Albanese to leave PNG without signing major defence treaty
Tom McIlroy
Albanese will leave Papua New Guinea without signing a major defence treaty on Wednesday, instead securing a joint communique with his counterpart James Marape.
Albanese will speak from Port Moresby in the next few minutes.
The treaty is considered “a work in progress”, despite months of negotiations and Albanese downplaying an earlier delay during commemorations of PNG’s independence from Australia on Tuesday.
There are concerns within the PNG government about the country’s sovereignty under the deal. Australia governed PNG until 50 years ago.
It is the second such delay in as many weeks. Ahead of the Pacific Islands Forum last week, Vanuatu’s government paused the signing of a joint agreement with Australia, saying more work was needed on the question of critical minerals funding from China.
PNG’s cabinet is going to meet next week to discuss the deal with Australia. It had been due to sign off on the deal on Monday night but fell short of the required quorum of members due to independence celebrations.
The treaty will allow PNG citizens to join the Australian Defence Force, and for Australians to serve with PNG troops, promote interoperability between the two countries and integrate responses to a military attack.
Joint military training and defence exercises are planned, as well as new cooperation on cybersecurity preparedness.
Key events
Prime minister Anthony Albanese is set to speak from Papua New Guinea in a few minutes. The two countries have been negotiating the details behind a landmark military defence agreement.
Queensland coalminer blames state royalties regime on decision to slash 750 jobs
Andrew Messenger
The BHP Mitsubishi Alliance has blamed Queensland’s “world’s highest” coal royalties regime for a decision to mothball its Saraji South coalmine and slash 750 roles across the state.
The metallurgical open cut coalmine, about 300km north west of Rockhampton, opened in 1979. The company announced it will be put into care and maintenance in November and that it is also conducting a strategic review of the BHP FutureFit Academy in Mackay.
Saraji South is part of the country’s fourth-largest mining complex, with the remaining mines to continue operating. The company said maintaining operations in lower margin areas of BMA’s mine footprint is not sustainable under current conditions in Queensland. BMA’s asset president, Adam Lancey, said:
As joint owners of BMA, BHP and Mitsubishi Development do not want to see operations paused or jobs lost, but these are necessary decisions in the face of the combined impact of the Queensland government’s unsustainable coal royalties and market conditions.
The simple fact is the Queensland coal industry is approaching a crisis point.
This is now having real impacts on regional jobs, communities and small businesses.
The uncertainty this creates for our people and our communities is not taken lightly, and we will do everything we can to support them.
Some of the staff are based in Brisbane, but it is understood most of the economic impact will be felt locally.
The company is the largest private sector employer in central Queensland.
Coalition question remain despite more detail on plans for social media companies to block under-16s
Melissa McIntosh, the shadow minister for communications, said the Coalition has questions after the eSafety commissioner detailed how social media giants will be expected to handle the ban on users under 16.
Yesterday, the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said social media platforms from 10 December will be expected to take a “multilayered waterfall approach” for age checking to make sure that government ID is never the sole or final choice for people to verify their ages.
But McIntosh said the Coalition still has questions about how the age checks will take place. She told RN Breakfast:
I’ve got some question marks around some of the measures that the eSafety commissioner is implementing. When this legislation was passed, there was going to be no digital ID, and this has crept into the guidance material now. It’s not a first step, but it’s a backup step that people may need to use digital ID. So there’s some shifts, there’s some changes.
Families are telling me they don’t feel like parents, schools, and kids are being educated, that this is coming.
… I think Australians have a right to question that being as an option if all other proofs of identity, you know, age verification fail in this process.
Two charged in Victoria after $14m in cocaine allegedly found inside car driven from NSW
Victoria police charged two men overnight after seizing 40kg of cocaine allegedly found inside a vehicle they were driving from the NSW border back to the state.
Police said the car was intercepted on the Hume Highway around 6.20am on Tuesday morning. A search of the vehicle allegedly found a substance believed to be cocaine with an estimated street value of $14m.
The two men, aged 19 and 20, have both been charged with trafficking large commercial quantities of cocaine and possessing large commercial quantities of cocaine. The will appear in court today.
Police said they will allege in court the transport was part of a wider syndicate.
Lisa Cox
Heatwaves caused more than 1,000 deaths in Australia over four-year period, study finds
Heatwaves caused 1,009 deaths in Australia from 2016 to 2019 according to a new analysis led by researchers at Monash University.
As the national climate risk assessment identified heatwaves as the climate hazard causing the most deaths, the newly published study found Queensland and New South Wales were the states with the highest mortality rates attributable to heatwaves.
Lead author Prof Yuming Guo said the study was the first to take a granular look at the risk of heat-related deaths in local communities across Australia.
The researchers analysed 249,546 death records from 2016 to the end of 2019 – the country’s hottest year on record.
Read more here:
Lyons says spat feeds into Trump’s history of attacks on the media
Lyons added more to ABC News this morning, saying:
I think all this feeds into President Trump’s sort of war on the media. It was just a perfectly sort of normal thing to do, to ask questions that I don’t think are provocative, I think are fair, are based on research.
They were not asked in an abusive fashion. And if we’ve reached the point where asking those sort of questions prevents you from going into the White House, then I think it’s a very dark day.
