A daily 5 minute news wrap for English learners and people with a disability.
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to SBS News in Easy English. I'm Catriona Stirrat.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has defended likening the social significance of a pro-Palestinian protest at the Sydney Opera House to the Port Arthur massacre.
Mr Dutton is defending his choice of words telling Channel 9 he was comparing the response of then prime minister John Howard with Anthony Albanese.
"The point I was making, which is absolutely a legitimate one, is that I thought this was a time for the prime minister to show leadership and to step up. Instead, we’ve had crickets."
But Labor's Bill Shorten says John Howard received bipartisan support after the Port Arthur massacre which led to gun laws being tightened.
He's told Chanel 9 Mr Dutton could consider taking a similar approach.
"Peter's, you know, he's got to make his points, that's his job but I think that he should work with the prime minister to call out inflammatory language rather than throw kerosene on the bonfire of hate."
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An Indigenous legal service in the Northern Territory is calling for an independent advisory body to investigate allegations of racism by police.
It come after a racist image that was shared among police on email in 2008 was published in newspapers.
The image showing an alternative Monopoly board has been referred to a joint investigation between territory police and the NT's Independent Commissioner Against Corruption.
Principal legal officer with the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency Jared Sharp has told the ABC Indigenous clients regularly make complaints against police officers.
"This is always a conflict of interest if you're investigating yourself. You're your own people. Like, it needs to be at arm's length. It needs to be independent of the police."
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Independent MP Monique Ryan says students are seeing their higher education, or HECS, debt grower faster than they can repay it because of what she calls an unfair indexation system.
In June last year, an indexation rate of 7.1 per cent was applied to HECS debts, the highest rate in decades.
Monique Ryan has told Nine Radio the system needs to be reformed.
"What's happened now over time is that the way the indexation has affected young people and the issues that many people are experiencing in paying back their debt means that they're making payments but they're seeing their debt increase over time."
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Gaza's Ministry for Health says the Israeli attacks since October 7 have killed more than 33,000 Palestinians and wounded 76,000.
It says that in the past 24 hours, the Israeli army has killed 63 Palestinians and wounded 45 others.
In a statement, the Israeli army said that it had conducted a military operation in central Gaza on Wednesday night based on intelligence information, with the goal of destroying the relevant infrastructure.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement on Thursday that the Israeli forces had attacked multiple military installations of Hamas in the central Gaza Strip between the evening of Wednesday and the early morning of Thursday, and the Israeli Navy carried out a number of targeted strikes along the central coastline of Gaza to assist ground forces in their operations.
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A new report has found nine in ten junior doctors in Victoria say they're worried about making mistakes due to burnout and fatigue, creating concerns for patient safety.
The report has found Victorian junior doctors work under the nation's worst conditions and a high number are considering leaving the profession.
The Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation Victoria surveyed more than 400 medical professionals and found 93 per cent of junior doctors experienced burnout in the past 12 months.
A similar number were worried they would make clinical errors as a result, which could impact patients.
Some 87 per cent reported working unpaid overtime in the past year, with many concerned speaking out or claiming unpaid hours would hurt their career.
That was SBS News in Easy English. I'm Catriona Stirrat.
