What we learned today, Wednesday 30 October
And with that, we are going to put the blog to bed. Before we go, let’s recap the big headlines:
The attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, is “giving consideration” to whether a restricted section of the robodebt royal commission report should be publicly released.
The driver of the car that led to the fatal crash through a school fence in Hawthorn East, Melbourne, has been released. The crash is being investigated by Major Collision Investigation Unit detectives.
The annual consumer price index for the July-September period was 2.8%, or the lowest since the March quarter of 2021, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported.
Climate activists protested outside Whitehaven Coal’s annual meeting in Sydney on Wednesday, when clean energy lobbyists Market Forces attempted to lead a shareholder revolt against the company for a second year.
The owners of an island volcano in New Zealand that erupted in 2019 killing 22 people launched an appeal against their criminal conviction for violating safety laws.
More than 40,000 stolen limited edition Bluey coins have been recovered during a search in Wentworthville, NSW police have said.
Patricia Karvelas is set to host Afternoon Briefing, the ABC’s afternoon political show, from next year, taking over from Greg Jennett.
We will be back tomorrow to do it all again.
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Sydney man charged over alleged domestic trafficking of children from Indonesia
Australian federal police have charged a Sydney man with the alleged domestic trafficking of children after a complex AFP-led human trafficking investigation in Australia and Indonesia, AAP has reported.
The man, 30, appeared before Manly local court today after he was arrested yesterday and charged with the domestic trafficking of children and possession of child abuse material.
The AFP will allege the man was a senior member of an organised crime syndicate which profited from trafficking women and children from Indonesia to Australia for sexual exploitation.
The man allegedly trafficked a child for sexual exploitation in Sydney on two occasions between January and March 2024.
As a result of the investigation, the AFP has removed multiple potential victims from sexual exploitation in Australia.
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Concerns raised for transgender woman in Villawood detention centre
Advocates say they are concerned for the health and safety of a south-east Asian transgender woman in Villawood detention centre who has been detained for 12 weeks.
The campaign is led by the Asian Migrant Sex Worker Advisory Group and endorsed by more than 40 civil society organisations, including refugee advocates, community legal centres and trans rights organisations.
The group says that along with three other trans detainees, the woman has been held in the all-male section of the detention centre and denied access to hormone replacement therapy for months. The group is calling for the government to grant her a protection visa.
Sanmati Verma, the legal director of the Human Rights Law Centre, says:
Our migration laws allow people to be warehoused for years while their visa applications are processed. There are no hard time limits on detention – no matter a person’s circumstances, or whether they are at risk in detention.
Visa processing should take place while people are safely in the community. Trans women’s health, wellbeing and safety is compromised by their detention.
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Man to face court over 2022 death of baby boy in Coffs Harbour
A man will face court today charged after the 2022 investigation into the death of a baby at a home in Coffs Harbour.
About 8am on Monday 23 May 2022, emergency services were called to a home in Coffs Harbour after reports a two-year-old boy was unresponsive inside.
The infant was taken to Coffs Harbour health campus in a critical condition, before being airlifted to John Hunter hospital.
Detectives from the Coffs/Clarence police district attended and established a crime scene.
On Tuesday 25 May 2022, the boy died in hospital.
Strike Force Kielwarra was established by detectives who investigated the circumstances surrounding the boy’s death.
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Whitehaven Coal avoids a board spill as activists protest outside AGM
Australia’s leading coal producer has avoided a board spill as activists staged a colourful protest at its annual general meeting, AAP has reported.
Climate activists protested outside Whitehaven Coal’s meeting in Sydney on Wednesday, when clean energy lobbyists Market Forces attempted to lead a shareholder revolt against the company for a second year.
But the 12.93% vote against the remuneration report fell well short of 2023’s first strike, when 41% of shareholders voted against it, and the 25% required for a board spill motion.
More than 40% of shareholders voted against Whitehaven’s proposed remuneration package for the chief executive, Paul Flynn, worth about $7m, and 19% against the re-election of the chair, Mark Vaile.
Vaile told the meeting the company had engaged with shareholders after the 2023 vote to understand their concerns about the remuneration report.
He said the incentive plan remained fit for purpose and the company rejected Market Forces’ allegation it was over-incentivising coal production growth compared to other miners and driving executives to pursue risky, long-life projects.
Whitehaven reported $3.8bn in revenue for the 2024 financial year and $1.4bn in earnings, including $272m from the Daunia and Blackwater mines.
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There have now been 39 days in Darwin over 35°C this year.
From Blair the guru as we now have 39 days in Darwin over 35°C for the year…
— Andrew B. Watkins (@windjunky) October 29, 2024
“there had never been a year over 30 before 2019 but it's now happened in 5 of the last 6 years. (1961-1990 mean is 9.9, 2019-2024 mean will be over 40).” https://t.co/BFCWfz4Dx7
Reserve Bank rate cut news stops share market winning streak
The Australian share market has snapped a three-day winning streak as analysts pushed back expectations for a Reserve Bank rate cut, AAP has reported.
The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index finished Wednesday 68.8 points, or 0.83%, lower, at 8,180.4, while the broader All Ordinaries fell 66.4 points, or 0.78%, to 8,439.5.
Annual headline inflation for the September quarter fell to 2.8% from a year earlier, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, within the RBA’s target range.
But underlying inflation was still at 3.5%, leading money markets to slash the odds of a pre-Christmas rate cut and Commonwealth Bank economists to push back their rate cut prediction to February.
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Good afternoon
Hello everyone – this is Cait Kelly, I will be with you on the blog for the rest of the afternoon. Let’s get into it.
