Samantha Ratnam to step down as leader of Victorian Greens for federal tilt
Benita Kolovos
Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam says she will be stepping down as leader of the party in the state after she was successfully preselected to run in the federal seat of Wills, currently held by Labor’s Peter Khalil on an 8.6% margin.
Speaking alongside federal leader Adam Bandt in Coburg, she said:
I’d also like to announce that as a result of my candidacy, I will be stepping down as leader of the Greens Victorian party room. We’ll be meeting on Tuesday to elect a new leadership team. They are a formidable team. They have my full confidence and I know they’re going to continue to shake up Victorian politics for years to come.
Ratnam says she’ll also resign from parliament before the end of the year.
Over the next few months the party will conduct a pre-selection to select my replacement in the seat of Northern Metropolitan. I plan to leave my seat of Northern Metropolitan once that process is complete over the next few months’ time, before the end of the year.
Photograph: Erik Anderson/AAP
Key events
Woodside revenue dives as fossil fuel prices dip
Sluggish production and falling fossil fuel prices have slashed revenues at Australia’s largest oil and gas producer Woodside by almost a third, AAP reports.
The Perth-based company’s revenue for the first quarter fell 31% compared to the previous year to $US2.97bn ($A4.66m), it has announced.
Over the same period, production dropped by 4% while gas and oil prices slumped by a quarter.
Despite the lacklustre result, chief executive Meg O’Neill said significant progress had been made on Woodside’s three major growth projects – Sangomar in Senegal, Scarborough in WA and Trion in the Gulf of Mexico.
Full year production and capital expenditure guidance remained unchanged.
Woodside’s board is set to face a feisty reception from shareholders at its annual general meeting next week. The company’s share price has fallen by a quarter in the past eight months while critics have attacked its climate credibility.
NSW health minister says backlog of overdue surgeries has fallen sharply
The NSW health minister, Ryan Park, says overdue surgeries have fallen by the thousands since he established a surgical care taskforce last year.
Park spoke to the media earlier today from Brisbane, where a meeting of state and federal health ministers was held. He said overdue surgeries had fallen from 14,000 to 2,100 since the taskforce was established in March 2023.
While acknowledging challenges in the health system, Park said:
When we took over there were around 14,000 people waiting longer than clinically recommended for their surgery. [The] surgical care taskforce got the very, very best clinicians from across the hospital system in NSW and started to work on what we could do … to make surgeries quicker and be able to get them faster for people in the community …
What has that resulted in? 14,000, from day one, now down to 2,000, [and] that is a massive improvement in the space of a 12-month period.
Non-citizens may prefer prison to immigration detention – ombudsman
Paul Karp
The commonwealth ombudsman has made a submission to the Senate inquiry into Labor’s deportation bill, warning it could add to the “risk of indefinite detention”.
It said a non-citizen in immigration detention who was subject to a removal pathway direction would have two choices: “return to their country of origin or a safe third country; or go to prison”.
If the person chooses non-compliance with the direction, once they have served their prison sentence, without change to their visa status, they would be returned to immigration detention where they could be subject to further ministerial removal pathway directions … The only way for a non-citizen to break the cycle of detention and imprisonment is to return to their country of origin or a safe third country.
The submission also questions whether a mandatory minimum of one year in prison for refusing a direction to cooperate with deportation would even work – because non-citizens may prefer prison to immigration detention.
The report says that “in my view, immigration detention facilities are unsuitable for long-term use”, with the office receiving reports on “barriers to accessing medical care, dental treatment and drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs”.
… as well as losing access to life and work skill programs they may have commenced while in the community or in correctional facilities. Indeed, my office has recorded instances of detainees expressing a preference for incarceration over immigration detention due to the certainty and better range of meaningful activities that can be attached with a prison term.
It is therefore possible that the deterrence potential of a prison term has been overestimated and that some people on a removal pathway will choose noncompliance with a ministerial direction over removal and remain in a cycle of detention and imprisonment for prolonged periods or even indefinitely.
Boy, 9, among four killed in WA car crash
Four people including a nine-year-old boy have died in a fatal car crash in Western Australia.
Officers from the major crash investigation section are investigating the crash that occurred in Clackline in the early hours of Friday.
About 12.30am, a silver Nissan Navara utility was travelling east on the Great Eastern Highway when the vehicle left the road and struck a tree, police said.
The four male occupants of the vehicle – aged 45, 21, 19 and nine – sustained critical injuries and died at the scene.
Major crash investigators are urging anyone with any information relating to this crash, or who saw the silver Nissan Navara utility travelling in the area prior to the crash, to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Greens yet to take position on bill banning non-prescription vapes
Benita Kolovos
Greens leader Adam Bandt says the party is yet to form a position on the federal government’s bill banning non-prescription vapes.
It comes as the Australia’s state and territory governments said they backed the legislation that, if passed, would force vape stores to close by preventing the domestic manufacture, advertisement, supply and commercial possession of non-prescription vapes.
Bandt said at a press conference:
We’re having a look at the legislation and we’re talking with experts and stakeholders to work through our position. We take a principle-based approach where we’ll listen to the evidence and the experts.
