A new film tracks the life of one boy but is also the story of a generation of Indigenous children and their right to be educated in their language on country
“I want my school to be run by Aboriginal people.
I want adults to stop cruelling 10-year-old kids in jail.
Continue reading...Shadow education minister emphasises education as key battle line against Coalition, while Greens leader Adam Bandt calls for end to public school fees
Labor will continue to make education funding a key point of difference to the Coalition, with a greater emphasis on the disparity between public and private schools’ spending on facilities, Tanya Plibersek has signalled.
In a speech delivered to the Australian Education Union on Friday, Plibersek warned both the government and internal critics arguing for lower social spending that “the fight for fair school funding is not over” and claimed that “visible inequality” in facilities suggests Australians care more about some children than others.
Continue reading...Commissioner says Det Insp Mark Thompson ‘gutted’ at phrasing he used about Camp Hill car fire deaths in Brisbane
A senior Queensland detective who said police were keeping an “open mind” as to whether the deaths of Hannah Clarke and her children were a case of a “husband being driven too far” has been stood aside from the investigation.
The Queensland police commissioner, Katarina Carroll, apologised on Friday for comments made by Det Insp Mark Thompson as he appealed for information into the deaths the previous day, saying the detective was “gutted” at his choice of words.
Continue reading...Domestic violence campaigners appalled force wants to consider suggestions Rowan Baxter was ‘driven too far’ when he set fire to his family in their car in Brisbane
Queensland police have revealed that a man who killed his wife and three children by dousing them with petrol and setting them alight had a history of domestic violence and was known to them.
But in comments that have shocked domestic violence campaigners, the force says they are keeping an “open mind” about suggestions the 42-year-old Rowan Baxter had been “driven too far” and are appealing to people who knew the couple to come forward to understand his motives.
Continue reading...The ALP leader says a feasibility study into a new coal-fired power station in Queensland is ‘hush money’ for climate sceptics
Anthony Albanese says he supports jobs and economic activity from the Adani coalmine, but he has blasted a feasibility study into a new coal-fired power plant in Collinsville as “hush money” for climate sceptics in the Coalition.
In Queensland on Wednesday for his fourth “vision statement” since taking the Labor leadership, Albanese told reporters the ALP needed to improve its electoral performance in the state given the poor showing in last year’s federal election. He said he was listening to voters in a number of regional centres.
Continue reading...We’d been incredibly close when I was a child. Then, in 1994 she went away and never came back. Now here we were, taking to the road with no real plan after her cancer diagnosis
I had been sitting in the cafeteria of a hospital in Perth, Australia, for seven hours waiting for the phone to ring.
Seven hours of drained coffee cups, watching families cry and cling to each other, wondering if they were tears of grief or relief, seven hours of slowly feeling the panic rise up through my body.
Continue reading...Waks, now an advocate for Jewish abuse victims, was one of a number of children Cyprys abused at Melbourne’s Chabad Yeshivah centre
A child abuse victim who blew the whistle on abuse within the Orthodox Chabad sect of Judaism in Australia has been awarded $804,170 in damages in a civil case brought against his perpetrator and serial abuser, David Cyprys, in Melbourne.
Manny Waks was about 13 years old when he was first abused by Cyprys at the Elwood synagogue, and he was also abused at the Chabad Yeshivah centre in Melbourne.
Continue reading...Politicians from WikiLeaks founder’s home country have flown to UK to visit him in jail
Boris Johnson should block attempts to extradite Julian Assange to the US, say two Australian MPs who have flown to the UK to visit the WikiLeaks founder.
Andrew Wilkie, an independent federal MP, said the extradition of Assange, who has been charged by the US with conspiring to hack into a secret Pentagon computer network, would set a dangerous precedent.
Continue reading...Yang Chen says watching survival and adventure TV shows helped her stay alive, as she knew to keep hydrated and warm
A Chinese student who survived in flooded and dense Gold Coast bushland for five days used an empty milk bottle to collect water and get by.
Yang Chen went missing last Wednesday while walking with a friend in the Tallebudgera Valley and spent the next five nights sheltering in caves until she was found by water police near Gorge Falls on Monday morning.
Continue reading...People who flout new order in Xiaogan city in central Hubei face detention for 10 days as global death toll reaches 1,775. Follow live news and latest updates
Shares in China have posted strong gains after the country’s central bank cut the interest rate on its medium-term lending to try to cushion businesses from the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak. The bank also injected another 200bn yuan of liquidity into the system.
The move is expected to pave the way for a reduction in the country’s benchmark loan prime rate on Thursday, Reuters reports, to lower borrowing costs and ease financial strains on companies hit by the epidemic.
China CSI 300 erases Covid-19 slump.
Why?
* Short selling ban (in China this means the Gulag!)
* Funds need gov't approval to sell (prove an outflow)
* Record repo injections by the PBoC, rate cuts
* Xi - will cut taxes and record fiscal stimulus
Rally means all is good, right? pic.twitter.com/hCRUaEiHdZ
#PBOC injects 200 bn yuan liquidity via 1-year medium-term lending facility (MLF).
PBOC cut the rate on MLF to 3.15%, from 3.25% in the previous operation. https://t.co/EXAEiLHayq
A reporter is asking about Australians onboard the MS Westerdam cruise ship that docked in Cambodia last Thursday. An American passenger on that ship was subsequently diagnosed with Covid-19, after testing in Malaysia. The foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne answers:
There were some Australians on the vessel Westerdam. 39 of those have remained in Phnom Penh after the ship finally docked. They have been provided with hotel accommodation in the capital.