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Young people say proposed age ban of 16 ‘plucked from the air’
Young people have expressed frustration that the proposed age for teens to be banned from social media at 16 appears to have no evidentiary backing and seemed to be “plucked from the air”.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, said the Coalition will ban teens under 16 from social media if the party wins the next election, while the Albanese government is exploring an age ban between 13 and 16. News Corp’s campaign for the age ban has also suggested 16 is the appropriate age.
However, the eSafety Youth Council and Reach Out Youth Advocates criticised this proposal, speaking to the parliamentary committee examining social media. Sina Aghamofid, a Reach Out youth advocate, said:
I just don’t know where that age has come from and what the evidence is to support that and whether that’s effective … it seems like it’s just a number someone’s plucked out of the air and it sounds good. Politically, it’s a great age.
But I haven’t really heard the reasons [why] we’ve come up with this age and what the evidence is for this kind of age.
Layla Wang, a Fellow Reach Out youth advocate, indicated it was unfair that children can get a job before 16 but face being banned from social media, and said parents may use the ban to keep tighter controls on their children.
Aghamofid added that the age of criminal responsibility is as low as 10 in some jurisdictions and young people did not understand where the 16 age limit came from:
Nearly every single young person I’ve spoken to has agreed that they just don’t understand where this is coming from and in the context of these other things that are in place for under 16-year-olds, it just doesn’t make sense to young people.
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Patricia Karvelas to host Afternoon Briefing
Patricia Karvelas is set to host the ABC’s afternoon political show Afternoon Briefing from next year, taking over from reporter Greg Jennett who will move to presenting the ACT 7PM News.
Karvelas will still present Q+A and weekly political wrap The Party Room, as well as write analysis for ABC News online. Karvelas said:
I’m so excited to be anchoring a daily national affairs and politics program, especially at a time when Australians are seeking not just accountability but explanation of really complex issues. Afternoon Briefing has become appointment viewing and is a key part of the news agenda daily.
Being able to launch a podcast which is fast and responsive and engaging on moving political stories has been my dream.
It’s how I consume content and I know there’s a strong desire from our audience for non-appointment content that meets people in their headphones when it suits them.
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CBA reads the room: RBA won’t cut interest rates this year
Australia’s biggest bank, CBA, had been a bit of an outlier, holding out the hope of a Reserve Bank interest rate cut this year.
No longer, it seems. Gareth Aird, the CBA’s head of Australian economics, has just put out the bank’s take on today’s CPI figures.
The retreat in underlying inflation – down to 3.5% in the September quarter from a year earlier, and holding steady at 0.8% on a quarter-on-quarter basis, didn’t recede fast enough to justify an RBA cut in December, as the CBA had previously predicted. (The other big three banks had pencilled in 2025 for the first cut for a while.)
“We look for the first 25bp rate decrease in February 2025,” Aird said. “Our expectation is that the disinflation process will continue over Q4 24 and the board will view February 2025 as the most appropriate time to commence cutting rates.”
Then again, it’s hard to know what might happen in the US (or elsewhere) in the final months of 2024. Let’s hope there aren’t rate cuts for some very bad reasons.
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Community funding will help break disadvantage cycle: treasurer
Federal funds being used to provide more localised support to disadvantaged people will help make Australia fairer, the treasurer says.
The commonwealth will spend almost $20m over five years to establish partnerships for local action and community empowerment, which will help design and deliver programs that address issues like youth development, health, education, employment and youth justice.
The government will partner with local communities to develop solutions to these complex social issues. The initiative is expected to help hundreds of communities and thousands of Australians within its first five years.
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said the funding would help to stop disadvantage flowing across age groups. He told reporters in Melbourne:
We’re working very closely with philanthropic organisations and governments at all levels and local communities to try to see the change that we want so that disadvantage doesn’t concentrate and cascade through the generations.
There’s not just some switch that you can flick to eliminate disadvantage in our country, you need to begin where we can make the most difference, and that’s what we’re doing.
- Australian Associated Press
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Trauma surgeons sound grim warning on dangers of e-scooters
Children as young as five are ending up in hospital with e-scooter and e-bike injuries as officials warn growing use could further clog emergency rooms.
As NSW contemplates how best to legalise the electric transport devices, doctors are urging MPs to impose strict regulation – including bans – on riders aged under 16.
More and more children are arrive in emergency room after crashes in a “very sharp increase” in 2024, SV Soundappan, a trauma specialist at Westmead children’s hospital, told a parliamentary inquiry on Wednesday.
Common injuries include soft-tissue complaints and fractures along with significant head injuries, complex fractures, brain bleeds and internal organ injuries.
The inquiry continues on Wednesday, two days after the NSW government revealed its draft plan to overhaul rules for e-scooters.
Along with legalising the scooters, which are officially barred from use in public areas of the state, the proposed changes include a ban for under-16s along with mandatory helmets and a 0.05 blood alcohol limit. The e-scooters would be allowed on bike paths and shared pathways as long as riders gave way to pedestrians and stuck to 20km/h speed limits.
Soundappan said speed limits on shared paths should be 10km/h, to lower the risk of collisions with pedestrians – if e-scooters were allowed to be used there at all.
The trauma chair of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, Vikram Puttaswamy, predicted an increase in major injuries without stricter rules governing the use of e-mobility devices.
“They would then come to our emergency departments and also increase the amount of morbidity and mortality we are already seeing ... in a significantly stretched hospital system,” he said.
John Crozier, a trauma surgeon, urged parliamentarians to prioritise the needs of pedestrians when reforming laws.
