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Lidia Thorpe puts forward motion on ‘shameful’ deaths in custody numbers
Sarah Basford Canales
Independent senator Lidia Thorpe has put forward a motion in the Senate this morning, extending sympathies to the families of the 17 First Nations people who have died in custody this year, including 24-year-old Walpiri man Kumanjayi White who died in May after being restrained by officers at an Alice Springs supermarket.
Labor and the Greens have agreed to pass the motion acknowledging White’s death while extending its sympathies to the families of the 602 Indigenous deaths in custody since the release of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
The motion also called on all parliamentarians to work constructively together to address the over-incarceration and deaths of First Nations people in custody.
While moving the motion, Thorpe said:
These are not just statistics. They are sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, cousins, siblings, grandchildren – lost to a system that continues to harm our people … This motion is about preventing that pain from continuing. It’s about doing what we can, here and now, to ensure that Kumanjayi’s death is not just another entry in a long and shameful list. It must be a turning point.
Thorpe also spoke of the impact on her family after the death of her cousin, Joshua Kerr, a 32-year-old Yorta Yorta and Gunaikurnai man who died in custody in August 2022.
The motion this morning coincides with the release of the latest Closing the Gap report, which revealed only four of 19 targets were on track to be met by 2031. The 2023-24 data showed the national rate of Indigenous youths in detention had increased compared with the previous year.
Key events
Coalition’s efforts to investigate decision to allow US beef imports shot down
Labor and the Greens have shot down the Coalition’s attempt to investigate the decision to allow more beef imports from the US.
The Coalition has been calling for an independent review into the decision, and senator Matt Canavan put forward the motion to have the processes and advice provided by the department looked at by a committee.
The decision to lift restrictions came after the Trump administration had publicly criticised the import blocks, but the government said Australia’s biosecurity won’t be weakened, and the decision was separate from discussions on trade tariffs.
ABC ‘deeply concerned’ about health and safety of freelance journalists in Gaza
The ABC is calling on Israel to allow international journalists to report independently from Gaza and is “deeply concerned” about the health and safety of freelance journalists it works with on the ground.
ABC news director, Justin Stevens, wrote in a statement that the ABC is the “only Australian media organisation with a permanent presence in the region and we have repeatedly tried to get reporters back into Gaza”.
The ABC relies on a “network of freelanced journalists and individuals on the ground”, and Stevens said the organisation is “seeing the effects of food shortages on journalists we work with”.
We rely on a network of freelance journalists and individuals on the ground to tell the story of what they are witnessing. We are deeply concerned about their health and safety.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 186 journalists and media workers, mostly Palestinian, have been killed while gathering evidence of the war inside Gaza since 7 October. That number includes journalists who have done work for the ABC.
We’re now seeing the effects of food shortages on journalists we work with.
ABC Middle East correspondent, Matthew Doran, wrote about the deteriorating situation for journalists last week, describing one colleague he has worked with in Gaza who has lost 34kg and said he “does not have the strength to hold a camera any more”.
Tom McIlroy
Greens bill would give ACCC power to investigate and prosecute price-gouging
As cost-of-living pressures continue to hit households around the country, the Greens say they will push a bill to make price-gouging illegal in the new parliament.
The Greens treasury spokesperson, Nick McKim, reintroduced legislation on the plan on Thursday. It is aimed at increasing pressure on Labor and follows a similar promise from the Albanese government during the election campaign. McKim said:
Coles and Woolworths are using their enormous market power to squeeze every last dollar they can from people just trying to feed their families.
The Greens’ bill would give the competition watchdog the power to investigate and prosecute corporations that exploit their market power to hike prices unfairly.
We welcomed Labor’s election promise to ban supermarket price gouging, but since the election we’ve seen no action.
Labor needs to honour their promise and take action against the profiteering supermarket corporations.”
Josh Butler
Education department ‘ready to act swiftly’ against childcare centres not meeting standards
Going back briefly to Jason Clare’s press conference earlier, the education minister said his department will “act swiftly” against underperforming childcare centres when the new legislation passes parliament.
The bill to crackdown on childcare providers with poor safety standards could pass the parliament today. Clare told us earlier this week that, once the bill passes, the department will start looking at taking action against those not meeting standards. He wouldn’t say which centres were on his priority list for taking action, but flagged he’d soon have more to say. He said today:
The intention here is not for centres to close but for centres to raise their standards to meet the quality and safety standards that we expect them to have. But it’s not an idle threat …
I think parents will want to know if their centres are not up to scratch. And that’s why, as part of this legislation, we’re saying that, if my department imposes a condition on a centre and says, “You’ve got this time to get up to scratch,” they have to tell the parents at that centre what’s happening as well so they’ve got the information they need to make the decisions they need to make, to make sure their children are getting the best-quality care and education they can.
Clare said he wouldn’t go into the priority list today, but that he’d told the department “to be ready to act swiftly.”
“I’ll have more to say next week,” the minister said.
Andrew Messenger
Ninety six homeless Queenslanders banned from emergency accommodation under crackdown
Ninety six homeless Queenslanders have been banned from emergency accommodation for six months within the first two months of a new crackdown.
