News update for Thur 5 June 2025 - Teds Woodworking Review

Welcome to your TrueNorth news update where every weekday afternoon we share curated articles from Australia’s independent news media sector.

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Scroll down for the news and views you need to know today…

TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here – and through 6 News here

BREAKING NEWS: Liberal premier Jeremy Rockliff expected to push for early Tasmania election after losing no-confidence vote – The Guardian

Extreme weather events have slowed economic growth, adding to the case for another rate cut – The Conversation

Australia’s economy slowed sharply in the March quarter, growing by just 0.2% as government spending slowed and extreme weather events dampened demand. That followed an increase of 0.6% in the previous quarter.

The national accounts report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed annual growth steady at 1.3%, below market forecasts for an improvement to 1.5%.

The result is also weaker than the Reserve Bank of Australia’s forecasts.

The years of lobbying behind Woodside’s North West Shelf approval – 7am Podcast

Greg Bourne, former BP Australasia president, once worked alongside Australia’s biggest LNG venture: Woodside’s North West Shelf. Now a councillor at the Climate Council, he warns extending the project will unleash billions of tonnes of emissions and threaten tens of thousands of ancient rock carvings, while delivering a “pittance” in economic benefit to Australia. Yet Bourne says the decision to keep the project running until 2070 was almost inevitable, after decades of lobbying in Canberra. Today, Greg Bourne on how Woodside got the green light – and the reform he says is needed to stop the next fossil-fuel behemoth.

Listen to the 7am Podcast

Also > Profit vs priceless heritage: the fight to save Murujuga – Follow The Money Podcast

Ross Gittins: In one awful decision, Albanese has revealed his do-nothing plan – Pearls and Irritations

It didn’t take long for us to discover what a triumphantly re-elected Labor government would be like.

Would Anthony Albanese stick to the plan he outlined soon after the 2022 election of avoiding controversy during his first term so he could consolidate Labor’s hold on power, then get on with the big reforms in term two? Or would he decide that his policy of giving no offence to powerful interest groups had been so rapturously received by the voters, he’d stick with it in his new term?

Well, now we know. The re-elected government’s first big decision is to extend the life of Woodside Energy’s North West Shelf gas processing plant on the Burrup peninsula in Western Australia for a further 40 years from 2030.

Also read >

Woodside’s North West Shelf approval is by no means a one-off. Here are 6 other giant gas projects to watch – The Conversation
Who murdered the rock art science? – Boiling Cold
Reworked Petroleum Resource and Rent Tax raising $ 4 billion less than first thought – ABC News
The Top End’s tropical savannas are a natural wonder – but weak environment laws mean their future is uncertain – The Conversation

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Deafening silence at flawed process. NACC and the Robodebt investigation – Michael West Media

Three months have passed since the National Anti-Corruption Commission promised an “impartial and fair investigation” into Robodebt. Nothing has been heard since, and legal experts question the process.

Anti-corruption experts are alarmed by the National Anti-Corruption Commission’s apparent plans for one of its deputy commissioners to be involved in the investigation of the six officials referred to it by the Robodebt Royal Commission.

Anthony Whealy KC, chair of The Centre for Public Integrity, said that all of the NACC’s deputy commissioners were “arguably tainted” and should not be involved in any way.

Max Boot: We are witnessing the suicide of a superpower – Washington Post

On June 14 — the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army and, not so coincidentally, the 79th birthday of President Donald Trump — a gaudy display of U.S. military power will parade through Washington. No doubt Trump thinks that all of the tanks and soldiers on display will make America, and its president, look tough and strong.

But the planned spectacle is laughably hollow. Even as the president wants to showcase U.S. military power, he is doing grave and possibly irreparable damage to the real sources of U.S. strength, including its long-term investment in scientific research. Trump is declaring war on science, and the casualty will be the U.S. economy.

Greg Jericho: The good news? Household living standards are on the rise. The bad news? Just about everything else – The Guardian

There were early signs that the March GDP figures were not going to be good.

To start with, the Bureau of Statistics’ new measure of household spending that covers about two-thirds of all household spending had already revealed that spending for the quarter was flat compared with a 1.6% jump in December quarter last year. So household spending was worse.

Then last week the private capital expenditure figures revealed a 0.1% fall in investment in buildings and engineering, compared with a 0.2% rise in the December 2024 quarter. So private investment was worse.

Five years since Black Lives Matter – has anything changed in Australia? – Full Story Podcast

In 2020 tens of thousands of people took to the streets, demanding accountability and racial justice in solidarity with First Nations Australians. But five years on, and after a failed referendum on constitutional recognition, campaigners mourn the lack of progress. Indigenous affairs reporters Sarah Collard and Ella Archibald-Binge join Nour Haydar to discuss the recurring calls for justice.

Listen to the Full Story Podcast

Mark Kenny: Albanese’s new ‘progressive patriotism’. Is it more than a vibe? – Crikey

Is the prime minister’s new slogan merely a crafty label to be retrofitted to existing Labor policy? Or is it a bold new organising principle for a government alive to new possibilities?

In Australia, where overt flag-waving rings hollow and is usually considered tasteless, the word “patriot” feels imported and foreign, ironically. Yet that might be changing.

Three years ago, in an essay in Meanjin titled “Towards a new progressive patriotism”, I sensed a reclamation project of sorts, in which conservative touchstones like the flag and an openly expressed love of country might be reverse-colonised and uniquely recharged with 65,000 years of continental continuity.

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Angela Priestley: Protect the men! Women in the Liberal party are getting ‘too assertive’ – Women’s Agenda

It doesn’t take much for women to be declared “sufficiently assertive.” Just elect a woman to lead for the first time in history, ignore the fact that very few women are coming up behind her, and everything is fine on gender diversity.

At least, that seems to be the opinion of Liberal Party elder and former party president Alan Stockdale, based on his comments on Tuesday night.

Stockdale is reported to have told the Liberal Party’s online women’s council meeting that women in the party are sufficiently “assertive” and that it’s actually men who may need quotas and protection in the future.

Also read >

Stockdale Syndrome: Alan, resentful old blokes, and the Liberals’ talent crisis – Crikey (paywall)
Sussan Ley encourages ‘assertive women’ to join Liberals in rebuff to party elder’s controversial comment – The Guardian

Anne Davies: Moderate Liberals say the party has a choice – be a far-right rump run by octogenarians or move to the centre – The Guardian

The NSW Liberal party membership has dwindled to between 8,000 and 10,000.

The former NSW treasurer Matt Kean, one of the most outspoken moderates in NSW, said the only person supporting the ongoing intervention was Abbott.

“This is a battle for the soul of the Liberal party: whether we become a far-right rump run by octogenarians or whether we become a centrist election-winning party again,” Kean said.

Much now depends on Ley, but the Right of the party has severely damaged its cause – and provided fodder for Labor.

Oof! Libs red-faced in ‘blue-ribbon’ Bradfield – The Politics

It’ll take a long time for the senior Coalition party to get its breath back after that punch in the guts from voters.

As a kick in the guts when you’re already down, the torturous loss for the Liberal Party in the proverbial leafy north shore seat of Bradfield in Sydney takes the whole election cake stand.

It’s a final exquisitely placed exclamation mark, a multiple whammy for a once great political force on the Australian landscape. But it’s now a party that’s in a fully fledged, voter-enforced retreat from its heartland, having surrendered its ideological soul to the Trump-lite wasteland, straying far from its much-vaunted “values”.