Reece Walsh has appeared on breakfast TV in good spirits after a high tackle from the Blues’ Joseph Suaalii knocked him out in the State of Origin opener last night.
“It’s all part of the game, it was a good hit and [you] just gotta keep rolling with the punches,” Walsh told the Today show this morning.
“At the end of the day it is what it is.”
Reece Walsh hits the deck after a hit from Joseph Suaalii.
Walsh was ruled out for the entire game with a category one concussion after the hit.
Referee Ashley Klein sent Suaalii off seven minutes into his debut Origin game, labelling the tackle “a very dangerous action”.
When asked if he felt for Suaalii, Walsh replied: “At the end of the day you make the decision and you’ve just gotta live with it. That’s footy.”
Read more about the Maroons victory over the Blues last night.
A fresh look at compulsory ID scanning and a boost to late-night public transport have been identified as priorities for Brisbane business, as they met with council to find a way to supercharge the nighttime economy in time for the 2032 Games.
The new Nighttime Economy Advisory Group, chaired by deputy mayor Krista Adams, met for the first time this afternoon ahead of the state government launching a review of Queensland’s Safe Night precincts.
John Collins, the part-owner of the Fortitude Music Hall and Triffid venues, said extending late-night transport must be a priority if Brisbane is to have a thriving 24-hour economy.
Fortitude Musical Hall in Brisbane.Credit: Tony Moore
“I think making transport run later would be a really good thing, particularly on weekend nights,” Collins said.
“So if you lived 25 minutes from the city you don’t have to use an Uber or taxi. You could still use a bus or a train. That would make it more affordable for people to come in and out of these precincts.”
A senior Australian Defence Force officer says he is disturbed by reports that a military padre – similar to a chaplain or support officer – told a grieving army widow that she was young and would “find somebody new” after the death of her husband.
Another widow of one of the four army personnel who died when their MRH-90 Taipan helicopter crashed off the Queensland coast during training exercises last July has said that a military padre advised her not to hold her late husband’s funeral on Father’s Day.
“[I was told] I needed to think about my dad and how disrespectful that would be to the most important man in your life, and I needed to be thinking about how that would affect my future husband and my future children,” Caitland Lyon, the widow of Captain Danniel Lyon, told an inspector-general inquiry into the fatal helicopter crash in May.
Chadine Whyte, the widow of Lieutenant Maxwell Nugent, said a padre told her “that I’m young, and I’ll find somebody new”.
“Which is an incredibly cruel thing to say because he’s not replaceable,” Whyte told the inquiry.
After raising the matter at Senate estimates hearings today, Greens Senator David Shoebridge asked: “Who on earth would say that to a widow? … How is this happening?”
Deputy Chief of army Chris Smith said he was not aware of the details of the padre’s comments but added: “I agree with you that they sound in the circumstances concerning.”
Smith said he would seek to find out if the padre who offended the grieving widows was still working in the field.
It was just another day for a group of scientists – until a tiger shark threw up an echidna.
The James Cook University research team had seen some sights tagging marine life off the Queensland coast, especially from tiger sharks.
This silhouette of the regurgitated echidna next to the tiger shark.Credit: Nicolas Lubitz
They are known to eat anything – seabirds, tyres, license plates and even small TV screens.
“They’re just a scavenger. I’ve seen videos of them eating a rock for no reason,” marine biologist Dr Nicolas Lubitz said.
The first of three State of Origin clashes last night was the highest rating television program of 2024 so far.
The match, which saw Queensland thrash an under-manned New South Wales side was viewed by an national average audience of 3.44 million across the Nine Network, 760,000 of those being streamed on digital platform 9Now.
The total reach of the program – meaning those who watched for at least one minute – was 5.31 million according to the latest VOZ report from ratings agency OzTAM.
The numbers fall short of several records set by the Matildas during the Women’s World Cup in 2023, the semi-final match against England attracting an average audience of 7.13 million across Seven and 7Plus.
Premier Steven Miles is appearing before a crowd at the XXXX brewery in Milton and has just delivered his Queensland Day speech.
But the second question in the Q&A to follow was about the LNP.
Asked about leader David Crisafulli’s apparent adoption of Labor’s looming budget, here’s what he had to say.
My cabinet hasn’t even endorsed the budget yet, but the Leader of the Opposition has?
We all know what they’re trying to do right? He is absolutely determined to tie himself into the tiniest little ball of a small target so people won’t see the risk.
