Key events
Chris Hipkins to make first visit to Australia as New Zealand PM
New Zealand prime minister Chris Hipkins will visit Australia for the first time since landing the top job.
Hipkins will travel to Canberra today, where he will meet with his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese at Parliament House, Australian Associated Press reports.
The visit is a show of prioritising his nation’s relationship with Australia.
Regional security will be high on the agenda, with Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific reaching Wellington through alleged political interference.
Albanese said he looked forward to “discussing ways to build on trans-Tasman cooperation”.
“Australia and New Zealand have an extremely close relationship, underpinned by our shared history and generations of personal, business and government links,” he said.
Speaking ahead of his one-day trip, Hipkins said his relationship with the Australian prime minister began with a “very warm” phone call and texts late last month.
“We’ve had a good conversation on the phone. I think we’re going to get along pretty well actually,” he said.
“Primarily [the trip] is just about prime minister Albanese and I having the opportunity to meet each other and get to know each other a little bit.”
Hipkins replaced Jacinda Ardern as New Zealand’s leader last month after the former prime minister announced her shock resignation.
This year will be an important milestone for Australia and New Zealand, marking the 40-year anniversary of the signing of the Closer Economic Relations Free Trade Agreement.
The visit also coincides with 50 years of the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement.
Electric car sales soar
The number of electric vehicles on the roads has almost doubled over the past year, growing from 44,000 at the beginning of 2022 to more than 83,000, according to new sales data.
Of those cars, 79% are pure battery and 21% plug-in hybrids. The best uptake is in the ACT where 10% of new sales were EVs.
Electric vehicle market share was 4% in New South Wales and Victoria and slightly more than 3% in Queensland in 2022, but just 1% in the Northern Territory.
And as an Australian startup Recharge buys the bankrupt battery maker BritishVolt, sales of EVs in Britain have fuelled the strongest start to the year for the car market since before the pandemic.
Welcome
Hello and thanks for joining us for rolling coverage of the day in Australian news and politics with parliament back for another day. My colleague Amy Remeikis will be along shortly to take you through the day but in the meantime here are the main stories making headlines overnight.
The devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria is the big story overnight with at least 2,600 people killed and many thousands more feared dead. The huge quake hit a region of millions of people and where the population has been swollen by people escaping the civil war in Syria. We have full coverage here.
The big political story at home overnight is the fallout from Lidia Thorpe’s decision to stand down from her post as Greens party Indigenous affairs spokesperson and fight for Black sovereignty. That paved the way for a party room vote last night in favour of supporting a yes vote in the voice to parliament referendum – a position that Thorpe had opposed.
Households will be on edge today with the Reserve Bank forecast to raise the cash rate again in a move that will mean more financial pain for people with mortgages. It’s good news for savers of course but most of the reaction to the expected decision – due as ever at 2.30pm – is likely to focus on the increased strain on borrowers’ budgets.
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