“The devices are powered with electric motors and should be regarded as motor vehicles,” he said.
– Australian Associated Press
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Government 'considering' unsealing confidential robodebt report chapter
The attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, is “giving consideration” to whether a restricted section of the robodebt royal commission report should be publicly released.
This morning, the National Anti-Corruption Commission announced it will reconsider its decision not to start a corruption investigation into six robodebt referrals, after its watchdog found its initial refusal was “affected by apprehended bias”.
In July 2023, the commissioner, Catherine Holmes, wrote a cover letter for the report that was addressed to the governor general. It explained that the sealed chapter “recommends the referral of individuals for civil action or criminal prosecution”.
Holmes wrote that the chapter should “remain sealed and not be tabled with the rest of the report so as not to prejudice the conduct of any future civil action or criminal prosecution”.
But after the APSC released its final report into the 12 referred public servants involved in the unlawful scheme, some advocates have questioned whether the restricted section should now be released.
The NDIS minister, Bill Shorten, told the National Press Club in August he had been unsuccessful in making the case but would try to continue using his “powers of persuasion”.
On Wednesday, following the Nacc Inspector’s report, Dreyfus’ office said the matter was still being considered.
A spokesperson said:
The government is giving consideration to questions relating to the release of the confidential chapter.
Read more:
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ING website and app undergoing access issues
ING Australia said they are aware of customers “experiencing issues accessing the ING website and app”.
“The issue has been identified and our team are making progress in resolving the disruption,” they said on X.
We are aware that some customers are experiencing issues accessing the ING website and app. The issue has been identified and our team are making progress in resolving the disruption.
— ING Australia (@ING_Aust) October 30, 2024
We sincerely apologise to any customers who may be impacted.
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Advocates say social media age ban laws must first consult youth
Youth advocates have urged parliament not to develop policies around restricting young people’s access to social media without consulting with those it will affect.
The parliamentary committee on social media in Australian society is today hearing from young people from the eSafety Youth Council and Reach Out Youth Advocates and heard that social media is now an integral part of life for young people.
William Cook, a member of Reach Out Youth Advocates member, said regulatory changes affecting social media should be developed with young people:
We believe that any regulations or policy changes affecting social media should be developed with input from young people who are experts in their own digital experiences.
It should also come with increased controls over algorithms, to give young people a say in what they’re shown and keep them protected from harmful content, Cook said. It should also come with education around online safety and digital literacy.
The eSafety youth council said an age ban should not be the only change and other changes, including making platforms safer, should also be implemented.
The advocates said there was still too little detail on how age assurance would work in practice and what platforms would be covered.
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Man in hospital after alleged murder of woman in Melbourne home
A man charged with the murder of his girlfriend has failed to appear at his first court hearing because he is in hospital.
Joel Micallef, 33, was on Tuesday charged with the murder of Nikkita Azzopardi after family members found her body after a welfare check. The 35-year-old woman was found dead at her South Morang home, in Melbourne’s north-east, on Monday.
Micallef was due to face Melbourne magistrates court on Wednesday morning, but his lawyer asked for the hearing to proceed in his absence as he is in hospital.
“He’s being treated in hospital for health complications,” defence lawyer Clare Morris told the court. She said it was his first time in custody.
Prosecutors were given until 22 January to hand over their brief of evidence to Micallef’s lawyers. He will next appear in court on 5 March 2025.
– Australian Associated Press
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Queensland LNP to await advice on pill-testing ban three weeks out from schoolies
A hardline stance on drugs might be put on hold for schoolies by the new Queensland government, with the premier balking at an immediate pill-testing ban, AAP has reported.
Pill testing at the popular end-of-year event on the Gold Coast was to be rolled out at a cost of $80,000, but the LNP said It would ditch the scheme if elected.
After ending Labor’s nine-year reign at the election on Saturday, the new premier, David Crisafulli, said he would await advice on a pill-testing ban with the schoolies event just weeks away:
I’m going to take some advice on that and I’m going to do that in a deliberate way – that’s important.
The question was asked about schoolies, which is in three weeks’ time – we’re not talking about in the future, I’m talking about this event here and I’ve asked for some advice.
Queensland is one of only three jurisdictions in the nation to have legalised pill testing, which reduces the risks and harms associated with drug use. It is available in 28 countries across Europe, the Americas and across the ditch in NZ.
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Victorian coroner calls for ‘improved public awareness’ on wild mushroom dangers after 98-year-old dies
The Victorian state coroner, John Cain, has called for “improved public awareness about the dangers of consuming wild mushrooms” following the death of a Bayswater woman after she and her son were poisoned by a meal made with mushrooms from her garden.
The coroner’s report was released today. It found that 98-year-old Loreta Maria Del Rossi, who passed away in May this year seven days after eating the homemade mushroom meal, died from “multi-organ failure due to poisoning from amatoxins”.
Amatoxins are “the toxin found in lethal ‘death cap’ and yellow-staining mushrooms,” according to a media release from the coroners court of Victoria.
The yellow-staining mushroom is often confused for edible mushrooms that can be purchased in supermarkets and are the most commonly eaten poisonous mushroom in Victoria. The death cap mushroom is usually whitish, yellow, pale brown or green in colour and often grows under oak trees.
The estimated lethal dose of amatoxins in humans is 0.1 mg/kg. As such, a 50g mushroom may contain a potentially fatal quantity of amatoxins for a 70kg adult.
Del Rossi grew her own vegetables, and regularly collected wild edible grasses, the coroners court said. It outlined that Del Rossi located a patch of wild mushrooms growing in her front yard in April, and collected, cleaned and tested them. When her and her son consumed the mushrooms, they “did not experience any negative effects”.
