Month: May 2019

Damaging winds that caused gusts of up to 90km/h in Sydney's CBD and up to 125km/h in the regions on Monday are likely to return on Tuesday in association with a new cold front, the Bureau of Meteorology has warned, after Sydney's seemingly endless summer came to an abrupt end.

In Sydney, winds whipping through the CBD and dubbed a "polar jet" by Weatherzone forecaster Andrew Miskelly, sent debris flying, causing problems for traffic and pedestrians alike while other areas of the state received a dusting of snow.

A man was killed at Silverdale in Sydney's west when a flying branch hit a truck about 1.50pm, causing it to lose control before hitting a tree. The driver of the truck was flown to Nepean Hospital in a stable condition, but his passenger died at the scene.

A lane also had to be closed on the Sydney Harbour Bridge due to a loose sign, while fallen wires closed Seven Hills Road in Seven Hills.

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There were reports of cars and other people, including a mother with a pram, nearly being hit by several sheets of steel sheeting flying off a building site in the gale. Meanwhile, a Herald reporter narrowly missed loose plastic material landing on him near a construction site during the gust.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service has warned bushwalkers to delay their trips because of the weather. Weatherzone reported Sydney's temperature as being 13.2 degrees at 4.30pm on Monday, with a "feels like" temperature of 4.3 degrees.

Winds picked up about lunchtime with gusts in the city up to 90km/h and average wind speeds of about 60km/h at Sydney Airport.

Earlier on Monday, the Bureau of Meteorology issued a severe weather warning for "vigorous westerly winds" in the state's south-east in the afternoon, including for the Sydney metropolitan area, the Illawarra and parts of Hunter, South Coast, Central Tablelands, Southern Tablelands, South West Slopes and Snowy Mountains.

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Zhi-Weng Chua said the worst winds, which gusted up to almost 90km/h about 1pm at the airport, had probably passed for the day in Sydney.

Mr Chua said wind speeds were expected to ease further on Monday evening but remain strong offshore and strengthen again on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"Tonight will be cold, or below average," Mr Chua said.

But slightly warmer minimum temperatures were expected for the weekend, he added.

The cold front also brought a dumping of snow to the Blue Mountains and Snowy Mountains overnight, with more falls expected during the week.

Perisher reported 20 centimetres of snow as the first blizzard of the season arrived.

The cold fronts bring to a screeching halt the near-record heat that has characterised most of the month so far.

The temperature at Observatory Hill in Sydney was just 13 degrees on Monday afternoon, according to Weatherzone, compared with a high of more than 27 degrees on Saturday.

That recording was more than 7 degrees above the average high for this time of year.

Last week, smoke haze choked Sydney, shrouding the city in a thick fog following hazard reduction burns by the NSW Rural Fire Service. Those conditions were caused by the combination of very light winds and a temperature inversion resulting from a high pressure system.

Weatherzone is owned by the publisher of this website.

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A heavily guarded Ivan Milat has been moved from a high-security ward in Sydney's Prince of Wales hospital to Long Bay Jail hospital in a convoy of three cars.

The convicted serial killer has been in the Randwick hospital since May 13, when he was first transported from his cell at Goulburn supermax jail.

He has been diagnosed with advanced cancer of the oesophagus, and told he may only have weeks to live.

On Tuesday the 74-year-old travelled in the convoy of cars that left Prince of Wales hospital around 12.25pm.

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He was seated in the right-hand, back passenger seat of a white Nissan 4WD, which stopped briefly on Randwick's Hospital Road as a large media scrum surrounded the vehicle.

The car, which was followed by two other vehicles carrying Corrective Services officers and staff, drove straight to Long Bay Jail Hospital on Anzac Parade.

Over the past two weeks Milat has undergone testing and possible treatment of advanced malignant tumours on his throat and in his stomach, in a secure inmate-only annexe of the hospital.

He is serving seven life sentences for the killing of seven young backpackers between 1989 and 1993. Despite his conviction in 1996 he has never admitted to any of the murders.

Milat is not expected to return to his solitary confinement cell in Goulburn – rather he is likely to see out his days in the Long Bay hospital facility.

