Source : the age
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Two of the three wind farm projects halted by Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie in January have now been approved, and a decision on the third is imminent.
After ordering the projects be placed under greater scrutiny, Bleijie recently allowed the applications to proceed to a decision. His department gave the green light to the Bungaban and Wongalee wind farms, and will soon decide the Theodore project.
Bleijie recently told parliament the LNP honoured an election commitment by making wind farms impact assessable, requiring mandatory consultation and third-party appeal rights, after Labor tried to force projects on regional communities “from their concrete jungle offices here in Brisbane”.
“We updated the wind farm code, one of the weakest planning policies which allowed for wind farm proponents to ride roughshod over regional communities,” Bleijie said.
“We now make sure that: any application will not result in any loss of prime agricultural land and put the people and the environment first; that workers’ accommodation does not impact on the communities’ housing market where rental vacancies are extremely low; that construction impacts on local infrastructure are mitigated or, if unable to be mitigated, remediated; and the decommissioning of wind farms becomes the sole responsibility of the wind farm operator and guaranteed through bonds or financial guarantees, no longer leaving private landowners at risk.”
The Royal Edinburgh Military tattoo has doubled its Brisbane shows after ticket sales hit the halfway mark this week, just hours after opening public sales.
Spruiking the state’s tourism industry in parliament this week, Tourism Minister Andrew Powell said the shows – on February 12 and 14 next year – were expected to attract 38,000 tourists to Brisbane.
The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo will be coming to Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane in February 2026.Credit: Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo
“Due to overwhelming demand, the Saturday performance has sold out, and in response, the Tattoo has decided to add not one, but two additional shows at Suncorp,” he said.
Powell said the decision doubled the number of shows, in a “brilliant outcome” for the tourism industry.
The new dates include Friday, February 13 and Sunday, February 15. Ticket presales opened last week with public sales launched from 10am on Wednesday.
Cannes, France: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is thinking about how to become politically active again once he has fully recovered from his prison ordeal.
Assange, 53, returned to Australia after pleading guilty last June under an agreement with US officials to one count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security materials.
Eugene Jarecki, Julian Assange and Stella Assange at the Cannes Film Festival.Credit: Scott Garfitt/Invision/AP
Assange, who was born in Townsville, spent five years in a British prison, after seven years at the Ecuador embassy as he sought to avoid extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations. Assange denied those allegations and called them a pretext to extradite him to the US over WikiLeaks.
“He was in a very grave situation in the prison. He’s recovering from that,” his wife Stella Assange said on Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival, where they are promoting the documentary, The Six Billion Dollar Man.
“But now he’s coming to understand how grave the situation outside [prison] is and thinking, making plans to find the means of what to do about it. He’s very, very concerned about the state of the world and the state that we’re all in right now.”
Julian and Stella Assange, holding a sign saying “Stop Killing”, walked the red carpet on Wednesday evening.
Julian Assange has so far not spoken at any of his appearances. The documentary from Emmy-winning director Eugene Jarecki takes on the tone of a high-tech international thriller to recount Assange’s fight against extradition, using WikiLeaks footage and archives and previously unpublished evidence.
Reuters
A woman involved in a crash with a truck that killed two people and seriously injured a baby was allegedly intoxicated and speeding at the time.
A Hyundai i20 and and a Fuso Canter truck collided at the intersection of Bellmere Road and King Street in Caboolture about 6.30pm, April 6.
A 35-year-old woman and 50-year-old woman – both passengers in the hatchback – died at the scene.
A woman has been charged after a fatal crash in Caboolture.
A one-year-old boy also in the car was taken to hospital in a serious but stable condition.
Police will allege the Hyundai was travelling north-west on King Street when it approached the intersection at high speed and did not stop at the red light.
The truck was allegedly driving in the opposite direction and trying to turn right onto Bellmere Road.
The male truck driver was not injured, and the 26-year-old Caboolture woman who was driving the Hyundai suffered minor injuries.
Police announced this morning they had charged a 26-year-old woman with a string of offences including driving while affected by an intoxicating substance and while excessively speeding.
The woman is due to appear in Caboolture Magistrates Court on June 17.
The state government has denied claims it planned to slash a program designed to teach children about healthy relationships, consent, and body image, after emails detailing the cuts were leaked.
An email detailing changes to the Queensland women and girls’ health strategy 2032, which was tabled twice in parliament on Wednesday.
The Queensland puberty health education program – aimed at children in years 5 and 6 – was introduced as part of the Queensland women and girls’ health strategy 2032 by the former Labor state government.
Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said the opposition was “trying to weaponise” women and girl’s health, when members attacked the government over alleged cuts to the program.
Leaked emails from a Health Department employee – seen by this masthead and tabled twice by opposition members in yesterday’s parliament sitting – said it would not continue after “a shift in government priorities and funding”.
“As a result, any work planned or underway will no longer continue and there will be no program pilot or trial,” the email read.
Labor opposition MPs slammed the LNP state government, calling the move a “health cut” and a contradiction of promises made ahead of last year’s election.
In parliament yesterday Treasurer David Janetzi said there would be no cuts, and any information that claimed there would be cuts “had not come from the government”.
The government said it would continue to fund the $247 million women and girls’ health in its entirety, which includes rural health access for women, and boosts to sexual and reproductive health for women across the state.
By the Reserve Bank’s own words, Donald Trump is more of a threat to the global and domestic economy than the COVID pandemic and the global financial crisis combined.
