Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Australia says China’s claims to disputed islands are ‘invalid’ and are not consistent with UN convention on law of the sea
Australia has declared “there is no legal basis” to China’s territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea, marking an escalation of recent tensions with Beijing and bringing Canberra further in line with Washington.
State Liberal Matt Kean calls on his federal counterpart to drop opposition to an independent environment protection authority
The New South Wales environment minister has called on the Morrison government not to “smash through” changes to national conservation laws and to drop its opposition to an independent environment protection authority.
In a significant intervention from a Liberal government minister, Matt Kean questioned his federal counterpart’s rush to introduce draft laws to change the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act while a major review was still under way, saying it was more important to get the detail right.
The National Retail Association wants all businesses to have greater flexibility, not just those receiving jobkeeper
Australia’s retailers are calling on the Morrison government to broaden the power of employers to cut workers’ hours and change duties, as Labor signalled it will oppose the move to extend flexibility linked to the jobkeeper wage subsidy.
The National Retail Association chief executive, Dominique Lamb, told Guardian Australia the government should consider granting all businesses the flexibility to vary work hours – not just the firms in receipt of the jobkeeper wage subsidy.
Company has previously resisted calls to change branding, saying it was named after American cheesemaker Edward William Coon
The Australian cheese brand Coon will change its name to help “eliminate racism” following a campaign stating the product name was offensive to Indigenous Australians.
Friday’s announcement by Saputo, the dairy company that owns Coon, “to retire the Coon brand name”, comes after a decades-long effort to rename the cheese, including an unsuccessful 1999 complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission from Indigenous activist Dr Stephen Hagan.
The AFL roadshow continues with a mini-hub to be created in Cairns, Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has confirmed.
Two yet-to-be named teams will base themselves in the city, and three games will be played at Cazaly’s Stadium. Strict quarantine protocols and the Covidsafe Industry Plan will be rigorously employed, as is the norm these days.
Three @AFL Premiership games will be played at Cazaly’s Stadium and two clubs will relocate to Cairns temporarily with strict quarantine protocols and the COVID Safe Industry Plan in place. It will inject millions of dollars into the local economy and support jobs. #AFL#qldjobspic.twitter.com/MiILnH1DjX
The Australian Education Union says that senior school students and specialist school students should also be allowed to move to flexible learning because of increasing rates of community transmission in Victoria.
More from AAP:
Year 11 and 12 students are being taught in the classroom ahead of exams, as are special school students.
AEU Victorian branch president Meredith Peace said the rigid approach meant some students were missing out and there was additional stress for principals, teachers and support staff.
AMA wants national network of contact tracers; calls for low-risk prisoner release; Port Stephens in NSW on Covid-19 high alert. Follow all the latest news and updates, live
Burney was also asked about the Black Lives Matter march planned for Sydney next Tuesday.
She said both organisers and people who attend the rally need to observe the health advice. Organisers are requiring people to wear masks and remain 1.5m away from each other, as they did at earlier rallies in June.
I will not be telling people who have lost loved ones not to demonstrate. But they have a democratic right to see their local member, to write to their local member and make it very clear what their feelings are.
Labor has been advocating for years that there needs to be justice targets in the new Closing the Gap targets and I understand that’s going to happen. But there is absolutely no way that it is OK that something like 400 people have died in custody since the royal commission and that continues to happen and the incarceration rates of Aboriginal people and Aboriginal young people are completely unacceptable.
Labor’s social affairs spokesperson, Linda Burney, said the new permanent jobseeker rate has to be an amount “where people can live with dignity and children, in particular, are not thrown on to the poverty scrapheap”.
Burney told ABC24:
We have heard that the old Newstart rate, which was $550 a fortnight, was just throwing people into poverty, there was absolutely no way it was an incentive to work.
One of the things that Labor is saying very clearly is we believe that the Government missed an enormous opportunity yesterday and that is to announce a permanent increase in JobSeeker, which Labor and others have been arguing for for a very long time.
The Morrison government will reduce the level of income support paid out under the jobkeeper and jobseeker payments from 28 September, and create two payment tiers for the wage subsidy to ensure the rate aligns more closely with people’s pre-Covid income, rather than giving part-timers and casuals a pay rise.
The overhaul will be unveiled by Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg on Tuesday ahead of an economic statement the government will deliver on Thursday. As well as lowering the rate of both the jobkeeper wage subsidy and the $550 coronavirus supplement in jobseeker after September, the government will tighten the eligibility requirements for both payments – including retesting businesses in October.
Australia’s acting chief medical officer warns people in Sydney are not taking precautions ‘as seriously’ as in Melbourne
Victoria has recorded 217 new cases of Covid-19 and three more deaths, as the prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced parliament would be postponed due to the health risks of MPs travelling to Canberra from Melbourne and south-western Sydney.
Katharine Murphy sits down with Guardian reporter Paul Karp and Nine senior economics correspondent Shane Wright to discuss the Australian economy and the government’s various stimulus packages. As conditions remain grim, with 992,300 Australians out of work, and the unemployment rate rising to 7.4% in June, how will the government navigate Australia’s recovery?
Mining magnate allegedly diverted funds to the benefit of his Palmer United party in the weeks before the 2013 election
Mining magnate Clive Palmer has been charged with fraud and corporate misconduct offences that carry lengthy prison sentences over the alleged diversion of at least $10m to the benefit of his Palmer United party in the weeks before the 2013 election.
Palmer denied the allegations, telling Guardian Australia the charges were “nonsense” and rehashed matters over which a court had already ruled in his favour.
Acting Rural Fire Service commissioner Rob Rogers has been formally appointed to the position, replacing Shane Fitzsimmons as leader of the NSW fire agency.
