Peter Dutton after question time at Parliament House in Canberra on Monday. The opposition leader did not ask a question during today’s session. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
Peter Dutton after question time at Parliament House in Canberra on Monday. The opposition leader did not ask a question during today’s session. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
Helen Haines calls for cheaper batteries for households
Meanwhile, Indi independent Helen Haines is introducing a bill into the parliament to try to make batteries cheaper for households to help with the transition to renewables:
It’s not just improving household savings that would be achieved under this bill. Batteries provide a reliable energy source during times of emergencies like bushfires and storms, when our powerlines fail us – in places like Corryong and the Alpine areas.
They are also a critical part of reducing our national emissions. If 500,000 batteries are installed, that’s the equivalent of taking 500,000 cars off the road each and every year.
Batteries will reduce our power bills, secure our energy supply and reduce our emissions. It should be a no-brainer for the government to provide that extra help so households can afford them. This bill gets this done.
Queensland MP pushes to ensure Australia Day date isn’t moved
Henry Pike, an LNP MP from Queensland, has submitted a private member’s bill to the parliament.
So what is the concern of the Bowman MP? What is the first order of business from a Coalition MP following the NSW Liberals loss where people voted for more progressive candidates?
Australia Day.
Or, more specifically, that Australia Day not be moved from 26 January.
The primary purpose of this bill is to enshrine Australia’s national day in federal law. The provisions in this bill are the same as those used to enshrine Anzac Day as a national day of commemoration through the Anzac Day Act 1983. The date of Australia Day would be formally established as 26 January. This legislative protection ensures that Australia Day must remain as a national day and cannot be abolished by the actions of the government.
The remainder of the bill provides an avenue through which the date of Australia Day could be changed in the future. This process would be the same prescribed in the Flags Act 1953 for changing the design of Australia’s national flag, namely through a national plebiscite.
How a national plebiscite on Australia Day would be formed and conducted will be at the discretion of the parliament. However, any alternate proposals must include 26 January as an option that can be selected by voters in the plebiscite. Those qualified to vote in federal elections would be qualified to vote on any proposal for an alternate date for Australia’s national day.
It is up to the government when private member’s bills come to the parliament for a vote. Can’t say this one will rate too highly on government business.
ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott believes recent bank collapses overseas have more in common with the savings and loans disaster that gripped the US in the 1980s than the global financial crisis.
The comments, posted on the bank’s website on Monday, come amid a turbulent period for the sector, triggered by the collapse of California-based Silicon Valley Bank, and Switzerland government-backed rescue of Credit Suisse.
There are growing fears of contagion after investors also sold-down shares in Germany’s biggest lender, Deutsche Bank, late last week.
Elliott said:
The GFC was fundamentally a crisis around the quality of assets and the loans that banks make, and that’s not what the risk is here.
This is a different issue. This is really to do with the global war on inflation and how central banks are raising rates very quickly in order to combat that, and that has casualties.
The 1980s savings and loans crisis came during a period of rising interest rates that cut the profitability of many lenders in the US. The lenders were also not able to attract enough depositors, eroding the stability of bank operations.
This differs from the GFC collapses from 2008, which were linked to banks making excessive bets on the US subprime mortgage market.
Elliott said the recent banking issues in the US and Europe could turn into a broader financial disaster, adding it was too early to tell.
Every five to 10 years there’s something going on in the world. And so we shouldn’t be surprised, in a funny way, that things like this happen.
It’s too early to call it – I mean, it’s a crisis for some, obviously – but is it a financial crisis, who knows? Does it have the potential to be one? Yes, it does.
IMF warns on China temperature rise’s economic risks
Days after the IPCC issued a “final warning” about the need to cut said emissions, the IMF’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, noted temperatures were rising faster in China than the global average. GDP losses would be in the order of 2.3% a year by 2030, and rising, the IMF reckons.
(Within China, the drying out of the northern plains, the loss of snow-caps that provide water for millions in the west, and rising sea levels and storm surge risks in the east are among the threats in a hotter world.)
She said:
[O]ur research shows such rebalancing could lead to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of 15% over the next three decades. [T]his translates into benefits for the whole world: a fall in global emissions of 4.5% over the same period.
Whether or not nations listen to the IMF’s advice is another thing. (They don’t like Australia’s property bubble, for one thing.)
