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Labor senator Tim Ayres has claimed Peter Dutton’s leadership is “like the mad uncle at the barbecue has become in charge of Coalition policy on energy”.

During an appearance on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, Ayres condemned the Coalition’s nuclear power plan, saying it was expensive and relied on technologies that “haven’t been commercialised yet”.

Assistant Trade Minister Tim Ayres.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Ayres continued:

Why is the Coalition focused on so-called solutions to the energy issues that the country faces that make power more expensive? That would be the result. Of adopting Mr Dutton’s strategy so-called strategy, and it relies upon of course, putting nuclear power stations in suburbs and regions that he is not prepared to name.”

Ayres then went on to dismiss the Coalition’s proposal as “political destruction, not a serious policy argument”.

“The public policy that we have to solve in Australia is low-cost, low emissions’ energy that is reliable for households and industry. That is the project at the government has embarked upon, that is where the weight of evidence is, that is where the weight of experts is and that’s where the energy sector itself is going,” Ayres said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been busy on the sidelines of the special ASEAN-Australia summit, holding meetings today with outgoing Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Thailand Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, Timor Leste Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Mane and the Sultan of Brunei.

Maritime operations and security are a key focus of the summit, with China’s influence in the region and territorial disputes in the South China Sea looming over the gathering.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during a meeting with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.Credit: Joe Armao

The Australian leader also made an appearance with Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to spruik new agreements on border security, electricity and shipping corridors.

Albanese was keen to keep the focus on Australia’s $2 billion boost to encourage trade and investment in South-East Asia, saying it would create new jobs at home.

The South-East Asia Investment Financing Facility will provide loans and insurance, with a focus on clean energy and infrastructure development.

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Australia’s peak medical body wants independent oversight of price hikes to private health insurance premiums, following a spike of more than 3 per cent.

The federal government has approved an average industry premium rise of 3.03 per cent from April, the largest increase in five years after jumps of 2.9 per cent in 2023 and 2.7 per cent in both 2022 and 2021.

Australian Medical Association president Professor Steve Robson.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Australian Medical Association president Professor Steve Robson said more oversight was needed to make the system fairer.

“We need an independent body that has the capacity, objectivity and expertise to ensure the system is fair for patients and balances everyone’s interests,” he said.

“We have seen people signing up in droves to insurers and at the same time we’ve seen management expenses increasing. We want to see a mandatory minimum payout with 90 per cent of every premium dollar going back to the patient.”

Premiums for NIB customers will go up by 4.1 per cent, while BUPA will have a rise of 3.61 per cent, 3.95 per cent for HBF, while Medibank Private will pass on a 3.31 per cent increase.

Health Minister Mark Butler said the approved 3.03 per cent increase was below the annual rise in wages, which was 4.2 per cent in 2023.

“I wasn’t prepared to just tick and flick the claims of health insurers, as the opposition asked me to do,” he said.

“I asked insurers to go back and sharpen their pencils and put forward a more reasonable offer for the 15 million Australians with private health insurance.”

Butler said the government had given $7.3 billion to policyholders through its private health insurance rebate.

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Casino giant Crown will shed almost 200 jobs as the company undertakes a review to restructure the business.

The company will cut 194 jobs across a range of areas within the organisation, with a majority of job losses coming from its Melbourne venture.

“As we enter the next phase of our transformation, we are reviewing our business to ensure we have the right structure to realise these plans,” a Crown spokesperson said.

The Crown in Melbourne.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

“This will impact some of our team members and we are working closely with them and their unions on their options through consultation.”

The review will examine the business’s structure to ensure its sustainable growth.

Impacted workers will be offered options to be redeployed to other positions within the company.

The United Workers Union, representing Crown workers, is working with management to minimise the impact on members and is pushing for voluntary redundancies.

“Most workers at Crown are covered by a UWU agreement which has strong redundancy entitlements and rules, and we will be making sure that the company adheres to these provisions,” union director Dario Mujkic said.

The job cuts come after 180 workers were laid off at Crown’s Barangaroo site in Sydney last year due to financial constraints and performance.

Crown employs more than 20,000 people nationwide, with roughly 11,500 workers based in Melbourne, making it Victoria’s largest single-site private employer.

