Australia currently spends just 1.8% of GDP on research and development, lagging OECD average
Australia risks losing jobs to other countries if it fails to lift its below-average spending on research and development, a peak science body has warned, amid Scott Morrison’s vow to promote “technology not taxes” on climate policy.
Australia invests just 1.8% of its economic output in research and development, well behind the OECD average of 2.5%.
Continue reading...Katherine stay-at-home restrictions due to lift at midnight, but source of outbreak still not known. Follow updates live
Labor will create a national anti-scam centre and double funding for services helping aggrieved Australians get stolen IDs back to counter scammers if it wins government, AAP reports.
Forcing companies to take down fraudulent ads faster, a review of the current penalties in place for scammers and a new ministerial portfolio for the issue will be introduced under its “scambuster” plan.
Exclusive: Taxpayer cost of offshore processing regime revealed as government remains silent on where $400m went
The cost to Australian taxpayers to hold a single refugee on Nauru has escalated tenfold to more than $350,000 every month – or $4.3m a year – as the government refuses to reveal where nearly $400m spent on offshore processing on the island has gone.
Australia currently pays about $40m a month to run its offshore processing regime on Nauru, an amount almost identical to 2016 when there were nearly 10 times as many people held on the island.
Continue reading...Victoria records 1,268 cases, NSW 270, ACT 18 and Qld one as Katharine in Northern Territory in lockdown
Nationals MP Darren Chester and Labor MP Amanda Rishworth were on ABC 24 earlier, being asked whether Scott Morrison had “shamed Australia on the global stage” at the Cop26 summit and worsened tensions with French president Emmanuel Macron. The following exchange took place.
Chester:
I know it’s a spring racing carnival and Labor wants an each-way bet on everything, but the Labor party has supported the Aukus deal. The Labor party has spoken in positive terms ...
The Labor party has been very bipartisan on the Aukus deal but to say the prime minister has handled this anything but appallingly would be an understatement. There’s no doubt the French were upset, but even President Biden admitted that perhaps this whole thing was handled clumsily. Rather than the [Australian] prime minister work on his diplomatic relationships there, what he’s done is he’s doubled down and allegedly his office has leaked private text messages. And then we’ve had government ministers criticising the press for asking questions. This really goes to the character of our prime minister.
Continue reading...A breakup, a pandemic and a homecoming left the singer with time to sit and think. Her new album radiates the calmness and kindness she sought
At the beginning of 2020, while her home country burned and the rest of the world was waking up to a global pandemic, Courtney Barnett was in Los Angeles. She’d just completed an American tour; her plan was to find herself an apartment and stick around a little longer to work on songs.
Then – after “it all got really wild” – she came home to Melbourne. For maybe the first time in six years – since her 2016 hit Avant Gardener turned her into the newest “New Dylan” – Barnett finally had time to sit and think.
Continue reading...Prime minister ‘quite certain’ Australia will reach 80% double-dose target today; Mark McGowan says Western Australia’s border restrictions could be eased by late January; Victoria records 1,343 Covid cases and 10 deaths; NSW records 249 cases, three deaths; Melbourne Cup attendee and Flemington Racecourse contract worker test positive; Northern Territory records second Covid case in two days – follow live updates here
Scott Morrison will meet with state premiers and territory chief ministers this afternoon for the first national cabinet meeting in more than a month.
We’re told the agenda includes an update on international border arrangements and an update on testing, tracing, isolation and quarantine protocols.
We don’t know where and we don’t know when but this is community transmission.
He has caught it from someone in the territory but we don’t know who ... Right now this bloke has no idea how he caught Covid and neither do we.
Continue reading...Kelly, 36, transferred from Carnarvon to Perth in Western Australia after being charged with various offences including one count of taking a child under 16
The man charged with abducting four-year-old Cleo Smith will be transferred from Carnarvon to a maximum-security prison in Perth.
Terence Darrell Kelly, 36, appeared briefly before a magistrate in Carnarvon on Thursday charged with various offences related to the abduction of Cleo, including one count of forcibly taking a child under 16.
Continue reading...High vaccination rates and low Covid case numbers mean border can reopen, premiers Dominic Perrottet and Daniel Andrews say
For the first time in months, the border between New South Wales and Victoria will open to fully vaccinated travellers from 11.59pm Thursday, as both state governments push ahead with “normalising living with the virus”.
On Thursday evening, the Victorian acting chief health officer, Ben Cowie, reclassified the status of the Australian Capital Territory and all remaining “orange zone” areas in New South Wales.
Continue reading...Carnarvon local charged with forcible abduction and other offences after four-year-old girl was allegedly taken from remote WA camping site
West Australian police have charged a 36-year-old man in relation to the alleged abduction of Cleo Smith after the four-year-old was found alive and well 18 days after she disappeared.
Terence Darrell Kelly appeared briefly before a magistrate in Carnarvon on Thursday afternoon.
Continue reading...Peter Dutton says France would’ve reacted the same if told earlier about Aukus; Victoria records 1,247 new Covid cases and nine deaths; NSW records 308 and four deaths; Queensland records three local cases; Labor attacks Morrison over leaked texts – follow today’s news live
And here is the opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, joining the condemnation of Scott Morrison, speaking now to ABC News Breakfast.
Well, [the Australian and French relationship] needs some repair done, quite clearly.
It’s quite extraordinary for the leader of a major nation, like France, to say the Australian prime minister lied to them. And it’s quite extraordinary for them, in response, for the Australian prime minister to release a private text message that doesn’t really show much.
