Power bills to rise next month despite LNP promise
Electricity bills will rise next month, despite the Queensland government promising households would pay less under the LNP.
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ABC News
a day ago
- ABC News
Former Liberal MP Andrew Laming wins a High Court appeal over fines for three Facebook posts
Former Queensland Liberal MP Andrew Laming has won his High Court appeal against a $40,000 fine over three Facebook posts. He was accused of not properly identifying himself as a political candidate upon posting in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election. Andrew Laming was the LNP member for Bowman when he made the Facebook posts on a page he administered titled "Redland Hospital: Let's fight for fair funding". The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) went after Mr Laming for failing to provide the correct authorisation required of political candidates in political communication. Under Australian electoral laws, MPs are required to give details, including their name and location, on any material that is aimed at influencing votes. Mr Laming admitted the posts lacked the required authorisation, but contested whether some of them fell into the category of political communication. The original Federal Court judgment found some of the posts were clearly written by Mr Laming, having been signed by him, including a letter to a journalist, but others did not identify him as the writer or publisher. The judgment noted it was evident from the post "that Mr Laming was pretending it was posted by someone else", even referring to himself in the third person. In the end, the case was narrowed down to three posts and Mr Laming was fined $20,000. But the AEC appealed and the fine was doubled to $40,000. That was to reflect the fact that the posts had been viewed 28 times. Mr Laming took it to the High Court, describing the reasoning as counterintuitive, saying he only made the omission once on each post. The AEC said the purpose of the law was to deter breaches and protect the rights of voters to make an informed choice. The commission told the High Court that on Mr Laming's reasoning, any anonymous political publication would only result in a single contravention, no matter how harmful or wide-reaching it may be. But today the High Court ruled a line in the sand, saying there was a contravention each time the posts were published, not each time they were viewed. Mr Laming quit politics before the 2022 election after a series of unrelated controversies.
ABC News
a day ago
- ABC News
Sunshine Coast residents unsure if homes will be resumed for transport project
A man on Queensland's Sunshine Coast says he and his neighbours have been forced into a "horrible" limbo as they wait to learn if the government will take their homes. Shaun Taylor said he was told before last year's state election that his Mountain Creek home had been marked for resumption to allow for the eventual construction of a rail line. But the LNP government said in March that it would renege on its election promise to build the line to Maroochydore, instead stopping construction at Birtinya and running a "metro-style" bus service the rest of the way as part of a new multi-billion-dollar public transport project dubbed The Wave. That announcement was initially met with relief by about 10 property owners at Mountain Creek, including Mr Taylor. But nearly six months on from The Wave announcement, and a year since discovering their homes were in the firing line, the residents are still struggling to get answers about the fate of their homes. Mr Taylor said they were unable to move on with their lives until they did. The electrician settled in Causeway Court nine years ago with his young family. They believed they had found their forever home, but Mr Taylor said they could not even sell it without losing a considerable amount of their initial housing investment. "We thought, 'Oh, let's just move', but we spoke to an agent and they said you won't get your value for your property. If anything, they'll low-ball you," Mr Taylor said. "There's two people down the street from us whose houses weren't even on the [resumption] list, they want to sell up and retire. But they can't because nobody's interested. They've had their house on the market for almost six months. Mr Taylor said he spoke to local member Brent Mickelberg in March but had not spoken to him since. Instead, residents received a letter which included a "direct line" to someone within the transport department to talk to about the project. "First of all the number didn't work, and then when I did get through about three weeks ago they didn't even have a design team or a planning team," Mr Taylor said. Mr Mickelberg was not available for an interview. In a statement, a Department of Transport and Main Roads spokesperson said investigations were still underway into a preferred corridor for The Wave's "metro-style" bus service. "The Queensland government understands the impact this may have on property owners and is committed to progressing this work as quickly as possible," the spokesperson said. "Investigations into the preferred corridor are expected to be completed in 2026 and our priority will be to confirm impacts on properties." According to state government figures, public transport patronage across the Sunshine Coast region stands at less than three per cent. A dedicated transport route, known as the CAMCOS corridor, has been set aside for 25 years. But new alignments, including the one that left the Mountain Creek residents in the firing line, have been made in recent years to support the technical requirements for Queensland Rail to safely operate trains. Alex Jago from advocacy group Better Transport Queensland said he did not want give affected residents "false hope" but it was possible that buses could run along the original corridor. "The difficulty of putting a train line into Maroochydore was one of the drivers for going to a bus solution there," Mr Jago said. "A bus is a lot more forgiving in terms of how steep it can go, how tight it can turn." He said The Wave would be a "game-changer" for the region — one of the largest urban areas in Australia by population to not have a dedicated, fixed-route public transport system. "Not just for the Olympics but for everything we do from the 2030s onwards," Mr Jago said. "There's a heck of a lot of people moving to the southern part of the Sunshine Coast. That does create massive travel demand, and a lot of those people will need to travel to Brisbane.
Sky News AU
4 days ago
- Sky News AU
‘Not for us to fix': Calls for Palestinians to rebuild trust
LNP MP Garth Hamilton firmly rejects any path toward Palestinian statehood while Hamas remains in control. Mr Hamilton said the group's grip on power must end before serious diplomatic discussions can begin. 'What has changed? Nothing has changed in the situation,' he said. 'I'll be really blunt here, I think Palestinian people have a lot of work to do to regain the trust of international community. 'They have to change that, that's not for us to fix and until such time … that those circumstances have changed, I don't think we should be having a conversation about statehood at all.'
