Key occasions
BHP defends coal and carbon seize plans amid questions from skeptics
Australia’s largest mining firm defends its plans to proceed digging up coal, arguing nascent inexperienced metal know-how gained’t be sufficient to satisfy world demand.
Chair Ken MacKenzie and chief govt Mike Henry defended BHP’s local weather transition motion plan on the firm’s annual normal assembly yesterday, arguing controversial carbon seize, utilisation and storage (CCUS) might assist obtain its emissions reductions targets.
Local weather activists Lock the Gate Alliance protested BHP’s “greenwashing” and shareholders questioned how the corporate might meet its objective of net-zero scope-three emissions, these produced not directly up or down the worth chain, whereas mining coal into the following century.
One shareholder requested why BHP was over-investing in a dangerous, unproven know-how like CCUS when different commercial-scale applied sciences had been simpler at decreasing emissions.
MacKenzie mentioned, in addition to exploring different methods to scale back emissions from metal manufacturing, that:
“Yes, unapologetically, we’re looking at CCUS because it’s a potential solution to create near-zero blast furnace base, which is the dominant technology out there today,” he mentioned.
Simon Nicholas, lead metal analyst on the Institute for Power Economics and Monetary Evaluation, mentioned there have been no commercial-scale CCUS crops for coal-based steelmaking on this planet.
He advised AAP:
BHP is the one one that could be a metallurgical coal miner.
It’s of their pursuits to persuade those that CCUS goes to unravel the issue and permit us to proceed to utilizing metallurgical coal and the low-grade iron ore that BHP is continuous to mine.
I don’t see how they’re going to satisfy their scope-three emissions objective.
You simply can’t try this if you happen to’re nonetheless mining coal and sending your low-grade iron ore to be processed in blast furnaces, as a result of CCUS won’t ever scale back emissions by sufficient.
– by way of AAP
Variety of reported scams hit file highs regardless of current fall in complaints
Hundreds of Australians have been swindled out of their cash because the variety of reported scams hits file highs.
Customers and small companies reported greater than 10,000 scams in 2023/24 – an 81% enhance from the yr earlier than, based on the Australian Monetary Complaints Authority’s annual evaluate launched right this moment
Whereas this spike in complaints was one of the worrying tendencies prior to now monetary yr, the authority’s chief ombudsman David Locke famous there had been a downturn within the final quarter that had continued into the brand new interval.
“This is encouraging but definitely not a cause for complacency,” he mentioned.
Anti-scam initiatives launched by the federal authorities and large banks seem to have helped dampen numbers. “But there is still a long way to go,” Locke mentioned.
Of the greater than 10,000 complaints the authority helped resolve the place customers had been scammed out of cash, seven in 10 had been handled in 60 days.
– by way of AAP
As much as half of faculty college students uncovered to lethal automotive air pollution: report
Andrew Messenger
As much as 55% of faculties and childcare centres are unsafely near essential roads in some Australian suburbs, exposing youngsters to lethal automotive air pollution, based on a brand new report.
A Local weather Council report, launched right this moment, finds that about one in six colleges and childcare centres throughout our capital cities are positioned inside 100 metres of a busy highway. That equates to greater than 2,300 childcare centres and 827 colleges.
Kids are significantly in danger from air air pollution, as a result of they inhale extra air per kilogram of physique weight and have quicker respiratory charges. The nearer they’re, the upper the chance.
Outside air air pollution was blamed for 4,250 untimely deaths in 2021, plus an increase in bronchial asthma, coronary heart illness and lung most cancers, amongst different illnesses.
Automobile crashes are the main reason behind demise for kids globally. Air air pollution prices about $6.2bn a yr in Australia.
The Local weather Council CEO, Amanda McKenzie, mentioned it was time to part out “polluting cars”.
Let’s give extra folks in our cities higher journey choices, so it’s simpler for extra folks to make use of shared and energetic technique of getting round our cities – like strolling, using a motorcycle, or taking public transport – extra usually. This can quickly clear up our neighbourhoods, scale back air and local weather air pollution on the identical time, and create more healthy and safer areas for our children to thrive in.
