Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 26 April. Top stories A 12-year-old asylum seeker held on Nauru has publicly pleaded for his severely depressed mother to be moved to Australia, for the urgent medical treatment doctors have been recommending for more than a year. "I feel helpless because there is no one to help us. There is no one to see how we are suffering" Ali says in a series of videos filmed in the tent he shares with his mother. The case of the Iranian asylum seeker Fazileh M, who has been suffering gynaecological issues causing incontinence for more than three years, is the latest in a string of medical transfers that have been urgently requested by doctors on the island but delayed or refused by the Australian Border Force (ABF). Ali says his ongoing indefinite detention has harmed his family. "From the age of seven, when I came here, I have been stuck. I had so many dreams but they have all blown away. I wanted to become an important person but instead I became nothing – even worse than nothing." The former commissioner of the Australian Border Force, Roman Quaedvlieg, has said on Twitter that the medical transfers from Nauru were a "vexed" issue for the ABF, which has the ultimate authority to move people to care. He conceded that genuine medical transfers were "obstructed and thwarted" by the ABF. A former senior medical officer on Nauru, Dr Nick Martin, told Quaedvlieg: "Every time, without fail, that I tried to get deserving cases the care they needed they were thwarted and obstructed by ABF. Every time." Quaedvlieg said: "Understood and I accept without equivocation … A tragedy borne from tragedy." The Turnbull government has dumped plans to increase the Medicare levy to fund the national disability insurance scheme. The treasurer, Scott Morrison, will use a speech today to confirm the about-face on a measure the government outlined in the 2017 budget. While the government won't lay out the full details of the decision until the budget in two weeks, Morrison will say the government now can afford to jettison a measure forecast to raise $8.2bn over four years – and still fund the NDIS in the 2018 budget and "beyond" – because the strengthening economy has improved the government's fiscal position. The proposed Medicare levy increase of 0.5% would have affected everyone earning more than $21,655 and the government seemed unlikely to get it through the Senate. The Danish inventor Peter Madsen has been sentenced to life in prison for the premeditated murder and sexual assault of the Swedish journalist Kim Wall on his submarine. "This is a cynical and pre-planned sexual assault of a particularly brutal nature on a random woman who, in connection with her journalistic work, accepted an invitation for a sailing trip on the accused's submarine," said judge Anette Burkø, explaining the rare decision to hand down Denmark's most severe sentence. Wall was 30 when she died in August last year. The journalist had reported from all over the world for Time magazine, the New York Times and the Guardian, among others. A cross-party group of federal MPs has asked the auditor general to urgently investigate $180m spent on water buybacks last year, amid concerns about whether the government got value for money. The buybacks of water rights from three large properties took place without tender. "There have been concerns about the buybacks raised by the Australia Institute and Guardian Australia," Senator Rex Patrick said. "The analysis and reports allege that the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources … significantly overpaid vendors." In one buyback, the government paid $79m – nearly double the valuation made by the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has made an impassioned speech in Washington advocating many of the things Donald Trump has spent much of his presidency trying to destroy. Macron said he was "sure" the US would one day return to the Paris climate change accord and vowed that France would not abandon the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Trump has left the first agreement and has been threatening to quit the second in the next few weeks. Macron presented himself to the US legislature as an unabashed advocate of the liberal world order of global institutions and free trade – the opposite of the America First nationalism that fuelled Trump's rise to the White House. Sport With the departure over the past fortnight of Adelaide's Bec Goddard and Fremantle's Michelle Cowan, the young code has no women left at the top, and the AFLW is at risk of being run by men for men. Where are the female coaches?, asks Kate O'Halloran.
On the eve of A-League semi-finals, our resident cartoonist David Squires looks back at a well-attended week one, and the surprise emergence of a familiar final four. Thinking time
| 
Posts
Ali is a 12 year-old Iranian asylum seeker detained on Nauru, has a video message for Australia 
No comments:
Post a Comment