“No, but utterly predictable,” Coutts-Trotter said.
Brown replied: “We should talk it through… Technically it was my decision.”
Text messages between Investment NSW boss Amy Brown and the state’s most senior public servant Michael Coutts-Trotter have been revealed.Credit:Kate Geraghty / Supplied
Brown has consistently maintained she was the final decision-maker in appointing Barilaro. However, she also told the ongoing upper house inquiry then-trade minister Stuart Ayres did not remain at arm’s length from the process.
The premier has also granted the recruitment process was “flawed”.
Other documents released on Wednesday include emails between Department of Premier and Cabinet staffers, which suggest Graham Head was required to hand over his report into the appointment to Coutts-Trotter by August 5.
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Details of the contract for the report were contained in the documents, revealing the full cost to the NSW taxpayer would be more than $80,000, plus any expenses.
The Department of Premier and Cabinet has been contacted for comment.
Perrottet on Tuesday said he expected to receive the final report shortly. I have received a draft excerpt from the report last week, which raised concerns about whether Ayres breached the ministerial code of conduct. Ayres was subsequently forced to resign.
A further inquiry by high-profile barrister Bruce McClintock, SC, will be conducted to probe Ayres’ involvement. Ayres has denied any wrongdoing and maintained he remained at arm’s length from the public service process.
Perrottet on Tuesday granted he would have asked Barilaro not to apply for the plum post if he had his time again, adding that it was clear “the process was flawed”.
“What has struck me during this period of time has been the problematic process that occurred,” he said.
Barilaro will give a second day of evidence to the parliamentary inquiry on Friday.
Our Breaking News Alert will notify you of significant breaking news when it happens. Get it here.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed by the Senate over the weekend will pursue an extremely wide and varied array of strategies intended to combat climate change. The $369 billion in climate-related spending over 10 years targets five areas: consumer clean energy costs, decarbonizing various sectors of the economy, domestic clean energy manufacturing, environmental justice, and agriculture and land use. Taken together, these programs would help the US reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% from 2005 levels by 2030, and would save an estimated 3,700 to 3,900 lives per year thanks to cleaner air from a reduction in burning fossil fuels.
Steam rises from the cooling towers of the coal-fired power plant at Duke Energy’s Crystal River Energy Complex in Crystal River, Fla. (Dane Rhys/Reuters)
This approach represents a break from many past congressional proposals designed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, most of which proposed using a singular, overarching policy, such as taxing emissions or requiring tradable permits for emissions. Those measures all died in Congress, but this one made it through the Senate and is expected to pass the House later this week.
“The whole package in terms of dealing with climate change is a long-overdue improvement,” former Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman told Yahoo News on Tuesday. Waxman was chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee for many years, and he co-wrote a bill that passed the House but died in the Senate that would have capped carbon emissions and gradually reduced the number of tradable credits for them, a system known as cap-and-trade.
“Unlike other efforts in the past, such as cap-and-trade or a carbon tax, this approach gives a lot of incentives, especially financial, through the tax code and appropriations for industry to accomplish a reduction in emissions,” Waxman said. “This climate proposal has very little, if any, regulation. It’s a lot of incentives to develop, in effect, a partnership with industry and the government … to sharpen up the technology to accomplish our goals.”
Here’s a guide to the biggest programs in each bucket of climate policies, and what they will mean for American families.
Consumer clean energy costs
Solar panels create electricity on the roof of a house in Rockport, Mass. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
The IRA would pour money into helping homeowners, especially those with low and moderate incomes, and lower their carbon footprint and their energy bills by helping them transition to more efficient heating and cooling systems. There will be a $9 billion program to help low-income households switch to electric appliances (such as stoves) and to retrofit their homes for energy efficiency (by insulating windows, for example).
There will also be tax credits for replacing oil and gas burners with electric heat pumps and water heaters and installing rooftop solar, allowing customers to get 30% off the cost of these purchases.
To reduce dependence on oil, the bill would provide a $4,000 consumer tax credit for lower- and middle-income individuals to buy used electric vehicles, and a $7,500 tax credit to those who make less than $150,000 per year or couples who make less than $300,000 per year who buy new electric vehicles. (Qualifying EVs must cost less than $55,000 for cars and less than $80,000 for trucks.) There is also a $1 billion grant program to help local authorities make affordable housing more energy-efficient.