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In more news from Western Australia, the state renamed its $50.8 million football centre in Sam Kerr’s honour in October last year after the Matildas’ strong showing at the 2023 World Cup.

West Australian Premier Roger Cook dodged questions about Kerr’s UK charges at a press conference but said she was a “great advocate for women’s sport”.

Sam Kerr has pleaded not guity to the charges in the UK.Credit: Getty

“I know that Sam Kerr has pleaded not guilty to those charges, and so she will have a day in court, and because it is subject to a court process I won’t be making a comment,” he said.

“She’s a great ambassador for sport in Western Australia, but let’s allow the justice process to unfold.”

In announcing the centre’s rebrand last year, Cook said the facility would train the next generation of football stars who could look up to Kerr’s legacy.

“Sam Kerr is a global football superstar and truly a sporting icon – she’s an incredible role model for Western Australians and I can’t think of a better name for our new home of grassroots football and high performance,” he said.

“In naming our new world-class facility after Sam, my government hopes that her contribution to football and impressive legacy will continue to inspire our future Matildas and Socceroos and help grow the game locally.”

A Coalition proposal to build nuclear power stations at the sites of retired or retiring coal stations is ridiculous and a distracting from efforts to reach net zero using renewables, West Australian Premier Roger Cook says.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton floated the idea of building nuclear power stations on sites of retired coal stations – which could include the south-west WA town of Collie – as a zero-emissions solution to the nation’s energy woes.

WA Premier Roger Cook.Credit: Getty Images

Cook blasted the Coalition proposal being spruiked by federal Nationals leader David Littleproud in WA this week as an economically unviable fantasy.

“The rollout of small nuclear reactors or modular reactors in other countries has been halted because it’s not commercial, it’s not viable,” he said.

“In addition to that, Australia has no experience in nuclear power generation, so we don’t have the workforce, we don’t have the know-how to be able to bring them in.

“You simply cannot plonk these things into a land into a landscape and plug it into the grid. These simplistic sort of ideas are ridiculous.”

Cook said the plan was a distraction to avoid doing hard work on the pathway to net zero emissions through renewables.

“What we need to do is accept that climate change is a reality and move to exploit the abundance of wind and solar that we have at our disposal,” he said.

Littleproud said the Coalition wanted all energy solutions on the table because the Albanese government’s “reckless” target of 82 per cent renewables by 2030 was unattainable.

“We don’t have the supply chains to support what’s needed to achieve 82 per cent,” he said.

“Why wouldn’t we replace them with nuclear power that firms up that energy with zero emissions and those jobs are saved and transferred to a nuclear industry where they are transferable?”

Read more on this story here.

Matildas coach Tony Gustavsson has confirmed that, like Football Australia, he first learned of Sam Kerr’s UK criminal trial in the news this morning.

“Obviously, [I] was surprised,” he told media at a press conference in Sydney planned for the announcement of a pre-Olympics friendly against China to be played at Accor Stadium.

“I can’t comment on the [alleged] offence because it’s a legal matter at this point.

“The only thing I can comment on is my experience and interaction with Sam as a person, as a footballer, and I have only positive experiences from that.”

Former PwC Australia boss Kristin Stubbins told a Senate committee that the firm’s board had been kept in the dark about the tax scandal during her time as a director and she slammed the “flagrant disregard for confidentiality” by the partners involved in the breach.

“We were given a couple of brief verbal updates on various legacy tax matters that were being dealt with, which were described as largely resolved,” Stubbins said of the board meetings she attended between 2020 and 2023.

Former PwC boss Kristin Stubbins.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

This was before a dossier of emails released by a senate committee in May last year revealed the full extent of the confidentiality breach. Senior PwC partners allegedly used confidential government tax plans to drum up work with multinational companies that were being targeted by the tax office.

The matter – which is now under investigation by the Australian Federal Police – led to her brief appointment as acting chief executive.

“When I was appointed acting CEO on the 9th of May 2023, I was completely stunned to learn about the extent of these issues,” she told the Senate committee.

“I quickly gleaned that the issues were much more than individual breaches of confidentiality, but were cultural in nature, and that needed to be thoroughly investigated.”

Stubbins, who left PwC in January, said she remains “deeply upset” at the behaviour of some of the partners.

“I’m also very upset that the seriousness of these issues was kept hidden from the broader partnership for so many years,” she said.