Latest news with #AfternoonUpdate:Election2025
The Guardian
04-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Cost of emissions from five major Australian resource companies more than $900bn, study finds
Five of Australia's biggest fossil fuel producers could be on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars in damages after a US research team developed a method to link individual companies to specific climate harms and put a dollar figure to the impact. This is the result of a new peer-review study published in the journal Nature that sought to establish a method that would allow courts to quantify the economic loss caused by fossil fuel producers for one kind of climate impact – extreme heat. Looking at the period 1991 to 2020, the researchers, Christopher Callahan at Stanford University in California and Justin Mankin at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, used historical emissions data for the world's five biggest oil producers: BP, Gazprom, Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil and Chevron. They then sought to understand how the emissions from these companies contributed to extreme heat. This was defined as the temperature of the hottest five days in a year. The team developed a replicable method to quantify the damage linked to a single company, with the figure running into the trillions for the world's largest fossil fuel producers. It suggested state-owned oil companies Saudi Aramco and Gazprom were responsible for US$2.05tr and $2tr in damages respectively. Chevron, ExxonMobil and BP were each found to be responsible for $1.98tr, $1.91tr and $1.45tr in losses respectively. In a separate analysis of emissions data for five major Australian resource companies – BHP, Rio Tinto, Santos, Whitehaven Coal and Woodside Energy – Callahan assessed the total damages from their collective emissions at more than US$600bn, or A$929.47bn. Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter 'Our analysis is very explicitly thinking about emissions that are already occurred and the sort of historical changes in extreme heat, and attributing those to emissions that have been already detected and attributed to specific actors,' Callahan said. 'Even just from that we get numbers in the trillions, when you aggregate globally over the last 30 years in terms of the losses associated with any individual company, but GDP growth losses from extreme heat are a very small fraction of the total cost of climate change.' The difficulty in establishing causation and calculating a single company's contribution to climate harms has made courts in many jurisdictions, particularly in Australia, reluctant to hold individual fossil fuel producers to account for the climate impact of their projects. When seeking approval to build and operate its $5.6bn Barossa gasfield in a remote area off the far north Australian coast, Australian oil company Santos was asked by the Australian Conservation Foundation whether it had considered potential climate harms. Santos responded by arguing 'there are limitations to linking emissions from the activity to any specific climate change impacts'. Sign up to Afternoon Update: Election 2025 Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key election campaign stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion 'Santos invited ACF to provide further information regarding how it is able to undertake an analysis that links climate change impacts from the activity to specific environments or ecosystems,' the company said. Callahan said the work provides a foundation for future research to link the activities of specific oil, gas and coal producers to additional climate harms such as drought, flooding and sea level rise, though he added there was still 'a long way to go' before a tobacco or asbestos-style lawsuit succeeds. 'Until two weeks ago, it was unclear whether it was scientifically supported to say an individual emitter can be linked to the impact that you're suing over or that you are trying to recoup costs for. That scientific connection can absolutely be made,' he said. 'It is no longer scientifically supported for actors to argue that there is plausible deniability, that it is impossible to link any of an individual actor to any impact of climate change. 'That statement, that there is a sort of uncrossable gap between where you emit and some other impact down the road, we've shown that to be fallacious.' Several significant law suits have been brought against major US oil companies, including Municipalities of Puerto Rico v Exxon Mobil Corp and other cases brought by individual US state governments. On Friday, Hawaii became the 10th US state to take fossil fuel producers to court over alleged climate deception, prompting a counter-suit by the Trump administration in an attempt to block the filing. Next to the United States, Australia is the second most active jurisdiction in the world for climate litigation, according to Melbourne Law School's Climate Change litigation database which currently tracks 627 cases. Many of these cases include smaller decisions involving council planning, regulations or access to information as the database uses a broader definition.
