**Source:** The Guardian
**Date:** Fri, 29 May 2026 02:46:44 GMT
**Category:** 9535
**Image:** https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1eb71ef8df7f3a015af79c8b9d8a8aa93b0a6f80/1564_283_9117_7295/master/9117.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctbGl2ZS5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=611192982b76fcf5874d5e74a55f3668
ABC presenter James Valentine’s celebration of life begins
Amanda Meade
The celebration of ABC presenter James Valentine’s life has begun and is being broadcast live on ABC Radio.
The public memorial of the hugely popular talkback radio star at Sydney’s town hall has kicked off with a tribute from comedian HG Nelson.
Valentine died aged 64 last month using voluntary assisted dying, two years after he was diagnosed with cancer.
He had a 30-year career presenting radio at the ABC, most notably for the Afternoons show on 702 ABC Sydney, where he developed his distinctive approach to talkback.
Victorian attorney general, chief justice discuss how courts should use AI
More than 130 people have attended a Victorian forum discussing how the courts should use AI, with the attorney general, Sonya Kilkenny, saying the state was at the “vanguard” of the movement.
According to a statement issued by the Law Institute of Victoria, the forum focused on improving access to justice, delivering economic benefits to Victoria and maintaining trust in the legal system
Kilkenny said:
AI is not coming, AI is here … this forum was the beginning of a conversation that government will continue having with courts, practitioners, technologists, universities, and across the justice system.
Chief justice Richard Niall said that the focus should be on using AI to create tangible improvements for court users. He said:
The rise and rise of AI should make us reflect on our role and function so that AI becomes part of, but does not overtake, our professional lives.
Maximum penalty for breach of button battery provision $50m, ACCC says
Catriona Lowe, the deputy commissioner of the ACCC, is speaking about the federal court proceedings filed against Amazon amid allegations children’s backpacks for sale on its online marketplace failed to comply with mandatory warnings for button batteries.
She said:
Many consumers now shop at online marketplaces and it is important they can have confidence and trust as they do so. That is why it is important for the ACCC to take this action.
She said button batteries can present great danger to young children, becoming stuck in a child’s throat or resulting in lifelong injury or death. Children up to five years of age are at the greatest risk.
Lowe said any penalty is a matter for the court to decide, but she said the ACCC would be seeking a penalty to reflect what the body believes is “very serious” conduct. The maximum penalty for a breach of the relevant provisions is $50m.
Amazon said earlier it was considering the case and that the company remains “focused on providing the best experience for our Australian customers”.
“That includes continuing to work hard to ensure every product available in our store is safe and compliant with our policies and applicable regulations,” a spokesperson said.
KPMG boss resigns over mishandling of whistleblower claims
Patrick Commins
The chief executive of KPMG, Andrew Yates, has resigned after taking responsibility for the top-tier firm’s failure to properly respond to whistleblower allegations around the misuse of client information.
“I have been committed to a speak-up culture in our firm, it is clear that in this case we have let ourselves down and I take accountability,” Yates said in a statement this morning.
The head of KPMG’s audit and assurance division, Julian McPherson, will also step down from his role and will leave the company “after an orderly transition of his client responsibilities”.
The firm’s statement said it was continuing to investigate “a matter relating to client documents being inappropriately shared internally” and recognised its internal reviews had “fallen short”.
KPMG Australia confirms its treatment of a whistleblower and investigation into their allegations fell short of the firm’s expectations, those of the whistleblower and the broader community.
The initial internal investigation, that did not substantiate the allegations raised by the whistleblower, was in hindsight not conducted with the necessary rigour required.
Asic this morning at a parliamentary committee hearing said it was conducting “a preliminary investigation into the allegations about the conduct of a number of the registered company auditors at the firm KPMG”.
Clean Energy Council responds to Greenpeace report
Earlier this week, Greenpeace released a report warning “the frenzied rollout of AI datacentres in Australia is set to derail the renewable energy transition, entrench gas and turbocharge climate pollution”, arguing current datacentre operators in Australia had not proved they were covering their own emissions with new renewable projects.
The Clean Energy Council’s general manager of market operations, Martin Kennedy, told a NSW inquiry into the sector that Greenpeace’s position is “probably correct” if new renewables are not being built to support datacentres.
The research that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation commissioned … shows that if you don’t build the new-build renewables, it does push up prices, does create reliability challenges, and it does threaten emissions targets.
But Kennedy said if datacentre companies are partnering with renewables projects to provide investment as they’re developed, that offsets what demand those centres need that would prevent this scenario. He said:
We view it as a win-win. You have renewable developers who are seeking long-term [investment], and you have datacentre developers who are seeking to contract long-term, cost-effective electricity.
