China’s ambassador to Australia says country has nothing to apologise for after live-fire drills
China’s ambassador to Australia says the country has nothing to apologise for, after warships conducted unannounced live-fire drills in the Tasman sea, which led to dozens of flight diversions.
For all the background on this, you can have a read below:
Speaking on ABC AM, ambassador Xiao Qian signalled Beijing would regularly send more warships to this region.
We in China, we look at Australia as our partner. There’s no reason for us to pose threat to Australia … In my view, their notice is appropriate. I don’t see there’s any reason why the Chinese side should feel sorry about that, or even to think about to apologise for that.
As a major power in this region, as a country that has so many things to look after, it is normal for China to send their vessels to different parts of the region to conduct various kinds of activities.
Key events
Queensland fire department warns of heightened fire danger
The Queensland fire department has warned of dry conditions across the state, particularly in grasslands, leading to heightened fire danger.
In a post to X, the department wrote:
While [Tropical Cyclone] Alfred continues to lurk off the Queensland coast, we can’t turn our attention away from other risks. Some areas of the state are experiencing dry conditions which has resulted in some fire activity, particularly in grasslands. Heightened fire danger is expected over the coming days, so it’s important if you’re planning to conduct any permitted burns you check local conditions prior to lighting up.
While TC Alfred continues to lurk off the Queensland coast, we can’t turn our attention away from other risks. Some areas of the state are experiencing dry conditions which has resulted in some fire activity, particularly in grasslands. Heightened fire danger is expected over the… pic.twitter.com/yiouPnoYR5
— Queensland Fire Department (@QldFireDept) February 27, 2025
Council advises music festival not to go ahead amid fears of gastro outbreak
A Victorian council is advising the organisers of this year’s Esoteric Music Festival to cancel the event, amid fears of a gastro outbreak.
At least 260 festival goers reported gastroenteritis symptoms after attending last year’s event, with the Shigella bacteria detected in a number of those ill.
In a statement today, the Buloke Shire Council said its officers had recommended the refusal of a planning permit for the festival, set to be held on 6-11 March, based on “significant health and safety concerns.”
The council said festival organisers applied for a new ten-year permit last September, and the council made two requests for more information in October and December.
A satisfactory response to these requests was not received which delayed the required referrals and public notice to occur. Despite these delays, ticket sales for the 2025 Festival have continued without the necessary approvals and permits in place.
The council’s CEO Wayne O’Toole said:
We understand the impact this decision will have on the event organisers, patrons and the local community, and acknowledge their disappointment but we are also committed to ensuring any event within the shire is safe and compliant.
Findings from report on how DV impacts women’s employment
Continuing from our last post, here are some of the key findings from the report:
Domestic violence affects women’s long-term earnings, with significant declines in full-time employment often lasting at least five years
For young women, domestic violence reduces rates of full-time employment by 9.1%
Domestic violence leads to a stark 9.7% reduction in university degree attainment
Victim-survivors report significantly higher rates of financial distress, with 44% unable to meet household expenses and 28% seeking financial assistance from family or friends, compared with just 7% of women who have not experienced violence
In 2021–22, women who experienced partner violence or abuse in the past five years had a 5.3% lower employment rate compared with those who had not. For women who recently experienced economic abuse, the gap was even greater at 9.4%
Nearly 35% of women who were working when they experienced domestic violence took time off work, with an average of 31 days off after the abuse.
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732.
Report demonstrates how domestic violence impacts women’s employment
A new report reveals how domestic violence impedes women’s employment, often forcing them out of the workforce altogether.
The report also states that, in many cases, these women work fewer hours, for less pay, than employed women who have not experienced domestic violence.
The “employment gap” can be as large as 9.4%, the report states, noting that 72% of women who have endured economic abuse in the past five years are in employment compared with 81.4% of women who have not been subject to such abuse.
The research was led by feminist and journalist Dr Anne Summers, professor of domestic and family violence at the University of Technology Sydney, with support from the Paul Ramsay Foundation.
It found that altogether 60% of women who currently endure domestic violence are in employment. A statement on the report said:
Many of these women face continuous pressure from their partners to quit their job or to at least reduce their hours. Such pressure is worse from former partners, with the 2021-2022 Personal Safety Survey showing that 451,000 women had a previous partner who controlled or tried to control them from working or earning money.
