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Bridget McKenzie says rollback of inland rail project sends ‘chill’ through community

Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie, the shadow minister for infrastructure, said the Labor party has sent a “chill through the infrastructure pipeline” after the Albanese government abandoned a beleaguered inland rail project connecting NSW with Queensland.

People were surprised and shocked and dismayed at this announcement by the Labor government, they’ve been making their concerns heard loud and clear.

This Labor government has actually derailed this project and, indeed, sent a chill through the infrastructure pipeline investment community because no project would now be safe from some future government turning off the tap.

You’re cutting the wrong things, not the things that are going to drive a productive economy.

A senior surveyor at a government inspection unit has admitted alerting the renovation consultant ahead of site checks at Wang Fuk Court before the estate went up in flames, a public inquiry has heard.

Victor Dawes, lead counsel to the independent committee investigating the fatal fire, questioned Andy Ku, a senior maintenance surveyor at the Housing Bureau’s Independent Checking Unit (ICU), on Wednesday.

Dawes presented to the committee Ku’s written witness statement, in which the senior surveyor said that the ICU had “no particular role in reviewing or confirming the quality, reliability, and integrity of consultants.”

The committee earlier heard in March that one of the directors of Will Power Architects, the consultancy firm overseeing the large-scale maintenance work at the Tai Po housing estate, had not carried out his duties as a “registered inspector” (RI).

“The RI’s work, in effect, is to act as a regulator. If it’s not up to you to keep them in check, who else would it be?” Dawes asked Ku.

Ku replied that the oversight system is essentially “self-regulating” and that the ICU does not have a formal auditing system.

The committee also heard on Wednesday that for most of its inspections, the ICU had notified a Will Power employee, who was also a representative for the RI. The inspector himself was not there for most of the ICU checks.

Dawes remarked that the ICU’s inspection practice deviated from the norm with other government departments, such as the Labour Department and Buildings Department.

The lead counsel also told the hearing that the ICU had conducted a total of 10 inspections at Wang Fuk Court, of which only two were held without advance notice. One of those two inspections was an impromptu check, which Ku conducted himself after a medical appointment in the same district.

“If you didn’t have a medical appointment in Tai Po that day, there wouldn’t have been an inspection?” Dawes asked. Ku agreed.

Dawes then showed the committee screenshots of ICU maintenance surveyor Amanda Lau’s text conversations scheduling an inspection with the RI representative, who then alerted the contractor, Prestige Construction & Engineering. Ku confirmed that Lau acted on his orders.

After the fire, the ICU began conducting inspections without advance notice, Ku said.

Dawes asked if the new arrangements meant that the ICU realised there were issues with its old system. Ku replied: “There was room for improvement.”

Scaffolding nets, foam boards

Ku was also grilled on his unit’s oversight of scaffolding nets and foam boards, which a preliminary investigation has blamed for contributing to the spread of the blaze.

The lead counsel brought up the ICU’s checks on the fire retardancy of scaffolding nets used at Wang Fuk Court.

He asked Ku why he told the Buildings Department the nets were up to standard, despite the ICU’s own test showing the nets continued to burn for more than 10 seconds before the flame was extinguished.

Ku said that upon two retrials of the same piece of netting, the net did not catch fire.

Dawes showed a fire retardancy certificate to the committee and asked Ku whether the ICU could verify the legitimacy of the certificate and whether it really corresponded to the same lot of scaffold nets.

Ku said the unit could not verify, as it relied on the contractor’s word.

Despite residents’ complaints, the senior surveyor told the hearing that he did not notice the estate’s windows were covered with foam boards during an ICU inspection in September because scaffolding nets were in the way.

A month later, the contractor and the inspector told Ku that only three floors would have windows covered with foam boards whenever spalling works were carried out.

Ku said he did not ask to see a fire retardancy certificate for the foam boards as he believed the phased arrangement would mitigate fire risks. “There was no basis to ask for a certificate,” he said.