Mark Cridland, director general for Queensland’s Department of Housing and Public, revealed just under 4,000 people were currently living in a hotel or motel paid for by the department under its ‘immediate housing response’ scheme.
Of the 96 people evicted under a new policy implemented in May, 59% had been evicted as a result of bad behaviour or a breach of hotel rules, he said.
He added no people had yet been banned from both social housing and emergency accommodation, under the government’s new three-strike policy.
Four “first and final notices were issued for dangerous and severe behaviors” have been issued since the policy came into effect in July, according to housing and public works minister, Sam O’Connor.
How office buildings, factories and shopping centres can cause legionnaires’ outbreaks
Following from the news of a legionnaires’ disease outbreak that has seen one man die and six others hospitalised, Guardian Australia’s Matilda Boseley is here to explain what the infection is and how legionella bacteria spreads:
X loses eSafety court case where it claimed Twitter ‘ceased to exist’
Josh Taylor
Elon Musk’s X has lost a full federal court appeal where the company tried to claim that a notice issued to Twitter over its tackling of child sexual abuse material did not account for the company “ceasing to exist” when X Corp merged with Twitter in March 2023.
While the merits of the $610,500 fine issued are waiting on the outcome of a ruling in the administrative review tribunal, X had challenged whether the notice could have been issued in the first place because it was first brought against Twitter prior to the company becoming X.
The full federal court dismissed the appeal, with costs, with the judgment noting that between the notice being issued to Twitter and X being fined, eSafety continued to engage with representatives of the company, and it wasn’t clear what issuing a fresh notice to X would have changed. The judgment stated the challenge “has no substantive merit”
X and eSafety were approached for comment.
One death and six more diagnosed with legionnaires’ disease after Sydney outbreak
Luca Ittimani
A man in his 80s has died as health authorities investigate an outbreak of legionnaires’ disease in a harbourside Sydney suburb.
Another six Potts Point residents have been hospitalised with the infection since late May, one of whom is yet to return home.
None of the patients are known to each other, though they may have become infected after exposure to a common source, according to South Eastern Sydney Local Health District (SESLHD).
Water sources in the areas visited by the seven locals are being tested for potential contamination as health authorities and the City of Sydney seek to determine the source of the outbreak.
Investigation are yet to find legionella bacteria but authorities have asked building owners to disinfect their cooling towers on two occasions since the investigation began in June, SESHLD’s public health unit director, Dr Vicky Sheppeard, said. She added:
People who have recently been in Potts Point and develop these symptoms should see their GP or go to a hospital emergency department.
Outbreaks can occur after contamination of bacteria from cooling towers on large buildings or other environmental sources, Sheppeard said. Legionnaires’ disease is not normally spread from person to person.
The disease is a form of pneumonia, or lung infection, caused by legionella bacteria. The bacteria can be found in damp environments and, in Australia, the two most common types are found in water and soil. You can read more about the disease here:
Education ministers to meet in August to discuss ‘key questions’ relating to childcare centre CCTV
The issue of CCTV will be discussed at the next meeting of state, territory and federal education ministers.
Clare says there are key questions on how that data will be used or stored, which will be addressed at that meeting in August.
The last thing you want to do here is create a honey pot for bad people. So where does the [CCTV] data get stored? How does it get used? I’m on the record saying that I think it has real value in potentially deterring bad people from doing bad things. I think it also has real value for police in being able to use that in their investigations. That’s after – after the fact, though. If it can deter, that’s good.
Asked about the Hecs legislation, and the push from the Greens to go further to wipe Hecs debt completely, Clare says it’s not just a one-off cut, and the reforms change the structure of how the debt is paid back for all students.
The legislation increases the salary threshold for those paying student debts back, meaning graduates on lower salaries won’t have to begin paying their debt back until later, or will pay back less until they earn more.
Instead of paying back around about $1,900 once they hit $70,000, it’s about $450 … When you’re on $70,000 and might be renting, that money matters, that money counts. That helps you to pay for rent, pay for food, pay for public transport.
This was a recommendation of the Accord. It was a recommendation of a bloke named Bruce Chapman who for those who don’t know was the architect of Hecs back in the ‘80s. And he says that this is perhaps the most important change to the Hecs system in 35 years.
‘There is a mountain of work to do’ to fix childcare: Clare
Clare says again that this legislation is only the start of reforms that governments – federal, state and territory – need to do to fix the system.
The impact of the legislation, Clare says, should be to raise the standards of centres, not to force them shut, at a time when the government is also trying to boost the number of children accessing early childhood education.
Clare says there’s already a list of providers prepared, that the government could take action against – but he won’t yet reveal who’s on it.
I won’t expand on that today. I will have more to say on that when the department publishes that list. First, the bill needs to pass the parliament, then it needs to receive royal assent. But I have directed my department to be ready to act swiftly. I’ll have more to say next week.
Hecs cut ‘promised and delivered’ says education minister
The education minister, Jason Clare, is speaking to the media, after the passing of the government’s Hecs bill through the Senate.