Milat's nephew Alistair Shipsey told The Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday that he was expecting to visit the 74-year-old once he arrived at Long Bay Hospital.

"I'm going to be applying definitely to visit, as soon I know he's there, solid, locked in, I'll be going to visit him."

Mr Shipsey said his mother Dianne and his uncle Bill had both been to visit Milat in the past week at the Prince of Wales.

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"Mum said he was in high spirits, said he talks very clearly, no dementia … nothing wrong. He's switched on," he said, adding that both his mother and his uncle commented on how much weight Milat had lost.

"Bill said I'd be lucky to recognise him, he's lost so much weight … [but] last week he actually got to have some soup, he's keeping food down, and is fully coherent, feeling a lot better."

It is unclear what treatment Milat will undertake, however it is understood all custodial patients are triaged for treatment like other public patients at the hospital, by a multidisciplinary team of nurses, doctors, psychiatrists and allied health staff, including aged care and cancer care clinicians.

Custodial patients are not given priority treatment beyond what is appropriate and required.

A Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network spokeswoman told the Herald that treatment plans were "determined by clinicians based on the individual needs of the patient, including consultation with specialists (such as cancer and surgical specialists) from Prince of Wales Hospital."

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While she could not comment on individual patient cases, the spokeswoman said all custodial patients who complete care at Prince of Wales Hospital can be moved to Long Bay Hospital for clinical care, in collaboration with the cancer specialists.

Mr Shipsey said the Milat family had been told the convicted serial killer would potentially undergo chemotherapy, adding that he had had "two procedures" while he's been at the Randwick hospital.

Milat has always maintained his innocence.

This month NSW Police minister David Elliot made a public statement urging the 74-year-old to do “one last honourable thing on his deathbed” and assist police with any questions related to his crimes and other unsolved murders to which he has been linked.

For a long time, my coming out story was not something I wanted to share. It would often bring me to tears. And, sometimes, to a dark place of self-harm and not wanting to live.

Growing up in a traditional Christian home, I was terrified of coming out. As expected, my parents – who were divorced – did not take it well.

Shortly after telling them I was transgender at 16, I was moved, against my will, to a Christian high school. My friends were considered a bad influence and had somehow “made me trans”, so by moving me away from them, this would “all go away”. I was also banned from talking to, or seeing, my friends who were my only source of support at the time.

To have my parents so strongly reject me as their son, to refuse to use my correct name and pronouns, to cut off my support network, to move me to a school where I was forced to wear dresses and skirts, to force me to stay in the closet and hide like something shameful, was incredibly damaging to my mental health.

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I became depressed. My enjoyment in life and activities I had previously enjoyed declined dramatically. I hated looking at myself naked in the mirror and I would shower with my eyes closed. I swung between feeling overwhelmed and hopeless, to feeling nothing at all. I still wonder which was worse. I had suicidal thoughts. I often thought to myself, “Wouldn't it be easier for everyone if I just wasn't here?”

I never attempted suicide but I did come very close once. I had tried many times to take baby steps with my parents. Just little things like asking them to not use any pronouns at all, rather than “she” or “her” pronouns. But even these were met with anger and even disgust.

After one such failed attempt, I felt absolutely and totally hopeless. I felt like my family would never accept me; that they would never understand or support me, or even respect me. That day I considered ending it all.

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But I was terrified I wouldn't die; that I'd be mis-gendered in hospital and that in the rush to operate on me, the medical staff would destroy the chest binder I wore to keep my chest flat, and mitigate how distressed my chest made me feel. Then I thought of how sad my friends and family would be. I thought of the driver, and how selfish it would be to traumatise some poor, innocent driver to make my own life easier.

So I didn't kill myself that day, and I am so glad I didn't.

Given my parents' disapproval and rejection, I couldn't start medically transitioning as soon as I came out. I had wanted to start hormone replacement therapy (testosterone) and have top surgery (removal of breast tissue and contouring to give the chest a 'male' appearance) right away, but I had to wait until I was 18 and legally able to make appointments and decisions, myself.

