Australia news live updates: housing market posts first monthly decline since September 2020; trial date set for Brittany Higgins accused | Australia news

Michael McGowan

The New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet, has asked for an investigation into the circumstances leading to John Barilaro’s appointment to a plum $500,000-a-year trade commissioner job in New York City.

The Guardian revealed this week that Barilaro was given the trade job – which he created while still in government – ahead of another highly qualified candidate.

Perrottet revealed on Wednesday that Amy Brown, the chief executive of Investment NSW, had signed off on Barilaro’s appointment after the Guardian revealed she had previously answered to him while he was deputy premier.

On Thursday Perrottet said he had asked for the secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Michael Coutts-Trotter, to investigate the appointment.

Perrottet said he would make the report public after it was completed.

It comes as the opposition leader, Chris Minns, said he would recall Barilaro from the job if Labor wins government at next year’s election.

Minns said:

We’re expected to believe a global search took place, not just the eight million people who live in this state but around the entire world to represent the economic and trade interests of the people of NSW and the bloke they picked was the guy they sat next to for 12 years who just happened to be the leader of the National party.

If we win the next election he’s going to have to come home. This is a farce.

Houses and units have recorded a 0.1% fall in value over May, the first fall since September 2020, as trends in value across both quarterly and annual timeframes continue to weaken.

According to CoreLogic’s national home index, this is the first month of negative dwelling value growth in 20 months, and comes amid “lower consumer sentiment, increasing global uncertainty, mounting inflationary pressure, and the first cash rate rise since November 2010, up 25 basis points in May”.

The results also showed a steeper decline for houses, which saw a larger monthly decline than units, falling 0.15% and 0.08% respectively.

The combined capitals unit market fell 0.2%, its first monthly decline in values since October 2020, while regional unit values showed some resilience rising 0.8% over the month.

The CoreLogic research analyst Kaytlin Ezzy said monthly declines in unit values across Sydney (0.7%) and Melbourne (0.3%) weighed the national results down:

While last month’s rate rise likely added further downward pressure to the Sydney and Melbourne unit markets, growth conditions have been weakening over the past year amid worsening affordability, lower consumer sentiment and rising fixed mortgage rates.

More recently we have also seen surging inflation and a more cautious lending environment also dampening housing demand.

Graham Readfearn

Mark McGowan announces 80% emissions cut by 2030 for WA government

The Western Australian government says it will cut greenhouse gas emissions from its own departments, agencies and government-owned enterprises by 80% below 2020 levels by 2030.

Premier Mark McGowan said the “whole-of-government” target would be reached with the help of energy efficiency, buying more renewable energy, cutting emissions in government-owned vehicles and also through the purchase of offsets.

A spokesman told the Guardian the 2019-20 baseline for the target was set at 7.3m tonnes of CO2-e.

Because the target only covers the government’s own emissions, WA remains without a statewide 2030 emissions reduction target.

Latest national figures that include 2020 – a year affected by drops in fossil fuel use as a result of the pandemic – showed emissions in the state were at 81.7m tonnes and had risen 4% from 2005 levels.

Last week McGowan announced the state would close its coal-fired power stations by 2030. McGowan said today:

This interim target sends a signal to the broader economy that we are serious about tackling climate change and setting up Western Australia for a healthy, prosperous low-carbon future.

Action on climate change is crucial to diversifying the WA economy, creating long-term jobs, managing environmental impacts, and protecting the health and wellbeing of Western Australians.

Greenpeace said the announcement was a “welcome step” but the state needed to rein in massive gas industry expansions that were impeding a clean energy transition.

Jess Panegyres, the head of clean transitions at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:

Western Australia is particularly vulnerable to worsening climate change, as we saw from this summer’s extreme heat and bushfires. It’s heartening to see the state government step up to protect West Australians from dangerous climate impacts by committing to strongly reduce emissions across state-owned utilities over the next few years.

As part of this ambitious climate agenda, we also need the McGowan government to get serious about reducing the role of gas, a dangerous fossil fuel that’s driving climate change.

