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Former Liberal MP says climate debate driven by ‘emotions and virtue signalling’
Sarah Basford Canales
The former Liberal MP Keith Wolahan says debate on climate change and emissions reduction is “mostly driven by emotion and virtue signalling” from all sides of the political spectrum.
In an interview with Sky News on Friday, the former member for Menzies, who lost his seat in May, said he was back working as a barrister, which he claimed was sometimes considered “90% logic and 10% emotion”. On the other hand, politics was more like 10% logic and 90% emotion, he said.
Wolahan continued:
You can’t ride it on emotion alone and there’s temptation for those on the left or the right to run the energy debate on emotion … we should be driven by logic, by facts and by what’s in our national interest. And I think if we get the debate to there – I think it needs to move there, because I think it’s mostly driven by emotion and virtue signalling from the left and the right. The debate needs to move away from that – then I think we can have a proper conversation about this.
Asked whether Wolahan would have another crack at the seat of Menzies in Melbourne’s north-eastern suburbs at the next federal election, he said he was “more likely than not to put my hand up to run again”, but warned:
Unless the Liberal party in the Coalition wins more metro seats, it will always be a voice in opposition only, and I don’t think that’s in the country’s interest.
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Severe storms forecast for east coast this weekend amid storm outbreak across the country
Jessica O'Bryan
All states and territories are in for a wet weekend, with potentially severe thunderstorm outbreaks forecast across north-eastern parts of New South Wales and south-eastern Queensland.
The Bureau of Meteorology senior meteorologist Sarah Scully says showers and storms will cover the northern half of the country and the east coast, brought on by “multiple troughs of low pressure that’s combining with tropical moisture”.
“This trough tomorrow will extend all the way down eastern Australia into the south-east, drawing a cloud band as far south as Tasmania,” Scully says.
The potentially severe thunderstorms “on the cards” for north-eastern NSW and south-eastern Queensland between today and Sunday may involve “damaging winds, large hail or heavy rainfall that could cause flash flooding”, according to the meteorologist.
Scully says Australians are “well and truly into the severe weather season”, noting this marks Queensland’s fifth consecutive weekend of severe forecast storms.
The meteorologist suggests people stay up to date with the BoM’s latest thunderstorm warnings and “keep an eye on the radar”.
Penry Buckley
NSW workers’ compensation: what is whole person impairment?
Returning to the deadlock over NSW’s workers’ compensation scheme, the main sticking point has been over “whole person impairment”, the tool used to assess whether a worker can claim damages for a workplace psychological injury.
But what is whole person impairment, or WPI, and how is it calculated? In short, psychiatrists assess factors including the duration of a psychological impairment, the likelihood of improvement, whether a worker has undertaken reasonable rehabilitative treatment, and any other relevant matters, to create a percentage figure which describes the level of injury.
Currently the level of WPI at which a person can claim lump-sum compensation is 15%. The government’s original proposal was to lift this to more than 30%. The government says psychological injuries account for 38% of total workers’ compensation costs, despite making up only 12% of total claims.
A parliamentary inquiry heard that most workers who are assessed as having a WPI of 21% or higher were “not fit to work in any capacity”. The final report claimed the government’s proposal to raise the threshold left workers at serious risk of self-harm or suicide.
Many say WPI is an imperfect tool to assess psychological injury. One of the proposals of a compromise deal which fell apart last night was for the NSW chief psychiatrist, Dr Murray Wright, to develop a new tool within 18 months.
Rafqa Touma
‘Opportunity to recommit’: shadow immigration minister on 1 million refugees
The shadow immigration minister, Paul Scarr, says the milestone of 1 million refugees being settled in Australia since 1947 is an “opportunity to recommit to our humanitarian and refugee program”.
He was speaking at the Refugee Council of Australia’s annual general meeting in Parramatta, Sydney, last night.
This year 1 million people will have been settled in Australia through refugee and humanitarian programs since 1947, the Refugee Council said. The meeting celebrated the milestone by launching its documentary series One Million Untold Stories.
