It's increasingly evident that we've reelected a PM and government who have delivered the slowest economic growth in a decade. Not that you'd know it from listening to them.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg (Image: AAP/James Ross)
A year ago this week the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that GDP had grown by 3.4% in the 2017-18 financial year. With inflation hitting 2.1%, there were calls for an interest rate rise in The Australian Financial Review, The Australian and the various newsletters and notes from business economists and analysts.
Josh Frydenberg had just taken over the role of treasurer from Scott Morrison (who had knifed prime minister Malcolm Turnbull the previous month). The jobs boom, which had started in 2016, wasn’t slowing and the economy was surging.
Melbourne, Australia is set to host the Southern Hemisphere's largest esports venue in early 2020. Fortress Melbourne, which will be operated by Fortress Esports Pty Ltd, will cover 2,700+ square metres, house over 160 PCs, as well as function rooms, tabletop play areas, a restaurant, two bars and a 200 seat arena.
In addition to all that, Fortress Melbourne will also feature console gaming suites and "dedicated streamer pods". Fortress Esports has partnered with Allied Esports on the project, which operates the HyperX Esports Arena in Las Vegas.
The site will be situated in the Emporium Melbourne, in the basement and lower ground space of the building.
The news follows the announcement earlier this month of Gfinity Esports Australia's closure. According to a statement issued, the local esports market "has not developed to the level forecast when the company was launched in 2017". Hopefully Fortress Esports doesn't encounter any similar issues in Australia.
Here are some more (mocked up) images of the venue:
MELBOURNE, Australia — A 22-year-old female apprentice jockey who was recently married has died after falling from her horse during track work in the Australian state of Victoria.
Racing Victoria said Friday that the early-morning accident happened at the Cranbourne track, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of Melbourne.
It said track work was canceled after the death of the jockey, Mikaela Claridge.
“Mikaela was dislodged from her horse while riding on the sand trails on the southern side of the Training Centre at approximately 4:35 a.m. She was attended to by the on-course paramedic but was tragically unable to be saved,” Racing Victoria said in a statement.
After injury interrupted her career, Claridge returned to riding in 2018 and won her first race in September. She had since won 28 more races, the most recent on July 11.
Mikaela ClaridgeGetty Images
Racing Victoria said a planned eight-race card at nearby Pakenham would not be held on Friday.
“The meeting has been abandoned in the interests of participant welfare and out of respect for the rider and her family,” Racing Victoria said.
Australian horse industry figures show 20 jockeys have been killed in the country since 2000, 17 of them during races and three during track work. In February, a Victoria state trainer died, also after falling from a horse during a training run.
Australian activists have managed to halt the midnight deportation of a Tamil asylum-seeker family as they were being flown out of the country.
An injunction, granted mid-air, paused the removal of Nadesalingam, Priya, and their two daughters to Sri Lanka.
The family's case has provoked national outcry since March last year, when authorities forcibly removed them from their home in Queensland.
Australia defended their expulsion on Friday, saying they were not refugees.
"They're not owed protection by our country," Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton told local media outlets.
He said the family's asylum claim had been comprehensively assessed and rejected by immigration authorities. Successive legal appeals in recent times for the parents and eldest child have also failed.
The parents of the family, Nadesalingam and Priya, met and married in Australia after fleeing Sri Lanka's civil war. Two-year-old Tharunicaa and her four-year-old sister, Kopika, were both born in Australia.
Supporters say they risk persecution if they are returned to Sri Lanka due to their past political links.
The family worked and lived in the small country town of Biloela for three years, before they were forcibly removed to detention centres last March. The dawn raid, carried out by a dozen officers, prompted a huge response from the community. A petition for their return has attracted more than 120,000 signatures.
In a dramatic development on Friday, a federal court extended an injunction that stops the government from deporting the youngest child before next Wednesday.
It is unclear whether the government will allow that reprieve to include the rest of the family, who have only been publicly identified by their first names.
"Given the circumstances, it would be a pretty inhumane thing to do to separate the family at this point," lawyer Carina Ford told reporters.
How was their deportation stopped mid-air?
Protesters rushed to Melbourne Airport on Thursday night, upon learning the family would be deported within hours.
Their plane took off at about 23:00 local time (12:00 GMT), but lawyers succeeded, during the flight, in securing a last-minute order preventing Dharuniga's deportation.
