source : the age
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The end of the state’s $1000 electricity subsidy has pushed up Brisbane’s inflation rate to one of the highest in the country.
All-important inflation figures have come in a little higher than expected today, potentially throwing a spanner into Reserve Bank expectations of an interest rate cut next month.
In the March quarter, prices rose by a higher-than-expected 0.9 per cent, with the annual inflation rate steady at 2.4 per cent. Food prices were up 1.2 per cent in the quarter, housing lifted by 1.7 per cent, while there was a large 5.2 per cent jump in education.
Brisbane’s inflation rate is higher than that in Sydney and Melbourne.Credit: Courtney Kruk
The biggest factor in today’s figures has been the end of Queensland’s $1000 electricity subsidy, when the net cost to households rose again.
Nationally, power prices jumped by 16.3 per cent in the quarter. Without the end of Queensland’s subsidy, electricity prices would have lifted by just 0.4 per cent.
It means Brisbane’s inflation rate jumped 1.9 per cent to 2.7 per cent for the year, just below Perth’s rate of 2.8 per cent.
Inflation in Sydney and Melbourne is at 2.3 per cent, while it is now at 1.4 per cent in Hobart and 1.7 per cent in Darwin.
The Crisafulli government is expected to formally request access to the archived cabinet documents of the former Labor government to explore its management of the hospital building program.
After using its numbers in parliament to pass a motion calling on Opposition Leader Steven Miles to consent to any such request by 5pm today, the parties are likely to exchange formal correspondence outlining the precedents, and merit or otherwise, of the move.
It is not yet clear how Miles will respond.
This is the first time a government has sought access to cabinet documents from the other side of politics since July 2012. On that occasion, then health minister Lawrence Springborg obtained documents relating to an IBM contract, with the support of then opposition leader Annastacia Palaszczuk, for a Commission of Inquiry into the health payroll debacle.
The Crisafulli government has vowed to continue with Labor’s hospital building program despite a review finding fault with the planning and budgeting. There is no suggestion it will hold an inquiry.
New data shows 31.5 per cent of people living in Australia last year were born overseas – up from 30.7 per cent the year before.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the overseas-born population in Australia has grown for the third year in a row following the border closures associated with the COVID pandemic.
Most Queensland residents who hail from overseas were born in New Zealand or England. Credit: iStock
For the first time since 1901, Italy has dropped out of Australia’s top 10 countries of birth, with the largest increases over the past decade coming from India, China, the Philippines and Nepal.
In Queensland, the top two countries for people born overseas are still New Zealand and England.
The end of the state’s $1000 electricity subsidy has pushed up Brisbane’s inflation rate to one of the highest in the country.
All-important inflation figures have come in a little higher than expected today, potentially throwing a spanner into Reserve Bank expectations of an interest rate cut next month.
In the March quarter, prices rose by a higher-than-expected 0.9 per cent, with the annual inflation rate steady at 2.4 per cent. Food prices were up 1.2 per cent in the quarter, housing lifted by 1.7 per cent, while there was a large 5.2 per cent jump in education.
Brisbane’s inflation rate is higher than that in Sydney and Melbourne.Credit: Courtney Kruk
The biggest factor in today’s figures has been the end of Queensland’s $1000 electricity subsidy, when the net cost to households rose again.
Nationally, power prices jumped by 16.3 per cent in the quarter. Without the end of Queensland’s subsidy, electricity prices would have lifted by just 0.4 per cent.
It means Brisbane’s inflation rate jumped 1.9 per cent to 2.7 per cent for the year, just below Perth’s rate of 2.8 per cent.
Inflation in Sydney and Melbourne is at 2.3 per cent, while it is now at 1.4 per cent in Hobart and 1.7 per cent in Darwin.
Turning now to the federal election campaign trail, where Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has defended his party’s volunteers following reports members of the Exclusive Brethren are campaigning for the Liberal and National parties.
The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren, has dispatched hundreds of its members to pre-polling booths in marginal seats while instructing them to keep secret that they are members of the controversial religion.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton visited MSFIN – Mums Supporting Families In Need – in Seaford, in Victoria, today.Credit: James Brickwood
The volunteers from the separatist Christian sect although the church objects to voting and tells its members to hate the world.
Earlier today a journalist asked Dutton: “This is a sect which treats women as second-class citizens and doesn’t tolerate homosexuality at all. Surely, you don’t think those are shared values.”
Dutton responded: “The point I make is people will support parties for different reasons and people of Islamic faith are involved in this election.”
“People of no faith, people of the Jewish faith obviously feel particularly aggrieved, as they should, by the antisemitism that we’ve seen in our society over the course of the last couple of years and they’ve seen antisemitic Jew-hating Greens party and the conduct of that party.
“But some people will be supporting the Greens.”
