The Australian Labor Party in New South Wales (NSW) state claimed power in an election on Saturday night, with voters backing the center-left party’s pledges of cost-of-living relief and to stop privatization policies.
The election in Australia’s most populous state had been touted as a tight race between the incumbent Liberal-National coalition and Labor, but the vote count yesterday showed Labor on track to take the 47 seats needed to form a majority government, after three terms in opposition.
The win marks further endorsement of the party of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who on polling day joined Chris Minns, the Labor candidate who was later designated NSW premier-elect.
Photo: REUTERS
“A huge congratulations to @ChrisMinnsMP ... and the whole NSW Labor team on your election victory,” Albanese wrote on Twitter late on Saturday.
MAINLAND POWERHOUSE
Labor’s win means the party now governs at state and federal level across Australia’s mainland, leaving island state Tasmania as the conservative outlier.
“After 12 years in opposition the people of New South Wales have voted for a fresh start,” Minns told supporters in Sydney late on Saturday.
“The people of New South Wales voted to put in a government that would put people at the heart of all decisionmaking”.
Labor’s campaign in the state featured a pledge to rule out further privatization of state assets and a promise to boost public sector wages amid cost-of-living concerns.
Outgoing NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, a socially conservative Catholic and former state treasurer, was elected premier in 2021 after his predecessor, Gladys Berejiklian of the Libberal Party, resigned after a corruption watchdog probe into whether she was involved in conduct that “constituted or involved a breach of public trust.”
Albanese, in the lead up to polling day, urged voters in his home state to back Labor, saying Perrottet’s coalition government was “in shambles” due to infighting.
Pins hidden in her shoes, head forced down a toilet, kicked in the stomach: South Korean hairdresser Pyo Ye-rim suffered a litany of abuse from school bullies, but now she is speaking out. The 26-year-old is part of a phenomenon sweeping South Korea known as “Hakpok #MeToo,” where people who were bullied publicly name and shame the perpetrators of school violence — “hakpok” in Korean — decades after the alleged crimes. Made famous globally by Netflix’s gory revenge series The Glory, the movement has ensnared everyone from K-pop stars to baseball players and accusations — often anonymous — can be career-ending, with
One of Australia’s two active volcanoes on an island near Antarctica — known as Big Ben — has been spotted by satellite spewing lava. The lava flow on the uninhabited Heard Island, about 4,100km southwest of Perth and 1,500km north of Antarctica, is part of an ongoing eruption that was first noted more than a decade ago. The image was caught by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite on Thursday, and is a composite of an optical picture and an infrared image. The lava is seen flowing down the side of Big Ben from near the summit, known as Mawson Peak.
SYMBOLIC: The bill sponsored by a cross-party group of lawmakers was hailed as a ‘historic moment’ in the fight for marriage equality, but is unlikely to pass Lawmakers in South Korea have proposed the country’s first same-sex marriage bill, in a move hailed by civic groups as a defining moment in the fight for equality. The marriage equality bill, proposed by South Korean lawmaker Jang Hye-yeong of the minor opposition Justice Party and co-sponsored by 12 lawmakers across all the main parties, seeks to amend the country’s civil code to allow same-sex marriage. The bill is unlikely to pass, but forms part of a trio of bills expected to increase pressure on the government to expand the idea of family beyond traditional criteria. The two other bills relate to
TIME TO TALK: Among China’s grievances were economic and trade issues related to Taiwan, but both countries emphasized the need to maintain communication US Trade Representative Katherine Tai (戴琪) on Friday raised complaints about China’s state-led economic policies during a meeting with Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao (王文濤), who objected to US tariffs and trade policies, as well as issues related to Taiwan, their offices said. However, statements from the US Trade Representative’s (USTR) office and the Chinese Ministry of Commerce emphasized the need for Washington and Beijing to maintain communication on trade. “Ambassador Tai highlighted the need to address the critical imbalances caused by China’s state-led, non-market approach to the economy and trade policy,” the USTR said in a statement released after the
RSS