The Albanese government has released its plan to revamp the safeguard mechanism – a Coalition policy that promised to reduce emissions from our biggest industrial polluters but actually resulted in the opposite.
Labor has proposed a policy makeover. The government’s plan will require big polluters to cut emissions by 5% a year until 2030, but will controversially allow them to continue buying carbon offsets from companies that pollute less.
How the government regulates the safeguard mechanism is a big deal, given the polluting facilities included in the policy are responsible for 28% of the nation’s emissions. If Australia is to meet its 43% emissions reduction target by 2030, this policy has to work.
For an easy-to-understand backgrounder on the safeguard mechanism, watch this video.
Top news
Melbourne Victory fined | The A-League club has been fined $550,000 by Football Australia for the pitch invasion on 17 December. Victory fans have been banned from attending away games for the rest of the season, and will no longer be allowed to sit behind the northern end at home games.
Woman tortured for hours in Brisbane hotel | Trent Wayne Lawson, 38, has been sentenced to six years in jail for the “reprehensible” assault and torture of a woman for at least two hours in 2021 while he held her captive in a hotel room. Lawson then forced her to provide her online banking details and transfer $290 to his account, damaged her mobile phone, and left the hotel room taking all her clothes and medication.
Australian detainees in China | Beijing’s envoy to Australia, Xiao Qian, has offered a glimmer of hope about the cases of two Australians detained in China, saying he wants a “solution” to be found as quickly as possible as Canberra continues to push for their release. “I hope a solution will come as soon as possible, but we need to respect the legal procedure,” he said today.
Universities respond to ChatGPT | … with a return to “pen and paper” exams after students were caught using AI to write essays. ChatGPT, which generates text on any subject in response to a prompt or query, was launched in November and has caused a stir in academia. Australia’s Group of Eight leading universities said pen and paper exams will be part of their revised approach to assessments this year.
Earthquake shakes Darwin | Residents in the Top End reported a “violent” shaking of houses after a 7.6-magnitude undersea quake struck near Indonesia’s Tanimbar Islands. “Everything was banging and shaking, the doors were shaking, I thought the house was going to fall apart,” one resident said. The Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre assessed there was no tsunami threat to the Australian mainland, islands or territories.
Brazil aftermath | Extremists defecated inside the presidential palace and destroyed hundreds of years of Brazilian art and political history. Our reporter toured two of the three ransacked buildings in Brasília 24 hours after the attack by hardcore followers of the former president Jair Bolsonaro. “The whole place stank of urine and beer,” a palace employee said.
Virginia teacher tried to confiscate gun | Abby Zwerner, the 25-year-old school teacher shot by her six-year-old student, sought to confiscate the weapon from the child who had revealed the gun in class, a parent of another child in the class has said. Zwerner had life-threatening injuries but is now continuing to improve in hospital.
Consuming cannabis in Thailand | Cannabis cafes and weed dispensaries have popped up in Thailand since the country eased a ban on marijuana last year. But the new rules have caused some confusion, especially for tourists. So what can you do and what is out of bounds? We answer the questions.
Mountain photo of 2022
This stunning shot by Kat Lawman above the clouds at the top of Garnedd Ugain in Wales shows Jupiter, Saturn and Venus aligning under the watchful gaze of a camper. It won the UK mountain photo of the year, awarded by Trail magazine. See the other contenders here.
What they said …
***
“I just opened up my phone then … I’ve just been added to a WhatsApp group called ‘Legends’ … with Scott Morrison and Justin Langer in it.” – Pat Cummins
The cricket captain revealed in a new documentary that he and former coach Justin Langer were randomly added to a private WhatsApp group by the then PM, Scott Morrison, shortly after Pat Cummins became captain. Morrison said he made the group to cheer them on in “a direct and personal way”.
In numbers
“We spend 1,000 times as much exploring space as we do exploring the ocean in the US,” the president of OceanGate Expeditions, Stockton Rush, says. “How the ocean responds to climate change is going to dictate everything. We need to understand it.”
Before bed read
By turns sympathetic and absurd, Spare by Prince Harry echoes the tropes of tabloid storytelling even as it lambasts them, writes the Guardian’s chief culture writer, Charlotte Higgins.
“The monarchy relies on fiction. It is a constructed reality, in which grown-up people are asked to collude in the notion that a human is more than a human …
“Ceremonials such as the late queen’s funeral are not merely decorative; they are the institution’s means of securing its continuance. The monarchy is theatre, the monarchy is storytelling, the monarchy is illusion.”
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