Dawes scrolled through about a dozen photos from the site, most of which showed windows covered with foam boards in clear view. The photos were part of a slideshow report that Ku had previously seen.

Dawes questioned how Ku could have been unaware of the foam boards, to which the government surveyor said he was “focused on the concrete works.”

Ku added that in retrospect, he “had been lied to” and that he did not follow up on the matter because there were no further complaints from residents.

WASHINGTON, May 7 — It was the perfect split-screen for the race to succeed Donald Trump — so long as your name is Marco Rubio and not JD Vance.

In a packed White House briefing room, journalists shouted over each other in a bid to get a question from the US secretary of state.

At the same time Vice President Vance — Rubio’s most likely rival for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination — was hundreds of miles away from the action at a political fundraiser in Oklahoma.

“Guys, this is chaos,” said Rubio as reporters desperately waved their hands at him.

The 54-year-old appeared to be enjoying his time standing in for Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is on maternity leave.

He fielded a series of questions on Iran, Cuba and China with a relaxed style and dashes of humour — and little of the invective that Trump often unleashes in his briefing room appearances.

The self-confessed rap fan even threw in some hip-hop lyrics, declaring Iran’s leaders to be, in the words of Cypress Hill, “insane in the brain.”

“Rubio just wrapped up his FIRST White House Press Briefing, and he absolutely knocked it out of the park,” conservative influencer Nick Sortor said on X.

“This man is a SERIOUS contender for 2028.”

Could it mark the moment when Rubio’s star definitively rose in the race to lead a post-Trump Republican party in two and a half years?

‘Easter Bunny over the Tooth Fairy’ 

Polling has suggested that Vance, 41, has a large lead among Republican voters.

Neither man has officially declared his intention to run — and Rubio himself has publicly said that the “veep” is a friend and insisted that he would not run in 2028 if Vance is a candidate.

Nor has Trump yet anointed an heir to the throne of his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.

But in Washington there has been growing speculation that Trump increasingly favours Rubio. Vance’s odds on prediction markets have collapsed in recent weeks.

While Vance’s life story — growing up in poverty in an Appalachian community beset by opioid addiction — is tailor-made to appeal to Trump’s base, he has sometimes struggled to connect with voters.

Yet Vance was not as far from the action as he may have seemed on Tuesday.

Notably, his travels took him to Iowa, the crucial mid-western state where Republicans will cast their first votes for the 2028 Republican nominee — and which first propelled Trump towards the White House in 2016.

The Oklahoma fundraiser meanwhile reflects Vance’s overlooked role as Republican National Committee finance chief — which could help build his grip on a party that has never quite seemed to warm to him.

And he stopped in Ohio to vote in a primary in the state where he was formerly a senator — and his son Vivek was able to cast a kids’ vote in a contest between two mythical figures.

“He voted for the Easter bunny over the tooth fairy,” Vance said of his son.

‘You’re not ready for my DJ name’ 

Vance is still regarded with suspicion by some Trumpists.

Back in 2016 he compared his future boss to Hitler. And the former marine and anti-interventionist has kept a low profile over Trump’s Iran war.

By contrast, Rubio is a long-term foreign policy hawk who has won Trump’s praise over the Venezuela and Iran military operations.

It was Rubio, and not devout Catholic convert Vance, that Trump dispatched to meet Pope Leo XIV this week amid tensions over Iran.

The White House’s X feed on Tuesday even seemed to lean towards Rubio, announcing his press briefing with the caption “Another job?” and posting a picture of him on dozens of channels.

If it was a try-out for the top job itself, Rubio wasn’t saying.

Rubio will know that two years is an eternity in politics — and that the last former secretary of state to run for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, suffered a stunning loss to Trump.

Instead, he was content to bask in the attention at the podium, while keeping his ambitions to himself.

That includes whether he has an alternative identity as a DJ after a video clip at the weekend showed a besuited Rubio behind the decks at a wedding even as Iran negotiations continued.

