TRANSCRIPT
- Barnaby Joyce to join One Nation
- Energy rebates to end
- The West Tigers are now without a CEO
Barnaby Joyce has confirmed he is joining the One Nation, after leaving the Nationals in the final sitting week of parliament.
Mr Joyce says he feels he has a lot more to deliver when it comes to policy issues like energy and immigration.
He told Tamworth Radio 88.9FM, he has done a lot of thinking - and running as a One Nation candidate for Senate is the best fit.
"Now, I'm really going to focus back on the Australian people. Working with people like such to Pauline, I think I have a fellow traveller, and I have great respect for the work that Pauline has done. She has driven the political agenda. She has made us when I was when I was with the Coalition, react to where she has gone, and that has been an incredibly positive thing."
_
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has confirmed he government's energy bill rebates will not be continued after this year.
He says three rounds of rebates worth up to $150 dollars has cost the Commonwealth Government almost $7 billion, with states and territories also contributing around $1.5 billion.
Dr Chalmers says substantial pressures on the budget mean the mid-year budget update next week will be sensible, responsible, and restrained - not a 'spend-a-thon'.
He has framed the decision to dump energy rebates as marking a shift in the way the government is delivering cost-of-living relief.
"This shift is from temporary measures first decided when inflation was almost 8 per cent - a shift towards ongoing cost of living help, whether it's getting wages moving again, as we have been, whether it's the Medicare bulk billing incentives, because more bulk billing means less pressure on families, whether it's cheaper medicines, or all of the other ways that we're now providing permanent, ongoing, substantial, meaningful help."
_
A coroner in West Australia says the youth wing of a high-security adult prison south of Perth should be closed as a matter of urgency after the death of an Indigenous teenager.
Cleveland Dodd was found unresponsive inside a cell in 'Unit 18' of Banksia Detention Centre after self harming in October 2023, and he died in hospital about a week later.
Coroner Phil Urquhart said the 16-year-old had been subjected to prolonged periods of solitary confinement, and a lack of access to health, education and running water.
He has found Mr Dodd's death was avoidable, and recommended a special inquiry into how Unit 18 came to be established, in addition to its urgent closure.
_
The Australian Federal Police have charged three men for allegedly displaying Nazi symbols or possessing extremist material as part of a week-long blitz.
AFP Assistant Commissioner Stephen Nutt says a 43-year-old UK citizen living in Queensland is the third man to be charged in the last week as part of an investigation aimed at stopping those who are damaging social cohesion by spreading violence and hate.
He says the charges could result in a jail term of up to five years.
"Members of the national security investigation teams executed a search warrant at a home in Caboolture on 21 November and seized mobile phone along with some several weapons, including swords bearing a swastika, symbols, axes and knives. The man was charged with three counts of public display of prohibited Nazi symbol, and also one count of using a carried service to menace harass or cause offence."
_
To sport now and in NRL,
Shane Richardson has resigned as Wests Tigers CEO one week after the embattled club's majority owner, Holman Barnes Group, dismissed all four independents from the Tigers board.
Mr Richardson had been seen as a potential white knight when he took up the role in late 2023, after more than a decade of on-field failure and off-field dramas.
