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Police have accused environmental activists who staged disruptive protests in Sydney on Monday of “incredibly dangerous” behaviour and have vowed to continue tracking down all of those involved ahead of further actions planned this week.

A woman who locked herself to the steering wheel of her car and blocked the harbour tunnel was one of 11 climate protesters arrested in Sydney, as Blockade Australia activists kicked off a week of disruption with a march through the city centre on Monday.

On Monday afternoon, acting assistant commissioner Paul Dunstan said those involved will be charged with recently introduced state government legislation to crackdown on illegal protesters following several arrests of climate change activists blocking traffic and access to ports. Protesters face a maximum penalty of two years’ jail and $22,000 fines for disrupting traffic or preventing access on roads.

Dunstan said police will continue going through CCTV footage to identify protesters so they can be arrested. He also said police will have an increased presence across the city in coming days in anticipation of further actions.

Police will continue to be out in force in the coming days as this group continues their unlawful disruption of Sydney. They appear hell-bent on continuing this activity to disrupt the people of our city…We need the public’s help to help us identify those involved and to help us prevent further unlawful protest activity.”

Dunstan said police had a “very strong deployment on the footprint of the CBD” on Monday, “however, the group this morning was highly unorganised and erratic, and they were moving throughout the CBD in an unstructured format, and it was difficult to get ahead of them”.

We will be out in force and we will have additional police as a result of this morning’s activity. What I will say – the behaviour of this group was nothing short of criminal activity. The throwing of bicycles, the throwing of garbage bins, the throwing of other items in the path of police, in the path of media, in the path of innocent members of the public just walking by, will not be tolerated and cannot be by the people of NSW.”

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Tamsin Rose

Free refresher RSA courses extended for NSW hospitality

Hospitality workers are being given extended free access to refresher courses for responsible service of alcohol and responsible conduct of gambling certificates as part of a New South Wales government bid to ease worker shortages.

The scheme is being extended into next year as pubs and clubs continue to struggle to find workers. The hospitality minister, Kevin Anderson, said:

Many who left the sector have seen their mandatory certifications lapse. We want to make it easy for those people to quickly and freely renew those certifications and remove any barriers that are preventing them from re-entering the hospitality sector.

People whose certificates lapsed since February 2020 will be able to renew their certificates for free until February next year.

More than 16,000 people have completed free RSA and RCG refresher courses since February this year, according to the government.

Katharine Murphy

‘Alarming’ state of the environment report to be released in July

Tanya Plibersek says a damning national environmental report card received by the former Coalition government last year but not released, tells an “alarming story” of decline, native species extinction and cultural heritage loss.

In one of her first interviews as the new federal environment and water minister, Plibersek said the state of the environment report – a five-yearly official scientific assessment – would be released when she gave a National Press Club address on 19 July. It would help inform changes Labor planned to strengthen the country’s widely criticised national environment laws, she said.

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Thanks so much for hanging out with me this morning. I’m handpassing this blog over to my lovely colleague Elias Visontay now – he’ll be with you for the rest of the afternoon. See you tomorrow morning!

Frank Moorhouse remembered for contribution to Copyright Agency

If you’re a creator in Australia and you’ve ever received a payment from the Copyright Agency for use of your work, you have Frank Moorhouse to partly thank for that.

The Copyright Agency have talked about the late writer’s legacy in a Twitter thread here:

New UAP senator calls on PM to review staffer reduction decision

Paul Karp

The United Australia party’s new senator has accused Labor of “pumping the brakes” on the crossbench’s ability to scrutinise the government by cutting their staff.

Ralph Babet, the Victorian senator, has called on Anthony Albanese to review the decision, which the prime minister has doubled down on despite threats from minor parties of disruption in the Senate if their allocation is not increased.

On Friday, Labor revealed that crossbench parliamentarians will receive just one additional adviser, down from four under the Morrison government, prompting One Nation and senators Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock to threaten to delay government bills.

Babet said:

Cutting independent and minor party parliamentary staff allocation by 75% will make it very difficult for us to be able to do our jobs effectively.

The prime minister is essentially pumping the brakes on our ability to scrutinise the government and the legislation they may propose. We call on the prime minister to review his decision.

Auction levels down after interest rate rises

With Australia likely to have considerably higher interest rates by the end of the year, it’s not surprising that the most rate-sensitive parts of the economy are going to get a bit more attention, particularly real estate.

Of course, record-low interest rates from November 2020 until (awkwardly for the Morrison government’s reelection hopes) May this year, helped propel property prices to record levels in many parts of the country. It makes sense that we’ll see some unwinding of those rises now the cost of borrowing is increasing.

CoreLogic, a consultancy, said the past week’s auction levels were down about one-fifth in the main capitals from a year ago. But preliminary clearance rates edged slightly higher to 59.8%. This time last year, 75.4% of auctions held recorded a successful result.

Sydney, the most expensive city to live in the country, did have a small uptick in clearance rates too. However, not so promising was 28.6% of scheduled auctions in the past week that were pulled – a level not seen since late April 2020, CoreLogic said.

For now, investors are betting the Reserve Bank has more increases to come this year in its cash rate target (a rate that in turn directly influences what commercial banks charge households and businesses for their loans).

If the market’s speculation is correct that the RBA will lift its cash rate from 0.85% to 1.5% on 5 July, the 65-basis-point move will be the largest since 1994.

SA Liberal party data harvesting was ‘inadvertent’, ombudsman says

Data harvested through hyperlinks in media releases and on government websites used by the previous South Australian Liberal government was muddled and of little use, the state ombudsman has ruled.

Wayne Lines looked at the use of links by the Liberals that redirected web users through a domain used by political parties around the world to collect data for campaign purposes, AAP reports.

Lines said it appeared the practice had been inadvertently carried over when the former government was elected in 2018 and ceased in March 2021.

As well as the hyperlinks being used in media releases, employees from a range of agencies had cut and pasted them on to agency resources without understanding the potential implications.

The ombudsman engaged an expert in cyber security, privacy and the protection of government data to provide advice after studying the functions of several of the hyperlinks in question.

Lines said on Monday that advice found the data was effectively “muddled” and most likely could not be used in any meaningful way:

In all of the circumstances, particularly noting the expert advice that it does not appear data was produced in any meaningful form, I determined, in my discretion, that it is not in the public interest to take further action in relation to the matter.

Even so, the use of stateliberalleader.nationbuilder.com for the management of media distribution lists by the former government as a carryover from being in opposition is regrettable and created the perception of public information being used for party-political purposes.

Lines said he had released details of his inquiries to remind all political parties of the importance of government resources not being used, or having the appearance of being used, for party-political purposes.