Historic Kalgoorlie pipeline set for over half billion upgrade
The Kalgoorlie pipeline is one of the nation's great infrastructure projects. It's up there with the Snowy Mountain scheme and the Overland telegraph line as a visionary nation building project. The WA State Government has announced it will spend more than half a billion dollars upgrading the capacity of the historic Goldfields Water Supply Scheme. Water Minister Don Punch says 543 million dollars will be allocated in the forthcoming State Budget to increase its daily capacity by more than 7 million litres by 2027. Reporter: Sinead Mangan with Jarrod Lucas (Kalgoorlie)
A third vigil has been held in Alice Springs to demand "justice" after Kumanjayi White's death in police custody last month. Many members of Mr White's home community of Yuendumu travelled hundreds of kilometres to be at the vigil, which saw the crowd walk to the Coles supermarket where the young Warlpiri man died. Mr White's family members repeated calls for the NT Police Force to hand over their investigation into his death to an independent body. Reporter: Sinead Mangan with ABC Indigenous Affairs reporter Carly Williams
The GoodSam app recruits everyday people to respond to a cardiac arrest before an ambulance arrives. New South Wales GoodSam volunteers have saved more than 50 lives since 2023. When Geoff Percival collapsed in cardiac arrest and his partner called triple-0, a paramedic was not the first responder; it was neighbour Ashlin Fisher. Reporter: Christien de Garis (Bega)
The tariff war between the US President Donald Trump and China has had an upside for Australian farmers with Beijing restaurants and shops swapping out US beef for Aussie beef. Reporter: Sinead Mangan and Alex Hyman, talent Beef Central publisher and co-founder Jon Condon.
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ABC News
30 minutes ago
- ABC News
Productivity summit turns to building homes, with warnings housing targets will not be met
Housing will dominate discussion at the Economic Reform Roundtable this morning, with ministers, business leaders and conservationists all under pressure to solve the wicked problem of building more homes without trashing the environment. Productivity commissioner Danielle Wood, who will open the session, titled: Better Regulation and Approvals, is expected to explain to attendees that environmental approvals are one of the biggest handbrakes on housing. In her speech to the National Press Club on Monday, Ms Wood warned "regulatory hair balls" had found their way into "almost every corner of our economy". The result has included massive blowouts in approval times for housing and major infrastructure projects, and she argues it has hurt productivity. The focus has again turned to aging environmental laws that both the former Morrison government and the Albanese government last term failed to reform. Under current laws, new developments only need federal approval if they are likely to damage the environment, harm threatened species or affect culturally sensitive land. That means only a fraction of projects fall within the Commonwealth's remit. But ABC News understands that even within that smaller pool, there is still a backlog of 30,000 projects, including many of industry's largest proposals, and plenty of room to speed up approvals. Both Environment Minister Murray Watt and Housing Minister Clare O'Neil will be at the forum today, searching for the balance between protecting the environment and delivering homes faster. Ms Wood on Monday pointed out that housing approval times had blown out 50 per cent in the past three decades due to regulation. It means "hard conversations" are unavoidable, including about heritage and density restrictions. Last week, Treasury documents that were leaked to the ABC suggested the government could freeze changes to the National Construction Code to speed up housing approvals as a major outcome of the three-day summit. Labor derided a Coalition policy for a 10-year freeze at the 2025 election, arguing it would lead to the construction of "shoddy homes". Now, the government seems to be inching towards a freeze, which is feeding criticism from the opposition. "The government are hopeless when it comes to balancing the needs of more housing while protecting the environment. Labor are totally paralysed by this dilemma," Shadow Housing Minister Andrew Bragg told the ABC. "If their only outcome from the roundtable is to copy our policy, you can forgive us for rolling our eyes." Behind closed doors, Labor MPs admit the scale of the problem. Treasury documents show the government is not on track to meet its own election pledge of building 1.2 million homes in five years. Senator Watt has been consulting for months with miners, developers, business groups and conservationists on reforms to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act he hopes to legislate by mid-next year after two previous terms of government failed. A consistent complaint of the current system is duplication. Projects require the sign off of both state and federal departments, with the federal process not beginning until state or territory approval is given. Stakeholders agrees more housing is needed and that Australia's environmental laws are outdated. The sticking point is how far each side is willing to compromise. Graeme Samuel, who reviewed the EPBC Act in 2020, has identified a number of areas where approvals can delay and cause real impediments to proper investment. "The first is local government planning laws and approvals, they can take an inordinate amount of time and of course the NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) syndrome of local objectors can hold approvals up and in fact result in them never being obtained," he told the ABC. "The environmental approvals are also important and the recommendations in the review I did back in 2020 are designed to ensure efficiency and, more importantly, to ensure certainty." The same leaked Treasury documents also recommend a national artificial intelligence plan to cut environmental red tape. Housing approvals are just one concern of the flaws in the EPBC Act. Another is accelerating approvals for renewable energy projects, which the government considers just as critical in meeting its green energy targets. A Labor source told the ABC: "Reaching renewables targets and delivering on housing are the hardest challenges for the government politically. The big question for the talks is how to speed up approvals for both." It is why BHP's Australian president Geraldine Slattery and Australian Conservation Foundation chief Kelly O'Shanassy are central voices at today's discussion — symbols of the tension between growth and conservation. For Housing Minister Clare O'Neil, the Productivity Commission's report is blunt: red tape is choking supply. In some cases, it takes up to 10 times longer to get approval for a new home than to build one. She argues this bottleneck is shutting ordinary Australians out of home ownership and driving up costs. Fixing it has become one of the government's most urgent priorities. While housing dominates today's agenda, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will step away from Canberra to travel to South Australia to make his first inspection of the state's algal bloom crisis and flex his environmental credentials. Back in the capital, pressure will remain on attendees to strike the right balance between protecting the environment and solving the housing crisis. If tensions spill over, Mr Albanese will have the chance to smooth them over tonight, when he hosts union bosses, business chiefs and bureaucrats for dinner at The Lodge.
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
What is a state, and how do you start a new country? Statehood: Explained
NICHOLAS MAHER, REPORTER: Right now, a lot of people are talking about statehood, specifically Palestine being recognised as a state by Australia. But what does that actually mean? What is a state and who gets to decide who gets to be one? Let's start with that first question. In Australia, when we hear the word state, we usually think of these, but in international law, a sovereign state is a term used to describe countries like Australia or China. In order to be considered a sovereign state, there are four criteria that need to be met. You need a permanent population, a defined territory, a government that's not under the authority of another government, and the ability to enter into agreements with other states. So, who gets to decide when a state officially becomes a state? In international law, there two main ideas that dictate when a state is considered to be a state. The constitutive theory, which was the model in the 19th century and the declaratory theory, which was developed in the 20th century as a way to address some of the issues people had with the constitutive theory. When the constitutive theory was dominant, statehood wasn't automatic. There were no formal legal rules or criteria that needed to be met. Basically, a state could only become a state when it was recognised by other, already established states. This put a lot of power in the hands of the few established states that existed at the time. And because there weren't any real guidelines, recognition was often influenced by politics, or the strategic interests of these established powers. In the 20th century a new idea started to emerge, declaratory theory. This was expressed in the 1933 Montevideo Convention, which outlined the four criteria we talked about earlier that are still used today. Introducing a universal checklist for statehood challenged the idea that powerful countries could control who gets to be a state. The basic idea is that an entity is a state if it meets certain criteria, whether it's recognised by other states is a completely separate issue. In theory, this made becoming a state less political and more legal and objective, and in the years since World War II, we've seen a massive jump in the number of new countries being recognised. However, the story doesn't end here, and the way all of this actually plays out in reality isn't quite as clear cut. Despite declaratory theory meaning you can pretty much just declare yourself a state today if you meet the criteria, it doesn't mean you're automatically granted all the rights and status that other states may have. The reality is, being recognised by other states, constitutive theory, still plays a huge role in how much power and influence a state actually has on the international