1 hour ago
One flight cancelled every three days across Australia due to staff shortages
Luca Ittimani
Worker shortages have cancelled one flight every three days on average in the last year, Airservices Australia has told a Senate hearing.
The government agency’s deputy CEO, Peter Curran, said Australia’s airports recorded 2,536 cancellations over the year to 31 August, of which 121 were attributed to Airservices. Sydney accounted for 103 of those.
Just this morning, the troubled airport recorded 14 inbound cancellations and more outbound cancellations, after some overnight staff were unavailable, Curran said. Airservices and airlines manage the shortage by delaying or cancelling flights.
Curran said Sydney had grown and now needed a team of 41 air traffic controllers, spread across the roster. It has 49 employed but eight are unavailable at the moment. Curran said:
When we have a bit of short-term sickness or unavailability, like we had last night, it makes it very difficult to recover.
Curran said retired staff had been asked to come back to work but some of them were “simply not interested”. He said there were about 1,100 air traffic controllers working across Australia and 91 would join in the coming year.
With more recruitment, Curran said Airservices would be able to enough on-call staff to cover two absences a day by March 2027.
It’s not an ironclad model, but it certainly reduces the likelihood of the sorts of issues that we’re having today.
Key events
Roxanne Tickle welcomes rejection of Giggle’s appeal in landmark transgender discrimination case
The transgender woman at the centre of a successful discrimination case has welcomed the High Court’s rejection of an attempted appeal.
The High Court refused, with costs, an appeal by the women-only app Giggle against a Full Federal Court ruling in May. The ruling upheld a landmark decision that the app and its founder, Sall Grover, unlawfully discriminated against Roxanne Tickle after she was denied access to the platform.
In a statement, Tickle said:
It’s been nearly 5 years since I lodged my discrimination complaint. It’s been a relentlessly exhausting time, both physically and emotionally, for me and many others.
I hope that yesterday’s High Court special leave refusal provides clarity to the protections in law for transgender and gender diverse people in Australia, and perhaps provides a beacon of light to the rest of the world.
I wish my trans and gender diverse siblings, as well as their loved ones, much hope and love for their collective futures. May we all learn that just being different is not grounds for you to be ridiculed, attacked, feared or hated, but that instead you are providing a little something extra to the world. Life is not easy. Let’s all be kinder to each other and we might all enjoy it a little more.
Read the full story here:
Erin Patterson frightened and unpopular behind bars
Mushroom murderer Erin Patterson is being kept in near constant isolation, leaving her frightened and at risk of psychological decline, AAP reports.
A prisoner rights group is advocating on the triple murderer’s behalf for her to receive peer counselling to improve her mental wellbeing at no cost to the state.
Patterson’s current conditions at the Dame Phyllis Frost centre, west of Melbourne, involve being confined to a cell for a minimum of 22 hours a day and having approved contact with just one other prisoner through a wire mesh during limited yard time.
Advocacy group Justice Action has called the treatment tantamount to torture, invoking United Nations rules named after Nelson Mandela which say a person should not spend more that 15 consecutive days in solitary confinement.
The group is yet to be allowed direct contact with Patterson, but says information from other prisoners in the same unit suggests she is in a poor mental state.
Justice Action co-ordinator Brett Collins, who is a former inmate, said Patterson was entitled to be treated like any other prisoner and to serve her time constructively. He told AAP on Friday:
She’s a frightened woman, understandably so.
She’s actually been now isolated for such a long time, and she’s already had those disorders before she before she was convicted, so now we’ve heard she’s unused to people being around her.
That’s the sort of behaviour that causes causes permanent damages. It’s torture, actually.
Justice Action is proposing Patterson be permitted a trained peer support mentor to help address and mitigate the psychiatric risks, which it would offer at no cost to taxpayers.
Major fire breaks out at building in Sydney’s north-west
Authorities are investigating the cause of a major building fire in Sydney’s north-west.
Emergency services responded to reports of the blaze on Loftus Street in Riverstone at around 1.35pm.
Fire and Rescue NSW said about 40 firefighters and 12 trucks remained at the scene. The fire has since been contained to the building where it started.
Four people were assessed at the scene, but none were taken to hospital.
Fire and Rescue NSW said the cause of the fire was under investigation.
Achol Arok
Hello! I’ll be here to guide you through the rest of afternoon’s news.