The report also found an “education gap”, showing that by the time young women are 27 there is a nearly 15% difference in the rates of university degree attainment between victim-survivors and other women.
Woman charged over allegedly laundering $7m through fraudulent mortgages
A woman has been charged for allegedly laundering nearly $7m through fraudulent mortgages on behalf of an organised crime network.
NSW police said that, since 2020, detectives identified the woman had applied for and was granted up to 10 home loans at various banks using fraudulent documentation which inflated her income.
Seven mortgaged properties were the subject of the investigation to the value of $6,910,050, police said, with the woman allegedly laundering funds on behalf of an organised crime network through the mortgage repayments.
Officers believe most of the funds were derived through the illegal tobacco trade.
Yesterday, detectives arrested a 36-year-old woman in Berala, who was taken to Auburn police station and charged with 20 offences, including dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception and dealing with the proceeds of a crime.
She was refused bail to appear in Burwood local court today.
Police also executed three search warrants in Berala and Auburn and allegedly located and seized $2.5m worth of tobacco cigarettes, $28,000 worth of loose-leaf tobacco, $104,465 cash, and a Mercedes GLC300 worth $110,000.
At the Auburn residence, police allegedly located an illegal gambling den and unlicensed tattoo parlour linked to the organised crime network.
Malinauskas says Sheargold remarks about Matildas ‘bizarre’
The South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, was also on ABC News Breakfast this morning, where he was asked about comments Marty Sheargold made on the radio about the Matildas, and endometriosis being a made-up condition.
He has since parted ways with Triple M:
Malinauskas labelled the remarks “bizarre”, particularly when you “look at the explosion in female participation in sport around the country”.
I think the best thing that … has happened to women’s sport in this country in a while was, of course, the World Cup and what the Matildas did. My son – we had the Matildas here in Adelaide last year and the Socceroos – and in the lead-up to those events, my son was more excited about going to the Matildas than he was to the Socceroos, because of the extraordinary excitement that they generated.
I think that was a transformative moment. I wouldn’t take these remarks and focus on them too much because I don’t think that’s where the rest of the community is at.
Equality Australia says ‘the fight is not over yet’ before Mardi Gras parade
Teddy Cook from Equality Australia says the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights isn’t over, before tomorrow’s Mardi Gras parade.
Speaking to ABC News Breakfast, Cook said he has marched for 20 years and “the fight is not over yet”. Asked about what is occurring overseas in terms of queer rights, he said:
We’re seeing an interesting and I think temporary experience that is telling me that there are people in power who are a bit afraid of what trans people offer. The freedom that we represent can feel very, very scary sometimes, particularly if you’ve been taught your whole life what it means so much to be a man and what it means so much to be a woman.
Trans people like me offer an idea of what it means to be self-determined and what it means to have agency in our lives … I think when those sorts of discussions start to happen, it’s good to remember that it’s probably a distraction, given that trans people are 1% of the population.
In Australia, Cook said there has been “really tangible improvements in the lived experience of trans people” – but also pointed to “really regressive policy change happening” in Queensland:
Queensland has done some really wild, totally out of best practice policy changes to ban gender-affirming care for young people, which is very, very worrying for me, and it gives me pause to worry about those kids up there on the wait list – there’s about 500 of them … Some have been on a waiting list for years.
China’s ambassador to Australia says country has nothing to apologise for after live-fire drills
China’s ambassador to Australia says the country has nothing to apologise for, after warships conducted unannounced live-fire drills in the Tasman sea, which led to dozens of flight diversions.
For all the background on this, you can have a read below:
Speaking on ABC AM, ambassador Xiao Qian signalled Beijing would regularly send more warships to this region.
We in China, we look at Australia as our partner. There’s no reason for us to pose threat to Australia … In my view, their notice is appropriate. I don’t see there’s any reason why the Chinese side should feel sorry about that, or even to think about to apologise for that.
As a major power in this region, as a country that has so many things to look after, it is normal for China to send their vessels to different parts of the region to conduct various kinds of activities.
Victoria warns of local measles outbreak
The Victorian health department has warned of a measles outbreak in the state, after two people acquired their infection in Melbourne.
