if Jim Chalmers makes “really bad decisions”:
I hope Jim Chalmers can start talking up the economy instead of talking it down.
They went to the election with a plan, and Australians voted for the Labor party based on that plan being delivered, but at the moment there’s no sign of it.
The budget is their opportunity to live up to their promises, and if they’re intending on breaking promises or implementing new taxes, then they should be very clear and upfront with the public that they have broken that trust.
Separate security breach at Adelaide airport
Adelaide airport was thrown into chaos this morning after a security breach was reported, forcing all passengers in the terminal to be rescreened.
The incident is reportedly unrelated to the security breach in Melbourne this morning, which means we’ve had two security breaches in a matter of hours.
The terminal in Adelaide was evacuated around 10am after a piece of security equipment had failed. The terminal is now completely reopened, with flight delays expected.
At a press conference, the managing director of Adelaide airport, Brenton Cox, said a security screen had malfunctioned, causing the rescreening of everyone in the terminal, and praised the “understanding and incredibly kind” passengers:
People were incredibly understanding and incredibly kind. We had a great customer care team in their pink vests to help people out this morning through what was an unfortunate situation, but we think was managed very well in the circumstances.
Cox said 10 flights were delayed, and around 2,000 people were caught up in the situation:
In this instance, we weren’t able to track down the initial passenger that went through. And as it happens, it’s a time based process where if people have already boarded the plane and that plane is off and disembark, then we know that safe. To the extent that that hasn’t happened, you do need to track it back. And unfortunately, that meant quite a lot of people that had to be rescanned.
Asked if there was any connection to the incident in Melbourne, Cox said it was “completely fortuitous coincidence”:
It really is unfortunate that that’s happened in two major airports this morning. And it was a completely fortuitous coincidence that that’s occurred in Melbourne and then has occurred in Adelaide. We’re, in the scheme of things, lucky in Adelaide because it fell outside of morning peak.
A man has reportedly been shot in the NSW Central Tablelands this morning.
Police are currently on the scene, with the man understood to have been shot in the abdomen on the grounds of Lithgow Hospital.
He is in a stable condition and being treated at the hospital.
We will bring you more as it emerges.
Daniel Hurst
The head of a new parliamentary inquiry into promoting democracy across the Indo-Pacific says he hopes a shared commitment to free elections will “bind Australia with our friends” across the region.
Labor MP Josh Burns, the chair of the foreign affairs and aid sub-committee, announced today that his committee was launching an inquiry into how Australia can partner with countries in the region to promote democracy.
Burns told Guardian Australia the military coup in Myanmar last year “showed how quickly democracy can be taken away”.
He said the committee would examine the merits of Australia “having a clearly defined policy” when it comes to providing funding and support to help countries in the region hold elections.
Readers may recall that the prime minister of Solomon Islands, Manasseh Sogavare, last month objected to the timing of Australia announcing its offer to financially support the holding of the country’s next election (calling the way it was publicised “foreign interference”). But Sogavare later welcomed the offer and thanked the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, at a meeting in Canberra last week.
Burns said the new inquiry would also consider the important role a free and independent media and civil society organisations played in supporting democracy:
Clearly China is thinking about the long term and generationally in terms of their place in the region and I think Australia has to be thinking across generations about how we act in our interests with our friends in the Pacific.
Sharing democratic ideals and a commitment to democracy will hopefully bind Australia with our friends not just for five years but for the next 50 years.
The inquiry was launched following a referral from the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, and it is open for submissions until 11 November.
Earlier today in a statement, Burns said this inquiry was “deeply personal” for him:
I think of my grandmother who had her citizenship and democratic rights taken away in Germany.
My family is very grateful to Australia for the democratic rights and freedoms that we, like so many other refugee and immigrant families, have today. We do not take them for granted. I want to see that others have the same.
The AAP is reporting that Telstra’s chairman said the telco’s cyber security capabilities are “considerable” but added he’s avoiding complacency and hubris after the devastating Optus hack.
“It is easy for third parties to be critical of companies who have suffered devastating cyber-attacks such as happened recently to Optus,” John Mullen told shareholders at Telstra’s annual general meeting on Tuesday.
Let me be blunt, however, and say it is easy to be critical when it isn’t you in the firing line.
We should all avoid hubris because no one can be complacent and no organisation can ever be 100% sure that it is completely protected and safe.