With projects like Woodside’s proposed Scarborough and Browse gas fields set to release billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas pollution over the course of their operation, Western Australia’s gas industry undermines the state’s climate targets and impedes the clean energy transition.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton has taken to the airwaves to blame both the energy crisis and asylum seeker boats from Sri Lanka on Labor.

Dutton, who, let’s not forget, was part of a government for nine years whose inaction has led to much of the issues being faced now, who had to be pushed into responding to the pandemic, and whose delay in vaccine rollout led to a range of challenges, told 2GB Labor needs to be more “nimble”:

I worry that they’re making the wrong decisions … you’ve got to respond quickly as a government to the problems of the day. You’ve got to be nimble.

He went on to call energy minister Chris Bowen a “disaster” and that Labor “haven’t got Operation Sovereign Borders” (I don’t understand that if the operation is ongoing), adding that the “sugar is back on the table” for people smugglers.

Paul Karp

Lehrmann trial date set for October

Bruce Lehrmann’s trial for the alleged sexual assault of Brittany Higgins will go ahead on 4 October and last four to six weeks.

At a mention on Thursday Lehrmann’s counsel, Steve Whybrow, asked for the trial to be heard next year, arguing that the “bushfire” of controversy around the case “is still burning”. Lehrmann denies any form of sexual activity took place in early 2019 and is pleading not guilty.

The ACT supreme court chief justice, Lucy McCallum, said a three-month delay was a “significant period” to allow potential prejudice to Lehrmann to dissipate, and that much of the coverage she had seen had been “ameliorative” because it focused on the fact “a man is facing a trial for serious offence and is entitled to the presumption of innocence”.

McCallum and the director of public prosecutions, Shane Drumgold, revealed lawyers for Channel 10 and Lisa Wilkinson have written indicating they are prepared to make undertakings to refrain from commentary about the allegation, the complainant and accused, and acknowledging the need to avoid a contempt of court.

Given that letter, Drumgold said there would be no grounds for an injunction if the undertakings were given. He also revealed that as many as five books are in the works that may touch on the Higgins complaint, and said he would contact their authors.

I just wanted to return to the NSW Premier’s press conference, where he has both announced and defended the NSW government’s decision to hike fines for illegal industrial action.

It comes as both health and eduction sectors face strikes in the coming days, both in response to government decisions (mostly related to staff hires and wages), with the government increased illegal strike fines to $55,000 for the first day of industrial action and $27,500 every day after that.

Subsequent strikes could mean unions are hit with a penalty of $110,000 for the initial day followed by $55,000 every day after.

These fines today should act as a deterrent for not conducting illegal strikes. These are strikes the Industrial Relations Commission has deemed to be illegal,” Perrottet said in a press conference on Thursday morning.

If we have to take further action, we will.

The Northern Territory government has announced its decision to close the Howard Springs quarantine facility from next week. It is likely to remain on standby for another year.

The facility has been in use since the beginning of the pandemic as the country’s forefront quarantine facility.

Chief minister Natasha Fyles said the facility had achieved its goal, adding that it had put the NT “on the national and global stage”:

The government has always, and will always do, what it needs to do to keep Territorians safe.

The Centre for National Resilience helped put the NT on the national and global stage, providing care for Australians and international repatriates in the most uncertain of times.

The closing of the facility symbolises not only the importance it played in keeping our community safe but also how far we have come transitioning from living under the pandemic to simply living with the pandemic.

NSW premier Dominic Perrottet has stepped up for a press conference, and first up he is discussing the strikes that the state are facing (in health and education) and says the union bosses should be hit “with the hardest fines possible” for “inconveniencing families”:

The changes we make today are in line with every other jurisdiction.

My message to the union bosses is that, please work with the NSW government. When it comes to wages in the state, as we know, we had a leading wage policy in the country. We will continue to work with the unions right across NSW in the best interest of the people of our state.

These fines today will act as a deterrent for not conducting illegal strikes.

Victoria is reporting 7,461 new Covid cases and nine deaths overnight:

Another increase in Covid-related deaths in NSW today, with 26 reported in addition to 9,203 new cases: