Australia news live: former ADF chief warns nuclear power plants could be war targets; Greens unveil arts policy
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Australian nuclear reactors could become a target of war if the federal coalition was to go ahead with plans to build them, AAP reports.
The Australian Security Leaders Climate Group, a group of former defence leaders, has warned that the plan to build seven small nuclear reactors across five states on the sites of coal-fired stations could leave Australia vulnerable to missile warfare and sabotage.
One of its members, former ADF chief Chris Barrie, said modern warfare was increasingly being fought using missiles and unmanned aerial systems.
Every nuclear power facility is a potential dirty bomb because rupture of containment facilities can cause devastating damage. With the proposed power stations all located within a 100 kilometres of the coast, they are a clear and accessible target.
Former defence department director of preparedness and mobilisation Cheryl Durrant cited the Ukraine-Russia war where both sides have prioritised targeting their opponents' energy systems.
Australia would be no different. Share
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I'm Martin Farrer, bringing you the best of the overnight stories, and then it will be Emily Wind to take you through to the weekend.
Our lead story this morning is a report into the third-party groups campaigning to reduce 'Green and teal growth' at the federal election. Third-party groups are preparing federal election campaigns that include accusations that the Greens and teal independents threaten 'Australia's economic and social stability', and also focus in part on their views on the Israel-Gaza war. More to come.
Creative Australia's chief executive should be sacked and its board spilled with a comprehensive review of the funding body, the Greens have said. The party, which releases its arts election policy today, said the creative sector was in turmoil after the biennale fiasco, job cuts and festival cancellations. More coming up.
And a group of senior defence experts have warned that proposed nuclear power plants in Australia could be targets in case of war. More on that too soon. Share
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The Independent
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Independent Scotland would cut ties with Israel, says SNP Westminster leader
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Telegraph
23 minutes ago
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Hermer praised mosque where preacher urged Muslims to ‘spit on Israel'
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The Guardian
24 minutes ago
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Who are Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli ministers facing sanctions?
The two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers facing sanctions from the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway are critical to the political survival of Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. In 2022 Netanyahu formed the most rightwing government in Israel's history, brokering a coalition with Bezalel Smotrich, whose Religious Zionism party has 14 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose Jewish Power party has six seats. They account for just 20 of his coalition's 67 seats in parliament but carry outsize influence because if they quit – which both repeatedly threaten to do – the government will fall. Netanyahu is currently on trial for corruption and fending off calls for an official inquiry into the 7 October 2023 attacks, and keen to avoid early elections. Here are short details of both men's lives and careers before entering government. Smotrich is a messianic settler who was born in the occupied Golan Heights in 1980, now lives in the occupied West Bank and has repeatedly called for Israeli settlers to return to Gaza. He believes Jews have a divine right to all land that made up biblical Israel. A commitment to expanding the area controlled by Jewish Israelis – both in de facto terms and through legal annexation – runs through his personal and political life. In 2005, he was arrested by the Shin Bet security services and questioned for weeks about his role in protests over Israel's plans to withdraw from Gaza, allegedly on suspicion of planning to block roads and damage infrastructure to try to block the withdrawal. He was released without charges being brought, set up an influential rightwing NGO focused on control of occupied land and won his first parliamentary seat in 2015. Homophobic and accused of racism, he backed segregated maternity wards separating Jewish and Arab mothers, called for government reprisal attacks on Palestinians and once organised an anti-gay 'Beast Parade' protest against Gay Pride. Ben-Gvir embraced extremism so young that Israel's domestic security forces barred him from serving in the country's army as a teenager. Born in 1976 to a family of Iraqi heritage in a small town outside Jerusalem, he became a far-right activist while still at school, and continued while studying law. By his early 30s he had been convicted of incitement to racism and support for a terrorist organisation. Those convictions did not stop him from becoming a lawyer, and he specialised in representing Jewish Israelis charged with terrorism-related offences. For years his living room was decorated with a portrait of the mass murderer Baruch Goldstein, who gunned down 29 Palestinians in a Hebron mosque in 1994. Goldstein, like Ben-Gvir, was an admirer of the extremist rabbi Meir Kahane. Having spent most of his life as a figure on Israel's political fringe, Ben-Gvir was given the security portfolio when he joined Netanyahu's government. He now controls the police forces that once arrested him, and the jails where he was once held.