“My DJ name? You’re not ready for my DJ name,” he said. — AFP 

LONDON, May 7 — David Attenborough, a leading voice on climate change and biodiversity loss whose landmark documentaries transformed popular understanding of the natural world for a global audience, marks his 100th birthday on Friday.

Attenborough’s natural history series, such as Life on Earth, in which he had a famous encounter with mountain gorillas in Rwanda, have brought the most remote corners of the planet into living rooms worldwide.

“He’s taken us all to places that we would never otherwise go. That’s a huge gift,” botanist Sandra Knapp, director of research at London’s Natural History Museum, told AFP.

The BBC is leading the celebration of the Briton’s centenary with a full week of programming dedicated to his life.

Classic episodes of series including Planet Earth II and Blue Planet II are being reshown along with others such as Life in the Freezer and Paradise Birds available on the BBC’s iPlayer service.

The centrepiece will be a 90-minute live show on his birthday from London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Knapp said Attenborough’s programmes had “expanded people’s horizons” and been an inspiration to many.

Jean-Baptiste Gouyon, professor of science communication at University College London (UCL), said Attenborough had made natural history as popular as football.

Attenborough’s programmes succeeded in instilling in the public an unparallelled passion and wonder for the natural world, said Gouyon.

Attenborough’s lifelong passion for the natural world began as child, and he went on to study geology and zoology at university.

Prince William, heir to the UK throne, has described him as a “national treasure”. Attenborough was also a firm favourite of the late Queen Elizabeth II, who knighted him in 1985.

Showing Attenborough’s cross-generational appeal, US singer-songwriter Billie Eilish has praised his “deep love and knowledge of our planet”, adding: “The animal kingdom brings out the childlike curiosity within us all.”

Mountain gorillas 

Attenborough has often reflected on his “luck” in being able to “find and film rare creatures that few outsiders have seen in the wild”.

And he has said he has been able “to gaze on some of the most marvellous spectacles that the wild places of the world have to offer”.

In 2006, he added his voice to those raising the alarm on climate change and biodiversity loss.

He declared himself “no longer sceptical” about the issue, having waited for conclusive proof that humanity was changing the climate.

Attenborough’s broadcasting career spanning nearly eight decades has been closely associated with the BBC, which he joined in the early 1950s.

Life on Earth, released in 1979, has alone been watched by 500 million people worldwide, while dozens of documentaries and associated books have made him a household name.

Recalling the series’ highlight, when he unexpectedly found himself up close with a group of mountain gorillas, Attenborough described the experience as “bliss” and “extraordinary”.

“I was simply transported,” he said ahead of his centenary, reliving how the adult female twisted his head and looked straight into his eyes and her two youngsters sat on him as the cameras rolled.

‘Modern colonialism’ 

Still making documentaries well into his nineties, he used his 2025 film Ocean to condemn the industrial fishing methods of wealthy nations, which he called “modern colonialism at sea”.

Despite his fame, the broadcaster — whose brother was the late actor and film director Richard Attenborough — has always refused to be seen as a celebrity.

Gouyon said Attenborough always made sure to direct the viewer’s gaze back to the subject matter.

On the threat to the natural world, Attenborough has said he hopes humanity will be able to change course.

“Perhaps the fact that the people most affected by climate change are no longer some imagined future generation, but young people alive today... will give us the impetus we need to rewrite our story, to turn this tragedy into a triumph,” he said at the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow in 2021.

“We are, after all, the greatest problem-solvers to have ever existed on Earth,” he said.

At 100, Attenborough no longer wanders the world’s jungles and deserts.

But he has continued to tell the story of the planet closer to home.

In Wild London, broadcast in early 2026, he marvels at the wildlife of the British capital, his birthplace, from foxes and beavers to hedgehogs and harvest mice.

After all his travels, he has confided that his favourite place remains Richmond, an affluent and leafy suburb in south-west London.

