Australia news live: Woolworths denies spying after employee kicked out of NSW farmers’ meeting; Labor cabinet reshuffle rumoured | Australia news
Woolworths denies spying after employee ousted from farmers’ meeting
A Woolworths employee was kicked out of the NSW Farmers Horticulture meeting on Monday after failing to disclose who they were despite repeated opportunities to do so, according to NSW Farmers.
As AAP reports, NSW Farmers Horticulture Committee chair Jo Brighenti-Barnard was overseeing proceedings when sensitive grower information was being discussed.
She said it felt like corporate espionage by Woolworths. She told AAP:
Once we discovered they did work for Woolworths and didn’t identify themselves we thought, ‘What are they actually doing there, why not be open?’
We did ask the whole room if someone was here from any of the supermarkets and no one put their hand up.
Woolworths said it wasn’t aware the employee was attending but called the incident “an unfortunate misunderstanding”.
“This team member works in our technology team and has no contact or relationship with our commercial buying teams,” Woolworths said in a statement.
This appears to be an unfortunate misunderstanding, and while we are not aware of what was discussed – or by whom – we want to provide the strongest reassurance there will not be any repercussions for suppliers who spoke at the event.
The woman had been formally directed not to share any information she heard at the conference with anyone at the company, it said.
Suppliers who had a complaint or concern were encouraged to raise it with the supermarket giant or confidentially through its whistleblower program, “Speak Up”.
Key events
Tasmanian independent says tensions high between food producers and supermarkets
Independent Tasmanian senator Tammy Tyrrell says allegations a Woolworths employee was “spying” on a NSW Farmers meeting “shows just how tense things are between producers and the major supermarkets right now.”
(We covered this earlier in the blog here).
Tyrrell said in a statement:
Producers are worried that if they speak out about bad behaviour by Coles and Woolworths, they’ll lose contracts. And that’s not a hypothetical – I’ve heard evidence of that happening.
That’s why I pushed so hard for the food and grocery code of conduct to become mandatory, with more independent processes for complaints. It’s a great start, but the Senate inquiry into supermarket prices had several good recommendations to help producers deal with this cowboy behaviour.
The federal Labor government needs to act on the good recommendations of the inquiry. If they’re serious about giving farmers a fair crack, they need to start putting policies in place, not just talking about it.
New Zealand man found dead after failing to return from hike in Tasmania
A New Zealand man has died while bushwalking in the Southwest National Park of Tasmania.
As reported yesterday, Tasmanian police launched a search operation after an experienced bushwalker did not make contact with friends as planned following a multi-day hike along the Eastern Arthurs Traverse.
Police have confirmed the 27-year-old man has died, believed to have fallen from a height in the vicinity of Federation Peak. His body was located by search crews about 10am today.
Inspector Colin Riley said the man had been planning to finish the hike near West Picton Road at the weekend, after setting off from the Huon River campground last Tuesday.
The retrieval of the man will require both ground and aerial resources and it is expected to take some days for emergency service personnel to safely undertake this due to the terrain and weather conditions.
Our thoughts are with the man’s family and loved ones, and a report will be prepared for the coroner.
Record for hottest day globally broken after just one day
Peter Hannam
The world notched its hottest day on record on Sunday, 21 July, with an average surface temperature of 17.09C, as the Guardian’s Ajit Niranjan reported here.
Well, it took just one more day to set a new high mark, at 17.15C, as clocked by Europe’s Copernicus climate change service:
July is the time of the year when we are more likely to set global heat records – it’s mid-summer in the north and the northern hemisphere has much more land than the south. Land warms (and cools) faster than oceans, hence the amplification at this time of year.
Natural factors play a role, too, but it’s the background warming resulting from loading up our atmosphere with greenhouse gases that is driving heat records.
The last 13 months have also been the hottest for each month on record and looking at the widespread heatwaves roasting parts of North America, Europe and Asia at the moment, July looks like extending that unhappy run to 14 months.
Blueprint to restore Australia’s landscape released
The blueprint for repairing Australia’s environment is now available to read online here.
Blueprint should form part of national environmental strategy – Prof Jamie Pittock
Next to speak at the press club is Prof Jamie Pittock, who said the blueprint illustrated how environmental repair could contribute towards Australia’s agriculture plan for a $100bn industry by 2030.