Generally, we know that prohibition doesn’t work and hasn’t worked in the past. But we also are very concerned about the rise especially of children vaping, I say that as someone who’s got two children in primary school … the real question is what is the best way to tackle that?
Bandt wouldn’t put a timeframe on this work, saying:
We’re going to take the time necessary. It’s a very important piece of legislation.
Benita Kolovos
Introducing Samantha Ratnam, federal Greens leader Adam Bandt said:
I am absolutely thrilled that Sam Ratnam is putting herself forward for the people of Wills as their next member of parliament. Sam has an incredible history representing people of Wills over a decade, representing this area as the local member, as well as being the leader of the Victorian Greens, which has a strong history and connection with this area and a strong track record of fighting for the people of Wills.
People are disappointed in Labor. They don’t want Peter Dutton and now, this time, they can vote for the Greens.
Samantha Ratnam to step down as leader of Victorian Greens for federal tilt
Benita Kolovos
Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam says she will be stepping down as leader of the party in the state after she was successfully preselected to run in the federal seat of Wills, currently held by Labor’s Peter Khalil on an 8.6% margin.
Speaking alongside federal leader Adam Bandt in Coburg, she said:
I’d also like to announce that as a result of my candidacy, I will be stepping down as leader of the Greens Victorian party room. We’ll be meeting on Tuesday to elect a new leadership team. They are a formidable team. They have my full confidence and I know they’re going to continue to shake up Victorian politics for years to come.
Ratnam says she’ll also resign from parliament before the end of the year.
Over the next few months the party will conduct a pre-selection to select my replacement in the seat of Northern Metropolitan. I plan to leave my seat of Northern Metropolitan once that process is complete over the next few months’ time, before the end of the year.
Photograph: Erik Anderson/AAP
Daniel Hurst
‘Israel has every right to defend its territory and its people’ – Dutton
Circling back to opposition leader Peter Dutton’s speech to the St Kilda Hebrew congregation in Melbourne this morning, where he leaned heavily into good versus evil rhetoric:
A Coalition government under my leadership will always distinguish the lawful from the lawless, always differentiate civilisation from barbarism, and always discern the good from the evil. This is why the unequivocal condemnation of Hamas is right. And that is why we must unambiguously denounce Iran’s military attack on Israel, and the regime’s sponsoring of terrorist groups across the region.
Israel has every right to defend its territory and its people … any self-respecting society would expect that of their democratically elected government.
Israel has every right to respond militarily to thwart the existential threats that it faces.
The Labor government has repeatedly and unequivocally condemned Hamas’s 7 October attacks and has also condemned Iran’s recent attacks. The government has said Israel has a right to defend itself, but also said how it does so matters, and that it must comply with international law and protect Palestinian civilians.
Dutton went on to say that the resolve of democracies around the world were being “tested” and he believed “our very civilisation, as we know it, our civilisational values are under threat”.
He said it was “not a time for weak leadership, it’s not a time for weasel words, this is not a time to try and walk both sides of the street”.
The Coalition stands with our ally and our friend Israel and we stand with Australia’s Jewish community in fighting against antisemitism in every season.
Disability and mental health check for accused terror teenager
A teenage boy facing a possible life term in prison for alleged terrorism over the stabbing of a bishop has shown behaviour consistent with mental illness or intellectual disability, his lawyer told a court today.
The 16-year-old is accused by police of travelling 90 minutes from his home to attack Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel during a live-streamed sermon at Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley, in Sydney’s west, on Monday night.
The teenager did not appear in court during a brief mention of the case today, when he was refused bail at a hearing. A brief of evidence is due to be served when the matter returns to court on 14 June.
The teenager’s lawyer, Greg Scragg, said he might seek an earlier date, having been instructed the boy had a long history of behaviour consistent with a mental illness or intellectual disability.
He told Parramatta children’s court:
We may seek to bring this matter back earlier if a question arises in relation to his treatment or assessment for those conditions whilst he’s in custody.
The magistrate made a recommendation for the boy to be assessed by Justice Health while in custody.
– from AAP
Opposition leader says Palestinian state alongside Israel not ‘conceivable’ until Hamas defeated
Daniel Hurst
Peter Dutton has given a speech saying the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel “isn’t even conceivable” until after Hamas is defeated.
Sky News has broadcast footage of the opposition leader speaking at the St Kilda Hebrew congregation in Melbourne this morning. Dutton used the speech to declare that the Coalition “stands with our ally and our friend Israel” amid the ongoing military operation in Gaza.
He also accused the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, of having “significantly damaged our relations with our most important ally in the region, Israel” by stressing the importance of a two-state solution to end the cycle of violence in the long term.
Dutton said:
It was Hamas’s barbarity on October 7 which has set back the goal of a two-state solution. Until Hamas is defeated, a two-state solution isn’t even conceivable because Hamas will always pose an existential threat, an existential threat to the State of Israel. That’s why I characterised the foreign minister’s remarks as utterly illogical, as ill-timed and inappropriate.
The audience applauded at that comment.
In her speech on 9 April, Wong mentioned that the international community was considering recognition of a Palestinian state as part of building momentum to a two-state solution, but she gave no timing for Australia to do so. Wong was emphatic that the Australian government saw “no role for Hamas in a future Palestinian state”.