As it happened: Dutton defends nuclear policy; Pilot escapes plane crash during NT defence exercise

A jumping castle involved in the deaths of six children in Tasmania will be re-inflated and examined by experts as part of the operator’s defence against alleged safety breaches.

Zane Mellor, Peter Dodt, Jalailah Jayne-Maree Jones, Addison Stewart, Jye Sheehan and Chace Harrison died in December 2021 when the jumping castle became airborne at Hillcrest Primary School, in Devonport, during end-of-year celebrations.

Coronial inquest preparations were paused after Rosemary Anne Gamble, the operator of the company that set up the castle, was charged with workplace health and safety breaches. She has pleaded not guilty and is expected to face a two-week hearing in Devonport Magistrates’ Court in November.

Today, coroner Olivia McTaggart granted a request from Gamble’s lawyer, Christopher Dockray, for the bouncy castle to be re-inflated and examined by two experts.

Dockray told the court the examination, to be carried out in August at an undisclosed location closed to the public, was “essential” to Gamble’s defence.

Lawyers representing families of the children who were killed and injured in the incident didn’t oppose the request, but stressed evidence must be preserved.

The court was told the castle, under custody of the coroner, would be filmed during transportation, re-inflation and deflation.

It will also be examined by a police officer and subsequent 3D mapping will be provided to the coroner.

McTaggart said replacement pegs would be used to erect the castle if the integrity of the original pegs couldn’t be maintained.

According to court documents, seven students were on the jumping castle when a “significant” weather event occurred, causing it to become dislodged. They fell from the castle, while a blower attached to the castle to keep it inflated struck a nearby student.

Gamble allegedly failed to ensure the anchorage system was sufficient to prevent the bouncy castle from lifting.

AAP

In breaking news overseas, a plane with 19 people on board slipped off the runway and crashed while trying to take off from the airport serving Nepal’s capital, state television said.

The plane belongs to the domestic Saurya airline and was heading from Kathmandu to the resort town of Pokhara, Nepal Television said on Wednesday.

It was not clear how it slipped or if there were any casualties.

Tribhuvan International Airport has been closed and emergency crews are responding.

AP

In breaking news, a massive defence exercise in the Northern Territory has narrowly avoided tragedy after a plane crashed south of Darwin.

The international aircraft was taking part in the biennial Exercise Pitch Black training event when it crashed near the Daly River on Wednesday morning.

On Wednesday afternoon, Defence Minister Richard Marles’ office confirmed the pilot ejected from the aircraft before the crash, with no fatalities reported from the incident.

The pilot was taken to the Royal Darwin Hospital in a stable condition for precautionary checks, but police said they were “otherwise safe and well”.

A Defence spokesperson said a search and rescue helicopter had helped to recover the pilot.

“The exercise participant made immediate contact with air-crew in the area via radio following their ejection,” the spokesperson said. “The pilot arrived at hospital by helicopter around 1.30pm (local time). All flying for the remainder of the day has been cancelled. Defence will provide further updates when available.”

It is not yet known what type of aircraft was involved in the crash, or what caused the incident.

Pitch Black, one of the largest tactical air operations in the world, is hosted by the Australian Royal Air Force and includes 20 countries, more than 140 aircraft and 4500 personnel.

The exercise is being held out of both the RAAF Base Darwin and RAAF Base Tindal.

The Air Force’s website describes the operation as its “most significant flying activity for strengthening international engagement and enhancing our ability to work with overseas partners”.

AAP

Australia can heal its sick environment for far less cash than the federal government gives fossil fuel companies every year, scientists say.

At the National Press Club in Canberra today, some of the nation’s most distinguished environmental scholars launched a landmark blueprint to restore ailing land and sea scapes and rescue thousands of species from death row over the next 30 years.

And while the annual price tag of $7.3 billion might seem eye watering, they say it’s cheap at less than two-thirds of what the government reportedly gives fossil fuel producers in subsidies each year.

The independent Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists says its plan will cost just 0.3 per cent of Australia’s GDP – an excellent spend, they say, given half of the national economy is nature-dependent.

And it’s a fraction of the $30 billion Australians spend on their pets annually, group member Martine Maron told the National Press Club.

“Just half of the GST from that spending could recover all of Australia’s threatened species,” said the professor of environmental management at the University of Queensland.

“Frequent announcements of a million dollars here and there for worthy environmental projects can make it feel like the money is flowing, but at the moment we are throwing tiny cups of water at a burning building.”

Fellow member and ANU geography professor Jamie Pittock said politicians should welcome the blueprint because it shows voters don’t have to choose between a healthy environment and a productive economy.

