Key events
What we learned: Thursday 15 August
This is where we’ll wrap up the blog for today – but first, a quick recap:
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Liberal senator Jane Hume said no “supporters of terrorist organisations” should come to Australia.
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Peter Dutton confirmed he did not consult shadow cabinet before announcing his position on Palestinian visa holders. He then moved a suspension motion over the issue in parliament.
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Victorian authorities lifted some anti-bird flu restrictions.
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The NSW opposition leader, Mark Speakman, said the Liberals’ state director must resign immediately following a catastrophic administration error that has thrown the party’s local government election campaign into disarray.
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Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young confronted David Littleproud over Gaza in parliament hall.
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July job figures were almost triple predictions but the jobless rate continues to tick up.
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Tanya Plibersek said Zali Steggall was subjected to “unparliamentary behaviour” from Liberals and Nationals in parliament. Dutton accused Steggall of holding “extreme views”.
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The PM said national security was too important for “divisive politics”.
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The Albanese government announced it would guarantee Rex bookings throughout its administration process.
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Penny Wong said the Coalition and Greens had “voted to protect [John] Setka” after a CFMEU bill motion was defeated in Senate.
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NSW introduced legislation to overhaul its controversial environmental offset scheme.
Have a lovely evening.
Perth teen charged over cannabis lollies that led to hospitalisations
A 16-year-old has been charged for allegedly manufacturing and selling cannabis lollies, which has led to the two students being hospitalised.
Perth detectives charged the teenager with a number of drug charges in relation to the manufacture and sale of three lollies to a school student on Tuesday 13 August.
WA police said:
The lollies were then ingested by the student and another female student both aged 16 years.
The two students required hospitalisation.
The school alerted police on Wednesday and a subsequent search of the boy’s home was executed later that day.
He was bailed and is due to appear in the Perth children’s court on 5 September.
Police said there are no further public health concerns and the matter is believed to be contained at this time.
Three-year-old dies in WA car rollover
A three-year-old girl has died after in a car rollover in WA’s Pilbara region.
WA police said in a statement that officers are investigating the crash which occurred last night:
About 10:50pm, a maroon-coloured Holden Captiva travelling on an access road near Great Northern Highway, has left the road and rolled.
A three-year-old female passenger sustained critical injuries and sadly died at the scene.
Five other adults in the vehicle, including three females and two males, received minor injuries.
An investigation into the circumstances surrounding the crash are ongoing.
Two dead after boat capsizes off Kangaroo Island in SA
Two men have died after a boat capsized in waters off Kangaroo Island yesterday afternoon.
South Australian police were alerted after a boat was located upturned off the coast of Cassini.
They estimate the incident occurred just after 4.15pm. Emergency services, with the assistance of the local coastguard and PolAir, quickly located the overturned vessel. In a statement SA police said:
Sadly, two bodies were subsequently located in the water near the boat.
The two men, both aged 65-years-old and both from Kingscote were recovered by emergency personnel.
The Water Operations Unit attended the scene this morning, attempting to recover the vessel as investigations into the deaths continue.
Lisa Cox
More on the bill to reform NSW biodiversity offsets
The legislation to reform the New South Wales offsets scheme aims to ensure developers focus first on avoiding impacts to nature and that offsets become a genuine measure of last resort.
Sharpe said:
Offsets must be a genuine last resort. While this requirement is currently in law it is too often ignored.
The bill also introduces steps to transition the scheme from one that is currently required to deliver no net loss to one that delivers net gains over time.
The government is proposing new registers to improve transparency and public scrutiny of the scheme. Another measure would limit the circumstances in which developers are able to transfer their offset obligations to the Biodiversity Conservation Trust by paying into a fund the trust manages.
The bill will be examined by an inquiry before returning to the parliament for debate.
Sharpe and the NSW Greens’ environment spokesperson, Sue Higginson, credited the role Guardian Australia’s reporting played in triggering inquiries and bringing reform to the parliament.
Higginson said the scheme had been “so broken for so long” and “we know that there are so many people out there that have been waiting … for reform around the biodiversity offset system”.
NSW introduces legislation to overhaul environmental offset scheme
Lisa Cox
The New South Wales environment minister, Penny Sharpe, has introduced legislation for a long-promised overhaul of the state’s biodiversity offset scheme.
The bill, which has been referred to a parliamentary committee for inquiry, follows years of reporting and investigation by Guardian Australia which triggered multiple reviews of the scheme:
Sharpe said these inquiries, including a parliamentary inquiry she sat on while in opposition, found the scheme “wanting” and that major reform was needed.
She told the parliament on Thursday the bill would be a “significant step forward to fixing the biodiversity offsets scheme and setting nature in New South Wales on a path to recovery”.
