
Dr Chris Brown's secret publicist girlfriend he met while filming I'm a Celebrity breaks her silence after being sacked by Channel 10 - as we reveal details of their extremely private relationship
Brisbane-based Channel 10 publicist Lorraine Monforte, known as one of the best industry liaisons in , was let go last week after more than a decade handling press out of the network's Mt Coot-tha headquarters.
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Daily Mail
16 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Work from home to soon become a legal right for millions of Victorians
The Victorian government is set to enshrine the right to work from home in law, with sweeping reforms that will apply across both the public and private sectors. Premier Jacinta Allan will unveil the landmark policy at the annual state Labor conference, describing it as a progressive move to modernise the workforce and support families. 'Working from home works for families, and it's good for the economy,' she will say. 'Day after day, unions are being contacted by workers who have been denied reasonable requests to work from home. 'Across the country, Liberals are drawing up plans to abolish work-from-home and force workers back to the office, and back to the past. 'That's why the Allan Labor government is acting. Enshrining work from home in law means this life-changing practice isn't something you or your loved ones have to politely ask for. It's a right you'll be entitled to.' The proposed legislation would give workers a legal right to request remote work two days a week if they can 'reasonably' perform their duties from home. Employers would be required to give the requests proper consideration, with a formal consultation process set to begin soon as the legislation is introduced later this year. Ms Allan also pointed to the cost of living relief the policy would offer, estimating it could save workers around $110 per week, or more than $5,300 a year in commuting and related expenses. 'Work from home supports women with children, carers, and people with a disability to work,' she said. 'Thanks to work from home, workforce participation is 4.4 per cent higher than before the pandemic.' Opposition Leader Brad Battin has dismissed claims the Liberals opposed the laws, telling Daily Mail the party supports work-from-home flexibility. 'The Victorian Liberals and Nationals recognise that working from home has become a valuable option for many workers and families,' Mr Battin said. 'We support measures that help Victorians enjoy a better work-life balance and will review any legislation closely, to ensure it supports flexibility, productivity, and personal choice.' His comments contrast with those of former federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who was forced to retreat from a policy limiting work-from-home rights for public servants after widespread backlash during the last election campaign. In addition to the proposed work-from-home reforms, Victorian Labor will also debate a raft of controversial policy ideas at the state conference on Saturday, including new taxes and major social reforms. More than 600 party delegates, including MPs, grassroots members and union representatives, will vote on a series of proposals that could shape the ALP's platform ahead of the 2026 state election. Among the most contentious items is a push to raise taxes on Victorian residents, despite the state already being the most heavily taxed in the country. Other proposals include introducing a super profits tax on land sales and legalising cannabis for recreational use. The outcomes of the weekend's debate will play a critical role in defining Premier Jacinta Allan's policy agenda over the next 18 months, with an election set for November next year.