The blueprint shows that we know what we need to do to repair Australia’s environment to good health. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, but rather supercharge existing efforts and actions of so many Australians.
Pittock said the first recommendation was that the blueprint should form the basis of a long-term, nationwide bipartisanship strategy to repair the nation’s landscapes.
This strategy needs oversight by a national council or similar body to co-ordinate implementation. Landscape repair must be driven bottom-up as well as top-down in a nation as culturally and environmentally diverse as Australia.
Climate change and nature loss must be addressed together – professor
Wrapping up her speech, Prof Martine Maron said frequent announcements of a few million dollars are made for worthy environmental projects, but “realistically, these amounts are like throwing little cups of water at a burning building”.
We need to stop taking nature of granted. It needs us, and we need it.
I think most people fully understand now the existential threat that climate change poses, and the urgency of addressing it, but we must also remember that nature loss is equally urgent and its impact are intertwined with those in climate change.
We absolutely must address both of those challenges together.
Professor details blueprint to repairing Australia’s landscapes
Martine Maron said the blueprint would act as a “constant step-by-step recipe”, showing that repairing Australia’s landscapes is achievable and “not an endless task”.
The blueprint focuses on five of Australia’s major landscape asset groups – soil, native vegetation, threatened species, freshwater and coasts – and recommends a set of 24 repair actions.
For example, one of the recommendations is to restore, regrow and replant nearly 13m hectares of degraded or clear native vegetation across the continent.
This factors in things like stewardship payments … as well as other actions that boost productivity on the most suitable agricultural land by improving soil conditions.
Restoring this vegetation could evade almost 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, providing government revenues to landholders, but there will be other flow on benefits to the farming systems as well.
Professors address press club to launch blueprint to repairing Australia’s landscapes
Prof Martine Maron and Prof Jamie Pittock are addressing the National Press Club in Canberra today to launch their landmark report, titled Blueprint to Repair Australia’s Landscapes.
Maron said Australia wasn’t just a biodiversity hotspot but also a “world leader in extinction, habitat destruction and environmental degradation – but we don’t have to be”.
She said the blueprint relied on the contributions of Indigenous custodians, farmers, Landcare groups, catchment organisations and local and state governments to show how “everyone can play an important part in returning our nation’s environment to good health”.
But it is also a call for genuine leadership, for governments of all stripes to uphold their responsibilities to Australians, to properly protect and restore our environment.
Our environment has been treated as an afterthought for too long and today we call the change. The evidence clearly shows that it is long overdue.
Andrew Messenger
Continuing from our last post: The independent delivery authority has only been legislated in recent months and has yet to appoint a chair and the board. The state signed up to an intergovernmental agreement for a $2.5bn spend on the main arena.
Infrastructure department director general Graham Fraine said:
The government has been clear that it will ensure that the cost of any upgrade to Qsac, to the Gabba, to the Suncorp will be within that $2.7 billion budget envelope that was originally talked about for the Gabba.
Infrastructure minister Grace Grace said later in the meeting:
We will be looking at working with stakeholders on the Gabba about what the needs are to bring these up.
And there are indicative costs in relation to upgrades to those venues. I don’t think Suncorp has had a substantial amount of money spent on it for quite a number of years. And I think it’s well and truly looking forward to a facelift and to becoming the premier state stadium that it is – even better.
Andrew Messenger
Queensland in the dark on cost of Olympic venues, estimates hears
The Queensland government doesn’t know how much three major Olympics venues will cost to build or upgrade.
The current plan is to build a new stadium at the site of the Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre (Qsac), about 10km south of the city centre. Qsac was built for the 1982 Commonwealth Games.
An independent review – which recommended not choosing Qsac – estimated the new stadium would cost about $1.6bn, but the government chose it because it would be cheaper.
At state parliamentary estimates, infrastructure department director general Graham Fraine said the government’s delivery authority would be responsible for producing a project validation report (PVR) – essentially a business case, which would estimate costs.
That was also true of planned upgrades to Gabba and Suncorp, Fraine said.
Deputy opposition leader Jarrod Bleijie asked:
The government’s made the announcement, due diligence is happening after the announcement’s made. What’s the department’s plan if the project validation report says Qsac is not validated?
Fraine said: “The request that the department has dealt with from government is to investigate Qsac, which is the purpose of a PVR and indeed, depending on the outcomes of that, there will be further consideration given to options at that point.”
