As it happened May 23, 2024: Sorry Perth, but winter is coming

Thank you for joining us today as we brought you the news you needed to know.

Tonight we leave you as news that Australian man Keith Davis, an injured passenger from the ill-fated Singapore Airlines flight 321, is stuck in Bangkok with neither answers nor a voice.

His wife has been in intensive care since the flight from London to Singapore was forced to make an emergency landing in Thailand on Tuesday following the death of a passenger in extreme turbulence.

Davis wished to speak more openly about his concerns with the ABC’s Bill Birtles on Thursday but was not allowed to by officials for reasons that were not explained.

In extraordinary scenes at a public cafe inside the hospital, staff surrounded Davis when it became apparent he was about to speak.

The mother of an eight-year-old boy who drowned on a school excursion has spoken of the grief of losing her son, saying her legs collapsed from under her when she arrived at the pool and was told he had died.

Skye Meinen said losing her son Cooper Onyett, nicknamed “Mr Cute”, had caused her life to be “shattered into a million pieces”. Cooper was a year 2 student.

And on a lighter note, Jim Bright writes about ‘green dot’-obsessed managers ruining remote work.

We look forward to your company tomorrow.

Back to the knife laws where the opposition has invoked a fiery debate from 2010 when the former Barnett government wanted to bring in sweeping stop and search powers for police.

Opposition police spokesman Peter Collier said he was called a fascist and the 2009 laws were described as draconian and compared to Nazism.

Collier claims the knife laws announced today by the Labor government are very similar to the powers he tried to give police 14 years ago.

“What happened now to the moral conscience of the Bolsheviks? They have now completely shifted and bought into play our piece of legislation,” he said.

“If they thought that this was so good, why did it take them 15 years to have an epiphany and all of a sudden decide our legislation was right?”

Collier said he supported Labor’s laws on face value but questioned why they would be rushed through parliament before the 2025 election when knife crime was actually trending down.

“Now are we doing it because it’s right or are we doing it for the public pressure that’s come as a result of a few incidents?”

In a press conference in Brisbane, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has hit back at attacks against Immigration Minister Andrew Giles over a man charged with murder in Brisbane who was freed from immigration detention in April by a decision of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Critics, including the opposition, have used the case to add to the public furore over the immigration saga that saw 150 detainees released in recent months, pointing to the fact that the AAT cited directions from Giles about considering the age a detainee arrived in Australia in making release decisions.

This criticism was put to Albanese, who responded by referring to the case of a man accused of a brutal attack on a Perth grandmother. The man was released from federal detention in early 2020 when Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was minister for home affairs.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles.Credit: Wayne Taylor

“I hope you applied the same principle to Peter Dutton, who was responsible as Minister for Home Affairs for the release of one of the people who are involved in that [Western Australia] attack.”

Albanese also suggested that the questioner consider which government appointed the members of the AAT who made the decision to release the Brisbane man:

“With regard to the other incident that you raise that goes to a decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal I think if you go back and have a look at who appointed the people who made that decision, it wasn’t this government.”

Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir is urging Jye Amiss to stick to his tried and trusted goalkicking routine, believing last week’s wonky radar was just an anomaly.

Amiss kicked 2.5 in last Saturday’s 17-point win over St Kilda, bringing his season tally to 14.14.

It’s in stark contrast to last year, when he kicked 41.17.

Jye Amiss celebrates after scoring a goal.Credit: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

Even before his AFL career kicked off, Amiss was given the nickname ‘Nev’ Amiss - a play on the words ‘Never Miss’ – due to his extreme accuracy.

All eyes will be on Amiss’ goalkicking in the round-11 clash with Collingwood at Optus Stadium, and Longmuir is backing his key forward to thrive.

“He’s got great confidence in his routine, in his ability to kick goals,” he said.

“The last thing you want to do is after one poor week – last week in front of goals – you don’t want to throw everything out the window and start fresh.

“That’s the reason why you have a routine. That’s the reason why you do all the practice, so you can lean on it in those moments when you’re under pressure.

“He just needs to get back to his routine, his action, and it will return just as quickly as it turned back the other way.”

The Dockers’ goalkicking as a team will also be under the microscope after they followed up their 4.15 against Sydney with 9.18 against the Saints.

Perth is Australia’s most profitable AirBnB location in the nation, according to new data.

Short-term rental data and analytics provider AirDNA has revealed Perth boasts the highest average occupancy rate (77 per cent) in the country with a daily rate averaging $223.

Sneaking in ahead of Sydney, Augusta-Margaret River was ranked fifth with an occupancy rate of 68 per cent and an average daily rate of $359.

The Whitsunday islands off the coast of Queensland had the highest earning potential at $164,200.

Perth, which was number one overall for market performance, was ninth place for revenue potential with a more modest yearly income of $60,000.

From July the state government will establish a registry of short-term accommodation as part ofmeasures to address the impact WA’s booming short stay accommodation market on Perth’s housing crisis.

