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BTN: Episode 24 Transcript 28/8/18 BTN: Episode 24 Transcript 28/8/18 Hey, I’m Amelia and you’re watching BTN. Coming up today. • We take a special look at the Great Barrier Reef, the threats it's facing and how we can tackle them. • Plus, the new medicine that will make a big difference to kids with cystic fibrosis. • And what does it take to pilot a hot air balloon? PM Scott Morrison Reporter: Amelia Moseley INTRO: We'll get to all that later. But first, wow, what a week it's been in Canberra! After days of chaos and confusion, Australia has a new Prime Minister. Here's how it happened. It's time to play everyone's favourite game show: Who's our Prime Minister? Oops, time's up. It's Scott Morrison! SCOTT MORRISON I, Scott John Morrison, do swear that I will well and truly serve the people of Australia. He's 50 years old, 182cm tall and father to Abbey and Lilly. He's known as 'Sco-Mo' to people that don't actually know him, and he was once a child actor! He was Australia's Treasurer and before that Immigration Minister and now he's the 30th Prime Minister of Australia! For those playing at home he's also our 5th PM in 5 years. OK, I know what you're thinking "What did Scott Morrison look like as a kid?" Ha-ha! Just jokes. No, you're probably thinking "How did this happen?" I bet this guy's been thinking a bit about that too (our now former PM, Malcolm Turnbull). So, let's go back a bit. In Australia, it's important to remember we don't vote for the PM. We vote for members of a political party and it's up to them to choose their own leader, but they can change their minds. That's what happened a few years ago when the last PM, Tony Abbott, was voted out and replaced by Malcolm Turnbull. Before that, Labor PM Kevin Rudd replaced Julia Gillard, who'd previously replaced him. Yeah. Messy. So, here's what went down this time. Former home affairs minister Peter Dutton said he wanted to lead, because he didn't think Malcolm Turnbull was doing such a bang-up job. So, their party - the Liberal Party - had a vote, but Dutton didn't win. End of story? No chance. Some politicians who used to support Malcolm Turnbull then changed their minds and they rallied to force another vote just a few days later, which didn't exactly make this PM very happy. ©ABC 2018 Mr Turnbull decided to take himself out of it saying he'd quit parliament altogether if the vote went ahead. So, the race came down to Peter Dutton Deputy leader Julie Bishop and Treasurer Scott Morrison. Morrison turned out to be the winner, of course, with Josh Frydenberg as his deputy. While it's all a bit confusing, the winner of this political game is clear for now. So, we'd better learn a bit more about our new PM. MAYA Hey everybody, I just talked to Scott Morrison. Luckily, our Rookie Reporter Maya met him back in 2016! SCOTT MORRISON, 2016 When I was young, I always wanted to be involved in some sort of public service. My father is a policeman and my brother is an ambulance officer, he's a paramedic and my brother in law was a fireman. He also seems to be a bit of a BTN fan! SCOTT MORRISON, 2016 I remember watching BTN when I was a kid at school so it's great to say that it's still going! We sure are! Been around for, oh, about 12 prime ministers now. This Week in News Okay so that was a pretty dramatic turn of events but what happens now? Well that's exactly what we'll reveal in this week's news headlines. Now that all that party voting stuff is over the hard work starts for PM Morrison. One of his first jobs was choosing the Cabinet. That's the group of ministers who'll look after important areas Deputy Leader Josh Frydenberg will also be Treasurer. Foreign affairs, will be handled by Marise Payne. Christopher Pyne will look after defence. Melissa Price is in charge of the environment. Dan Tehan will look after education. And Greg Hunt will be minister for health. Meanwhile, with our old PM Malcolm Turnbull no longer, well our PM, and on Monday he announced that he's leaving parliament altogether by the end of the week. That means there will have to be a by-election in his seat of Wentworth in Sydney so people who live there can choose a new representative even though the next election might only be 6 months away. ©ABC 2018 All this drama hasn't exactly been a hit with voters. The latest Newspoll had support for the Coalition down a fair bit. We asked you guys what you thought about it all too. KID 1 I think that all Australians should have a say in the decision. KID 2 A way they could maybe solve the problem would be making sure the Prime Minister has to stay in their full terms. KID 3 I think they could solve this problem by bringing in a new law where you have to serve 4 years as a Prime Minister like they do in the United States with their Presidents. I just think that would make it a lot more organised and stable. In other news, the ABC's done a study for Bookweek looking at one hundred of the top selling kids picture books from last year. It found that 51 of them had a male as the lead character, 26 had no lead or a lead with no gender, and only 23 feature a female character. It also found that there were a lot more books written by male authors. Finally, to the world air guitar championships in Finland! Japan's Nanami Nagura took out this year’s top prize with her acrobatic routine and expert air-playing. Part of her prize is an actual guitar which seems slightly insulting to the entire concept, to be honest. Great Barrier Reef Problems Reporter: Matt Holbrook INTRO: Okay. Moving right away from Canberra now and all the way up to Queensland! We're going to take a special two-part look at one of Australia's natural wonders - the Great Barrier Reef. It's the biggest reef in the world but experts are really worried about how it's going. Later on, we'll find out what can be done to fix the reef. But first here's a look at its biggest threats. You'd have to be living under a rock, or many rocks actually, not to have heard that this big ole thing, the Great Barrier Reef, is in a spot of trouble. But, from pictures like this that may seem hard to believe. The reef covers two and a half thousand kays off the coast of Queensland, and two million people flock to it every year. All keen to check out the super colourful coral, and the more than 1,600 species of fish that call it home! But all of this prettiness isn't the whole story. In some parts there's hardly any life left at all. So, what's to blame? Well, the biggest issue here is coral bleaching. That can happen when water gets too warm. See, what we know of as coral is actually cities, if you will, of ©ABC 2018 tiny animals called polyps. Algae live in the polyps, and polyps feed off the algae. Working together, they're happy and pretty and colourful. Yay! CHARLIE VERON, RESARCHER: The very, very essential thing about corals, is they build their own place to live. Corals, have got together with algae, to build things that nothing on earth could possibly rival. That’s how they live, and I reckon that’s as fascinating as biology can get. But if the sea gets too warm, the algae's forced out, and the coral turns white. And if the sea stays warm for too long, algae never come back, and the coral can die. Bacteria and seaweeds take over. End of friendship. Coral can recover if sea temps drop in time, but if it keeps happening, and happening too frequently, that becomes much less likely. And that's exactly what scientists believe is happening right now because of climate change... TERRY HUGHES, MARINE BIOLOGIST: So, the interval, between pairs of, repeated bleaching events globally is shrinking. So, climate change is a huge threat. But it doesn't just raise temperatures either. Another issue is ocean acidification. Oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If there is more of it in the air, more ends up in the ocean which makes it more acidic. That can affect sea life, as this again colourful, but slightly sad cartoon illustrates. There are many more things being thrown at the Reef. Run off from the land can carry nutrients and sediments into the Reef, along with farm chemicals. That can lead to outbreaks of these little guys, crown of thorn starfish. They can eat their body weight worth of coral every day and have worked through large areas of the reef already. Another issue is cyclones and storms. They're not just damaging on land, they can destroy coral in shallow water, which can take hundreds of years to grow back. So, they're just some of the threats facing the reef.
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