As it happened: Mandatory COVID isolation cut from seven days to five; jobs and skills summit under way

“Australian export of zero emissions goods and services could reduce global emissions directly by about 7 per cent.

“This would cover much of the hardest and costliest decarbonisation in the rest of the world. This is in addition to the one and a quarter per cent of global emissions removed by Australia itself going to net zero.”

Australia has five “crucial advantages” in achieving the post-carbon economy, said the economic adviser to then-prime minister Bob Hawke at the time of the 1983 economic summit, and the author of the Garnaut climate review for the Rudd government.

It has the best combinations of solar and wind resources in the developed world, he said, which should generate the world’s cheapest energy; it is the world’s biggest exporter of ores that need energy-intensive smelting; it has an abundance of the critical minerals for the machinery of the zero carbon world; the largest endowments per person of land suitable for making biomass and sequestering carbon; and key knowledge that could be translated from the mining and farming sectors.

Read more here.

Najib began a 12-year prison term last week after losing his final appeal in one of the five graft cases against him involving the multibillion-dollar pilfering of 1MDB.

Before the verdict, the court heard Rosmah’s application to disqualify the judge after the alleged guilty judgment leaked online. Police said the leaked document was work done within the court’s research unit and was not the judgment, but Rosmah’s defence said they lost confidence the judge could be fair.

Prosecutor Gopal Sri Ram said Rosmah’s application was made in bad faith to delay her verdict. He said there was nothing wrong if the judge did indeed request the view of the court’s research unit. Such a system of judicial research is accepted in many countries and doesn’t discredit the court nor imply any bias, he added.

Malaysia’s top court earlier slammed the action of the website, run by a blogger based in England, as “a deliberate act” to smear the court’s reputation.

Last week, the same website published a document it said was the Federal Court’s guilty verdict against Najib, just before the ruling was read out in court. The court has said that the leaked document was a working draft of the ruling. The court has filed complaints with police over both leaks.

Read more here.

Wintringham staff found the front door of Gracemanor padlocked at night, which raised fire danger concerns, boxes of opened and unopened mail, and foul-smelling bedrooms.

“You have no idea what these places smell like,” Lipmann told the royal commission.

He said he was amazed by the lack of scrutiny of supported residential services, which are state regulated but privately run.

There are 114 registered supported residential services in Victoria, which house about 4000 of the state’s most vulnerable people with a disability or mental illness.

Read more here.

“Rio Tinto is committed to moving Oyu Tolgoi forward in direct partnership with the government of Mongolia to realise its full potential for all stakeholders,” he said.

The purchase price of $C43 per share is 19 per cent higher than the Canadian miner’s share price at last close, and Rio Tinto said the price is the company’s “best and final offer” after its previous offers to buy the company at $C34 per share were rejected.

The takeover has the unanimous approval of the Turquoise Hill board special committee but will need to be confirmed by a two-thirds majority of Turquoise Hill shareholders and a simple majority of votes cast by minority shareholders.

Read more here.

Any hopes of sending humans to Mars in the next 20 years depend on the ability to make oxygen on the surface for the astronauts to utilise.

MOXIE has been turned on seven times since February 2021 and ran at full tilt for an hour at a time, with each test done in different conditions.

NASA found that about 50 grams worth of oxygen was made during the seven cycles, which the machine’s builders at MIT say is akin to the productivity of a small tree.

MOXIE involves a high-quality air filter cleaning detritus from the atmosphere, and then compressing the atmosphere – which is 95 per cent CO2 – to the same pressure of Earth’s air. It is also heated to 800 degrees Celsius and transferred to a custom-built tool called solid oxide electrolysis.

Read more here.

The lucrative trade roles have attracted criticism since the appointment of Barilaro, with attention recently turning to the highest-paid commissioner in the network: Agent-General to the UK Stephen Cartwright.

Bureaucrats on Thursday confirmed taxpayers were footing a UK tax bill worth more than $100,000 on Cartwright’s behalf after he complained he was not receiving the same benefits as his state counterparts.

A NSW budget estimates hearing was told Cartwright successfully renegotiated his cost-of-living allowance in London earlier this year to lower his income tax.

Read more here.