Sydney Harbour Bridge set to close as protesters draw attention to Gaza
TRANSCRIPT:
Sydney Harbour Bridge set to close as protesters draw attention to Gaza
Indigenous leaders praise the federal government's new economic partnership plan
The Wallabies win their third match against the British and Irish Lions Indigenous leaders have hailed the Prime Minister's announcement of an economic partnership with the Coalition of Peaks as a real step forward. Coalition of Peaks lead convener Pat Turner says the partnership is about putting Indigenous communities in control of their economic future, while National Native Title Tribunal chief executive Jamie Lowe says the funding shows the government is serious about supporting traditional owners. "Native title holders have been crying out for more resourcing to facilitate their cultural obligations and facilitate economic empowerment for years now. There's conjecture around whether it's enough, but it's a starting point. So we really welcome the announcement." Meanwhile, others like elder in residence at legal centre Knowmore, Aunty Glendra Stubbs, have expressed disappointment in a lack of any mention of a national truth-telling process in his address. Yolngu leader and chair of the Yothu Yindi Foundation Djawa Yunupingu has also said he wants a real economy for his people. "Ladies and gentlemen, let me assure you that the Yolngu people are not going to suddenly stop and rest and think, everything is okay." The United Nations says two key thresholds have now been crossed as the hunger crisis in Gaza draws nearer to an official declaration of famine. Ted Chaiban is a senior official with the UN Children's Fund and says over 18,000 children have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. That's an average of 28 children per day, and Mr Chaiban says choices made now will determine whether tens of thousands more children die. "And Gaza now faces a grave risk of famine. I know this is something that's been building up, but we now have two indicators that have exceeded the famine threshold. One in three people in Gaza are going days without food and the malnutrition indicator has exceeded the famines threshold with global acute malnutrition now at over 16.5 per cent. Today more than 320,000 young children are at risk of acute malnutrition." He says the aid being allowed into Gaza by Israel is 'a fraction of what's needed' despite a slight increase in the past week. Gaza's health ministry says the total death toll since October 2023 has passed 60,400. The Sydney Harbour Bridge will close to traffic today as thousands are expected to join a major protest over the war in Gaza. The Palestine Action Group is leading the rally, supported by politicians, unions and aid groups. It aims to highlight what the UN describes as worsening famine in Gaza. New South Wales Police tried to block the event in court, but the Supreme Court ruled it can go ahead. A large police presence will be in place, with the bridge shut to vehicles for most of the day. Acting Deputy Commissioner of the New South Wales Police Peter McKenna says police are working with the Palestine Action Group to ensure the procession goes on safely. "As is the case, we respect the decision of the Supreme Court, and we will now be working with and have already reached out to the organisers of that protest to make sure that this operation, this this public assembly, goes ahead and as safely as possible." A similar protest is also set to take place in Melbourne at the King's Street Bridge in the CBD against the war in Gaza. An Australian-first plan to introduce a legal right to work from home for two days a week in Victoria has been criticised by business groups as divisive and political. Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has promoted the plan as beneficial to both the economy and families, likening it to other significant workplace changes in recent decades including more women entering the workforce. But Australian Industry Group Victorian head Tim Piper has described it as 'pure political theatre' designed to wedge the opposition, and something that runs counter to both global trends and business best practice. Scott Vankeer from the Victorian Chamber of Commerce has tells SBS it could mean businesses would move interstate. "We would expect to be consulted over the next couple of weeks here, because it's quite concerning. And we think that the government needs to hear from our members and their concerns in terms of what could this mean for their growth, and employing staff in Melbourne and Victoria." The Wallabies have restored some national pride and avoided a dubious place in Australian sports history with a face-saving 22-12 third-Test win over the British and Irish Lions in Sydney. Joe Schmidt's side overcame miserable conditions and the absence of key players to record a spirited and spiteful victory at Accor Stadium on Saturday. Much of the match was played in torrential rain, while lightning early in the second half forced a rare 38-minute stoppage.
The Wallabies' win denied the Lions their bid to complete the first 3-0 series whitewash since 1904.
