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SA premier shares statement from police commissioner after schoolies death

South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas has shared a touching and emotional statement from police commissioner Grant Stevens and his wife Emma, following the loss of their son Charlie.

Charlie died in hospital after being struck by a car in an alleged hit-and-run during schoolies celebrations.

In the statement, Stevens acknowledged Charlie as the 101st life lost on SA roads this year and touched on all the things he loved – from Lego, scooters, footy, surfing and Fortnite to school, family and his mates.

101 is Charlie Hinchcliffe Stevens … you lived life and gave so much to so many. You were a force of nature and we will never forget your beautiful, cheeky, disarming smile.

Son, brother, grandson, uncle, nephew, cousin, friend, workmate, team mate. So much more than just a number on a tragic tally.

Queensland police have partnered with the RSPCA for a six-week youth engagement program.

The “Youth for Paws” program works with disadvantaged and at-risk youth, partnering them with injured and abandoned animals to care for:

GPs praise delay to opioid dependence changes

The Royal Australian College of GPs (RACGP) has welcomed a move from the federal government to delay the ban on GPs administering opioid dependence treatment medicines as a private script until 30 June next year.

The college said this will stop vulnerable patients who rely on opioid dependence treatment drugs from “falling between the cracks of our health system”, and called on the government to pursue a long-term solution.

Earlier this year, the government added some life-saving opioid dependence medicines to the PBS. But as part of the changes, GPs who had been ordering treatments directly from manufacturers to administer in their practice had to stop from 30 November.

Delaying this until 30 June was “the right decision”, said RACGP president Dr Nicole Higgins.

The delay will ensure that there is minimal disruption to patient care over the busy holiday period and give the state and territory governments more time to transition patients to [PBS] arrangements or to implement alternative opioid dependence treatment access arrangements for patients.

Higgins said these medications help patients “the same as patients with diabetes accessing lifesaving insulin”.

The college called for a long-term solution because “otherwise, we may well see negative impacts on some of our most vulnerable patients who rely on this treatment”.

Study shows infants and toddlers capable of imaginary play

A landmark study from Monash University has found that infants and toddlers are capable of engaging in imaginary play.

This corrects previous academic beliefs that they were unable to, and confirms the “profound significance” of imaginative play in early childhood education.

The five-year pragmatic study engaged more than 2,500 educators and young children. It found when children engage in imaginary play they transition from perceiving objects as they are to imagining them as something else, signifying a crucial developmental milestone.

Kerrie Devir, an early childhood educator from Monash Community Family Co-operative, took part in the research and said before this study she would have said that imaginative play was a skill used only by older children aged above four:

This research has really challenged the conventional view that object play is the only play stage for infants and toddlers.

Instead, we now regularly include imaginary play in our early childhood settings and we’ve seen results where even our youngest children are engaging in the activities.

A new national wellbeing survey has shown a stark generational and income divide amid the cost-of-living crisis, and the lowest economic satisfaction in 22 years.

The latest wellbeing index survey conducted by Australian Unity, in partnership with Deakin University of more than 2000 Australians aged 18 to 97, found clear age and income divides in the standard of living.

Economic satisfaction recorded a sharp drop to its lowest level in 22 years – worse than that recorded during the Global Financial Crisis in 2008.

Lead researcher Dr Kate Lycett said:

Rising living costs and interest rates are putting immense pressure on many people, particularly those with mortgages and those trying to get into the housing market. Without a lift in economic satisfaction, our national wellbeing will likely remain stagnant.

Those aged 55 years and under, and those with a household income of $100,000 or less, recorded notably lower personal wellbeing than older adults and those with higher household incomes, respectively. These same age and income divides were also seen on satisfaction with standard of living.

CEO of wealth and capital markets at Australia Unity, Esther Kerr, said addressing wellbeing inequalities between these demographics is “essential”.

The findings likely reflect a ‘pressure cooker’ effect caused by the rising cost of living, higher interest rates, stubborn inflation, and global economic uncertainty.

This appears to be affecting the financial wellbeing of people who were previously able to cope or had a savings buffer to carry them through tough times.

Essential workers pushed into serious rental stress

Cait Kelly

Luke Murphy, Law Council of Australia president, also pointed to the mandatory sentencing of one year in prison for people on the new special visa who failed to notify the minister of a change in personal circumstances within two days.

He told ABC RN:

The imposition of mandatory sentences for breach of conditions and that restricts the right to a fair trial and that compromises the independence of the judiciary.

There must be an independent oversight to ensure everyone is treated equally.

He added that there was no evidence non-citizens were any more dangerous than Australians.

The indefinite time limit imposed on the conditions and no judicial oversight of their applications made the laws a “very unjust, harsh and disproportionate response”, he said.

Any new preventative detention measure needed judicial oversight and the released detainees needed proper access to legal representation, he said.

– from AAP

Emergency legislation needs to be urgently reviewed, Law Council chief says

Law Council of Australia president Luke Murphy said new legislation for those released from indefinite detention needs to be urgently reviewed, with concerns the balance between individual liberty and community safety had not been struck.

More than 90 people being held in immigration detention have been released so far aftger a high court ruling. Three murderers and several sex offenders are included in the numbers, however many were awaiting deportation after committing minor offences.

The government and opposition teamed up to ram emergency legislation through parliament to put strict monitoring requirements on the newly released cohort and impose criminal punishment for visa breaches.