That injunction, ordered over the phone by a judge, forced the plane to land over 3,000 km (1,850 miles) away in Darwin, Australia's northernmost major city, at about 03:00 local time on Friday. Footage posted online shows the family being escorted from the plane by guards.
I urge the Prime Minister to intervene to offer compassion and grace to the Tamil family. He can save them from being deported. The two children must be so scared. It does no harm to allow them stay so they can get on with school and being young healthy kids. #hometobilo
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The government agency that manages Australia's Great Barrier Reef has downgraded its outlook for the corals' condition from "poor" to "very poor" due to warming oceans.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority's condition report, which is updated every five years, is the latest bad news for the 133,360 square miles of colorful coral network off the northeast Australian coast as climate change and coral bleaching take their toll.
The report issued Friday finds the greatest threat to the reef remains climate change. The other threats are associated with coastal development, land-based water runoff and human activity such as illegal fishing.
"Significant global action to address climate change is critical to slowing the deterioration of the reef's ecosystem and heritage values and supporting recovery," the report said. "Such actions will complement and greatly increase the effectiveness of local management actions in the Reef and its catchment."
The report is the agency's third and tracks continuing deterioration since the first in 2009. The deterioration in the reef's outlook mostly reflects the expanding area of coral killed or damaged by coral bleaching.
The report said the threats — which include the star-of-thorns starfish that prey on coral polyps — are "multiple, cumulative and increasing."
"The accumulation of impacts, through time and over an increasing area, is reducing its ability to recover from disturbances, with implications for reef-dependent communities and industries," the authority's chairman Ian Poiner said.
"The overall outlook for the Great Barrier Reef is very poor," he added.
A study of coral bleaching on the reef, published in the journal Nature in 2017, found 91% of the coral reef had been bleached at least once during three bleaching events of the past two decades, the most serious event occurring in 2016.
A fourth major bleaching struck later in 2017 after the Nature study was published.
The United Nations' World Heritage Committee expressed concern about bleaching in 2017 and the report Thursday could lead to the World Heritage-listed natural wonder being reclassified by UNESCO next year as "in danger."
Environment Minister Sussan Ley said she was not surprised by the downgrade in the reef's condition given the damage done by recent cyclones and latest bleaching events in successive years.
She said her government was "building resilience in this important global reef" and was keeping its Paris commitment to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030.
"I want to make the point that it's the best-managed reef in the world," she said.
Australian activists have managed to halt the midnight deportation of a Tamil asylum-seeker family as they were being flown out of the country.
An injunction, granted mid-air, paused the removal of Nadesalingam, Priya, and their two daughters to Sri Lanka.
The family's case has provoked national outcry since March last year, when authorities forcibly removed them from their home in Queensland.
Australia defended their expulsion on Friday, saying they were not refugees.
"They're not owed protection by our country," Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton told local media outlets.
He said the family's asylum claim had been comprehensively assessed and rejected by immigration authorities. Successive legal appeals in recent times for the parents and eldest child have also failed.
The parents of the family, Nadesalingam and Priya, met and married in Australia after fleeing Sri Lanka's civil war. Two-year-old Tharunicaa and her four-year-old sister, Kopika, were both born in Australia.
Supporters say they risk persecution if they are returned to Sri Lanka due to their past political links.
The family worked and lived in the small country town of Biloela for three years, before they were forcibly removed to detention centres last March. The dawn raid, carried out by a dozen officers, prompted a huge response from the community. A petition for their return has attracted more than 120,000 signatures.
In a dramatic development on Friday, a federal court extended an injunction that stops the government from deporting the youngest child before next Wednesday.
It is unclear whether the government will allow that reprieve to include the rest of the family, who have only been publicly identified by their first names.
"Given the circumstances, it would be a pretty inhumane thing to do to separate the family at this point," lawyer Carina Ford told reporters.
How was their deportation stopped mid-air?
Protesters rushed to Melbourne Airport on Thursday night, upon learning the family would be deported within hours.
Their plane took off at about 23:00 local time (12:00 GMT), but lawyers succeeded, during the flight, in securing a last-minute order preventing Dharuniga's deportation.
That injunction, ordered over the phone by a judge, forced the plane to land over 3,000 km (1,850 miles) away in Darwin, Australia's northernmost major city, at about 03:00 local time on Friday. Footage posted online shows the family being escorted from the plane by guards.
I urge the Prime Minister to intervene to offer compassion and grace to the Tamil family. He can save them from being deported. The two children must be so scared. It does no harm to allow them stay so they can get on with school and being young healthy kids. #hometobilo
