Hi there. It's Thursday, August 25 and you're reading The Loop, a quick wrap-up of today's news.
Let's start here: Qantas's big loss
If you missed it, the airline has posted an $860 million net financial loss in the last financial year.
Here are the main takeaways:
- Qantas has recorded a revenue jump of 54 per cent compared to 2021, when state and international border closures affected air travel
- Despite its full-year net loss of $860 million, it's less than what Qantas posted the year before, which was a net loss of $1.69 billion
- The airline says it's on track to achieve cost savings of $1 billion this year, and is looking to be ahead of its pre-COVID profitability
- Meanwhile, CEO Alan Joyce has resisted union calls for him to resign after months of consumer anger over flight cancellations, delays, lost luggage and staff discontent over job outsourcing
- Mr Joyce also says the airline is expecting to return to its "pre-COVID standards" next month
You can take a deeper dive with business reporters Michael Janda and Nassim Khadem here.
We heard a lot about Robodebt
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese officially called a royal commission into the former government's unlawful debt collection system known as 'Robodebt'.
Here's a quick rundown of what you need to know about it:
- The royal commission will look into the establishment of the scheme, who was responsible, how complaints were handled, costs, and ways to prevent it from happening again
- The Robodebt program was established in 2015 and used an algorithm to work out whether Centrelink recipients had been overpaid, but unlawfully claimed almost $2 billion in payments from 433,000 people
- A $1.8 billion settlement was ordered in the Federal Court last year for people who were wrongly pursued, and Justice Bernard Murphy was scathing of government ministers at the time over the "massive failure"
- Former Queensland Supreme Court Justice Catherine Holmes has been appointed to lead the commission
- The final report is due to be handed to the federal government by April 18, 2023
News alerts you might have missed
- The school board in Uvalde, Texas unanimously voted to fire the school district's police chief, Pete Arredondo, over his handling of the deadly shooting massacre at Robb Elementary in May.
- Australian Formula One star Daniel Ricciardo has confirmed he will leave McLaren at the end of the 2022 season. It means he'll depart one season before his contract with the team was due to end.
- A truck driver who killed four Victorian police officers on Melbourne's Eastern Freeway in 2020 has agreed to testify against his former boss in exchange for a reduced sentence. Mohinder Singh was sentenced to 22 years behind bars, but was resentenced to serve 18 years and six months.
What Australia has been searching for online
- Barbie Ferreira. The actor who is best known for playing Kat Hernandez in HBO's Euphoria won't be back for the show's third season, saying she's "having to say a very teary-eyed goodbye" to the show.
- Kobe Bryant. The late basketball great's wife, Vanessa Bryant, was awarded $US16 million ($23 million) over photos that were shared of human remains at the helicopter site where her husband, their 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others were killed in 2020. She had sued Los Angeles County alleging invasion of privacy.
One more thing: Could NASA go to Uranus?
Leave your jokes at the door — NASA is seriously considering Uranus as the next frontier in space exploration.
According to the decadal survey by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine poll in the US, which surveys the scientific community about top research priorities, a Uranus probe was flagged as "the highest-priority new Flagship mission" for the next decade.
Speaking during a virtual town hall meeting last week, Dr Lori Glaze, a director of NASA'S Planetary Science Division, gave a *very* rough timeline for the potential mission.
NASA plans to begin studies of the Uranus Orbiter and Probe no later than mid-2024 which will look at options and costs, but the mission itself is unlikely to get off the ground until the 2030s, before arriving at Uranus in the 2040s. (It is 3.2 billion kilometres away from Earth, after all.)
As for what the mission will involve? The rough concept currently is to have a spacecraft orbit the ice giant before a probe dives down through the planet's atmosphere.
You're up to date
We'll be back tomorrow with more news.
ABC/wires
