Heavy rain and strong winds to hit Victoria
Parts of Victoria are expecting heavy rainfall and damaging winds today as a cold front moves across the state from the west.
Showers and thunderstorms have been developing in the western parts of the state this morning, before transitioning to a rain band with embedded thunderstorms this afternoon.
The rain band is associated with a cold front that is making its way across the state, extending from roughly Mildura down to the Otways during the afternoon and before crossing Melbourne later this afternoon and evening.
Heavy rainfall is expected, as well as damaging wind gusts over central Victoria, including the Ballarat area, this evening and the eastern ranges overnight before the cold front.
Some flash-flooding is expected with the heavy falls but no Riverine flooding.
Stephanie Miles, meteorologist at the BoM, said Easter travellers should be careful on the roads:
On the roads just be careful with reduced visibility in the heavy rainfall, and the roads will be mostly slippery as well, as we have haven’t had all that much rainfall over the last month or so.
Key events
Andrew Leigh says Meta plan will result in ‘junk flooding the zone’
More on Meta, from AAP:
Media outlets have argued Facebook unfairly benefits in advertising revenue when links to news articles appear on their platforms.
Meta has been winding back its promotion of news content and says it is because fewer users are accessing news stories.
“The number of people using Facebook News in Australia … dropped by over 80% last year,” Meta said in a statement in February about its plan to “deprecate” the tab for news content.
Asked what could be done to get Meta back to the bargaining table, the assistant competition minister, Andrew Leigh, said there were penalties under the news media bargaining code which gave tools to the government.
Leigh said he was concerned about the amount of “junk flooding the zone”.
We know that when you take high-quality news out of the space then it’s the sewer that floods in, so we’ve got to do more to make sure that we’re having a discussion which is based on facts.
Australia prospers by engaging with the world through strong institutions and through having careful intellectual debates when we’re confronted with big challenges.
But the rise of populist politics … all of that is fuelled by a misinformation, disinformation, environment.
The former ACCC head Rod Sims described Meta’s move as thumbing its nose at the Australian parliament and said he was concerned about the impact on society.
Meta news removal an ‘abrogation’ of duty, Labor says
The plan to start removing traditional media outlets’ news feeds from Facebook and Instagram as of this month is “simply unconscionable”, a government minister has said.
The decision by Meta, which owns the platforms, to no longer enter deals to pay Australian news publishers for their content has sparked a huge backlash from the federal government and media outlets.
Yet it is not backing down with plans from this month to remove the Facebook News tab it created in 2019.
The assistant competition minister, Andrew Leigh, condemned the decision as an “abrogation of their responsibility”. He told ABC’s RN on Monday:
This is a place that people go to for trusted news. The idea that you would take off trusted news and just allow the ecosystem to be filled with misinformation disinformation … it’s simply unconscionable.
It [Meta] should not be treating its consumers in this way.
It is not too much to ask one of the world’s biggest multinationals to make a modest contribution to the Australian news media in order to keep a highly functioning public debate and people making decisions based on good information.
Meta has been approached for comment on Leigh’s remarks.
– Australian Associated Press
Peter Hannam
Rains across the east to help ease spreading drought
As noted in the earlier post, there are some decent falls expected in Victoria today – although they won’t be so welcomed for those packing up Easter camps or traipsing home along roads that will be jammed and now a bit more slippery too.
Farmers, however, will be among those grateful for a bit of rain, particularly those in parts of South Australia and Victoria that have endured a few relatively dry months,
As the Bureau of Meteorology notes, March was quite dry in the south but also quite wet in the north:
Melbourne, in fact, had its driest March on record. (The city’s 2.8mm reading was a tiny drop – and well shy of the evaporation levels which would be closer to 200mm.)
Of course, one month doesn’t itself signal a drought. With the stormy summer for large parts of the east – even during an El Niño year – there will be some areas reporting relatively wet conditions.
Still, over the past 12 months, rainfall has varied significantly over the nation compared with historical averages. The west coast and most of Tasmania have been especially – if not extremely – dry.
There will be a few regions hoping the current rains will reach them – and be followed up by more soon.
Men who drowned saving toddler were child’s father and grandfather
More on the two men who drowned after jumping into a pool to save a child, which we reported on earlier, from Australian Associated Press:
The toddler was reportedly playing beside a Gold Coast apartment block pool when they slipped and fell into the deep end at about 7pm.
The child’s father, 38, and grandfather, 65, leapt into the pool to try to save the toddler.
The Queensland Ambulance Service’s Mitchell Ware said bystanders were able to pull the people from the pool and performed CPR until paramedics arrived but the grandfather and father died at the scene.
A woman known to the two men was taken to Gold Coast University Hospital in a stable condition.