We promised it and we’ve delivered.
Young Australians don’t always see something for them on the ballot paper, but they did this year.
Clare says the debt relief will be backdated to 1 June this year, before indexation was applied.
He also says he’s hopeful the childcare legislation will be passed in the Senate before question time today.
Here’s a video of Lidia Thorpe moving the motion earlier this morning:
Josh Butler
Thorpe urges PM to use Garma festival speech to commit to deaths in custody royal commission recommendations
Independent senator Lidia Thorpe has called on Anthony Albanese to use his speech at the Garma festival to implement the recommendations of the deaths in custody royal commission.
Albanese will travel to the Northern Territory this weekend for the important Indigenous cultural and community festival. He will make a speech at the event, which is often where federal leaders commit to new policy and stances in Indigenous affairs.
Speaking after her motion on deaths in custody was passed by the Senate, Thorpe told a press conference that she hoped Albanese would use Garma to commit to taking more federal action on hanging points and other concerns in prisons.
No one’s had oversight of those recommendations for two decades, since the demise of Atsic. They’ve been sitting there for two decades. No one gave a damn that deaths in custody was still happening, so oversight and action on implementing the remainder of those recommendations, removing hanging points would be great.
We know that there’s been hanging points that have been used 20 times. The prisons know. The cops know. The governments know, yet they allow people to continue to take their lives in known hanging points. A recommendation from the royal commission is to remove them, to provide mental health services, to allow communities to self determine their own solutions.
So it’d be great if the prime minister took it seriously and not just rock up [to Garma] to see culture on display.
Labor’s Hecs debt bill passes the Senate
The government’s Hecs debt bill has passed parliament, a key promise of the federal election.
The Greens tried to move several amendments to the bill, but the government wouldn’t support them.
Ultimately the bill passed without amendments – it’s the first bill to pass in the new term – supported by Labor, the Greens, independents including David Pocock, Tammy Tyrrell and Fatima Payman.
Coalition senators abstained from voting, and three One Nation senators voted against the bill.
Lidia Thorpe introducing her motion into the Senate this morning
Thorpe’s motion expressed sympathies to the families of the 17 First Nations people who have died in custody this year, including 24-year-old Walpiri man Kumanjayi White, and to the families of the 602 Indigenous deaths in custody since the release of the 1991 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody.
The motion was supported by Labor and the Greens.
Patrick Commins
RBA deputy governor says consumer price figures ‘very welcome’
The Reserve Bank’s deputy governor, Andrew Hauser, says yesterday’s consumer price figures were “very welcome”, in a further signal that the central bank has gained some comfort with the trajectory of inflation and that it will cut rates next month.
Inflation dropped to 2.1% in the year to June, while the RBA’s preferred underlying measure fell to 2.7% – which Hauser said was in line with the bank’s forecasts.
Still, Hauser also flagged that the central bank was in no rush.
Our strategy for some time is to set interest rates to bring inflation back sustainably – that’s an important word – to the midpoint of the 2-3% target range, and to do that through a policy that is gradual, considered, measured.
Financial markets are pricing in a rate cut on 12 August and another by the November board meeting.
Jim Chalmers on morning TV refused to comment on likelihood of a rate cut next month.
I try not to make predictions about decisions that the independent Reserve Bank will take about interest rates, but I’m really pleased that inflation has come down so substantially.
It’s a powerful demonstration of the progress that Australians have made together in the fight against inflation.
Labor votes against Greens amendment to early childhood bill
The Senate has now moved to the early childhood bill the government has said it wants to be passed this week (ie today).
The Greens are trying to move an amendment to the bill that would note “the need for broader reform” to make early childhood education universal, and calls on the government to establish an independent national Early Childhood Education and Care Commission.
Labor votes against it with a handful of Liberal senators.
They’ll now continue debating – the minister, Jess Walsh, is currently answering questions on the bill in the chamber – before they vote on the bill.
Lidia Thorpe’s condolence motion passes in Senate
Lidia Thorpe’s condolence motion extending its sympathies to the families of the 17 First Nations people who have died in custody this year, including 24-year-old Walpiri man Kumanjayi White, who died in May after being restrained by officers at an Alice Springs supermarket, has passed in the Senate.
Tears as Marion Scrymgour says deaths in custody ‘catastrophic for my communities’
The Labor member for Lingiari, in the Northern Territory, Marion Scrymgour, is tearing up in the chamber, as she also speaks on Aboriginal deaths in custody.
She says two of the First Nations people who have died in custody this year have been from the area that she represents.
This issue weighs heavily on me. As an Aboriginal person from the Northern Territory, these deaths have been catastrophic for my communities. As a mother, as a grandmother, these deaths have weighed heavily on my communities.
I hear their calls for justice, Speaker.
After Kumanjayi Walker’s tragic passing in Alice Springs during Naidoc, I called for the investigation with minister McCarthy to look into his death and to have suitably qualified and authorised professionals from outside the Northern Territory police. We didn’t take that decision lightly, we did it because of the systemic racism and the issues between our Northern Territory police and Aboriginal people.
