As it happened: Brisbane on November 30

A toddler has been flown to hospital after a ute reversed over her, pushing her face-first into the sand on K’gari (formerly Fraser Island) on Thursday morning.

Emergency services, including paramedics and the LifeFlight rescue helicopter, responded to the incident involving the young girl, who suffered extensive bruising and tyre marks on her leg, back and ear.

The toddler was airlifted in the RACQ LifeFlight chopper.Credit: RACQ LifeFlight

It was believed the vehicle’s tyres rolled over the girl at slow speed, pushing her face-first into the sand.

The girl was reportedly unresponsive, and her father performed CPR for about a minute, before emergency services could arrive.

She was flown to the Queensland Children’s Hospital in Brisbane in a serious but stable condition.

That’s where we’ll leave our live updates today. We’ll be back with you on Friday morning.

Here are some of the main local headlines making news today:

• Steven Miles’ mission to Canberra as part of his attempt to muscle the federal government into reversing infrastructure cuts has come to naught, writes Zach Hope.

Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles.Credit: AFR

• Peter Dutton is demanding an apology from federal Labor ministers who claimed he had voted to protect paedophiles rather than children.
• Former federal Liberal political staffer Brittany Higgins has branded as “insulting” a suggestion by Bruce Lehrmann’s barrister that she fabricated an allegation of rape.
• Rising interest rates have done little to slow Brisbane’s property price growth, with new data showing the Queensland capital had fully recovered from the 2022 downturn.
• Voluntary assisted dying is considered suicide under criminal law, the federal court has ruled, meaning doctors who give patients information about euthanasia using telehealth, email or phone calls could face charges.

And from world news:

• Henry Kissinger, a controversial Nobel Peace Prize winner and diplomatic powerhouse whose service under two presidents left an indelible mark on US foreign policy, has died aged 100.

Henry Kissinger in Circular Quay, Sydney, in 1995.Credit: Fairfax Archive

• The author of a controversial new tell-all book about the royal family has denied naming royals after an “error” in the translated Dutch version was pulled from the shelves.
• Israel and Hamas agreed on Thursday to extend their truce by at least one more day, minutes before the six-day ceasefire was due to expire.
• The Emirati oil boss leading the UN climate summit has vehemently denied allegations the host nation sought to engage foreign governments to strike oil and gas deals.

A man is set to be airlifted to hospital following a suspected shark attack in Queensland’s far north.

A rescue helicopter has been sent to remote Clack Island, off the coast north of Cooktown.

Emergency services were responding to reports that a man had been bitten by a shark after 12.30pm on Thursday.

“A man in his 20s was reportedly bitten on the upper arm by a shark,” a QAS spokesperson said.

The rescue helicopter is set to transport the man to a hospital, likely to be in Cairns.

QAS said the man was in a serious but stable condition.

Clack Island is part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, located at the tip of Cape Melville on the Cape York Peninsula.

A north Queensland priest has been charged with historical child sex offences dating back to 1969.

Father David Lancini, 77, has been charged with eight counts of indecent treatment of boys under 14.

He retired from the priesthood after 49 years in 2020.

He spent decades in Townsville after serving in parishes in Charters Towers, Ayr, Mount Isa and Hughenden.

The Diocese of Townsville said Lancini “strongly denies” the allegations.

“The Diocese of Townsville is aware of Fr Dave Lancini being charged with historic offences dating back to 1969,” a statement said.

“Fr Dave Lancini strongly denies any involvement in the alleged offences.

“Fr Dave Lancini is currently not involved in any public ministry until such time as the legal proceedings has concluded.

“The Diocese of Townsville has full confidence in the legal system.”

He is due to appear in Townsville Magistrates Court on December 5.

A long-running campaign by midwives battling heavy workloads has led to legislation aimed at making maternity wards safer in Queensland.

Minimum midwife-to-patient ratios of one to six, including babies, will be established in public maternity wards under reforms proposed by Health Minister Shannon Fentiman.

It marks the first time in Australia newborn babies will be counted as patients in such provisions.

“This will mean that mums and dads receive higher quality care and midwives will not be tasked with unmanageable workloads,” Fentiman said.

Fentiman also announced that appropriately trained nurses and midwives would be allowed to administer drugs such as MS-2 Step, a type of medical abortion medicine, to improve access to medical terminations.