Ware said:
It’s an extremely emotional scene. Anyone could understand that not just to lose one family member but to lose two family members.
These incidents can have long-lasting effects for not just the family members involved but also the people that were at the scene as well, and also the first responders.
Authorities have advised people who are not strong swimmers to exercise caution around any body of water.
The family was understood to be holidaying at the apartment complex on Orchid Avenue.
Five rescued but dozens still stranded at Queensland campsite
Five people have been rescued while dozens remain stranded at a Queensland campsite after flood waters from a nearby dam began rising rapidly, AAP reports.
The call came in just after 1am on Sunday reporting 29 people were marooned at a campground at East Leichhardt Dam, east of Mount Isa in Queensland’s far north-west, with two of those people stuck in the water.
The rescue efforts began with police and swift-water rescue firefighters using an inflatable boat to cross the dam to get into the flooded campsite, while other first responders made their way in on foot.
All campers were accounted for and no injuries were reported.
Queensland Fire and Emergency Services transported five people, including young children, who did not have food out of the campsite using an inflatable boat.
The remaining campers decided to stay at the site until the water levels subsided.
A thunderstorm warning has been issued along the western border of Queensland, spanning across Mount Isa, with warnings of further rain over the next 24 hours for the region.
There has been 33mm of rain recorded at East Leichhardt dam in the past 24 hours.
Heavy rain and strong winds to hit Victoria
Parts of Victoria are expecting heavy rainfall and damaging winds today as a cold front moves across the state from the west.
Showers and thunderstorms have been developing in the western parts of the state this morning, before transitioning to a rain band with embedded thunderstorms this afternoon.
The rain band is associated with a cold front that is making its way across the state, extending from roughly Mildura down to the Otways during the afternoon and before crossing Melbourne later this afternoon and evening.
Heavy rainfall is expected, as well as damaging wind gusts over central Victoria, including the Ballarat area, this evening and the eastern ranges overnight before the cold front.
Some flash-flooding is expected with the heavy falls but no Riverine flooding.
Stephanie Miles, meteorologist at the BoM, said Easter travellers should be careful on the roads:
On the roads just be careful with reduced visibility in the heavy rainfall, and the roads will be mostly slippery as well, as we have haven’t had all that much rainfall over the last month or so.
Stargazing plumber from regional Victoria wins prestigious astronomy award
Rod Stubbings is the 2024 recipient of the Astronomical Society of Australia’s (ASA) Bernice and Page medal, which is awarded for scientific contributions by an amateur astronomer.
He is just one of three people in the world to have made 400,000 measurements of the brightness of variable stars and his observations have helped astronomers in more than a dozen countries better understand stars in the Milky Way.
Stubbings said:
I don’t know what I am going to see each night. Some nights, there will be 10 outbursts or more amongst my list of stars, some nights just one or two.
Living at the base of the Strzelecki Ranges in southern Victoria, Stubbings bought a telescope in 1986 but struggled at first to use it. However, when he learnt about variable stars he realised he could do something useful for science.
Now every clear night he is in the observatory in his garden, looking at up to 300 stars.
“Each night, it leads to an alert I send to astronomers around the world enabling them to study outbursts in the stars of interest in them,” Stubbings said.
He doesn’t take photographs – instead he works from memory as he assess each star for its brightness.
– Australian Associated Press
Original Yellow Wiggle backs fresh defibrillator push
The original Yellow Wiggle Greg Page and the Heart Foundation are behind a fresh push for more lifesaving devices in rural areas.
Page’s organisation, Heart of the Nation, has partnered with the foundation to advocate for greater access to automated external defibrillators (AED) and more education on how to give CPR.
They want government to roll out more of the devices in country areas.
The performer founded Heart of the Nation after suffering a cardiac arrest while the Wiggles were on stage for a bushfire fundraising concert in 2020.
Page credited his survival to the fact an off-duty nurse had access to a defibrillator at the concert.
Some 24,000 Australians die each year from the condition and only one in 20 people who have cardiac arrest outside of hospital survive.
However, Page is hopeful survival rates can improve.
Those crucial minutes before an ambulance arrives are when CPR and an AED need to be used to dramatically increase a person’s chance of survival.
– Australian Associated Press
Measles alert for western Sydney
People in western Sydney are being advised to look out for measles symptoms, after NSW Health were notified of a woman with the illness in the area.
Dr Conrad Moreira, the acting director of the public health unit at the Western Sydney Local Health District, said there was no ongoing risk to the public but that it was important those who attended the locations below look out for symptoms:
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Baby Bunting, Blacktown Mega Centre, on 24 March between 3pm and 4pm
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Kmart Blacktown on 24 March between 4pm and 5pm
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Winston Hills mall on 28 March between 12pm and 2.30pm
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Westmead hospital emergency department on 29 March 2024 between 2pm and 10.30pm.