He has lived in the riverside town for many years, and still resides in the family home he shared with his late wife Jane and their two children. — AFP 

FOSHAN (China), May 7 — Vacuum cleaners and vapes could get more expensive if the Iran war drags on for much longer, Chinese factory owners and traders warn, as the world’s manufacturing hub reels from “crazy” costs.

Weeks of US-Israeli strikes on Iran and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz have choked Asia’s oil supply, stymieing the production of plastic — derived from oil — across the region.

Manufacturing giant China has been comparatively sheltered from fuel shortages thanks to oil reserves and renewable energy, but local factories are picking up a ballooning raw materials bill.

“Basically, we’ve been losing money on all our orders,” said Bryant Chen, a manager at vacuum cleaner factory RIMOO in southern Guangdong province’s Foshan.

The price of plastic has risen roughly 50 per cent since before the Iran war, Chen told AFP as workers behind him fastened suction tubes to metal tanks.

“The costs of the products that we are making are being very greatly affected,” the 42-year-old said, listing plastic, copper for the vacuum’s motor and raw materials in its power cords.

“Typically at this time we’d be entering peak season, but compared to the same period previously, shipment and production data aren’t very optimistic.”

Two hours away, plastic traders in storage hub Zhangmutou said price fluctuations were the worst they’ve seen in decades.

“It has never been this crazy,” said Li Dong, 46, who entered the industry two decades ago.

The plastic, rice-sized pellets he buys for local phone case and EV battery factories jumped wildly in March, triggering days of panic that jammed the small town’s roads as factories rushed to stock up.

‘Mutual state of decline’ 

Exporters in Zhangmutou showed AFP a vast range of products their pellets would become, including drones and badminton birdies.

One trader sifted through pink, green and purple beads that she said would be moulded into e-cigarette casings sold in the Middle East.

The Iran war has hit plastic production even harder than bottlenecks caused by the Covid pandemic, when ships could not come and go from China, Li said.

Some sellers cashed in on the plastic panic, he added, fighting to take advantage of surging costs.

Li said the price of plastic had dropped around 10 to 20 per cent from its height, but he cautioned against further oil hold-ups.

“The factories we supply to will suffer the most because their direct costs will rise,” he said.

For exporters, the Middle East crisis has added to the hangover still lingering from Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs last year.

The US Supreme Court struck down those levies as illegal, but tolls on Chinese goods entering the US still sit at around 20 per cent.

On the outskirts of Guangzhou, one garment factory owner lamented the chaos triggered by the US President’s trade war.

Overseas clients are afraid to place orders, while Chinese manufacturers cannot pin down changing costs.

“As a result, everyone is in a mutual state of decline,” garment boss Zhou, 55, said.

While 80 per cent of his clients have returned, the fabrics scattered on his factory floor made into sweatpants headed for Europe and North America have risen 10 to 20 per cent in cost due to the Middle East war.

As overseas orders dropped, seamsters went months without a job.

‘Tensions rise, orders disappear’ 

Migrant worker Jingjing returned to her hometown in Hubei province for two months, where she made half the 400 yuan (RM240) she now earns in Guangzhou’s garment factories.

“When tensions rise... orders suddenly disappear,” the 42-year-old said.

But this year she said she always has something to do.

In a damp back alley, Jingjing joined job-seekers milling about leisurely, haggling for higher wages while garment bosses perched on scooters brandished hiring signs, desperate for day labourers.

Chen, the vacuum factory manager, said he was “still worried” about surging shipping costs should the Iran war drag on.

“If shipping costs rise, it will cause the final costs for our customers to increase sharply,” he said.

They “will have no way to sell normally, because the costs are just too high”.

Chen said RIMOO plans to expand to other markets beyond the Middle East where around 60 percent of its customers are based.

“We are still optimistic,” he said. “The market demand still exists.”

But analysts warn the war’s impact on costs will be felt for months.

“The problem is all of these costs will filter through the supply chains for the rest of the year,” said supply chain consultant Cameron Johnson.

“The longer it goes on, that kind of cascades into much bigger problems, particularly if there’s not enough oil in general to run stuff.” — AFP