As it happened: Brisbane on Thursday, June 13

Thanks for joining us. We’ll be back tomorrow morning. Here’s what was making news today.

Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras tour was booked to come to Brisbane this year, but it was Tokyo – not a lack of venue – that caused the star to give Queensland a miss.

Taylor Swift was due to perform in Brisbane on her Eras tour - but decisions surrounding her Japan leg of the tour led to Queensland being snubbed.

Queensland’s state LNP opposition leader David Crisafulli delivered his budget reply on Thursday, outlining plans including new supports for small business, boosting housing supply and a regulatory review of the building sector.

Selwyn Cobbo and Kotoni Staggs will be free to negotiate with rival outfits from November 1 for beyond the end of their current 2025 contracts but the Broncos are hoping they can keep the duo in Brisbane.

A top court has rejected Chris Dawson’s bid to overturn his conviction for the cold-blooded murder of his wife Lynette, whose disappearance in 1982 became one of Sydney’s most enduring mysteries.

A former Neighbours actor and early-2000s pop star Holly Valance has hosted a fundraiser for Donald Trump, reportedly raising $US2 million ($3 million) for the former US president’s 2024 White House campaign.

Police are searching for a man who robbed a fast food restaurant armed with a knife west of Brisbane.

CCTV shows the man with a face covering walking into the store armed with a knife on Augusta Parkway in Augustine Heights, near Ipswich, on May 8 about 5.30am.

“The male threatened the attendant and stole the register,” Queensland Police said in a statement.

Police said the employee complied and was not physically harmed.

“The male left the scene on foot through the business entrance and was last seen in the vicinity of Ignatius Street,” they said.

Police are asking anyone who recognises the man to come forward.

The skeleton of a fearsome predator dubbed a “demonic pelican” has been unearthed, 100 million years after soaring over inland Australia.

The new species of pterosaur, a flying reptile which would have lived during the age of dinosaurs, was discovered outside the rural town of Richmond in western Queensland.

An artist’s reconstruction of the newly discovered species of Australian pterosaur, Haliskia peterseni.Credit: Curtin University/Gabriel Ugueto

Adele Pentland, who led the Curtin University research team that identified the new species, said the creature had a wingspan of 4.6 metres.

“They’ve been described as being a sort of demonic pelican,” she said.

“They had these big jaws filled with rows of spike-shaped teeth and the head of this animal would have been about 60 centimetres.”

The area where the fossilised remains were found was once covered by an inland sea, which Pentland said would have been the pterosaur’s food source.

“It was probably eating fish and squid-like creatures,” the Curtin University PhD candidate said.

“We find bones of plesiosaurs – marine reptiles – and there are certainly many fish fossils found out this way too.”

The fossilised remains were unearthed by Kronosaurus Korner museum curator Kevin Petersen in 2021, and identified by the Curtin University team as Haliskia peterseni.

“I’m thrilled that my discovery is a new species, as my passion lies in helping shape our modern knowledge of prehistoric species,” Petersen said.

The skeleton is 22 per cent complete, including the entire lower jaws, the tip of the upper jaw, 43 teeth, ribs, bones from both wings and part of the leg.

Pentland said it was the most complete pterosaur skeleton found in Australia.

While Ariarne Titmus has been making 200-metre history at Chandler, another speed record has been smashed an hour away on the M1.

Skypoint on the Gold Coast has unveiled its newly renovated guest lift, which shaves five seconds off the 230-metre journey to the building’s top floor.

Gold Coast’s Skypoint lift - the fastest in the country.

Thanks to a carbon-fibre hoisting solution that replaces traditional steel ropes, the 77-floor ascent now only takes 38 seconds, breaking the lift’s own record as Australia’s fastest.

The lift also now features immersive screens depicting a dynamic Surfers Paradise city skyline.

Tickets to the Observation Deck start at $23.

Domestic abuse charity Beyond DV and the Brisbane Fashion Festival have put the call out for participants in the second annual Dress to Express Day.

The event raises awareness about domestic abuse and coercive control through fashion. Participants register online and assemble in King George Square on August 30 wearing their most fabulous outfit.

Beyond DV founder Carolyn Robinson said that women’s clothing being restricted by their partners was one of the first signs of coercive control.

Dress to Express Day takes place during the Brisbane Fashion Festival and highlights domestic abuse. Credit: Beyond DV

“All of our Beyond DV clients report some level of DV and abuse around their clothing, whether they were told what they could or couldn’t wear, [or were] humiliated and verbally criticised for what they did wear,” said Robinson.

She said that funds raised on Dress to Express Day would help Beyond DV’s recovery programs for women and their families across Brisbane.

“Brisbane Fashion Festival is delighted to have this opportunity to highlight the role fashion can have in the healing journey of DV survivors,” said festival director Lindsay Bennett.