Nick Visser
That’s all for me. Achol Arok will take the blog from here. Take care!
ATO employee charged after allegedly disclosing information to organised crime associates
An Australian Taxation Office employee has been charged with corruption-related offences by the AFP and other groups on allegations the man disclosed information obtained in his work to organised crime associates.
The AFP said today the Gold Coast man, 32, had been charged overnight with two counts of unlawfully disclosing information by a commonwealth officer. The offence carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison.
He is due in court later this month.
After a search warrant was carried out, the man was also charged with two counts of possession or control of child abuse material and 15 counts of using a carriage service for child abuse material. The maximum penalty for both offences is 15 years in prison.
Queensland’s credit rating downgraded for the first time in 17 years
Queensland has been dealt the first downgrade to its credit rating in 17 years, heaping more borrowing costs on to the state’s budget, AAP reports.
Credit agency S&P Global slapped a stable outlook on Queensland’s downgraded AA rating.
The loss of Queensland’s AA+ rating came on the same day NSW received an upgrade to its credit outlook. Queensland’s budget performance would remain “very weak” over the next two to three years compared to peers with a similar rating, S&P said on Friday.
The state’s historically large infrastructure program ahead of the 2032 Olympics and forecast deficits contrasted with previous expectations for sound surpluses from 2028, it said in a report.
The state could also expect lower stamp duty revenues after property tax changes in the federal budget exacerbated a deepening housing downturn, S&P said.
One flight cancelled every three days across Australia due to staff shortages
Luca Ittimani
Worker shortages have cancelled one flight every three days on average in the last year, Airservices Australia has told a Senate hearing.
The government agency’s deputy CEO, Peter Curran, said Australia’s airports recorded 2,536 cancellations over the year to 31 August, of which 121 were attributed to Airservices. Sydney accounted for 103 of those.
Just this morning, the troubled airport recorded 14 inbound cancellations and more outbound cancellations, after some overnight staff were unavailable, Curran said. Airservices and airlines manage the shortage by delaying or cancelling flights.
Curran said Sydney had grown and now needed a team of 41 air traffic controllers, spread across the roster. It has 49 employed but eight are unavailable at the moment. Curran said:
When we have a bit of short-term sickness or unavailability, like we had last night, it makes it very difficult to recover.
Curran said retired staff had been asked to come back to work but some of them were “simply not interested”. He said there were about 1,100 air traffic controllers working across Australia and 91 would join in the coming year.
With more recruitment, Curran said Airservices would be able to enough on-call staff to cover two absences a day by March 2027.
It’s not an ironclad model, but it certainly reduces the likelihood of the sorts of issues that we’re having today.
49ers rout Rams 27-7 in NFL clash at the MCG
Mike Evans, Demarcus Robinson and Deebo Samuel caught touchdown passes from quarterback Brock Purdy, and the San Francisco 49ers routed the Los Angeles Rams 27-7 Friday in the first NFL regular-season game in Australia.
Purdy passed for 205 yards against the Rams’ ineffective defense at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in front of 100,021 fans, the seventh-largest regular season crowd in NFL history.
Australia’s sporting capital reveled in its first real taste of American football – and in a dominant win by the 49ers, who had already won many Aussies’ affection by travelling to Melbourne a week earlier than the Rams, who only boomeranged in on Thursday morning.
Read more here:
NFL stars, cheerleaders and the Jonas Brothers as American football comes to Melbourne
About 100,000 fans filled the MCG for the historic NFL regular-season clash between the Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne.
Die-hard supporters and interested spectators came from all corners to see American football’s cultural exchange, which included cheerleaders before the match and a Jonas Brothers show at half-time.
Take a look at some below:
Australian share market veering towards worst week since US-Iran war began
The Australian share market is barreling toward its worst week since the US-Iran war began, as surging oil prices pressure bond yields and squeeze central banks to hike borrowing costs.
The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index fell 112.2 points by midday on Friday, to be down 1.27% as the broader All Ordinaries tumbled 120 points, or 1.33%.
The top-200 is on track for a 3.2% slump since Monday and its worst week since early March’s 3.8% plunge, when US-led strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader and triggered a broader regional conflict.
The Australian dollar was buying 71.56 US cents, down from 72.16 US cents on Thursday at 5pm.
