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1hit NoneSave Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Got it Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Michelle Rowland once confessed she had a vice. It was “excessive online clothes shopping”, Rowland told this masthead in 2021 , when she was Labor’s communications spokeswoman. “I blame Instagram.” Now the communications minister with responsibility for regulating social media, Rowland is doing something to curb its influence. The politician known for having such a lawyerly, cautious approach that she reads from notes even in private meetings has taken the audacious step of banning under 16s from social media . The move has outraged technology giants and generated headlines around the world. “We would like that something very similar could be put in place, enforced in Europe,” French Education Minister Anne Genetet said. “We absolutely urgently need something to be put in place.” Michelle Rowland has strong backroom relationships. But they have not been enough to advance major parts of the government’s agenda that she is overseeing. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen That Australia is out ahead of any other country is all the more striking because two of Rowland’s other priorities – a bill to ban lies online and a crackdown on gambling ads – are dead or dying. Rowland’s critics blame the minister for that. “Minister Rowland seems to operate under the belief that she doesn’t have to bring anyone along with her on her legislation and policies,” Greens communications spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young says. “For the communications minister, she’s not a great communicator.” But the wooden exterior belies a different Rowland. Behind the closed doors of the Labor Party, colleagues know her as funny (the type of minister who leaves odd snacks on staff desks), sharp and influential. Advertisement Rowland, they say, is in her dream job. She is the first sitting MP since Paul Keating to serve as NSW party president, a role in which she has helped keep internal NSW Labor dramas off the front page as the state branch won an election after more than a decade in opposition. The former communications and regulatory lawyer, who worked with star lawyer Danny Gilbert and Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb, cares about her portfolio and knows it inside out. Loading Growing up in the western Sydney electorate of Greenway that she represents, Rowland rose through the ranks of Young Labor before marrying Michael Chaaya, a corporate lawyer who could not speak English when he started school in Mount Druitt. The pair regularly attend a Maronite church together, grounding her views in favour of religious freedom and against antisemitism. In 2009, Rowland was a senior lawyer at Gilbert+Tobin when an electoral redistribution flipped Greenway from a safe Liberal seat to a winnable prospect for Labor. Rowland won it the next year and began a steady rise through the party that has won her fans in Labor’s most senior ranks. Treasurer Jim Chalmers secured her a position on the powerful cabinet expenditure review committee that signs off on government spending – a rarity for a communications minister. “She is very smart, very thorough and very tough,” one senior minister says. “She has a lawyer’s sense of the detail and a marginal member’s sense of the politics, and that makes her very influential.” Advertisement And she has personal bonds, too. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rates not only her political judgment as a voice from suburban Labor comfortable on Sky News, but also her health advice. He followed Rowland’s diet (she lost about 40kg – roughly half her body weight – on the strict meal-prepping plan in 2020 and still gets up at 4.30am for Pilates) to lose weight before the 2022 election, declaring it made him “match fit”. Yet, those backroom relationships have not been enough to advance major parts of the government’s agenda that Rowland is overseeing in a portfolio that deals with politically influential organisations such as media companies and sporting codes. On some other issues, such as modernising Australia Post, updating rules to preserve major sport on free-to-air TV, reshaping the National Broadband Network, and letting users find broadcast stations on smart TVs, Rowland has confronted issues that her Coalition predecessors left alone. But rules to require more Australian content on streaming services such as Netflix, which sit both in Rowland’s patch and the arts portfolio, are nowhere to be seen. Labor’s anti-misinformation bill , which would have let the media regulator pressure social media companies to take down falsehoods circulating online, attracted a chorus of critics, from human rights groups to religious institutions. Intended to prevent conspiracy theories about events such as terrorist attacks, it left experts baffled about who would determine what was true and how. Rowland abandoned her second attempt to pass the law late last month. Advertisement Gambling reform has fared scarcely better. More than a year after the late Labor MP Peta Murphy delivered bipartisan recommendations from a parliamentary committee for a blanket ban on gambling advertising, no laws have been introduced and a government commitment to respond by the end of this year has been all but abandoned. Anti-gambling advocates have accused the government of betraying Murphy’s memory. That is despite Rowland privately briefing interested parties on a full digital ban on gambling ads online and a cap on those airing on television, less than the proposal Murphy backed, but further than the sports, gambling and media sectors wanted and beyond what any previous government has floated. Loading But Rowland has done little to convince the public of the significance of the reforms. In press conferences, Rowland is disciplined to the point of appearing stilted. Those who have spoken with her in private say her habit of referring to notes, which is unusual for a politician but more common in the law, has the same effect. It is, one former minister says, an “insult to the craft”. Rowland’s allies admit her attitude towards the gambling sector changed after this masthead reported in February 2023 that she had received donations and a Rockpool dinner from Sportsbet before the 2022 federal election, leading to crossbench calls for her resignation. Teal MPs and anti-gambling advocates portrayed Rowland as captured by corporate interests. That perception has meant her proposed set of policies, which would hurt media companies and sporting codes’ finances, won no friends. “The reputational damage done by the Sportsbet stuff meant she was always on the back foot on the gambling issue,” one gambling industry source says. “People like [Alliance for Gambling Reform chief advocate] Tim Costello were always going to paint her as weak if she ended up anywhere other than a full blanket ban.” Advertisement With the prime minister publicly suggesting poker machines are a greater problem and privately convinced there is little electoral benefit in prosecuting the crackdown, Rowland’s problem is unlikely to go away unless she can muster the rhetoric to convince the public that a middle path works. That more charismatic Rowland has peeked through before. Asked her favourite TV show in that 2021 Q&A with this masthead , Rowland named the Netflix show Vikings . It’s full of “heavily tattooed Nordic beefcakes in sweaty battle scenes”, she said. “I’m only human.” Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter .

O3 Mining Grants Security-Based Compensation For 2024A Campbell River resident is celebrating the milestone of becoming Canada’s first-ever student pilot to fly solo in an electric airplane. Catherine Check said she has wanted to be a pilot since she was five years old and decided a few years ago to pursue it as a profession. After gaining experience with conventional airplanes, her instructor at Sealand Flight School offered her the opportunity to test an electric plane. On Dec. 18, with about 10 hours of training experience, the 18-year-old became the country's first-ever student pilot to fly solo in an electric airplane. "The plane is a lot lighter, so you feel more turbulence," Check said. "But at the same time, the technology difference is remarkable." Flying the electric plane felt safer than a conventional plane, Check explained, because she could monitor what's happening with the engine, batteries, and power more confidentially during the 50-minute flight. "It's really safe in my opinion," she said. "Because it's a glider, it's not going to go in a nosedive." Check said the achievement means a lot to her, as she is a female pilot in a male-dominated field. She said she hopes her success will encourage others to consider becoming pilots, especially because the future of air travel is more sustainable. Called a Velis Electro, the electric plane Check flew is ultra-quiet. It produces zero emissions and is expected to be less expensive than conventional training aircraft. According to Sealand Flight School, the flight represents a major milestone in the aviation industry’s pursuit of sustainability. With the backing of Clean BC, BC Hydro, and Transport Canada, Sealand Flight is leading this initiative and takes immense pride in Check's achievement. “After sending students solo in conventional airplanes for over 20 years, it was exciting and rewarding to watch Catherine solo in an electric airplane for the first time,” said Ian Lamont, the company's chief flight instructor. This pioneering initiative serves as a foundation for implementing more commercial zero-emissions aircrafts reads a media release from the flight school. Through the electric airplane training flights, Canada's regulators and industry members are studying and evaluating how aviation can feasibly adopt these emerging technologies, it says.

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(Bloomberg) — Stocks in Asia are poised to extend Monday’s gains as Donald Trump’s pick of Scott Bessent for Treasury Secretary lifted US bonds and shares, with traders betting the hedge-fund manager will bring a Wall Street mindset to the role. Futures pointed to advances in Sydney, Tokyo and Hong Kong after the regional benchmark advanced 0.8% on Monday. Treasuries rallied across the curve, with the move led by longer maturities. The dollar fell the most in more than two weeks while Bitcoin slipped after a surge toward $100,000 fizzled just shy of the historic level. Oil sank as Israel moved closer to a cease-fire with Hezbollah. Markets kicked off the week with a risk-on tone as Bessent has deep familiarity with global financial systems — a trait that made him palatable to investors. And while he’s indicated he’ll back the president-elect’s tariff plans and fight to extend Trump’s tax cuts, Bessent isn’t known as an ideologue, spurring Wall Street expectations that he will prioritize economic and market stability over scoring political points. “Investors are viewing this nomination as one that will provide a Goldilocks scenario for Mr. Trump’s pro-business proposals,” said Matt Maley at Miller Tabak + Co. The S&P 500 rose 0.3%. The Nasdaq 100 added 0.1%. The yield on 10-year Treasuries declined 13 basis points to 4.27%. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.5%. Australia’s 10-year yield tracked US bond moves, falling seven basis points in early trading Tuesday. While the S&P 500 might be a long way away from fumbling a strong year, don’t get too optimistic about a strong, smooth finish to the year, according to Callie Cox at Ritholtz Wealth Management. “Yields show that expectations have moved a lot over the past two months, yet we haven’t seen any sustained, clear momentum in economic data,” Cox said. “December could be a reality check for people convinced that the economy is firing on all cylinders again.” US inflation figures this week that are seen showing stubborn price pressures will reinforce the Federal Reserve’s cautionary posture toward future interest-rate cuts. The personal consumption expenditures price index excluding food and energy — the Fed’s preferred measure of underlying inflation — is projected to have risen by 0.3% in October from September, and by 2.8% from a year earlier, in what would be the largest advance since April. Fed Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee told Fox Business he foresees the central bank continuing to lower rates toward a stance that neither restricts nor promotes economic activity. Key events this week: Some of the main moves in markets: Stocks Currencies Cryptocurrencies Bonds This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.The city has enlisted the services of East Chicago-based contractor Midwestern