Three more Queensland MPs referred to ethics committee over question time stoush
Andrew Messenger
Three additional MPs – including the health minister, Shannon Fentiman – have been referred to the parliamentary ethics committee over a May question time stoush.
The shadow health minister, Ros Bates, asked Fentiman if the government believes pregnant women should be told to “cross your legs” if a service is closed due to staffing shortages during a heated debate.
Bates accused Fentiman of misleading the parliament by posting a brief clip of the exchange with a caption.
In a decision published on Friday, speaker Curtis Pitt said he found there was an “arguable case that the published shortened extract of the proceedings, in the absence of the full context of the question asked, could have been potentially misleading” though he has yet to make up his mind if it were or not.
Fentiman argued that the video was a true and unedited excerpt from proceedings that day, he said.
Bates has already been referred to the committee for refusing to withdraw a later comment, contradicting his ruling.
On Friday Pitt referred Deb Frecklington and Fiona Simpson to the committee for encouraging her to do so.
With that, we will wrap the blog for the evening. Have a lovely night, and stay safe and dry out there. Here were today’s major developments:
Rain is easing in New South Wales however communities are still under flood watch and being prepared to evacuate, particularly around the Hawkesbury Nepean region at North Richmond, after 160mm was observed across the valley in the 24 hours to 9am.
A federal court has ruled against a decision blocking access to early robodebt documents drafted under the former Coalition government, as part of one man’s long-running fight to shed light on the scheme’s origins.
The immigration minister, Andrew Giles, has signed ministerial direction 110, saying in a statement – “a new, revised direction to strengthen the consideration of community safety in Australia’s migration system”.
Bird flu – the same high pathogenicity strain that has been kicking around for weeks – has been detected at a fifth poultry farm in Victoria. The H7N3 strain, first detected at a Meredith egg farm on 22 May, has been detected at another property within 5km of the original infection site.
Laura Jones has won the $100,000 Archibald prize for her portrait of Tim Winton. Some 1,005 entries were submitted this year, with 57 finalists.
In Queensland, three additional MPs – including the health minister, Shannon Fentiman – have been referred to the parliamentary ethics committee over a May question time stoush.
ASRC says ‘senseless’ new ministerial direction will harm families
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre says Labor’s ministerial direction 110, signed today, is a “rushed” and “senseless” decision that will harm families and communities.
The new direction replaces direction 99 and serves as guidance for decision-making authorities who are weighing up whether to refuse or cancel people’s visas. It will come into effect on 21 June.
The direction also amends previous clauses about how decision makers consider the length of time a person has spent in Australia, including whether a person has lived in Australia since they were a child.
Hannah Dickinson, ASRC’s principal solicitor, said the federal government’s response was “reactive, ill-considered, and deeply damaging”.
Decisions under these directions will expose people and their families to unimaginable harm: it is appropriate and necessary that their circumstances be taken into account, and that due care is exercised in law-making.
The new direction is out of step with community expectations. It disregards the concerns of family violence experts that directions like these expose victim-survivors to further harm. And it jeopardises the integrity of critical decisions that irreversibly impact families and communities.
The co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Alex Ryvchin, demanded Payman apologise for the remark he said was “anti-semitic”, accusing the senator of “stoking hatred in such a vile way”.
Payman defended the use of the phrase days later, saying it was “not a call for the annihilation of Jews. Rather, it asserts a desire for Palestinians to live in their homeland as free and equal citizens, neither dominating others nor being dominated over.”
Payman has since stepped down as a member of two committees.
The Young Labor left statement finished off with:
We call on all Labor governments to commit themselves to ending the suffering of the Palestinian people. We condemn the weaponising of this issue by those who neglect and ignore the suffering in Gaza and seek to use it for their own advantage. We commit ourselves to continue the fight for justice and peace. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
ALP left youth support Payman’s criticism of party’s inaction on Gaza
Labor’s left youth factions in NSW, Victoria, the ACT and the Northern Territory have released a statement in support of Western Australian Labor senator Fatima Payman’s comments criticising her party’s inaction on the war in Gaza.
