News update for Monday 5 Feb 2024
Your trusted guide to the top independent news and views of the day...
Welcome to your TrueNorth’s weekday news update where every weekday afternoon we forward selected articles from the independent news media sector.
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The Guardian: Fuel efficiency standards: Labor unveils proposal, highlighting petrol savings of $1,000 a year for motorists
The Albanese government has unveiled its long-awaited plan for fuel efficiency standards for new cars while highlighting potential savings of $1,000 a year and predicting a Coalition-led scare campaign.
‘The proposed model, announced on Sunday, would place a yearly cap on the emissions output for new cars sold in Australia to incentivise carmakers to supply low- and zero-emissions vehicles and penalise companies that do not,’ explains Henry Belot.
‘Legislation will only apply to new passenger and light commercial vehicles – would be introduced to federal parliament in the first half of 2024 and take effect from January 2025.’
Read more in The Guardian here
Renew Economy: “Count me out” Barnaby Joyce backed anti-renewables rally tries to co-opt Bob Brown
Sophie Vorrath reports that Australian Greens founder and award winning environmentalist Bob Brown has slammed the organisers of an anti-renewables rally planned for outside federal parliament tomorrow, and demanded they stop using his name and image to promote a protest he says has been “hijacked by the coal lobby.”
Read more in Renew Economy here
The 7am Podcast: Inside the Albanese reset
For someone who’s been accused of breaking an election promise, Anthony Albanese isn’t hiding. The prime minister and his front bench have been out selling their new tax cuts, giving interviews and addressing the National Press Club.
‘So what makes the government confident they’ve made the right call? And how does it set up the political chessboard for the first week of parliament?’ asks Karen Middleton.
Listen to The 7am Podcast here
Michael West Media: Why is CSIRO hiding its advice on Carbon Capture and Storage?
Former SA Senator Rex Patrick does FOIs.
‘Australia’s peak science body, CSIROwhich ‘has refused to disclose its advice on Carbon Capture and Storage technology. Is it telling the ministers that it doesn’t work, or not?
CSIRO is the Australian Government’s peak scientific body standing ready to guide and advise ministers and their departments in relation to some of the nation’s biggest challenges. It focuses on the big things that really matter. So, why is it all cowardly when it comes to disclosing its advice to the government on CCS technology – which the coal and gas industries claim is an effective method of containing emissions?’
Read more in Michael West Media here
The Conversation: Mortgage and inflation pain to ease, but only slowly: how 31 top economists see 2024
A panel of 31 leading economists assembled by The Conversation sees no cut in interest rates before the middle of this year, and only a slight cut by December, enough to trim just $55 per month off the cost of servicing a $600,000 variable-rate mortgage, reports Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University.
The panel forecasts paint a picture of weak economic growth, stagnant consumer spending, and a continuing per-capita recession.
Read more in The Conversation here
Cartoon by Jenny Coopes for The Saturday Paper
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here
Pearls & Irritations: Mid term Aged Care Report card: 5/10 – must try harder
‘The election of the Albanese Labor government was met with a strong sense of optimism among people who had been lobbying for aged care reform for years. Finally, a government prepared to address the systemic issues that had plagued the sector since the Howard government neo-liberal reforms decades before. Alas, it was not to be,’ lament Kathy Eagar and Les MacDonald.
Read more in Pearls & Irritations here
#auspol
The New Daily: Social media is rewiring humanity’s central nervous system
Alan Kohler writes ‘Last week I tweeted: “I am not dead.”
‘My tweet, or should that be my ‘X’, even prompted a news article in the Daily Mail (admittedly, it doesn’t take much to achieve that), and a gratifyingly large number of people tweeted back that they were relieved I was still kicking.’
Read more in The New Daily here
#auspol
The Guardian: Under Lowitja O’Donoghue, our greatest leader of the modern era, Indigenous affairs made real progress
Point to anything good that happened in Indigenous Australian communities and you will trace it back to Atsic under Lowitja’s leadership, according to Noel Pearson.
‘I write to send my love and that of our First Peoples of Cape York Peninsula to those who were loved by and who loved our grand lady, Dr Lowitja O’Donoghue AC CBE DSG, who passed this last Sunday, aged 91.
Her passing ends an extraordinary public life, marked by selfless service and dedication to her people and country. She gave our country everything she had and tutored so many of us in our callow years. She was a leaders’ leader.’
Read more from Noel Pearson in The Guardian here
From the weekend…
The Guardian: When Mark Zuckerberg can face US senators and claim the moral high ground, we’re through the looking glass
In UK commentator, Marina Hyde’s opinion piece this weekend, she writes: ‘“Companies over countries,” as Mark Zuckerberg said a long time ago. This once-unformed thought becomes more realised all the time, with the Meta boss last year explaining that, “Increasingly, the real world is a combination of the physical world we inhabit and the digital world we are building.” The added irony is that the more the Lindsey Grahams fail the real world, the more people retreat further into the unregulated embrace of the worlds that the Mark Zuckerbergs run.’
Read more in The Guardian here
New Politics: Labor finds some Stage 3 courage and Morrison’s departure
The first New Politics podcast for 2024 delves into the recent adjustments made by the Labor government to the Stage 3 tax cuts, initially legislated by the Coalition government in 2019. Originally criticised for disproportionately benefiting high-income earners and offering minimal support to lower and middle-income demographics, these tax cuts represented a significant point in Australian politics.
Listen to the New Politics podcast here
The Saturday Paper: The end of political complexity
‘There are, in the possible horrors of 2024, important but unrecognised common factors. These include the existential threat to democracy everywhere, the potential resurrection of Donald Trump, wars and rumours of wars, mob responses rather than collective action based on individual thinking and analysis, and the revival of religious fundamentalism in its myriad forms,’ according to Barry Jones, former Labor minister for science and a professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne.
Read more in The Saturday Paper here
Pearls & Irritations: The worst Australian public policy decision of the 21st century
‘I regard the changes made to the carve-up of GST revenues among the states and territories by the Morrison Government in 2019, with the support of the then Labor Opposition, and continued (indeed extended) by the Albanese Government, as possibly the worst Australian public policy decision of the 21st century thus far. But very few people understand it. This article is an attempt to correct that,’ explains Saul Eslake.
Read more in Pearls & Irritations here
You’re up to date for Monday 5 February. See you tomorrow!
Don’t miss Nemesis Part 2 at 8pm tonight on the ABC.
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here
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