Two years! To 16-year-old me, that seemed like an eternity. Those were the hardest and darkest years of my life.

Even after turning 18 and graduating from school, my parents and siblings had still not come around. So, I booked my own appointments to the psychiatrist to be assessed for testosterone therapy and top surgery. I paid for the appointments out of my own pocket and counted down the days until I could take my first shot of testosterone. I paid for each shot of testosterone, which I will need four times a year for the rest of my life. I also paid for top surgery all by myself. It cost more than $10,000 so I put off purchasing a car because the surgery was far more important.

By this time, my family had started to come around.

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It took them three years.

For me, it was three years of bearing the “she/her” pronouns when they should have been “he/him”.

It was three years of hearing my old name, instead of Logan.

It was three years of censoring myself, and not correcting people, out of fear and depression.

But after those three years, my parents saw that being true to myself, being Logan, being trans, made me happy.

For my dad, especially, the turnaround took a lot of research, a lot of talks with counsellors and my psychiatrist and it took time. Dad even drove me to hospital so I could have top surgery, just after my 20th birthday.

I was also happy and relieved that Mum arrived before I went into the operating theatre.

After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, my family now accept and support me. I am my parents' son, I am an older brother to my siblings, I am a grandson, I am a nephew, and I am me.

For a long time, telling the story of how I came out as trans brought me to tears, but now it makes me smile.

*Surname withheld

Logan is a guest on SBS' Insight on Tuesday, 28 May at 8.30pm. The episode focuses on transgender teens.

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For the past few weeks, I’ve had more than a few people giving me advice on who should be in the NSW side for State of Origin I.

And plenty of advice on who shouldn’t be there. How many people told me that Nathan Cleary shouldn’t be the halfback?

Try everyone.

When we assembled our team at North Bondi Surf Club on Monday morning for the team photo, and I looked at our halves — Nathan and Souths’ Cody Walker — I was more pleased with the way we went.

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It's a big ask but I am confident they will get the job done.

My advisors, Greg Alexander and Danny Buderus, and I have a system where we don’t put anyone’s name in pen until the final round.

If you get really excited about players, you know you are going to get your heart broken because of injury or form. We copped a nice little final jab to the head on Sunday afternoon when Dragons back-rower Tyson Frizell left the field early with concussion.

We started this season with last year’s halves, Nathan and Jimmy Maloney, written in pencil. From there, injury and form guided our thinking.

By last Friday night, I was convinced that Nathan was our halfback.

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He went into the Thursday night match against Parramatta at Bankwest knowing what was on the line. The pressure was on. He’d been verballed all year about his form. I’d also spoken to him in the lead-up to the game. He knew what was at stake.

It was a really tough game for him to shine. There were plenty of dropped balls and mistakes in the greasy conditions — but he stood tall above all the others.

Then, on Friday night, things changed dramatically. As soon as I saw Luke Keary concussed for the Roosters against the Knights, I knew he wouldn’t be playing in a sky-blue jumper at Suncorp Stadium on June 5.

To be honest, it was the least of my concerns. His welfare is everyone’s priority.

I checked in with Roosters coach Trent Robinson and then I went down to the Knights rooms. I wanted to speak to their halfback, Mitchell Pearce.

“How you going?” I asked.

“Mate, I’ve got a sore groin," Mitchell replied.

That ended that conversation pretty quickly, which is actually good. Mitchell was up front. He wants the best for NSW.

There and then, Jimmy Maloney’s name came back into my head. So did Cody Walker's.

I’ve been watching Cody's defence closely this year and it’s been a lot better. He gets in there, he’s aggressive, and that’s the thing that sells him as our five-eighth.

Everyone knows what he can do with the ball and with his feet. You can see what he can do every time Souths have had the ball this season.

But we look at the defensive side of things as well. We try not to talk about things that players don’t have, so the thing that comes through this year is that his defence has been great. Maybe, in the past, I haven’t felt that way.

There’s no game that stands out for me but there's been no game when I’ve walked away and said: he can’t be our six.

So, for whatever reason, the two healthiest halves became the two best. Cleary and Walker.