New chief executive Vicki Brady said a Telstra third party provider was recently hacked and some employee data was stolen, including her own information. But no customer data was lost, she said.
Ms Brady reaffirmed Telstra’s guidance of $7.8bn to $8bn in underlying earnings in 2022/23 on total income of $23bn to $25bn.
Mr Mullen said Telstra had been focusing on creating a better customer experience, hiring 2000 new team members across the country so it answers calls in Australia rather than overseas.
It has also brought all of its licensee stores in-house, so they are now Telstra owned and operated.
The meeting is continuing.
So I wanted to also rewind for a second, earlier this morning teal independent Monique Ryan was on ABC Breakfast, saying she believed the government was between a “rock and a hard place” on stage three tax cuts.
Nonetheless, Ryan believed the government should rescind the cuts, noting that “people will understand”:
I think people understand that a government’s role is to respond to the challenges that it has in front of it.
I think people understand that these tax cuts were legislated at a time before we had a trillion dollars in debt. And before we saw the cost of living and in fact, inflationary pressures on the economy that we’re seeing at the moment.
Ryan added that she thought the government would be reluctant to do that, though, in the face of strong criticism from the opposition, which she said was “not helpful”:
The opposition … doesn’t have a whole lot else to talk about (and is) is going to bang on about broken promises and lies in a way that is, I think, not helpful to the Australian people at this point in time.
But that probably does mean that the government is going to be reluctant to withdraw completely from the plans for the stage three tax cuts.
So Jim Chalmers has ended his presser, and there were a couple of interesting titbits. Apart from consistent questions about the budget blowouts and how much the NDIS contributes to that (Chalmers refused to be drawn in), there was a question about immediate relief for low-income families.
Chalmers took a shot at giving a balanced view, saying the government will attempt to address cost of living issues, while being cognisant of the “hard job” the Reserve Bank has on their hands:
It is going to be the most problematic aspect of it, of our inflation problem over the course of the next six or nine months. I have had a number of conversations with Treasury and with others about it. When it comes to support for cost of living, we need to be extremely cautious here that any cost of living support that we provide isn’t counterproductive.
We want to make sure that cost of living support that we provide doesn’t make the already hard job of the independent Reserve Bank even harder. We’re very conscious of that. It is rare that there’s a conversation with our colleagues which doesn’t weigh up in one way another this challenge that you’re getting at when it comes to providing cost of living relief.
What we will do in October is provide cost of living relief where we are supremely confident that it won’t make the job of the independent Reserve Bank harder and the way you do that is you provide cost of living relief in a way that has an economic dividend. Child care is an obvious part of that. Cheaper education costs obvious part of that.
Making medicine cheaper and a lot of people who will be under pressure from high power prices will benefit from cheaper medicines. This is how you go about providing cost of living relief. What I have tried to do for some time now and you have all heard me say it one way or another, is I don’t want to get into the situation of spraying cash around in a way that is counterproductive and just makes it harder for the independent Reserve Bank.
Josh Butler
Treasurer Jim Chalmers says the world is on track for another economic “downturn”, saying Australia may not be spared, but the government is looking at ways to bring down gas prices ahead of a forecasted spike in consumer costs.
However he also said the government was weighing any potential cost of living relief, in a bid to alleviate power prices rising, against the risk of further adding to inflation.
Chalmers told his Canberra press conference that there was more the government could do to address spiralling gas prices. He didn’t say exactly what that would look like, but said he’d been working with resources minister Madeleine King and industry minister Ed Husic on measures to cut prices.
Asked about predictions electricity prices would balloon in coming months, Chalmers said that would be “the most problematic aspect” would be inflation and how to balance that against more government spending.
“When it comes to support for cost of living, we need to be extremely cautious here that any cost of living support that we provide isn’t counterproductive. We want to make sure that cost of living support that we provide doesn’t make the already hard job of the independent Reserve Bank even harder,” Chalmers said.
What we will do in October is provide cost of living relief where we are supremely confident that it won’t make the job of the independent Reserve Bank harder.
But specifically asked about gas, Chalmers flagged some changes could be made.
“There is more that governments can do and there will be more that we do.. I do think there is more that can be done,” he said.
Chalmers added his trip to the United States this week is “an opportunity to take the temperature of the deteriorating global economy” and what it will mean for Australia.
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