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ABC News
30 minutes ago
- ABC News
Negative gearing reform is back on the agenda, but younger voters now hold the power
It's time to put the 2019 election to bed, along with the messages we pretend were sent from voters from that disastrous campaign for Labor. It has been six years since Labor leader Bill Shorten took what were quite radical proposals to the voting public, including negative gearing reforms. Since that election, Australia has changed profoundly. We have endured a global pandemic with consequences we are only beginning to realise, and an acute housing crisis that has changed us. We have seen the biggest change to the demographics of the dominant voting bloc, with millennials and Gen Z now being the largest voting group in Australia, outnumbering boomers. By the next election, that shift will be even more profound. Voters younger than their mid-40s are consistently telling pollsters they believe the system is stacked against them. They have made it crystal clear they are hungry for change. The treasurer's productivity roundtable has now morphed into something much broader than simply delivering productivity reforms, and this is both worrying and exciting some stakeholders. Some in business circles believe it is increasingly being used to push for higher taxes. Those who want the tax conversation say it's about more effective taxes. Even fairer taxes. Remember fairness? Senior government sources strongly contest that this is an excuse to raise taxes. They say they are keen to cut taxes too, but need to pay for it somehow. That can't be from spending cuts alone. A reconfiguration of that tax system is the only answer. The Australian Council of Trade Unions yesterday declared they will use the productivity platform to call for bold reform to negative gearing and the capital gains tax at the government's productivity roundtable this month, proposing that the tax breaks be limited to one investment property. Sally McManus, the union's secretary, told Insiders the current arrangements should continue for five years, but after that date, "we've got to bite the bullet". "Otherwise, we're just saying 'too bad, young people, you're not going to be able to ever own a home,'" she said. "Since 2019, the problem has just gotten worse. It's going to continue to get worse unless the government is brave enough to do something about it." When it was in opposition, Labor took negative gearing reforms to the 2016 and 2019 federal elections, at which they were defeated. But they were defeated for a myriad of reasons. Their tax policies were only part of the story of that defeat. The ACTU's manifesto for reform will be resisted by some quarters, but their proposals achieve one important thing. They have restarted a conversation that Australians have said they want their leaders to be having. The tax burden is not being shared fairly, and governments that continue to ignore this reality risk losing the trust of younger voters who are hungry for reform. At the same time, the Productivity Commission has called for a 20 per cent tax rate on profits for companies with revenue of up to $1 billion. The commission also called for a new 5 per cent tax on net cashflow rather than profits, which could see some large companies pay a higher rate but would provide immediate tax relief for smaller companies seeking to build their capital. Already, this is being fiercely resisted by the big end of town. But it's time to involve a wider range of Australians from across the tax scale to have an input on what is fair and what is just. Perhaps the proposal won't work — who knows — but we should ventilate big and radical ideas, and we should applaud the Productivity Commission for thinking radically and creatively. Returning to the negative gearing conversation, you'll recall this was a scare campaign Peter Dutton unsuccessfully tried to inject into the May campaign. At the time, it forced Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers to deny that Labor was preparing to make changes to negative gearing. The issue re-emerged during the leaders' debate on the ABC, when Mr Albanese said he had not commissioned Treasury modelling on the potential economic impact of changes to the policy. His response prompted Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to laugh and accuse him of lying. Reports first emerged last year that the federal Treasury had investigated a potential overhaul of the tax concessions awarded to property owners. "It certainly wasn't commissioned by us to do so," the PM said when asked during the second debate about the Treasury modelling. But Treasurer Jim Chalmers had publicly stated back in September that he had asked Treasury for "advice" about the subject, leading Dutton to claim in the debate that Albanese had a "problem with the truth". Chalmers then tried to draw a difference between that advice and "modelling". "I've said on a number of occasions now that I sought a view," the treasurer said. "Now that's different to commissioning modelling. The prime minister was asked about commissioning modelling. I sought a view." Chalmers said it was "normal practice" to seek advice on such a matter and that the Treasury's view was a change to negative gearing "wouldn't get the sort of improvement that we desperately need to see in our economy when it comes to supply". One thing is clear: the treasurer wants this debate. Whether the PM would be willing to champion this change is another matter. We do, however, have one precedent worth remembering. The PM was deeply resistant to changing the stage 3 tax cuts until the case had been made with the public, and then suddenly, he was into it. I suspect the same thing would occur on some of the bigger reform ideas. Kos Samaras, director at the political consultancy firm Redbridge, said there are profound generational shifts between the 2019 and 2025 elections. In 2019, Millennials and Gen Z made up just 26 per cent of the electoral roll, whilst Baby Boomers and older Australians still held sway, culturally and politically. But that was the last election where the latter group's decades-long dominance would be felt. "By May 2025, Millennials and Gen Z accounted for 42 per cent of enrolled voters, a generational bloc shaped by vastly different life experiences," he tells this column. "This is the first cohort since the Great Depression to believe their quality of life is worse than that of their parents. "They've come of age amid a housing crisis, climate anxiety, a global pandemic, inflation shocks, and broken career promises. "At the next federal election, this generational tide will become even more pronounced. "Millennials and Gen Z will be the most dominant voting bloc in the country, while Baby Boomers and older Australians will comprise just 27 per cent of the roll. "Hence, the ACTU-proposed negative gearing changes will resonate with younger Australians, and it would be a brave politician to ignore such a proposal." Over to you. Patricia Karvelas is host of ABC News Afternoon Briefing at 4pm weekdays on ABC News Channel, co-host of the weekly Party Room podcast with Fran Kelly and host of politics and news podcast Politics Now.