When injuries take away competition, it hurts your discussion. We want to foster competition to be in our side. It makes it better. It's healthy.

We always wanted to pick the team from last year and people had to find a reason to get in — or those who did the job last year had to give a reason for us not to pick them.

It’s tough because it’s all so public. That’s what State of Origin is about: it’s a big show.

People will be angry that we've picked Angus Crichton, because he hasn't been going great for the Roosters. They’re under the pump. They’re a bit battered. But that's where loyalty comes in.

I've seen Queensland's side. I don't think about them too much, to be honest. It's a strong team, across the board, as it should be because the majority of them are internationals.

Ben Hunt has been named at hooker but who will play there when he becomes too tired? Moses Mybe or Josh McGuire? Who knows?

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There hasn't been much contact with the outside world since coming into camp because I have a "no phones" policy. That means you get about half an hour when you return to your hotel room late in the day.

When I got back to the room on Monday afternoon, there were 30 missed calls.

But there have been a few text messages back and forth with Jimmy Maloney, who I contacted after the side was named.

It was a difficult decision not to have him here with us.

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Prime Minister Scott Morrison is aiming to put the government's $158 billion income tax cut to the new Parliament in the first week of July, as he urges his ministers to perform and warns his backbench against complacency.

Mr Morrison set out the timeline at a Coalition meeting on Tuesday morning, where he hailed the government's success at winning seats from Labor and declared his confidence in doing more of the same at the next election.

While the Prime Minister did not set a hard date for the meeting of the 46th Parliament, he told the gathering that he “expected” to see everyone back in Canberra in the first week of July.

The date will depend in part on whether the Australian Electoral Office can complete its count from the May 18 election so the writs can be returned in the last week of June.

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While the opening days of Parliament would be largely ceremonial, with Tuesday, July 2 as one likely date, the rest of the week could be used to pass the tax package through the lower house.

The intention appears to be to sit for one week and then allow a two-week break in the middle of July when school holidays are on in several states and both territories.

The Prime Minister told the MPs there were many other areas of Australia where the Liberals and Nationals could build their vote and secure future victories.

While there were conflicting accounts of whether Mr Morrison named specific seats, those where the Coalition came close to defeating Labor included Cowan in Western Australia, Dobell on the NSW Central Coast and Solomon in the Northern Territory.

The remarks came in a gathering of Liberal and Nationals MPs in Canberra where 28 new members joined the party room, each of them standing to receive applause from their colleagues.

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Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack said "the wind is at our backs" and told the room that Mr Morrison had the potential to be one of the great prime ministers of modern times.

Mr Morrison reprised his message from the election campaign that the government would “burn” for Australian voters, but he also warned his MPs against being too confident after their victory.

He pointedly told the group that 67 members of the Coalition party room did not know what it was to serve in Opposition, and he stressed that they should never wish to be in that “wasteland” where they could not get things done.

In a warning to the ministry, he noted that the party room had many others with the talent to serve on the frontbench and this meant there was “pressure to perform” on everyone.

The chief government whip in the lower house will be Bert van Manen, one of the whips in the last Parliament and a Queensland Liberal who is close to Mr Morrison. He will be supported by two whips, Rowan Ramsey and Nicolle Flint.

The Nationals whips will be Damian Drum and Ken O'Dowd.

The Speaker in the last House of Representatives, Tony Smith, was confirmed as the government's nominee for the position in the next Parliament. This was done at a Liberal Party meeting earlier on Tuesday with nobody standing against him.

Nationals MP Kevin Hogan, who left the party room to sit on the crossbench after the leadership spill that removed Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister last August, appears to have rejoined the joint party room and is his party's nominee for deputy Speaker.

The president of the Senate, Scott Ryan, is expected to retain the position once the new Senate meets in July, the point at which Coalition senators will agree on their nominee.

Vienna: Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of Austria and his caretaker government were ousted from power on Monday with a no-confidence vote in Parliament, as the ramifications of a secretly filmed video added to the political disarray in a European country normally known for stability.

Kurz launched his re-election campaign just hours later.

