News update for Thur 29 May 2025

Your trusted guide to the top independent news and views of the day...

May 29, 2025

Welcome to your TrueNorth news update where every weekday afternoon we share curated articles from Australia’s independent news media sector.

Please share with friends, family, colleagues - as good journalism is always worth supporting.

Share TrueNorth News

Scroll down for the news and views you need to know today…

TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here

Adam Morton: Approval of Woodside LNG project gambles with ancient heritage for short-term gain - The Guardian

Forty-year extension of North West Shelf gas project granted by environment minister Murray Watt will result in huge greenhouse gas emissions, putting the already degraded Indigenous rock art at risk.

We don’t know all the evidence that the new environment minister, Murray Watt, had before him when he decided to approve a 40-year life extension to one of Australia’s biggest fossil fuel developments so that it could run until 2070.

But we do know this. The decision largely turned on whether the North West Shelf liquefied natural gas (LNG) development on the Pilbara’s Burrup Hub can coexist for decades into the future with an incredible collection of ancient Murujuga rock art, some of it nearly 50,000 years old and unlike anything else on the planet.

Also read >

Green light for gas: North West Shelf gas plant cleared to run until 2070 - The Conversation
Environment minister Murray Watt approves 4.3 billion tonnes of carbon emissions - Michael West Media
Great gas giveaway: $215 billion in royalty-free gas for Woodside’s North West Shelf project - The New Daily
With Watt’s first crucial decision, Labor’s light on the hill takes the form of a gas flare - Ben Eltham for Crikey (paywall)
Albanese Lets Off Biggest-Ever Carbon Bomb - LyreBird Dreaming
Rock art expert says WA government doctored elements of Murujuga rock art report - ABC News
Flood-hit NSW residents say insurance unaffordable as premiums skyrocket - The ABC
Pocock says voters have ‘buyer’s remorse’ after Labor approves massive gas development’s 40-year extension - The Guardian

The Coalition is back together, what now? - Full Story Podcast

The Liberals leader, Sussan Ley, and the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, have reached a new agreement, presenting a united front and announcing a new shadow frontbench. But with the Liberals facing a mammoth task ahead, and net zero commitments up in the air, could this mark the beginning of a rocky term for the Coalition? Nour Haydar speaks with Dan Jervis-Bardy about the Coalition’s short-lived breakup

Listen to the Full Story Podcast

Also >

The return of the Coalition - The Daily Aus Podcast
The Coalition splits, maybe not - Jenny Hocking for Pearls and Irritations
Sussan Ley and David Littleproud need this frontbench lineup to heal Coalition wounds. It will be anything but easy - The Guardian
Ley’s frontbench is full of land mines. It’s going to be an explosive three years - Crikey

Ross Gittins: Don’t let rich old men tell you the planned super tax is terribly bad - Pearls and Irritations

Would you want Australia to become more like America? How on Earth did so many Yanks vote to reinstall a crazy, destructive leader such as Mad King Donald?

If we don’t want to become more like them, it’s worth thinking about how it happened, so we know what not to do.

Americans brought Trump back for two main reasons. First, extreme partisanship. Many registered Republicans voted for him because, no matter how bad he was, he couldn’t possibly be as bad as a Democrat president would be. But second, I suspect many Americans voted for him because they’d become so disenchanted with the way the country was run, felt so mistreated and estranged from the rest of America, that they wanted to give the system a big kick up the backside.

Laura Tingle: Election volunteers say they experienced abuse and aggression at polling booths - ABC 7.30 Report

Australia prides itself on its orderly elections with high voter engagement, but something else was going in this time with volunteers claiming more than usual incidents of bullying and harassment at the polls.

Watch Laura Tingle for the 7.30 Report

“A big deal:” Bowen says hosting Cop31 will lift Australia’s standing and help accelerate renewable shift - Renew Economy

Australia’s bid to co-host the United Nations COP31 climate talks in 2026 with Pacific nations has been described by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen as a “remarkable opportunity” to restore Australia’s international climate leadership and help shape the global clean energy conversation.

