Shorten pledges big on renewables

A CLEAN FIGHT

Bill Shorten will today announce a “Renewable Energy Zone” across South Australia’s Spencer Gulf region that he says could create 1300 clean energy jobs.

Shorten’s announcement follows a $1 billion pledge for solar panels across schools and coincides with a demand from potentially key independents to block the Adani coal mine, and a pitch from Richard Di Natale to form a Labor-Greens climate coalition. Finally, in the face of Coalition criticism, Shadow Energy Minister Mark Butler has announced it would be impossible to cost ALP climate policies.

HASTIE DENIALS

Liberal MP Andrew Hastie has disputed claims by colleague Ian Goodenough that the pair briefly met with far right extremist Neil Erikson at a rally for white South African farmers last year, responding to Goodenough’s comments in The Guardian that he is “confident” the meeting did not take place.

The news comes as Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack was again forced to defend the Nationals’ preference deal with One Nation after Queensland leader (and remaining ticket name) Steve Dickson resigned from the far-right party, while Queensland MP Warren Entsch has bucked Scott Morrison’s advice and preferenced the Greens above Labor ($). Finally, Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has called on the Liberal party to stand down ($) Victorian candidate Jeremy Hearn following the discovery of Islamophobic online comments.

ATTEMPTED COUP IN VENEZUALA

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó has instigated an attempted coup against rival and sitting President, Nicolás Maduro, capping off a three-month campaign with a video call for action at a key military installation.

The Guardian’s live blog details the situation as it continues to unfold, including news that dozens of armed troops and hundreds of supporters have joined Guaidó at the Caracas base and that US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has tweeted support of the uprising.

[free_worm]

THEY REALLY SAID THAT?

I cop all this shit all the time, and I’m sick of it … I’ve had Fraser Anning, I’ve had Brian Burston. I’ve had a whole list of them, David Oldfield, you name them. Where are they now?

Pauline Hanson

The One Nation founder talking to A Current Affair after yet another member of her party turns out to be problematic.

CRIKEY QUICKIE: THE BEST OF YESTERDAY

Labor is undivided in its decision to not talk about divisions

Patrick Marlborough

May 01, 2019

5

“Back in 2014, Bill Shorten kicked up factional strife criticising the position the ALP had taken on the Israeli settlements since 2008 — that they were all illegal in accordance with international law. Contradicting the party’s official party line, Shorten stated that ‘some’ were illegal. This was around the time Bob Carr made his infamous statements about the ‘pro-Israel lobby’ and its supposed hold on the party and then prime minister Julia Gillard.”

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‘It feels different this time’: on the streets of Warringah

Charlie Lewis

May 01, 2019

3

“A local tells me the old Manly tourism slogan was ‘Seven miles from Sydney and a thousand miles from care’. And it’s true, Manly’s broad, sun-beaten streets, smelling of chip fat, sea air and that sweet coconut tang of expensive sun cream feels like a different universe to Sydney and, it turns out, the rest of Warringah.”

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The Nationals are enabling and normalising fascism

Bernard Keane

May 01, 2019

45

“The Nationals’ willingness to embrace Pauline Hanson and One Nation, and leader Michael McCormack’s boast of how closely aligned his own party and One Nation are, is a disastrous moment in Australian democracy. A major political party is both facilitating the electoral prospects of a white supremacist political organisation, and declaring how mainstream the views of that organisation are.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Attempted murder charges after attack on Manus Island refugee

Family of Aboriginal woman who died in custody want coroner to consider ‘systemic racism’

Imams act to stop radicalisation as terror plotters’ Swinburne link revealed

Majority of voters want action on women’s issues, new polling shows

Byron Bay’s Bundjalung people celebrate long-awaited land and sea native title determination

Mundine campaign bus given new paint job after age pension slip-up

Tony Abbott under pressure over hospitals sale to Cayman Islands entity

Barnaby Joyce pulls out of debate focused on women’s issues

‘Climate emergency’ declared by Welsh Government

Donald Trump sues to stop Deutsche Bank from disclosing accounts

THE COMMENTARIAT

Steve Dickson is One Nation to his filthy core ($) — Tory Shepherd (RendezView/Adelaide Advertiser): “Most people, after too many sherries, might pull some bad dance moves or tell the same story more than once.They might sway and slur and declare their undying love for their mates. Most wouldn’t start telling people that for $10 million or $20 million they’ll get them seats in the Australian Parliament and get to work on relaxing Australia’s gun laws. Most people don’t start calling women bitches, talk about their ‘cahoonas’, or suddenly become racist.”