One month later, she found more mushrooms growing in the same patch of yard, and prepared them for dinner, the court said. Del Rossi and her son both fell ill that night, called 000 and were transported to hospital. Her son survived, but her own condition deteriorated and she entered palliative care on 20 May.
Judge John Cain said:
I commend the Department of Health for publishing a health advisory regarding the consumption of wild mushrooms. However, I believe that additional public awareness is merited.
He recommended the Department of Health and Victorian Poisons Information Centre run an annual advertising campaign each autumn, warning about the dangers of consuming wild mushrooms.
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NSW police challenge Newcastle anti-coal ‘protestival’ in court
The New South Wales police force is challenging a planned protest through the supreme court for the second time this month – this time an event in Newcastle calling for climate action.
The November protest is organised by Rising Tide and known as the “People’s Blockade of the World’s Largest Coal Port”. It would involve thousands of activists paddling into the Port of Newcastle on kayaks and rafts to stop coal exports from leaving Newcastle for 50 hours.
The event, which is also advertised as a “protestival”, includes workshops and music in the lead-up to the paddle-out.
This is the second year in a row that Rising Tide planned such an action. Last year, the police accepted the group’s form 1 to block the port for 30 hours.
NSW police later charged more than 100 people after protesters blocked the major coal port beyond the agreed deadline. Among those arrested was a 97-year-old man who was a Uniting church minister.
One of the protest organisers, Zack Schofield, said NSW police had sought a court order challenging their form 1 application. If accepted, the application protects participants from being charged by police for the disruption under obstruction and unlawful assembly offences.
Read more here:
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Diseases expert says pandemic planning must put a dollar value on life
Prof Peter Collignon, a Australian National University microbiologist and infectious diseases expert, says governments need to be more “hard-nosed” about putting a price on life when planning for future pandemics and conduct cost-benefit analyses on the economic and social impact of lockdowns versus how many, and who, they might save.
Collignon told ABC radio Canberra on Wednesday that health economists generally valued a life at about $50,000 a year of good-quality life.
“So when people say you can’t put a price on life, in fact, health always does when they’re making decisions about allocating billions of dollars, and we need to look at that,” Collignon said.
If you’re going to actually put in severe restrictions, and it’s going to cost you billions of dollars in your economy, you’ve got to look at how many lives are you really going to save from that and what is the age of those lives? Saving a 15-year-old is different to saving an 85-year-old.
Now, if you’re 85 you’ll have a different attitude, but you know, you’ve got to be a bit hard-nosed about this in how you allocate resources in society and how you interfere with people’s livelihoods, as well as trying to make their health as well as you can with the resources you have.
Collignon was responding to the findings of the federal government-commissioned Covid-19 inquiry, published on Tuesday, which found lockdowns during the pandemic’s emergency phase had eroded public trust in governments, seriously damaged children’s mental health in particular and imposed a significant burden on the economy.
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The increase in services inflation in the September quarter isn't what the RBA wants to see: (Via @ABSStats ) pic.twitter.com/W22ByUjoby
— @phannam@mastodon.green (@p_hannam) October 30, 2024
Cheaper energy drove drop in September quarter inflation
The September quarter inflation numbers will provide some comfort to the Reserve Bank that its interest rate hikes are doing their job. The fact that markets barely budged on the inflation news suggests investors were sanguine too, with the dollar and stocks pretty steady.
As flagged, energy prices fell in the September quarter, led by a 17.3% slide for power prices and 6.7% for automotive fuel, the ABS said.
The former will vary across the nation, since residents in Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania collected hefty rebates on 1 July (while the rest of us had to make do with $75 per household from the Albanese government that we’ll get at the start of each quarter this financial year).
The drop in petrol prices will be more widespread. Whether the drop will be sustained hinges a lot on how the Middle East conflicts fare (and also if China’s economy really does perk up).
Anyway, food and non-alcoholic drinks added 0.6 percentage points to the modest 0.2% rise in quarter-on-quarter CPI, itself the smallest increase since the June 2020 drop during the early Covid shutdowns.
Less promising, though, was services inflation. This has actually risen by 4.6% from a year ago, versus the 4.5% annual pace in the June quarter. Rents were up 6.7%, the slowest pace since the June quarter of 2023 but still uncomfortably high for many.
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More than $40,000 of stolen Bluey coins recovered in Sydney, police say
More than 40,000 limited edition Bluey coins have been recovered during a search in Wentworthville, NSW police have said.
Police received a report that “a large amount of currency” had been stolen from a warehouse in Wetherill Park on Monday 12 July this year.
Officers were told 63,000 unreleased limited edition $1 Bluey coins, produced by the Australian mint, had been stolen.
Two men and one woman have been charged and remain before the courts, police said in a statement.
Detectives searched a self-storage facility in Wentworthville yesterday aftenoon and found Royal Australian Mint bags containing a total of $40,061 of the stolen Bluey coins, police said.
Police also located and seized other items believed to have been stolen, including a number of power tools, clothing items and bags.
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Inflation falls to 2.8%, its lowest rate in three years
Australia’s headline inflation rate retreated to its lowest in more than three years in the September quarter as petrol and electricity prices fell.
The annual consumer price index for the July-September period was 2.8%, or the lowest since the March quarter of 2021, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has just reported. That outcome compared with the 2.9% pace expected by economists and the 3.8% headline result for the June quarter.
The measure of underlying inflation – the trimmed mean gauge – came in at 3.5%, putting it back on track towards the Reserve Bank’s 2%-3% inflation target range.