Scarr said:
I believe it’s an opportunity to recommit, to recommit to our humanitarian and refugee program, to celebrate the success that it’s been, to look at different barriers, ways in which it can be improved for the future, to communicate to the Australian people what a great benefit it has been to our country and to everyone in our country.
Paul Power, the Refugee Council CEO, urged Scarr to “appeal to your colleagues in the Liberal and party rooms to review the policy and certainly not to advocate for a cut to the current program”.
I think it would be remiss of us not to ask the Liberal Coalition to review the policy for the last election in terms of the size of the refugee and humanitarian program. Over the past 10 years, the refugee and humanitarian program has only made up about 6% or 7% of net overseas migration.
Carlos, who lived Chile until 1974, spoke on a panel at the event. Asked what he would do if he were in parliament, he said:
I would say that we need more refugees everywhere. Coming from different countries, no matter what colour, skin, no matter religion. We need more people to come because the world is in crisis now. So Australia has to be open for any refugee from any country in the world.
Northern Territory makes croc pet permit process more snappy
Keeping a snappy predator as a back yard pet is being made easy with new guidelines on crocodile ownership restoring a right seen as part of a “unique territory lifestyle”, AAP reports.
As Victoria moves to ban pet crocs, the Northern Territory government has scaled up plans to allow ownership of the reptiles, with 63 people already licensed to keep 123 of them.
“It’s proof our unique territory lifestyle is alive and thriving,” the NT parks and wildlife minister, Marie-Clare Boothby, said.
The NT government is inviting Territorians to have their say on new safety and welfare guidelines to make owning a pet croc simpler and safer.
The proposed regulations would strengthen guidelines already in place to own a pet crocodile.
The crocs will receive a unique identification marking, owners will be charged a $299 fee for a five-year permit and there will be a $100 an hour recovery fee if departmental staff need to capture an escaped reptile. Updated enclosure standards include a lockable door and an isolating section to reduce human-crocodile interaction during cleaning or vet checks.
Nick Visser
That’s all from me. Josh Taylor will guide you through the rest of the afternoon. Take care!
Attorney general touts $37m to strengthen criminal history monitoring in early childhood and care
The attorney general, Michelle Rowland, just spoke about the federal government’s commitment of $37m to strengthen criminal history monitoring in early childhood and care.
She told reporters at a news briefing in Brisbane the reforms were part of the government’s focus on ensuring a “safer community in the long term”, adding of a national tracker:
This will ensure that the states and territories can plug into this system to have that real-time monitoring and ensure that we know who should be excluded, what their criminal histories are and this will make for a much safer system …
The significant progress we have made … particularly when it comes to working with children checks, demonstrates the focus of the Albanese government on keeping our most vulnerable safe.
Adeshola Ore
Victorian ombudsman sounds warning on youth crime crackdown
The Victorian ombudsman has sounded the alarm on the Allan government’s youth crime crackdown, warning it will lead to less humane treatment of children in detention and no long-term improvement in community safety.
In an unusual intervention, the ombudsman wrote to a number of MPs on Thursday, in response to the Allan government’s proposed “adult time for violent crime” policy. The changes could see children as young as 14 sentenced to life in prison.
In the letter, viewed by Guardian Australia, the ombudsman, Marlo Baragwanath, said since May there had been a 20% increase complaints from prisons and youth justice facilities, including allegations of misuse of force, compared with the previous year.
Baragwanath said she anticipated a 157% increase in youth justice complaints before the proposed reforms came into effect:
Put simply, our work shows that rapid increases in the number of people in custody leads to less humane treatment and less effective rehabilitation, which does not improve community safety in the long run.
Former Liberal MP says climate debate driven by ‘emotions and virtue signalling’
Sarah Basford Canales
The former Liberal MP Keith Wolahan says debate on climate change and emissions reduction is “mostly driven by emotion and virtue signalling” from all sides of the political spectrum.
In an interview with Sky News on Friday, the former member for Menzies, who lost his seat in May, said he was back working as a barrister, which he claimed was sometimes considered “90% logic and 10% emotion”. On the other hand, politics was more like 10% logic and 90% emotion, he said.