Brisbane Fashion Festival takes place August 25 to 30.

LNP leader David Crisafulli has wrapped up now, with debate on Labor’s budget bills continuing. Here’s Crisafulli’s other new announcements:

On housing:

• “The LNP will also publish alongside each regional plan a regional infrastructure plan that will set a framework for the government’s future infrastructure investments.”
• “Today I can reveal its [a re-formed Productivity Commission previously pledged] first order of business will be to conduct a regulatory review of the building industry.”

On small business:

• “We will implement a ‘Buy Local Small and Family Business Procurement Policy’, to ensure that local small and family businesses are prioritised for local tenders.”
• “An LNP government will implement a Small and Family business Innovation Pathway to directly engage a Queensland small and family business on short-term contracts of up to $1 million for the purpose of proof-of-concept or outcomes-based trials.”

And this: “In the lead up to the election, the LNP will continue to roll out plans to address the crises impacting Queenslanders.”

The unemployment rate has eased slightly, falling to 4 per cent in May from 4.1 per cent the month before, according to new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said that over the month, about 40,000 people gained employment, while the number of unemployed people fell by 9000.

“In April we saw more unemployed people than usual waiting to start work. Some of the fall in unemployment and rise in employment in May reflects these people starting or returning to their jobs,” he said.

“There are now almost 600,000 unemployed people; however, that is still nearly 110,000 fewer people than in March 2020, just before the pandemic.”

Due to the increase in employment and fall in unemployment, the employment to population ratio remained at 64.1 per cent and the participation rate remained at 66.8 per cent, both still much higher than pre-pandemic levels.

“Together with elevated levels of job vacancies, this suggests the labour market remains relatively tight, though less than in late 2022 and early 2023,” Jarvis said.

In state parliament, LNP leader David Crisafulli is on his feet now delivering his budget reply speech.

He’s started things off talking about the four “crises” (housing, cost-of-living, health, youth crime) we’ve heard his party focus on relentlessly since last year.

“The government’s slogan for this budget is Doing What Matters, yet they are now telling Queenslanders their past does not matter,” he said. “The record shows this government did not do what mattered, when it mattered, and Queenslanders are paying for that fact today.”

Crisafulli has also further detailed some of the LNP’s plans around renewable energy, saying that along with abandoning the government’s centrepiece Pioneer-Burdekin pumped hydro scheme, the party would “bring in new laws to ensure all projects are treated equally” with “no special treatment” for planning and environmental approvals on renewables projects.

“There’s a difference between responsibly supporting budget supply and honouring underway fully funded programs, and backing exorbitant thought bubbles,” he said, a nod to his comments last week that he would support most of Labor’s budget before its release.

It’s Thursday of state budget week, which means the LNP’s time to give their formal reply to the economic and political document in the form of lengthy speeches to parliament, with leader David Crisafulli has already dropping some details of the looming announcements to media overnight:

• A commitment to keep Labor’s recently announced expansion of the first-home buyer stamp duty threshold – something the LNP have been saying they would do for months, without any detail – to $700,000.
• The complete removal of stamp duty for people building their first home, and removing a restriction banning people who access the government’s first-homebuyer grants from renting rooms within the first year.
• A $165 million shared-equity scheme initially open to 1000 people under which the government would help “close the deposit gap” for those with savings of at least 2 per cent of a purchase price with up to 30 per cent equity in a new home and 25 per cent in an existing one, up to $750,000.
• Pledges to deliver 1 million homes, including 53,000 social and affordable homes, by 2044 (two years earlier than Labor’s target) – with 10,000 of those built on church and charity land, a new $2 billion fund to help councils build infrastructure for new developments and boost housing approvals by 25 per cent in five years.
• Scrapping the planned centrepiece of the government’s energy transition plans, the Pioneer-Burdekin pumped hydro project still in early stages and likely to cost more than $12 billion, instead looking for “small, more manageable pumped-hydro projects”.

Labor has already seized on the announcements, with Premier Steven Miles touting the federal government’s shared-equity scheme expected to help “around 8000 Queenslanders” opposed by the Greens and federal Coalition, and Energy Minister Mick de Brenni saying there is “not another site like Pioneer-Burdekin”.

A man who was riding an electric bicycle in Kangaroo Point near the Story Bridge has died in hospital after suffering critical injuries in a crash.

The 57-year-old East Brisbane man was riding the e-bike south along the Deakin Street footpath about 3.10am on Sunday when he lost control and crashed near the bridge.

Paramedics treated the man and rushed him to hospital in a critical condition, but he died from his injuries yesterday.

The Forensic Crash Unit are continuing their investigations, and police urged anyone with information to come forward.