So much for ‘never again’: rushed laws mean youth detention abuse is likely to continue — Sophie Trevitt (The Guardian): “So much for never again. Less than one year after Wakefield moved the amendments to the Youth Justice Act to protect children in detention, on 24 March 2019 she reversed them with retrospective amendments rammed through parliament with no scrutiny and no consultation.”

News Corp: Democracy’s greatest threat — Richard Cooke (The Monthly): “The pantomime staged during this festival centres on an important character type, a kind of fall-guy figure called ‘the good journalist’, whose role is to work at News, and then hand-wring in private about how awful all this is, as though this unpleasantness has come as a huge shock and they have found themselves trapped at an embarrassing masthead by mistake.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Canberra

• Greens leader Richard Di Natale will deliver ‘A Future for All of Us’ at the National Press Club.

• ACTU President Michele O’Neil will deliver a ‘2019 May Day Toast’ at The Dickson Tradies.

Sydney

• Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong will address the Lowy Institute on Labor’s foreign policy plans.

• Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen and Labor member for Macarthur Mike Freelander will announce a commitment for Campbelltown Hospital.

• Warringah candidates Zali Steggall (Independent), Dean Harris (Labor) and Kristyn Glanville (Greens) will face a climate election forum.

• Former Labor MP Peter Baldwin will launch journalist Michael Thompson’s book Labor’s Forgotten People: The Triumph of Identify Politics at Revesby Workers’ Club.

• Director of Australian Leather and ugg boot maker Eddie Oygur, together with Nick Xenophon who is part of his Australian legal team will hold a press conference before flying to Chicago to face a multimillion-dollar lawsuit from Deckers Outdoor Corporation, a multimillion-dollar US conglomerate, for selling a few dozen pairs of ugg boots in the US.

Melbourne

• ACTU President Michele O’Neil, NTEU Victoria’s Nicholas Kimberley, Shadow Assistant Minister for Tertiary Education Louise Pratt and an academic will hold a press conference on insecure work at Victorian universities.

• Oxfam will host Higgins election forum event ‘Australia’s Role in Tackling Poverty and Climate Change’ with ALP’s Fiona McLeod and Greens’ Jason Ball, with Liberal candidate Katie Allen declining.

• The Victorian Auditor-General will hand down two reports, one on whether the Melbourne Metro Tunnel planning processes and early works have adequately prepared for the start of the main tunnel; and another on compliance with the asset management accountability framework.

• Launch date for the Melbourne Skyfarm, a project aiming to turn a CBD rooftop car park into a working farm and cafe.

• Director of New York City’s Climate Museum Miranda Massie will deliver a keynote as part of the ‘ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2019’ festival at The University of Melbourne.

• Australian National University Chancellor and former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans will launch ANU anthology China Story Yearbook: Power.

Adelaide

• Grattan Institute director of health Stephen Duckett will present ‘Have we under invested in Palliative Care? Aligning policy objectives and payment design in palliative care’ at the Hawke Centre.

Darwin

• The Chamber of Commerce NT will host a local industry forum for onshore gas development.

Perth

• The State School Teachers’ Union will put hundreds of school cut outs on the lawn at Burswood to represent WA public schools and how much additional funding they would receive if Scott Morrison reverses funding cuts.

Warwick, Queensland

• A 25-year-old Labrador man and 42-year-old Mermaid Beach woman will both appear over animal rights protests on the Darling Downs earlier this year.