Rogers began volunteering with the RFS in 1979 and has been acting in the role since April. He was a deputy commissioner during the horrific 2019-2020 fires.
Rob is truly a veteran of the RFS. From his seat on the ‘Belrose Blitz’ (fire tanker) to the commissioner’s chair - the community has benefited from Rob’s leadership in action over successive fire seasons.
We’ve been working in lockstep with Rob Rogers and the RFS to ensure the state is as prepared as it can be to face disaster again this bushfire season.
The Queensland Council for Civil Liberties has called on the state government to release the draft of its bill to increase the maximum penalty for breaching public health orders to six months imprisonment.
The public health act already carries fines of $4,003 for breaching the chief health officer’s directions, which currently includes entering Queensland without a valid border declaration pass.
The proposed further Covid-19 legislation containing prison terms of up to 6 months represents a significant increase in penalties and in that regard the proposed legislation should have been the subject of public consultation.
There has been no consultation with this Council and so far as I am aware no consultation with other stakeholders such as the Queensland Law Society or the Bar Association.
A dearth of political leadership means abortion drugs remain inaccessible, unsafe and unaffordable for many women
It has been 24 years since the federal government chose the partial privatisation of Telstra over the rights of Australian women to safely terminate a pregnancy with abortion drugs. In 1996, anti-abortion independent Brian Harradine, who held the balance of power in the Senate, agreed to support John Howard’s one-third float of the telecommunications company if the government amended legislation to give the health minister veto to prohibit the import, manufacture or use of abortion drug RU486 (mifepristone).
A perpetual dearth of political leadership in the subsequent quarter century has meant the drugs remain inaccessible, unaffordable and at times unsafe for many women in Australia outside of a certain income or major city.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian details stricter regime for pubs as cluster linked to the Crossroads Hotel grows to 30 cases
New South Wales is on “extra high alert” for a widespread Covid-19 resurgence and will require so-called hygiene marshals to enforce social distancing at every pub in the state.
The crackdown comes after patrons who visited a Sydney hotel at the centre of the state’s largest outbreak expressed concern over relaxed safety practices and the pub’s manager conceded more could have been done to record visitors’ contact details.
Secret correspondence between Buckingham Palace and the governor general of Australia reveal discussion of a “last resort” option to dismiss then prime minister Gough Whitlam, but the final decision on the sacking was kept from the Queen as it “was better for Her Majesty not to know in advance”.
The historic trove of letters between the Queen, her representatives, and then governor general John Kerr in the lead-up to Whitlam’s dismissal clearly shows the extent to which the palace was drawn into Kerr’s 1975 plans to remove the Labor leader from office.
Exclusive: Masterclasses promise to improve work mindsets and link programs to Covid-19 response
Australian government agencies have spent more than $230,000 on “innovationish” training – the latest management fad promising to improve work mindsets – and linked the programs to the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Australian Securities and Investment Commission and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spent $180,000 with the US company People Rocket LLC, which suggests it can replace traditional management consultancy by developing “cultures that champion innovation through cross-functional collaboration”.
Charges against Bernard Collaery and his retired Asis agent client confirm the government has few regrets about an exploitative exercise against a friendly neighbour
In the first week of January 2019, a private jet landed at Presidente Nicolau Lobato International Airport in Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste. The former Victorian premier Steve Bracks emerged into the monsoonal heat and was greeted by staff from the office of Xanana Gusmão, Timor-Leste’s chief maritime boundary negotiator. They drove Bracks to the waterfront café at the Novo Turismo Resort and Spa, where Gusmão was waiting.
The subject of the meeting was Bernard Collaery, Gusmão’s former lawyer, who was pleading not guilty to breaches of Australia’s intelligence act. Collaery’s charges related to an Australian Secret Intelligence Service operation in Dili in 2004, in which Canberra is believed to have recorded Timor-Leste officials’ private discussions about maritime boundary negotiations with Australia. In 2013, the Australian government revealed the allegations of spying.
Victoria has recorded another 216 cases of coronavirus and one additional death, a man in his 90s, as the state tries to contain the second wave of the virus that returned Melbourne residents to lockdown.
Thirty of the new cases are linked to known outbreaks and 186 are under investigation, with the state’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, saying it was becoming more difficult to quickly trace the source of new infections.
Pop-up testing facility to be set up in Sydney hotel car park as Victorian premier says 37,588 tests were conducted in the state yesterday. Follow live news and updates
Victoria is preparing two-million reusable masks for people in Melbourne and Mitchell Shire by the end of July, and a million single-use masks, but in case you want to go and make your own now, you can find a CDC guide on how to make one here.
The Victorian government is going to prepare its own how-to guide for masks in the coming days.
Due to the heightened public health risk with the current outbreak in Victoria, we are asking ALL South Australians with symptoms (fever/chills, cough, sore throat, runny nose, shortness of breath, loss of taste or smell) to get tested for COVID-19. https://t.co/daEpRqXyQVpic.twitter.com/lccT3Rvwef
The Australian government and its partners had no choice but to recognise the new reality in the territory and offer some of its citizens a way out
I feel sorry for Chinese foreign ministry officials, with whom I have had many good conversations over the years. They have been pushed to lambast Australia and other Western democracies with such frequency that they risk running out of fresh invective, hyperbole and idiom.
Attorney general should be stripped of the power to force tech companies to help security agencies potentially spy on the public
The attorney general should be stripped of the power to approve orders that would force tech and social media companies to help security services to potentially spy on the public, the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor has said.
In a report into the encryption legislation, the outgoing INSLM, James Renwick, called for that power and the ability for agency heads to compel assistance from tech companies to be moved to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, and a new investigatory powers commissioner within it.