The Guardian
04-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Sweeping policy reset needed to reconnect with voters, senior Liberals say – as others call for lurch further right
Senior Liberals are warning that the party must urgently reconnect with traditional supporters, women and younger Australians if it is to find a pathway back to relevance, describing John Howard's broad church as 'broken' after Saturday's election drubbing. As remaining MPs and party strategists begin to consider the scale of the loss under the outgoing opposition leader, Peter Dutton, most agree that a major policy and messaging reset is needed to return the party to its roots under its founder, Robert Menzies. But, in a sign of the fight to come, some leading Liberal figures are pushing for a move to the right, arguing that the party has not been conservative enough. The senior moderate and former finance minister Simon Birmingham said on Sunday that the melding of liberal and conservative thinking within the party had been lost. 'The Liberal party has failed to learn lessons from the past and if it fails to do so in the face of this result then its future viability to govern will be questioned,' he said. Birmingham used a lengthy reflection on the result to call for quotas for women in party preselection, saying they should be 'hard, fast and ambitious'. Liberals have resisted quotas for decades, while Labor has reached gender parity in its caucus since implementing them in 1994. 'The Liberal party is not seen as remotely liberal and the brand of conservatism projected is clearly perceived as too harsh and out of touch,' Birmingham said. 'A Liberal party fit for the future will need to reconnect with and represent liberal ideology, belief and thinking in a new and modern context.' Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter Early discussions about the leadership took place in private on Sunday, even as a slew of seats remained too close to call. Most MPs contacted by Guardian Australia agreed that a root-and-branch policy review was needed, with some pointing to Dutton's plan for nuclear power and divisive rhetoric on Indigenous welcome to country ceremonies. The New South Wales senator Dave Sharma said the Liberals had suffered a devastating loss due to a failure of strategy and campaign management. 'It is clear we failed to convince the public that we would be a better government, even if they had misgivings about Labor,' he said. 'A loss of this magnitude demands a serious set of reflections, reviews, and internal conversations about our policies and direction. That will take some time. 'The nation is best served by a strong opposition. We need to ensure the Liberals can provide this.' Internal party polling put the Liberals ahead in a series of Labor-held seats in the final days of the campaign, including Werriwa, Whitlam and Gilmore in NSW. The results gave false hope to the Dutton camp, even as published polls showed Labor on track to win. Some party figures blamed key strategists in the campaign, including the former minister turned Dutton adviser Jamie Briggs. Some Liberals said Dutton's efforts to promote party unity after the Coalition's 2022 election loss meant not enough policy fights had taken place. Others said the Coalition had drawn the wrong lessons from the no vote in the voice to parliament referendum, believing it was a sign of a rightwards shift in the electorate. The Liberal grandee and former Howard government minister Philip Ruddock said party MPs elected on Saturday were responsible for charting a course back to power. 'My father said the Liberal party always knows how to bake a bigger cake, and the Labor party only know how to cut it up,' he said. 'If you're looking at the way forward, you need to be very focused on how you're going to create wealth and opportunities. The Liberal party of the future has to be very focused on building a bigger economy, creating the opportunities, and then later deciding on how you might better apportion the gains.' Sign up to Afternoon Update: Election 2025 Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key election campaign stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion MPs said more checks and balances were needed to the new party leader's authority. 'We lost the trust of metropolitan voters and need to urgently work out how to get it back again,' said one MP, who was narrowly re-elected. The re-elected NSW moderate Andrew Bragg said Australia was 'drifting' under Labor. 'It was the toughest night for the Liberals ever,' he said. 'The message from the electorate is clear. For the Liberal party, the road back starts with a deeper understanding of modern Australia. 'We must offer an ambitious economic agenda and a centrist, inclusive social vision. Reclaiming enterprise and the centre is not a departure from our values – it is a return to them.' The former senator and party strategist Arthur Sinodinos said the Liberals needed to return to first principles and rebuild Howard's broad church. 'Grievance politics was not enough to win,' he wrote in an opinion piece for Guardian Australia. 'An opposition must have a clear and coherent plan that demonstrates they are ready to govern. 'Listening to our fellow Australians, grappling with the complexity of demographic and social change in a way consistent with Menzian values will succeed if we do the hard work.' The former deputy prime minister and Nationals frontbencher Barnaby Joyce declined to say who should lead the Liberals. While the junior Coalition partner will have a stronger presence in the joint party room due to fewer Liberals winning their seats, Joyce said there was little room for celebration. 'It is a wake-up call. There is no winner in our loss but you can't turn yourself into another party. You have to do what you're meant to do better.' The rightwing South Australian Liberal Alex Antic blamed policies which did not resonate with voters. 'Unfortunately, we've sent the troops into battle without ammunition,' he said. Antic told Sky it was time to 'make the Liberal party great again', echoing Trump's campaign slogan.
