Evening News Bulletin 28 April 2025
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TRANSCRIPT:
- Peter Dutton doubles down on his Welcome to Country position;
- Murder charges laid after a car ramming killed 11 in Canada’s Vancouver;
- A man killed in a crash at the ProMX motocross Championship in South Australia.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has continued to double down on his Welcome to Country views, saying the ceremonies should be relegated to “significant events” only.
He says he doesn’t consider Anzac Day to be one of those significant events .
“It’s ultimately a decision for the individual organisers of the events. But listening to a lot of veterans in this space – and Anzac Day is about our veterans – there’s about 103,000 Australians who have died in service of our country. I think if you’re listening to their sentiment, it would be that they don’t want it on that day.”
Discussion around the necessity of the ceremonies has resurfaced since a group – which included known neo-Nazis – heckled the Welcome to Country at an Anzac Day Dawn Service in Melbourne.
The Melbourne Storm also cancelled the planned welcome before their last match.
The war in Gaza appears to have fractured support for Labor among Arab and Muslim voters ahead of the election.
Groups such as The Muslim Vote and Muslim Votes Matter are hoping to capitalise on community concern about the major party’s positions on Gaza, calling on voters to preference third-party candidates and their independents ahead of Labor and the Coalition.
Egyptian-born pharmacist Ahmed Ouf is running as an independent against Education Minister Jason Clare, who has held the safe Labor seat of Blaxland since 2007 and won nearly 65 per cent of the vote in 2022.
The pharmacist has told SBS News that for his community, which has one of the highest Muslim populations in the country at 32 per cent, the issue of Gaza has been a tipping point.
“If we keep doing the same thing over and over, we won’t get anything different than what we have had in the last 20 years of Jason Clare. Gaza was the straw that broke the camel’s back, let’s say, because he didn’t speak about Gaza inside the Parliament. He only mentioned Gaza once.”
Murder charges have been laid against a man accused of driving his car through a crowd celebrating a Filipino community festival in Vancouver, killing 11 people.
The 30 year old is facing eight counts of second degree murder so far.
But Vancouver authorities say more charges are possible.
Meanwhile Vancouver chief of police Steve Rai says while the motive for the attack is yet to be officially determined, they have ruled out some possibilities.
“While I’m not prepared to speak about the potential motive, I can now say with confidence that the evidence in this case does not lead us to believe this was an act of terrorism.”
North Korea has confirmed for the first time that it has sent troops to fight for Russia in the war with Ukraine under orders from leader Kim Jong Un.
North Korea has sent an estimated total of 14-thousand troops to fight alongside Russia, which South Korean Defence Ministry spokesperson Koo Byoung-Sam says is a clear violation of UN Charter resolutions.
“The truth cannot be concealed. Sacrificing North Korean youth for the regime’s survival is an inhumane and immoral act. The government calls for the immediate withdrawal of North Korean troops and makes clear that if the current military collusion between North Korea and Russia continues, we will not stand idly by but will respond firmly in coordination with the international community.”
The confirmation follows a deadly strike in Kyiv last Friday that killed 12 people, with the missile that struck the residential building supplied by North Korea.
Both Russia and North Korea have denied weapons transfers that would violate U.N. embargoes.
The Victorian government has opened what is the state’s first public residential treatment centre for people with eating disorders.
The opening date had been delayed for the past twelve months, with construction delays pushing back the unveiling from February 2024 to today.
Victoria’s Minister for Mental Health, Ingrid Stitt, says the centre in Melbourne will fill a critical gap in care.
“This residential option will break that nexus for people cycling through our emergency departments because it will give Victorians battling complex eating disorders the opportunity for up to 12 weeks of therapeutic residential care.”
Opioids 1000 times stronger than morphine and an animal sedative used to lace street drugs have been detected in Australia’s wastewater.
They’re among five different nitazines found in up to six percent of samples tested by researchers in a study in the latest issue of the Environmental Science and Pollution Research journal.
The study follows warnings from health authorities in NSW and South Australia about the drugs.
They say nitazenes are being sold as black-market oxycodone, or are being mixed with other drugs, like heroin.
A man has died after a crash in the 2025 ProMX Championship at Gillman in South Australia.
The man has been identified as 30 year old motocross identity Joel Evans.
Race organisers have confirmed the accident happened during round three of the championship event.