More details coming shortly.
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Matthew Richardson goes viral by falling into his pool
The AFL hall-of-famer Matthew Richardson (now fall-of-shamer) awkwardly stumbled into his pool while giving it a clean – and caught the moment on a security camera:
Fellow Tigers goal-kicking great Jack Riewoldt joked in the comment section: “Fake video...you’ve got someone who does this for you #poolboy.”
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Victoria consumer affairs minister on rental reports
As we reported earlier, the Victorian government has announced a suite of rental reforms, including a ban on no-fault evictions and landlords and real estate agents charging fees to process rent or conduct background checks.
Speaking at a rental property in Clifton Hill earlier this morning, Victoria’s consumer affairs minister, Gabrielle Williams, says the reforms will be “gradually rolled out” over the next 12 months. She said:
These are reforms that directly respond to the feedback that we’ve received from renters and renter advocates, issues that we know are playing out in our rental market right now ... These are the reforms that we’re introducing to make sure that we’re getting the right balance in that marketplace, that we are, on one hand, providing the opportunities for landlords and property investors, but also that we are making sure that for those renters in our community, they have a safe, secure and fit-for-purpose place to call home and they’re not being unnecessarily and unfairly stung by charges that they should just simply not have to pay.
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Victorian health minister on Covid inquiry report
Victoria’s health minister, Mary-Anne Thomas, was also asked about the Covid-19 inquiry report when she arrived at parliament this morning. She said she was yet to read the report in full but would consider its findings and recommendations:
I welcome the commonwealth’s commitment to establish a centre for disease control here in Australia. We are one of the very few developed nations that does not have such a centre. At the time of this unprecedented event that was extremely difficult for all Australians, we took the advice of health experts and put in place a range of initiatives. We took their advice in order to protect the lives and livelihoods of all Victorians. The actions that we took during that time saved lives, and they saved businesses. We kept people employed, but I will take time to read the report in detail, to examine its findings and recommendations, to see what actions we need to take.
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Pandemic showed Victoria Liberal party ‘at its worst’, says premier
Back to the Victorian premier’s presser a short while ago.
Jacinta Allan dismissed suggestions her predecessor, Daniel Andrews, failed to communicate decisions made during the early years of the pandemic to the Victorian people. She said:
All Victorians remember so very well the daily dissemination of information from the former premier. He was singularly focused on providing information to Victorians, directly to Victorians, something like 120 daily press conferences in a row that contained significant amounts of information.
Asked about opposition leader John Pesutto’s comments on ABC News Breakfast earlier this morning, in which he said the Victorian lockdowns were “selective”, and the government picked and chose which industries it closed “for no apparent reason”, Allan replied:
During the pandemic, the Victorian Liberal party showed their worst. They were not on the side of Victorians. Their approach to the virus is to let it rip ... You know what let it rip looks like? Let it rip would have looked like many, many, many people dying, many, many more people in hospitals and businesses being very, very badly affected. That is the Victorian Liberal party, in my view, at its worst, and it appears that they’re continuing that approach ... They were playing politics then, and they’re playing politics now.
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Today’s inflation data dump to shape RBA’s interest rate outlook
For all the recent chatter about whether the economy was running too hot (eg the latest bumper month for job creation) or if it had stalled (with per capita output still in retreat), the numbers that really matter as far as the Reserve Bank is concerned about will be revealed today.
The ABS’s quarterly inflation figures, out today at 11.30am AEDT, will comfort – or alarm – the RBA board when it meets next Monday and Tuesday to review its interest rate setting.
Economists are primed for good news, both for the headline consumer price index (CPI) and the underlying inflation rate (known as the “trimmed mean”).
The former may well have a “2” in the front of it for the first time since early 2021. The latter may ease to 3.5%, or so economists predict, resuming a retreat that was interrupted in the June quarter.
We explored the prospects that the cost-of-living crisis is abating last weekend, and we will probably get more evidence of that today. Petrol prices have been tumbling for a while (war in the Middle East notwithstanding) and electricity bills have been suppressed by generous government handouts (especially in Queensland and WA).
The RBA governor, Michele Bullock, however, said last month the central bank would likely want more proof inflation is “sustainably” within its 2%-3% target range before it would cut interest rate cuts.
Prior to today’s figures, investors were betting there was only a 10% chance of a 25 basis-points RBA rate cut to 4.1% next week and about a one-in-four chance in December. They estimated a reduction of that size was only a certainty in May next year, according to the ASX’s rate tracker.
We’ll find out in a bit over an hour if those bets are on the money.
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Victoria premier on Covid inquiry
Earlier, at Victorian premier Jacinta Allan’s press conference, she was asked about the federal Covid-19 inquiry, which handed down its long-awaited report yesterday.
She said while her focus had been on the Auburn South primary school accident, she would review the findings of the report:
It was a one-in-100-year pandemic with a deadly disease that was killing people, and so [the Victorian government response] was based on the best public health expert advice that we had ... This informed the measures that we put in place here in Victoria. And so we’ll have a look at the report. But I think it’s important to reflect that this was a one-in-100-year pandemic. It was unprecedented.
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ABC television news audience down 4%
Audiences for ABC news and current affairs on television are down by 4% on last financial year, according to the ABC Annual Report tabled in parliament late on Tuesday.
News programs on ABC TV and the ABC News channel reached an average of 5.2m viewers weekly across metro and regional areas.
The ABC News website, ABC News app, and current affairs websites combined recorded an average of 8.1m weekly users in 2023–24, down 7% on the previous year.