A family that uses all these rebates and tax credits could receive an additionalgrand total of $28,500 in incentives, according to the Center for American Progress. Rewiring America, an advocacy group that promotes electrification, estimates that a family that takes advantage of these incentives will save an average of $1,800 per year on home heating fuel and lower energy bills.
However, in order to win the crucial support of Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., the IRA requires that an EV eligible for the tax credit must have a battery built in North America with minerals mined or recycled there as well. Currently, most EVs on the market would not qualify. The purpose is to develop EV building capacity domestically, instead of relying on China, which is the main producer of lithium-ion batteries. But automakers have expressed doubts that they will be able to meet the bill’s requirements on its timeline.
Decarbonizing the economy
Piles of coal at the PacifiCorp Hunter coal-fired electrical generation plant in Castle Dale, Utah. (George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
About $30 billion will be doled out in grants and loan programs to states and electric utilities to switch utilities from burning gas and coal to using clean energy sources such as wind and solar power. There are also grants and tax credits for clean commercial vehicles — think electric delivery trucks, buses and taxis — and money for efforts to reduce emissions from industrial processes, such as chemical, steel and cement plants.
In order to use the federal government’s buying power to catalyze private sector investment as well, the IRA contains $9 billion for the US to buy clean technologies. For example, it includes $3 billion for the US Postal Service to purchase zero-emission vehicles.
As part of this bill’s emphasis on equity, there is a $27 billion “clean energy technology accelerator” that will distribute funds to deploy clean energy technologies, especially in lower-income communities. An example of a recipient of these funds would be, say, a nonprofit that helps low-income renters, who can’t buy a solar panel for their own home, enjoy the cost savings of buying solar panels by pooling their money and buying solar panels to go in a public space and sharing in the savings
In a major win for environmentalists, there is also going to be a program to reduce the leakage of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas wells and pipelines. This is the rare portion of the IRA that includes sticks as well as carrots: grants to help the industry comply and the imposition of fees for operators that continue to leak methane at a high rate.
Domestic clean energy manufacturing
An electric vehicle charging station in New Rochelle, NY (Star Max/IPx via AP)
Whatever the costs and benefits of Manchin’s buy-American requirements for the EV tax credits, every Democrat agrees that developing the ability to produce the key ingredients of a clean energy economy within the United States would be beneficial. So the IRA includes $30 billion worth of tax credits for manufacturing solar panels, wind turbines, batteries capable of storing wind and solar energy, and the processing of key minerals needed for all those technologies (and for electric vehicles).
Separate from those tax credits for making the actual products, there are $10 billion in tax credits for building the infrastructure needed for that production, such as wind turbine and solar panel factories, and $2 billion for renovating auto factories to make EVs. The federal government will also offer up to $20 billion in loans to build new EV manufacturing facilities across the country and will provide $2 billion for additional clean energy research.
environmental justice
Predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods and poorer communities suffer an outsize share of the effects of climate change, such as extreme heat, flooding and the pollution from burning fossil fuels on highways and in factories and power plants. The IRA will give out $3 billion in block grants for community-led projects to deal with those kinds of problems, another $3 billion for neighborhood improvements like reconnecting areas separated by highways, $3 billion to reduce pollution at ports and $1 billion for electric heavy-duty duty vehicles, like garbage trucks.
Agriculture and land use
Drought-conditioned saplings from resilient seeds used to reforest burn scars are grown at John T. Harrington Forestry Research Center in Mora, NM (Adria Malcolm/Reuters)
Plants absorb carbon dioxide, so how they are managed can affect how much carbon is in the atmosphere. The IRA will spend $20 billion on climate-smart agriculture practices (rotating crops instead of planting the same ones in the same place every year, for example) and $5 billion for forest conservation and urban tree planting.
The bill also incorporates tax credits and grants to support the domestic production of lower-carbon biofuels and $2.6 billion in grants to conserve and restore coastal areas that are needed both to absorb carbon and to manage storm surges that are becoming severe because of climate change, via rising sea levels and more intense storms.
