What we learned: Wednesday, 4 December
With that, we will wrap the blog for the day. Enjoy your evenings, whether it be spent watching the Matildas take on Taiwan or anxiously reading our blog on the South Korea crisis.
Here were today’s major developments:
Australia’s economy put in a disappointing performance in the September quarter. Excluding the Covid disruptions, the annual growth pace of 0.8% was the weakest since the early 1990s recession, according to Westpac. The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said “the growth in the Australian economy continues to be positive but it is weak”.
Commonwealth Bank has conceded it did a “poor job” communicating changes to affected customers, after announcing a partial backdown over its plans to start charging users of one of its popular accounts a $3 fee for accessing money from a branch.
The Greens plan to call Murdoch media executives before a Senate inquiry into greenwashing, after paid advertising from the gas lobby appeared as straight news coverage across Murdoch tabloids.
They have also announced a new election policy to provide women with free access to contraceptives.
The high court has ruled that aggregate sentences do count towards automatic visa cancellation on character grounds, reversing a full federal court decision that resulted in the release of more than 100 people from immigration detention in December 2022.
And Australia has voted with 156 other countries at the United Nations to demand the end of Israel’s “unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible”, marking a return to the position for the first time in more than two decades.
Albanese government declines to review three coal proposals for potential climate impact
Three proposed coalmine projects will remain under assessment for potential approval after the federal government declined to review them for their potential climate impacts.
The three projects are Idemitsu’s Boggabri coal project in NSW, BHP Mitsubishi’s Caval Ridge coal project in central Queensland and Jellinbah Group’s Lake Vermont coal project in Queensland.
The legal firm Environmental Justice Australia said the mines would result in about 850 million tonnes in greenhouse emissions.
The three mines were part of a larger bid - known as the Living Wonders case - by the Environment Council of Central Queensland (ECoCeQ) to have the government reconsider 19 projects because of the climate damage they would cause.
The group also ran a series of landmark court cases in which it argued, unsuccessfully, that the minister for the environment was required to consider the lasting climate damage that two different coalmine expansions would cause.
Environmental Council of Central Queensland spokesperson Ellie Smith said:
This is another blow from the Albanese government, which came to power promising to protect the environment but keeps approving carbon bombs that will supercharge climate change.
Environmental Justice Australia senior specialist lawyer Retta Berryman, said:
In refusing to change the risk assessment for these massive coalmine expansions, the Albanese government has failed to recognise their climate harms to thousands of animals, plants and places.
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