SBS News In Easy English 30 October 2024

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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to SBS News In Easy English. I’m Catriona Stirrat.
Cheaper fuel and energy bill relief have helped lower headline inflation to its lowest rate since early 2021.
A 2.8 per cent rise in the September-quarter consumer price index marks a return to the Reserve Bank’s target range of two to three per cent, after a long period above it.
On a quarterly basis the consumer price index lifted 0.2 per cent, well down from the one per cent rise in the June quarter.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers says it’s a sign of good governance.
“I know that our political opponents will pretend wrongly, falsely, deliberately, that this is only about energy rebates. Our energy rebates are helping and we’re pleased with that. But underlying inflation’s come off substantially as well, and that shows that broader underlying pressures in our economy are easing considerably as well.”
While Angus Taylor has criticised the federal government – saying Australia is behind international efforts to ease cost of living.
“The one thing that is clear is that Australians are worse off under Labor. Since Labor has come to power, we’ve continued to see a deterioration in Australian standard of living, and right at the heart of that has been raging in persistent inflation. This government has never had a credible plan to beat, and that’s why we’re at the back of the pack with dealing with it.”
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Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has paid tribute to those affected by a car crash at a primary school which killed a child and injured others.
A school community is in mourning after a car crashed through a fence yesterday killing an 11-year-old boy and seriously injuring four other children.
A 40-year-old woman had just collected her child at Auburn South Primary School in Melbourne’s east when the incident occurred.
Ms Allan says the strength of the Victorian community has been admirable.
“There has been messages of support that have come from every community and every corner of our state, and I want to thank Victorians for that, and I know speaking to the department, speaking to the principal, that really means a lot and they’re going to need to continue to have that love and support over the coming days, weeks, and months ahead because this will be a long journey as the school works through the aftermath and the impact of this tragedy.”
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A group of eight Austrian soldiers attached to the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon have been hurt in a rocket strike.
Austria’s Defence Ministry says the soldiers sustained superficial injuries in the strike on Camp Naqoura near Israel – but they have condemned the attack in “the strongest possible terms”, saying they want the incident to be urgently investigated.
The strike follows an earlier incident that saw two Sri Lankan peacekeepers hurt in a hit to their observation tower, one of at least 20 recent incidents on UNIFIL positions.
Sri Lankan Nursing Officer Lieutenant Colonel Shilpi Mankotia says the heightened threats from military activity are affecting everyone.
“Presently, each peacekeeper around is anxious due to the uncertainty of the situation here. We all are doing everything to keep ourselves motivated.”
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Research by a doctoral student in the US has helped to uncover thousands of previously unknown Mayan ruins in Mexico.
Tulane University doctoral student Luke Auld-Thomas and his advisor, Professor Marcello Canuto, have established there are more than 6,500 structures dating back nearly 1500 years in a jungle near the town of Campeche, including an unknown city.
Professor Canuto says the discovery was made with the help of a technology called Light Detection and Ranging, which allows researchers to look through tree canopy and interpret what is on the ground beneath.
He says this will help better explain the stories of the Maya civilisation.
“We have always been able to talk about the ancient Maya especially in the lowland regions because of their hieroglyphic texts, because they left us such an interesting record… What we are now able to do is match that information with their settlement and the population and what they were fighting over, what they were ruling over, what they were trading with right and who was involved with this. And that’s really interesting because these two now are rich datasets that kind of can talk to one another.”
That was SBS News in Easy English. I’m Catriona Stirrat.