The bill also includes some measures that were needed to win Manchin’s support that will actually make climate change worse, such as requirements that the federal government lease swaths of federal land and coastal areas for oil and gas drilling. As with the electric vehicles, Manchin is focused on producing as much energy domestically as possible. Still, the overwhelming majority of environmentalists are exultant at the IRA’s overall potential to reduce the severity of climate change.
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Global temperatures are on the rise and have been for decades. Step inside the data and see the magnitude of climate change.
When tourists taste Vegemite for the first time their initial reaction is usually one of shock.
It has a very strong, bitter and distinct taste that you either love or loathe.
But one US man, who has learned to love the thick, dark brown spread, discovered something baffling on a jar he bought several years ago.
Taking to Reddit, he explained he bought the 220g jar from an import store in the US that he has been using it sparingly for quite a while.
“I still have not used it all up,” he wrote.
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But it was when he whipped out the jar a few days ago that he discovered a date to read ’23 June 2011′ on the bottom – learning the spread “doesn’t expire”.
“This morning I got it out to spread on some toast for breakfast. As I was eating it, I wondered how long I’ve been on this same jar.
“I looked for a ‘use by date’, and this is what I saw,” he wrote alongside a photo showing the date underneath the jar.
“If you’ve ever wondered if it’s true that Vegemite has no expiration date, I can confirm that it’s true.”
The man shared the post in the Reddit community group titled ‘Australia’ which boasts almost 1 million members.
And while the fact came as a shock to him, most Aussies were unphased by it with many quick to point out it is made from yeast extract and has a high salt content, which acts a natural preservative.
“It’s 70 per cent salt so you probably have at least another 6 Australian prime minister changes before it stops being effective against drop bears,” one person joked.
“Vegemite is to Australians what honey was to the ancient Egyptians. You will be OK to uncover a jar from a grave in 2000 years and still use it,” another person added.
A third added: “Two things will outlast humanity: 1. Micro plastics 2. Vegemite.”
Others went on to reveal how long they have had their Vegemite jars.
“My Vegemite has a celebratory Commonwealth Games label on it. Not sure which Commonwealth Games, but it’s definitely not the current one,” a Reddit user wrote.
Another Aussie said they found a jar at their nan’s place when they were cleaning the house after she passed away in the late 80s.
“She’d lived there for 40+ years. She found an old jar of Vegemite, like super old looking retro jar and label. Smelled fine, was a bit thicker but a finger dip tasted of it was fine too … but we chucked it anyway bcs we’re not that desperate,” they wrote.
However, others warned Vegemite can go moldy if contaminated with butter.
“I hope you dug the Vegemite out from the bottom to avoid the toxic combination of Vegemite and butter in the jar,” one person wrote.
“Every kid, and Hoges, knows that’s poison (absolutely fine to mix them on toast though).”
A second person wrote: “Vegemite lasts forever, HOWEVER, the butter that contaminates it from double dipping your knife will turn it rancid.”
Another warned: “It will only expire if contaminated with little bits of bread or butter.”
Some suggested to scrape off the top layer to avoid eating any contaminated bits.
Google has sued Sonos, alleging that its new voice assistant violates seven patents related to its own Google Assistant technology, CNET you have reported. It’s the latest salvo in a long-running smart speaker battle between the companies, with each suing and countersuing the other following a period when they worked together.
“[Sonos has] started an aggressive and misleading campaign against our products, at the expense of our shared customers,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
Sonos’ Voice Control assistant arrived in June, letting users give commands with the phrase “Hey Sonos,” much like Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant. In the complaint, Google said it “worked for years with Sonos engineers on the implementation of voice recognition and voice-activated devices control in Sonos products… even providing its Google Assistant software to Sonos for many years.”
The fight erupted in early 2020 when Sonos sued Google for alleged patent infringement after the companies had collaborated for several years. Sonos claimed that Google gained knowledge of its technology when they worked together and used that information to develop its own smart speaker line. The company filed another suit in September 2020, claiming that Google infringed on five more patents.
Google countersued, alleging that Sonos was using Google’s search, software, networking, audio processing and other technology without paying a license fee and made “false claims” about their work together
In 2021, the US International Trade Commission ruled that Google infringed on five Sonos patents. That forced Google to change the way its speakers were set up to avoid an import ban. Most of those were related to the way speaker groups are controlled — for instance, users can no longer change the volume of a group of speakers and must adjust them individually instead.