After about three hours of debate, a simple majority of lawmakers stood up in a demonstration of their withdrawal of trust from Kurz, 32, making him the first Austrian leader in more than seven decades to be removed from power by his peers in Parliament.

The removal of Kurz, just 17 months after he became chancellor, came despite a gain of 8 percentage points for his conservative People's Party in the European Parliament elections.

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"I am still here," Kurz told a crowd of fans and cheering People's Party officials that were bussed to Vienna.

"They cannot stop the change that we have started," he said.

New elections are planned for September, although that process could now be accelerated, with the country led by a caretaker government appointed by President Alexander van der Bellen in the interim.

Kurz's coalition government with the far-right Freedom Party collapsed after the party's leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, resigned as vice chancellor May 18 after a video emerged that showed him promising government contracts to a woman claiming to be a wealthy Russian in exchange for financial support.

The meeting, which was filmed in 2017 without Strache's knowledge, appears to have been a setup. But it raised questions about the Freedom Party's ethics, given their leader's apparent willingness to trade political favours for Russian black money.

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Prosecutors in Vienna said on Monday that they had opened an investigation into who was behind the video.

After Strache resigned, Kurz fired Interior Minister Herbert Kickl, a leading Freedom Party member, prompting the remaining far-right ministers to quit in protest. The chancellor called for a snap election in September and replaced the four ministers with technocrats until a new government could be voted into power.

But opposition leaders accused Kurz of abusing their trust in his government by failing to work with them in organising his interim government and by refusing to apologise for his role in the political uncertainty.

"Mr. Chancellor, you and your government do not enjoy our trust," Pamela Rendi-Wagner, the leader of the Socialist Party, told lawmakers before calling for the no-confidence vote.

Kurz had defended his recent actions as necessary and said they had been made in consultation with van der Bellen.

New York Times, DPA

Fast food giant Domino's Pizza's shares have slumped to an almost four-year low over fears that slowing growth in sales and store rollouts will see it deliver lower than expected profits over the next two years.

Morgan Stanley analyst Thomas Kierath on Tuesday cut his price target for the ASX-listed company's shares from $50 to $41 on Tuesday, and sliced his recommendation to investors from over-weight to equal weight.

Domino's shares had fallen 6 per cent to $38.26 by 11.30am, which is the lowest they have traded since September 2015. The shares were trading as high as $80 in 2016.

Mr Keirath said that after 10 years of strong double digit growth, Domino's Australian and New Zealand business was slowing.

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He said that was "driven by the law of large numbers (finally), competitors catching up with online capabilities, moderating same store sales growth and new product innovation that lacks the punch of that in prior periods".

"Same store sales growth has slowed significantly in recent periods, reflecting very strong growth in prior periods and it reaching its potential market share in Australia and New Zealand," Mr Keirath said in a note to clients.

Morgan Stanley found that Domino's had added few stores to its network in the past five months, while data showed an 11 per cent fall in Google impressions, which suggested sales were slowing.

Domino's said in February it was heading towards the lower end of its guidance for earnings and sales growth.

But Mr Keirath said that Domino's was like to miss its guidance for earnings to grow between 10 and 20 per cent this year entirely. He cut his earnings per share forecast for 2019 to 2021 by between 4 and 9 per cent.

The slowing in sales and store growth in Australia, New Zealand and Europe would be partially offset by higher earnings in Japan, helped by the weakened Australian dollar.

Domino's is the 25th most shorted stock on the ASX, with 8.7 per cent of its shares held in short positions, according to shortman.com.

The company said it did not comment on day-today share price movements and would provide a trading update on the day of its full-year result, on August 21.

More to come 

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Two young women walk out of the World’s End pub and disappear into the cold Edinburgh night. The next time anyone sees them, they are dead.

Christine Eadie’s body will be found first, dumped on the sand dunes of Gosford Bay, just outside the Scottish capital. Helen Scott’s body is found later, a few kilometres away, dumped in a just-harvested cornfield.

It would take 37 years, one failed trial and an Australian mathematician to finally put one of Scotland’s most notorious serial killers behind bars.

The 1977 World’s End murders quickly gained international attention. But despite a huge manhunt by local police it took 30 years for a man to be charged.

