Australia news live: Albanese government approves four coalmine extensions
Albanese government approves four coalmine extensions
Graham Readfearn
The Albanese government has approved the extension of four coalmines that climate campaigners estimate will release more than 850m tonnes of CO2 over their lifetime, an equivalent to almost double Australia’s annual emissions.
All four extensions were approved on Thursday afternoon.
The four projects target mostly steel-making coal, with a small amount of coal for burning in power stations. Campaigners said the approvals would put Australians at increased risk from extreme weather events that are being amplified by fossil fuel emissions.
The four projects approved are the Boggabri coalmine in New South Wales, the Caval Ridge Horse Pit in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, and also in Queensland, the Lake Vermont Meadowbrook coalmine and the Vulcan South coalmine.
We’ll have more to come on this.
Key events
Melbourne expected to hit 40C on Boxing Day
Residents of Melbourne are in for a scorcher on Boxing Day, the weather bureau has predicted.
The Bureau of Meteorology has released some of its forecasts for 26 December, showing the Victorian capital is in for a top of 40C.
It’ll be hot in Canberra too, where the temperature is expected to reach 37C.
Adelaide can expect a top of 34C.
Sydney and Hobart are both set for a maximum temperature of 31C.
We have more details on the Christmas Day forecasts here:
Hiker missing in Blue Mountains for six days located safe and well, NSW police say
A hiker has been found safe and well, six days after she went missing in bushland in the Blue Mountains.
The 33-year-old woman was last seen at Katoomba last Friday.
Police said they started looking for her after the alarm was raised when she could not be located or contacted.
Her car was found on Galwey Lane in Mt Wilson about midday on Saturday, police said.
Police said they had conducted a “widescale land and air search” of the bushland at Mt Wilson this week.
The search included local police with the assistance of Police Rescue, PolAir, NSW ambulance service, the State Emergency Service and the Rural Fire Service (RFS).
About 2.30pm today, the woman was spotted by a Rural Fire Service helicopter, police said.
Police rescue officers and paramedics treated the woman at the scene for minor injuries and dehydration.
She was flown to Nepean hospital for further treatment.
Police have thanked the public and media for their assistance.
Albanese government approves four coalmine extensions
Graham Readfearn
The Albanese government has approved the extension of four coalmines that climate campaigners estimate will release more than 850m tonnes of CO2 over their lifetime, an equivalent to almost double Australia’s annual emissions.
All four extensions were approved on Thursday afternoon.
The four projects target mostly steel-making coal, with a small amount of coal for burning in power stations. Campaigners said the approvals would put Australians at increased risk from extreme weather events that are being amplified by fossil fuel emissions.
The four projects approved are the Boggabri coalmine in New South Wales, the Caval Ridge Horse Pit in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, and also in Queensland, the Lake Vermont Meadowbrook coalmine and the Vulcan South coalmine.
We’ll have more to come on this.
Christopher Knaus
Australian Energy Regulator says $25m AGL fine a warning to other retailers
The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has welcomed the issuing of a record $25m fine to AGL for using Centrepay to receive money from the welfare payments of former customers.
The federal court issued the fine earlier today for AGL’s misuse of the system to wrongly receive and keep money from 483 Centrepay users between 9 January 2017 and 28 October 2021.
The AER, which brought the case, said the penalty is the largest ever handed out for breaches of the national energy retail rules.
The regulator said it served as a warning to energy retailers that they must refund money who have been overcharged.
The AER chair, Clare Savage, said:
The record $25 million penalty reflects the seriousness of the breaches and serves as a warning that the AER expects all retailers to refund customers if they have been overcharged and to provide consumers the full protections afforded under the Rules.
The actions by AGL negatively impacted hundreds of people over an extended period, many of these may have been experiencing vulnerability.
Continued from previous post:
AFP Det Supt Melinda Adam said the federal police were committed to ensuring the safety and welfare of alleged victims of human trafficking.
In a statement, Adam said:
Servitude practices, including debt bondage, occur when people are subjected to conditions to which they had not agreed.
Victims of human trafficking can be significantly deprived of personal freedom in all aspects of their life, and threats, coercion or deception are often used against them.
In some instances, those being exploited may not come forward about their situation out of fear of retribution by perpetrators, social isolation or financial dependence of others.
The AFP urges people to be aware of the indicators of slavery-like practices and report anything that may seem suspicious.
Adam encouraged anyone that suspected they or another person was being exploited or at risk of being exploited to seek help by calling the AFP on 131 237 or making a report on its website.
AFP charges second person over alleged human exploitation at Adelaide home
The Australian federal police says it has charged a second Colombian national with debt bondage and servitude offences in relation to alleged human exploitation at their home in Adelaide.
The AFP has alleged the woman was involved in the “ongoing and degrading treatment of other residents” who lived at her property in Kilburn, in Adelaide’s inner north.
She allegedly maintained daily control of the victims by tracking their movements, restricting daily activities, scheduling compulsory daily chores, controlling earnings and forcing victims to pay off debts that were unreasonably enforced, the AFP said.