The suburbs of Perth Metropolis in Perth and Boroondara in Melbourne had been the least wholesome, with 55.3% and 51.9% of faculties uncovered to automotive air pollution. The Victorian capital had the worst file of any capital metropolis, with 24% of all colleges uncovered.
The Victorian planning system is usually criticised for forcing new growth on to essential roads as a way to keep away from opposition by incumbent landowners dwelling in safer and extra engaging neighbourhood streets.
Greens announce plan for limitless psychological well being classes on Medicare
Sarah Basford Canales
The Greens have introduced an formidable plan to supply limitless psychological well being classes on Medicare, anticipated to value about $5.9bn over the following 10 years, because it narrows in on inner-city Labor seats forward of the following federal election.
The minor get together’s flagship election coverage can be launched within the Melbourne seat of Macnamara, held by Labor’s Josh Burns, on Thursday and expands on its push for 1,000 free native healthcare clinics throughout the nation.
Beneath the proposal, the Greens would take away the cap of 10 subsidised psychological well being classes a yr as a part of an individual’s psychological well being plan after it was halved from 20 in late 2022.
It might additionally provide free psychologist classes on the proposed native healthcare clinics.
Along with eradicating the cap, the Greens say they’d elevate the minimal Medicare rebate for scientific or registered psychologists to $150 and lengthen the subsidised classes to provisional psychologists.
Based on the Parliamentary Price range Workplace’s evaluation, the modifications would value $5.9bn over 10 years along with the $31.7bn for 1000 new native healthcare clinics.
The Greens say the associated fee can be coated underneath the get together’s huge firms tax, which might elevate $514bn in authorities income over the last decade.
The get together’s chief, Adam Bandt, mentioned:
For those who’re pushing aside psychological healthcare as a result of you may’t afford it, you’re not alone … 1 in 3 huge firms pay no tax. The Greens will make huge firms pay their justifiable share of tax so you may see a psychologist at no cost and get limitless psychological well being appointments by means of Medicare.”
The minor get together is trying to choose up extra seats in inner-city suburbs after its historic outcome on the 2022 federal election when it gained 4 seats within the decrease home.
With polls suggesting Labor and the Coalition might each fall wanting a parliamentary majority subsequent election, the Greens might be key to forming a minority authorities.
The get together has mentioned it’s focusing on the Labor-held electorates of Macnamara, Wills, Richmond, and Perth, and Liberal-held Sturt.
Welcome
Good morning, and welcome to a different Guardian Australia stay weblog. Listed below are the highest in a single day tales:
Prospects who’ve suffered by means of Damaged Hill’s mass outages are set for a non permanent reprieve on their payments as locals proceed to be hit with night-time energy cuts in sweltering situations. Two energy corporations – Origin and EnergyAustralia – have agreed to defer payments to those that have been affected by the outages that crippled the area for the higher a part of every week.
The inspector of the Nationwide Anti-Corruption Fee launched an excoriating evaluate of the Nacc’s determination to not examine robodebt corruption referrals, discovering it to be “affected by apprehended bias”. The federal anti-corruption watchdog’s battle of curiosity is “really concerning” as a result of it pertains to “the person at the top”, Geoffrey Watson SC, a former counsel helping to the NSW Impartial Fee Towards Corruption, has mentioned.
New analysis has discovered folks dwelling in distant Indigenous communities are paying greater than double the capital metropolis costs for on a regular basis groceries together with flour, tasty cheese, apples and milk.
And a report by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has checked “vital signs of Australia’s climate” – they usually present Australia changing into hotter, extra harmful, and that temperature tendencies will solely worsen. “It is a wicked problem,” Dr Karl Braganza at BoM mentioned.
I’ll be taking you although the day’s information – if you happen to see something you don’t need us to overlook, shoot it my means on X @At_Raf_. Let’s get into it.
