SBS News in Easy English 2 December 2025

SBS News

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TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to SBS News in Easy English, I'm Camille Bianchi.
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A group from the United Nations is in Australia, to look at prisons, police stations and youth detention centres.

Lawyer Alison Battisson, owner of group Human Rights for All, says it is important these centres are investigated.

"I am still monthly finding people in Australia's immigration prisons who are impacted by the NZYQ decision of the High Court from November 2023. So we're talking more than two years later just because there is no proper system to identify such people. And this will lead to compensation claims against the government - and even more money being spent for no reason on arbitrary detention."
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Close to 50-thousand people in Australia are waiting for their student visas to be reviewed.

Administrative Review Tribunal registrar, Michael Hawkins, says the tribunal does not have enough workers or time right now.

"Okay, there is not a lot of triaging going on because we simply don't have the resources to attack the study visa cohort. Of the 97.9 FTE (full-time equivalent staff) that we're looking for (that we need) - the vast majority of those will be dedicated to student and protection visas."
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Hong Kong police have arrested 13 people as part of an investigation into a fire at apartment buildings that has killed at least 150 people.

The Hong Kong Police director for crime and security, Chan Tung, says the buildings do not meet safety standards.

"Police have been working around the clock. We have arrested 13 people, including 12 men and one woman, aged between 40 and 77 years old, with the crime of manslaughter. The arrested people include the investigators, the engineering consultant, the second-degree engineering company, and related people of the second-degree engineering company."
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New South Wales police have arrested 156 people at the Rising Tide festival protest, saying 16 protesters locked themselves to coal loaders and conveyor belts .

Rising Tide spokesperson Zach Schofield says the group wants to stop new coal and gas projects.

"So the federal treasury says that coal export revenue is projected to drop by 50 per cent in the next five years. And the port of Newcastle says that the coal export market could collapse entirely within the next 10 years, because China, Japan, Korea, you know, they're transitioning to renewables, or domestic energy production. And so we've got entire communities, Singleton, Muswellbrook that you know, to be honest, are based on coal, and so we need to actually fund new industries and jobs in those regions to make sure that those workers have a safe place to go when the industry collapses."
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That's the latest SBS News in Easy English.

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