“Google previously sued us all over the world and Sonos has prevailed in every decided case,” Sonos’ chief legal officer Eddie Lazarus told CNET. “[The latest lawsuits] are an intimidation tactic designed to retaliate against Sonos for speaking out against Google’s monopolistic practices.”
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A major hazard in the film-making career of any gifted auteur is the offer to direct a blockbuster.
Both Ang Lee and Nomadland’s Chloe Zhao inflamed critical opinion after Marvel came calling. While Lee’s Hulk and Zhao’s Eternals have their defenders, no one could describe their reception as rapturous. Now it’s Jordan Peele’s turn to be judged for his handling of a sizeable chunk of money. Nope’s $US68 million production cost is not in the Marvel class, but it’s a big leap from the $US4.5 million spent on Peele’s feature debut, get-outan elegant exemplar in the art of the cerebral horror movie, or the $US20 million which went into its similarly successful follow-up, Us.
Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, and Brandon Perea in Nope.
And Peele has further raised the stakes with a list of points that his new film is out to make. He sees it as nothing less than a satire on the human addiction to the spectacular, a critique of the ethics of commercial movie-making and a menage a trois uniting a seemingly incompatible trio of genres – the Western, the horror film and the sci- fi fantasy.
His sinister but cryptic opening scene suggests that he might just pull off these grand ambitions. The action takes place on the set of what looks to be a TV sitcom. Furniture is overturned, cushions are scattered – and stretched out on the floor is the unconscious figure of a woman, visible only from the knees down. Regarding her is a large, agitated chimpanzee dressed in blood-stained children’s clothes. And even more disturbing are the plaintive whimpers coming from somebody out of shot.
We return later to this moment. Meanwhile, Peele takes us west to the Haywood Ranch, where its owners, the Haywood family, train horses to be used in movies. Watched by his son, OJ (Daniel Kaluuya from get-out), the Haywood patriarch is exercising one of these horses when he’s thrown from the saddle and killed by something fired from above.
to sniper? to drone? No. Peele’s aspirations turn out to be much more rarefied. We’re watching the beginning of a sustained attack from a flying saucer hovering in the clouds.
The UFO’s next victims are the customers of Jupiter’s Claim, a neighboring Western theme park run by Ricky Park (Steven Yeun), whose childhood memories of his life as a young television star gradually explain the opening scene. Ricky’s psychological hangover from this is still with him, ready to be worked into a plot strand condemning Hollywood’s egregious reputation for exploiting its youngest stars. Its relevance to the rest of the plot, however, remains one of the film’s many mysteries.
South Australian MP Fraser Ellis has lost a bid to have deception charges against him dismissed.
Key points:
Independent MP Fraser Ellis will stand trial on deception charges
He claims he is immune from prosecution because the allowance claims were under parliamentary privilege
His charges rose from an Independent Commissioner Against Corruption (ICAC) investigation
The Yorke Peninsula MP is due to stand trial later this month.
The Liberal-turned-independent is seeking to contest allegations he made 78 fraudulent claims for an accommodation allowance totaling more than $18,000.
He was one of two MPs charged and several investigated for their use of the allowance by the state’s Independent Commissioner Against Corruption after a series of exclusive ABC News stories.
Mr Ellis had argued the case against him should be dismissed, because the allowance claim forms which are the subject of his alleged deception have been tabled in parliament, making them subject to the “absolute protection of parliamentary privilege”.
This morning, Magistrate Simon Smart dismissed Mr Ellis’s application to stay the charges.
The state’s ICAC Act was significantly amended in November last year, after Mr Ellis was charged.
Amongst the wholesale changes, the protections of parliamentary privilege were strengthened, so that ICAC cannot exercise any powers “in relation to any matter to which parliamentary privilege applies”.
In closing arguments on Tuesday, lawyers on both sides offered differing views of who had been responsible for the deaths of seven people who had been riding their motorcycles on Route 2, about 100 miles northeast of Concord. Some were en route to a charity event in Gorham when a flash of collisions sent riders hurtling to the road in a scene that witnesses described as bloody and chaotic.
Mr. Duguay, argued in his summation that Albert Mazza Jr., the president of the Jarheads Motorcycle Club who was killed in the collision, had caused the crash because he had been “driving his motorcycle while drunk, wasn’t looking where he was going, lost control of his bike and just slid into the oncoming truck.”