In a joint statement originally posted to Facebook on Thursday, the youth wing’s left factions expressed “solidarity with Senator Fatima Payman for speaking out against the inaction of the Albanese government over the genocide occurring in Gaza”.
It continued:
Furthermore, we condemn the Albanese government’s support of the Coalition’s divisive motion on Senator Payman’s statement and the Islamophobic and racist remarks shouted about Senator Payman during the debate by members of the Coalition.
As my colleague Daniel Hurst reported last month, the first-time senator accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and questioned how many deaths would prompt the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to declare “enough” in a televised statement to SBS and Capital Brief.
Payman also called for sanctions and divestment from Israel and declared “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – a politically charged phrase that Anthony Albanese has criticised – in a significant rupture with the Labor party position.
After the statement, a Coalition senator accused Payman of “supporting terrorists” in parliament during a fiery debate over a Senate motion to condemn the comments. The senator later withdrew the remark.
Media union calls out Peter Costello’s ‘low regard’ for journalists
The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) has called out Peter Costello for his “low regard” of journalists after accusations the Nine chair assaulted a reporter from The Australian newspaper as he refused to answer questions about the embattled media company.
As the chair of a major media company that employs hundreds of journalists, Peter Costello should know that a journalist asking him questions is just doing their job, and like any other worker in this country deserves to be treated with respect and to be safe.
It is extremely disappointing that as the head chair of a media organisation, Mr Costello should appear to have such low regard for the work of journalists, whoever they are employed by.
Costello was later interviewed at the Canberra press gallery, where he told reporters “there was no assault – I did not lay a finger or a fist or anything else on him”.
As I walked past him, he walked back into an advertising placard and he fell over. I did not strike him. If he’s upset about that, I’m sorry. But I did not strike him.
In Queensland, an investigation is under way after a serious three-vehicle crash, including a police car, on the Gold Coast today.
Police allege around 1.20pm, a police vehicle was stopped on the side of the road in Helensvale performing traffic duties.
The car was then struck from behind by a Mitsubishi.
The 55-year-old male police officer, the 54-year-old female driver and a two-year-old passenger of the Mitsubishi were transported to hospital with serious injuries. The driver of the third vehicle, who had stopped to offer assistance, was not injured.
Three more Queensland MPs referred to ethics committee over question time stoush
Andrew Messenger
Three additional MPs – including the health minister, Shannon Fentiman – have been referred to the parliamentary ethics committee over a May question time stoush.
The shadow health minister, Ros Bates, asked Fentiman if the government believes pregnant women should be told to “cross your legs” if a service is closed due to staffing shortages during a heated debate.
Bates accused Fentiman of misleading the parliament by posting a brief clip of the exchange with a caption.
In a decision published on Friday, speaker Curtis Pitt said he found there was an “arguable case that the published shortened extract of the proceedings, in the absence of the full context of the question asked, could have been potentially misleading” though he has yet to make up his mind if it were or not.
Fentiman argued that the video was a true and unedited excerpt from proceedings that day, he said.
Bates has already been referred to the committee for refusing to withdraw a later comment, contradicting his ruling.
On Friday Pitt referred Deb Frecklington and Fiona Simpson to the committee for encouraging her to do so.
The areas are currently under “watch and act” level:
You should monitor the situation and prepare to be isolated by floodwater. Consider the effects isolation will have on family, work, and educational commitments. You may be trapped without power, water, and other essential services and it may be too dangerous for NSW SES to rescue you.
Community confidence in police has dropped sharply since the pandemic, sparking concerns for Queensland’s commissioner, AAP reports.
Police chief Steve Gollschewski said public faith in other Australian jurisdictions was also on the decline post-Covid, citing Western Australia and Victoria.
Data released by Queensland police on Friday revealed 65.5% of 6,000 people surveyed said they trusted officers, down from 72% in 2021.
Perception of integrity had also fallen with just over 50% saying police treated people fairly and equally, down from 72.9%.
More than two-thirds of respondents were satisfied with police after having contact with them in the past 12 months and 61.3% felt confident to report domestic and family violence.
Gollschewski said other Australian jurisdictions used different methods for collecting public feedback data, but he believed there was enough statistics to indicate a parallel post-Covid decline in police confidence in other states.
