Alice Drury, acting legal director, Human Rights Law Centre:
The NSW government is on the wrong path. Instead of doing everything it can to mitigate the climate crisis, it is putting its efforts into imprisoning peaceful protester Laura Davy.
These laws are bad for climate activists, and they are bad for democracy in NSW. Yet again, we call on the Minns government to scrap these laws and protect the right to protest.
Katie Green, CEO, Inner City Legal Centre:
The Inner City Legal Centre is extremely concerned about the chilling effect of this sentence upon activists within our community.
Protest has always been a means for our community to achieve meaningful change; the 78’ers, the Aboriginal tent embassy, the Me Too movement and Black Lives Matter are a few examples of protests movements that have achieved significant and positive change in our community.
We will continue to fight for the right to fight for our rights.
Climate protester Laura Davy has been sentenced to three months in jail. Photograph: Blockade Australia
Queensland opposition’s youth crime policy ‘a purely political response’
A Queensland opposition plan for children to serve adult sentences for serious crimes has been dismissed as a “purely political response” that will not stop reoffending, AAP has reported.
Liberal National party leader David Crisafulli unveiled the policy at the weekend’s LNP convention, announcing that juveniles convicted of serious crimes would be treated as harshly as adults if he was elected premier in October.
However, he has come under fire for the “adult crime, adult time” pitch with advocate groups saying it will not make the community safer.
Youth Advocacy Centre CEO Katherine Hayes said:
It is a purely political response which doesn’t provide a meaningful response.
There is no evidence which shows that longer sentences reduce offending.
Transport Workers Union NSW/QLD state secretary Richard Olsen claimed Ampol workers were ultimately on worse conditions due to major airlines such as Qantas pressuring Ampol when signing contracts for their refuelling services.
Demand for aviation is booming but jobs have become second-rate, led by an obsession by privatised airlines and airports with obscene profits. Workers are looking for better hours for part-timers and more full-time positions so they have job security for themselves and their families.
At airports nationwide, workers are overburdened and exhausted as they strive to keep flights running smoothly, yet they continue to struggle with wages barely above the legal minimum and few guarantees around rostered hours. The aviation industry’s short-term, profit-driven focus driven by Qantas’ race to the bottom has brought us to crisis point in aviation.
Workers who refuel Virgin Australia’s fleet and some Qantas planes are threatening to strike in the coming weeks and months unless their pay and conditions improve.
On Monday, aircraft refuellers working for Ampol, which exclusively services Virgin aircraft and has contracts with other airlines including Qantas, held a vote to take protected industrial action over their pay and conditions dispute.
Participation was high, with 92% of workers casting a vote, and 100% of votes in favour of taking industrial actions that includes four, eight and 24 hour stoppages as well as strikes for seven days and up to an unlimited period. The notice period for stoppages is three days.
The workers are asking for Ampol to return to negotiations – set for Tuesday – and meet their demands to be paid comparably to competitors, more job security including guaranteed part-time hours and preference for full-time positions, as well as more consultation and better dispute processes.
The local share market has started the week on a losing note, dragged down in part by losses from the energy and materials sectors following a drop in iron ore and oil prices.
The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index on Monday dropped 59.1 points, or 0.76%, to 7,763.2, while the broader All Ordinaries fell 57.9 points, or 0.72%, to 8,012.2.
The Australian dollar was near a fresh six-month high against its US counterpart, buying 67.45 US cents, from 67.32 US cents at Friday’s ASX close.
Australia’s given Kyiv ‘too little too late’, Ukrainian council says
Australia can afford to be more generous in supplying Ukraine with military aid as it has benefited financially from the war through higher grain, mineral and energy exports, the president of the Ukrainian Council of NSW has said.
Speaking on Monday to a parliamentary hearing into Australia’s provision of aid to Ukraine, Daniel Wolody said:
Words aren’t matched by deeds pretty much across the world.
It’s not that Australia has done nothing, we’re thankful for the help we’ve received, but it’s a case of too little too late.
A local resident pushes a bike past a destroyed block of flats in Toretsk, eastern Ukraine, last month after Russian shelling. Photograph: Roman Pilipey/AFP/Getty Images
Australia has given about $1bn in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine and has joined a British-led coalition of forces helping train soldiers in the UK.
Wolody said:
The west is giving just enough to Ukraine so that it doesn’t lose, but not enough so that it can win, and what this really means is the war has to drag on.
Australia is a net beneficiary of the war and it can afford to be far more generous right now.
A woman has died following a suspected stabbing at Kingswood this afternoon.
In a statement NSW police said:
About 1.40pm today (Monday 8 July 2024), emergency services were called to a home at Great Western Highway, Kingswood, following reports of a stabbing.
Officers attached to Nepean police area command attended and found a woman, believed to be aged in her 20s, with two stab wounds to her chest.
NSW Ambulance paramedics treated the woman; however she died at the scene.
The woman is yet to be formally identified.
Officers have been told a 22-year-old man was seen running from the area.
Police have established a crime scene and commenced inquiries into the circumstances surrounding the incident.
Lawler defends Alice Springs curfew citing ‘disgraceful acts’
Northern Territory’s chief minister has defended the curfew and her connection to the town. Lawler says:
I’ve lived there. I still own a home there. I have large family in Alice Springs, but I’m also on the ground. I was at the show on Friday.
And the vast majority of people in Alice Springs do the right thing every single day. Small business operators who are trying to make a living, tourism operators who are trying to make a living in Alice Springs.
And then we have a small number of people that bring that town down by doing some, you know, disgraceful acts that we’ve seen.
The three-day curfew in Alice Springs begins at 10pm today. Photograph: Jaimi Joy/Reuters
Potter says there is no discussion of an extension yet:
I mean, it hasn’t even started yet. It’ll start at 10 tonight and run through for the three days, the 72 hours.
But I’ll continue to engage with the police commissioner as we go, as I have before, because every individual incident is a concern for us as government.
Lawler says it was the police commissioner who called the curfew, and he is on the ground in Alice Springs. She says there were possibly 5,000 extra people in the town for the show.
The police commissioner says police minister Brent Potter says:
In this instance we’ve seen 72 hours of different types, but all arguably related to some form of violence.
We saw the 20 individuals assault off-duty police officers, but there were Territorians walking home that were assaulted and we had the police officer who was run over during a point-of-sale intervention. And we’ve had some fighting at the Natick event.
