Grim call on algal bloom horror
Suffocated by the bloom, thousands of dead sea animals have been washing up on South Australian beaches for months.
The bloom, which is thought to be the product of severe east coast flooding in 2022, has reportedly grown to twice the size of the ACT.
Senator Watt will on Monday brief cabinet on the catastrophe before flying from Canberra to Adelaide.
'We've said consistently that we're willing to support the South Australian government as they manage this event and the visit that I'm paying today will ensure that I can keep the cabinet well informed about what the situation is and what support may be required,' he said.
He also said it was 'a naturally occurring phenomena that is not going to be solved overnight'.
'We all want to see those beautiful beaches return to the state they're normally in,' Senator Watt said.
'We want to be able to see recreational and commercial fishers be able to get back to what they're doing and we want to see all those incredible species returned to health.
'We will continue working to support the South Australian government's response.'
The visit to Adelaide signals a change in the Albanese government's handling of the issue.
Senator Watt insisted as recently as last Friday that it was a state issue, brushing off concerns from the Greens and state-level MPs.
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Trump's Critical Minerals Obsession Reignites Deep-Sea Mining
(Bloomberg) -- The leader of one of the most aggressive seabed mining startups spent years invoking global warming to spark interest in extracting avocado-sized rocks rich in electric-vehicle battery metals from the bottom of the ocean. Why the Federal Reserve's Building Renovation Costs $2.5 Billion Milan Corruption Probe Casts Shadow Over Property Boom How San Jose's Mayor Is Working to Build an AI Capital Salt Lake City Turns Winter Olympic Bid Into Statewide Bond Boom 'We want to help the world transition away from fossil fuels with the smallest possible climate change and environmental impact,' Gerard Barron, the Australian chief executive officer of a company then known as DeepGreen, told a 2019 meeting of the United Nations-affiliated International Seabed Authority, which for a decade has been debating regulations to allow the mining of untouched, biodiverse deep-sea ecosystems in global waters. That's not Barron's pitch anymore. Climate was out and critical minerals were in during an appearance earlier this year before a congressional committee in Washington, DC. His firm, renamed as The Metals Company (TMC), would help 'ensure the nation's energy security and industrial competitiveness for generations,' Barron said. 'China is close behind.' Barron's new tack is working. In April, President Donald Trump issued an executive order expediting US licensing of seabed mining, departing from international law to unleash what the administration called a 'gold rush' to 'counter China's growing influence.' The country is set to conduct ISA-sanctioned tests of two seabed mining machines in the Pacific over the next year. China already dominates the critical minerals supply chain on land, and TMC had successfully tapped into the US president's pursuit of China-free metals, expressed as a desire for dominion over Canada and Greenland. The global seabed, TMC repeatedly emphasized as it lobbied politicians and the White House, holds the planet's largest estimated reserves of minerals like cobalt and nickel in the form of black rocks called polymetallic nodules. These cover the Pacific Ocean floor by the billions. In an instant, Trump cleared the way for a race to the abyss to extract nodules, even though seabed mining technology remains under development and commercially unproven. At the ISA's annual meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, delegates on Monday decried Trump's move, with China's representative denouncing the US for 'unilateralist hegemonic acts' and attempting to 'replace the global standards with US standards.' Within days of Trump's order, Canadian-registered TMC's US subsidiary filed the world's first application to mine the seabed in international waters, including an area it licenses from the ISA. An $85 million investment from a leading Korean metals processor soon followed. Nasdaq-listed TMC's shares, which have periodically languished below a dollar, hit a 52-week high of $8.19 on Thursday. A Silicon Valley startup called Impossible Metals, meanwhile, has applied for a license to explore and possibly mine nodules in US waters off American Samoa, with an aim to raise $1 billion. Then on July 14, a top executive at US defense giant Lockheed Martin told the Financial Times the company is in talks to give seabed miners access to international areas of the Pacific it licenses from the US. A Lockheed Martin spokesperson declined to confirm the report but said, 'We appreciate the Trump administration's focus on ensuring reliable sources of critical minerals, including the ocean.' On Monday, delegates in Kingston ordered a report on ISA-licensed seabed miners at risk of violating their contracts with the body, a thinly veiled reference to TMC and other companies that might also seek to apply for US licenses to mine in international waters. The Trump-triggered seabed mining boom faces significant hurdles, though. While TMC has told investors it expects to begin mining within a year of receiving a license, the technology to extract minerals from the seabed at depths of four kilometers (2.5 miles) could be years away from being deployed at scale. Its competitiveness with terrestrial mining is unknown, as is the economic viability of processing and refining seabed minerals amid seesawing metal prices and the growing market share of battery technologies not reliant on nodule metals. The US lacks such metallurgical capacity, and it could take years to bring online in the few countries outside of China with the potential to refine nodule minerals. 