Day: March 22, 2025

Exclusive: Expenses authority found claim was within parliamentary rules because Dutton attended ‘in his official capacity as a minister’

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The expenses watchdog launched an investigation into then-home affairs minister Peter Dutton’s use of a taxpayer-funded flight to attend a “long lunch” on a luxury island on the Noosa River in 2019, internal documents reveal.

Dutton billed taxpayers $465 for a flight from Sydney to Maroochydore on 19 July 2019, the same day he was to appear alongside the then-Queensland opposition leader, Deb Frecklington, as a special guest at a private event on Makepeace Island, a resort island part-owned by Richard Branson.

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About 1,000 times the combined capacity of Wivenhoe and Boondooma dams was required to cool Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactors in 2011

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Proposed nuclear power plants in Queensland would not have access to enough water to stop a nuclear meltdown and could strain capacity on drinking water and irrigation supplies even under normal operations, research has found.

Analysis by the Queensland Conservation Council (QCC) has found that one of the two nuclear reactors proposed for the sunshine state under the energy plan that the Coalition will take to the upcoming federal election would require double the water currently used by the existing Callide coal-fired power station. The other, Tarong, would use 55% more water than its existing coal station.

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Scientists say widespread damage to both world heritage-listed reefs is ‘heartbreaking’ as WA reef accumulates highest amount of heat stress on record

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Australia’s two world heritage-listed reefs – Ningaloo on the west coast and the Great Barrier Reef on the east – have been hit simultaneously by coral bleaching that reef experts have called “heartbreaking” and “a profoundly distressing moment”.

Teams of scientists on both coasts have been monitoring and tracking the heat stress and bleaching extending across thousands of kilometres of marine habitat, which is likely to have been driven by global heating.

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Australia’s banks have been given an easy ride at taxpayers’ expense. And economists Chris Richardson argues the banking levy is a fraction of what it should be

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The budget would be billions of dollars better off every year if Australia’s biggest banks were forced to pay taxpayers for an unspoken guarantee that taxpayers will bail them out in a crisis.

Days out from a fourth Labor budget that will show a looming decade of deficits, there is a growing urgency to make bolder decisions as part of a wider audit of how we tax and spend.

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