Read the national news blog for rolling coverage of today’s top stories.
Read the national news blog for rolling coverage of today’s top stories.
The chief executive of insurance giant QBE has criticised Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s threats to break up insurers, claiming forced divestiture would not lower the cost of premiums for Australians.
Unveiling a full-year profit of $2.8 billion, an increase of 30 per cent on the prior year, on Friday, Andrew Horton said the insurance industry was already highly competitive, and Dutton’s threats to force insurers to divest their assets would not make it any more competitive.
“I don’t agree we need to break it up,” Horton said.
“I think there’s competition in the marketplace … We do really appreciate the cost-of-living issue, and we do want to work with governments and states on how to mitigate the risks because we need to lower the risk of buildings being impacted by catastrophes, and to do that, we need to look at building codes.”
One of Western Australia’s most important roads is open to traffic again after flooding from ex-Tropical Cyclone Zelia left sections of it badly damaged.
The Great Northern Highway, which connects Perth to Darwin, has reopened between Port Hedland and Broome as of Friday after temporary repairs.
The cyclone made landfall last Friday as a Category 4 storm, bringing heavy rain and damaging winds to the Kimberley.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Meteorology is warning another cyclone could form off the coast of Queensland in coming days.
Three buses exploded in Tel Aviv, Israel, area parking lots Thursday night, raising suspicions of an attempted, coordinated terrorist attack and prompting Israeli authorities to halt all buses and trains nationwide.
There were no injuries reported.
After the explosions, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that he had instructed the military to carry out “a massive operation” in the West Bank targeting militant hubs and had ordered police and intelligence forces to step up preventive measures in Israeli cities to thwart any subsequent attempted attacks.
The three buses were parked at different depots in Bat Yam, a city south of Tel Aviv, Tzvika Brot, the city’s mayor, said in a statement. Unexploded bombs were also found in parking lots in the nearby city of Holon, Brot noted.
Brot said he had ordered additional security patrols throughout Bat Yam. “The city will remain on high alert throughout the weekend,” he added. “However, the city’s routine continues as usual. There is no change to school tomorrow or any other activities.”
Ofir Karni, director of the Dan bus company, told Israeli news media that the last passenger on one of the buses that exploded had noticed a suspicious bag on a back seat and had alerted the driver. They drove into the depot and got off the bus, and it exploded after they exited, he added.
Meanwhile, Israel is claiming that one of the bodies Hamas returned to them yesterday was not a hostage from October 7, 2023.
With The New York Times
The family of a toddler who died in hospital after critical failings in care were “catastrophically let down” by its operator, prompting a pledge to overhaul systems in place under a controversial private-public model.
Two-year-old Joe Massa went into cardiac arrest and died in September after he and his parents waited more than two hours in the emergency department at Sydney’s Northern Beaches Hospital.
The hospital, opened in 2018, is operated by private provider Healthscope, which is owned by Canadian private equity giant Brookfield under a controversial public-private partnership set up by the previous coalition government.
Under the model, Healthscope has a contract with the NSW government to run the hospital’s public wing until 2038.
NSW Health Minister Ryan Park said he would push for improvements in care at the hospital in light of the toddler’s death, adding that he did not believe the public-private model was the best for healthcare.
“I’ve got to now try and make sure that this hospital is as strong and as robust and as reliable, and most importantly as safe as possible,” he told Sydney radio 2GB on Friday.
“What we need to do at the moment, while Healthscope are still operating this facility, is making sure that they are doing so in a safe, effective way that meets the needs of the community.”
In the case of Joe “we have not only failed to meet the needs of the community, we’ve catastrophically let down a family”, Mr Park said.
AAP
Immigration Minister Tony Burke has slammed independent member for Fowler Dai Le, who earlier claimed she was denied the right to speak at a citizenship ceremony.
Speaking on Sky News this morning, Burke said, since he stepped into his role as immigration minister, he has begun taking part in citizenship ceremonies and he had advocated for Le to speak.
“I was stunned when I heard Dai Le complain. I actually made sure at that citizenship ceremony that she got to speak. She wasn’t listed to speak. The mayor of Liverpool wasn’t going to allow Dai Le to speak and I intervened and said, ‘She’s a member of parliament,’ ” Burke said.
“I have no idea which way anyone is going to vote. Who does have any idea?”
Asked why citizenship ceremonies were being fast-tracked, Burke denied this was the case.
“I’m not fast-tracking it. What we had was a huge backlog. We had a huge backlog of people who were entitled to have these citizenship ceremonies and different councils weren’t having enough ceremonies,” he said.
“We’re making sure that we deal with a huge backlog and, you know, I just say to the people who are complaining, have a bit of patriotism about this. People standing up and saying, ‘I want to make a lifelong pledge of commitment to Australia’ is a good thing.
“The fact that there was such a backlog and people wanted to make the commitment and councils not holding enough ceremonies was holding people back. That was a terrible situation. We’re fixing it.”
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) will be able to continue certifying orange roughy as sustainable after a legal win.
A decision by an independent adjudicator today means the Australia Orange Roughy (Eastern Zone) fishery is set to be certified to the MSC Fisheries Standard by auditor MRAG Americas, with the certificate valid until February 2030.
