TRANSCRIPT
- Massive power outage in Victoria sparks energy plan criticism.
- Gaza ceasefire talks between the US, Israel, and Qatar fail.
- And in cricket, Mitch Marsh to Return at number 3 Ahead of T20 World Cup.
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The federal opposition has criticised the government's energy plans after one of the largest power outages in Victorian history.
Wild storms caused the Loy Yang coal-fired power station to go offline, after hundreds of power poles and lines were knocked down and six transmission towers collapsed on Tuesday.
The Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action has warned it could take "days, if not weeks" to fully restore electricity, with as many as 260,000 properties still out of power today.
Nationals Senator Matt Canavan says the outage shows there isn't enough resilience in national electricity networks.
"Our engineering plans have always factored in the fact that multiple faults should be allowed to happen and we can ride through - we're obviously not doing that right now. And that shouldn't be news - our energy regulator a few months ago said that we could expect blackouts over the summer, because we don't have enough redundancy in the system."
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Negotiators from the United States, Egypt, Israel and Qatar have failed to reach a breakthrough on cease-fire talks concerning Israel's war in Gaza.
This comes as the international community including Israel's closest ally the US have called on Israel to hold back on its assault on the southern city of Rafah where nearly 1.5 million are sheltering from the conflict.
Israel says its military is making plans to evacuate them.
But no plan has been offered yet and aid agencies say the displaced have nowhere else to go in the shattered territory.
Meanwhile, the head of Lebanon's Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah says his armed group's cross-border shelling of Israel would only end when Israel's war on Gaza stops.
"We are fighting in southern Lebanon with our eyes on Gaza. When the aggression stops against Gaza and when the shooting stops in Gaza, we will stop the shooting in the south. The Israeli minister came out and said, 'No, even if we stop in Gaza, we will continue in the south'- Alright, you're welcome, it is not a problem. You continue in the south of Lebanon, we will continue in the south."
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More than one million claims made to Services Australia remain outstanding, despite thousands of new staff hired to the department to reduce the backlog.
Services Australia's new chief executive David Hazlehurst has told a Senate estimates committee more than 1.1 million claims remained unprocessed as of December 2023.
It comes as the federal government confirmed Services Australia had reached its recruitment target, which was announced last year, of 3,000 extra staff members for the department.
Mr Hazlehurst says he is optimistic the agency can reduce the outstanding claim levels to between 400,000 and 500,000 by April.
"I would expect that by the middle of the year, particularly in relations to new claims on hand, we'd expect to see things back more towards what we would expect to be a reasonable standard. If we can get it below that. That would be terrific. We're going to continue to monitor it and continue to provide advice to the government."
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Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, has asked Barnaby Joyce to take personal leave after he was filmed last week sprawled on the ground next to a planter muttering obscenities.
Nationals Leaders David Littleproud tells Channel 7 that if Mr Joyce wished to take time off, he would be supported.
"Obviously this wasn't normal behaviour. Barnaby's embarrassed himself and his family, and while he's clearly articulated some of the underlying issues and circumstances there are other circumstances that I'm not going to break his confidence on I'll be very clear to him that primarily my responsibility is about his wellbeing and that if he wanted to take some time away to make sure he can address all these issues and get himself back to a level that we expect then he'd be fully supported."
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Mitch Marsh says he will happily slot back to Number 3 ahead of the T20 World Cup to allow Travis Head to return to the top of the order.
Marsh was promoted to opener for the series finale against the West Indies in Perth last night.
It marked the first time in Marsh's 52-match T20 career that he had opened.
The skipper made 17 off 13 balls before holing out in the deep.
The West Indies won the match by 37 runs, but Australia claimed the series 2-1.
Head, who was rested from the series, will return for this month's three-match T20 tour of New Zealand, starting on the 21st of February.
Marsh has spent some time as opener in the ODI arena over the past year, but it seems like his T20 opening stint against the West Indies in Perth will be a one-off.
