What we learned today, Thursday 16 February
With that, we’ll wrap up our live coverage of the day’s news.
Here’s a summary of the main developments:
The bodies of two miners who went missing at Dugald River underground mine yesterday have been found.
The New South Wales Liberals are facing internal pushback from senior women in the party who are furious that an upper house MP has avoided any formal sanctions despite admitting he circulated explicit photos of a female rival.
Former Morrison government ministers Josh Frydenberg and Greg Hunt are backing rival candidates in the Liberal party preselection battle for the seat of Aston, after the retirement of Alan Tudge.
Police have labelled last year’s shooting of two police officers and a neighbour in the Queensland town of Wieambilla as Australia’s first fundamentalist Christian terrorist attack.
Dominic Perrottet has lashed out at allegations his younger brother tried to orchestrate a $50,000 branch-stacking operation to unseat the federal Coalition MP Alex Hawke, demanding the inquiry running the probe “leave my family out of it”.
The world is at risk of descending into a climate “doom loop”, a thinktank report has warned.
Thanks for tuning in, we’ll be back tomorrow to do it all over again.
Updated
Liberals still not satisfied with voice proposal after second meeting with working group
The shadow Indigenous Australians minister, Julian Leeser, says the Liberal party is still not satisfied with the voice to parliament proposal and has concerns about the success of the referendum, even after a second meeting with the government’s internal working group.
Leeser and the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, met with the group (which includes Linda Burney, Pat Dodson, Megan Davis, Pat Anderson and other Indigenous leaders) for a few hours this afternoon. In a brief press conference afterwards, Leeser thanked the group and government, calling it a “respectful meeting, a good discussion”.
“But we said at this point in time, we don’t think the referendum is on track for success,” Leeser said.
He again reiterated Dutton’s earlier concerns about wanting more detail on how the voice would work, but raised a fresh criticism about minor changes to the proposed constitutional alteration.
Two weeks ago, the working group released legal advice from its constitutional expert group that suggested an introductory line (“In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples as the First Peoples of Australia”) could go before the three previously-suggested lines that would enshrine the voice.
Leeser claimed “those words keep changing”.
He said he and Dutton asked questions in the meeting but did not expect to get answers to the 15 questions the opposition leader had previously proposed.
Leeser said discussions would continue. Dutton had earlier said “for us to be here with you is important and we’re keen to continue the discussions”.
But at this stage, to sum up, basically no change in the Liberal position.
Updated
