Category Archives: John Howard

Australia fires live: NSW and Victoria bushfires insurance bill tops $700m – latest updates

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Rain falls on some NSW, Victorian and South Australian bushfire-affected areas, but worse fire conditions are forecast to return. Follow all today’s latest news and live updates

Andrew Crisp:

Speaking with the incident controller here at Bairnsdale a short time ago, some of our concern is the fires up in the alpine area, around Omeo, and the potential for them to travel south with the northerly and join the fires down in this part of the world.

We saw, only a few days ago, where there were more than 300 people on the oval at Omeo where some helicopters were there to take people out.

The Victorian emergency commissioner, Andrew Crisp, has an update:

There are three communities we haven’t been able to drive in. When I say ‘drive’ even with those other communities it is basically bushtracks and emergency vehicles to get in, it is where there is no real road access.

We’ve been able to get helicopters and sat phones in to make sure people have supplies.

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Cabinet papers 1998-99: Coalition’s campaign to unleash the GST laid bare

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Tax reform dominated debate, as ministers discussed East Timor and the 2000 Olympics – and resisted climate action

On 1 July Australia’s goods and services tax will have been in place for 20 years. It is uncontroversial in concept, with no major party advocating its abolition. Every so often there are calls for it to be increased from 10% or expanded – calls that are usually rebuffed.

But just how fraught the GST was to introduce is one of the key insights from the release of cabinet papers by the National Archives of Australia, covering the years 1998 and 1999. There were other concerns: East Timor’s independence, the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the failed republican referendum, and familiar resistance to doing anything but the minimum on climate change.

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‘Not welcome’ in Australia: from Tampa refugee to Fulbright scholar, via New Zealand

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New Zealand gave a home, and hope, to Abbas Nazari. He wishes all refugee children could be given the same chance

Abbas Nazari was stranded on a ship in the Indian ocean when he first heard the words “New Zealand”.

Then aged 7, Nazari’s mother, father and four siblings were among 430 asylum seekers, predominantly of the ethnic minority Hazaras of Afghanistan, plucked from a sinking fishing boat by the Norwegian cargo ship, the Tampa. They were later transferred to the HMAS Manoora, where they waited for asylum after Australia refused to accept them; creating an international quagmire over which country would, or should, offer sanctuary on humanitarian grounds.

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Nothing new in Coalition’s nuclear awakening. No wait, perhaps there is

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Could this be the catalyst for the Coalition of 2019 to reconnect itself with the position it adopted in 2007 for sound reasons?

Fair warning before we kick off this weekend. Increasingly, I’m reaching that stage of my professional life where I can be heard muttering, and sometimes shouting, I’m too bloody old for this.

My long-suffering colleagues in the Canberra bureau of Guardian Australia have absorbed bouts of muttering and shouting over the past few weeks as various Nationals and some Liberals have lined up post-election to support a new inquiry into nuclear energy, as if this might be a light bulb moment.

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Federal election 2019: Bill Shorten says Labor ‘the only game in town’ on wages – politics live

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Labor leader wants to bring together business groups and unions for meeting, as Bob Hawke calls Shorten a ‘consensus leader’. All the day’s events, live

Today the high court has released its full reasons for its decision in the case brought by former Liberal National Queensland president Gary Spence to challenge Queensland’s developer donation ban. Orders were delivered in April upholding Queensland’s ban, closing a loophole that would have allowed developers to donate to candidates in the federal election campaign.

The first thing to note is that Spence did not come close to winning on the point of whether the ban impermissibly burdens the implied freedom of political communication.

Scott Morrison ‘aspiration’ count:

14 May – 21 times

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‘Not a life sentence’: Christopher Pyne plots next move after 26 years in parliament

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The ‘fixer’ intends to enter the world of business, and lists the advice he gave John Howard in 1993 as one of his big regrets

Regrets, the retiring Christopher Pyne may have had a few, but one quickly sprang to mind when he was asked whether, looking back, he wished he had done anything differently.

“I probably wouldn’t have told John Howard in 1993 that his time was over, we wouldn’t go back to him,” he said. “That led to some period in the freezer for me.”

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George Pell’s lawyer says child abuse was ‘plain vanilla’ sex as cardinal heads to jail

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Cardinal Pell is remanded in custody following his conviction for child sexual assault, which judge calls ‘callous, brazen offending’

Cardinal George Pell has been taken in custody following a sentencing hearing in which his lawyer, Robert Richter, described one of Pell’s offences as a “plain vanilla sexual penetration case where the child is not actively participating”.

After the hearing, with Pell’s lawyer having withdrawn his application for bail, the chief judge, Peter Kidd, said: “Take him away, please.” Pell will be sentenced on 13 March after his conviction for sexually assaulting two 13-year-old boys.

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