ABC journalist explains clash with US president Donald Trump
The ABC’s John Lyons explained more about his clash with US president Donald Trump.
Lyons spoke to RN Breakfast after he asked Trump how much wealthier he had become since returning to the White House for his second term. Trump then turned on Lyons, saying he was “hurting Australia very much” and alluded Anthony Albanese was coming to visit him soon.
“I’m going to tell him about you,” Trump said, adding “you set a very bad tone”.
Lyons explained more to RN:
He liked the first half of the question. He didn’t like the second half of the question.
[He] said I was hurting Australia. And he was going to tell on me to the prime minister, Anthony Albanese. So I’ve still got to brace myself for what happens when he tells on me.
… A lot of the questions now are almost sickeningly grovelling. And so, when you get a vaguely sort of objective question, then you stand out. I thought my questions were legitimate. It’s about holding truth to power.
Read more here:
Good morning, and happy Wednesday. Nick Visser here to take over the blog. Let’s jump in.
Trump hints at Albanese meeting ‘very soon’
Donald Trump has indicated he is set to meet prime minister Anthony Albanese in the coming weeks.
“Your leader is coming over to see me very soon,” the US president told an Australian reporter while speaking to journalists as he left the White House for a visit to the United Kingdom.
Trump did not mention when he would meet Albanese.
The Australian prime minister is preparing to travel to New York in coming days for the United Nations general assembly, where a meeting on the sidelines with Trump was considered a possibility.
Read our full report:
Nappy pants taken off Woolworths shelves after pest found
Nappy pants have been stripped from supermarket shelves after a serious pest was found inside a haul of imported products, AAP reports.
Khapra beetle larvae were discovered inside Little One’s Ultra Dry Nappy Pants – Walker Size 5 (42pk) earlier in September, a federal agriculture department alert states.
The products were sold nationally by Woolworths and imported through a third company.
No other sizes or products from the same brand are believed to be impacted.
Anyone who bought the nappy pants has been told to seal the nappy pants in a bag to prevent the pest spreading and contact biosecurity authorities immediately.
Anyone who comes across the insects another way has been urged to raise the alarm.
A Woolworths spokesperson said as soon as they were made aware a customer raised the alarm the company removed the product from sale, quarantined it and launched an investigation with importer Ontex.
Energy efficiency and electrification can play huge role in cutting emissions, analysis finds
Adam Morton
Boosting energy efficiency and electrification in homes, businesses, and at major industrial sites could deliver a fifth of the emissions cut needed to reach a 75% emissions reduction target by 2035, according to a new analysis.
The report by the Energy Efficiency Council, using modelling by the Climateworks Centre, has been released as cabinet decides on its 2035 emissions reduction target, expected to be announced late this week.
It found measures including doubling the number of heat pumps installed in homes each year, upgrading thousands of inefficient industrial motors and pumps with more advanced technology, and replacing diesel-power equipment on farms and mines could cut annual pollution by 44m tonnes a year.
The council’s chief executive, Luke Menzel, said making these sorts of improvements were “some of the most cost-effective and fastest actions we can take to cut emissions and reduce the impact of climate change”.
No matter what number the government picks for our 2035 target, if Australia is serious about reaching net zero by 2050 we must up the pace of appliance upgrades, building retrofits and industrial electrification now and not wait until the 2040s.
The best time to get stuck in to this was probably 10 or 15 years ago, The second best time is now.
Net zero target a ‘distraction’, says new Liberal shadow minister
Luca Ittimani
Another member of the Liberals’ shadow ministry has defended the party’s internal debate over climate action and rejected net zero targets as a “distraction”.
Simon Kennedy, who Sussan Ley promoted to serve as a shadow assistant minister on Sunday, said Ley would welcome the party’s debate over whether to walk away from committing to reaching net zero emissions by 2050.
He told the ABC’s 7.30:
We’re having the debate the Labor Party should be having. … What [Ley] would welcome is Andrew [Hastie] and our party having a robust debate that Labor should be having on how do we actually reduce emissions and reduce energy [prices].”
A Liberal frontbencher, Andrew Hastie, this week said he would quit the shadow ministry if the party re-adopted the climate target, with colleague Jonno Duniam, suggesting more Liberals could follow suit.
Kennedy, the MP for Scott Morrison’s former seat of Cook, denied the debate was destabilising Ley’s leadership. He said he supported a net zero target but claimed it was “not a policy it’s a distraction” that Labor was using to divert attention from the fact emissions weren’t going down and energy prices were going up.
[Labor] are playing this politics about 2050 because they will do anything to avoid the disaster that’s hitting Australian industry.
The Liberals’ internal debate has come to a head in the same week the government released a landmark climate risk assessment, which Kennedy dismissed as “an alarmist report”.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer bringing you the top stories this morning and then my colleague Nick Visser will take the reins.
Donald Trump has indicated he is set to meet Anthony Albanese in the coming weeks. Responding to a question from an Australian ABC reporter at the White House as he left for the UK, Trump said Albanese was coming to see him “very soon”. More coming up.
As the opposition leader prepares to deliver a major speech on the economy, another member of Sussan Ley’s shadow ministry has defended the Coalition’s internal debate over climate action and rejected net zero targets as a “distraction”. More shortly.
