Peter Dutton given key board appointment by Queensland government
Andrew Messenger
The former opposition leader Peter Dutton has been appointed to the Queensland Investment Corporation board by the state government.
Former Beattie government assistant minister Michael Choi was also appointed to be a director on the board.
The corporation is one of Australia’s largest institutional investment managers, with more than $135bn in assets under management.
Treasurer David Janetzki said the two appointments “will bring world class expertise to the Queensland Investment Corporation strengthening its ability to driving [sic] investment in our state, helping to grow our economy to benefit all Queenslanders”.
Key events
Albanese to address media in Singapore
Prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is expected to address the media this afternoon. The PM is in Singapore today, meeting his counterpart, Lawrence Wong.
The two prime ministers hold a leaders’ meeting annually, but the summit takes on a new focus this year, with the fuel crisis likely at the top of the agenda.
Why Singapore is so important to Australia’s fuel stocks and why Albanese brought forward the meeting?
Political reporter Josh Butler explains here:
Nick Visser
That’s all from me. Ima Caldwell will take things from here and guide the blog into the weekend. Take care.
Nick Visser
Watchdog finds no serious misconduct over former commissioner’s gin gifts, but says NSW police needs new policies
The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC) recommended NSW police develop a policy over the acquisition and distribution of gifts by the force’s commissioner, but did not find any serious misconduct on the part of former commissioner Karen Webb.
The body tabled a report after finding that Webb authorised the purchase of 50 bottles of gin to be used as commemorative gifts to dignitaries and other persons during her tenure. While Webb did not choose the supplier, she eventually learned the gin came from a company owned by a friend. Webb left the role in 2025.
LECC said Webb noted in hearings she should have declared a potential conflict of interest, but said there was no serious misconduct, saying:
The report notes that several Commissioners of Police had given bottles of alcohol as commemorative gifts and Commissioner Webb continued that tradition. There were no guidelines within the NSW Police Force governing the acquisition, distribution and record keeping associated with corporate gifts.
The watchdog said a policy should be drafted to govern such gifts in the future.
Thousands of electric vehicles recalled in Australia due to battery fire risk
Thousands of Australian drivers will be asked to check their electric vehicle batteries as part of a global recall involving more than 100,000 cars, AAP reports.
Hyundai issued a local recall for almost 5,000 vehicles on Friday due to a fault with its battery management software that could cause a fire while the car is recharging or while it is parked.
The recall involves two Hyundai models: the Kona EV manufactured between 2018 and 2023, and the Ioniq EV made between 2018 and 2022.
The federal transport department announced the recall of 3,478 Hyundai Kona electric cars and 1,402 Ioniq EVs, warning drivers they would be contacted by the manufacturer to organise an assessment.
Read more here:
Lisa Cox
More on the NSW coalmine given a two-year extension
An underground coalmine has been given the green light to dig for a further two years, with the New South Wales planning commission arguing it’s needed to guarantee electricity supply as the state transitions to renewables.
The NSW Greens have warned the move could be challenged in court after the Independent Planning Commission (IPC) gave the green light to Delta Electricity’s extension of its Chain Valley colliery operations, in the Lake Macquarie region, for two years.
But it explicitly prohibited transport of the coal for export or any other domestic use beyond supplying coal to the Vales Point power station.
The commission said the approval was justified because it would support “reliable baseload electricity during NSW’s transition to renewable energy sources”.
In its published statement of reasons, it said the two-year extension “represents the outer limit of what can reasonably be justified in NSW’s policy context of working towards decarbonisation”.
Read more here:
Tom McIlroy
Greens say Australia should step up pressure on Israel over ‘disastrous, illegal, immoral war’ on Lebanon
The Greens want the federal government to put direct pressure on Israel to stop its deadly strikes on Lebanon, including cancelling weapons contracts to protest against the “disastrous, illegal, immoral war”.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, have insisted southern Lebanon should be included in the fledgling ceasefire agreement negotiated between the US and Iran in recent days.
The Greens defence spokesperson, David Shoebridge, said tougher economic and diplomatic pressure was needed. He told ABC radio on Friday:
I welcome Australia joining so many other countries around the world in making that clear statement that Lebanon should be part of the ceasefire, and I note that the Pakistan negotiators made it clear from the outset that a ceasefire in Lebanon was part of the ceasefire.
Read more here:
AHRC accepts human rights complaint after Indigenous families allegedly told to leave public pool
The Australian Human Rights Commission has accepted a complaint against NSW police and Belgravia Leisure after an alleged incident at the Inverell public pool in northern NSW, AAP reports.