“This is about making sure that no matter where you live in our very big state you get access to what is a lawful health procedure,” she said.

A toddler has been flown to hospital after a ute reversed over her, pushing her face-first into the sand on K’gari (formerly Fraser Island) on Thursday morning.

Emergency services, including paramedics and the LifeFlight rescue helicopter, responded to the incident involving the young girl, who suffered extensive bruising and tyre marks on her leg, back and ear.

The toddler was airlifted in the RACQ LifeFlight chopper.Credit: RACQ LifeFlight

It was believed the vehicle’s tyres rolled over the girl at slow speed, pushing her face-first into the sand.

The girl was reportedly unresponsive, and her father performed CPR for about a minute, before emergency services could arrive.

She was flown to the Queensland Children’s Hospital in Brisbane in a serious but stable condition.

A search for a missing fisherman off the Queensland coast has been suspended, four days after his family raised the alarm.

The 43-year-old Glass House Mountains man failed to return from a solo fishing trip off Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast on Sunday afternoon.

His abandoned boat was discovered two nautical miles off Moreton Island on Monday, but a wide-ranging surface and aerial search was unable to locate him.

“Despite our best efforts, we have been unable to locate the man and bring him home to his loved ones,” Senior Constable Murray Lyons said.

“We have liaised closely with his family and discussed the sad news regarding the likelihood of survival. They have asked for privacy during this difficult time.”

John Theodore Muller, the man responsible for stone carvings on Brisbane’s City Hall, Masonic Temple, Treasury Building and the University of Queensland’s Great Court, was born 150 years ago this week in Germany.

“He was the university’s first sculptor,” said German academic and fan Robert O’Shea.

The University of Queensland’s Great Court.Credit: University of Queensland

“Muller’s nearly 400 carvings include the coats of arms of various counties and their universities, huge friezes featuring people, native fauna and flora, and, most admired and intriguing, figures of animals and of people poking out of the walls: grotesques.

“Muller was immensely popular in his time. Anyone who visited the Great Court could not have missed seeing this cheerful man, between the ages of 66 and 79, perched high on scaffolding, chipping away at his carvings.”

Muller died in 1953 of silicosis, the lung disease most recently linked to the manufacture of stone kitchen benchtops.

More than one year on from the damning inquiry into police responses to domestic and family violence, a new report has flagged issues with how it is using its resources.

The Queensland Audit Office published its findings and recommendations today, noting police had taken a “short-term focus” on the changing environment it works in. As a result, it can’t effectively plan for the number of officers, equipment and infrastructure it needs to best deliver services, or where and how to deploy these.

“Without a more strategic approach, QPS will remain trapped in a cycle of struggling to meet current demand pressures and failing to plan for the long term,” the report concluded.

It comes as the government announced appointed to a new independent group to advise on crime issues, co-chaired by former Childrens Court Judge John Robertson and DVConnect chief executive Beck O’Connor – along with police union president Ian Leavers.

The Federal Court has confirmed that doctors using telehealth to support patients in voluntary assisted dying schemes are exposed to commonwealth criminal charges.

With uncertainty over the support available to rural and remote patients, a GP asked the court to rule on the conflict between VAD schemes and commonwealth laws that prohibit the use of a carriage service to facilitate suicide.

“It follows that in so far as the VAD Act purports to authorise medical practitioners to provide information about particular methods of committing suicide via a carriage service, it purports to authorise them to engage in conduct that the Criminal Code has criminalised,” Justice Wendy Abraham ruled on Thursday.

“Section 109 of the Constitution resolves that conflict by giving the Commonwealth law paramountcy and rendering the State law inoperative to the extent of the inconsistency. Consequently, the VAD Act is inoperative to the extent of the inconsistency.”

Auditor-General Brendan Worrall has criticised government departments for wrongly claiming to have fixed problems identify by his team.

In a stocktake of responses to audit recommendations, tabled in parliament on Tuesday, Worrall said “we continue to find that some entities have overstated their progress”.

After it emerged fire ants had spread to NSW, Worrall’s report makes clear the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries wrongly claimed to have implemented five recommendations arising from a biosecurity audit.

“When we followed on these recommendations as part of our audit on managing invasive species, we reported that three of the five recommendations were only partly implemented,” Worrall wrote.

“It is important that entities ensure the actions they take address the underlying issues that we identify.”