DUTTON TO REVEAL NUCLEAR PLANS
Peter Dutton will finally reveal his nuclear policy today. News Corp newspapers have been briefed on some of the details — including plans to make nuclear reactors “Commonwealth-owned and operated under similar schemes to those overseeing Snowy Hydro and the NBN”, per The Australian.
The story added that “the tightly held nuclear policy to be announced on Wednesday, which does not incorporate wider climate and emissions targets, was not fully briefed to shadow cabinet members on Tuesday night to avoid locations being leaked”.
However, MPs whose electorates might host a nuclear reactor have been briefed by Dutton.
The Daily Telegraph had more intel: Victoria’s Latrobe Valley is expected to be ruled out as a site for a nuclear power station after protests from Nationals MP Darren Chester, while Queensland might host two, at Callide and Tarong. The newspaper’s story said the shadow cabinet had been briefed on specific retiring or former coal-fired power station sites where Dutton wants to build reactors, while backbenchers would be briefed later last night. A party room meeting at 8.30am will consider the draft policy.
NSW BUDGET ENVISIONS 30K NEW HOMES
The NSW government has delivered this year’s budget and one of the headline items is an investment of $5.1 billion to build 8,400 new and refurbished social homes, the ABC reports. Overall, 30,000 new homes were promised.
The Labor budget recorded a $3.6 billion deficit, partly caused by a $11.9 billion hit from a loss in GST revenue, according to Treasurer Daniel Mookhey. He described it as a budget of “must-have” policies rather than “nice-to-have” initiatives (that rhetoric really flows off the tongue, doesn’t it?), naming housing, schools, hospitals, crime prevention, the energy transition and cost of living support as belonging to the former category.
Meanwhile, the state’s former Liberal treasurer Matt Kean has announced he’s leaving politics, throwing a few grenades at Mookhey as he dived for the door. “Daniel Mookhey has broken the budget. He’s left us with a decade of deficits. He’s blamed everyone but himself. I mean, the next excuse we’re going to hear is ‘The dog ate my surplus’,” Kean said, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
Thailand has legalised same-sex marriage, becoming only the third territory in Asia and the first country in South-East Asia to do so.
The legislation passed the Thai Senate on Tuesday night, and will take effect within 120 days of being announced in the Royal Gazette, the ABC’s South-East Asia correspondent Lauren Day reports.
That means couples like Vorawan “Beaut” Ramwan and Anticha “An” Sangchai, who were interviewed by Reuters ahead of the vote, can soon tie the knot.
“We’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” Sangchai said.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, Thailand will be the 37th country to legalise same-sex marriages, with other recent additions including Greece on February 15, and Estonia, whose law was enacted on January 1.
The other countries in Asia that have marriage equality are Nepal and Taiwan (however, according to Human Rights Watch, Nepalese same-sex couples still face near-impossible hurdles to marrying).
Say What?
If the polls are right, most of the candidates won’t be there for a leadership race — and I won’t be there to vote for them either.
Anonymous Tory candidate
The UK’s Conservative Party is bracing itself for a historic thumping in the July election, and a possible “civil war” between factions in the party. Tories have already begun gossiping about who might take over as leader if Prime Minister Rishi Sunak loses the election — but as one anonymous candidate told Politico, even those who consider themselves likely contenders for the top spot can’t be sure if they’ll still be in Parliament when its time to decide.
CRIKEY RECAP
“On June 20 last year, Tourism Australia staff tuned in to an all-hands Zoom meeting to learn more about impending job cuts impacting the agency’s marketing team. Chief marketing officer Susan Coghill and two of her team members used a generic background when they joined the video call. Then, according to sources with knowledge of the meeting, managing director Phillipa Harrison let slip that ‘Susan is in Cannes’.
‘They tried to hide [that she was in France], and all the staff still complain about it — and finding out like that! To make it worse, she hid it from her team and they found out over Zoom,’ one source said.