'Given the rapid evolution of batteries and other relevant technologies, there is great uncertainty about the future demand for critical minerals,' researchers at RAND wrote in a recent report. 'A seabed mining industry, as a whole, faces considerable opposition from nations and organizations concerned about the potential negative environmental impacts.' The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The countries that TMC relies on for seabed mining and processing technology are among the ISA's 169 member nations (plus the European Union) that oppose unilateral mining in international waters. Amid such backlash, a Japanese corporation, Pacific Metals Company, that planned to process TMC's nodules has now told investors that it would only 'launch operations once the international rules are finalized.' 'All those parties have a legal obligation to ensure that deep sea mining only takes place through the ISA,' says Samantha Robb, an Amsterdam-based attorney who specializes in ocean litigation. At the ISA, delegates convened behind closed doors on Friday to debate how to respond to TMC's plans. Barron, who once sat with the delegation of a tiny Pacific island nation that sponsors one of TMC's ISA contracts, has been absent this year but he's weighing in from afar. 'Amid some noisy grandstanding coming out of Jamaica this month, this is a good reminder … the US has every right to pursue seafloor resources in international waters,' he wrote Wednesday on X. In a statement to Bloomberg Green, TMC says it's 'on firm legal and regulatory footing,' citing the sizable investments it's recently attracted. The company, however, cautioned investors in a May securities filing that a US mining license wouldn't be recognized internationally, which could affect 'logistics, processing, and market access' for the seabed minerals TMC mines. 'It's going to take some time' More than a thousand miles southwest of Mexico on a September morning in 2022, a yellow, 80-metric-ton machine slowly rumbled across the seabed on tank-like treads, a plume of sediment billowing behind. During a two-month test for TMC, the 38-foot-long prototype vacuumed up 3,000 metric tons of nodules, sending them through a tube to a specialized surface vessel called the Hidden Gem. TMC hailed the trial as a success. Yet any commercial operations are a ways off, even if the US grants TMC a mining license this year, given technological and legal obstacles that must be overcome. Allseas, a Dutch-owned, Swiss-registered offshore engineering and construction company, developed the technology, the world's only working prototype of a nodule mining system. The company supplies the apparatus to TMC and is its second-largest shareholder. To meet TMC's production targets, it must now build a much bigger version capable of harvesting nodules nearly around the clock under crushing pressure far from shore. A US seabed mining license, however, would require TMC to deploy American-built and owned vessels. How the companies would comply with that mandate is unclear. Allseas said in a statement that it would take about two years to engineer the technical systems to support full-scale mining but it won't begin that work 'until we are confident that all relevant regulatory conditions are met.' Allseas, which itself owns an ISA-licensed seabed mining company, has come under pressure from Dutch politicians and activists not to provide technology for unilateral mining. TMC says it can't comment while its US mining license application is under review. But in a May 14 securities filing the company said it's 'evaluating U.S.-based vessel' options. However, the US hasn't built a specialized seabed mining ship like the Hidden Gem, and only eight US ocean-going bulk cargo carriers — large ships that can hold tens of thousands of pounds of nodules and transport them to shore — are in service. Seven of them are at or near the end of their lifespan, according to a 2024 US Maritime Administration report. Impossible Metals uses a nodule collector, called Eureka, that's designed to hover above the ocean floor, its robotic claws selecting individual nodules that its artificial intelligence program determines aren't inhabited by marine organisms. (Scientists estimate that at least 30% to 40% of deep ocean life in the seabed targeted for mining live on nodules.) The company has delayed a planned trial of the Eureka in an ISA-licensed area of the Pacific until at least 2027 because the technology needs further refinement. And any mining wouldn't happen until at least the early 2030s. Impossible Metals' mining license application is for US waters, not areas controlled by ISA. 'That's far less controversial,' said CEO Oliver Gunasekara. 'But obviously it's going to take some time.' What it takes to process a nodule In a small lab in Pasadena, California, scientists at an Impossible Metals spinoff called Viridian Biometals are trying to crack a problem about as challenging as pulling nodules out of the abyss: getting the metals out of the nodules. Nodule minerals precipitate out of seawater, forming layers around a piece of whale bone, a shark tooth or another small object at the rate of a few millimeters every million years. Unlike terrestrial minerals, where a couple of different metals might be found together in a deposit, nodules contain nickel, cobalt and copper particles scattered throughout every rock, mostly embedded in a matrix of manganese oxide. 'The treatment of materials that contain all four of these elements is not something that is commercially done today,' said Lyle Trytten, a veteran of the metals processing industry and president of Canada-based Trytten Consulting Services. Viridian scientists are tinkering with rock-breathing microbes that oxidize nodules to extract the most valuable metals. On a June afternoon, senior scientist Kenny Bolster opens up what looks like a freezer to reveal stainless steel bioreactors. As microbes inside oxide the manganese bits, they release nickel, cobalt and copper ions into a solution. 