Mr. Duguay also said that prosecution witnesses had offered conflicting accounts of what transpired before the crash: One witness testified that she had seen Mr. Zhukovskyy’s truck swerve in the lanes, while another said that he had not. Witnesses, Mr. Duguay said, had shared “completely different irreconcilable recollections.”
Prosecutors, however, said that while Mr. Mazza’s impairment was a “poor choice,” it ultimately had nothing to do with the crash.
“Not one person saw Mazza impaired or driving off the road,” Scott D. Chase, a New Hampshire assistant attorney general, said during closing arguments. “But every person on that road saw the defendant all over it.”
A report from the National Transportation Safety Board released in December 2020 found that on the day of the crash, Mr. Zhukovskyy had been “impaired by several drugs,” including heroin, fentanyl and cocaine. He was working for Westfield Transport, a trucking company, at the time and was driving to Albany, NY, and Gorham, according to court records.
recession? Who cares! Aussies are spending wildly on dining out as the ship goes down.
Australia is officially sick of cooking dinner, and we’re done with Uber Eats: we eat in now. At current restaurants.
The latest retail trade data shows Australians have had it up to here with food that comes in plastic boxes and cardboard tubs. We want to go out. We want ambience. We want proper printed menus, commercial crockery, and the kind of wine glasses you’d never have at home because they are as big as your head.
As the next chart shows, it’s not that we’ve stopped buying takeaway food altogether – it’s just that we’ve gone mad for restaurant spending.
Forget pre-pandemic levels – Aussies spent $3 billion dollars on restaurants, cafes and catering in just the month of June. That’s unheard of. We don’t give a damn about Covid and we also don’t care about the possibility of an upcoming recession. We are living for the moment.
Special shout-out to Tasmania too, where spending has gone from under $30 million to almost $60 million. I feel sympathy for the stressed and overworked waiters of Hobart just looking at this chart.
There’s a lot of pent-up birthday dinners in the above charts. Wedding anniversaries too, as well as simple nights at the pub.
I know I’ve been taking the chance whenever I can order a coffee in a cup that doesn’t have a little plastic lid. I actually sit in a cafe and sip it. This chart shows I’m not alone.
Whether Australians are thronging to fine dining or greasy chip joints, we are doing it despite Covid. The most recent retail spending data is from the month of June, so it doesn’t fully capture the latest wave driven by variant BA.5, but Covid has been an ever-present threat throughout this period when restaurant spending was rising. We’re not post-pandemic yet, even if we would like to be.
But what is different from 2020 and 2021 seems to be attitudes: We couldn’t give a stuff. Restaurateurs must be loving it (while infectious disease physicians might have another view).
fear fatigue
Australians are overly concerned. Before we celebrate this too much, we should remember the many with chronic illnesses and immune susceptibility for whom fear fatigue is not an option. Covid is killing more of us than ever. What’s different is we’ve assimilated that information. It’s part of the background hum now, rather than a salient and terrifying factor that affects people’s choices.
New risks are more frightening than old risks. Which is why you might think economic factors could be impeding restaurant spending. There’s a lot of chatter about recession risk, and when you look at surveys of consumer confidence, people report feeling gloomy. ANZ calls it “recession-level” confidence.
Once upon a time consumer confidence was a good guide to spending. But not now, apparently! Real recession level confidence doesn’t make people go out for dinner. What does might be an unemployment rate of 3.5 per cent – by far the lowest in decades.
I know what you are thinking
You’re thinking: Hey, the rise in spending could be because of higher prices. What if it’s not more restaurant meals, just bigger restaurant bills because of inflation?
It’s a really good thing to look at, which is why I checked that data as soon as I saw the spending data I showed you above.
So what does the price data show? It shows the price of restaurant meals shot up in the June quarter, by 1.4 per cent. That is high in historical terms! But not nearly enough to explain how spending rose 10 per cent in the same period.
The numbers really do reflect more plates of scrambled eggs, more Quarter Pounders, more pho, more Diet Cokes and more froyo. It’s a sign Australia has changed: We’re fearless now.
Jason Murphy is an economist | @jasemurphy. He is the author of the book Incentivology.