Another said: ‘[Harrison] didn’t read the room at all. There were quite a few upset people.’”
Labor’s ability to fight the climate wars next election has significantly weakened
Australia’s environmental laws are embarrassing us on the world stage — and are complicit in the destruction of our natural environment.
“The Albanese government was elected in 2022 on a promise to reform Australia’s broken environmental laws. The groundbreaking Samuel review of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act in 2020 recommended it undergo a complete overhaul by 2022. And yet, in April of this year, Labor backflipped on its election promise, indefinitely deferring these reforms.
The past week has seen Opposition Leader Peter Dutton promise to scrap the government’s 2030 climate targets and Climate 200 name its battlegrounds for the 2025 election. These developments are setting the stage for a resurgence of the widely dreaded ‘climate wars’.
If the past election is anything to go by, the climate debate is quite capable of costing Labor seats — seats it desperately must retain to keep alive its dream of a majority government. But does Labor’s track record in Parliament so far prime it to fight off environmental challenges?”
‘Opposite of what she argued in my case’: Pauline Pantsdown says Hanson’s Irwin defamation response hypocritical
In 1998, Pauline Hanson successfully sought an injunction to stop the ABC fromplaying a song parodying her.
“The man who sparked legal action from Pauline Hanson over his parody of her says the One Nation leader is ‘wanting it both ways’ after she was slapped with a concerns notice over her satirical cartoon of Robert Irwin.
Simon Hunt is a satirist better known as his drag persona Pauline Pantsdown. As Pantsdown (which he legally changed his name to at one point), he produced the songs ‘Backdoor Man’ and ‘I Don’t Like It’, both comedic parodies of Hanson that used samples of Hanson’s voice to parody and critique her policies on immigration and welfare.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
New Zealand prime minister hitches ride on commercial plane after jet breaks down (CNN)
South Korean soldiers fire warning shots after North Korean troops cross border, apparently in error (Associated Press)
Putin praises North Korea for Ukraine war support ahead of visit to Pyongyang (The Guardian)
‘I would be beheaded’: Islamist insurgency flares in Mozambique (BBC)
Emmanuel Macron urges New Caledonia residents to lift roadblocks after weeks of unrest (France24)
Six killed in Ecuador as heavy rains trigger landslide (Al Jazeera)
THE COMMENTARIAT
If the RBA does its job, we might all hold on to ours – Millie Muroi (SMH) ($): “On the surface, Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock is nailing her job. Holding interest rates at a near 13-year high isn’t winning her and the RBA board she heads many friends among mortgage holders. But at first glance, she and her colleagues have managed to walk the tightrope between taming inflation and tipping the economy into recession.
Perhaps most impressively, Bullock has helped keep the headline unemployment rate at, or below, 4.1% as of the latest data from May. Look beyond the headline numbers though, and we start to see some cracks. Economic growth is narrowly holding up, rising just 0.1% in the first three months of the year and 1.1% in the 12 months to March. Excluding the COVID-19 era, that 1.1% is the slowest pace of growth since 1991.”
Forget wine and pandas, it’s all about precious rocks and minerals as China’s Premier Li Qiang heads west – Keane Bourke and Jon Daly (ABC): “Cute and cuddly pandas might have dominated the headlines when the Chinese Premier visited South Australia, but the only other state Li Qiang is visiting has bigger ambitions. ‘I’ll take economic-boosting direct flights between Shanghai and Perth any day over pandas,’ WA Premier Roger Cook told reporters with a chuckle on Monday.
Boosting the state’s economy, and therefore the nation’s, is the name of the game for Cook.
But it’s not about flights or pandas or even lifting trade impediments on rock lobster (an issue hinted at by featuring the crustacean at a community banquet). It’s about what was packed in the rows and rows of white bags which greeted Premier Li in the industrial hub of Kwinana south of Perth — lithium, as well as other critical minerals.”
