for dateline london. hello and welcome to the programme bringing together bbc specialists with the correspondents who write, blog and broadcast for audiences in their own countries from the dateline london. this week borisjohnson s finance minister opens the taxpayers purse as the prime minister himself tries to persuade world leaders to open theirs to mitigate climate change. plus, is famine stocking afghanistan? joining us to discuss all that is henry chu of the la times, who keeps the show on the road whilst the us west coast sleeps. latika bourke, columnist for the age and the sydney morning herald in australia. and here in the studio,
$100 billion mark for another few years. so that is going to be discouraging for poorer countries to hear, who already this year have seen rich countries not making good on their vaccination pledges through covax. latika, scott morrison, the australian prime minister, said this week, or in the last few days, that he has come up with a uniquely australian solution, having been one of the laggards in this international debate on climate change. tell us more. well, the australian way , as the prime minister likes to refer to it, is deeply unambitious in the short term. now, we shouldn t understate just how significant it is for a prime minister of australia to stand up and say we are going to commit to net zero by 2050 which is what he said this week, and for him to still remain in the job the next day is extraordinary. this has not happened in australian politics for at least a decade. in fact, we have played musical chairs with our prime ministers and political leaders over this
hello, welcome to bbc news. i m david eades. our top stories: the un climate summit opens in glasgow with borisjohnson warning the pledges made so far by world leaders are inadequate. there are no compelling excuses for our procrastination. not only have we acknowledged the problem, we re already seeing first hand the devastation climate change causes. earlier, leaders of the world s richest nations meeting in rome fell short of setting specific targets for reducing carbon emissions to net zero. australia opens its international borders as flights resume from sydney and melbourne. cheering and applause. and alive with day of the dead parades: commemorations return to mexico after a year off,
probably not. maybe not the new age of optimism just yet. thank you. the chancellor was able to delete one line of expenditure this week. 20 years of funding a military presence in afghanistan has ended. a different sort of funding may already be needed, though, aid to avert famine. afghanistan is bankrupt and the taliban is floundering. challenged in the house of commons to help, borisjohnson said the uk could not write a completely blank check for a country that risks becoming again a haven for growing opium and cultivating terrorism. latika, regionalforeign ministers were meeting in tehran on friday and ended by issuing a statement calling for international assistance. australia is one country that had a military presence and has done things like, for example, take afghan refugees who wanted to flee the taliban. is there a sense in the region that realistically people are going to have to get involved again one way or another? well, it was interesting to see this week that the austr
committed to. both sides of parliament, in legislation tied to gross national income. that is not going up any time soon, yet suddenly they have found this money for all the other things like the overhaul of booze taxes. they can make it cheaper to fly domestically in the uk but they can t find the money to restore that original promise, which is actually tied to gross national income anyway. it is not a lump sum that they then have to tweak back. it naturally tapers down, as the economy expands or contracts. rishi sunak saying this at the end of his budget reminds me of this great line that kevin rudd, the labour prime minister in 2007 when he was on track to win his landslide victory over a conservative prime minister, he came out and said, people called me a fiscal conservative. an enterprising journalist went back and look at history and nobody had ever called him