In a statement yesterday, the department said these cases had “no history of overseas travel or known contact with other cases of measles.”
This means there is now local transmission of measles in the community.
The people were infectious at multiple locations around Melbourne and the Bendigo area, and you can view a list of exposure sites here. Anyone who visited these sites during the listed times should monitor for symptoms, the department said.
This news comes as the US is dealing with a significant measles outbreak:
Tropical Cyclone Alfred likely to remain offshore but could still impact coast, bureau says
The Bureau of Meteorology says Tropical Cyclone Alfred, which has been tracking through the Coral Sea well off the shore of Queensland this week, is likely to remain offshore.
The bureau said the tropical cyclone is forecast to continue moving south through the Coal Sea today as a category 4 system, and “while it may move closer to the coast on Saturday it is forecast to move south-east on Sunday away from the coast”.
Regardless of the track Alfred takes, coastal impacts for southern Queensland and north-east NSW are likely … Alfred has a high chance of remaining a tropical cyclone in the southern Coral Sea through much of next week.
Industry bailout steels Labor but poll pain persists
AAP is reporting that a majority of voters have backed the federal government’s $2.4bn rescue package for a troubled major steelworks.
The latest YouGov poll, provided to AAP, found 62% of those surveyed support the steelworks deal and public ownership of the plant announced last week, including 61% of people who intend to vote Liberal at the upcoming election.
But a cut in interest rates that bolstered the fortunes of mortgage holders has failed to translate to an uptick in the political fortunes of the government, the polling shows.
The poll showed the Coalition maintaining a 51% to 49% lead over Labor on a two-party preferred basis. The Coalition’s primary vote stands at 37% compared with the government’s 28%, while the Greens are on 14% and independents on 10%.
The poll showed Anthony Albanese had a net satisfaction of minus 12, with 40% satisfied compared with 52% dissatisfaction.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, had a net satisfaction of minus two, with 44% satisfied and 46% dissatisfied. But Albanese held a narrow lead as preferred prime minister, leading 42% to 40% over the Liberal leader.
The YouGov poll also revealed voters have not flocked to Clive Palmer’s new political venture Trumpet of Patriots – with just 1% of voters indicating they would give it their primary vote.
The poll of 1,501 people was conducted between 21 and 27 February, which had a margin of error of 3.3%.
Hrdlicka says Virgin pilot’s response to China’s live-fire exercise ‘business as usual’
On the Today show, Jayne Hrdlicka was also asked about the revelation it was a Virgin Australia pilot who first learned about China’s live-firing exercises, before authorities.
Asked how she was responding to this, the Virgin Airlines chief executive said this was a “business as usual thing for our team”.
Our pilots are very well trained. They’re very well skilled in navigating anything unusual – and this was definitely unusual … They picked up the radio communication on the airwave from the Chinese warship, so they knew as the Chinese warship was warning everybody in the airspace and they quickly reacted, let our services know. Let us know.
We changed our airspace rules and we quickly reacted. So that was, you know, business as usual for us. And we’re really proud of the team because they did exactly what they were supposed to.
Virgin Airlines CEO touts deal with Qatar
The Virgin Airlines chief executive, Jayne Hrdlicka, was up on the Today show earlier to discuss the Virgin-Qatar deal, which was signed off this week.
You can read an analysis on the deal Elias Visontay and Jonathan Barrett below:
She said fares would be less than $2,000 for a round-trip to Europe and that about 60 Virgin staff are completing secondments with Qatar.
Hrdlicka was also on ABC News Breakfast, where she touted the deal:
This is a partnership with the world’s best airline and one of its largest, and that means for Virgin Australia, while we’re big in Australia, we’re small in the grand scheme of global aviation. This means we get to access Qatar Airways’ scale. So not only do we get access to their international network and the opportunity to start flying long haul, but we get to engage in partnership with them to do things like procurement together with our big supply chain partners, engine manufacturers, aircraft manufacturers – all of our parts, working together with airports.
Watt says government is ‘working very hard’ to fix IT issues in mutual obligations system
Continuing to make the breakfast rounds this morning, the employment minister, Murray Watt, also spoke with ABC RN, where he was asked about reports that welfare payments have being wrongfully suspended amid IT issues with the mutual obligations scheme.