'All this happens at ambient temperature and pressure, which saves an enormous amount of energy and doesn't produce any toxic waste,' says Viridian CEO Eric Macris. It'll take a few years to assess whether the technology is likely to be commercially feasible. 'We love what Viridian is doing but we're just not sure if it will be mature enough when we need it,' says Impossible Metals' Gunasekara. If TMC, Impossible Metals and other companies mine the ocean floor under a US license, then federal law requires the minerals to be processed and refined in America. Aside from Viridian's early efforts, the US has no such capacity. A single facility in the US capable of processing and refining nodules would cost several billion dollars, and could take up to a decade to reach full production, in part due to the complexities of handling an entirely new feedstock, according to Niels Verbaan, director of metallurgy technical services for Swiss testing and certification company SGS. The US tax and spending bill enacted on July 4 allocates $5.5 billion to the Department of Defense for investments in critical minerals supply chains. But the US has suffered a precipitous decline in metallurgical expertise since the 1980s when universities began to eliminate related degree programs. 'We are decades behind now, and it's going to be very hard to catch up,' says Corby Anderson, a professor of metallurgical and materials engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. New immigration restrictions will also make it harder to recruit engineering talent from overseas. China has invested heavily in the industry and is now in a position to retrofit existing facilities to process nodules or build dedicated new plants. The country processes 74% of the world's cobalt ore, according to a 2024 report from the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan think tank, while 97% of global nickel ore processing capacity lies outside of North America. China also maintains more than 80% of the capacity for refining those metals into advanced EV battery materials. There's few existing facilities outside of China capable of handling nodules, even if a US seabed miner receives permission to use them and the owners are willing to revamp operations, according to industry executives. 'These processing plants are not just sitting there idle begging for feed, they're all in use today,' says Trytten. The 'blue whale' in the room TMC has found one overseas metals processor willing to make the switch. Last year, Pacific Metals Company of Japan fed a 2,000-ton pile of nodules collected by TMC in 2022 into an electric-arc furnace to produce 500 tons of a material. In February, it was smelted into a nickel-cobalt-copper alloy. 'These process plants are very expensive to build, they're very complicated, they're very risky,' says Jeffrey Donald, TMC's head of onshore development. 'So by using an existing asset, existing operators, you're really taking that capital off the front end and you're really de-risking the technology and operations aspect.' In April, Pacific Metals announced it would transition from processing nickel ore to smelting nodules. But it doesn't expect full production to begin until 2029 at the earliest. TMC has also struck a deal with metals giant Korea Zinc, which is assessing the feasibility of refining nodules into battery materials, a process TMC has so far tested only in the lab. Whether nations would be enabling deep-sea mining through commercial relationships with US-licensed seabed mining companies was the subject of whispered conversations among ISA delegates this month as they continued drafting mining regulations. Trump's move to mine in international waters and TMC's defiance of the ISA was, as French ambassador Olivier Guyonvarch alluded, 'the blue whale' in the room. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea prohibits unilateral mining by any country or corporation. It also requires the ISA to administer the global seabed for the benefit of humanity, with any royalties from mining divided among member states. The US never ratified the treaty, though it had generally adhered to its provisions and still participates in ISA proceedings as an observer. Pressure is growing on member states to not supply technology to seabed mining companies the US licenses, process their nodules or buy metals from them, as the treaty mandates ISA countries treat unilateral mining as illegitimate. Thirty-seven ISA countries support a moratorium on seabed mining until its environmental impacts are better understood. 'The risks of bypassing the ISA's oversight are not only legal, they are also economic,' ISA Secretary-General Leticia Carvalho said in a statement to Bloomberg Green. 'Product lines derived from ventures that violate international law will carry reputational and legal concerns that increase the risk of the investment and can undermine its return.' Pacific Metals appears to have gotten the message. In a recent investor briefing, the company, which did not respond to requests for comment, emphasized that when it comes to nodule processing, it considers 'international credibility to be a material issue.' (Updates sixth paragraph with comment from China's representative at the International Seabed Authority's annual meeting and ninth paragraph with an outcome from the proceedings.) Elon Musk's Empire Is Creaking Under the Strain of Elon Musk A Rebel Army Is Building a Rare-Earth Empire on China's Border Thailand's Changing Cannabis Rules Leave Farmers in a Tough Spot How Starbucks' CEO Plans to Tame the Rush-Hour Free-for-All What the Tough Job Market for New College Grads Says About the Economy ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Sign in to access your portfolio
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Lehrmann inquiry head's leak 'transparent, not corrupt'