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Forensic scientists managed to pull tiny, damaged strands of DNA from the clothing used to bind the women’s wrists. They discovered the genetic code matched those of a man already behind bars.

Angus Sinclair, a Glasgow-born painter, had already been found guilty of the murder of 17-year-old Mary Gallacher and, before that, Catherine Reehill – his childhood neighbour.

But when he came before court for the murders of Helen and Christine in 2007, DNA science was not as developed as it is today.

There were no eyewitnesses to the slayings. The case was circumstantial.

The scientists testified that the DNA was most likely Sinclair’s.

But they couldn’t be sure. They gave the judge a probability, and it wasn't a high one.

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“DNA, it’s now black and white. But it wasn’t early on,” Professor David Balding says.

The professor now leads a lab at Melbourne University, but back then he was a scientist working with London Metropolitan Police's forensic team. He remembers watching the judge hand down his ruling: no case to answer.

With nothing else to support it, the DNA evidence simply wasn’t convincing enough.

Sinclair wasn't convicted.

So Professor Balding got to work.

Professor Balding specialises in a type of DNA work called mathematical computational genetics. Rather than extracting the DNA in a lab, he writes mathematical models that can help translate the lab work into real-world answers.

His job: use the math models to weigh up how strong the evidence against Sinclair was.

It was a particularly difficult task for two reasons.

First, almost 40 years of storage had left the DNA badly degraded. The long strands had broken down into small sections, like a frayed rope.

Second, each sample possibly contained DNA from four people: Sinclair, his brother-in-law who also was accused of committing the murders, and the two girls.

Three billion bits of DNA from each person, broken down into tiny strands and mixed together, and almost 40 years old.

Professor Balding's mathematical model had to take all that into account, plus factor in likely degradation of the DNA, contamination, and experimental noise.

Amazingly, Professor Balding was able to come up with a new estimate of the odds it was somebody else's DNA in several of the samples: one in a billion.

It meant there was virtually no chance that the DNA belonged to anyone but Sinclair.

“It was pretty overwhelming,” he says.

In 2014, Balding spent a day in court under forensic cross-examination, defending the findings of his models. The maths held.

Finally, on November 14, 2014, more than 37 years after Christine Eadie and Helen Scott died, Angus Sinclair was found guilty of their murder, and sentenced to 37 years’ jail.

For his contributions to genetic and forensic science, Balding was on Monday elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, along with 21 other notable scientists.

These days Balding works on integrative genomics: testing what DNA can tell us about "everything – our appearance, our health, how every little bit works in the body".

"Hopefully, that makes the world better," he says.

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The Morrison government is ramping up pressure on Labor to support a bipartisan approach to energy and emissions policy as it rebuffs critics of its climate change plan in industry and the environmental movement.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor has dismissed calls from climate change groups to reach a deal on  Labor's proposals to cut greenhouse gas emissions, insisting his opponents recognise the will of the people and back the government's plan.

The call came after likely Labor deputy leader Richard Marles admitted on Monday he had been "tone deaf" to welcome the end of coal, in a comment that signals an opposition rethink on its wider policy on climate change.

Mr Taylor ruled out reviving the full National Energy Guarantee (NEG) as a way to cut emissions despite a suggestion from former Liberal deputy leader Julie Bishop on election night that the option should be on the table.

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"We're firmly committed to the policies we took to the election. We now have a clear mandate to implement those policies – and we'll be doing so," Mr Taylor said in an interview.

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"There's now an opportunity for a bipartisan approach to energy and emissions.

"Labor should adopt our plan, which was supported by the Australian people, and I know industry wants to see bipartisanship. Now's the opportunity."

Industry groups including the Business Council of Australia backed the NEG last year when it was put forward by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and endorsed by his cabinet and party room, only for the emissions target within the policy to be scrapped at the height of the August leadership crisis.

Labor went to the election with a policy to revive the guarantee and use a market mechanism to cut emissions, a stance backed by some industry executives who were uneasy at Mr Taylor's insistence on using the existing Emissions Reduction Fund to reduce carbon.