The police chief said available data showed community confidence in WA police had dropped 10% to 69% in the same reporting period, while in Victoria, it had decreased from 75% to 58%.
Adam Bandt says Peter Dutton ‘dangerous for Australia’ after opposition leader’s Greens comments
The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, has bit back at the opposition leader after he claimed Bandt would be “unfit for office” and alleged his party was “evil”.
In a post on X, Bandt said Peter Dutton was attacking the Greens “with the Trumpian language of a dictator, unchallenged by Labor who embraced him all week”.
Peter Dutton in charge would be dangerous for Australia.
The PM may side with Dutton, but Greens will take him on and keep pushing for peace.
Peter Dutton’s attacking Greens with the Trumpian language of a dictator, unchallenged by Labor who embraced him all week.
Peter Dutton in charge would be dangerous for Australia.
The PM may side with Dutton, but Greens will take him on and keep pushing for peace.
Parliament’s question time erupted on Wednesday after Anthony Albanese accused the Greens of spreading misinformation and Dutton alleged the Greens were condoning acts of violence instead of condemning them.
In response, Bandt said the party had expressed support for peaceful protests across the country, and maintained calls for the government to “bring pressure to bear on this extreme Israeli war cabinet”.
Elderly Australians facing up to nine-month wait for home care assistance
Elderly Australians in need of home care support are facing wait times of up to nine months and the situation is only expected to worsen.
The federal government is being urged to address the delays with the number of those in limbo more than doubling to 68,109 over the past 12 months.
A Senate budget estimates hearing on Thursday also revealed those already receiving support are waiting for extra help as their circumstances change.
The federal government’s home care package provides support for Australians with showering, cleaning, cooking and other basic needs. Those who receive the assistance are generally seeking to delay or avoid moving into full-time residential care.
Levels of entitlement range from $10,000 to $59,000 per year, with each recipient assessed on daily fees they can contribute to the care.
As of 31 May, there were 117 people waiting for level one assistance, 17,611 for level two, 36,524 for level three and 13,857 for level four, officials at Senate estimates revealed.
Those currently waiting for level-three assistance face wait times of nine to 12 months, while those seeking a level-four package face a wait of six to nine months.
The 2024–25 budget pledged an additional 24,100 home care packages, but the government is being urged to reduce wait times as the queue grows.
Sexual harassment ‘pervasive’ in retail industry, new study finds
Up to half of women and one in four men working in retail have experienced sexual harassment, new research shows, with peak bodies calling on the industry to urgently address the “pervasive” issue.
The report, published by researchers from the Australian Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusion @ Work, found young women under the age of 25 are particularly targeted and often subjected to multiple forms of sexual harassment.
Professor Rae Cooper, the director of the Australian Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusion @ Work, said employers had a legal duty to prevent harm.
These are not isolated incidents, this is happening every day across this large industry, and young people – especially young women – are copping the brunt of it.
The retail industry is a key national employer of young people, and these workplaces have a duty of care to protect their inexperienced workers who are often working their first job. Sexual harassment doesn’t just come from customers – peers and managers are often perpetrators. It is pervasive.
The report recommended researchers improve in workplace reporting mechanisms, data collection, training of staff and managers and communicating outcomes to staff to take the issue seriously.
Severe weather warning for NSW south coast and Illawarra cancelled
A severe weather warning that remained in place for the Illawarra and south coast of New South Wales today has been cancelled, the Bureau has confirmed, though some showers remain.
The surface trough which brought areas of heavy rainfall to parts of the Illawarra and surrounds overnight has now weakened. It will continue to weaken as it moves south, though showers with moderate rainfall rates are expected to persist about southeastern NSW and the ACT for the remainder of Friday.
Severe Weather Warning for Heavy Rainfall in the Southeast has been cancelled with easing of rainfall rate in the area. However, there are still a few Flood Warnings current in the area due to the past rainfall. Refer to the latest NSW warnings https://t.co/Ss766eTahj
— Bureau of Meteorology, New South Wales (@BOM_NSW) June 7, 2024
She’s still wet out there, though, with some significant rainfall in the 24 hours to 9am, including 204mm at Port Kembla, 156mm at Wollongong and 152mm at Kiama.