Now ultimately, this is the decision [to exit the French submarine deal to pursue nuclear options with the US and UK] that the government took and we [Labor] backed in the national interest, that is to move to the down the path of nuclear-propelled submarines.
That’s a big decision and, for the French, it was always going to be difficult to manage, but the job of the leader of the country is not to behave in this way ... it’s to deal with the inevitable negative response of the change in a mature and responsible way.
Continue reading...Investigators obtain bank records of transfers between Marlene Kairouz and electorate office manager Kirsten Psaila, hearing told
A Labor MP gave a staffer more than $33,000 to pay the party memberships of people within her faction, according to evidence provided to the Victorian anti-corruption commission.
But the MP, Marlene Kairouz, whose evidence is considered critical to the investigation into the alleged misuse of public funds by paying staff to do factional activity – including branch stacking – will not be subject to a public examination by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (Ibac).
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Continue reading...The Western Australia police officer who rescued Cleo said when she was reunited with her mother there were ‘big hugs, kisses and lots of tears’
A photograph of a smiling and waving Cleo Smith eating an icy pole in her hospital bed has been released by Western Australia police after the four-year-old was rescued from a Carnarvon house more than two weeks after she vanished from a remote campsite.
WA police on Wednesday afternoon said a 36-year-old man taken into custody following Cleo’s discovery was yet to be charged but they expected that to occur “probably” later in the day.
Continue reading...The Australian PM is a relatively new player on the global stage, but the leak of the French president’s text message spoke volumes
As Scott Morrison flew towards Australia’s military base for operations in the Middle East on Wednesday, Jean-Pierre Thébault was using an appearance at the National Press Club in Canberra to continue France’s rolling excoriation of Australia’s conduct while dumping a multibillion-dollar submarine contract.
By the time Morrison touched down in the desert, the French ambassador had landed a potent extrapolation. If Scott Morrison’s operation was prepared to leak private text messages from world leaders to settle diplomatic scores, who could trust Australia?
Continue reading...Australia’s high court finds the higher rate of tax for working holiday makers is discriminatory and breaches treaty with UK
A British backpacker who worked as a waiter in Sydney has won a long-running legal dispute against Australia’s “backpacker tax” in its highest court.
On Wednesday the high court ruled in favour of Catherine Addy, finding the tax which slugged working holiday-makers thousands of dollars more than Australians discriminated against her on the basis of her nationality and infringed a treaty Australia signed with the UK.
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Continue reading...Confidence shattered by ‘crude’ leak of president’s message to prime minister Scott Morrison, says adviser
Elysée officials have expressed fury at the decision of Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, to leak a private text message from the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as the diplomatic rift between the two countries deepened.
“Confidence has been completely shattered,” a close adviser to Macron told French media on Tuesday. “Disclosing a text message exchange between heads of state or government is a pretty crude and unconventional tactic.”
Continue reading...Officers also sifting through garbage collected from roadside bins near where four-year-old went missing
West Australian police are using drones and aircraft to create a detailed map of the Blowholes campsite as they look for “disturbances in the sand” during the ongoing investigation into the disappearance of four-year-old Cleo Smith.
Police recruits are also sifting through a mountain of rubbish collected from roadside bins stretching more than 600km along Western Australia’s north-west coast in the hope of finding any clue that could lead to Cleo.
Continue reading...People turn to Telegram and Facebook to find jobs as mandates bite
Unvaccinated Australians who have lost their jobs for refusing to comply with Covid vaccine mandates are using social media to find and share employment opportunities at workplaces where the new rules are not being enforced.
Telegram and Facebook have had an influx of people searching for paid jobs after states and territories implemented mandates covering a range of industries from health and aged care workers, teachers and police to construction and hospitality workers.
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Continue reading...US, Brazil, India, Mexico and UK account for over half of deaths in Johns Hopkins University tally
Singapore could see as many 2,000 Covid-19 deaths annually over time, mainly among the elderly, but it was focused on avoiding excess mortality, a minister said this morning, as the country battles its biggest surge in infections.
Reuters report that at 0.2%, Singapore’s Covid-19 case fatality rate is similar to the rate of deaths from pneumonia before the pandemic struck.
If we lose staff over the winter period our ability to provide care is compromised. We’ve got a very, very difficult winter coming up and we know the NHS is going to be at full stretch, so it makes sense to set that deadline once that period has passed. If we lose very large numbers of unvaccinated staff, particularly over the winter period, then that also constitutes a risk to patient safety and quality of care.
Continue reading...Rising house prices and a resurgent economy could nudge the Reserve Bank to raise rates for first time in 11 years
Borrowers are rushing to lock in low interest rates amid gathering expectations Australia’s central bank will declare an end to its record low cash rate earlier than its current prediction of 2024.
Economists say the Reserve Bank of Australia has little choice but to revise its rate rise timing given mounting evidence the economy is recovering quickly from the lengthy Covid-triggered lockdowns in NSW, Victoria and the ACT.
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Continue reading...Prime minister gives details of contract talks after French president accuses him of lying about plans to cancel $90bn deal
Scott Morrison has hit back against an extraordinary accusation from the French president that Australia’s prime minister lied to him over an abandoned $90bn submarine contract, declaring he will not “cop sledging” about Australia’s integrity.
Speaking to reporters in Glasgow where he is attending the UN climate conference Cop26, Morrison said Emmanuel Macron was well aware that Australia was contemplating pulling out of the troubled Naval Group diesel submarine contract.
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