Angus Taylor says ‘arrogant prick’ remark reflective of concerns in the community
The opposition leader, Angus Taylor, said his remark yesterday calling Anthony Albanese an “arrogant prick” was unparliamentary, but said he hears “far worse than that” as he travels around the country.
Taylor made the quip in question time yesterday while the prime minister was answering a question about changes to the capital gains tax discount. He later withdrew the remark after the leader of the house, Tony Burke, asked him to.
Speaking to the Today show this morning, Taylor didn’t overtly apologise:
I had to withdraw it. It was unparliamentary. But what I am hearing everywhere I go is far worse than that, Karl. The truth is that people who are running small businesses, farmers, are angry at a government that lied to them before the last election, said that these taxes weren’t going to come into place.
He went on to tell FiveAA Breakfast his remarks were a “mild version” of what he hears:
Frankly, I’m channelling the anger that a lot of Australians are feeling at the moment over the fact that this prime minister thinks he can blatantly lie and get away with it. This is the worst kind of arrogance.
Taylor said he was “required” to withdraw the remarks from parliament, but again said they reflected the anger he had heard in the community.
Government admits error in inflated $443m reef science claim to World Heritage Centre
The government said it made an “administrative error” when it told the World Heritage Centre it spent more than twice as much on a multimillion-dollar Great Barrier Reef science program than it actually had.
In a February report to the World Heritage Centre, the government said it had committed $443m to the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program that is investigating technological approaches such as cloud brightening and coral spawn dispersal to try and help the reef cope with global heating.
But in a Senate estimates hearing this week, the figure was questioned by Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson.
An official from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water said “I think you have picked up an issue there” and revealed the government had only spent $202m on the program at the point when the report was written. Another $30m had been committed in the most recent budget. Whish-Wilson told the Guardian:
After decades of watching Australian governments go to extraordinary lengths to spin and deal their way out of a world heritage in-danger listing for the Great Barrier Reef when it so clearly faces an existential threat from climate change, you would be forgiven for being cynical about this being a ‘mistake’.
Whether this was an accidental reporting discrepancy or something more sinister, the Albanese government must correct the record immediately with Unesco and provide clarity on what led to this oversight.
A department spokesperson told the Guardian the rogue figure was an “administrative error” and the department had “corrected the information in the report”.
The World Heritage Centre and it’s advisers, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, were notified of the change last night, a spokesperson said.
Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions fell 2% last year as the continuing rise of renewable energy displaced some coal and gas electricity, according to government data.
The latest quarterly update suggests national emissions were 24.5% lower than 2005 levels. Labor has legislated a target of a 43% cut below 2005 levels by 2030.
Most of the cut in pollution is due to changes in estimates of emissions from the land and forests, which have absorbed significant amounts of carbon dioxide. Remove that change – which is mostly not due to climate policy – and emissions from fossil fuels and other polluting industries are down only 4.4% since 2005.
Electricity emissions fell 3.8% last year as renewable energy hit record levels. There was also a 5.2% drop in fugitive emissions from fossil fuel extraction.
Transport emissions, which surged for years, dropped slightly (0.6%) due to a fall in petrol consumption. But domestic aviation and diesel consumption continued to increase.
The climate change minister, Chris Bowen, said it was the second annual fall in transport emissions outside of the Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns, suggesting the government’s clean car policy – the national vehicle efficiency standard – was making a difference and pollution from the industry may have peaked.
EVs have grown from less than 4% of new light vehicle sales in 2022 to more than 20% in the first four months of 2026.
Datacentre growth a ‘significant challenge and opportunity’, energy companies say
Energy company Ausgrid has told a NSW parliamentary inquiry on the sector that while datacentres currently account for 4% of the operational load today, by 2040, this is expected to be between 17% and 30%
Fatima Bazzi, Ausgrid’s customer group executive, told the hearing on Friday morning that the growth of datacentres is “unlike anything we have seen”:
We hear the real concerns about energy bills and power reliability, and we take that very seriously. But done well, connecting more datacentre customers can deliver very meaningful benefits … Increased demand improves network utilisation.
Bazzi said regulation was not designed for this pace of change.
Colin Crisafulli, Endeavour Energy’s future grid and asset management general manager, said western Sydney – which is covered by the company – was seeing the most datacentre growth in NSW and coordinated planning for these new centres was required:
When large new loads connect efficiently to the system, fixed network costs are spread across more units of electricity demand, which can place downward pressure on electricity bills for existing customers.
But those benefits depend on coordinated planning. Poorer located connections can drive inefficient network augmentation, crowd out future capacity, or reduce broader system value.
The wide 17% to 30% by 2040 figure is reflective of the pipeline of datacentre applications energy companies have received, and the operators acknowledged not all of the applications will proceed – some datacentre companies put in applications for multiple locations to see which ones will proceed.