The Guardian
18 hours ago
- The Guardian
Going to waste: two years after REDcycle's collapse, Australia's soft plastics are hitting the environment hard
Two years on from REDcycle's collapse, 94% of Australia's soft plastics are still headed for landfill. Collection has restarted at supermarkets, and 42 warehouses of plastics have been cleared, but experts say the packaging industry must take responsibility for the mess. By July, supermarkets had mostly cleared the stockpiles, which by November 2022 reached 11,000 tonnes of soft plastics at 44 sites across the country, hoards accumulated as collections outstripped available recycling capacity and export restrictions increased the amount of plastic waste in Australia. The remainder – 3,500 tonnes at two sites, in Victoria and in South Australia – is due to be processed in the first half of 2026, according to the supermarket members of the Soft Plastics Taskforce. But as more than 100 new collection points have been rolled out since June in selected Woolworths, Coles and Aldi stores across New South Wales and Victoria, taskforce members have been careful not to collect more than can be processed. 'The biggest challenge still remains that there is simply not enough soft plastic recycling capacity in Australia to support full, nationwide collections,' a spokesperson for the taskforce told the Guardian. Soft plastic is defined by its ability to be scrunched into a ball, unlike 'rigid' plastics, which are moulded to hold their shape. Even at the peak of its operations in 2022, REDcycle was collecting about 7,500 tonnes – less than 2% of the 538,000 tonnes of plastic bags, food wrappers, bubble wrap and other 'flexible' plastic waste produced in Australia each year. 'We still have a real problem in that we consume too much [soft plastics], we discard too much and we don't buy back anywhere near enough,' says Gayle Sloan, the chief executive of the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association of Australia. While recyclers are increasing their capacity to process the material, Sloan says other problems remain: the vast quantities produced, design packaging that is too complex to recover and the lack of demand from packaging companies and other consumers for Australian-made recycled plastic. She says the onus should be on plastic manufacturers to invest in facilities to take back their own material. 'We've got to stop putting it on consumers to solve the problem.' Despite national packaging targets set by governments in 2018 for 70% of plastic packaging to be recycled by 2025, only about 6% of used and discarded soft plastics were being baled, sorted, shredded, washed, melted – or chemically processed – and turned into new products, according to data published in December by Soft Plastics Stewardship Australia. The rest has headed to landfill. Consumer plastics collected by households, while the most visible, are only one part of the story. Soft plastics are embedded in so many aspects of modern life, says David Hodge, the managing director of recycling company Plastic Forests. The material is widely used, for example, in sectors such as agriculture for storing grain and preventing weeds, and in transport for wrapping pallets. Consumer materials, particularly those used for foods – frozen produce bags, cereal liners or bread bags – are 'tremendously hard to recycle, some of them impossible', he says. They are often 'super technical', comprising different types of plastic, and contaminated by inks used for advertising, or food residues. While there is value for recyclers in processing plastics, such as PET (or polyethylene terephthalate) in drink bottles collected in container deposit schemes, Hodge says 'the economics is broken in soft plastics' because the energy, labor and transport required to collect, process and recycle them costs more than importing new materials. The lack of incentives or mandates for products made from recycled content – such as fence posts and garden edging, electrical cable cover and plastic sheeting – mean they often struggled to compete with non-recycled products. 'There has to be support for the purchase of products. That will create the pull through,' Hodge says. 'Bunnings needs to be given a federal government mandate to support Australian made recycled products,' he says as an example. Jennifer Macklin, a researcher at Monash University's Sustainable Development Institute, says the solutions to the soft plastics problem are similar to other material and waste challenges. They include designing plastic packaging so it can be more easily recycled (while retaining its function, such as keeping food fresh), developing recycling infrastructure capable of turning large volumes of soft plastic waste into a usable material and – crucially – reinforcing demand for the recovered material. 'That's the big chicken and egg that we have with recycling,' Macklin says. 'We're quite good at collecting and reprocessing but not very good at buying it to turn it into new things.' Consumers have a role to play, she says, but as a general principle producers and importers of plastics should be responsible for the material's entire lifecycle. In late 2024, the federal government consulted on options for reforming plastic packaging. According to its summary, 80% of stakeholders supported regulation, and 65% supported an extended responsibility scheme that would make plastics producers responsible for the entire product lifecycle. The government is now 'working with industry and state and territory governments to deliver fit-for-purpose packaging regulations as part of Australia's transition to a circular economy', a departmental spokesperson said. Sloan says voluntary approaches have failed. 'We need to have clear design standards and they need to be enforceable, and we actually need those who make this to be held accountable and invest in facilities to take it back,' she says. 'We've got to stop putting products out on the market that have no home and can't be recovered.'