Wolahan continued:
You can’t ride it on emotion alone and there’s temptation for those on the left or the right to run the energy debate on emotion … we should be driven by logic, by facts and by what’s in our national interest. And I think if we get the debate to there – I think it needs to move there, because I think it’s mostly driven by emotion and virtue signalling from the left and the right. The debate needs to move away from that – then I think we can have a proper conversation about this.
Asked whether Wolahan would have another crack at the seat of Menzies in Melbourne’s north-eastern suburbs at the next federal election, he said he was “more likely than not to put my hand up to run again”, but warned:
Unless the Liberal party in the Coalition wins more metro seats, it will always be a voice in opposition only, and I don’t think that’s in the country’s interest.
Penry Buckley
Minns says workers’ compensation deadlock ‘a real shame for NSW’
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, says businesses will be forced to close and charities to reduce services over Christmas, after upper house MPs rejected the government’s proposed changes to the workers’ compensation scheme last night.
Minns says the decision by Coalition and Greens MPs to vote against raising the impairment threshold for psychological injury to 31%, which could exclude hundreds of workers from the scheme, is “a real shame for NSW”.
Asked if the government will seek to negotiate further on the threshold before the end of the parliamentary year, Minns says: “It’s over.”
Premium increases will go to both charities and businesses in the state. I’m sorry about that. I genuinely am. It’s the last thing that they need. But I can’t make people vote a certain way. That’s their decision. If they do vote that way, they can live with the consequences.
The premier’s comments echo those of the independent MP for Sydney, Alex Greenwich, who worked on a compromise deal with upper house independent MP Taylor Martin, which the government said it would support.
Earlier today, Greenwich said he was disappointed it had fallen apart at the last minute, saying it was Martin’s prerogative for walking away from the deal.
“If we don’t do our job, people across NSW will start losing their jobs,” he said.
Jessica O'Bryan
Seismic impact levels reveal ‘interesting’ crowd dynamics of AC/DC fans
While AC/DC fans spent Wednesday rocking out at Melbourne’s MCG, they made only one-fifth of the seismic impact of Taylor Swift’s fans.
The Seismology Research Centre in Melbourne measured the seismic level of the rock concert through frequencies of crowd motion and music, finding levels were “about 5 times smaller” than from Swift’s concerts last year.
The centre’s chief scientist, Adam Pascale, says it is “quite interesting” to see how crowd dynamics affect what they record.
If everyone’s sort of jumping in unison, that tends to amplify the signal so we can pick that up better. We saw that with Taylor Swift’s concert. I think everyone [there] was probably dancing more in unison than the guys that rock out at the AC/DC concert.
Following an “international movement of seismologists” recording Swift concerts last year, Pascale says the centre now has a seismograph essentially “dedicated to recording concerts”.
Although seismographs can pick up vibrations from concerts, Pascale says the centre is unable to assign a magnitude to the levels because they are far less than the seismic levels of an earthquake.
Victorian fire authority issues warning after series of haystack fires
Victoria’s Country Fire Authority (CFA) has issued a warning to farmers to take extra care to help prevent haystack fires after a spate of blazes where thousands of bales were lost.
The CFA said hay season was in “full swing” across the state. The agency pointed to a large fire on 9 November when a hay shed caught fire, resulting in the loss of about 1,000 bales. The bales can burn for days and cause major smoke in the area.
Between 30 June 2024 and 1 July 2025 the CFA responded to 73 haystack and shed fires in regional areas, which can be caused by spontaneous combustion when hay is baled with too much moisture.
Jason Heffernan, the chief officer with the CFA, said:
Farmers who have decided to carry on with hay production need to be extra vigilant this year to make sure conditions are right for making hay and for the future storage and transport of the product as well.
Hay fires are a real threat to properties and stock in farmland areas. Whether you’re a seasoned hay grower or switching to hay this year, it’s important to take care of your hay and crops this fire season.
