PROTESTS LEAD TO POLICE REFORM BILL

After almost two weeks of sustained protests over the police killing of George Floyd, ABC reports that Democrats will today introduce legislation, the Justice in Policing Act, that, amongst other changes, would:

• create a national database of complaints against police
• grant authority to the Department of Justice “to investigate state and local police for evidence of department-wide bias or misconduct”.
• ban chokeholds — which, while already banned in multiple states, is something that can apparently be ignored. as the 2014 killing of Eric Garner demonstrated.

While public pressure has led to a series of other wins — including a majority of Minneapolis City Council members voting to disband the city’s police force, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio pledging to trim the NYPD’s whopping $6 billion annual budget — The Hill reports that presumptive Democrat nominee Joe Biden has rejected calls to start defunding US police departments.

PS: In new analysis at Too Much Information, investigative journalist David Sirota unpacks how America’s population grew by about 50% between 1977 and 2017 but state and local spending on police forces grew by a colossal 173%.

CLOSING THE GAP

According to sources at The Australian ($), the Morrison government will aim to reduce the number of Indigenous people incarcerated by reforming “Closing the Gap” goals between state, territory and federal departments and Indigenous representatives.

The goal, which would reportedly improve on a draft 2028 target, comes after tens of thousands of protesters attended Black/Indigenous Lives Matter marches last weekend; as The Guardian reports, it also comes after the number of Indigenous deaths in custody increased by five.

BP TO CUT 10,000 JOBS

According to the BBC, oil giant BP intends to slash 10,000 largely senior office positions after mass lockdown led to oil prices plummeting into the negative earlier this year.

While the company has paused redundancies amidst the pandemic’s peak, chief executive Bernard Looney emailed staff yesterday to say around 15% of the company’s global workforce — which includes 15,000 in the UK and, according to AAP, more than 5700 in Australia — will go by the end of the year.

PEAK-PEAK DEMAND: As Mandarin Premium unpacked last week, the news comes after Looney voiced support for a demand under the World Economic Forum’s new “Great Reset” campaign to end fossil fuel subsidies.

It also follows IEA and Carbon Tracker reports that found the pandemic led to a dip in demand for all energy sources but renewables, and, consequently, accelerated peak demand for fossil fuels.

STATE VIRUS WATCH: WA'S $444M HOUSING BLITZ

• The Western Australian government has unveiled a $444 million housing package that includes both homebuyer ($125m) and social housing ($319m) schemes.
• In a busy long weekend, the Queensland government announced: a new intrastate tourism campaign, “You’re Good to Go”; a staggered timeframe for resumed, discounted long-service train services; more than 400 free business training courses; and 1500 square kilometres of opened up gas country
• Victoria announced $18.9 million to upgrade public visitor sites as state camping restrictions begin to ease; separately, the government pledged almost $850,000 in health and wellbeing funding for frontline healthcare workers.
• Finally, the Tasmanian government announced an Explorer Support Package, to include 6 months of suspended rental payments for exploration licences, amongst other waivers.