ABC News
30 minutes ago
- ABC News
The junior doctor from Perth trying to build a children's hospital in Gaza
As the hospital walls shook and screams filled the night, Dr Mohammed Mustafa turned on his phone to film, simultaneously shocking the world and changing the course of his life. Bombs were falling again on Gaza, a two-month-long ceasefire abruptly ended by Israel in the early hours of March 18 this year. The trainee emergency doctor from Perth, known as Dr Mo, was thrust into the carnage of a mass casualty event. "I remember just thinking to myself, "Oh my God, how many dead are there?" Dr Mo tells Australian Story. "And then I went to my room and I just recorded what was going on, what had happened that night." In the video, the 35-year-old doctor's face is etched with pain and exhaustion as he describes operating through the night on patients, mostly women and children, "burnt head-to-toe, limbs missing". Overcome, the UK-raised son of Palestinian refugees lowers his head, covers his eyes with his big hand to hide the tears and turns off the video. Then he posts it on social media. "I think it really struck a lot of chords with a lot of people," Dr Mo says. "All of a sudden I became this focal point where I had a lot of people wanting to interview me." Israel has banned foreign journalists from Gaza, and killed more than 170 Palestinian journalists, so Dr Mo became a chronicler of life and death in war-torn Palestine, talking to television networks around the world and taking video of the ever-unfolding nightmare of the emergency room. Just how deeply Dr Mo's work resonated became clear when he returned to Perth. Hundreds of supporters, many of whom only knew him via social media, filled the airport arrivals hall and cheers went up as the 190cm, 140kg man-mountain emerged. His videos also resonated globally, attracting the attention of world leaders and political figures such as former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and bringing him face-to-face with Piers Morgan and Greta Thunberg. Five months on, Dr Mo is now on a mission that has taken him not just to the halls of Australia's parliament but to governments around the world: to build a children's hospital in Gaza. To his 200,000-plus Instagram followers, Dr Mo is known by the username "Beast from the Middle East", a throwback to the chant that would rise up in the crowd as he thundered down the field as a professional rugby player. For the young Palestinian migrant to the UK, who was targeted at school for his ethnicity and Islamic faith, rugby offered a sense of belonging. Despite the schoolyard turmoil, he was a bright kid, and from an early age, Dr Mo was well aware his parents wanted him to be a doctor. "I pushed him hard [to] study medicine," his mother, Iman Mustafa, says. "I love medicine." After graduating, Dr Mo chose to specialise in emergency medicine, a field that, like rugby and his subsequent title-winning foray into ju-jitsu, satisfied his need for action. "I wanted to go and help in conflict zones," Dr Mo says. "I wanted to go help in natural disasters. I wanted to be there when it happened, to be right there and then." In 2017, despite his mother's protestations, Dr Mo moved to Queensland's Gold Coast to continue his training. "Emergency medicine in Australia is world-renowned and the pay is a lot better, the lifestyle is a lot better," he says. He became enamoured with Australia, its people, humour, and culture, and after moving to Western Australia, became an Australian citizen in April 2023. Six months later, while on night shift, Dr Mo learned of the horrific raids into Israel by Hamas on October 7. "Those images of women and children being kidnapped and taken into Gaza, when you saw dead women and children, there's no justification for that," Dr Mo says. But at the same time, he felt a sense of dread, knowing that Israel would respond with deadly force. "I felt sorry for what the people were about to endure in Gaza," he says. Israel's retaliatory strikes killed at least 1,900 children by the end of October, according to human rights researchers — an unprecedented toll in modern history. Dr Mo had never been to Gaza, never met his extended family living there. Now was the time. He volunteered as an emergency doctor and in June 2024, in the weeks after Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom was killed by an Israeli air-strike while attempting to deliver food, Dr Mo began his first of two stints in Gaza. "You could hear the bombs going off in the background and the drones overhead, and you've got these children in body bags [within] the first 30 minutes, hour, that we arrived at the hospital," Dr Mo says. Dealing with high-stress situations is part of Dr Mo's life. But when he stood up in Parliament House in May to deliver a speech urging support for a children's hospital in Gaza, he was overwhelmed. "My palms were very, very sweaty and I was very, very nervous," he says. Dr Mo told of the guilt he harbours from having to decide between the child he can treat and the child who will bleed to death