The complaint says First Nations families enjoying the pool were ordered to leave on 16 March 2025, after staff called police, alleging some children were disobeying the rules. The families say they were never asked to leave the pool before police arrived.
Officers told the families they could be arrested for trespassing if they did not leave before escorting them out, the complaint alleges.
The families and the National Justice Project say the actions of staff and police breached the Racial Discrimination Act.
Belgravia Leisure was contacted for comment on Friday, but chief executive Nick Cox had previously addressed the claims in a letter five days after the incident, saying the company “strongly” refuted the claims.
You can read more here:
Victorian teachers at government schools to hold rolling, half-day strikes next term
Cait Kelly
In Victoria, teachers at government schools will hold rolling half-day stoppages in term 2, after a full-day strike in March saw 500 classes cancelled.
The half-day walkouts will be done on a region-by-region basis and follow months of failed negotiations for a better pay deal, with the AEU calling for a 35% pay rise over three years. The government has offered 17%, which has been rejected.
AEU’s Justin Mullaly said:
They’ll commence in the third week of term, and it will see regions of the state take stop-work action so multiple local schools in a particular geographic area will all stop work at the same time, and they will converge and rally at a local state Labor MP’s office.
Mullaly said Victoria should be “ashamed” to call itself the education state.
[Teachers] are being taken for granted by the premier Jacinta Allan and education minister Ben Carroll, and will raise their voices around Victoria and significantly escalate their industrial action.
Peter Dutton given key board appointment by Queensland government
Andrew Messenger
The former opposition leader Peter Dutton has been appointed to the Queensland Investment Corporation board by the state government.
Former Beattie government assistant minister Michael Choi was also appointed to be a director on the board.
The corporation is one of Australia’s largest institutional investment managers, with more than $135bn in assets under management.
Treasurer David Janetzki said the two appointments “will bring world class expertise to the Queensland Investment Corporation strengthening its ability to driving [sic] investment in our state, helping to grow our economy to benefit all Queenslanders”.
Australian utilities warn datacentre demand risks pushing up household bills
Energy and water utilities warn the strain on capacity from a more than $100bn datacentre build-out in Australia’s biggest state could sharply push up household bills, Reuters reports.
In submissions to a New South Wales state parliamentary inquiry, the utilities said existing laws were insufficient to protect consumers from bearing the rising costs.
The submissions increase pressure on the government to set limits on how rapidly expanding datacentre projects use electricity and potable water shared by local communities, with critics contending that careful planning has been pushed to the sidelines in the rush to secure a piece of the multi-trillion dollar global datacentre boom.
Reuters previously reported that the state, home to Sydney and one-third of Australia’s 27 million population, had approved 10 datacentre projects from companies including Microsoft and Amazon without setting specific, enforceable parameters for resource consumption.
“Without appropriate policy settings, this growth could place pressure on electricity infrastructure planning, system reliability and ultimately consumer costs,” Jason Krstanoski, an executive at grid operator Transgrid, wrote in a submission.
You can read more from Guardian Australia’s Petra Stock here:
Artemis II crew on inspiring the next generation and unifying humanity
As the Artemis II mission enters flight day nine, the crew spoke about inspiring the next generation and “working on something big for the good of everyone” ahead of their return to Earth.
The crew, made up of three US astronauts and a Canadian, embarked on humanity’s first crewed lunar voyage in more than half a century. The 10-day flight around the moon and back will mark the second mission of Artemis, successor to the Apollo program of the cold war era.
Severe Tropical Cyclone Maila weakens as it tracks towards PNG
Severe Tropical Cyclone Maila is starting to weaken and is expected to “continue slowly weakening over the coming days,” according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
As of a 10am BoM update, Maila was slowly moving in the Solomon Sea and expected to start tracking south-west. It is forecast to impact south-eastern parts of Papua New Guinea before moving into the Coral Sea.
From Sunday, Maila may track west south-west towards the Far North Queensland coast and possibly cross Cape York Peninsula early next week.
It is possible, the BoM says, that Maila could weaken near or over south-east Papua New Guinea over the weekend and not cross the Queensland coast as a tropical cyclone at all.
Albanese tours Singapore LNG facility
Josh Butler
Anthony Albanese visited the Singapore LNG facility on Jurong Island this morning, taking a brief tour of a jetty where an Australian ship had docked.
