Victoria police detectives say they are not in a position to give further specific details about the latest search for Ballarat woman Samantha Murphy. Photograph: James Ross/AAP
Victoria police detectives say they are not in a position to give further specific details about the latest search for Ballarat woman Samantha Murphy. Photograph: James Ross/AAP
The Victorian premier Jacinta Allan said there was no place for misogyny in Victoria following allegations deepfakes depicting about 50 female students from a private school in regional Victoria were circulated online.
Victoria police conduct new ‘targeted search’ as part of Samantha Murphy investigation
Victoria police have released details about searches conducted in the Ballarat area over the past two days.
“Police undertook a targeted search in the Ballarat area yesterday and today as part of the investigation into the disappearance of Samantha Murphy,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
Detectives from the Missing Persons Squad as well as a range of specialist resources from across Victoria police were involved in the search, which is part of the ongoing investigation into Murphy’s alleged murder in February.
They said Murphy’s family had been advised, but that the force was not in a position to give further specific details about the operation, which has now ended.
A number of items located during a search in Buninyong on 29 May are still being forensically assessed, they added.
Journalist Cheng Lei to appear with comedian Vicky Xu at Melbourne’s Club Voltaire
It appears Australian journalist, Cheng Lei, who spent almost three years in China’s prison system, is branching into the wild world of stand-up comedy.
Cheng Lei, seen here with Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Penny Wong, after being released from Chinese detention. Photograph: Sarah Hodges/AP
Comedian and journalist Vicky Xu this afternoon tweeted:
HELLO MELBOURNE! Extremely psyched to announce that Cheng Lei (I cannot find her twitter) will be joining me tomorrow night and doing a comedy set of her own. One can only imagine the kind of jokes she’ll be making
Xu later confirmed to Guardian Australia that she will be appearing alongside Lei at the Club Voltaire gig.
In her description of the event online, Xu said: “I’ll be talking about my latest life as a nomad-memoir-writer-slash-MMA-fighter. Being harassed, haunted by the Chinese Communist Party. My alleged sex tape, and other stuff that come up.”
More work needed to stop male perpetrators of family violence, Indigenous advocate says
Alison Scott, the incoming co-chair of the Family and Sexual Violence Commission’s Lived Experience Advisory Council, says more work needs to be done to stop male perpetrators of family violence.
The Noongar woman’s sister was murdered by her partner five years ago. Speaking with ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, Scott says:
There’s prevention for our males in community … we really need to look at that. Women are very interested in that area growing, knowing that we can’t just look at funding services and working with services that deal with the victims all the time, we need to look at what is happening in the perpetrator space.
Prevention also is about making sure that people know what healthy relationships are so that they aren’t walking into these situations not knowing what they’re getting themselves into.
We know, especially in Aboriginal communities, we’ve had generations of devastation done to our families. So, trying to prevent getting into those situations again and having healthy, happy, strong families is really a priority so that we don’t see this going on for forever and a day.
Australia still waiting for transparency from PwC, Labor senator O’Neill says
Today’s senate inquiry report into government reliance on consultants makes 12 recommendations, including that consultancy PwC disclose the names and positions of those involved in the firm’s tax leaks.
Another was that service providers “act in the public interest”.
Speaking with the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, Labor senator Deborah O’Neill, who was part of committee that wrote the report, says that recommendation is necessary because of the extent to which public trust was breached.
We know that professional associations actually talk about the public interest, or the common good as it once was called, being a critical part of what it is to being a professional. Yet we’ve seen all of those values trashed, time and time again, with contracts that have run on, contracts that have been expanded, contracts that have been sought against the interest of the nation, replete with conflicts of interest. And we just can’t have that continue.
She continues:
We need transparency. The first recommendation of this committee was PwC should tell the truth. We are nowhere near that yet.
PwC should be banned for five years from all government work, Greens’ Pocock says
Recommendations from a senate inquiry into government use of consultants are too weak, Greens senator Barbara Pocock says.
The Greens broadly support the inquiry report’s 12 recommendations – which include the development of a central register for conflicts of interest breaches – but Pocock suggests PwC should be banned for five years from all government work and that consultancies should be size-capped.
Greens Senator Barbara Pocock wants tougher action taken against consultancy PwC. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
In a statement, she says:
Australians are now awake to the systemic conflicts of interest built into the consulting sector and they are expecting real solutions.
