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Nationals deputy leader Perin Davey fends off preselection challenge
Amy Remeikis
The results are in and the Nationals deputy leader, Perin Davey, has fended off a preselection challenge and will keep her Senate spot at the next election.
The numbers are not confirmed as yet, but Davey came out on top, putting to bed the challenges surrounding her parliamentary career.
Key events
Greenpeace is calling for car companies that support the government’s proposed vehicle efficiency standard to resign from major lobby group, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI).
This comes as Tesla quit the lobby group yesterday (full story below), and Polestar suggested it is ‘poised to leave’.
In a statement, Greenpeace Australia Pacific campaigner Joe Rafalowicz said:
It has become clear that the FCAI is only interested in representing car brands who want to weaken emissions limits… The FCAI is so far out of step with the demands of Australian consumers, who we know want to see cleaner, more affordable electric cars on our roads, sooner.
Car makers that are serious about climate action stand to gain nothing by associating with this increasingly irrelevant lobby group.
Man charged following Wentworthville shooting last month
New South Wales police have charged a man with shooting with intent to murder during a shooting in Wentworthville last month.
On 20 February, emergency services responded to reports of shots fired into a business on Wentworth Avenue. There were no reports of injuries.
A short time later, emergency services were called to Fulton Avenue after reports a scooter was alight, police said.
Following extensive inquiries, a 19-year-old man was arrested at a shopping centre in Bankstown just after 12pm yesterday. He has been charged with shooting with intent to murder and discharging a firearm with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
He was refused bail to appear at Bankstown local court today.
Police will allege in court the man was part of a joint criminal enterprise responsible for the shooting, a statement said.
Joe Hinchliffe
Comparisons between environmental activists and capitol rioters ‘odious’, protestors say
Comparisons between 14 largely retired environmental protesters unfurling banners in Queensland’s parliament and the January 6 US Capitol riots are “odious”, one of the protesters has said.
On Thursday, Queensland’s parliamentary ethics committee handed down its findings, which cleared Greens MP Michael Berkman of inciting or encouraging the Extinction Rebellion protest in November 2022, but described his conduct as “disgraceful”.
Fourteen people aged between 24 and 88 face the possibility of jail, if convicted, over their brief but raucous protest in which demonstrators unfurled banners with anti-fossil fuel slogans from the public gallery of parliament, interrupting question time with chants of “end fossil fuels now” and “stop coal, stop gas” for about three minutes.
In an interview with ABC Brisbane, Berkman later expressed shock at news the activists faced charges – not laid in more than 30 years – of disturbing the legislature during a protest.
He said the charges were “a really scary indicator of where we are up to”, and later posted on social media that the protesters were “absolutely right”.
Read more on this story from me and my colleague Eden Gillespie, here:
Nationals deputy leader Perin Davey fends off preselection challenge
Amy Remeikis
The results are in and the Nationals deputy leader, Perin Davey, has fended off a preselection challenge and will keep her Senate spot at the next election.
The numbers are not confirmed as yet, but Davey came out on top, putting to bed the challenges surrounding her parliamentary career.
Cait Kelly
Advocates call for ‘more than platitudes’ as Australian women faced with ‘impossible choice’ between domestic violence and homelessness
Continuing from our last post: The report notes that lack of access to safe housing prevents many women from escaping violence and pushes women back to violent homes.
Kate Colvin, CEO of Homelessness Australia, said:
Thousands of Australian women are faced with an impossible choice – return to a violent home or confront homelessness. This is not a decision anyone should be forced to make, yet it’s happening more and more.
Pathways to safe housing are the missing piece in the government’s response to family violence, but can be addressed in the new five-year national housing and homelessness agreement that will soon be released.
This International Women’s Day it would be refreshing to see more than platitudes. We would like firm commitments to improve a desperate, parlous situation that puts the lives and safety of too many women and girls at risk.
Cait Kelly
New report shows 45% of homeless women and girls seeking assistance are fleeing domestic and family violence
A new report has revealed a growing crisis of women and children fleeing domestic and family violence into homelessness, prompting calls for an urgent funding package to provide pathways to safe housing.
Homelessness Australia’s state of response report for International Women’s Day analyses Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data and found 45% of women and girls seeking homelessness assistance do so due to family and domestic violence.
It finds that over the last decade:
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The number of women and children sleeping rough or in a car at the end of homelessness support more than doubled, from 1,041 to 2,428; and
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The number of women and children couch surfing at the end of support more than doubled from 3,465 to 7,214.
In the past year alone, the number of women and children sleeping rough or in a car after receiving homelessness support increased by 23%.
Following on from our last post, the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, has posted this video on the mass coral bleaching occurring across the Great Barrier Reef:
Graham Readfearn
Fifth mass coral bleaching event in eight years hits Great Barrier Reef, marine park authority confirms
The Great Barrier Reef is in the grip of a mass coral bleaching event driven by global heating – the fifth in only eight years – the marine park’s government authority has confirmed.
The authority, together with scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, have completed aerial surveys across 300 reefs over two thirds of the reef, with more to come.
The authority said in an update:
These surveys confirm a widespread, often called mass coral bleaching event, is unfolding across the Great Barrier Reef.
Read the full story below:
Cait Kelly
Melbourne’s west yet to see promised public transport reform
Tomorrow will be 1,000 days since Victoria’s bus plan was released, with advocates arguing little has been done to ensure Melbourne’s west has a fast, frequent and reliable bus service.
In 2021, Victoria’s Labor government committed to a bus plan that promised to create a bus network to Victoria’s public transport needs and demands, including route reforms and improved accessibility and safety.
The lack of frequent and direct bus routes has been particularly difficult for communities such as those in Wyndham in Melbourne’s west, advocates say. In Hoppers Crossing, for example, the average bus trip takes four times longer than the same journey by car.
According to the government’s bus plan, 2023 was supposed to see the implementation of reforms to transform Victoria’s bus network to align it with growing demand.
Sustainable Cities spokesperson Elyse Cunningham said:
Victoria’s bus plan has no solid timeline, and no solid funding commitments. They’ve been sitting on this plan for 1,000 days, but the people of Melbourne’s west are still stuck waiting for better buses, and taking hours to get to uni, work or the shops.
In a cost-of-living crisis, families in the west are spending hundreds of dollars more on petrol just to get where they need to go.
Full review to come into accidental release of inmate from correctional facility, NSW premier says
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, has commented on reports from earlier this morning that a man was accidentally released from a correctional facility yesterday, and located in a Bondi hotel this morning.
Minns told reporters in Sydney that there would be a full review to determine what went wrong:
There’s over 12,000 inmates across Corrective Services in the state … when you put it against the mid-90s when there was over 100 inmate escapes or accidental releases per year, it’s well down.
But any inmate that’s released accidentally or earlier than they should be, is a major concern for Corrective Services and we want to make sure we get it right.
Earlier, Corrective Services said the man was released from Long Bay correctional complex due to an “administration error following a court appearance”, which is now being investigated.
– with AAP
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