ACCC opens court proceedings against Amazon over alleged lack of button battery warnings on unicorn backpack
The ACCC has opened federal court proceedings against Amazon amid allegations children’s backpacks for sale on its online marketplace failed to comply with mandatory warnings for button batteries.
The ACCC said it is the first federal court case brought against an online marketplace on allegations of non-compliance with mandatory product safety standards.
The allegedly offending backpacks, which feature a large colourful unicorn, were designed for children and feature a detachable light-up unicorn plush toy containing button batteries. The ACCC claims Amazon held the products in fulfilment centres in 2022, but required warning labels were missing.
“Many Australian consumers now shop on online marketplaces. That’s why it is important that consumers have confidence and trust in digital markets, and for the ACCC to take this action, the first of its kind to come before the federal court,” the ACCC deputy chair, Catriona Lowe, said. She went on:
Button batteries pose a serious hazard for young children. If swallowed or inserted, they can cause severe internal burns and injury, and in some cases death. These mandatory warnings are there to help keep children safe and businesses must get them right.
Amazon responded to the claims in a statement, saying:
We are considering the case filed by the ACCC. Amazon is proud to be a founding signatory of the ACCC’s Online Product Safety Pledge, and we remain focused on providing the best experience for our Australian customers. That includes continuing to work hard to ensure every product available in our store is safe and compliant with our policies and applicable regulations.
‘Speed and scale of radicalisation’ of young people one of most pressing challenges, AFP says
Young Australians are being moved to violent extremism in a matter of days as the speed and scale of radicalisation accelerate, the Australian federal police warned yesterday.
AAP reports that for years, terrorists and extremists have used the internet to target young people and convince them to plan and carry out violent acts.
But the recent use of social media, gaming platforms, online forums, the dark web and private group chats has allowed bad actors to more quickly and effectively radicalise people. The AFP commissioner, Krissy Barrett, told Senate estimates on Thursday:
We see the speed and scale of radicalisation becoming one of our most significant challenges, especially when it comes to young people.
Modelling shows 90% of young Australians will be better off under Labor’s tax reforms
Ninety per cent of young Australians will be better off under the Albanese government’s tax proposals, the Treasury claims, as Labor moves to pass its reforms into law.
The government introduced the tax changes to parliament on Thursday before a heated question time. Earlier on Thursday, Treasury secretary Jenny Wilkinson shared the previously unreleased modelling at an Australian Business Economists lunch in Sydney.
Wilkinson said the combined effect of the automatic $1,000 tax deduction, $250 “working Australians tax offset” (Wato) and the capital gains tax and negative gearing reforms would benefit most young people.
“The cumulative impact of the reforms is assessed as benefiting around 90% of young people, before impacts in the housing market are taken into account,” she said.
Had the changes been made decades ago, those under 30 today would be in a better financial position, she said.
Taylor’s performance to ‘dominate’ Liberal conference
Angus Taylor’s performance as Liberal leader is expected to dominate discussion when the party’s federal council meets, AAP reports.
Support for the federal Liberal party has plummeted to historic lows amid a turbulent leadership change in which Taylor took the top job in February, and the rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
The dire state of affairs and the opposition leader’s attack on the Albanese government’s 2026/27 budget will be hot topics when the Liberal Federal Council meets on Friday.
“The big discussions are going to be about how we’re travelling and has Angus turned a corner for us?” political consultant and former Howard government adviser Ian Hanke said. He added:
Yes, he has, but how far have we got to go? A long way. That will dominate a lot of the conversation …
The budget in reply was a test for Angus, and he passed it because Labor is now responding to us for the first time in ages.
Concert celebrating John Farnham to feature slate of stars, including Tina Arena, Céline Dion and Hugh Jackman
An upcoming concert in Melbourne will celebrate the life and songs of legend John Farnham while raising funds for head and neck cancer research.
The celebration concert will feature a lineup of 120 artists and musicians for a “powerful night of John Farnham’s music”, including Keith Urban, Tina Arena, Jimmy Barnes, Jessica Mauboy, Céline Dion and Hugh Jackman (the latter two will perform via satellite).
Farnham’s longtime musical director will lead the John Farnham band alongside a 38-piece orchestra an choir.
Farnham told the Herald Sun he will not sing or perform in public again after he was diagnosed with oral cancer four years ago. He told the paper:
Because of the surgeries to my mouth and face over the past few years, singing on stage is not something I can consider again. It’s just not possible …
I’m gobsmacked and truly grateful that everyone has said yes. It is truly humbling and I can’t thank them enough for what they will be doing for this cause, which is very special and personal for me.
The show will take place on 20 September at the Rod Laver Arena.
