Here is a look at what is making news around the country today.
Today’s national news includes Sky News Australia launching a new channel dedicated to covering Indigenous voices, mortgage interest payments doubling to $22 billion, Australia deploying surveillance aircraft to assist Ukraine, and an Australian retiree accused of terrorism freed from prison in Vietnam.
Politics
Australia to deploy surveillance aircraft to assist Ukraine
Australia will send a Royal Australian Air Force surveillance aircraft to Germany to help support Ukraine by protecting vital humanitarian and military supply lines, Aljazeera has reported. The E-7A Wedgetail is one of Australia’s most sophisticated early warning and airborne control platforms. It will be based in Germany for six months along with 100 crew and support personnel. The Wedgetail will operate only in European airspace avoiding Ukrainian, Russian or Belarusian skies.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/11/australia-to-deploy-surveillance-aircraft-to-assist-ukraine
Foreign relations
Australian retiree accused of terrorism freed from prison in Vietnam
A retired baker has returned home to Sydney after being released from prison in Vietnam, where he was serving 12 years on terrorism charges for being a member of a banned pro-democracy group. Acting Australian Prime Minister Richard Marles said Chau Van Kham was released on humanitarian grounds and “in the spirit of friendship” between Australia and Vietnam. Kham, a 74-year-old Australian-Vietnamese national, was arrested in 2019 hours after arriving in Vietnam where he met a fellow pro-democracy activist, according to Amnesty International, KTVZ.com has reported.
Economy
Mortgage interest payments double to $22 billion
Mortgage interest repayments have risen nine times as fast as rental costs in the past year, with economists saying homeowners rather than renters are feeling the economic pressure of rate rises, The Australian reported. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has found mortgage interest payments have doubled from nearly $11 billion to above $22 billion in the latest March quarter following 12 rate rises by the Reserve Bank of Australia. This compares with a $1.3 billion increase in rental costs, the national spend on rent rising from $18 billion to $19.3 billion in the March quarter. Total mortgage interest payments have also soared above total national spending on rents for the first time in over a decade.
Media
New channel dedicated to covering Indigenous voice
Rupert Murdoch’s pay-TV channel, Sky News Australia, will next week launch a dedicated new channel promising to “canvas all angles” of the Indigenous voice to parliament. Called Sky News The Voice Debate, the rolling news channel will broadcast press conferences, government and community announcements and town hall meetings, as well as news, analysis, commentary and documentaries. Some high-profile Sky News commentators, including prime-time hosts Andrew Bolt and Peta Credlin, are critics of the voice and are actively campaigning against it. Chris Kenny, who hosts a weeknight current affairs program on the network, is a rare supporter of the voice on the channel, The Guardian has reported.
0 Comments