CANBERRA, Australia — The world is safer from terrorism now than when the United States was attacked almost 20 years ago, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said. Morrison used a speech at the Anzac Day dawn service in Canberra to pay tribute to the “bravest of this generation” who served in Afghanistan during Australia’s longest war. “The world is safer from the threat of terrorism than when the twin towers were felled almost 20 years ago – but we remain vigilant,” Morrison said. “However, this has come at great cost. Forty-one Australian lives lost in Afghanistan, whom we especially remember and…
Author: zenger.news
MELBOURNE, Australia — More than 600,000 half-price flights have been snapped up in just three weeks following the Australian government’s AUD-1.2 billion ($0.93- billion) package to help tourism bounce back from the Covid-19 pandemic. Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack said the mass uptake of cheap domestic holiday trips is a big win for the aviation industry, with carriers “now doing a roaring trade.” “Australians are taking trips in large numbers with airlines reporting sales dwarfing previous records – our aviation industry is in a remarkable position compared to where it was just one year ago,” McCormack said in a statement on…
CANBERRA, Australia — Former Labor leader Bill Shorten admits it is going to take a whole-of-government and whole-of-community effort to get to net zero emissions by 2050. But he claims it is not just his party’s policy as most businesses, farmers, and investors think it is the way to go. “We do accept that what we need to do is that any climate policy Labor has to be anchored around the creation and maintenance of jobs,” he said. Australian Labor Policy (ALP) includes a number of initiatives in its climate change policy. The policy involves initiatives around reducing greenhouse gas emissions, capping…
BRISBANE, Australia — A British-flagged tanker ship with Covid-positive crew is making its way towards Australia and has been permitted to anchor off Brisbane. The Inge Kosan is scheduled to arrive at about 10 am on April 27, an official from Brisbane’s Vessel Traffic Services, responsible for maritime safety, said on April 25. Online vessel tracking shows the ship heading towards the Queensland capital, having departed Port Vila. “There is a booking for the vessel to come into an outer anchorage,” the official said. It is understood arrangements were being made for the tanker to be boarded by Australian health and other officials,…
SYDNEY — Australia’s employment minister has been forced to defend a controversial new hotline encouraging bosses to dob in people for rejecting work. The employer reporting line introduced by the Employment Department of the government has divided members of the coalition, with Liberal MP Bridget Archer arguing it demonizes those without a job. The hotline allows employers to dob in job-seekers for rejecting work, misbehaving in interviews, missing appointments, or voluntarily quitting their job. The scope of reasons is considerably broader than what the government foreshadowed in February when it announced a phone number for bosses to report welfare recipients who…
CANBERRA, Australia — Higher petrol prices, the rising cost of home building, and an increase in rents are expected to be among key drivers in a substantial rise in the consumer price index for the January-March quarter. However, it will still leave the annual rate of inflation way short of what the Reserve Bank of Australia wants to see before it even starts considering lifting the cash rate from its record low 0.1 percent. Economists expect that the Consumer Price Index of April 28, for the first three months of the year, has risen by 0.9 percent, lifting the annual rate…
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s biggest bank has hired hundreds of people to keep up with a deluge of home loan applications, as property industry veterans say bank pre-approval delays mean buyers are missing out. Commonwealth Bank has hired about 400 new staff and has told that its workers are doing thousands of overtime hours to keep up with loan requests. “The exponential growth in home loan application volumes has placed considerable pressure on our support teams and operations,” the bank said in a statement. The bank says it’s kept pre-approval times down to two days over the last three months, but…
BRISBANE, Australia — School banking programs will end in the northeastern Australian state of Queensland after a review found no evidence they improved saving habits in young children, who it described as “vulnerable consumers”. Banking in schools will cease at the end of July to coincide with the end of the Commonwealth Bank‘s current contract, Education Minister Grace Grace said on April 26. “The Australian Securities and Investment Commission report demonstrated that there was really little value in the program, and that often the true intention of the program wasn’t disclosed, and that there wasn’t really a terrible amount of financial…
CANBERRA, Australia — A study of the smoke that blanketed Melbourne during the Black Summer bushfire has shown mobile phones could be used to measure and detect haze events. The new Monash University-led research, published in the international journal American Geophysical Union, examined the atmospheric conditions in Greater Melbourne over a series of smoke haze events in 2019/10. The American Geophysical Union is a 501 nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists, consisting of over 62,000 members from 144 countries. The Black Summer bushfire burned more than 46 million acres, displaced thousands of Australians, and resulted in the…
HORNSBY, Australia — The chief executive of Blue Mountains City Council says Australia’s New South Wales government provided no criteria for applications made under an AUD 177 million ($1.37 million) bushfire relief fund, which is accused of being a pork-barrelling scheme. The New South Wales government was in February ordered to hand over documents related to the Bushfire Local Economic Recovery Fund after it emerged more than 98 percent of funding went to coalition-held seats. The funding was ostensibly for councils affected by the 2019-20 bushfires. Blue Mountains City Council chief Rosemary Dillon told a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry on April 20 that the council…