Airbnb owners will have to pay an initial $250 registration fee plus an additional annual fee of $100.

The Curtin University Student Guild has released a statement after members of the pro-Palestine encampment took over the campus’ engineering building yesterday afternoon.

While previously supportive of the protest, the guild has stated it believed the right to study and access teaching facilities in a safe way was more important.

Students for Palestine protesters take over the engineering building at Curtin University on Wednesday.Credit: Instagram

“This action was undertaken without the prior knowledge and approval of the Curtin Student Guild or Curtin Palestinian Society, and the guild does not support or endorse the actions of the group,” they wrote in an Instagram post.

“The Gaza solidarity encampment has been respectful and peaceful, and the guild has been in ongoing negotiations with the university to reach a resolution.”

Ahead of Wednesday’s protest, Erin Russell from Students for Palestine WA claimed the Curtin vice chancellor had refused to address the group publicly.

“We will be protesting to say that this is not good enough, we demand more, and we are willing to escalate,” she said.

In a statement, a Curtin spokesperson said the university was “extremely disappointed.”

“Today’s move inside our buildings was an unacceptable breach. Curtin supports freedom of speech and discourse, but only when it is civil and respectful of others,” a spokeswoman said.

This unseasonably warm weather Perth has been experiencing is about to end, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

BoM spokesman James Ashley said the south-west’s warm autumn has been caused by a stubborn high-pressure system to the south of the state, which hasn’t budged for months, resulting in a “very long, dry and warm period”.

WA is forecast to have an average, to wetter than average winter. Credit: Chalpat Sonti

It’s on the back of an eight-month record-breaking dry spell.

But Ashley said the system is breaking down.

“Over the next week we’re going to see a return of westerly winds starting to impact the west coast and with those winds, we’ll see cold fronts coming though starting from Friday,” he said.

“It looks like winter will be more normal, with average of in some cases above-average rainfall.”

The chill will arrive in Perth on Friday evening, just in time for the Fremantle-Collingwood AFL match at Optus Stadium.

A low-pathogenic case of bird flu has been detected on a WA farm.

The mixed poultry farm has been placed under pest control notice while the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development manages the situation.

A highly pathogenic form of bird flu can emerge when it mutates within high-density poultry flocks.Credit: Bloomberg

It is not related to an outbreak on a farm in Victoria.

Meanwhile, Victoria Health says a child in the state is the first person confirmed in Australia to have had bird flu.

It’s believed they acquired the H5N1 virus in India and have since made a full recovery.

Federal Liberal leader Peter Dutton is in Perth again today, this time giving a keynote speech during the final day of the Australia Energy Producers Conference at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre.

In a press conference that followed, Dutton was asked about his opposition to the federal government’s recently proposed production tax credits.

Here’s his response:

If [multibillion-dollar companies have] taken the decision, that they don’t want to invest their money in some of these projects, then I think it’s a reasonable question to say, should we be investing taxpayers money into those projects?

A lot of similar speakers pointed to a similar story around solar panels.

It’s a billion dollars of taxpayers money that can help families at the moment who is struggling with cost of living measures.

From July 1, 2027, companies will be offered a refundable tax offset of 10 per cent for the costs of processing the 31 critical minerals currently listed in Australia, including lithium.

This will cost the Commonwealth $7 billion in foregone revenue over the next decade.

From that same date, the government will also offer a $2 per kilo tax credit for green hydrogen production, expected to cost Australians $6.7 billion in foregone revenue.

Back to the WA Supreme Court now, where Chief Justice Peter Quinlan has approved a request by Brittany Higgins’ lawyers to delay a highly-charged document swap in a probe into her trust fund levelled by former boss Linda Reynolds as she prepares to tie the knot.

Reynolds opened up a new battlefront in her pursuit of damages against Higgins in March, asking the court to find out who controlled a trust she claimed Higgins set up to protect the $2.4 million she was awarded in compensation from the federal government.

Brittany Higgins and her partner David Sharaz.

Reynolds wants to have the court set aside the trust amid fears it may prevent her from getting damages if she wins the defamation case.

But Higgins’ counsel Leon Zwier asked for more time to get the information Reynolds sought, telling the court on Thursday that attempts to retrieve files from his client had been made difficult because she was preparing to wed fiancé David Sharaz in early June.

He asked the court to grant more time to allow Higgins to focus on her wedding and for the Sydney-based counsel to brief WA-based lawyers.

Higgins will now have until mid-June to respond to sworn testimony filed by her former boss.

The matter has been listed for hearing on July 17.

Outside court, Reynolds’ lawyer Martin Bennett clarified his client was seeking a copy of the trust to find out who was the trustee, which state law governed the trust and the subsequent effect.

The hearing comes just 48 hours after a second attempt at peace talks in the defamation case between the former defence minister, Higgins and Sharaz ended without resolution.

Read more here.