He is effectively trying to say to Queenslanders, you can have a Labor government, just without the Labor Party. I don’t think anyone’s going to fall for that.
The family of an Aboriginal mother whose remains were found in a bag are devastated after a coroner was unable to determine the cause of Constance Watcho’s death.
The 36-year-old was last seen in South Brisbane in November 2017.
Constance May Watcho.
About 10 months later, her remains were found at the bottom of a cliff at Kangaroo Point.
Handing down her findings in the Brisbane Coroners Court on Thursday, Deputy State Coroner Stephanie Gallagher said the place and cause of Watcho’s death remained unknown.
The precise circumstances of the death of the mother-of-10 were unknown but suspicious, Gallagher found.
Her finding was based on Watcho’s remains being partially disarticulated, the manner of their disposal and the length of time between when she was last seen and her remains being found.
She made the finding alongside the possibility Watcho died from some other unknown cause.
After a hugely successful debut, the show that lit up Brisbane’s City Botanic Gardens last year is coming back for Brisbane Festival 2024.
Lightscape, a multi-sensory light and sound experience, attracted 160,000 visitors and made $5.5 million in sales when it debuted as part of the 2023 festival program.
The 2024 show promises a “dazzling new experience”, with premiere works through the two-kilometre self-guided trail.
Lightscape 2024 will also feature two exclusive sculptural installations created by Queensland First Nations artists Paul Bong (aka Bindur Bullin) and Michelle Yeatman.
Brisbane Festival artistic director Louise Bezzina said she was delighted to welcome a new version of the festival favourite back to our “beautiful inner-city oasis”.
“This year’s Brisbane Festival program encourages us to embrace frivolity and I cannot imagine a more fitting place to do so than among technicolour trees, fields of luminous blooms and ethereal soundtracks,” she said.
Tickets are now on sale for Lightscape 2024.
The proportion of affordable suburbs for house buyers has plunged over the past five years, leaving buyers on a budget looking to units or further out of city areas.
The PRD Affordable and Liveable Property Guide, released today, defines affordable suburbs as those within 20 kilometres of the CBD where the typical house is cheaper than the median house price within five kilometres of the CBD.
Five years ago, half (51.7 per cent) of houses within 20km of the Brisbane CBD were affordable, but the proportion is now closer to a quarter (27.6 per cent). They include Strathpine and Griffin in the City of Moreton Bay, north of Brisbane.
In Sydney, the proportion has fallen from 32.5 per cent to 11.1 per cent, while in Melbourne it has fallen from 61 per cent to 24.4 per cent.
PRD Real Estate chief economist Dr Diaswati Mardiasmo expected options to have been limited by rising house prices.
“But I didn’t expect it to be that low,” she said.
“It just really highlights how undersupplied we are when it comes to houses – and the move to units, it’s pretty much inevitable.”
Treasurer Jim Chalmers says politicians should not stoke division after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton compared protests for Palestine to Holocaust deniers.
Labor and the Coalition berated the Greens on Wednesday for lending support to pro-Palestinian activists who have targeted federal MPs and vandalised electoral offices.
During Dutton’s speech in parliament, he said: “six million people were gassed in the second world war, and we have got people in our country today out there on university campuses and outside MP’s offices denying that that took place.”
Speaking on Radio National this morning, Chalmers said it was not for him to fact-check Dutton’s claim during question time.
“Our job is to try and calm this division, not stoke it,” Chalmers said.
“That’s certainly what the prime minister’s objective is, my objective, the government’s objective.”
Federal Greens leader Adam Bandt says his lawyers have written to Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus over what he considers “defamatory statements” made about him and the Greens.
Dreyfus gave an interview to ABC Afternoon Briefing where he spoke about protestors attacking electorate offices following on from question time when Labor and the Coalition berated the Greens for lending support to the pro-Palestinian activists.
“I think that the Greens political party and particularly the leader of the Greens political party have got something to answer for here in the way that they have been encouraging criminal damage of MPs electorate offices, encouraging really riotous behaviour, sometimes violent behaviour, that has been occurring outside electorate offices,” Dreyfus said yesterday.
In a statement this morning, Bandt said Dreyfus should not make “utterly unfounded statements and spread disinformation”.
“My lawyers have written to the attorney-general regarding what I consider to be defamatory statements he made about me and the Greens yesterday,” he said.
“I think that the first law officer of this country should not make utterly unfounded statements and spread disinformation. No politician should do that.
“I would prefer not to have to pursue these matters legally, and I hope the Attorney will respond in a proper way.”
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