Meanwhile, audiences for ABC News on TikTok are growing significantly, with a total of 591m video views on TikTok.
A spokesperson for the ABC said audience data should be understood in the context of softening audience trends across the entire media sector.
“The ABC is actively engaged with audiences as they increasingly transition to digital platforms,” the spokesperson said.
This is clearly in evidence with the most recent Ipsos rankings where ABC News is the top news website in the country.
While news audiences were down generally, big news events brought spikes in viewers: including the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war, the voice referendum, the Optus outage, the stabbing attacks at Sydney’s Westfield Bondi Junction, the federal budget in May 2024 and the return of Julian Assange in June 2024.
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Principal asks public for privacy and space
Marcus Wicher has acknowledged the staff and parents at the school who have helped comfort students:
The courage and care can only be described as remarkable.
Wicher requests the media respect the school’s privacy and give the community the space to grieve.
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School’s principal says community response ‘overwhelming’
Marcus Wicher, the principal of the Melbourne school where a fatal collision occurred on Tuesday, says the response from the local community has been “overwhelming”.
An 11-year- old boy died after a car veered off the road and crashed through the fence at Auburn South primary school in Hawthorn East at about 2.30pm on Tuesday. Four other children remain in hospital.
Speaking to media, Wicher says the school community’s thoughts are with the family of the boy, Jack, who has passed away.
We are entirely focused as a school community on the welfare of our students, staff and the broader school community.
Together we will get through this.
Members of the school community have been laying flowers near the school fence to pay tribute to the boy who died.
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Floral tributes laid outside primary school
Students and community members are paying tribute at the site of a fatal car crash into a fence at Auburn South primary school in Hawthorn East, Melbourne.
A child died and four others remain in hospital with serious injuries after the crash yesterday afternoon.
Police said the 40-year-old driver had driven to the school to collect a child, who was in the car at the time of the crash. Both the driver and the child in the car were unharmed.
The incident occurred when she performed a U-turn, crashed through a fence and into a table where five children were sitting, police said.
Read more here:
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Premier stresses importance of giving school community space to grieve
Victorian premier Jacinta Allan has urged Victorians to give the school community in Hawthorn East space to grieve:
When you hear this sort of news, your instant reaction is, how can I help? That shows the best in us … There is that instinctive reaction, you want to help, you want to provide support. I understand that people are leaving tributes at the school, and we will get some further advice on that. But also when we spoke with the department yesterday evening, there was some discussion about how we can provide, perhaps an email address for Victorians to be able to provide a message of support to the school.
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Allen says she has spoken to the school’s principal
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, says she’s yet to speak to the family of the 11-year-old who died but reached out to the school’s principal after he had spoken to the boy’s mother. She says:
It was a really tough conversation for the principal. And he relayed to Ben and I just how strong the family is in the toughest of times. And he also, I’m sure he won’t mind, he really did convey his appreciation for the messages of support that have already been coming into the school community. We have spoken to the to the principal, Ben we’ll be visiting the school this morning, we are taking very carefully the advice from the department of education about how we can best provide support to the school. Part of that is having the school open.
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Deputy premier to visit primary school
Deputy Victorian premier Ben Carroll says the accident is “every parent’s worst nightmare”. He says he will be attending the primary school with the secretary of the department of education this morning.
Some 25 additional teachers from neighbouring will schools will also be on hand, as well as chaplains and counsellors. Carroll says:
One thing I have learned though over the past 12 months as minister for education is that when tragedy or difficult circumstances strike at the heart of a school, the school community gets around that school and does everything I can to support them.
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Official investigations under way after fatal Melbourne school crash, premier says
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, and her deputy, Ben Carroll, who is also the education minister, are holding press conference at parliament following the death of an 11-year-old at a primary school in Melbourne’s east yesterday.
Allan says her thoughts are with the Auburn South primary school community after the accident.
Yesterday afternoon should have been a totally unremarkable sunny Tuesday afternoon for the Auburn South primary school community but what we saw unfold yesterday afternoon was just such a deep and terrible tragedy that has touched not only the strong Auburn South primary school community, but it has touched communities right across Victoria, and can I say, my heart and thoughts are with the boy’s family who has passed away. My thoughts are with his family and the broader school community as they grieve the loss of their little boy. And also my thoughts are with the families of the other kids who are continuing to receive care in our hospital system as they as they go through what are, in some instances, quite serious injuries.
Official investigations have been commenced by Victoria police, they’re under way, and they are continuing today so and it’s important to let those investigations take its place.
She says the school has reopened today to provide support to students and staff:
That shows remarkable bravery from the principal and the teachers who are wanting to make sure that the students in their school are supported.
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Pesutto says Victoria’s ‘selective’ and ‘disparate’ Covid lockdowns eroded trust
John Pesutto says Victoria’s pandemic lockdown response was “selective”, causing “a rapid erosion of trust”.
Speaking to ABC News Breakfast after the release of the Covid inquiry report yesterday, Victoria’s opposition leader says:
We can never repeat what happened in Victoria. They were the harshest lockdowns.
But also, what really concerned Victorians perhaps more so than Australians in other states and territories was that a lot of the lockdowns were very selective. And the enforcement that coupled those lockdowns were also very disparate across the community. And so there was a rapid erosion of trust in how fair a lot of these measures were. Equally, it gave rise to doubts about how legitimate the lockdowns were in many respects, because they were so disparate and so obviously selective. Some industries were allowed to continue operating, which enabled some people to maintain their livelihoods. Whereas in other cases, like retail and hospitality, livelihoods were smashed for no apparent reason when compared with other industries that were allowed to remain open.
