News live: all eyes on Albanese’s potential meeting with Xi Jinping; Ukraine appeals for more Australian coal and energy support | Australia news

Sian Cain

Jackie O steps away from radio show to recover from long Covid

Radio host Jackie O is stepping away from her long-running breakfast show with co-host Kyle Sandilands in order to recover from health issues months after contracting Covid-19.

While presenting the Kyle & Jackie O Show on KIIS FM on Monday, Jackie O, real name Jackie Henderson, said she had been struggling to recover after she contracted Covid-19 earlier this year, and that she had received medical advice to stop working in order to address an enduring cough and fatigue.

“I’ve been not very well ever since I’ve had Covid, I’ve been struggling with this fatigue,” Henderson said. “Ever since picking up that virus, I’ve been to the doctor several times, and he said because I’ve been pushing myself every day, after the show, all I’ve been doing is sleeping, and I’m not getting better.”

“I just have to take some time off, so I’m ending the show today. As in now … you know how much this show means to me; you know how much I push through everything, and I would not be doing this unless I absolutely had to.

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Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba has made an appeal to Australia for coal supply and energy infrastructure including generators, after the war-torn country suffered recent damage to its energy system.

Kuleba asked Anthony Albanese for the assistance in person when the pair met at the Asean summit in Cambodia in recent days, following missile attacks last weekend that damaged more than 40% of Ukraine’s energy network and led to blackouts and “catastrophic” problems with heating and water supply, according to the Ukraine government.

In a statement released by the embassy of Ukraine in Canberra, ambassador Vasyl Myroshnychenko said Albanese and Kuleba had a “very positive” discussion in Phnom Penh.

Myroshnychenko said:

It shows the mateship of Australia and Ukraine in standing up for democracy and sovereignty against autocracy and illegality. Ukraine really needs the mateship now.

Our goal is to help our people through immediate recovery of critical energy supply, diversification of energy sources, and the development of crisis stock.

It would be invaluable to Ukraine to again receive coal supply from Australia, a world leader. It is also a great engineering nation, and can help us with generators – to keep essential services like hospitals and water treatments plants going – and via transformers to restore the overall system.

While Ukrainians are determined to survive this hard winter, and while our troops are making advances on the battlefield, the additional support we request from Australia would have life-saving impact.

Paul Karp

Australia could free a third of its prisoners with little risk to community, new research finds

Exclusive: Australia’s prison population could be reduced by one-third with little risk to community safety, according to research conducted for the Institute of Public Affairs.

The research paper by Prof Mirko Bagaric, the dean of law at the Swinburne University of Technology, recommends law reform to prevent imprisonment of non-violent offenders.

It adds to calls from Labor’s assistant treasury minister, Andrew Leigh, and the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia to tackle Australia’s rising incarceration rates, particularly among women and Indigenous women.

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G20 preview: all eyes on Albanese’s potential meeting with president Xi

Katharine Murphy

Good morning from Phnom Penh. Anthony Albanese is on his way to the airport after two days in the Cambodian capital for the Asean and East Asia Summits.

We fly today to the G20 in Bali, where today’s focus is on the critical bilateral meeting between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. This will be Biden’s first face-to-face meeting with his Chinese counterpart since winning the presidency.

On Sunday, Biden met Albanese for about 40 minutes on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit. As we reported overnight, and senior US official Jake Sullivan confirmed with US reporters afterwards, yesterday’s conversation between the US and Australia was about comparing notes ahead of today’s bilateral in Bali.

Sullivan said Biden wanted to be “well coordinated with his closest allies”. Albanese will meet the summit host Joko Widodo shortly after we land this evening, before pushing on to a business event on the sidelines of the G20.

From the Australian perspective, all eyes will be on whether Albanese gets his own conversation with Xi during the G20 summit after breaking the ice with the Chinese premier at a gala dinner in Phnom Penh on Saturday night.

Paul Karp

Resource sector concedes threat from corporate ‘gorillas’ was unfortunate

The Australian Resources & Energy Employer Association head of policy and public affairs, Tom Reid, has appeared at the Senate inquiry into Labor’s IR bill.

Labor’s Karen Grogan asked about comments from the AREEA chief executive Steve Knott that “corporate gorillas in the mining, oil and gas sector have said this is not on” and are threatening a multi-million dollar campaign “like the mining tax on steroids”.

Reid said the use of the term “gorilla’” was “unfortunate”:

[Knott] likes to speak freely, he is quite colourful and open when talking to stakeholders about issues that have got him animated and concerned. That media comment was in the immediate aftermath of the bill coming in – Steve [Knott] was very shocked by the size of the bill, the inclusion of things with no evidence base. It was a bit unfortunate.

But as for the campaign? Reid said:

We have the full support of AREEA’s board and broad support of the membership. We are very actively and very publicly trying to explain to the general community and parliament just how damaging parts of the bill could be. We don’t apologise [for] going ahead with that, given the enormous contribution to employment and economy from our sector.

Grogan then tried to cross-examine him on the revenue and tax paid by some of AREEA’s larger members, but Reid said he had “limited insights” to offer.

Reid said part of the industry’s campaign would highlight that the parts of the bill aiming to lift low paid workers’ pay is completely different to broader changes to greenfields agreements and the single-interest, multi-employer bargaining stream, warning that the bill risks “pulling the highest paid and most productive sectors of the economy” into increased complexity.

Labor’s chair, Tony Sheldon, then attacked the “highly profitable” and influential miners, questioning whether AREEA were “a bunch of extremists” and labelling them the “monkey grinder of corporate gorilla munsters”. There was a question in there – are they the “overpaid gorillas of the Australian economy, telling everyone else to get out of their way?”

Reid again thanked Knott for the “unfortunate use of the term gorillas in the press” and pivoted to a very gracious answer about AREEA’s concerns about the bill, refusing to take the bait.