A former judge's decision to leak confidential material from an inquiry into Bruce Lehrmann's criminal prosecution was an attempt at transparency not an act of corruption, his lawyers say. Walter Sofronoff KC has asked the Federal Court to toss a March finding by the ACT Integrity Commission that the former judge engaged in serious corrupt conduct. The commission's probe stemmed from Mr Sofronoff's leaks to a journalist. But the watchdog's adverse finding was a "serious offence against the administration of justice", Mr Sofronoff's barrister Adam Pomerenke KC said during a hearing on Monday. Mr Sofronoff was not corrupt, malicious or dishonest, the barrister told Justice Wendy Abrahams. Rather, he genuinely believed he was acting in the public interest by sending documents like witness statements to the media. "Even if Mr Sofronoff was wrong in his view, the fact remains that he genuinely and honestly held it," Mr Pomerenke said. "At worst it could be characterised as an erroneous attempt to ensure accuracy and transparency in the public discourse." Mr Sofronoff chaired a board of inquiry into the ACT's criminal justice system after Lehrmann's controversy-plagued prosecution. The former Liberal staffer was accused of raping then-colleague Brittany Higgins in a ministerial office at Parliament House in 2019. A 2022 criminal trial was abandoned without a verdict due to juror misconduct. Lehrmann lost a defamation lawsuit he brought over media reporting of Ms Higgins' allegations but has appealed a judge's finding the rape claim was true on the balance of probabilities. The Sofronoff-led inquiry found the ACT's top prosecutor, Shane Drumgold, had lost objectivity over the Lehrmann case and knowingly lied about a note of his meeting with broadcaster Lisa Wilkinson. Mr Drumgold resigned and launched a legal challenge to the findings in the ACT Supreme Court. It found the majority of the inquiry's findings were not legally unreasonable, but it struck down an adverse finding about how Mr Drumgold cross-examined then-Liberal senator Linda Reynolds during Lehrmann's criminal trial. In March, the ACT Integrity Commission also found the majority of the inquiry's findings were not legally unreasonable. But it found Mr Sofronoff's behaviour during the inquiry gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias and he might have been influenced by the publicly expressed views of journalist Janet Albrechtsen. Mr Sofronoff repeatedly messaged the News Corp columnist and eventually provided her an advance copy of his probe's final report. Mr Pomerenke told the Federal Court on Monday the ACT corruption body had admitted it made an error in finding Mr Sofronoff might have engaged in contempt. The claimed contempt stemmed out of leaks to the media despite directions made to parties during the inquiry to suppress certain documents. But the notion that the head of an inquiry could be in contempt of himself was "absurd and irrational", Mr Pomerenke said. This concession was enough to toss the findings against his client, he told the court. Any individual error could not be "disentangled" from the final finding that the former judge engaged in serious corrupt conduct, the barrister said. The hearing continues.
Yahoo
20 hours ago
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Half this country desperate to live in Aus
More than half of the citizens of Tuvalu have applied for a visa to permanently migrate to Australia. Just more than a month ago, Australia opened the The Falepili Mobility Pathway ballot, a program to provide citizens of the tiny island nation of Tuvalu a permanent migration pathway to Australia. The country has a population of just 10,643, while at least 5157 of them entered the lottery, more than half of the nation's people. This was through 1466 registrations, with many of the people being included as family members on applications. The ballot, which closed on Friday, randomly selected up to 280 people each year to apply for the visa. It is open to all Tuvalu citizens, regardless of age, and visa holders do not need to gain employment in Australia before applying. If the pace of applications keeps up, it could mean the entire population of Tuvalu could live in Australia within 40 years. Selections for the ballot will take place between July 25, 2025 and January 25, 2026. The scheme allows successful applicants to live, work and study anywhere in Australia indefinitely, sponsor relatives to also migrate to Australia, and apply for citizenship once eligible. The population of the island nation is one of the world's most exposed to the effects of climate change, with this program providing a path to flee as the impacts worsen. The pathway is part of the Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union that both countries signed on August 28, 2024, part of which is to build climate resilience. Also included in the union is a commitment of $38m to invest in climate adaptation measures on the island. When the ballot opened last month, Pacific Island Affairs Minister Pat Conroy called it the 'most significant agreement' between Australia and a Pacific country since Papua New Guinea's independence in 1975. 'The opening of the mobility pathway ballot is a landmark moment for Australia and Tuvalu,' Mr Conroy said. 'Alongside the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme and the Pacific Engagement Visa, the Falepili migration pathway will strengthen relationships with our Pacific neighbours. 'It demonstrates how we are working in partnership with the Pacific to ensure our region remains peaceful, stable and prosperous.' Foreign Minister Penny Wong said 'as climate impacts worsen' the program allowed Tuvaluans to live, study and work in Australia. 'The pathway reflects the deep trust between our two countries, and we look forward to the contributions Tuvaluans will make to Australian society,' Senator Wong said.