Watt said this was “this is something that we’ve been working on for several months now”, pointing the finger at the Coalition and saying they had introduced this and the government was trying to fix it.
It does have problems with it. We’ve been working very hard to fix it.
Watt said there had been a “number of different IT bugs in the system” that have “resulted, unfortunately, in some jobseekers having payments not made in the way that they should be”.
We’ve done everything we can to try to remediate those payments but what we’re also trying to do is to fix the system. People shouldn’t be having this kind of thing happen to them, based on a government system.
We’re determined to try to fix it. We’ve got reviews under way in terms of the IT bugs but also my department, which is responsible for this system. When it became clear that there was some legal uncertainty about the cancellation of people’s payments, they immediately paused those cancellations.
You know, I think we all accept that the community owes it to jobseekers to support them with income, and jobseekers owe it to the community to seek work, but we don’t need to have a punitive system like we had under the Coalition and that’s what we’re seeking to change.
Caitlin Cassidy
Senate estimates probes new definition of antisemitism adopted by universities
In Senate estimates yesterday, Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi questioned the education department over the adoption by Australia’s universities of a new definition of antisemitism, which closely aligns with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition.
The definition agreed to by universities notes that criticism of Israel is not in itself antisemitic but can be, including “when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel”.
Asked by Faruqi if the education department was concerned that by adopting the definition, “freedom of speech and academic freedom and critique of Israel and anti-racist research will be stifled”, deputy secretary Ben Rimmer said there was “nothing in what we’ve seen that gives us cause for concern”.
Universities have agreed that it is helpful for them to have a working definition of antisemitism as they increase their efforts to tackle antisemitism on campus … that seems like a very reasonable objective.
Asked if universities had a working definition as a collective on Islamophobia, Rimmer said they didn’t, but many universities had a working definition against racism that called out Islamophobia.
For more on the new antisemitism definition, read our explainer:
Dutton says ‘not everyone gets the acronyms’ amid Trump Aukus comment
Taking a final question, Peter Dutton was also asked about Donald Trump’s “What does that mean?” response to a question about Aukus.
Dutton, like Murray Watt, wasn’t too fazed:
Not everyone gets the acronyms, and all the rest of it, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the president strongly supports the alliance between our three countries and strongly supports Aukus.
He stated that previously and the submarine deal, which we negotiated when we were in government, when I was defence minister, will underpin the national security of our country for the next century. And it’s an important relationship.
Dutton says purchase of properties ‘aspirational’
After more back and forth, Peter Dutton again argued the prime minister is “in a desperate position” and “knows that he’s about to lose his leadership to Jim Chalmers or Tony Burke”.
Moving to his property purchases, the host asked about Dutton’s criticism to changes of family trusts and negative gearing – is that because he’s on the market for a 27th property?
Dutton responded that he’s “invested according to the laws and I’ve paid taxes according to the law”.
I’ve claimed deductions according to the law, and I’ve been aspirational in my life. I didn’t start with money. I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth. And I worked hard after school until I started university, and I was fortunate enough to buy a house when I was 20 years of age.
Unfortunately, tragically, under this government, young 20-year-olds and 25-year-olds [and] now 30-year-olds have lost the dream of home ownership. I want to restore it … I’ve worked full-time without, frankly, any absence out of the workforce whatsoever, and my wife’s worked hard.
Dutton again questioned on share purchases
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, was also up on the Today show this morning, where he was again asked about his purchase of bank shares during the GFC and before a bank bailout – the topic of much discussion this week.
Dutton said the accusations were a “sign of a desperate government” and accused Labor of “smearing and throwing mud”.
The host said back “as if you don’t do the exact same thing”, which Dutton rejected:
Well, no, no, we don’t actually. I made no comment in relation to Copacabana and the prime minister renting out his rental properties. I didn’t make any judgment in relation to that whatsoever. It’s a private matter for the prime minister.
The host also referenced a report in the Australian Financial Review, claiming shadow ministers at the time heard whispers of the deal – was he among those in the know?
No … If the prime minister wants to make that claim, he should make it himself … I’ve been honest and transparent in every transaction I’ve done. If I was doing some sort of dodgy share deal, I wouldn’t put it up in lights on my parliamentary register.
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