Australia news live: Cathy Freeman urges nation to vote yes; campers flee bushfire in Tasmania

Key events

Cathy Freeman urges Australians to ballot yes

Olympic champion jock Cathy Freeman has urged Australians to backmost the Indigenous dependable referendum, saying alteration was “urgent”.

The golden medal winning runner has go the latest Indigenous backer of the dependable and the yes vote, joining the likes of shot stars Johnathan Thurston and Eddie Betts, and tennis champion Evonne Goolagong Cawley successful calling for support.

“I can’t retrieve a clip erstwhile alteration has felt truthful urgent,” Freeman said successful the latest endorsement of the Yes23 campaign.

In a video released overnight, Freeman called for voters to “stand unneurotic and amusement our enactment for Australians who request it most”, and spoke of her content that the dependable would assistance Indigenous kids get the “very champion commencement successful life, an adjacent commencement successful life.”

Freeman, calved successful Mackay, won a celebrated golden medal successful the 400m astatine the 2000 Sydney Olympics, arsenic good arsenic winning Commonwealth Games and satellite title titles implicit her celebrated career.

The aboriginal outpouring NSW heatwave volition soon subside, with a precocious evening chill alteration coming to Sydney, but not earlier the mercury is forecast to deed 35C which would beryllium a September grounds for the city.

On Tuesday the provisional maximum of 34.6C astatine Observatory Hill equalled the record.

With the vigor and upwind comes bushfire fears. The NSW agrarian occurrence work has declared full occurrence bans successful the greater Sydney, greater Hunter and precocious cardinal westbound plains regions. Fire information is acceptable astatine ‘extreme’ successful the archetypal 2 of those 3 regions.

Welcome

Good greeting and invited to our unrecorded blog of the day’s news. I’m Martin Farrer and we’ve got immoderate large overnight stories to speech astir earlier my workfellow helms the main portion of the day.

There are rather a fewer lines astir the dependable to parliament referendum this greeting starting with the quality that Gary Johns remains listed successful authoritative enactment positions with 2 large nary run organisations, contempt Warren Mundine distancing the run from the erstwhile Labor curate and hinting helium would not beryllium speaking publicly. And Cathy Freeman has appealed to Australians to backmost the voice, saying successful a uncommon nationalist comment: “We person the accidental to beryllium portion of a infinitesimal that brings radical together.”

An scale charting Australia’s health, wellbeing and connectedness implicit the past 14 years volition beryllium released contiguous and provides an penetration into immoderate large societal trends. Katharine Murphy talks to the demographer down the research and however trust, assemblage enactment and nationalist pridefulness are declining nether economical pressures.

The authorities has to person a much developed program to displacement to renewable vigor from fossil fuels oregon it risks “missing fractional the equation”, clime scientists person warned. The connection comes arsenic the state faces its archetypal bushfires of what is expected to beryllium a torrid summertime with the El Niño upwind system present nether way. Campers and radical surviving successful the Coles Bay Road country connected the Tasmania’s eastbound seashore were told to question structure yesterday arsenic a bushfire raged retired of control. The NSW Rural Fire Service main says there’s inactive “a batch to beryllium done” to hole for the occurrence season, and that’s besides the taxable of today’s Full Story.