Dressed in a green safety jumpsuit, Albanese met SLNG’s CEO Leong Wei Hung and inspected the jetty as gas was extracted from the ship in the harbour.
Surrounded by hulking metal structures, like gas storage tanks and steel walkways, the facility was highly secure with tight restrictions on filming. Albanese arrived to the location on a large bus filled with facility staff and his own team members.
Albanese and Hung spoke warmly for a few minutes, as the CEO pointed out features of the facility and jetty. Their conversation couldn’t be heard over the noise of the facility, but the PM and his guide pointed animatedly at various parts of the ship and jetty.
Hung later briefly told journalists that he and Albanese had a warm interaction, and that the PM had asked numerous questions.
Albanese is visiting other parts of Jurong Island, a major resource refining, energy and chemicals hub which employs about 27,000 people. He will meet Singapore’s PM, Lawrence Wong, later today and hold a joint press conference.
Jonathan Barrett
Life360 sheds staff as AI-linked job losses mount
Tracking app company Life360 has laid off an undisclosed number of workers as artificial intelligence prompts a restructure at the ASX-listed company.
The job cuts are the latest to hit the technology sector, which has been grappling with a rapid shift towards AI-led automation.
The Life360 chief executive, Lauren Antonoff, said in a LinkedIn post this morning that “we’re uncovering new needs and seeing that the roles and ratios that made sense for getting work done in the pre-AI world no longer hold as AI takes on more of the work”.
“This shift requires difficult tradeoffs that impact good people. Today, this meant saying goodbye to teammates who helped shape Life360 as we know it,” she said.
Shares in the family locator and safety app company have been under significant pressure, falling more than 40% since the start of the year.
RBC Capital Markets said that the company was aiming to move beyond simple location tracking to play a more active role in family life, targeting new segments like elderly care, pet ownership, and various life stages.
Life360 was contacted for comment. It has not disclosed how many jobs have been affected.
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Please send us your questions about politics, the economy and the current upheaval in the world. Our email is australianpolitics@theguardian.com and we would love to hear from you.
Graham Readfearn
Andrew Forrest considers decarbonisation of Pilbara iron ore works two years early
Mining billionaire and outspoken climate advocate Andrew Forrest has announced his Fortescue company will have developed a “green grid” to power its entire Pilbara iron ore mining operations by the end of 2028 – two years ahead of the company’s “real zero” target.
By the end of next year, Fortescue has announced it will have eliminated the need to burn diesel with the green grid that includes 1.2GW of solar power, 600MW of wind generation and battery storage. Forrest said:
As the world enters an entrenched gas and diesel supply crunch, Fortescue is stepping beyond these problems. With years to spare, the massive technology development needed is largely behind us and construction is in full swing – we can see the end in sight.
The “green grid” will cover all the iron operations, including processing, rail, ports, logistics and equipment, Fortescue said.
Forrest has been harshly critical of “net zero” targets, saying they still allow for fossil fuel use with offsets. Instead, Forrest advocates for “real zero” where new technologies replace fossil fuels.
‘Harsh, punitive, policies’ mean children as young as 10 still being restrained in spit hoods in NT
Douglas Smith
The former Australian national commissioner for children, Anne Hollonds delivered a scathing opening statement at a Senate inquiry on Friday, saying governments were ignoring evidence and still using “harsh, punitive policies” to lock children up.
Hollonds, who held the position from 2020 to 2025, said she had “witnessed things” that she “can’t unsee” when she conducted the “Help Way Earlier” report into child justice between 2023 and 24.
She said there was often “handballing” of responsibility between federal, state and territory governments when it came to the rights and wellbeing of children.
We need government accountability to act on the evidence …
[I’ve seen] children held in solitary confinement and in concrete police watch house cells with no windows, no natural light or fresh air, no outdoor area, no recreation, [no] rehabilitation or education and no visits from family
Not just overnight, but for weeks and sometimes months on end.
At a Northern Territory police watch house last year, I asked, ‘What do you do when the children are in psychological distress’, I was told they use the restraint chair.
You will recall the restraint chair … from the Dylan Voller footage that aired on the ABC, and what this tells is that the Northern Territory not only has brought back spit hoods and lowered the age of criminal responsibility back to 10, they brought back restraint chairs.
So we are literally back to where we were prior to the Northern Territory royal commission which began in 2016.
Hollonds has called for a federal minister for children to be a national taskforce to be established that would develop an “evidence-based” roadmap to deliver better outcomes for youth.