The AFP said the allegations relate to a number of individuals who migrated to Adelaide from Venezuela in 2015 and 2016, and alleged the offences took place over a prolonged period at the Kilburn home and elsewhere in Australia.
The AFP said it arrested the woman, 35, at her Kilburn home yesterday and charged her with the criminal offences of one count of remaining in servitude and one count of intending to cause a victim to enter into debt bondage.
The woman appeared in the Adelaide magistrates court today, where she was granted bail with strict conditions, the AFP said.
On 14 November, the AFP arrested a Colombian man who lived at the same Kilburn property and charged him with debt bondage and servitude offences.
The man appeared in the Adelaide magistrates court on 15 November and was remanded to reappear at the same court today.
The man and the woman are expected to reappear in court at a later date.
‘This is not a toy train set’: NSW government will seek to ban rail strikes over Christmas and New Year period
Elias Visontay
The New South Wales government has accused rail unions of putting “a gun to our head” during negotiations over a new pay deal, after a court decision paved the way for unions to take rolling industrial actions that could disrupt Sydney’s train network on New Year’s Eve.
The NSW transport minister, Jo Haylen, admitted to not knowing what industrial actions would be the first the unions have vowed to take immediately – conceding she couldn’t guarantee trains would definitely run on Friday – after the federal court earlier on Thursday dismissed the Minns government’s attempt to stop actions that rail unions had voted to take.
Haylen warned the union now had the ability to now take any of the more than 200 industrial actions the court had cleared the way for – noting “many of them are contradictory” and had the ability to “strangle our network”, such as demands for 24-hour services or none at all, as well as bans on the state transit authorities changing rosters.
She said:
This is not a toy train set. You can’t just move it around with a click of your fingers and expect that that’s going to service the millions of people across Sydney that rely on it each and every day.
Haylen vowed the government will seek to have industrial action banned in the lead-up to New Year’s Eve – going to the Fair Work Commission on grounds the actions could risk public safety and economic harm – but warned beyond that, the prospect of reaching a breakthrough in pay negotiations with unions was bleak.
She said:
The fact is, they’re happy to talk … as long as we agree with them. Now, we will not negotiate with a gun to our head.
Matt Longland, the CEO of Sydney Trains, warned that authorities expect the period between Thursday and New Years to be “a challenging period on the rail network”.
Longland said:
So this will be a very significant impact for the travelling public … we do expect that we will see impacts from this industrial action in the coming days.
You can read more here:
Catie McLeod
Hello, I hope you’ve had a great day so far. I’ll be with you on the blog until this evening.
Rafqa Touma
Thanks for joining me on the blog today. Handing over now to Catie McLeod who will keep you posted on the afternoon’s news.
Coalition takes aim at Labor over ‘open-slather approach’ to international student caps
Sarah Basford Canales
The opposition has hit out at Labor’s “open-slather approach” on limiting the number of international students that can study in Australia, with shadow education minister, Sarah Henderson, vowing to impose a “much tougher” but unspecified cap.
As my colleague Caitlin Cassidy reported earlier today, the Albanese government introduced a new ministerial direction to throttle student visa applications once a tertiary education institution has reached 80% of its proposed international student cap.
Labor’s approach replaces a former ministerial direction that gave visa processing priority to “low risk” sandstone universities and students from “low risk” nations.
The Coalition has pledged a tough crackdown on the increasing number of international students entering the country after record lows in 2021 and 2022 due to the pandemic.
Figures from the education department, released Wednesday, show there were more than 200,000 higher education commencements across the country in 2024.
Labor has planned to pass legislation in the final sitting weeks to remove the former ministerial direction and replace it with new powers to set a cap on universities and suspend and cancel courses.
The Greens and the Coalition teamed up against the changes and the bill did not pass.
Henderson clarified on Thursday the opposition still supported a policy of limiting foreign student numbers, promising to bring in a “much tougher cap”.
She added:
By tying the new Ministerial Direction 111 to Labor’s flawed student caps scheme, the government will continue to drive excessive numbers of foreign students to Australia’s elite, metropolitan universities.
This open-slather approach places no limit on the number of foreign students who can come to Australia.
The Coalition will impose a much tougher cap on foreign students at metropolitan universities which puts the needs of Australians first.”
But how would the opposition do that differently? We’re still none the wiser.
Fears Vanuatu health system could be overwhelmed after earthquake
Vanuatu’s public health system risks being overwhelmed amid mounting waterborne disease, aid agencies have said, as a lack of clean water and patchy telecommunications service complicated rescue operations after Tuesday’s powerful 7.3 magnitude earthquake.
The government’s disaster management office said early on Wednesday that 14 deaths had been confirmed, but hours later said nine had been verified by the main hospital. The number was expected to increase because people remained trapped in fallen buildings, a spokesperson said. About 200 people have been treated for injuries.
Much of Vanuatu remains without water after two large reservoirs serving the capital, Port Vila, were totally decimated by the earthquake, the National Disaster Management Office said. Landslides and aftershocks exacerbated the damage to water infrastructure and increased the risk of disease, aid agencies said.
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