Murphy said these measures amounted to an “inherent lack of equality before the law” and pointed to the fact serious offenders who served time behind bars were routinely released around Australia every day and managed by state and territory authorities.

– with AAP

Coolamon, Kakirra, Mateship or Roo-ver?

Public campaigning has kicked off after the Australian space agency opened voting to name our lunar rover.

Riverina MP Michael McCormack – along with Coolamon mayor David McCann – have thrown their support behind Coolamon for the rover’s name.

Coolamon is an Indigenous word for a multi-purpose tool, and the name of a town within McCormack’s Riverina electorate.

As we brought you on yesterday’s blog, the space agency has opened voting for Australia’s lunar rover, set to head to the moon as early as 2026.

Voting is open until 1 December and voters can chose between four names – Coolamon, Kakirra, Mateship and Roo-ver.

Cast your vote here!

Search continues for plane wreckage

A recovery mission is continuing for a pilot and camera operator feared dead two days after an ex-military jet crashed into waters off Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.

Crews have been scouring Port Phillip Bay for any sign of TV camera operator James Rose and pilot Stephen Gale after their Jetworks Aviation flight went down about 1.45pm on Sunday.

With hours passing and no sign of the aircraft wreckage, the rescue mission shifted on Monday to a recovery mission with the two men presumed dead.

Yesterday Victorian police said the search would continue until the wreckage was found.

We will bring you any further updates here on the blog today.

– with AAP

Courts should decide who is locked up, Greens senator says

Sarah Hanson-Young said it shouldn’t be up to politicians to decide how long or who should be in prison – that is for the courts to decide.

She was asked if violent offenders should be back behind bars:

If there’s someone who shouldn’t be on the streets, put it before a court and let a judge decide. That’s how we do things in a country that upholds the rule of law.

I know it may not suit Mr Dutton’s nasty politics and fearmongering, but that’s the rule of law. These are principles that so many Australians over decades have fought for, to protect. It is the basic – it’s the basic principle of a liberal democracy and it must be protected.

Dutton has ‘a taste for fearmongering’, Hanson-Young says

Speaking to ABC News Breakfast, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young was also asked about reports the government was seeking legal advice to put the most violent offenders released from indefinite detention back behind bars.

She said opposition leader Peter Dutton has “got a taste for fearmongering and he wants more of it”:

He’s not sustained by the fact parliament rammed through a piece of legislation in record time last week to override the high court, before the high court has even handed down their reasons for their decision.

And this is bad law making. It was very disappointing, I must say … seeing the Labor party roll over so far quickly.

Could Gladys Berejiklian take over at Optus?

Optus has to work hard to restore trust, Hanson-Young says

Earlier, Greens communications spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young spoke to ABC News Breakfast after the resignation of Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin yesterday.

Hanson-Young said Bayer Rosmarin had showed leadership by fronting the Senate inquiry into the 8 November Optus outage, and by resigning she had “taken the ultimate responsibility for the failure”.

Going forward, Hanson-Young said Optus has to “really restore trust with the Australian people”, and “fix” their crisis management:

It’s so clear from the evidence that we’ve seen in the Senate inquiry thus far that they just were not prepared and they were terrible at communicating to their customers.

And 101 of crisis management is to tell people what’s going on … and give them reassurance, but there was no reassurance.

Hanson-Young said the outage demonstrated how “out of touch and out of date” rules and regulations for big telecommunications companies are:

We all rely on the use of our mobile phone, on internet data to do so much with our daily lives and we need to make sure those rules and regulations are fit for purpose … We need to make sure we’re putting the rights of the public, the public interest, first and foremost. These are essential services, not just some luxury.

Man changed with alleged sexual assault of elderly woman at aged care home

NSW detectives have charged a man with the alleged sexual assault of an elderly woman at an aged care facility on the Central Coast.

Police were told on 15 November that an unknown man had broke into a facility and allegedly assaulted and sexually assaulted an elderly woman. She was taken to hospital and treated for serious injuries.

A crime scene was established and strike force detectives executed a search warrant on 17 November, finding electronics, sim cards and clothing relevant to their investigation.

Yesterday detectives arrested a 34-year-old man after he allegedly attempted to flee from police.

He was taken to hospital for minor injuries to his arm. On release he was charged with multiple offences and refused bail to appear before Belmont local court today.

Charges laid after $100m drug seizure in NSW

‘At the very minimum, it should be raised at ministerial level’

Host Patricia Karvelas:

If you think that [Anthony Albanese] didn’t raise it, if we accept your assessment, do you think he should seek now a conversation with President Xi [Jinping] to raise this?

Simon Birmingham:

At the very minimum, it should be raised at ministerial level and it’s not even clear from the government’s response that that has occurred.

Birmingham said we should be seeking “some acknowledgement from China that this occurred”:

If they say that it was a mistake and an accident well, so be it but apologies ought to be offered, but most importantly, for the safety of our region, we ought to be seeing a change in the way the Chinese military conduct themselves.

As I said at the outset, this is not a one-off incident. We’ve seen it happen … in other Australian operations and we see it far more routinely happen to other nations and in particular, for some months now we have seen repetitive patterns of aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea towards the Philippines, which again, Australia and partner nations across the region should be raising consistently and at a higher level with China.

Albanese should have raised matter with Xi, Birmingham says