The Guardian
04-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Australians have soundly rejected Trump-style culture wars. Now Albanese must act with courage and vision
Thank you, Donald Trump. Australians are much better at defining who they are by identifying what they are not, rather than by making lofty statements. And they have now said unequivocally that they are not angry little Americans, cultural warriors or self-interested libertarians. We always knew that there was a decency at the heart of this nation, but it took the bullying, showbiz bravado of the US president to crystallise it. First as thousands of people cancelled trips to America and then, decidedly, in the privacy of millions of cardboard voting booths. Even the prime minister, who in his first victory speech in 2022 struggled to get beyond the 'greatest country' cliche when talking about Australia, found the words on election night to begin to capture what makes this country unique and full of possibility. With practice and confidence he will get better. It might even translate into transformative action and not be left to die in the graveyard of empty words. Culture is almost always ahead of politics, so the signs have been there for a while. The notion of being unAustralian, which burst into the discourse in 2005 when Sam Kekovich berated vegetarians, hippies, dissenters of all sorts, was jettisoned nearly two decades later. The iconic Australia Day lamb ad turned itself upside down in 2023 embracing (shock horror) diversity. 'Guess we are all a bit unAustralian, that's what makes us Australian.' That's a start. And when Australian leaders recognise that the ability to embrace the best of what is on offer, to not be afraid of innovation, to combine courage with compassion, remarkable things can happen. It's been done before. True, this is usually in a dance of two steps forward one step back, but over time the two steps forward set the new direction. It was striking that the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, described his party's victory as the greatest achievement since federation. Who ever talks about federation? But it was remarkable. It took a decade of debate and two votes in every colony and then protracted negotiations in London to create. A nation was formed that for the next 15 years was a global model of democratic and social innovation. Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter We tend to focus – rightly, and in a very Australian way – on the negatives, on the harshness of the white Australia policy, on the forced deportation of South Sea Islanders, on the exclusion and attempted extermination of the First Peoples. But the rest of the world saw innovation, economic success with a compassionate heart and the birth of an Australian model. Australians were literate, positive and enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in the world. There were abundant possibilities. The devastation of the losses in the first world war and being beholden to British imperialism during the great depression sapped this confidence. But even before the second world war ended plans for reconstruction, the lessons of the previous decades were developed and implemented. This set the scene for modern Australia, which reached its peak when the Whitlam government swept to power in 1972 and implemented policies that had been gestating for decades. In the 1980s, when the old protectionist economic model imploded, Australia again led the world with a model of neoliberalism with a human face. It was not perfect, but it was copied around the world and celebrated for time as a 'third way'. It was much better than allowing the market to hold the whip hand and privatise everything. Then in the global financial crisis Australian politicians and policymakers were poised to respond, intervening to prevent the catastrophe that occurred in many other countries. These models should provide confidence that there is an Australian way, that even in the face of existential crises innovation is possible, that there is no need to be unduly dependent on what great powers might be doing. That courage and compassion are not incompatible. We have lost the habit of innovation and reform. Its memory needs to be revived and acted on. The crises we currently face – the climate catastrophe, a crumbling post war global order, an unreliable great power, the new digital imperialism and intergenerational inequity – need vision and courage. Strikingly this election showed that the Australian people recognise we can no longer rely on the rest of the world to provide the lead – the future is ours to make, fixing the foundations and imagining the future. As Rose Scott, one of the participants in the federation debates about the new nation, presciently observed: 'Be bold, be bold, be bold. Reform is hard, but worth it.' Julianne Schultz is the author of The Idea of Australia
The Guardian
03-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Meta and Shopify urged to act as scale of ‘ghost stores' preying on Australian online shoppers revealed
There have been more than 140 'ghost' stores operating online in Australia falsely marketing themselves as local brands and selling everything from poor quality clothing to counterfeit sports labels – or nothing at all. Affected customers have told Guardian Australia that if the products they bought from these sites actually arrived, they were of 'rubbish' quality and it was nearly impossible to organise a refund. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is investigating after a surge of complaints about ghost stores, but experts say Shopify and Meta need to take responsibility for enabling these sites and allowing them to run false advertising. Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter Guardian Australia, aided by consumer experts, has tracked more than 140 online ghost stores, all of which pretend to be local businesses and are often accompanied by a fictitious story telling consumers they are closing down and must get rid of stock. The analysis shows that the number of misleading sites, and threats to Australian consumers, is far more prevalent than previously known. On 31 March, Guardian Australia bought a blouse for $69.95 from a site called Maison Canberra, which has since been taken down. The store sent an email on 1 April saying the item had been shipped, but it was never delivered. Experts say the sites should be subject to Australian consumer law because they advertise on social media locally, but it is difficult to enforce any breaches because the exact location of the owners may be difficult to identify. Many of the websites use very similar copy, sell similar products, and reuse email addresses. For example, one site reviewed by Guardian Australia which has 'Sydney' in its name, lists a contact email for another site with 'Dublin' in its name. Last November, one online store claimed on its Facebook page that: 'After years of having a physical store only in the heart of Melbourne, we decided to open our webshop!'