Public health imperatives must always be observed. No one’s arguing with that. But you have to demonstrate that legitimacy and that equality of enforcement and application across the community.
We obviously don’t want those doubts to lead to people disengaging from the important work around vaccinating young kids.
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John Pesutto says “we’ve just got to rally around each other in the community” after yesterday’s fatal crash into a primary school in Hawthorn East.
Victoria’s opposition leader told the ABC that high schoolers across the road are sitting their VCE exams:
I think the most important thing today is that we rally around the school, the family of the young boy, in particular, who has tragically lost his life – but also those students who are still battling their way through recovery, and their family.
The other thing to bear in mind … is that, across the road, Burgess Street, there’s Auburn high school, and there are kids doing their VCE exams. It’s a very concentrated area of learning with Auburn South primary school to the north of Burgess Street and Auburn high school to the south. It’s a very busy, lively, concentrated area.
Really, we just have to rally around the school. Whatever lessons we can learn out of it, obviously out of these tragedies, we must learn … That will take its natural course. For now, we’ve just got to rally around each other in the community.
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Pesutto says fatal crash at Melbourne primary school ‘felt right across the area’
Victorian opposition leader John Pesutto told ABC News Breakfast the fatal car crash into a primary school in Hawthorn East is “the worst nightmare” for the community, and is being “felt right across the area”.
Pesutto, who is the member for Hawthorn, said:
It’s the worst nightmare for parents and families and siblings and the school community that you could possibly imagine.
The Auburn South Primary School community is one of the most active and engaged school communities I’ve ever come across. They are so involved not just in the immediacy of our local community in the area of Hawthorn East, but more broadly – even in international efforts that they engage in. It’s a really dedicated school. And the principal there, Marcus Wicher, has been a long-term principal and leads that community.
It’s just devastating for them, and it’s been felt right across the area.
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States didn’t have the ‘toolkit they needed’ during early Covid pandemic, health minister says
Asked about state premiers and different health ministers “going their own ways” on pandemic decisions, federal health minister Mark Butler says “they didn’t have the tools in the toolkit that they needed”.
He spoke to ABC News Breakfast:
Our leaders worked so hard and they made some incredibly courageous decisions but they didn’t have the tools in the toolkit that they needed. Most countries lacked the pandemic plans that we know with the benefit of hindsight, they should have had in front of them when this first hit. They didn’t have the plans. So the report say that is they effectively had to build the plane while they were flying it. We can be in that position again.
The CDC will work with other agencies to make sure that there are comprehensive pandemic plans in place next time. There will be regular stress testing of government systems to make sure that they don’t just gather dust on the shelves - that we have the capabilities in our systems to respond very quickly if the thing hits again. And that will be a central role of the CDC.
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Mark Butler flags importance of an Australian CDC in future pandemic responses
The federal health minister, Mark Butler, spoke to ABC News Breakfast this morning, after the Covid inquiry report was released yesterday.
He says “trust is lost very quickly, and very easily sometimes, and it’s much harder to rebuild”.
Yesterday he announced the establishment of an independent Centre for Disease Control centre.
He told ABC News Breakfast this morning:
Currently, we’re the only developed country that doesn’t have that single authoritative body that can provide to governments and communities about an evidence-based approach to pandemic response and to other communicable diseases. So that is the foundation on which we build a system to respond to the next pandemic - because there will be a next one – much more effectively than we did to Covid.
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Allan says Covid response focused on ‘the vulnerable members of our community’
Asked about whether she concedes the Vic government “got the balance wrong” during the Covid-19 pandemic response, Jacinta Allan says “our focus was very much on the health and wellbeing of our community”.
Speaking to ABC News Breakfast a short while, she said:
We all remember just how incredibly difficult and challenging it was, how it affected every aspect of our lives. And in terms of how the government worked during that period of time – we worked with those public health experts and advisers. Our focus was very much on the health and wellbeing of our community, particularly the vulnerable members of our community who were most at risk.
This was a deadly disease. We saw, particularly overseas, it killed so many people. So we were focused on a public health response – a public health response that was focused on supporting the health of our community, and also too understanding the significant additional supports that we needed to provide to small businesses to support them during this incredibly difficult time.
The Covid inquiry report was released yesterday. Read about it here:
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Allan urges those affected by fatal school crash to reach out for mental health support
Victoria premier Jacinta Allan urges anyone affected by the Hawthorn East school crash to reach out to mental health and wellbeing services:
We all handle these sorts of grief, these incidences, differently. We should make sure, if we feel we need help, please do reach out. Particularly if anyone’s got their own little kids who might be really disturbed by this – our schools do have really great mental health and wellbeing supports in our schools. So, really encourage families to reach out to provide that support – but also, too, take care of each other. Hold our little ones really tight.
I’ve got a little boy in grade 5 in a local primary school, and I think we all felt so sick to the stomach yesterday afternoon when we heard that news.
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Victoria premier sends ‘deepest condolences’ after fatal school crash
The Victoria premier, Jacinta Allan, spoke to ABC News Breakfast a short while ago about the fatal crash of a car through a school fence in Hawthorn East yesterday afternoon.
She said the Department of Education will provide additional support, including teachers and counselling, to the school.
It’s a tragic accident that occurred yesterday afternoon at the Alban South primary school. My deepest condolences are with the family, who are grieving the loss of a beautiful little boy today, but also to the broader school community.
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Driver released after fatal primary school car crash in Melbourne
The fatal crash of a car through a school fence in Hawthorn East, Melbourne, yesterday afternoon is being investigated by Major Collision Investigation Unit detectives, Victoria police said in a statement.
