Canberra Now: News in 90 seconds for Monday, April 30, 2018
Good morning Canberra,
Happy Monday!
It hasn't hit 0 degrees this morning but the weather bureau's forecasting the mercury will soon dip into the negative for the first time this year.
Today is expected to be sunny with a top of 21 degrees.
Read on for this morning's headlines.
Punters back Groovin the Moo pill testing
Festival goers have endorsed an Australian-first pill-testing trial at Canberra's Groovin the Moo.
Thousands of people descended on the University of Canberra for the ACT leg of the travelling music festival on Sunday.
The STA-Safe consortium received a last-minute green light to offer free pill-testing in a mobile laboratory in one of the festival's health tents, with the endorsement of the ACT government and ACT Policing.
It's understood more than 70 festival goers had already used the service by 7pm, with some dumping their drugs in an amnesty bin filled with bleach after the results were not what they expected.
Katie Burgess was there.
Turnbull's push for Gonski 2.0
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will push for a radical overhaul of the Australian curriculum after endorsing a blueprint by businessman David Gonski to fix the country's lagging school system.
The Gonski 2.0 plan will transform the school system to assess and reward personal progress, not just standard academic benchmarks. It challenges the Commonwealth, states and territories to ditch their "industrial model of schooling" in favour of a more modern and individual approach.
Read more here.
Rental trends for low-income earners 'disastrous'
Canberra rental homes have undergone a"shocking" long-term decline in affordability for low-income earners, Anglicare said on the release of its annual rental affordability report on Monday.
The charity's 2018 report showed there were no properties within the budget of low-income earners, except households earning a minium wage and on family benefits, and those on the aged pension.
I spoke to one young man affected by the crisis here.
Canberra's last greyhound race
Why Havili wants to stay put at Raiders
Siliva Havili has "a lot more left in the tank for NRL footy" and he has revealed the driving force behind his desire to earn a new contract with the Canberra Raiders.
Havili joined the Raiders on a one-year deal to fill the void left by star hooker Josh Hodgson and he is one of 13 players coming off-contract at the end of the season.
Find out why his daughter's on his mind here.