Mr Taylor insists the public funding in the Emissions Reduction Fund will help meet the government target to reduce carbon output by 26 per cent by 2030.

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Asked if the government would consider using the NEG to reduce emissions, he said: "We don't need to." He said another feature of the guarantee, a reliability obligation on electricity generators, would come into force as planned on July 1.

"Now is the opportunity for Labor to accept the policy we took to the election and create a bipartisan approach to these issues," Mr Taylor said.

While industry executives had speculated that Prime Minister Scott Morrison might appoint a new energy minister, he instead confirmed Mr Taylor in the position in the cabinet reshuffle on Sunday.

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Mr Taylor's priorities include signing contracts with 12 projects shortlisted to gain government support to add new generation to the electricity grid, as well as legislating price benchmarks to start on July 1 to act on recommendations from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

"We've been clear that we'll bring as much supply and competition into the market that we need to get back to a reasonable wholesale price," he said.

"If these shortlisted projects provide us with enough, so be it. If we need more, we'll look for more."

On calls from the Nationals to support a new coal-fired power station in Queensland to provide baseload power, he said the government would take a "balanced" approach.

"Coal has a role to play in our energy mix. Renewables are playing an increasing role, so whichever way you look at it there will be balance," Mr Taylor said.

"Picking fuels is much less important than focusing on outcomes, so we'll focus on the emissions and price and reliability outcomes we want."

Ms Bishop, speaking on a television panel on election night, questioned the Coalition's decision to dump the NEG.

Incoming Labor leader Anthony Albanese said on Monday that "the science is in" on climate change and that action was needed, but he left scope to change Labor policy on the mechanism to be used to do so.

"I am neither a climate sceptic nor am I a market sceptic when it comes to action on climate change, because I have listened to business and sat down with them," he said. "But the time for the ongoing conflict over these issues surely is over."

Labor has been stung by its defeat in Queensland electorates, where voters did not back the party's equivocal position on the Adani coal mine and greater ambition to cut emissions by 45 per cent by 2030.

Mr Marles accepted on Monday that the party suffered for his remarks in February that the collapse of the market for thermal coal was good "at one level" despite fears over job losses.

"The comments I made earlier this year were tone deaf and I regret them and I was apologising for them within a couple of days of making them," he told radio station 3AW.

Asked where he stood on Adani, Mr Marles said the party valued working people.

"Coal clearly is going to play a significant part of the future energy mix in Australia and it's clearly going to be a significant part of our economy," he said.

"And it's really important that we acknowledge that people who work in the coal industry need to be valued by us and that we thank and celebrate their work. That's important."

Woodside chief executive Peter Coleman will call on Tuesday for more agreement in Parliament on climate change and energy, an area where gas exporters face significant costs if a future government seeks to impose a market mechanism to reduce emissions.

"Our goal should be an approach to climate policy that is national, consistent with the Paris Agreement and which balances the environment and industries that support jobs and economic growth," Mr Coleman says in a draft of his speech to a gas industry conference.

"Once again, these are not competing goals but need to be aligned if outcomes are to be sustainable."

The one constant in the swirl of parenting advice is that children should have limited screen time.

My girls have had iPads since they were three. TV shows like In the Night Garden were part of their wind-down ritual before bed. They spend hours absorbed in Minecraft and Crossy Road. My older daughter spends her school holidays at "code camp" to learn even more about screens. And they veg out at the movies and TV.

Given all that, the experts would surely say that I’m a terrible dad.

The eminent neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield fears screens are changing the very structures of our brains, eroding our inner life and capacity for introspection. Meanwhile, David Gillespie, author of Teen Brain, claims "unfettered access to screens is driving an epidemic of addiction, depression and anxiety, the likes of which we have never witnessed before”.

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The World Health Organisation recommends no sedentary screen time for children under two and no more than one hour per day for two-year-olds. They add “less is better”, pointing to links between the time children sit in front of screens and excess fat, delayed motor and cognitive development and poor emotional health.

“Sedentary screen time is one type of passive sedentary time and has an unfavourable association with, for example cognitive development,” says Dr Juana Willumsen, WHO focal point for childhood obesity and physical activity.

