What we learned: Friday 12 August
We’ve done it – made it to the end of another working week, more and less in one piece.
Congratulations. We’ll wrap the blog up now – but before we do, here were the major developments of the day:
Federal and state ministers have made a historic decision to consider the environment as part of the National Electricity Objective following a meeting on the energy crisis today. The energy regulator will also be given expanded powers.
More than a third of respondents to a survey of workers in NSW parliament have been bullied or sexually harassed over the past five years, according to a landmark review into the culture at Macquarie Street. The Greens said the Broderick report shows a “toxic boys’ club” extends beyond Canberra’s politics.
Former New South Wales deputy premier John Barilaro has pulled out of his highly anticipated second appearance before a parliamentary committee probing his now-abandoned appointment to a controversial New York trade job, citing mental health concerns.
Education ministers agreed to draft national plan to combat teacher shortages at a joint meeting today. Education minister Jason Clare urged Australians to “stop bagging teachers” prior to the roundtable.
Google has agreed to pay $60m in penalties flowing from a long-running court fight with the Australian competition watchdog over misleading users on the collection of personal location data.
The family of an Indigenous man who died in custody at Port Phillip Prison on Wednesday have asked for privacy as they grieve.
And in Covid news, Australia has recorded at least 86 deaths to Covid, including 35 in NSW, 18 in Queensland and 14 in Victoria.
Updated
The nation’s first law officers have emerged from their first face-to-face meeting in two and a half years with a plan to tackle coercive control.
Coercive control is a tricky one – and not something with universal support. Indigenous communities are concerned it will be used against them, giving more power to police, while other stakeholders are worried about how it will be used in reality – could a teenager make a coercive-control case if their parents took their phone, for example?
But it is also something more states are being asked to consider adding to their law books, with coercive control one of the unifying factors in domestic and family violence cases.
The nation’s attorneys-general have agreed to a softly-softly approach, with a plan to release a consultation draft of the national principles to address coercive control to be released soon.
The consultation draft lays out:
the common features and impacts of coercive control
the importance of coordinated approaches to respond to coercive control, including identified gaps in community understanding, and
concerns about the misidentification of victim-survivors as perpetrators of family and domestic violence, particularly First Nations women.
The consultation draft sets out eight national principles that will set out a common understanding of what coercive control is, its impacts, and the potential consequences of criminalising the behaviour – including any unintended consequences.
That work is all due to start next month, with a progress update due at the end of the year. There won’t be any final sign-off on the principles until early next year.
Updated
RIP
The Victorians Party - founded by Paul Dimattina, Ingrid Maynard, Oscar Yildiz and Bill Lang - has withdrawn from the November election. #springst pic.twitter.com/iT0uFctkOu
— Mitch Clarke (@96mitchclarke) August 12, 2022
