Pauline Hanson’s gas policy and the party’s relationship with Rinehart is examined in a new Guardian podcast series, The Populist

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One Nation has come under fire for quietly shelving support for a new domestic gas reservation policy in preference for a policy that favours the party’s billionaire patron, Gina Rinehart.

The Albanese government has announced it will establish a new reservation policy for Australia’s east coast, requiring gas exporters to supply a portion of the gas they produce to the domestic market. The policy is aimed at “modestly” supplying the domestic market to put downward pressure on prices for consumers.

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Thanks to a little-known feature in Instagram, I try to travel back to 2012 – before everything on the internet was an ad

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I have a confession. I love my social media algorithm. It is a perfectly curated window into my insane and inquiring mind. It knows precisely which videos will tickle me and which memes will gently distract me from the slow collapse of humankind.

On Tuesday the Australian government announced “world-leading” reforms that would force social media platforms to allow users to opt-out of algorithms, dubbed “my feed, my way”. On the same day, I was delighted to be confronted with a video on Instagram of a woman accidentally spilling a bucket of eels on a Chinese train. Dozens of eels slithered among the passengers, who appeared not as surprised as I would have expected.

Adam Mosseri says platform’s algorithm ‘feels like a black box’ but company trying to give users more control after Labor announces opt-out plan

Instagram’s chief executive has said users will have a worse experience in an algorithm-free world, seeing more brand-related content, and spend less time on the app.

The comments come as the Australian government plans to give users the option to opt out of algorithms, with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, announcing plans on Tuesday to require social media platforms to prompt users to choose between a feed of algorithm-recommended content or a reverse chronological feed of the pages users follow. Labor also plans to introduce a range of measures designed to address online harm on the sites.

White House warns trading partners against ‘imposing digital services taxes, fines, and other forms of extortion’ on US tech sector

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The Trump administration will confront Australia over its plan to force digital platforms to take down harmful content and let users opt out of algorithm-generated “for you” feeds.

Big tech companies would be fined more than $100m for breaching the proposed laws and the Australian government is under pressure to raise those fines even further.

Even if the legislation passes, tech companies may still find ways to frustrate its intent and keep Australians hooked on their feed

Social media could become a “choose your own adventure” between the doom-scrolling status quo, or just the feed of the friends you want to see, if the government’s planned digital duty of care legislation passes, and the tech companies don’t muck around on compliance.

But that’s a big if.

This blog is now closed

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Police say the remains found in a suitcase near Goulburn are not human.

Supt Linda Bradbury with NSW police said:

Some good news here that we don’t have a suspicious death of a human on our hands. … We are still undertaking more forensic work to identify what they are. But we can identify that they’re not human.

But we’ve confirmed by other means that they are not.

The undersupply of housing combined with population growth is expected to partially offset the impact of higher interest rates and recent federal government policy changes on the housing market.

A feasibility study for the Western Australian project will show the project is uneconomic and requires government subsidies, experts say

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Leading Australian climate policy experts say a new oil refinery in Western Australia would be an investment in “dinosaur technology” that would require public subsidy and do little to solve the country’s fuel security.

The Albanese government announced a $4m early-stage feasibility study with the WA government for a new oil refinery in the Pilbara region on Tuesday, but experts said the money would be better spent on green technology to reduce Australia’s reliance on fossil fuels.

Experts told Guardian Australia doing the feasibility study was not a bad idea, but would ultimately show the project would be uneconomic and would require government subsidies.

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Federal-state stoush comes as rating agency warns that electricity bills could skyrocket

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Queensland and the Northern Territory have rejected the federal government’s plans to mandate that AI datacentres use renewable power, rubbishing Anthony Albanese’s proposals to regulate the booming technology as “underdeveloped ideas that hand increased power to Canberra”.

The latest federal-state stoush on energy comes as S&P Global, the economic rating agency, warns that power use from datacentres could rise five-fold by 2035 to 10% of Australia’s total consumption, and that a mismatch between delivery timelines for datacentres and renewable projects could lead to energy bills skyrocketing.

Journalist and author Cory Doctorow is coming to Australia to spread his message – humans will take their jobs back

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When the AI bubble bursts, executives who enthusiastically replaced their staff with AI tools will learn that it takes a “really long time” to replace those lost skills, says Cory Doctorow, a science fiction author and journalist.

