Australia news live: Kerry O’Brien attacks no campaign ‘lies’; inquest told AFL training risks brain damage
Kerry O’Brien attacks no campaign ‘lies’
Australians will be asked later this year whether they support an Indigenous advisory body being enshrined in the constitution.
“I see lies being told and not properly challenged,” O’Brien said on Wednesday night, AAP reports.
“I ask myself if there is a strength to the ‘no’ campaign against this referendum, why do the people substantially behind that campaign feel the need to lie?
“What does that tell us about the authenticity of what is motivating them?
“These are questions that I believe should be dealt with in a transparent and strong way by media and I have not seen it.”
O’Brien did not name individuals but called out the actions of the conservative political lobby Advance Australia.
Key events
Victoria’s opposition leader John Pesutto says premier Daniel Andrews is “lying” about the 2026 Commonwealth Games being forced onto the state.
“The Commonwealth games were hunted for by the Andrews government,” he says on 7’s Sunrise program this morning. “Daniel Andrews is lying.”
I regret to say to the Victorian people and the Australian people that he is pretending the games were forced on Victoria.
They went hunting for it in 2021. There was no business case to back it up. They locked Victorians into something it now turns out we could never afford and the reason we are not running the games ultimately is because we are broke down here under the Andrews government.
Police shut down Auckland CBD streets amid reports of gunman
Police have cordoned off several streets in Auckland’s CBD as they respond to a serious unfolding incident involving a reported gunman.
St John Ambulance have confirmed two injured people in an attack this morning.
Local outlet Newshub reports a police officer is among the hurt.
Read the full story here:
A bit of good news this morning, courtesy of AAP: Australia is on the brink of eliminating HIV.
There has been a steady decline in rates of HIV recorded over the past decade, pointing us in the direction of eliminating the disease.
Australia has recorded a steady 46% fall in rates of HIV over the past decade and could be on track to virtually eliminate the insidious disease.
555 cases were recorded in 2022, compared to a total of 1037 in 2013, figures released by the Kirby Institute today show.
Australia’s rate of decline is in line with other leading countries in northern Europe, and ahead of rates in the US and Canada.
A “virtual” elimination does not mean zero new cases of HIV – but an absence of sustained endemic community transmission.
Sharon Lewin, the International AIDS Society president and director of the Peter Doherty Institute, said Australia has maintained a progressive approach to HIV since the very beginning of the pandemic in the early 1980s.
Australia is poised to be one of the first, if not the first, countries to achieve virtual elimination of HIV.
Gay and bisexual men still make up the majority of HIV diagnoses but now represent a smaller portion, accounting for 57% of new cases last year compared with 79% in 2013.
Andrew Grulich, who heads the Kirby Institute’s HIV epidemiology and prevention program, said the group could be virtually HIV-free within the next three to five years.
The Australian Energy Regulator’s new wholesale markets report found average spot prices in the national electricity market increased from April to June, compared to the preceding quarter, AAP reports.
The onset of winter, the seasonal decline in solar generation, and reduced cheap coal capacity offered in Queensland and NSW has driven the higher demand.
Looking at higher wholesale costs of electricity – the exit of the Liddell power station in April contributed to higher wholesale prices, but was partly offset by new solar, wind and battery capacity.
Wind output reached record levels in June.
East coast gas spot market prices averaged $14.50 per gigajoule – mostly due to supply constraints at the Longford gas plant, and transportation constraints on the Moomba to Sydney pipeline during a period of high Victorian demand.
The Iona gas storage facility in Victoria finished the quarter at a record high level of capacity – the regulator said this is critical to managing extra demand.
The regulator was pleased to see prices remain well below the highs of the second quarter of 2022 as states face the remaining winter months.
“The second quarter of 2022 was an extremely challenging time for the sector,” AER board member Justin Oliver said.
We’re pleased the factors that drove the high prices at that time weren’t present to nearly the same extent this year.
We have seen far fewer coal generator outages and more coal capacity offered into the market than the same period last year.
The report warned higher-than-expected summer temperatures and lower-than -average rainfall will likely to contribute to higher prices in the first half of next year.
Rafqa Touma
Thanks Martin Farrer for kicking off the blog this morning.
I’m Rafqa Touma, taking the blog for the day. If you see anything you don’t want us to miss, let me know on Twitter or Threads.
To the news!
Last week Guardian Australia revealed that Advance Australia was paying for social media advertising that claims the voice proposal was either too much or not enough, depending on the demographic targeted.
O’Brien has co-authored a handbook on the voice with referendum working group member Thomas Mayo.
Mayo urged attendees at the Sydney campaign event to start conversations with friends and family about why they were voting ‘yes’.
“I want you to do that in a respectful way, in a way that will listen to their views so that you can put the best position back to them about why they should support it,” the Kaurareg Aboriginal, Kalkalgal and Erubamle Torres Strait Islander man said.
He said he believed “a great majority” of Indigenous people would vote for change in the referendum, due in the last quarter of 2023.
Kerry O’Brien attacks no campaign ‘lies’
Australians will be asked later this year whether they support an Indigenous advisory body being enshrined in the constitution.
“I see lies being told and not properly challenged,” O’Brien said on Wednesday night, AAP reports.
“I ask myself if there is a strength to the ‘no’ campaign against this referendum, why do the people substantially behind that campaign feel the need to lie?
“What does that tell us about the authenticity of what is motivating them?
“These are questions that I believe should be dealt with in a transparent and strong way by media and I have not seen it.”
O’Brien did not name individuals but called out the actions of the conservative political lobby Advance Australia.
Welcome
Martin Farrer
Good morning and welcome to our live news coverage. I’m Martin Farrer and I’ll be bringing you some of the best overnight stories before Rafqa Touma slips into the hot seat.
Australia may lose its only chance for indigenous constitutional recognition if the referendum on the oice is defeated later this year, the minister for indigenous Australians has told a yes rally in Sydney. “If we miss this moment, we may never get it again,” Linda Burney told a packed Sydney own hall on Wednesday night. Veteran journalist Kerry O’Brien took aim at unnamed no campaigners, saying they were telling lies.
We’ve also got the first of a new series of podcasts on the voice with our Indigenous affairs editor Lorena Allam, journalist Kerry O’Brien, and Queensland Young Australian of the Year Talei Elu answering all your questions.
An Australian-led research team has uncovered the first genetic link to strong immunity against Covid-19, which may help to explain why some people never develop any symptoms of the illness. A person who carries one copy of the protective HLA-B15 gene is twice as likely to remain asymptomatic after infection with the Sars CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19, while someone who carries two copies of the gene is eight times more likely to have no symptoms, the research, published in the journal Nature, found.
The AFL should consider following the lead of American football in “severely limiting full contact practices” to “dramatically reduce the risk” of players developing neurodegenerative disease, a US expert has told the first hearing of the inquest into the death of the late AFL player, Shane Tuck. The hearing in Melbourne last night heard that the NFL achieved an estimated reduction of more than 60% in head impacts.