What we learned today, Friday 24 May
We are wrapping up the blog for tonight. Here’s what made the news:
Keith Davis, an Australian passenger who was onboard the Singapore Airlines flight that hit extreme turbulence this week, has said his wife sustained a severe spinal injury. Singapore Airlines soon after apologised to injured Australians.
A Queensland court has delivered a historic judgment that social media company X is bound by the state’s vilification laws.
The foreign minister, Penny Wong, has said two additional flights will bring stranded Australians home from New Caledonia today, due to the worsening security situation there.
The NSW health minister, Ryan Park, said the state was seeing more than 400 cases of influenza a day.
Rental bidding has officially been outlawed in Queensland and price rises will only occur annually after major reforms were passed in the state.
Stolen generations survivors and their families gathered to hear Victoria’s police chief apologise for the role the force played in removing children from their communities over many decades.
Protesters at two Australian universities are packing up their pro-Palestine encampments, citing a shift by the institutions on demands to publicly disclose ties with weapons makers.
The Queensland government has rejected a carbon capture storage project in southern Queensland on the basis that it could cause “irreversible long-term change to groundwater quality”.
A man has faced court today on charges as part of an investigation into the Wakeley riots last month, becoming the 22nd person charged in relation to the riots.
Updated
People’s Commission into housing crisis hears of ‘abusive’ rent prices and ‘scapegoated’ migrants
This afternoon the People’s Commission into the housing crisis heard from migrants and international students who said they are struggling to make minimum wage and living in small, poorly maintained accommodation.
Raf Ramos is a migrant who travelled to study in Sydney and now works in the not-for-profit health space. He lives in a 12 sq m apartment in Camperdown and said he found it “horrific” that migrants were being blamed for the housing crisis.
I find so appalling … the narrative that migrants and international students – which, if I may say so, have brought on a rich diversity and knowledge and skills to this country – are now being scapegoated as the cause for the housing crisis.
International students … have brought in about $36.4 billion to this economy in the last year.
Another woman, Valentina Olivares, says she used to pay more than $200 a week for a shared room in Sydney. She now has her own room but is paying more than 50% of her income to live in a share house.
The amount we are paying is abusive. Because it is so expensive.
Updated
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