. However, on its website, it says it is 'based in Lennik, Belgium'. It lists an address for a house 30 minutes from Brussels but also says 'some of our products are located and shipped from within Australia, while others are shipped from China'. Another online store claims on its website to be 'based in the heart of Melbourne'. But it lists two addresses, one for an office building in central Amsterdam and another for a townhouse about 20kms away. The returns form for a third site instructs the customer to pay return postage to address in Zhejiang, China. The same address is listed on five other websites – one uses 'Aussie' in its name, while another uses 'London'. On third-party review websites, customers have claimed they were instructed to send returns to the same Zhejiang address after purchasing products from sites claiming to be based in Norway, Canada, Germany, and New Zealand. A 60-year-old Brisbane woman, who asked not to be named, said she spent about $350 on shoes and clothing from the site last year after seeing their advertising on Facebook. She says she received the items, but they were 'rubbish'. After trying to arrange a refund, she contacted PayPal and her credit card provider. The woman said the company sent PayPal the details of their refund process, which listed the Zhejiang address and instructed her to make a false customs declaration, stating the value of the goods is under $5. Sign up to Morning Mail Our Australian morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion 'Anything above $5 will be destroyed immediately, resulting in no possible refund,' the form said. The customer said she was 'usually a very tenacious person' but 'after four months of backwards and forwards and arguing with people, I thought I'd just cut my losses because it was creating a lot of anxiety'. She was yet to secure a refund. The majority of the identified ghost stores – based on analysis by Guardian Australia, evidence from customers, and a running list of sites compiled by the Scam Alerts Australia Facebook group – have been built using the Shopify e-commerce platform. The chief executive of the Consumer Policy Research Centre, Erin Turner, said online platforms must do more to stop 'fraudulent players' from using their services. 'Platforms like Shopify and Instagram are making money as these ghost stores pay for advertising and support,' she said. 'We should call this what it is: digital retail fraud. Without coordinated action from digital platforms and regulators, these fraudsters will keep gaming the system.' Guardian Australia contacted Meta and Shopify for comment, but the companies did not respond by deadline. Digital marketing strategist Briony Cullin said she had seen the volume of social media advertising for this type of online store increase over the past six months. She has reported the ads for 13 different businesses to Meta. Each time, she said she has been notified that the ad would not be taken down. One of the 'support' messages Cullin received from Meta, seen by Guardian Australia, said the company used a 'combination of technology and human reviewers' to process reports. 'There needs to be some balance for consumers here,' Cullin says. 'It's a huge problem that they're not taking any responsibility for and that's terrible.' Maison Canberra and the other stores referred to in this article were contacted for comment.
The Guardian
03-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Glum and glummer: Liberal faithful reel as Peter Dutton loses seat of Dickson after 24 years
Peter Dutton has conceded his 24-year hold on the Brisbane seat of Dickson, in a gracious speech that noted the electorate had a 'one-term curse' before he entered parliament in 2001. Dutton said he had called the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and his challenger in Dickson, Ali France, who he said would 'do a good job' as a local member. France, an amputee, lost her son Henry to leukaemia last year. 'No parent should ever go through that,' Dutton said. Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter 'Equally I said to Ali that her son Henry would be incredibly proud of her tonight and she will do a good job as the local member for Dickson and I wish her all the very best.' Dutton won Dickson at the 'Tampa election' in 2001 and has held it through heavy swings in both directions and some very narrow results. In 2007 he held on by just 200 votes. He had been expected to lose in 2010 but increased his margin. The seat was targeted heavily by GetUp in 2019 but, even when polls pointed to a loss, Dutton has found a way to hold on. Such was the story in Dickson that his loss, amid a heavy swing to Labor, still came as a shock. 'He's held it for 24 years!' one attendee at the Coalition election function said, as the ABC called the electorate for France. 'Yes but it's just the ABC,' said another. By then, many of those in the room had tuned out of the election coverage. Few were paying attention when Sky News called the election for Labor. Soon after the ABC television feed was cut, replaced by a Liberal logo and a couple of Australian flags. Many of those in the room on election night had been out volunteering for Trevor Evans, a moderate former MP and a popular figure among 'small l' liberal wing of the Queensland party. Evans has now lost 24% from his primary vote at consecutive elections. The party faithful who trudged from the booths in Brisbane to the city's W Hotel turned up glum and many quickly turned away from the TV screens. One LNP source said the party had 'put resources into the wrong contests'. 'We had a big effort out for Trevor [Evans] and [Ryan candidate] Maggie Forrest thinking we could win there, but in the end we should have been putting resources in Petrie and Bowman. I think maybe, given the state result, we just didn't really think that this sort of swing could be on.' Seven months ago, many of the same Queensland Liberal National party faithful stood in the same room, raucously cheering a state election victory. Such is the unpredictable nature of Queensland politics, a state where folks have a tendency to spray their votes around. Beautiful one day. Abject the next. In October, every LNP win was cheered. On Saturday, lost seats barely registered as small groups conducted their own inquests or took solace in Greens losses, or just decided to forget about politics altogether and talk about something else. Dutton's arrival brought out the brave faces. In the back of the room, some still turned their attention to the results. As Dutton was speaking, one party member pulled out his phone and began to scroll the footy scores. At least the NRL magic round – being held walking distance away in Brisbane – offered some hope of a better result.
