Good morning. NSW and Victoria are to offer a year of play-based learning for children before school officially begins. Australia’s electricity crisis continues after the wholesale market was suspended yesterday. And, in the US, the Federal Reserve has announced the biggest interest rate rise since 1994.
Victoria and NSW will introduce a new year of play-based learning for children before they go to school as part of what the state premiers have described as “the greatest transformation of early education in a generation”. The program will consist of 30 hours a week of play-based learning for all four-year-olds and will be known as “pre-prep” in Victoria and “pre-kindergarten” in NSW. The first childcare centres will open by 2025 and will charge a lower fee than many private childcare providers.
Australia’s main wholesale electricity market was suspended yesterday, a drastic step and the latest sign that the crisis threatening the stability of energy supplies is deepening. In the hours before the suspension, the Australian Energy Market Operator issued a flurry of lack of reserve alerts at the level three warning. Yesterday evening the NSW energy minister, Matt Kean, told Sydney residents to cut usage to reduce the risk of blackouts. Here’s a handy explainer of what’s going on.
With soaring inflation and the shadow of recession hanging over the US, the Federal Reserve announced a 0.75 percentage-point increase in interest rates – the largest hike since 1994. Until this week the Fed had been expected to announce a smaller increase. At a press conference, the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, said the central bank decided that a larger hike was needed after the latest economic news, including last week’s announcement that inflation had risen to a 40-year high.
Australia
The employment minister has been urged to pause a new “points-based” mutual obligations system as a new survey finds many jobseekers are fearful it will make their lives tougher. The system, which starts on 1 July, replaces the rigid 20 job applications-a-month requirement that frustrated jobseekers and employers for many years.
The immigration minister, Andrew Giles, has suggested Labor will allow the Nadesalingam family to remain in Biloela “with certainty” and said the government would not pursue a controversial bill that would lower the bar for visa cancellations. As one of its first acts, the Albanese government allowed the Nadesalingam family to return to Biloela on bridging visas. Giles told Guardian Australia: “What I’m intending to do is enable to allow the family to continue in Biloela with certainty which is the position that the prime minister has also articulated.”
The Australian novelist John Hughes, who last week admitted to “unintentionally” plagiarising parts of a Nobel laureate’s novel, appears to have also copied without acknowledgment parts of The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina and other classic texts in his new book The Dogs. In an email to Guardian Australia, he said: “I don’t think I am a plagiarist more than any other writer who has been influenced by the greats who have come before them.”
Australia must build conventional submarines before escalating to a nuclear-powered model or the whole program could fail, the Australian Industry and Defence Network says. Pressure is building on the new defence minister, Richard Marles, to work out how to deal with the looming capability gap.
The world
Ukraine has ignored a Russian ultimatum to surrender the embattled eastern city of Sievierodonetsk as fears grow over the hundreds of civilians trapped in the city’s Azot chemical factory. More than 500 civilians, including 40 children, are in the factory. Weeks of Russia’s relentless bombardment of Sievierodonetsk, including its industrial area, have reduced much of the city to rubble.
Saudi officials have been seizing rainbow-coloured toys and clothing from shops in the capital as part of a crackdown on homosexuality, state media has reported. Items targeted in the Riyadh raids include bows, skirts, hats and pencil cases, most of them manufactured for children.
The World Health Organization has said it will rename monkeypox to avoid discrimination and stigmatisation as the virus continues to spread among people in an unprecedented global outbreak of the disease.
More than 100 million Americans have been advised to stay indoors amid record-breaking heat, with experts warning that such temperatures could become the norm amid the climate crisis. The heatwave stretched from parts of the Gulf coast in the south to the Great Lakes in the midwest, the National Weather Service Prediction Center said.
Recommended reads
After a childhood shrouded in silence and depression, the artist Hiromi Tango has dedicated herself to a loud, vibrant career, exploring how colours interact with the brain and make us happy. In an interview with Steve Jones, Tango talks about her latest project, Rainbow Dream Moon Rainbow, as well as her mental healing journey over the last few years. “We’re pretty much driven by things that make us feel good … we love food, we love warmth, we love connection, we love human touch. We do love novelty.”
The Covid pandemic was truly awful but there might be a silver lining – continuing some of the health and hygiene habits adopted because of Covid will also reduce the risk of contracting other lurgies, experts say. With outbreaks of hand, foot and mouth disease at childcare centres across the Northern Territory and north Queensland, soaring influenza case numbers, and the emergence of monkeypox in Australia, maintaining a few habits could help you avoid them.
Listen
For 30 years a company called Youpla sold low-value funeral insurance in Aboriginal communities, until it collapsed this year, leaving thousands of people on low incomes unable to pay for funerals. In today’s Full Story, Indigenous affairs editor, Lorena Allam, and senior business reporter, Ben Butler, detail how this company operated and whether Aboriginal families can recover the millions of dollars they paid into this fund.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
Once dubbed “the next Kelly Slater”, the Australian surfing prodigy Jack Robinson is finally coming of age and a World Surf League title is now within reach. In an interview with Kieran Pender, he discusses how he came to this point in his life: “It was definitely interesting, it’s not always like that for everybody.”
Media roundup
Just months after inviting witnesses to share their experiences, a Labor-led parliamentary inquiry into Ibac has walked away and “betrayed” them, the Australian reports. Less than 10% of a $250m rental support fund has been distributed to NSW flood victims, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. A parliamentary inquiry into the deadly February flooding disaster heard that more than 3,000 people are still waiting for the rental support payment despite the program being set to end in less than two weeks.
Coming up
The Australian Bureau of Statistics will publish its labour force statistics for May.
Australia’s new minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, will address the Uluru statement from the heart summit.
And if you’ve read this far …
Find out why chickens in Thailand are being fed cannabis.
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