Continue reading...Chinese ambassador says consumers not being served well by ‘politically motivated’ ban on tech firm’s entry into 5G network
The Australian government’s ban on Huawei’s participation in building the nation’s 5G network remains a “sore point or thorny issue” between the two countries, the Chinese ambassador said on Monday, as he criticised the government for discriminating against a Chinese company.
Cheng Jingye dismissed concerns Huawei may pose a threat to Australia’s national security given its links to the communist Chinese government, and said Australia’s ban was “politically motivated”.
Continue reading...In an interview on Channel Ten’s The Project, Parker said he had been told to leave RFS leading to the hashtag #IStandWithPaulParker trending in Australia
The Rural Fire Service is investigating claims that a volunteer firefighter who told the prime minister to “get fucked from Nelligen” in a viral news clip was “sacked’”by his local brigade.
Paul Parker told Channel Ten’s The Project on Sunday that he was chastised by the RFS for directing the expletive toward Scott Morrison and that he had been booted from the organisation, contrary to reports from the time that he had been stood down due to exhaustion.
Continue reading...Labor says National party seats shortchanged after projects in Liberal-held, non-rural seats got nearly $110m
Labor is accusing the government of shortchanging rural areas through a $150m sports fund that was overwhelmingly spent in marginal seats during the election campaign.
The $150m female facilities and water safety stream program, announced by the Coalition less than two months before the election, was funded in the 2019 budget for the purpose of female change rooms and swimming pool upgrades, but was all allocated in the election campaign.
Continue reading...Treatment of refugees and asylum seekers ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading’, but does not warrant prosecution, ICC office says
Australia’s offshore detention regime is a “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” and unlawful under international law, the international criminal court’s prosecutor has said.
But the office of the prosecutor has stopped short of deciding to prosecute the Australian government, saying that while the imprisonment of refugees and asylum seekers formed the basis of a crime against humanity, the violations did not rise to the level to warrant further investigation.
Continue reading...Statistical error led to more than 100 deaths being counted twice, national health commission says
A Channel 4 employee was taken to hospital to be tested for coronavirus on Thursday after being met at the channel’s London headquarters by health officials in protective clothing, it has emerged.
The person is understood to have been on holiday recently in China in the last month and had some concerns about feeling unwell. They are not a journalist and had not been to Wuhan, the Chinese region at the centre of the outbreak.
“On Thursday a member of staff at Channel 4 who had travelled to Asia within the last month felt unwell.”
“As a precautionary measure they decided to seek medical advice and, in line with the latest public health advice regarding the Coronavirus, they were taken to hospital for a precautionary test. We have informed our staff of this and continue to follow all the latest public health guidance.”
Singapore has reported nine new coronavirus cases – its biggest daily increase, according to the Straits Times. The new cases take Singapore’s virus tally to 67.
Six of the new cases are linked to the Grace Assembly of God church which is now the biggest cluster of cases in Singapore with 13 in total.
Coronavirus: 9 new cases confirmed in Singapore, 6 of these linked to Grace Assembly church which has become the biggest cluster https://t.co/eybB3Xrpwp
Continue reading...NSW detective is defending charges of illegally making recordings during investigation into disappearance of three-year-old William
William Tyrrell’s foster family has blasted the “personal agendas” of police behind the prosecution of former detective Gary Jubelin, saying the investigation into the boy’s disappearance has been “cavalier” following his removal.
Jubelin is defending four charges of illegally recording elderly neighbour Paul Savage during an investigation into the 2014 disappearance of the three-year-old from the NSW mid-north coast.
Continue reading...Parliament sits for the final time this week, with threats to the government’s promised surplus back in the spotlight. All the day’s events, live
The auditor-general will appear at the Senate inquiry into the sports grant affair in about 30 minutes.
Asked if he voted for Llew O’Brien in the deputy speaker ballot, Barnaby Joyce says it was a secret ballot and “the reason ballots are secret is that you don’t tell people how you vote. Otherwise don’t bother having them”. Which leads to this exchange:
Joyce: Who did you vote for at the last election?
Continue reading...Elsewhere in the country rainfall offered relief from the bushfires, but caused flash flooding as well
Tropical Cyclone Damien made landfall in Western Australia over the weekend and lashed north-western parts of Australia with heavy rain and damaging winds. Unrelated to the cyclone, eastern Australia also recently had some substantial rainfall totals. While rain came as welcome relief after the severe bushfires, flash floods have now swept across the region.
Storm Hervé marked the end of unseasonable warmth across parts of France and Germany last week as the system brought a cooler airmass, strong winds, and fresh, heavy snowfall to the Alps. Prior to this, south-west Europe as a whole was experiencing exceptional heat, and temperatures rocketed to 29.6C in Valencia in Spain on Tuesday, setting a new all-time February record.
Continue reading...Areas of Australia have burnt during the recent bushfire season that used to be too wet to burn. In this first episode of The Frontline, a new series that shows how everyday Australians are already experiencing the climate crisis, we go inside the new fire zone
Continue reading...Former NSW Labor MPs allegedly conspired over mining properties in Bylong Valley, near Mudgee
The federal opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, a former New South Wales premier, Morris Iemma, mining figures and public servants are expected to give evidence in the trial of former mining ministers Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald.
The former state Labor MPs – with Obeid’s son Moses, 50 – are being tried in the NSW supreme court over their alleged conspiracy to commit an offence between 2007 and 2009, when Macdonald was mineral resources minister and the Obeids owned land in coal country.
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