Still, as we saw last month, there’s a race of sorts between China’s much-touted rush into renewables and electric vehicles, and its ongoing binge of building new coal-fired power plants:
IMF nudges China to shift economic focus, cut carbon emissions
Peter Hannam
The International Monetary Fund has gently told China to shift its economic model to favour consumption over investment and make lifting productivity a priority to lower its greenhouse gas emissions to the benefit of all.
In a speech to the 2023 China Development Forum in Beijing on Sunday, Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, noted that China’s faster growth would help buoy economies in the region (including Australia’s, which she didn’t mention).
The IMF reckons China’s GDP growth will quicken to 5.2%, or about 2 percentage points faster than in 2022.
“The robust rebound means China is set to account for around one third of global growth in 2023,” Georgieva said. “A 1 percentage point increase in GDP growth in China leads to 0.3 percentage point increase in growth in other Asian economies, on average—a welcome boost.”
That’s all well and good - and perhaps a reason why Victorian premier Dan Andrews is flying to China to spruik that state’s economic prospects, including for foreign students.
But more interesting is the IMF’s advice about the need for China to “rebalance the economy away from investment and towards more consumption-driven growth that is more durable, less reliant on debt, and will also help address climate challenges”.
Such a shift would lift productivity of the economy by around 18% by 2037, helping to offset the pressures of a shrinking economy. But the benefits go further, particularly if the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter acts to cut pollution.
Victorian MP Nick McGowan says he supports Deeming
Liberal upper house MP Nick McGowan says he’ll be backing Moira Deeming. Speaking ahead of party room meeting, he said:
My mother raised me to do what is right … I don’t believe for a second that Moira is a Nazi, a Nazi sympathiser or has any association with Nazis. It’s incumbent, I think, upon each and every one of us here as human beings, as reporters – who I defend – to make sure whatever the vote here today is, that when you write, when you publish, when you report, you keep that foremost in your mind.
At the end of this day we’re dealing with a human being, an intelligent, creative woman. That’s not to say that I nor you … will agree with all her views on all matter of subjects, but it would remiss of me not to make that comment here today.
Important to note Pesutto is not alleging any of the above. He alleges Deeming’s position as “untenable” after her “involvement in … promoting and participating in a rally with speakers and other organisers who themselves have been publicly associated with far rightwing extremist groups including neo-Nazi activists”.
Government mulls more curbs on dating apps amid safety concerns
Josh Butler
Communications minister Michelle Rowland says the federal government is considering the possibility of further regulating dating apps, as the commonwealth continues its investigation of online safety around the services.
Further to Rowland’s morning media interviews, which Amy brought you earlier, the minister gave a short doorstop press conference in the Parliament House press gallery this morning.
Her office this morning announced Rowland had “issued a detailed information request to the top ten online dating services used by Australians about the extent of harms occurring on their services, and the safety policies and procedures they have in place to keep their Australian users safe”.
That information includes the number of reports the apps had received about sexual harassment and abuse, user bans, referrals to police, and the processes in place to keep banned users from creating new accounts.
Rowland said research had found three in four Australians using the apps have experienced some form of harm, but also that dating apps are the most common way to meet a new partner for young people, so the government was looking at further action.
The online safety of dating apps is being investigated. Photograph: Tero Vesalainen/Getty Images/iStock
Rowland said in her doorstop:
If we don’t get the kinds of responses we think should be forthcoming, we will consider further regulation here.
One of them could be, and this isn’t novel because it’s used across broadcasting and telco sectors, is some form of code of practice that is devised by the industry which could be subject to regulatory oversight and enforcement.
Work is still ongoing with state and territory attorneys general, the federal eSafety commissioner and relationship services, but Rowland said the recent focus on the sector – including a roundtable on safety in January – had seen apps voluntarily set up their own extra safety features.
It’s pleasing to see the focus on this area has had the effect of incentivising regulation in this area, with some of these dating apps introducing new safety features. Some of them, we’ve questioned why they are behind some paywall services because everyone should be entitled to safety.
It’s pleasing this has already focused the minds of these app providers on what they need to do better.
In a release this morning, Rowland and social services minister Amanda Rishworth said the government would “continue to put pressure on online dating services to be transparent about the safety of their users, making clear that services will be held to account for sexual harassment and abuse facilitated by their platforms”.
The barriers give this real Queensland LNP leadership spill energy.
Moira Deeming has arrived at party room accompanied by Renee Heath, Richard Riordan, Bev McArthur, Ryan Smith and Joe McCracken @GuardianAuspic.twitter.com/MVkrgCeSuN
