As it happened: PM flags meeting with Xi Jinping next month; Sofronoff report highlights ACT Police mistakes in Lehrmann investigation

Turning now to business news, Millie Muroi reports that the Australian sharemarket started the week down, weighed by healthcare and financials stocks on the back of more Wall Street weakness.

The S&P/ASX 200 was down 17.5 points, or 0.2 per cent, to 7307.8 at about midday AEST even as real estate investment trusts and energy companies traded higher.

Meanwhile, Emma Koehn reports that department store retailer David Jones could cut up to 100 jobs.

The company, currently owned by private equity firm Anchorage Capital, is removing the role of assistant sales manager from its operating structure because tasks such as preparing sales reports and other office tasks are increasingly automated.

Turning to lighter news, Mattel has announced it will produce an official “Weird Barbie” doll, based on the movie character played by Kate McKinnon.

The character is meant to represent a Barbie doll after it’s been played with too much, complete with DIY punk haircut and texta scrawled on the skin.

If you ask me, making a Weird Barbie instead of letting her spontaneously blossom into being feels like the toy world’s equivalent of premade ripped jeans.

We have been very focused on the inquiry into the handling of the Bruce Lehrmann case and other domestic news this afternoon. So here’s a quick briefing on what’s been happening around the world:

• Ten cars of a passenger train derailed in southern Pakistan on Sunday, killing 30 people and injuring more than 90 others, officials said. Read the full story.

• The US women’s soccer team copped a spray from former president Donald Trump who blamed the team’s “wokeness” for their loss to Sweden. Read the full story.
• Moscow has unleashed a massive missile and drone barrage on western Ukraine, following through on its promise to retaliate for a Ukrainian attack on a Russian tanker. Read the full story.
• Fourteen people were reported to have died over the weekend in the Chinese city of Shulan due to flooding caused by Typhoon Doksuri. Northeastern China, Beijing and Hebei province have seen heavy rainfall and floods since the typhoon made landfall in southern Fujian province two weeks ago.
• The Philippines summoned the Chinese ambassador to convey a diplomatic protest over the Chinese coast guard’s use of a water cannon against a Filipino supply boat in the disputed South China Sea.

With Reuters

Hundreds of Australian teenagers are among the Scouts evacuating the World Scout Jamboree in South Korea before a typhoon hits.

A Scouts Australia spokesperson confirmed all scouting contingents had been asked to leave by tomorrow, not just the Australian contingent.

“Tents and typhoons don’t mix, obviously,” the spokesperson said. “They’ll be heading out to Seoul and continuing the program of awesome activities and socialising with international scouts. Nothing will stop the program, but it will have to be adjusted, of course.”

The jamboree was attended by more than 40,000 people, most aged between 14 and 18 and from more than 150 countries. There were 930 Australians at the jamboree, including about 600 young people.

The British, US and Singaporean contingents had already pulled out because of temperatures soaring into the mid-30s, but the Australians had stayed put. Singaporean scouts had also left the campsite but had been taking part in on-site activities.

Typhoon Khanun, which has wreaked havoc in southern Japan, is forecast to reach southern South Korea on Thursday, near the jamboree’s campsite in Jeolla province.

The World Organisation of the Scout Movement said South Korea’s government had informed the group that they were planning an early departure from the campsite due to the typhoon.

Details would be announced today, but President Yoon Suk Yeol’s office said there were plans to put up the scouts in accommodation in the Seoul area.

Local organisers were also asking universities if they had space in their dorms for the participants.

A K-pop concert due to be held at the campsite yesterday was postponed to Friday and will be held at a sports stadium 53 kilometres away.

Various authorities and businesses have stepped in to help, including by donating water and ice cream, while the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism has opened up its temples to the Scouts.

With Reuters

To Western Australia, where the Cook government cabinet met today to discuss the future of the state’s Aboriginal cultural heritage protections.

The government is yet to publicly confirm it plans to scrap the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2021, which came into effect on July 1, but it briefed stakeholders late last week that it intended to do so.

The act will revert back to the 50-year-old laws in place before July 1, which was the settings that allowed the legal destruction of Juukan Gorge including 46,000 rock shelters of “exceptional significance” by Rio Tinto in 2020.

The backflip followed months of anger from the state’s farming sector, which grappled with the new requirements of landowners with properties larger than 1100 square metres to apply for permits to alter or destroy Aboriginal cultural heritage sites

The new laws required in-depth assessments of land for Aboriginal cultural heritage value.
Some farmers had received quotes in the order of tens of thousands of dollars to have this work done.

The decision to abandon the new laws has been met with some opposition in the Cook government cabinet, but it is expected Premier Roger Cook will make the announcement later this week.

That is expected to be accompanied by some changes to the current legislation to bolster Aboriginal involvement in applications to destroy or impact cultural heritage sites in Western Australia.

At the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land on Saturday, Yes 23 campaign director Dean Parkin welcomed news of the Cook government’s decision.

He said it gave his side clear air to sell the Voice as it ramped up its efforts to win over Australians ahead of an anticipated referendum date in October.

Question time is now over, but earlier the Coalition repeatedly asked Labor about its budget funding for an organisation to negotiate a treaty between Indigenous Australians and the Commonwealth.

Labor has committed to implement the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full. As well as a Voice to parliament, this includes setting up a Makarrata Commission to supervise treaty-making and truth-telling about Indigenous history.

Burney confirmed $100,000 had been given to the National Indigenous Australians Agency to “to progress our commitment to the Uluru Statement from the Heart”.

“But we are not establishing a Makarrata before the referendum. Our priority is constitutional recognition through a Voice,” she said.

Burney has declined to state whether the government would continue with the later steps of its reconciliation agenda, being treaty and truth-telling, if the first one – a Voice to parliament – was rejected at the referendum.

Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley asked Burney whether the government would back away from the later steps if the referendum failed.

In response, Burney said: “We intend to get a successful vote [at the referendum].”

The Sofronoff inquiry also made findings related to conflict between former public prosecutor Shane Drumgold and one of the trial witnesses, senator Linda Reynolds, who was Brittany Higgins’ boss when the alleged offence took place in the ministerial office.

Drumgold had said that political forces were at play during the trial, and he accused Reynolds of “arranging” for her partner to attend court with the implication he would improperly discuss other witness evidence with her. Reynolds denied this.

Sofronoff found that Drumgold had no solid factual basis to make these suggestions, and that they should not have been made.

“They were intended to, and might have, affected the outcome of the trial adversely to Mr Lehrmann and the conduct was, therefore, grossly unethical,” Sofronoff found.

Back to the ACT government press conference, Chief Minister Andrew Barr said Shane Drumgold’s comments about being denied procedural fairness by the leaking of the report were justified.

He said Drumgold, the former ACT director of public prosecutions, would have had another opportunity to respond to the findings in the report before they were supposed to be released.

“Now he will still have that opportunity, and we have referred to that in the statement that we released today, so it remains open to him to do that,” Barr said.

Asked whether he would like inquiry chair Walter Sofronoff to be charged over handing the report to journalists before the government, Barr said: “We are considering our options as I’ve outlined in the statement.”

He said Sofronoff had not apologised.

“There are many possible pathways, it might be that [a] referral to the integrity commission to examine the conduct of the inquiry may be a pathway, or it may not The government will seek advice on that,” Barr said.

Barr said the inquiry “should have drawn a line under this matter”.

He said the leaking of the report and briefing journalists during the inquiry raised questions.

“I think there’s been a lapse of judgment here in relation to those actions,” he said.