“Symptoms include fever, sore eyes, runny nose and a cough followed three or four days later by a red, blotchy rash that spreads from the head to the rest of the body,” Moreira said.
Support for Labor drops in WA as Coalition gains ground among the young
Voters in Western Australia are shifting away from Labor towards the Coalition, as the opposition gains ground among young people.
A Newspoll published in the the Australian newspaper on Monday shows a rise in support for the Coalition in key areas but Labor still leading 52-48 on a two-party-preferred basis nationally.
This remains unchanged from the last quarter of 2023.
The Coalition increased its support by five points to a primary vote of 27% among young people in the voting group, aged between 18 to 34, as Labor fell five points to 33%.
According to the analysis, the Coalition’s primary vote is now higher than the Greens.
Young men are equally supportive of Labor and the Coalition, with a three-point swing on two-party-preferred terms against the government.
The parties are 50-50 split among the demographic, while there was a six point fall to 31% in Labor’s primary vote.
But for women, Labor was still ahead 53-47 on a two-party-preferred basis.
Among voters aged between 35 and 49 years of age, Labor has further cemented its position by pulling ahead, as the government has focused on cost of living relief and tax cuts for “middle Australia”.
The new analysis shows Labor trailing the Coalition on a two-party preferred basis in WA, while the parties were drawing with each other in NSW.
– Australian Associated Press
Josh Butler
Matt Thistlethwaite defends emergency deportation powers
Assistant minister Matt Thistlethwaite has claimed the government needs the emergency deportation powers it failed to ram through the Senate last week, because some visitors to Australia have been “milking the system”.
In a Sky News interview this morning, Thistlethwaite – the assistant minister for defence – alleged “this has been an issue for some time”.
“You’ve got people who come to Australia on visas and we’re not talking about refugees here, we’re talking about people who may come on a tourist visa or some other visa and then they overstay, and they breach their visa conditions. And under the former government, they were milking the system,” he claimed.
“They couldn’t be deported and they’d end up costing taxpayers millions of dollars each year. And this government has said, well, enough is enough. We’re going to fix that loophole in the system and make sure that the migration minister has the power and the discretion to force those people to comply with their visa conditions and leave the country.”
These were the “urgent” powers the government tried to rush through the parliament on the same day they were introduced. The Coalition initially supported the push but referred it off to a Senate committee after the government declined to detail exactly what the time sensitivity was for the unorthodox and rushed approach.
Liberal senator Hollie Hughes, appearing on the panel with Thistlethwaite, strongly criticised the government’s approach.
“Wow, having accountability, what a crazy concept. The Senate doing its job. What a crazy concept,” she said.
“This is how outrageous this government is, that they wanted to ram through these changes within 36 hours. Massive changes to our immigration laws within 36 hours. No one can really say what the urgency is. Clare O’Neil did let slip that perhaps it’s got something to do with an upcoming court case where, again, the government has failed in its own defence.
“But every piece of legislation, every piece of legislation goes to a Senate legislation committee, and you tried to circumvent that last week. Why?”
Matthews’ strong Flanders form bodes well for Olympics
An Olympic medal might be rich consolation for Michael Matthews missing out on a precious podium finish at the Tour of Flanders.
The Australian’s storming ride on Sunday night at De Ronde, one of road cycling’s five monuments, ended in devastation.
The Jayco AlUla star finished third – only the fifth time an Australian has featured among the top three at the storied race.
Matthews was subsequently relegated to 11th over infractions during his sprint to the finish. But his form over the past few weeks points to the 33-year-old being a serious contender in the 3 August Olympic road race.
The Olympic event will suit the “puncheurs” – riders who excel on rolling terrain – with Flanders cited as a similar course profile to that of Paris.
Matthews has never ridden at the Olympics and was gutted at missing out on the Tokyo team three years ago. He finished third at the 2022 world championships in Wollongon , but injury marred his season last year, with a stage win at the Giro d’Italia his one highlight.
In January, Cadel Evans pointed to Matthews and time trial star Grace Brown as the main Australian riders for the Olympic road events. The Tour de France winner told the Nine Network:
At this point, looking at the course I’d say Michael Matthews in the men’s, Grace Brown for the women’s in the road race would be the first picks we’d be looking to.
But of course, them staying healthy, being in form, avoiding injuries and so on – there’s still a long way to go in that regard.
‘We’re sceptical’ on supermarket break-up push: Labor
Labor is “sceptical” about breaking up supermarket giants amid warnings proposed powers could push up food prices and harm job security for workers.
As households struggle to pay for groceries, Woolworths and Coles have been accused of price-gouging customers and stifling competitors while undermining suppliers.
The Albanese government has directed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to review prices and competition in the sector.
