Government urged to split IR bill to help low-paid people now – as it happened

Migration system review will focus on process

For those wondering, here is a little more detail on the migration review Clare O’Neil announced this morning.

Accessed the name, date of birth, address, phone number and email address for around 9.7 million current and former customers and some of their authorised representatives. This figure represents around 5.1 million Medibank customers, around 2.8 million ahm customers and around 1.8 million international customers.

Did not access primary identity documents, such as drivers’ licences, for Medibank and ahm resident customers.

Medibank does not collect primary identity documents for resident customers except in exceptional circumstances.

Accessed Medicare numbers (but not expiry dates) for ahm customers. 

Accessed passport numbers (but not expiry dates) and visa details for international student customers.

Accessed health claims data for around 160,000 Medibank customers, around 300,000 ahm customers and around 20,000 international customers.

This includes service provider name and location, where customers received certain medical services, and codes associated with diagnosis and procedures administered.

Additionally, around 5,200 My Home Hospital (MHH) patients have had some personal and health claims data accessed and around 2,900 next of kin of these patients have had some contact details accessed.

Accessed health provider details, including names, provider numbers and addresses.

Did not access health claims data for extras services (such as dental, physio, optical and psychology).

Did not access credit card and banking details.

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Right-leaning group fails to wrest control of National Trust

Restore Trust blamed computerised voting for defeat of all its candidates at annual general meeting in Bath

A right-leaning campaign aiming to wrest control of the National Trust from an alleged “political” takeover has criticised a computerised voting system after all of its candidates for council seats were defeated at the trust’s annual general meeting.

Restore Trust failed to secure a single win and immediately attacked the soundness of the charity’s democratic system after results were announced at the National Trust’s Grade I-listed Bath Assembly Rooms.

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Forest regeneration that earned multimillion-dollar carbon credits resulted in fewer trees, analysis finds

Exclusive: Claim by academics, including former integrity chair of Australia’s carbon credit scheme, raises further doubts about system

Projects meant to regenerate Australia’s outback forests to store carbon dioxide have been awarded millions of carbon credits – worth hundreds of millions of dollars – despite total tree and shrub cover in those areas having declined, a new analysis has found.

It is the latest claim that raises doubts about the integrity of Australia’s carbon credit system, which the federal government and polluting businesses rely on to meet targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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Cop27 gets off to delayed start after tussle over agenda for talks

Contentious opening to UN climate conference as delegates struggle to reach agreement on discussion of loss and damage

The Cop27 UN climate summit has made a delayed start after delegates tussled late into Saturday night and on into Sunday morning over what should be discussed at the conference.

At the heart of the disagreement was the vexed question of loss and damage, which refers to the devastating consequences of climate breakdown suffered by the poorest and most vulnerable countries, and how to help them.

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Fears mount that Cop27 app could be used by Egypt to surveil regime’s critics

Cybersecurity experts warn that official Cop27 climate app requires access to a user’s location, photos and even emails

There are mounting fears over the surveillance of delegates at the Cop27 climate talks in Egypt, with cybersecurity experts warning that the official app for the talks requires access to a user’s location, photos and even emails upon downloading it.

The revelation, as more than 25,000 heads of state, diplomats, negotiators, journalists and activists from around the world gather at the climate summit that starts in Sharm el-Sheikh on Sunday, has raised concerns that Egypt’s authoritarian regime will be able to use an official platform for a United Nations event to track and harass attendees and critical domestic voices.

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Body found of second man who died when ute was swept off causeway in NSW floods

Floods crisis continues across NSW and Victoria although waters are subsiding in parts of the country including Forbes and Wagga Wagga

The body of a second man who died when a ute was swept into New South Wales flood waters last week has been found in the southern tablelands, as towns throughout the state and in Victoria remain on high alert.

NSW police confirmed on Sunday that police divers had found the man’s body after the ute was swept off a flooded causeway in Bevendale, about 280km south-west of Sydney, on Monday.

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Bob Brown accuses Tanya Plibersek of putting industry above environment on Tarkine trip

Environment minister visited Tasmania for two days and insists she’s taking mine decision seriously but Brown wanted her to visit rainforest with him

Bob Brown has accused the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, of prioritising industry over the environment by not accepting his invitation to tour Tasmania’s takayna/Tarkine rainforest when she visited the site of a controversial mining proposal.

Plibersek visited Tasmania last week to meet with representatives and workers from the minerals company MMG about its proposal to build a tailings waste dam and pipeline infrastructure in rainforest near the town of Rosebery in the state’s north-west.

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Sunak claims role as ‘clean energy champion’ on eve of Cop27

Scepticism from summit attendees as PM adopts Labour leader’s stated aim of making UK a green ‘superpower’

Rishi Sunak attempted an extraordinary volte-face on green policy on the eve of the Cop27 climate summit on Saturday, saying he would attend in order to “galvanise” world leaders to save the planet.

The prime minister – who had been criticised for saying he was too busy with domestic commitments to attend – also adopted precisely the same language on renewable energy that Labour leader Keir Starmer has been using for months, declaring that he now wanted to turn the UK into a “clean energy superpower”.

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Climate activists storm Amsterdam airport and block private jets

Sitdown protests are part of a day of demonstrations in and around Schiphol airport

Dutch border police arrested hundreds of climate activists who stormed Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and sat in front of the wheels of aircraft to prevent them from leaving.

More than 100 protesters, wearing white suits, entered an area where private jets are kept on Saturday as part of a day of demonstrations in and around the airport organised by environmental groups.

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Brazil, Indonesia and DRC in talks to form ‘Opec of rainforests’

Spurred by Lula’s election, the three countries, home to half of all tropical forests, will pledge stronger conservation efforts

The big three tropical rainforest nations – Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – are in talks to form a strategic alliance to coordinate on their conservation, nicknamed an “Opec for rainforests”, the Guardian understands.