He says global studies estimate doing nothing about environmental degradation equates to a loss of nearly half a trillion US dollars, or $A479 billion, per year.

“If we don’t take serious action now then we will have neither a productive economy nor a healthy environment.”

AAP

US cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike has issued its first post-incident report into last Friday’s outage that crippled devices globally and caused the Australian economy $1 billion in damage by early estimates.

CrowdStrike said an update containing an undetected error passed validation and was sent to millions of Windows devices, forcing many to shut down with a “blue screen of death” error.

The incident knocked out businesses globally including airlines, banks and supermarkets.

“On Friday, July 19, 2024 at 04.09 UTC [Coordinated Universal Time], as part of regular operations, CrowdStrike released a content configuration update for the Windows sensor to gather telemetry on possible novel threat techniques,” the company said in a statement.

“The issue on Friday involved a rapid response content update with an undetected error.

“Systems in scope include Windows hosts running sensor version 7.11 and above that were online between Friday, July 19, 2024 04.09 UTC and Friday, July 19, 2024 0.27 UTC and received the update. Mac and Linux hosts were not impacted.”

CrowdStrike global president Mike Sentonas, a Melburnian, apologised for the incident on Tuesday night.

“We deeply apologise. I, personally, apologise for what happened,” he told Sky News.

“We understand the disruption and the distress that we caused a lot of people. And firstly, I think it’s important to say we put out an update, which we do regularly, and we’ve been doing for over a decade. And we got this very wrong.

“We identified what the issue was very quickly. We stopped that particular file from being propagated but unfortunately a lot of people around the world did get access to that file ... And the experience that people had was a blue screen of death.”

Earlier today, Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce had the final word after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was peppered with questions about the Coalition’s nuclear power policy at a press conference in the Hunter Valley.

In a report released overnight, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering found a fully formed market for small-scale nuclear reactors is unlikely to develop in Australia for more than 20 years because of the technology’s expense and unproven performance, casting doubt on a key pillar of the Coalition’s plan to build seven nuclear power facilities.

In response, Dutton said “there are plenty of experts around” who see the potential for nuclear development in Australia’s energy market, as the Coalition does.

“We’ve done analysis, and we’ve spoken to experts. Our analysis is that we can have nuclear into the system [by] 2035 to 2037 in the first two sites, and then we’ll continue to roll it out from there,” the Liberal leader said.

But as Dutton thanked reporters and tried to end the press conference amid questions about how he would address the concerns some Muswellbrook residents had about having a nuclear reactor proposed nearby, former deputy prime minister Joyce asked if he could add one last thing.

Peter gave some great examples. I’m gonna give you one more – one more.

And you’ve got to hear this – you’ve got to hear this: Australia does have a nuclear reactor. People don’t realise it, [but] we do.

It’s bang smack in this city – might’ve heard of it – a town called Sydney, right, Sydney.

And around Sydney are houses worth $1.5 to $1.6 million. And if they look out their front or back door, whichever way they want to face, they see Lucas Heights.

So if Sydney can handle it, I reckon Muswellbrook can handle it.”

Lucas Heights is home to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s (ANTSO) reactor, which underpins Australia’s nuclear medicine capabilities.

Last month, ANU honorary professor Tony Irwin told this masthead the Open-pool Australian lightwater reactor (OPAL) at ANTSO was very different from reactors intended to drive nuclear power.

OPAL is a “neutron factory” that runs cool, meaning if the reactor surpasses 60 degrees, control rods plunge into the core to disrupt the nuclear fission in half a second.

“It’s completely the opposite to a power reactor, which is a big kettle,” said Irwin, who managed the Sydney reactor in its early years. “You want as much temperature as you can to produce steam.”

The Lucas Heights reactor only generates about 20 megawatts of heat compared to nuclear power stations in the UK, which produce about 1200 megawatts, and the 300 megawatts produced by the small modular reactors spruiked by Dutton that are not yet commercially viable.

With Angus Dalton

Major telcos are preparing for up to 150,000 people to be cut off from telecommunications, including emergency calls, after Australia’s 3G network is shut down.

Telstra and Optus executives appeared before a Senate inquiry this morning into the closure of the ageing 3G mobile network, committing to their shutdown deadline of August 31.

Devices that are not compatible – often bought overseas or secondhand – use 4G data for regular calls and texts, but bump triple-zero calls to 3G because they are not enabled with a technology called voice over LTE.

Users may not realise their phone is configured this way by the manufacturer until the 3G network is switched off and they need to call triple zero.

All telcos, including TPG/Vodafone, have a service for customers to check the status of their device by texting “3” to the number 3498.

AAP