It also appointed former Labor minister Craig Emerson to review the effectiveness of the grocery code of conduct, which governs how the supermarkets treat their suppliers.
The assistant competition minister, Andrew Leigh, said the government would wait for the ACCC to hand down its report but previous competition inquiries failed to recommend divestiture. He told ABC RN this morning:
The National Farmers’ Federation have argued against divestiture and the ACTU have made the point that it could potentially hurt workers, so we’re sceptical.
Leigh said the government would not make a decision until it had the ACCC’s report.
– Australian Associated Press
Queensland’s Ergon Energy Retail has become the second Australian energy company to wrongly receive money from the welfare payments of former customers, prompting fears the issue could be widespread.
(Last week, Guardian Australia revealed that $700,000 had been diverted via the government-run Centrepay debit system from the pockets of more than 500 welfare recipients to the energy giant AGL.)
Read the full story from Christopher Knaus and Lorena Allam here:
Hunt for alleged arsonists who targeted play centre three times
The hunt is on for a gang of alleged arsonists who repeatedly targeted a play centre in Melbourne’s west over the Easter break.
The first attempt happened at about 10pm on Good Friday when a man smashed a window at the Braybrook business, Victoria police said.
Four offenders then allegedly forced their way into the Ashley Street centre and lit a fire at about 2.30am on Saturday.
They took off in a car and were seen driving along on Ballarat Road.
The third alleged attack happened at 3am on Monday, when a group smashed a window and caused significant damage by setting fire to the kitchen.
– Australian Associated Press
Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial
Network Ten will ask the federal court to reopen its defence on Tuesday at an emergency hearing scheduled less than two days before the judgment in the Bruce Lehrmann defamation case is due to be handed down.
Justice Michael Lee was scheduled to deliver his judgment in the federal court in Sydney on Thursday 4 April in the defamation case Lehrmann brought against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson.
Now Lee will hear Ten’s argument for reopening its case in light of “fresh evidence”, according to the interlocutory application filed on Sunday afternoon.
Read Amanda Meade’s full story here:
More on the Australian UN observer hurt in blast on Israel and Lebanon border
A Defence spokesperson confirmed an Australian Defence Force member was wounded while deployed on Operation Paladin in Lebanon – “part of Australia’s contribution to the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation”.
The member was undertaking a routine United Nations patrol to monitor activity near the Israeli-Lebanon border, accompanied by three United Nations military observers and an interpreter, the spokesperson said.
The blast injuries sustained were non-life threatening. They were transported to a health centre at a nearby military base for treatment and have now been released to recover.
Defence is taking the appropriate steps to ensure the safety and welfare of the member.
Labor touts EVs to households as charging sites rise
Fast-charging sites for electric vehicles have risen by about 100 this year, leading to a near doubling of the Australia-wide network since 2022.
According to Electric Vehicle Council data, some 900 fast-charging sites support about 2,100 fast and ultra-fast charging plugs.
Australia also has about 3,000 regular charging stations with 7,000 plugs and sockets.
Outer capital city suburbs are leading the charge on EV purchases, with Rouse Hill and Kellyville topping Sydney sales in 2023. The energy minister, Chris Bowen, said:
More and more families in the outer suburbs are now reaping the benefits of cheaper-to-run cars, taking pressure off the family budget by avoiding thousands of dollars in fuel bills.
The average family spends $5,000 a year on petrol and could save thousands of dollars because EVs are typically $2,000 a year cheaper to run, he added.
As well, EV tax discounts could save buyers up to $11,000 a year on a $50,000 purchase. When eligible, the discount can make base EV models such as the Tesla 3 cheaper to lease per month than petrol-run cars like the Mazda 3 Astina.
– Australian Associated Press
Good morning
And welcome to a new week on the blog.
An Australian was among three UN observers and one translator injured in an explosion near Lebanon’s border with Israel. UN interim force in Lebanon spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told AFP that two observers were from Australia and Chile, adding that all four wounded were in stable condition. Australia’s defence department said the Australian’s injuries were not life-threatening.
Queensland police are preparing a report for the coroner after two men died in Surfers Paradise last night. The men, aged in their 60s and 30s, drowned after jumping into a hotel pool to save a child, who was successfully pulled from the water, according to an ABC report. Emergency services were called to Orchid Avenue about 7pm. The men were declared dead at the scene. Both deaths are being treated as non-suspicious.
And in positive news, a pilot scheme to replace cardboard produce boxes with reusable plastic crates has been launched in Victoria, with the aim to cut “invisible” cardboard waste. The Victoria Unboxed project, led by food charity Sustain with Sustainable Victoria, has supplied 1,000 reusable plastic crates to transport produce from farms to venues, wholesalers and homes across Melbourne.
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