For today’s news updates as they happen in Brisbane and beyond, follow us here.
For today’s news updates as they happen in Brisbane and beyond, follow us here.
Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie received the first draft of the 100-day Brisbane 2032 Olympic infrastructure review at the weekend.
As Cameron Atfield writes, this starts the process to finalise the venues and connections needed for the event.
The report remains officially under wraps for now, but according to reports on last night’s Nine News, it recommends building a new stadium at Victoria Park.
A new stadium is something the premier rejected before last year’s election, although he’s been walking away from that position since.
Nine says senior LNP members preferred the option of rebuilding the Gabba.
But the draft review questions whether this could be done in time, as the Gabba can’t be demolished until after Tests in the Ashes cricket series are played there in December.
When asked if the Premier would follow recommendations of the review, his office said the government would make its plan public on March 25.
Australian authorities found out Chinese warships were running live fire exercises in the Tasman Sea 30 minutes after it started when a Virgin Australia pilot notified them, instead of officials.
Airservices Australia officials told Senate estimates on Monday night that 49 flights were diverted from flight plans because of China’s exercises.
The incident marked the latest challenge to the government’s efforts to stabilise relations with China, as the Albanese government called for answers from Beijing after commercial pilots were forced to divert their routes last week.
Chief executive of Airservices Australia, Rob Sharp told estimates last night they only found out the Chinese task group was planning a live firing exercise at 9.58am on Friday.
“It was, in fact, Virgin Australia, advising that a foreign warship was broadcasting that they were conducting live firing 300 nautical miles east of our coast,” Sharp said.
“That was how we first found out about the issue.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese held a press conference in Sydney, where he spoke from a health care centre alongside MP Jerome Laxale.
They continued Labor’s promotion of its $8.5 billion Medicare package that will expand the bulk-billing incentive to all Australians. Announced by the prime minister on Sunday, the funding commitment has been matched by the Coalition.
Watch the press conference back here:
Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie received the first draft of the 100-day Brisbane 2032 Olympic infrastructure review at the weekend.
As Cameron Atfield writes, this starts the process to finalise the venues and connections needed for the event.
The report remains officially under wraps for now, but according to reports on last night’s Nine News, it recommends building a new stadium at Victoria Park.
A new stadium is something the premier rejected before last year’s election, although he’s been walking away from that position since.
Nine says senior LNP members preferred the option of rebuilding the Gabba.
But the draft review questions whether this could be done in time, as the Gabba can’t be demolished until after Tests in the Ashes cricket series are played there in December.
When asked if the Premier would follow recommendations of the review, his office said the government would make its plan public on March 25.
The Reserve Bank’s cut to official interest rates has delivered a huge boost of confidence to homebuyers and renters while managing to ease worries about inflation.
The ANZ-Roy Morgan weekly measure of consumer sentiment, released this morning, revealed a 4.7 point jump in confidence over the past seven weeks.
Confidence is now at its highest point since May 2022, before the Reserve Bank started lifting interest rates and just ahead of the election of the Albanese government.
ANZ economist Sophia Angala said confidence among mortgage holders jumped 10.7 points while there was a four point lift in confidence among renters.
“We expect a gradual uptrend in ANZ-Roy Morgan consumer confidence (index) this year, as tax cuts, easing inflation and the RBA’s easing cycle support household disposable incomes,” she said.
While confidence lifted, expectations around inflation eased. Weekly inflation expectations fell by 0.7 percentage points to 4.2 per cent. A month ago, it was around 5.5 per cent.
Measures of current financial conditions increased by 7.5 points while expectations for future financial conditions jumped by 10 points.
All police will be issued with tourniquets in Queensland, following the shooting of an officer in Brisbane this year.
The government will spend $5 million on 125,000 first aid kits containing the devices, with the roll-out beginning immediately.
Police will be given discretion on when and where they should be carried.
“I’m happy to announce that we’ll be supplying every frontline police officer in Queensland with personal tactical first aid kits, which do include the tourniquets,” police minister Dan Purdie told 4BC this morning.
“They’ll do a risk assessment, and, if they decide they might need to carry that on their person at any given time, it’ll be available for them to do that.”
The announcement comes after a 40-year-old senior constable was shot during a confrontation in Annerley earlier this year.
A first-year officer had bought his own tourniquet, which he was carrying, and applied it to his colleague to stem significant bleeding.
Police said his actions may have saved the senior constable’s life.