The failure to recommend an end to political donations from big contractors does not pass the pub test. Even big consultants see this as a problem.
In the face of indisputable evidence of a betrayal of confidential tax information by PwC, there are no new recommendations to impose penalties on PwC, despite ongoing investigations and evidence of new misdemeanours.
PwC should be banned for five years from all government work based on its known transgressions, and it should certainly be banned until all the current investigations are completed and they have handed over the Linklaters report.
We need systemic action to end the opaque governance of big consultancies, cap their size to 100, and require them to meet the same level of taxation, transparency and accountability as other large entities, like corporations.
We need to be able to see the books, examine the way they manage their personal income tax, end their conflicts of interest, and stop mis-use of the revolving door.
Australian wine exports to China rebound now that trade has resumed
It’s not long since China re-opened the wine trade with Australia and already our wineries have sold about $86m of vino to our largest trading partner.
Speaking from Wirra Wirra winery in South Australia’s Mclaren Vale, agriculture minister Murray Watt says the newly-restored Chinese market is helping the industry get back on its feet.
Grape growers are hoping for better times now that China is once again buying Australian wine. Photograph: Loren Elliott/Reuters
Within a month of its suspensions on wine exports being lifted by China, Watt told ABC’s Afternoon Briefing that $86m-worth of Australian wine – the bulk of it from South Australia - had been sold to China.
That is a really encouraging trend, and frankly, probably goes further than what we expected to happen quite so soon.
Wirra Wirra alone has sold 15,000 extra bottles since suspensions were lifted, he said.
China was Australia’s biggest wine market before Chinese tariffs were imposed more than three years ago.
Watt has announced a $3.5m funding package to help the industry.
Greens want more cost-of-living support for Queenslanders, higher mining taxes
Meanwhile, the Greens reckon Queensland’s cost of living support doesn’t go far enough, for long enough, or tax the mining sector hard enough.
The party’s two state MPs Amy MacMahon and Michael Berkman say the government needs to build tens of thousands of new public homes to reduce social housing waiting lists, which hit a 21-month record this year.
The Greens do seem to support the government’s 20% cut in the price of car registration, with MacMahon saying “any measures that we can be using [to help] Queenslanders with cost of living now are really crucial”. He continues:
The Greens have been pushing for fast, frequent, free public transport for many years. We want to see the government massively increasing investment in public transport so that people can get around, people can make the choice to not have to drive a car. But without that [extra investment] people are going to be making the rational decision to drive.
The Greens also want the government - which has budgeted a reduction in public transport fares to just 50 cents each trip - to go even further, slashing them to zero.
Queensland opposition budget reply expected to focus on housing
Staying in Queensland, where part of the government’s budget strategy this week has been to use it to try to flush the opposition out of its small-target strategy.
Opposition leader David Crisafulli gets an hour of parliament’s time tomorrow as treasurer Cameron Dick has reminded anyone who will listen for the past few weeks.
He had a new line for the cameras outside the post-budget lunch.
We’ve only got 24 hours to wait for the big reveal from David Crisafulli and the LNP. I think David Crisafulli is going to have to turn into David Copperfield, because he’s going to have to make all of his promises magically disappear, because there’s absolutely no way he can deliver the promises that he’s made, including lower debt, lower taxes and then support all parts of our budget.
My concern is that what he’s going to make disappear are Queensland jobs, Queensland services, and Queensland’s big build.
Everyone says the budget reply speech will include housing - a no-brainer in the country’s second-most expensive city - but nobody can say exactly how. Stay tuned!
Queensland premier, treasurer spruik 50c public transport fares, expanded bus service
Back to Queensland, where premier Steven Miles and treasurer Cameron Dick have made their pitch to party members at an ALP lunch today.
Several hundred party members attended the two-course lunch at the Exhibition and Conservation centre.
Both Miles and Dick made substantial speeches, but most of what they said has already been reported.
The government loves talking about public transport but it’s still spending heavily on roads. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP
(For example, Miles once again warned the state would be a “dumping ground for nuclear waste” under the LNP).
As is often the case, the question and answer session was the most interesting part.