Speaking at the Energy Efficiency Council’s national conference on Wednesday Bowen said he wants the event to put Australia on the international stage, and “knock it out of the park.”

But Australia’s ambition to host the world’s most important climate summit could be jeopardised by its decision to approve a massive fossil fuel project.

Labor’s Trump card goes missing - Inside Story

A key factor in Labor’s election win was forgotten once the postmortems began.

Last Wednesday Labor’s national secretary, Paul Erickson, delivered the traditional election winner’s speech at Canberra’s National Press Club. This opportunity to exercise bragging rights and feed journalists the government’s preferred narratives about what happened and why is as longstanding as it is ritualistic. Playing with the defeated team’s heads is a priority. A high-impact example was Liberal director Andrew Robb’s spreading the gospel of “Howard’s battlers” in 1996, a psephologically fake narrative that infects political discourse to this day.

The Sunday Shot won't censor Nasser Mashni!

Unlike the ABC, we will let the eloquent voice of Australia Palestine Advocacy Network President Nasser Mashni be heard.

Watch The Sunday Shot here

Also > Whether due to indifference or disinterest, the media colludes with Gaza genocide - Pearls and Irritations

‘Genocide’: Patrick Dodson condemns Australia’s Aboriginal youth incarceration rates - The Guardian

Former Labor senator Patrick Dodson has condemned the country’s Aboriginal youth incarceration rates and child removals as an ongoing genocide against First Peoples and an “embarrassing sore” on the nation.

“It’s an assault on the Aboriginal people. I don’t say that lightly [but] if you want to eradicate a people from the landscape, you start taking them away, you start destroying the landscape of their cultural heritage, you attack their children or remove their children,” Dodson said.

“This is a way to get rid of a people.”

Dodson said there was no other word for it than genocide.

Albanese, the new Howard, is keeping Australia in the past - Crikey

Anthony Albanese once derided John Howard. Now he’s become a Howard-like figure of political dominance, while holding Australia back just as the Liberal PM did.

It was April 1998 when parliament’s youngest MP rose in the grievance debate one afternoon to declare “today my grievance is against the prime minister”. There followed more than 1,500 words of zingers about John Howard, ranging from his eyebrows to the Spice Girls to his pettiness, and his personal history.

Here is a man who lived at home until he was 32. You can imagine what he was like. Here were young Australians demonstrating against the Vietnam War, listening to the Doors, driving their tie-died kombi vans, and what was John Howard doing? He was at home with mum, wearing his shorts and long white socks, listening to Pat Boone albums and waiting for the Saturday night church dance.

The MP concluded that “Australians deserve a courageous leader … They do not deserve John Winston Howard and in time they will put him out to pasture.”

Tim Dunlop: The Natural Party of Government - The Future of Everything

If progressive politics is to have any meaning at all then it must be about addressing climate change, surely? When Labor approves a project like the North West Shelf extension, giving the company free rein until 2070, it is no small thing: not just because of the project itself, but because it is Labor doing the approving.

Responding that Dutton would’ve been worse in other ways is just a massive deflection.

So, maybe this is why we should keep talking about the collapse of the Liberal Party, and force ourselves to watch things like that Four Corners program, because it reminds us what self-delusion looks like and where it can lead.

Labor is flying high now, no doubt, but they might want to remember that just because they can’t feel the wind as they glide across the landscape it doesn’t mean the wind isn’t blowing.

SUPPORT OUR PRECIOUS DEMOCRACY THROUGH DEMOCRACY WALKS T-SHIRTS.

Inspired by a local group of people in Sydney's north who were looking for t-shirts to wear on their regular walks, Democracy Walks champions, supports and actively engages in our democracy.

CLICK here to see a range of Democracy Walks’ t-shirt designs.

DEMOCRACY WALKS T-SHIRTS - THEY NEVER FAIL TO START A CONVERSATION.