It’s believed the car was traveling along Burgess Street just after 2.30pm when it veered off the road and crashed through a school fence.
The driver, a 40-year-old Hawthorn East woman, was arrested at the scene. She has since been released pending further enquiries, police said.
“One boy, aged 11 years old, was taken to hospital with critical injuries but he has since died,” police said. Two girls aged 11 years old, one 10-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy were all taken to hospital with serious injuries.
Police on Tuesday said the 40-year-old driver had driven to the school to collect a child, who was in the car at the time of the crash. Both the driver and the child in the car were unharmed.
The incident occurred when she performed a U-turn, crashed through a fence and into a table where five children were sitting, police said.
Speaking from the school on Tuesday afternoon, Victoria police inspector Craig McEvoy said “it appears it is a tragic accident” and had been tough on ambulance workers and other first responders, as well as for the school community.
Read more here:
Updated
Thank you Martin Farrer for kicking off the day’s live blog!
I’ll be rolling your news updates throughout the day – if you see anything you don’t want us to miss, send it my way on X @At_Raf_
Healthy funds needed for disease centre to do tough job
Australia’s planned Centre for Disease Control has a complex and tough task ahead to fulfil its mandate but the real challenge will be funding it into the future, Australian Associated Press reports.
The centre is a key recommendation of the 670-page report on Australia’s Covid-19 response, launched yesterday, which also found the disease exhausted the nation’s healthcare systems, public service and economy, and eroded public trust.
The federal government says it will spend $251m over four years to establish the centre, with a commitment of funding into the future despite the looming election.
The Public Health Association of Australia says the initial funding is modest but a good start.
“The report very much looks to the CDC to take a lead a whole range of the big challenges,” the chief executive, Terry Slevin, said.
This includes building infrastructure to collect accurate disease information in real time.
The centre is also likely to be tasked with behavioural research and influencing the choices that people make when it comes to health.
“These are easy to say, not so easy to do, and so the challenge is to make sure that investment is very much for the long term and growing to match the level of responsibility the Centre for Disease Control can and should prosecute,” Slevin said.
“It has to be a long-term commitment,” he said. “That’s the nature of public health.”
Looking past headline inflation for real deal on rates
Household energy discounts are weighing on Australia’s headline inflation rate, hopefully enough to help it back within the Reserve Bank’s target range of two to three per cent later today, Australian Associated Press reports.
But the central bank says it plans to look through the subsidies because they are temporary, with headline inflation – the official gauge – forecast to exceed the target band by the end of 2025 before returning by late 2026.
Economists, however, say trimmed mean inflation will instead be the figure to watch when the September quarter consumer price index is released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics at 11.30am.
That measure scrubs away major price changes at either end, accounting for the likes of expiring energy bill relief.
Westpac economist Justin Smirk was expecting progress on underlying inflation but the trimmed mean at 0.7% would still be stronger than the RBA would want.
Such a result would take the annual pace to 3.5% from 3.9% in the June quarter.
Lower prices at the petrol pump and cost-of-living assistance were expected to drag the headline figure lower as housing costs, including elevated rents, worked in the opposite direction.
Lower interest rates were still possible before the end of the year, the AMP chief economist, Shane Oliver, said.
“Our base case remains for the RBA to start cutting in February next year, but a cut in December still can’t be ruled out if September quarter trimmed mean inflation comes in as forecast and October monthly underlying inflation shows a further leg down,” Oliver said.
Owners appeal volcano disaster conviction
The owners of an island volcano in New Zealand that erupted in 2019 killing 22 people, including 14 Australians, have launched an appeal against their criminal conviction for violating safety laws, Australian Associated Press reports.
They argue that tour operators – rather than their company – were responsible for the safety of visitors to Whakaari, also known as White Island.
Whakaari Management, a company owned by brothers Andrew, Peter and James Buttle, was found guilty last October of a charge brought by New Zealand’s workplace safety regulator of failing to protect visitors to the island. It was ordered to pay millions of dollars in fines and restitutions to victims of the volcanic eruption, who were tourists from a cruise ship, and their local guides.
Forty-seven tourists and guides were on the island at the time of the eruption, including 24 Australians, 14 of whom were killed.
The company in March filed an appeal. Yesterday, lawyer Rachael Reed told the high court in Auckland that the trial judge had erred when he ruled the volcano’s owners were the managers or controllers of a workplace under the law – and were therefore responsible for mitigating health and safety risks to anyone present.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and then it’ll be Rafqa Touma to take you though the day’s news.
Analysis of parliamentary data shows at least 90% of federal politicians have declared taking up invitations to join the exclusive Qantas Chairman’s Lounge and dozens also received flight upgrades, expensive gifts or hospitality from the national carrier – as debate swirls over Anthony Albanese’s use of Qantas freebies, which he says he has declared under the usual practice.
Yesterday’s report into the government’s handling of the pandemic was a very useful way for Anthony Albanese to divert attention away from the Qantas story, writes Guardian Australia political editor Karen Middleton, but Labor can’t quite seem to move the debate away from Peter Dutton’s attacks on Albanese’s character.
What could help Albanese and Labor is if today’s inflation figures show signs of coming down more, and showing the path towards lower interest rates for the country’s beleaguered borrowers. The numbers for monthly and quarterly price rises are out at 11.30am this morning with expectations they could be lower. More coming up.
And yesterday’s big report on Australia’s Covid pandemic response – which exposed some serious shortcomings – recommended we get an American-style Centre for Disease Control. Public health experts say this is a good move. More on that soon.