The two leaders were asked which part of the budget was their favourite. Miles said it was the 50-cent public transport fares because higher fares for long-distance travel discouraged outer-suburban residents like him from taking the train.
They were asked also what they were doing to support small business in disaster areas, with the premier explaining there’s a preferential procurement policy for government contracts.
Jon Raven, the Labor mayor of Logan, asked what the government was doing to improve bus services. Dick said the state was putting $70m into “new and expanded bus services”. Which is a fair bit less than they’re putting into new and improved road services. The state’s 20% car registration discount alone costs the budget $435m over two years.
Bicycle commuting increasingly popular across Australia
Australians are increasingly choosing to cycle to work, with an annual average growth of 6% in bike commuting across the country, according to new data.
Analysis from the Bicycle Network, which recorded data at 961 sites around Australia detecting 143,000 trips on bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters on 5 March, has found a consistent rise in commuters following what had been a flatlining trend in 2023.
A growing number of Australians are choosing to commute to work by bicycle. Photograph: Darren England/AAP
Tasmania recorded 48% growth in commuting by bike, however the Network notes there was favourable riding weather on the day the data was captured there.
New South Wales recorded a 28% annual increase in bike commuting trips, with rises of 11% in South Australia, 4% in Victoria and 1% in Western Australia.
Bike commuting rose 7% in Melbourne, which the Bicycle Network says is notable because of disruptions to a number of bike routes in and outside Melbourne’s CBD.
Bicycle Network CEO Alison McCormack says:
People right across Australia are recognising the benefits of active transport and beginning their day in the best way possible: with a bike ride.
While we have seen sharper upticks in other years, the growth of 6% across the country is significant. We know, for example, that at an annual growth rate of 7% the number of bike riders on the street would double within a decade. The future is bright.
The 2024 count also included e-bike data for the first time, which revealed that e-bikes accounted for 11% of all bike trips across the country. Women made up more than one in three e-bike riders. E-bikes accounted for 16% of all trips completed by women, and 9% of the trips completed by men.
Queensland man jailed for ‘remorseless’ attack on South Bank shopping centre guards
Over to Queensland, where a man who stabbed a shopping centre security guard in the torso and slashed another on the arm has been jailed for his “remorseless” attacks.
Jake Wayne Peter Purcell, 29, pleaded guilty in Brisbane District Court on Wednesday to two counts of unlawful wounding, AAP reports.
Crown prosecutor Stephen Muir said Purcell had threatened two male security guards with a knife after they had taken reasonable steps to remove him from a shopping centre near Brisbane’s South Bank tourist precinct on 7 June, 2023.
Purcell had attended a supermarket intending to buy cigarettes but became belligerent when his preferred brand was not available.
“The (victim), quite properly, shoved the defendant when he saw the weapon. (Purcell’s) response was then to wound each man ... with what was obviously a deadly weapon,” Mr Muir said.
The guards were treated in hospital for a 5cm penetrating wound and a 3cm laceration.
Purcell was sentenced to three-and-half years’ imprisonment with just over one year on remand declared as time served.
Greens say Australia’s climate legislation is ‘Dutton proof’
Adam Morton
The Greens have called Peter Dutton’s comments about climate targets “a waste of breath”, arguing the Coalition has “zero chance” of having the numbers after the next election to overturn the country’s climate legislation.
The opposition leader says he will not support the legislated 2030 target - a 43% cut compared with 2005 levels - if he wins power, and he will not announce an alternative target before the election.
Adam Bandt says fighting about climate targets is meaningless because the Coalition won’t have the numbers to change legislation. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, argues the Coalition has little to no chance of winning a majority of seats in the House of Representatives, and no chance of having the numbers in the Senate to overturn legislation that sets a minimum 2030 emissions reduction target. He says there is likely to be a “climate majority” of Labor, Greens and independent MPs in both houses, making the climate laws “Dutton proof” and the fight over climate targets “meaningless”.
The Greens say a repeat of the 2022 election result will likely give Labor and Greens 39 votes in the Senate, enough to pass or block legislation. If the 2019 election result was repeated, Labor and the Greens would likely have 37 Senate votes and be able to form a blocking majority with at least one independent.
Bandt says:
Instead of a confected debate about something Peter Dutton won’t even have the power to do, we should focus on what the science demands and stop opening new coal and gas mines.