It also comes after a recent review of the state’s conservation laws called for significant changes to protect and recover the state’s threatened species and ecosystems.
Natasha May
Thanks Amy and good evening everyone!
Natasha May will take you through the evening while I go and stare at a wall.
Once the parliament is through this afternoon, it will rise until Monday morning when the second week of the sitting will resume.
I’ll be back with you then for whatever the week throws up – thank you to everyone who read along with us this week, and for your comments and messages. I am working my way through them.
Until then, please – take care of you. And those around you. A bit more kindness seems to be needed at the moment.
Dutton’s Palestinian visa rhetoric ‘triggering’ for refugees, independent MP Dai Le says
The independent member for Fowler, Dai Le, has also spoken about the need for compassion when it comes to granting visas to people fleeting war zones. Le has said she thinks the current debate, which has been pushed by Peter Dutton, would be “triggering” to refugees. As a child, Le and her family left Vietnam during the war and arrived in Australia as refugees.
I’m thinking, gosh, what if there are families like mine, exactly the same position, but then another country … is saying ‘they’re all terrorists’?
That would mean that I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be where I am today.
Le said she believed the “debate” over security checks could be better framed:
I don’t know if anyone in the House of Representatives has lived through having to pack their things, or any small belongings they have, not knowing what’s happening, not knowing why there are bombs on both sides … and therefore can shape our narrative differently.
Shape it in a way that is about putting the safety and prosperity of this nation at the forefront, while at the same time having a heart to understand that we need to play a role in settling some of those who are fleeing war.
‘Where is the outrage’ on murdered and missing Indigenous women and children, Greens senator asks
The committee investigating murdered and missing Indigenous children and women has handed down its report.
The Greens senator Dorinda Cox wants to know “where is the outrage?” Cox says the recommendations in the report do not go far enough to address the issue.
We heard and know that our women and children are disappearing and dying at unacceptable alarming rates. This is an issue that should be above politics. Yet these recommendations fall below expectations and do not reflect the evidence heard.
I have been very clear with the committee and the minister for Indigenous affairs that these report recommendations will not close the gap, including target 13, and that more First Nations women and children will die or ‘disappear’. Yet they chose to not adopt our recommendations. This is absolutely devastating and shameful.
I refuse to accept that First Nations women and children’s lives do not matter and that their deaths and the violence continues to be predictable and preventable and that when given an opportunity to create accountability, cultural safety and capture data on the magnitude of this issue through these recommendations, this committee refused to do so.
Paul Karp
Government has change of heart on gambling meeting NDAs
After controversy last week about demands that stakeholders attending consultations on the proposed gambling ad restrictions sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), it seems the government has had a change of heart.
An official in the communications department has informed stakeholders:
Please note that the department and the minister’s office will be meeting with some other select stakeholders this week for a high-level discussion on wagering advertising reform.
These discussions are happening outside the deed of confidentiality process, meaning that no confidential commonwealth information nor any commercially sensitive information will be disclosed … The main purpose of the discussion will be to outline the government’s current policy thinking and for stakeholders to be able to provide their views on information that has been publicly reported.
The Senate was having a very Senate time of it, as Mike Bowers captured:
It was a bit of a Milton Dick festival today – his older brother (and deputy premier of Queensland), Cameron, was a special guest in the speaker’s gallery today.
Ahead of question time, the speaker, Milton Dick, worked out some angst by playing an actual violin. Not the one that we are sure plays in his head when some of the points of orders are raised in QT:
The Reid MP, Sally Sitou, is sharing some of the abuse she has received on social media in response to the speech she gave a little earlier in the house:
Tasmania’s salmon industry should be cut to save Maugean skate, scientists advise government
You may remember the Maugean skate news from yesterday – the first live hatchling was born in captivity. Which was heralded as great news for saving the species, which is only found in one Tasmanian harbour.
The reason that the captive birth was so exciting is because the wild population in Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour is under threat from the salmon industry.
Adam Morton has some news about recommendations to the government on that point:
Scientists advising the Australian government on how to save the threatened Maugean skate from extinction have recommended the salmon industry be either scaled back dramatically or removed from Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour after finding fish farms are the greatest threat to its survival.
The advice is included in a report by the government’s threatened species scientific committee that says the skate – an ancient ray-like species found only in the harbour in the state’s west – should be considered critically endangered.
The committee estimated there were between 40 and 120 adult skates remaining in the wild, numbers it described as “extremely low”, and that this was projected to fall by 25% in the next generation. The population was cut roughly in half over the past decade.
For the first time, Anthony Albanese also referenced the personal story of a Palestinian refugee. This came after Zali Steggall shared the story of a family in her electorate earlier today in the motion Peter Dutton moved on the topic of Palestinian visas:
