What we learned today, Thursday 14 December
We will wrap up the blog here this Thursday evening. Here’s what made the news today:
Chris Bowen has called on News Corp to sack Andrew Bolt after the controversial commentator penned a column suggesting Australians are “sick of kowtowing to the primitive”.
Kathleen Folbigg has been acquitted of killing her four young children following a 20-year battle to clear her name after she was labelled Australia’s worst female serial killer.
The Labor MP Josh Burns has played down the significance of the Australian government-backed UN vote for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, saying during a visit to Israel that it “couldn’t be less relevant to the people here on the ground”.
Australia’s dominant container terminal operators are enjoying surging profits, prompting accusations from the competition regulator they are not subject to sufficient pricing pressure.
The head of the watchdog that oversees the New South Wales police force has implored officers to always use body-worn cameras, arguing that if they are acting responsibly, “they should have nothing to worry about”.
Australia’s employers added 61,500 jobs last month and the jobless rate came in at 3.9%, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said.
Thanks very much for joining us today. See you tomorrow.
Clive Palmer’s coal-fired power station plan rejected
The Queensland deputy premier (at least for one more day) Steven Miles has formally rejected Clive Palmer’s planned coal-fired power station in central Queensland.
The rejection will probably be Miles’s first act before being elected Labor leader on Friday and becoming premier.
Guardian Australia reported last month that the state environment department had denied to issue an environmental authority for Palmer’s plan for a 1.4GW coal power station, citing climate impacts and rejecting his company’s claims it would be “carbon neutral”.
That rejection was formalised by Miles’s decision on Thursday afternoon.
Clare Silcock, from the Queensland Conservation Council, said the decision “propels Queensland into a cleaner energy future, moving away from the dirty coal fired power stations of the past”:
This coal power station would have burnt 4m tonnes of coal every year beyond 2050. We’re relieved that this rejection keeps that pollution out of our atmosphere, and reduced the climate impacts.
The science is clear: we need to stop building new coal if we want to stop runaway climate change.
Miree Le Roy, a spokesperson for Friends of the Earth, which led opposition to the proposal, said “common sense has prevailed””
Minister Miles has made the right decision - gone are the days of coal, the future is clean renewable energy.
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