But those in creative fields should also be warned not to put all their faith in copyright as the best way to safeguard their work, Doctorow warns, just one week after the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, promised to ramp up protection against AI companies who refuse to pay.

The companies hope to follow in the footsteps of SpaceX, which raised $86bn and soared to a $2.1tn valuation after it listed on public markets in June

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Top US AI developers Anthropic and OpenAI cheered when Australia announced it would set new AI rules.

Big tech celebrating limits on their Silicon Valley VC-funded free-for-all might seem counterintuitive but there’s a much broader play than just what happens in one relatively small market.

For months, artists and activists have been calling on the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to act on the AI boom as datacentres pop up around the country. Today he made a major speech at the University of Sydney addressing copyright, the regulation of datacentres and the future of AI in Australia

• 'Not up for grabs': Albanese establishes AI office and vows to protect Australian creatives from copyright 'theft'

PM lays out plan for datacentre development and rejects prospect tech companies will be given free use of Australian data

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Anthony Albanese has promised “the strongest possible protection” for Australian creatives against misuse of their work by artificial intelligence models, warning it would be “theft” if writers, artists and musicians didn’t have control of their work or receive payment for its use.

Amid growing community concern about large energy-intensive datacentres, the federal government will also set strict new rules for the facilities, including where they can be built, that they shouldn’t compete for land with housing, their power and water use, and that they don’t increase electricity prices for consumers.

Anthony Albanese will deliver a landmark speech on AI this week as MPs are torn between attracting datacentre investment and protecting the rights of creatives

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When Anna Funder stood before a pack of journalists at Parliament House this month, she presented herself not just as a writer but also a “victim of crime”.

The Stasiland author was using the analogy to illustrate how technology companies have flagrantly “hoovered up” her literary works for their own profit.

They suck up energy and water, and blast out heat. Just who is better off from all this investment – aside from tech bros?

The two great existential threats of our time – the climate crisis and AI – come hurtling together in the explosion of datacentres across Australia and around the world.

You can hardly avoid hearing about them these days, either with awed reverence of the promised benefits to humankind or with fear and anger given the implications for the climate, inflation, jobs and even housing affordability.

Assistant minister agrees concerns over resource usage are legitimate but argues Australia cannot ignore ‘consequential’ economic wave

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Australia should learn from the mistakes of the resources boom and set the terms for the AI and datacentres boom, the assistant minister for the digital economy, Andrew Charlton says.

Growth in datacentres has exploded in the past two years, Charlton told the Sydney Institute on Wednesday night, with 44 projects in the pipeline in New South Wales alone seeking 11GW of capacity on the electricity grid.

We cannot afford to make the same mistake as we did with gas. If tech companies are going to use our land, energy and water for AI, they must pay their fair share of tax

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Over the past few months, tens of thousands of Australians have emailed their local MP calling for a 25% tax on gas exports. More than 2,200 people have even chipped in their own money to fund billboards promoting the idea.

Why?

Nour Haydar speaks with Christopher Knaus about the BHP files – the cache of internal documents leaked to the Guardian and the ABC’s Four Corners – which show that the world’s biggest miner has war-gamed ways to massively delay decarbonisation

Additional audio in this episode was sourced by Financial Times Live

Read more:

Outrage as leaked documents reveal mining giant’s backsliding on commitments to slash emissions

• Adam Morton: Big Mining gets a $4bn tax break to use fossil fuel. It’s a strange way to tackle emissions

• Read more from the BHP files investigation here

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The independent senator David Pocock says leaked BHP documents show that the mining giant is “laughing” at Australia’s key climate policy while pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars through a generous diesel tax break.

An exclusive investigation based on documents leaked to by the Guardian and the ABC show BHP has scrapped a project to significantly reduce global emissions, delayed vast renewables projects in the Pilbara and war-gamed options to push the electrification of its polluting diesel truck and train fleets into the next two decades.

Exclusive: BHP once dubbed climate change an ‘existential’ threat. But leaked documents show it has backtracked on decarbonisation at a vast network of mines

• Read more from the BHP files investigation here

In the middle of 2019, London was sweltering through a heatwave.

Temperature records tumbled. Frail, ill and elderly people died in their hundreds.