on the floor. He told of how at least 1,400 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war. And a child dies there every 40 minutes. Sitting in the audience, along with politicians, diplomats, and aid workers, was Matiu Bush, the nursing academic with social media know-how who Dr Mo met and collaborated with during his second mission in Gaza. Together, they spearhead the campaign for the children's hospital, recently spending months overseas engaged in high-level lobbying for support of the proposal. "We're not an organisation, we're not part of the government," Dr Mo told the crowd. "We're just a doctor and a nurse." The mission is to build a children's hospital in Gaza, with its kitchen named in Zomi Frankcom's honour. The plan is to assemble the hospital in Gaza from modular units transported from Jordan. Funding would come from philanthropic donors and the public, with like-minded governments acting as custodians, taking on overall responsibility for the hospital. Dr Mo has met with Australia's Foreign Minister Penny Wong and the minister for international development, Dr Anne Aly, pushing the need for government negotiations with Israel to allow the hospital. The UK's under-secretary of state with responsibility for the Middle East, Hamish Falconer, has agreed to consider the proposal. The Irish government has pledged "full support" and the Jewish Council of Australia wants to help fundraise. He is so busy with his mission, just when Dr Mo will finish his traineeship and become an emergency medicine specialist is uncertain. But despite the days of darkness Dr Mo experienced while in Gaza, he found a shining light. "They say don't believe in love at first sight, but I was blown away by this woman," he says. He worked alongside her in the emergency room, a local doctor, "so kind and compassionate". He knew her name was Nour, but before he found the courage to ask if she was single, word came through that Dr Mo and other volunteers were to be evacuated from northern Gaza to the south within a few hours. After arriving in the south, he mentioned his feelings for Nour to an uncle, and everything happened in a rush. Her father was contacted and made the dangerous trip south to meet Dr Mo. The next day, Nour visited. They spoke for a few hours, after which Dr Mo was more convinced than ever that "this is the person that I want to be with". The next day, her father called. Nour had agreed to marry him. With drones overhead and bombs falling nearby, their families came together for a small daytime wedding ceremony — and then Nour went back north. Five days later, Dr Mo was flown back to Perth. "I worry for her safety," Dr Mo says, who has since been denied access to Gaza by Israel. "I can't wait till we manage to get her out of Gaza." When Dr Mo calls Nour, he can hear fighter jets overhead and knows the danger she faces going to work at the hospital each day. When he closes his eyes, he sees the lifeless bodies of children he has put into body bags. "Switching off the phone doesn't stop those images in my head," he says. "There's a lot of pain that I've got, but if I can put aside the pain and I can focus on something positive, then maybe people from the other side can also put aside their pain and focus on the positive. "I just want the killing to stop, and I want these kids to grow up with a chance in the future."
West Australian
an hour ago
- West Australian
Sue-Anne Hunter: New role to close the gap after Garma Festival reveals ‘grim' statistics on youth in prison
The nation's first Commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children has described the task ahead as 'urgent' and statistics around Indigenous incarceration as 'grim.' Sue-Anne Hunter, a Wurundjeri and Ngurai Illum Wurrung woman, social worker and member of Victoria's truth-telling Commission, was appointed on Sunday night, to be a voice for children and young people. She said she was honoured. 'I recognise that we are at risk of losing another generation to systems that fail them, to removal, out of home care detention and a bleak future,' Ms Hunter said. 'The work is urgent and the statistics are grim. But our children are not statistics, they are our future. This role will elevate their voices and their concerns. They will be at the centre of everything I do.' At the annual Garma Festival on Saturday, Anthony Albanese was confronted over the high rate of imprisonment of indigenous youth in the Northern Territory. 'Don't be here to think your attendance here is enough,' Yothu Yindi Foundation chief executive Denise Bowden told the Prime Minister. National statistics show Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are more than 10 times more likely to be in out-of-home care and 27 times more likely to be in youth detention. Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy called the status quo 'deeply distressing' and unacceptable. 'Under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap all governments have committed to reducing these rates, and states and territories must redouble their efforts,' she said.