stage. A good example of this is Palestine. Today, the state of Palestine is recognised by more than 140 countries. In the eyes of the Palestinians and those 140 plus countries, Palestine meets the criteria for statehood, and is therefore a state, full stop. However, to countries that don't recognise it, like the United States, Palestine isn't a state. This leaves Palestine in a bit of a weird limbo. It can still function normally when it deals with other states that recognise it; for example, signing treaties or trade deals. It doesn't have the full international rights and status that a country like Australia has. The clearest example of this is the fact that Palestine still isn't a full member state at the United Nations, which is often seen as one of the final steps in achieving full international status. To become a member of the UN, you need the approval of at least two-thirds of the UN's member states, which Palestine has. You also need approval from at least nine of the 15 members of the UN Security Council, which Palestine also has. So, what's the problem here? The UN Security council, which is in charge of maintaining international peace and security, has five permanent members that can veto any decision. And when a vote on Palestinian membership came up in 2024, it was vetoed by the United States. This is why stories about countries deciding to recognise Palestine often gain international attention, despite most of the world having already made up its mind about this issue a while ago. Try to think of it this way: If you're looking at things from a strictly declaratory theory standpoint, the UK and France recognising Palestine may not seem like a big deal for Palestinians, because in their eyes it's just confirming what they already know: Palestine is a state. However, from a constitutive theory standpoint recognition from France and the UK is a big deal because it means two permanent members of the Security Council are now a lot less likely to veto Palestinian membership at the UN. Recognition from countries like France and the U.K. Also potentially puts pressure on the United States, now the final remaining permanent Security Council member in opposition to Palestinian statehood, which, to Palestinians, represents one of the final hurdles standing in the way of Palestine achieving the full UN membership status it's been waiting for a long time.
News.com.au
5 hours ago
- News.com.au
Telstra warns of new wave of scams on encrypted messaging apps
Popular encrypted messaging platforms are becoming a safe haven for scammers looking to bypass scam blocking technology, Australia's largest telco has warned. Telstra has cautioned its customers against flocking to encrypted messaging platforms, flagging users may be more vulnerable to scam messages and calls. While the security of end-to-end encryption means messages can only be accessed by the sender and receiver, limited visibility for telecommunication providers means their scam blocking technologies cannot scan or filter suspicious activity. Telstra's Cyber expert Darren Pauli said while encryption was a 'wonderful thing', the nature of these platforms make it tough for Telco's to monitor for potential scams. '(Encryption) protects banking, it protects everything. And it doesn't care about what the contents are that it's protecting. It just works,' he told NewsWire. 'I think more broadly that wherever the scams are happening, that platform should really genuinely put effort in and money in to really try to crush this. 'It's one of those things that you have to do for the broader security of the internet.' The telecommunications provider has also flagged an uptick in sophisticated recruitment lure scams, offering fake job opportunities that seem legitimate, and a rise in AI-enhanced scams and deepfakes. In the 12 months to June, Telstra was forced to block more than 18 million scam calls a month, almost double the number from the previous year. It also intercepted an average of more than 8 million scam text messages a month, and observed a 13 per cent year-on-year increase in reports of suspicious contacts. 'These fake job offers and recruitment scams are particularly nasty … they're targeting people who are vulnerable,' Mr Pauli said. 'They might be looking for work or whatever, and they will come out with offers of work from home, with good remuneration, and a quick interview process … So these are really quite lucrative and enticing offers. 'The tragedy really is that these scams are all about harvesting personal information (which) they then use for identity theft and sell it on the dark market.' Despite the increasingly sophisticated methods used by scammers, the National Anti-Scam Centre's Targeting report recorded a 25 per cent drop in losses between 2023 and 2024. Telstra's 'Cleaner Pipes' cyber initiative comes amid a massive advocacy push across the telecommunications and banking industry, spreading awareness to the harms of scams. 'I'm genuinely impressed with what the industry as a whole has done. It's remarkable stuff,' Mr Pauli said. 'They are frustrating scammers who are trying to hammer out texts or phone calls and it's not working and it costs (the scammers) money. 'If they weren't such terrible people I'd almost have some sympathy for them.'