A station-issued tourniquet was generally previously kept in a police officer’s car.
A tropical cyclone off the Queensland coast might intensify to a category 3 system, but whether it will move closer to the state remains uncertain.
Tropical Cyclone Alfred is sitting about 970km north-east of Mackay in Queensland and is slowly moving south-east while intensifying.
It is expected to become a category 3 system tomorrow as it tracks farther away from the coast.
The Bureau of Meteorology is still watching several scenarios for where Alfred could track later in the week.
Some bring it closer to the coast, others have it moving farther south, well away from Queensland and some even weaken it below cyclone strength.
Alfred is having almost no impact to Queensland in the meantime, other than some gust winds for coastal communities from K’gari to Townsville.
The man accused of murdering Toyah Cordingley is due to face trial more than six years after the young woman’s body was found at an isolated beach.
The Supreme Court of Queensland on Tuesday will start hearing the case in Cairns, about 40km south of the alleged crime scene in the state’s far north.
Rajwinder Singh, a nurse from Innisfail, about 90km from Cairns, was charged in March 2023 with the murder of 24-year-old Ms Cordingley.
Police accused Singh of fatally stabbing Ms Cordingley at Wangetti Beach, north of Cairns.
Ms Cordingley drove to the beach for a Sunday afternoon walk with her dog on October 21, 2018.
Her family raised the alarm later that evening when she didn’t return.
Her body was found by her father and other searchers half-buried in an isolated section of sand dunes about 800m from her car, which was parked in a camping ground at the beach’s southern end.
Her dog was found unharmed and tied to a tree.
Police claimed Ms Cordingley had died after “a personal and intimate attack”.
Ms Cordingley, a pharmacy worker, was known within her hometown to be gentle, humble and loving.
Read more about the case here.
AAP
The Queensland government is still chasing millions in unpaid hotel quarantine fees from the pandemic.
According to the ABC, $31.1 million of $255 million for mandatory isolation stays remains outstanding.
“Our quarantine fee recovery program aimed to reduce the financial burden of COVID-19 on Queensland taxpayers,” a Queensland Health spokesperson told the national broadcaster.
“We have finalised almost 90 per cent of outstanding invoices.”
The department said it intends to recoup all funds.
Workplace Minister Murray Watt has questioned Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s share purchases in the depths of the global financial crisis when he bought bank stocks at low prices.
Declarations to parliament reveal Dutton bought shares involving the big banks the day before Labor announced a bailout in 2009, News.com.au reports.
Speaking this morning in Canberra, Watt said the article raises significant questions about Dutton’s conduct during the GFC when he was shadow minister for finance, competition policy and deregulation.
“This is a guy who had no real history of trading in bank shares, but he entered into an absolute frenzy of buying and selling bank shares over a very small period of time that just happened to coincide with the time that the Rudd government was planning and delivering multi-billion dollar bank bailouts,” Watt said.
“I think it is highly unusual that we see a senior member of the opposition at the time who has no history of buying and selling bank shares, all of a sudden take a great interest on the day of a record low share value and the day before a large bailout is announced by the government that only a small number of people know about.”
Watt said it was up to Peter Dutton to explain what happened to the Australian people.
“Is this some really incredible coincidence, or is there something more to it?”
More from the prime minister’s grilling on ABC’s Q+A last night, where Anthony Albanese was asked why his Medicare policy was only being announced now, and not earlier in his term of government.
Labor announced an $8.5 billion cash injection into Medicare to expand the bulk-billing incentive to all Australians, to increase the bulk-billing rate to 90 per cent. Shortly after, the Coalition said it would also adopt the policy.
Albanese was asked why this hadn’t already been done, given bulk-billing rates have been tanking for years.
He blamed Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s stint as health minister, suggesting the Coalition’s extension of a Medicare rebate freeze for six years had put Labor behind.
“We’ve come up with this policy that builds on what we did a year ago in the budget. We’ve only been here for less than three years,” he said.
“We introduced the biggest reform and funding for Medicare [since its inception] by tripling the [existing] bulk-billing incentive. It has resulted in more than 90 per cent bulk-billing. We have taken that evidence and said it should be applied across the board for every Australian so that everyone can get that access to Medicare that we think is at the heart of the health system.”
Albanese said he understood why people were frustrated it hadn’t been done already, but he insisted that Labor has “improved the Medicare rebate in each and every year that we’ve been in power”.