The election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, has been followed by a flurry of activity to avoid the destruction of the Amazon, which scientists have warned is dangerously close to tipping point after years of deforestation under its far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro.

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Who’s who at Cop27: the leaders who hold the world’s future in their hands

A look at who will – and who may not – be at Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh climate summit this month

Delegates arrive for Cop27 on 6 November in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and the conference is scheduled to end on 18 November, though it is likely to run later. World leaders will attend on 7 and 8 November, and after they depart the crunch negotiations will be done by their representatives, environment ministers or other high-ranking officials.

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Flood waters continue to rise in NSW town of Forbes with peak expected Saturday night

La Niña brings an increased chance of above average rainfall for Australia’s north and east and a lingering risk of flooding for the months ahead

Flood waters continued to rise in the New South Wales town of Forbes, where there had been 10 flood rescues and more than 237 calls for help in the past 24 hours, including for a pregnant woman.

The woman, whose water broke on Friday, was transported across the middle of the river in Forbes to the town’s hospital by a local volunteer, where she could be cared for by doctors and nurses.

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Cop27 host accuses countries of making empty public pledges

Egypt has expressed frustration at leaders making positive statements that are abandoned in negotiations

Governments meeting for vital climate talks have been accused of making positive commitments in public but denying them later in the privacy of the negotiating rooms by the Egyptian hosts of the summit.

Wael Aboulmagd, the Egyptian diplomat in charge of running the negotiations at the Cop27 UN climate summit, said: “Political statements and pledges are made in front of the cameras, but in the negotiating rooms it’s back to the adversarial approach. These [publicly positive positions] will not be of value until translated into the negotiating rooms, and that has not been the case so far.”

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Indigenous people in Peruvian Amazon detain tourists in oil spill protest

About 70 people seized in protest at environmental damage from crude oil spillage into Cuninico River

Indigenous people in the Amazon in Peru have detained a group of Peruvian and foreign tourists, including UK and US citizens, in protest at a lack of government aid following an oil spill in the area.

“[We want] to call the government’s attention with this action, There are foreigners and Peruvians, there are about 70 people,” Watson Trujillo, the leader of the Cuninico community, told RPP radio.

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Japan makes squid farming breakthrough as wild catches plummet

Scientists have long sought to farm the scarce seafood staple, but critics say animals are not suited to intensive methods

Scientists in Japan say they have developed a groundbreaking method of farming squid that could solve shortages of the seafood staple, amid warnings from environmental groups that aquaculture is incompatible with the animal’s welfare.

Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) say their system produced a reliable supply of squid and has the potential to be commercialised.

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Tanya Plibersek to reassess 18 proposed oil and gas projects to consider their climate change impact

Queensland environment group had asked federal minister to revisit decisions made going back to 2011

Federal environment officials have agreed to look again at 18 proposed new coal and gas projects after a Queensland environment group submitted requests to have the effects of climate change considered.

None of the 18 projects has been approved under the country’s environment law, but have been through a process where the environment minister determines the nature and scale of their likely impacts.

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Spanish minister urges Sunak to commit to climate crisis fight

Teresa Ribera says she was ‘hugely surprised’ and saddened by PM’s initial refusal to go to Cop27 summit

The Spanish government has urged Rishi Sunak to demonstrate a clear commitment to fighting the climate emergency, describing the British government’s flip-flopping over the prime minister’s attendance of the forthcoming Cop27 summit as “sad” and “surprising”, given the UK’s global reputation and its current presidency of the conference.

Spain’s environment minister, Teresa Ribera, also said the “absurd”, heel-dragging political debate over climate change in the UK was “surprising and disappointing”.

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Insurance firms must lower premiums as government funds disaster prevention, minister says

Murray Watt says Canberra is funding disaster mitigation infrastructure and ‘expects the insurance industry to fulfil its end of the bargain’

Insurance companies need to reduce premiums for customers in disaster-prone regions now the federal government is investing heavily in infrastructure to minimise loss during extreme weather, the emergency management minister, Murray Watt, says.

Ahead of confirming funding on Friday for 34 new mitigation projects to reduce the impact of coastal erosion accelerated by the climate crisis, Watt used an insurance industry conference to put the sector on notice.

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Political prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah will escalate hunger strike during Cop27

British-Egyptian activist says he will cease drinking, raising fears he may die while officials attend summit

A British-Egyptian pro-democracy activist has said he will escalate his hunger strike inside a desert prison, raising concerns he could die while British officials attend the Cop27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a figurehead of Egypt’s 2011 uprising and one of the Middle East’s best-known political prisoners, has spent most of the past decade behind bars. Shortly after gaining British citizenship while in detention last year, he was sentenced to a further five years in a high-security prison on charges of “spreading false news” for sharing a social media post about torture.

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Australia news live: Ed Husic says government must intervene in gas market; Pocock backs fossil fuels super profits tax

Industry minister says gas companies are ‘not picking up the signals’. Follow all the day’s news live

Gas supply not a problem, ‘glut of greed is’, industry minister says

Husic:

This is not a shortage of supply problem; this is a glut of greed problem, that has to be basically short-circuited and common sense prevail.

The pricing mechanism is the one that I think needs to be seriously examined.

The LNG exporters are offering gas to the domestic market at prices they couldn’t reasonably expect on the international market.

We have the ACCC looking at that [code of conduct] and that code of conduct is to help better guide the way in which these contracts get negotiated … in terms of the other areas, we want to work through that internally.

If you look at what the treasurer has said over the last few days, he is examining those type of options and again that will be in the mix of things he thinks through.

I think the bigger focus long-term is the price mechanism.

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