But it’s worth taking a closer look at the evidence.

The WHO recommendations, for example, are based on systematic reviews of data published in peer-reviewed journals on the relationship between physical activity, sedentary behaviour — specifically sedentary behaviour reported by parents as passive screen use — sleep and various health outcomes

That all seems pretty watertight — until you read the accompanying commentary the WHO provide on the quality of evidence.

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Look at the text just under the recommendations for sedentary time where there is, in a smaller-sized font, the following disclaimer: “Strong recommendations, very low quality evidence.”

The WHO goes on to acknowledge that their recommendations on the links between screen time and body fat, cognitive and motor skills development and psychosocial health are based on “moderate to very low-quality evidence” and that “the overall quality of evidence was rated as very low”.

This comes as no surprise to other researchers in the field.

“We have no evidence yet that if, for example, a teenager is doing poorly, taking away their phone would help them,” says PhD candidate Amy Orben from the University of Oxford’s Department of Experimental Psychology.

Ms Orben, along with Professor Andrew K Przybylski from the Oxford Internet Institute, looked at data involving some 17,000 children aged 9–15 living in Ireland, the US, and the UK, and found there was almost no evidence to show digital technologies adversely affect children’s wellbeing.

So what gives? Why are parents routinely advised to reduce screen time for kids?

One of the problems with research on technology and health, Ms Orben says, is it often mistakes correlation and causality.

“It’s the same kind of thing with murder rates going up when ice cream sales go up. There's no relation between the two, but murder rates are higher in the summer and ice cream sales are also higher in the summer,” says Ms Orben.

Similarly, the ubiquity of screens and increasing reports of anxiety and depression and other health problems among kids have occurred together, but no causal link has been proven.

Another problem is researchers using huge datasets. While these make the findings robust, they can also make otherwise tiny effects take on a significance that might otherwise go unnoticed in everyday life.

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“We can label effects, as statistically significant, that are tiny,” says Ms Orben, adding that "statistical significance is not the same as practical significance".

Ms Orben illustrates the point with the example of wearing glasses. “If a teenager wears glasses to school, that also has a negative correlation with their wellbeing. That correlation is also really, really small. It is statistically significant — and it's actually larger than the one between digital technologies and wellbeing.”

That’s not to say there’s no adverse effect of screen time and technology, but the proven impact children’s wellbeing and development is tiny. Ms Orben says children would need to use screens up to 11 hours per day or more to experience a decrease in wellbeing. While we’ve all heard stories of kids “addicted” to video games, they are the exception, rather than the rule.

Ms Orben points out that, unlike the World Health Organisation, the UK Chief Medical Officer for the UK and England and the Royal Society for Paediatrics and Child Health have declined to issue concrete guidelines about screen time because the evidence of harm simply isn’t there.

Sydney-based registered psychologist Jocelyn Brewer says studying the impacts of screen time is difficult ("you can't give all teenagers a ‘dose’ of technology and map the outcome"), but the "less is better" message from the WHO and others is unhelpful.

“We really need to empower parents to help them work out what does their digital diet and the digital menu look like for their family, and how does that fit into bigger questions of when do you go and spend time in the outdoors or as a family, and how and when do you eat meals, and all of that other contextual wellbeing.”

Ms Brewer says these recommendations also often ignore the potential positives of screen time.

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“For some kids not to be on social media is worse for their wellbeing than being a moderate user, because they don't have that social capital to participate, the way other kids do,” she says, adding that, for many kids, hanging out on social media or video games such as Fortnite is the equivalent of spending hours in the skate park or the shopping centre.

She advises parents to become active participants alongside their children in screen time and talk to other parents to negotiate ground rules about technology use.

“We want parents to feel empowered around taking control and understanding what's happening in the digital space, not shamed,” says Ms Brewer. “Participating is better than standing back saying ‘I'm not a gamer, I don't get that' or ‘just do that for one hour a day'.”

Christopher Scanlon is a Melbourne academic and co-author of the young-adult series The Chess Raven Chronicles under the pen name Violet Grace.