As it cut official interest rates to a two-year low of 3.85 per cent, and paved the way for looser monetary policy in the weeks and months ahead, the RBA released its latest quarterly outlook for the economy.
This document, which contains its key forecasts around inflation, unemployment, wages growth and household spending, is the bank’s best guess of how the economy will pan out over the coming two years.
Across 68 pages, the word “uncertain” (or “uncertainty”) was used 132 times. In the same document a year ago, it was used just 31 times. During the depths of the pandemic in mid-2020, it was used on 52 occasions.
Explaining the bank’s rates decision at a press conference following its monetary policy committee meeting, governor Michele Bullock said not only was the uncertainty caused by Trump and his trade war a problem, but so was his unpredictability.
In some unusually candid language, Bullock noted the huge amount of time her team of economists are spending trying to understand the geopolitical tsunami unleashed by Trump since his “liberation day” announcement of April 2.
She said her staff had spent a lot of time since the issues “exploded”.
“But we, just like everyone else, were completely blown out of the water by the scale and the scope,” she noted.
Read more of Shane Wright’s analysis here.
A disability pensioner has lost his bid to be allowed to gamble at The Ville casino in Cairns.
The Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal heard the man had received an insurance payout for total and permanent disability, as well as a superannuation payment, and gambled during a period when he had no other income.
By December 2023, the man – deemed by the casino to be a ‘President Member’ – was gambling large amounts of money, and on one day had a turnover of around $97,000.
After a dispute over events on an evening in February 2024, when the man lost more than $10,000, the casino formally issued the man with an exclusion direction.
Tribunal member Christopher Taylor found the casino had acted appropriately in excluding the man, who now receives a disability pension.
Taylor noted that when the man was asked in a hearing why he believed the casino was wrong to exclude him, he replied, “it was action too late, they should have stepped in earlier,” thereby confirming the casino had been right.
President Donald Trump clashed with his South African counterpart over claims of a genocide of white Afrikaner farmers and ranted extensively about the American media, in another extraordinary and tense Oval Office meeting with a foreign leader.
Trump dimmed the lights and played a video purporting to back up his assertions about the state-sanctioned mass murder of Afrikaners, the white ethnic minority that ruled South Africa during apartheid, as the country’s president Cyril Ramaphosa was made to watch.
US President Donald Trump met South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office.Credit: AP
Trump mentioned Australia several times during the exchange, claiming both Australia and the US were being flooded with white South African farmers trying to flee. Dozens arrived in the US last week after the Trump administration fast-tracked their approval as refugees.
“You take a look at Australia, they’re being inundated, and we’re being inundated with people that want to get out,” Trump said. “This is a very serious situation and … if we had a real press, this would be exposed.”
Trump held up printouts of articles about white farmers who he said had been the victims of farm attacks, including robbery, land dispossession and murder. Gang violence is rife in South Africa, although as Ramaphosa and other officials pointed out during the Oval Office meeting, many victims are black.
The tense exchange between the two leaders did not rise to a shouting match, but represented the most contentious Oval Office meeting since Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance ambushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in late February.
Read more here.
Two of the three wind farm projects halted by Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie in January have now been approved, and a decision on the third is imminent.
After ordering the projects be placed under greater scrutiny, Bleijie recently allowed the applications to proceed to a decision. His department gave the green light to the Bungaban and Wongalee wind farms, and will soon decide the Theodore project.
Bleijie recently told parliament the LNP honoured an election commitment by making wind farms impact assessable, requiring mandatory consultation and third-party appeal rights, after Labor tried to force projects on regional communities “from their concrete jungle offices here in Brisbane”.
“We updated the wind farm code, one of the weakest planning policies which allowed for wind farm proponents to ride roughshod over regional communities,” Bleijie said.
“We now make sure that: any application will not result in any loss of prime agricultural land and put the people and the environment first; that workers’ accommodation does not impact on the communities’ housing market where rental vacancies are extremely low; that construction impacts on local infrastructure are mitigated or, if unable to be mitigated, remediated; and the decommissioning of wind farms becomes the sole responsibility of the wind farm operator and guaranteed through bonds or financial guarantees, no longer leaving private landowners at risk.”
A man has been killed after a trailer rolled down a hill and pinned him to a lamp post in the Gold Coast hinterland yesterday afternoon.
Police were called to Bushmead Street, in Nerang, shortly after midday and found the 48-year-old suffering from significant internal injuries.
Paramedics treated the man, but he died at the scene.
Police have launched an investigation into the circumstances leading up to his death.
Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner has told developers his council will review the low-to-medium density residential zone in a bid to facilitate higher-density projects.
At a Queensland Property Council lunch on Wednesday, Schrinner said the review was “about delivering more homes sooner, and where they’re needed most”.
“We’re going to focus on areas with existing infrastructure – close to public transport, shops, schools, and jobs – where modest, well-designed increases in housing density can have the greatest impact,” he said.
Queensland Property Council executive director Jess Caire welcomed the move, saying “Brisbane’s low-to-medium density residential zone covers 14 per cent of Brisbane but in 2023 only 445 new dwellings were delivered in these areas”.
Meanwhile, Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie told parliament the state government had approved 1631 new housing lots in the Greater Flagstone Priority Development Area, and intended to fast-track another 3700 lots at North Harbour through a PDA.
The area covered by the North Harbour PDA has yet to be made public.