Daily Mail
21 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Highly strung MSNBC anchor soapboxes about why he quit plum job at Washington Post
Longtime Washington Post opinion writer and current MSNBC anchor Jonathan Capehart has detailed his decision to leave the paper after nearly two decades. Subbing in for Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC's 'The Last Word' Thursday, Capehart said it was the editorial board's increasingly conservative tone as of late that led him to make the call. 'American democracy is in peril', he claimed, after taking a buyout from the Jeff Bezos-run paper nearly two weeks ago. He will still have his own show on MSNBC to go back to - 'The Weekend' - where Eugene Daniels, a self-professed ' Kamala Harris expert', and the Post's current congressional correspondent, Jackie Alemany, are his co-hosts. Also a frequent PBS NewsHour contributor, Capehart told O'Donnell's usual audience that it was Bezos's increasingly hand-on approach to the newspaper that set him off - as well as Americans' 'optimism' under Donald Trump. He explained: 'In February, the owner of the Post decided that the section would focus on the twin pillars of personal liberties and free markets.' 'We in the section received an email from our new editor, which reiterated that and added, it's also important that we communicate with optimism about this country in particular and the future in general. 'How can we communicate with optimism about the future in general when we're living in the here and now, where American democracy is in peril?' The spiel saw him take aim at Post owner Jeff Bezos, who announced the Post's opinion section would only focus on 'free markets and personal liberties' back in February Capehart, 58, had been referring to Bezos' recent interference with the Post's editorial process since Trump's reelection, which was followed by a wave of exits from the Post's largely progressive opinion section. Back in February, Bezos announced the Post's opinion section would only focus on 'free markets and personal liberties' - sparking the negative response. Months before, Bezos ruled to not endorse a presidential candidate shortly before the election, after years of propping up Democrats. Around that time, the Post's then-new publisher and CEO, Will Lewis, a former editor of the British Daily Telegraph, flat out told Post journalists: 'People are not reading your stuff'. A round of layoffs ensued, in late February, after which The Post announced it was implementing a buyout program targeting veteran staffers. Capehart, on-air, said he accepting the offer because the editorial board he belonged to since 2017 was now being expected to "constantly extoll the beauty of a home's doors, crown moldings, and windows when the rest of the house is engulfed in flames and its foundation is flooding." He further claimed 'patriotism is incomplete' if the ideology does not allow for a "mirror to be held up" to the US and its citizens. 'The administration is playing chicken with federal courts,' Capehart said. 'The administration is using masked federal agents to snatch people off the streets and send them to hellish prisons abroad. 'The administration deployed the military on the streets of an American city,' he continued. 'The president is using his office to enrich himself and his family. 'The president has turned Congress, a co-equal branch of government, into the staff wing of the executive branch,' he claimed. 'And we're supposed to ignore it, leave it to others to wrestle with on their news pages and websites? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. 'The Constitution gives us the inherent, unapologetically patriotic right to rail against such affronts to democracy and the rule of law, and the First Amendment demands it,' he added. Capehart famously cried while reflecting on the memory of the January 6 riots live on MSNBC, during the insurrection's third anniversary. He specifically cited the January 6 Capitol siege as a turning point in where MAGA supporters of former president Donald Trump violently invaded the Capitol Building in Washington DC in an effort to disrupt a joint session of Congress that was busy counting electoral votes in Joe Biden's favor. Back in 2021, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the same MSNBC host announced that he believed that Trump supporters are more of a threat than the Taliban or ISIS. Capehart famously cried while reflecting on the memory of the January 6 riots live on MSNBC, during the insurrection's third anniversary in 2024. He currently hosts The Weekend with Eugene Daniels and former fellow Post staffer Jackie Alemany At the time, Capehart called out 'MAGA and the domestic threat', which he said was far 'more worrisome than any foreign threat', during an appearance at PBS NewsHour, where he is a regular presence. The Pulitzer Prize winner has continued the decry Trump for straying from the country's founding principles since. Such a stance was effectively barred with Bezos's edict back in February. The move saw the Post's longtime editorial page editor, David Shipley, resign immediately, before dozens of others followed suit. The terms of Capehart's buyout, meanwhile, remain unknown.