The certification means the fishery achieved an average scoring of at least 80 out of 100 across the three principles of the MSC Fisheries Standard, covering sustainable fish stocks, minimising environmental impact and effective management.
The case went to adjudication after an objection by the Australian Marine Conservation Society on the basis that the species is endangered. Orange roughy – also known as deep-sea perch, orange ruff, red roughy, slimehead or Hoplostethus atlanticus – is listed under Australian environmental laws as “conservation dependent”, which means the species can be killed.
AMCS sustainable seafood program manager Adrian Meder accused the MSC of having “strayed from its original mission”.
“Most Australians would be appalled at the idea of eating endangered species, yet this MSC certification is wrongly telling them it’s OK with its blue tick,” Meder said.
“We call on Australian retailers and seafood suppliers to reject this flawed certification and support fisheries that are truly sustainable.”
AMCS said orange roughy populations remained highly vulnerable after catastrophic overfishing in the 1980s and ’90s.
To Tasmania, where debate is heating up over the future of the salmon industry.
Environmentalists have been campaigning against fish farming in the island state, particularly in Macquarie Harbour on the west coast, the home of the endangered Maugean skate.
On the weekend Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised to provide “certainty” to the salmon industry by creating special legislation to ensure salmon farming would continue in Macquarie Harbour, pre-empting a review by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.
In a radio interview on the ABC with Hobart host Leon Compton on Wednesday, Albanese cited new research from the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania suggesting skate numbers had recovered.
The draft paper found skate numbers had increased significantly since 2022, but the number of juveniles adding to the population was still lower than before 2009.
Today conservation councils from around Australia have written to the prime minister condemning the move as setting a dangerous precedent that overrides Australia’s nature laws, disregards international World Heritage obligations and poses a serious risk to many of Australia’s other threatened species.
Macquarie Harbour is fed by the King and Gordon rivers and is part of the same World Heritage Area Bob Hawke’s government protected after winning the 1983 election.
Kelly Roebuck, vice chair at Environment Tasmania, said it was “an astonishing turn of events” that the area was now threatened by another Labor government’s “desire to appease the salmon industry”.
“The Australian government promised no new extinctions. Tasmania is facing the highest profile potential extinction since the loss of the thylacine or Tasmanian tiger. The irreversible harm to the Tasmanian brand and economy is not worth the risk for a few multinational foreign owned salmon companies.”
The Coalition has also pledged to ensure salmon farming remains in the harbour if it wins government.
Taking a look at what’s happening in WA …
A teal independent running for the state seat of Fremantle has taken a potshot at Seven West Media’s shareholder links to the gas industry on the second page of the business’ own daily newspaper, The West Australian.
In an advert, Kate Hulett announced a plan to introduce legislation to prevent the gas industry from owning and controlling media outlets in Western Australia.
Seven Group Holdings is the major shareholder of the Kerry Stokes-chaired Seven West Media, as well as SGH Energy, which has interests in the Crux gas field in the Browse Basin and a 100 per cent interest in the Longtom gas field off the coast of Victoria.
Google has won a motion to have an antitrust suit brought by Australian start-up Unlockd dismissed.
Unlockd, which was led by Melbourne-based entrepreneur Matt Berriman, had accused the tech giant of anticompetitive conduct when it banned Unlockd from its app stores in mid-2018.
Media billionaire Lachlan Murdoch made a personal plea to Google’s boss, Sundar Pichai, in an attempt to stop the tech giant from banning Unlockd from its platform. Google’s ban effectively undermined Unlockd’s business model. The start-up collapsed in 2018, soon after Murdoch – who is an Unlockd investor – made his appeal.
A years-long court process has now seemingly come to an end, with a US judge ruling in favour of Google.
“In short, Plaintiff still offers nothing more than its repeated assertion that it was an innovative business and would have been a threat to Google in the Digital Advertising Market absent Google’s alleged conduct,” US District Judge Haywood Gilliam of the Northern District of California said in handing down the decision.
“Such unsupported conclusions are simply insufficient to allege antitrust injury.”
Google was contacted for comment.
“I’m aware of the decision,” Berriman said in a LinkedIn statement.
“I will announce our response to the market in due course. Until then, I’ll continue to focus on building (another) multi-billion dollar disruptive media company Livewire.”
Telco giant Telstra made misleading representations about broadband speeds to nearly 9000 customers of its budget subsidiary Belong, the Federal Court has ruled.
In a case brought by the competition watchdog, the court found that, in October and November 2020, Telstra migrated 8898 customers who were on broadband plans with maximum upload speeds of 40 megabits per second, to plans with 20 megabits per second, without notifying them.
“Telstra’s failure to inform customers that their broadband service had been altered denied them the opportunity to decide whether the changed service was suitable for their needs,” ACCC commissioner Liza Carver said.
“There was no reduction to the price Telstra charged its customers even though the cost charged by NBN Co to Telstra was $7 a month less for the new, lower speed service. We expect better from the country’s largest retail broadband internet service provider and believe these customers, who ultimately received a service they did not agree to, should be compensated.”
The ACCC is seeking penalties, costs and consumer redress, which will be determined at a later date.
In a statement just now, Telstra said: “Our goal is to always do right by our customers. We’re disappointed by this outcome, but we respect the Court’s findings and will review the decision in full before deciding on further action.”
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