Electric, which will start work on city-owned lights during the week of December 16, prioritizing those on Gary's main Broadway corridor. Gary's poor street lighting has long been a concern of city residents. An audit conducted by the contractor TWiG Technologies earlier this year found that of 1,996 municipally-owned lights, 1,293 had less efficient non-LED bulbs, 868 were non-functional, and 77 had been downed by weather or vehicle accidents. Mayor Eddie Melton, who took office last December, announced plans for an overhaul of the city's lighting infrastructure during his inaugural State of the City address in May. The following month, the Gary Common Council voted unanimously to set aside just under $3.5 million from the city's federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to replace street lights. In a statement released at the time, the Melton administration announced that all of the city's street lights would be repaired and upgraded with LED bulbs "by early 2025." That timeline has since been revised, Allen told The Times, and the city now expects to see all street lights fixed by the end of next year. " Once the materials were ordered, the submittal process took longer than anticipated," he wrote in a statement. "We are installing 16 different types of streetlights across the city and needed to make sure we got the requirements right for each streetlight. Confirming details like the anchor bolt pattern dimensions and locations for all the pole variations took some time to finalize. We had to make sure everything would fit perfectly when the materials arrived." Allen said that work on Broadway's lights should be done by February. The city also plans to repair 58 lighting fixtures at Gleason Park that have been non-functional since a transformer was damaged in a massive 2008 flood. Allen added that the ARPA appropriation will allow the city to purchase reserve materials, including poles and other street light components, to allow the city to more quickly address future damage to lighting infrastructure. City Council President Tai Adkins, D-4, asked Allen during Tuesday's council meeting to develop a more specific timeline for residential street light repairs that includes benchmarks for certain percentages of completion, "because the council members will be the ones that will be getting that call." Allen told Adkins that his office will do so and will provide the information to the council.Britain is the “sick man of Europe” when it comes to accessing pharmacies locally, new analysis shows. The National Pharmacy Association says the UK has fallen behind countries such as Bulgaria and Romania after a decade of underfunding, forcing pharmacies to close for good. International OECD data shows the UK comes 22nd out of 31 nations for the number of community pharmacies for every 100,000 of the population. It has fewer by this measure than countries including Latvia, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and France. Separate data shows the average UK pharmacy serves around 5,700 patients which is more than double in France, at 3,238 patients, and the Republic of Ireland, at 2,500 patients. Also the UK spends less on its medicines per head of population than Australia , Ireland, Japan, the US, Spain, Germany and Italy. Germany spends double what the UK does, with the US nearly three times more. It comes after government real-term funding cuts of 40% in England over the last decade have forced over 1,500 community pharmacies to close and many more to cut back opening hours. The NPA says its analysis of the data suggests 1,000 more will close in the next three years in England alone if current funding levels persist. The Mirror is campaigning to save family chemists and stop the closures which are piling pressure on overstretched GPs. Nick Kaye, chair of the National Pharmacy Association said: “These shocking new figures show that the UK is the ‘sick man of Europe’ when it comes to spending on vital medicines and community pharmacies. It is damning that UK pharmacies serve more patients than comparative countries whilst also receiving ever reducing levels of funding.” It comes as pharmacies are set to launch their first ever industrial action with many across Britain cutting their opening hours from January. NPA members voted to conduct ‘work to rule’ actions which can also include stopping free medicine deliveries, emergency contraception services or addiction and stop smoking support. Mr Kaye added: “As our ballot result showed, many pharmacy owners feel pushed to breaking point thanks to the impact of 40% cuts to their funding and increases in their workload. Community pharmacies have the potential to deliver so much more for patients, including a wider range of clinical services that will help to keep pressure off other parts of our health system. “However this cannot happen with funding at its current levels and pharmacies shutting at record rates. The government must get round the table and start to deliver the funding necessary so we can stop the closures and deliver the best possible care for patients.”

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Sharon picks up first win, Farrell takes first loss of the season