Two illegal pig hunters have been caught in Bribie Island’s national park.
Rangers and police received a tip-off last month about two vehicles entering the national park without number plates and travelling on restricted access roads with pig-hunting dogs and equipment.
Two men were subsequently caught by police and issued fines totalling $9032.
A spokesperson for the Department of the Environment said the duo did not have guns, but were hunting feral pigs with knives.
Feral pigs are a pest in Queensland, but hunting in national parks is illegal.
Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie has flagged his intention to call in a development application being considered by Sunshine Coast Regional Council.
While Bleijie has made much of the LNP government’s support for local government, having accused Labor of “riding roughshod” over councils, he has concerns with the proposed 150-site campground at Coochin Creek that may require a state takeover of the assessment process.
The site of the proposed campground at Coochin Creek on the Sunshine Coast.
The company behind the project is the Comiskey Group, which owns nearby venues including the Sandstone Point Hotel, Imperial Hotel in Eumundi and the Doonan, as well as the planned Aura Hotel.
The council blocked the group’s previous application for a 100-site campground at Coochin Creek.
The group won an appeal in the Land and Environment Court, and applied to amend the proposal to 150-sites including 75 cabins.
If Bleijie calls it in, his decision will be final.
Bleijie is considering whether the tourism and employment benefits of the project offset the risks of departing from the area’s rural production designation, which is meant to provide a green break from south-east Queensland urban sprawl, in a site close to Moreton Bay Marine Park and Bribie Island National Park.
The council also blocked the group’s plan for a neighbouring music festival site called Coochin Fields. The group took it to court but backed out of the case earlier this month.
The federal government has called tenders for the restoration of the stone lighthouse on Mulgulpin (Moreton Island), the first of its kind in Queensland.
Built in 1857, the 23-metre tall tower with a cast iron lantern room is a tourist drawcard, having long served as a maritime safety guide in and around Moreton Bay.
The heritage-listed Cape Moreton Lighthouse on Mulgulpin (Moreton Island) in Queensland.Credit: Queensland Government
A 2023 inspection identified erosion of the stone work, the poor state of cement pointing, deterioration of the external stone staircase and rising damp.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which conducted its own more recent inspection, has told potential contractors it wants the restoration work completed in a matter of months.
The mother of a woman allegedly murdered by her flatmate broke down in court yesterday while describing a video prosecutors claim was sent to conceal her daughter’s killing.
Yang Zhao, 30, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Qiong Yan, 29, in September 2020 at their apartment in the inner-Brisbane suburb of Hamilton.
He has instead pleaded guilty to interfering with Yan’s corpse, which was found concealed in a large tool box on their riverside unit’s balcony almost 10 months after her alleged murder.
The body of 30-year-old Chinese national Qiong Yan was found in a tool box on a Hamilton apartment balcony. Credit: Police Media
Qiong’s mother, Rongmei Yan, travelled from Shanghai, China, to Brisbane and took the witness stand yesterday.
Mrs Yan was sent a brief video in April 2021 with a female hand holding her daughter’s cat Anchun and a text message stating, “I am fine. I have Anchun taking care of me”.
Her daughter had been dead for seven months at that point.
Mrs Yan broke down crying and wiped her eyes with tissues after watching the cat video in court.
She is due to finish giving evidence today.
Mass DNA re-testing at a beleaguered lab is likely to reveal issues with more cases, the state government warns amid reforms to keep the forensic samples for longer.
Queensland’s state-run lab has been the subject of two full-scale inquiries into its operations since testing issues were first raised following the death of 23-year-old Shandee Blackburn, who was stabbed more than 20 times on her way home from work in Mackay in 2013.
Mackay woman Shandee Blackburn was killed in 2013.
Despite significant amounts of biological material and blood at the scene of Blackburn’s killing and in the car Peros’ was driving, the Queensland government-run Forensic and Scientific Services lab stated it could not identify usable DNA.
The inquires heard that an unusual DNA threshold limit adopted by the lab in 2018 was designed to save money and improve efficiency, but resulted in thousands of crime-scene evidence samples not being tested.
Other samples were incorrectly ruled insufficient due to a flawed automated extraction method.
The laboratory’s failings, which may have led to offenders escaping conviction over nine years from 2007, have prompted a massive re-testing program.
The LNP government moved amendments in parliament yesterday to ensure current DNA sample retention was extended from three to seven years to tackle the re-testing backlog, which may take years.
DNA material taken from suspects between June 14, 2025 and June 14, 2027 will be kept for up to three years under the amendment.
Queensland Attorney-General Deb Frecklington claimed further high-profile cases will emerge from the re-testing.
“Who knows how many other Shandee Blackburns are out there. I hope none but I know that there will be many,” she told parliament yesterday.
AAP
