The Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal has backed a decision by the Queensland College of Teachers to suspend a guidance officer over his dealings with a vulnerable teenage girl.
The former guidance officer, who cannot be named, had appealed the suspension, telling the tribunal allegations he had a romantic or sexual interest in the student were “entirely fabricated and unsubstantiated”.
According to the QCAT decision, the man acknowledged he had transgressed professional boundaries as a teacher, including by giving the student a birthday card and chocolates, keeping a non-school email for correspondence and maintaining contact outside school hours, even when the principal had ordered it cease.
The student, who the tribunal heard had “extensive mental health vulnerabilities,” said the man had also made inappropriate comments, went to her house, supplied her and a friend with alcohol, touched her inappropriately and told her he loved her. The college accepted her evidence.
Tribunal member Professor Ned Aughterson said he was not satisfied the man no longer posed a threat to children, even just based on his own evidence.
“In his record of interview, his initial denials were general and he states that he has ‘always insisted on and maintained professional conduct’ towards students,” Aughterson wrote in a decision published this week.
“This does not accord with subsequent concessions in the record of interview or in his submissions to the tribunal.”
A day after legislation was passed to establish an independent Olympic Games delivery authority, the Prime Minister has told Brisbane radio he’s confident Queensland will do it well.
Speaking on Nova 106.9 Brisbane on Friday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he was confident the Games would “be a cracker”.
“It will be a huge opportunity to showcase this great city and great state to the whole world,” Albanese said.
“So, it’s a flow-on effect as well. And I’m very confident that Queensland will do it very well.”
Albanese would not be drawn on the debate over the stadium for 2032, saying “I’m not micromanaging the Olympics”.
Read Matt Dennien’s full story about this week’s Olympic legislation.
Elon Musk has suffered another legal defeat in Australia after his social media company X argued it should not be subject to local anti-discrimination laws.
The Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal ruled X – formerly known as Twitter – has to answer to the state’s laws despite being based in America.
X has more than halved the number of moderators it employs since being acquired by Elon Musk in 2022.Credit: Bloomberg
The group behind the complaint is hailing the ruling as “precedent-setting”, saying it ensures social media companies must be held accountable for locally accessible content that breaches hate speech laws.
It stems from a complaint made by the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network, alleging Musk’s X should be responsible for posts on its site vilifying Muslims because it is a publisher.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has been speaking about the Coalition’s nuclear energy plans.
He was questioned on Nine’s Today program about estimates from the CSIRO that it would cost $8.5 billion and take more than a decade.
Dutton said he wanted to believe that battery power can provide the baseload but “it just can’t”, and that wind and solar power was intermittent.
“So you need to firm it up. And as we know at the moment, Labor governments in Victoria and NSW are extending the life of coal-fired power stations because they’re worried about the lights going out.”
Those comments come after the NSW government made a deal to prolong the life of the Eraring power station.
“We’ve got to get serious about a new energy system as we decarbonise and modernise, and nuclear is a key part of that,” Dutton said.
The opposition leader pointed to the Canadian province of Ontario, and said they have 60 per cent nuclear energy and power prices were a quarter of what was paid in Australia.
But Labor minister Bill Shorten, who also appeared on the program, said he didn’t believe nuclear energy was a viable option for Australia, and would cost too much and take too long.
“It will take about 15 years. $8.5 billion, costing twice as much as the renewables are,” he said.
Shorten said it wasn’t true to say 19 out of 20 countries in the G20 used nuclear power, arguing that Germany was moving away from it, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia didn’t use it.
“The truth of the matter is that if we were going to have nuclear power, that was a conversation for the 1960s, not the 2020s,” he said.
“We’ve got the opportunity to invest in our renewables and use gas as our base load transition until we get there.”
A mystery single entry from South Australia has won the $150 million Powerball jackpot – the third-biggest lotto prize in Australian history.
Lottery officials said the winning entry was bought in-store from a lottery outlet in Adelaide.
The ticket holder or holders were not registered to a card or online account, so their identity remains a mystery.
The jackpot had risen to $150 million last night after no entries scored the division one prize in the previous $100 million draw, prompting the lottery’s top prize to roll higher for the sixth consecutive week.
The $150 million was the third-largest lottery prize in Australian history, behind a $200 million Powerball win shared between two people in February and a $160 million jackpot in 2022 that was carved up between three ticket holders.
The odds of a single entry winning the division-one prize are more than 134 million to one – about the same chance as being struck by lightning twice in a lifetime.
A sunny morning has been forecast, with a partly cloudy afternoon, and a slight chance of a shower later in the day.
In other news, in Australia and overseas:
North America correspondent Farrah Tomazin meeting Savannah after she completed her seven-year journey around the world.
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