What we learned, Monday 27 April
And with that, we are going to put the blog to bed. Before we go, let’s recap the big headlines:
The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, travelled to Japan today as part of another diplomatic tour to secure Australia’s fuel and energy supply chains. The government has said Australia has more fuel now than before the Iran war.
The big defence spend continued, with the government promising three-quarters of a billion dollars to build 268 new Bushmasters in Bendigo, Victoria, over the next seven years to 2033.
NSW police said they believe two children have died after a fire tore through a home in Bowen Mountain, at the foot of the Blue Mountains, overnight. Emergency services were called just after 2am amid reports of a fire. A man and four children were able to escape the house, but two others were unaccounted for at the time.
Northern Territory police are calling for urgent public assistance to locate Sharon, a five-year-old girl missing from an Alice Springs town camp, at Marshall Court, Old Timers Camp, Alice Springs. In a press conference, NT police said they are looking for 47-year-old Jefferson Lewis, who is known to police.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull called the Liberal party’s decision to preference One Nation in the Farrer byelection, “a retrograde move”. He said: “One Nation – apart from preying on racism and division, its whole MO for 30 years, Pauline Hanson’s MO would be to divide Australia”.
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, held a press conference earlier today to announce that a “record” $1.04bn will be allocated in next week’s state budget to rebuild, repair and resurface roads across the state.
Thank you for spending part of your day with us. We will be back tomorrow to do it all agian.
Updated
Kevin Rudd backs climate projects that ‘deliver price outcomes’
Speaking on the same climate and energy panel as Turnbull, former prime minister Kevin Rudd said climate and energy policies that delivered for working families would have staying power, if - “the good folks in communities right across Australia conclude in their head, in their hearts and in their pocketbook, that this is sustainable for them for the future.”
Policy continuity will be supported if we continue not just good messaging about this, but actually deliver price outcomes, security of supply, electricity supply outcomes, new industries and new jobs, which people touch, see, feel, hear and have in their daily experience. Otherwise, they conclude it’s all bullshit and therefore it doesn’t work.
He said there had been a change in the “political and popular firmament” since the war in Iran.
Let us seize the opportunity presented by what is now unfolding in Iran and the strait of Hormuz – and frankly the shock which working people across the world are now experiencing in terms of continued hydrocarbon dependency. They are experiencing the physical terror of becoming insecure in their supply of what they need to drive to work if they’re still using a gasoline-based car.
If you’ve got an EV at the moment, or frankly, if you’ve got a hybrid, you are much less dependent on what comes out of the geopolitics of the Gulf at present. So I’ll just leave that as a word of encouragement, and it’s out of adversity that can also precede opportunity.
Rudd was speaking on a panel with former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, Christiana Figueres, diplomat and architect of the Paris Climate Agreement, and Anna Skarbek, chief executive officer of Climateworks Centre, in conversation with Thom Woodroofe, for the launch of his book Power, Prosperity & Planet: Climate and Energy Policy for All.
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