In crucial byelection, a country website fills a political news void
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Even 72-year-old Kate Fraser has realised that the future of political campaigning is digital.
In a byelection where the stakes are unexpectedly high, Fraser is one of 13 candidates looking for clever ways to reach 55,000 voters in the Upper Hunter, a seat of rolling hills about 200 kilometres north of Sydney that is the centre of the state’s horse breeding and coal mining industries.
Scone.com.au managing director Elizabeth Flaherty, right, and cadet journalist Taylah Fellows working from a Scone cafe.
Roger Skinner
To share her anti-mining, pro-public transport message, Fraser has settled on a behemoth and a minnow: Facebook and Scone.com.au, a hyper-local news website.
iPolitics By Kelsey Johnson. Published on May 13, 2021 11:10am Apple Pie (Pexels photo)
Good day and welcome to the Sprout, where it’s National Apple Pie Day, National Fruit Cocktail Day, National Hummas Day and World Cocktail Day an eclectic mix that is sure to have a bit of something for everyone. (We’ll take an Old Fashioned, please, along with a slice of apple pie.)
Here’s today’s agriculture news.
The Lead
Business leaders in Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin are backing Canadian efforts urging a U.S. court to keep the Line 5 oil pipeline operating.
As CBC News reports, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is attempting to shutdown the cross-border pipeline, which she insists poses an unacceptable environmental risk along the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac, connecting Lake Huron with Lake Michigan. Line 5 supplies roughly half of Ontario and Quebec’s fuel. The Canadian government has also warned a shuttering of the pipeline could undermine Canada-U.S. rel
2021–22 federal budget
The Australian Government treasurer Josh Frydenberg brought down his third budget tonight, and the news for the science, technology and university sectors is… mixed.
The Australian Academy of Science points out that that the budget contains no significant new funding for fundamental discovery science and no initiatives to stem the loss of university science jobs.
On the flip side, the Academy is pleased the government has stepped towards future-proofing Australia by choosing to support development of capability to manufacture vaccines.
Academy President Professor John Shine says: “The Academy welcomes the commitment to develop an Australian mRNA manufacturing capability to fight COVID-19, the flu and future pandemics.