Tower of Fantasy is now available for pre-download ahead of tomorrow’s release date. The upcoming anime MMORPG releases globally on August 10, and will unlock for players at 8 PM ET. That’s the equivalent of midnight UTC.
According to the statistics listed on the game’s official website, over four million users have pre-registered to play Tower of Fantasy. That number includes both players on PC and all compatible mobile devices. Its popularity isn’t too surprising, though, as it has drawn comparisons to Genshin Impact. Despite launching back in 2020, Genshin Impact is still one of the most prevalent games on the market.
If you’re interested, you’ll want to head over to the global site for Tower of Fantasy. On the home page, there’s an option to pre-download Tower of Fantasy on either Windows, the App Store, or Google Play. Selecting Windows will download the MMORPG’s launcher where you can register, log in, and then download the game.
You’ll need a total of 25 GB of free storage space to download it. While the download itself is under 22 GB, the extra space is reserved for future content. Given that some modern games can take up over 200 GB of space, this is a nice change. Tower of Fantasy is free to play, so there are no mandatory additional costs to try it out. Given that it’s a Genshin Impact-inspired gacha game, though, you can likely expect plenty of microtransactions.
what to expect
when Tower of Fantasy arrives, players should have plenty to do. Developer Hotta Studio promises to deliver an immersive open-world experience with unique characters and epic combat. There’s a lot of pressure to deliver, with expectations being as high as they are, but the promotional material we’ve seen so far looks encouraging. Hopefully, Tower of Fantasy delivers and offers some real competition.
Abbie Chatfield says there is one Aussie celebrity she never wants to see again or appear on her show The Masked Singer
By Kinta Walsh-cotton For Daily Mail Australia
Published: | Updated:
Abbie Chatfield is not a fan of one certain Aussie celebrity.
The reality television star, 27, says she never wants to see celebrity chef Pete Evans beneath one of the costumes on her show The Masked Singer.
‘I narrowly missed having an interaction with him on I’m A Celebrity two years ago when he uploaded that Nazi meme, so I was hoping he wasn’t back,’ she told Yahoo Lifestyle.
Abbie Chatfield, 27, (pictured) revealed on Wednesday there was one person she really didn’t want to see on The Masked Singer stage
‘That was kind of the only person that I thought, “God I hope it isn’t Pete Evans.”‘
The My Kitchen Rules judge, 49, was slated to appear on season seven of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! alongside Abbie.
However, he was dropped by Channel 10 after he posted the Black Sun, a neo-Nazi symbol, to social media, later claiming he didn’t know what it meant.
In an interview with Yahoo Lifestyle , the reality television star was adamant she never wanted to see celebrity chef Pete Evans, 49, (pictured) beneath one of the costumes
The My Kitchen Rules judge was slated to appear on season seven of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! alongside Abbie
Celebrity chef Colin Fassnidge took his place at the last second after Pete had commenced his pre-filming quarantine.
The disgraced television chef was a judge on My Kitchen Rules for a decade alongside French chef Manu Feildel.
Seven dropped him from his $800,000 contract in May 2020 after being involved in a string of controversies.
However, he was dropped by Channel 10 after he posted the Black Sun, a neo-Nazi symbol, to social media, later claiming he didn’t know what it meant. (Pictured: the neo-Nazi post Pete uploaded)
Celebrity chef Colin Fassnidge took his place at the last second after Pete had commenced his pre-filming quarantine. (Pictured: Pete confirming he did in fact know what the symbol meant)
Pete previously claimed COVID-19 was a ‘f**king hoax’ and that the pandemic ‘doesn’t compare to what is happening in the world on a large scale’.
Among his false claims about the pandemic, Pete previously declared he’s immune to coronavirus, and blamed the health crisis on 5G technology.
He also endorsed fellow conspiracy theorist David Icke, a Holocaust denier who was barred entry into Australia last year after protests from the Jewish community.
The disgraced television chef was a judge on My Kitchen Rules for a decade alongside French chef Manu Feildel (left)
He was dropped by 15 sponsors and companies in the space of 48 hours in November 2020.
MKR had once been a juggernaut ratings for Seven, but its popularity nosedived in recent years as viewers flocked to Channel Nine’s Married At First Sight instead.
In April, it was announced that home-cooking sensation Nigella Lawson would replace Evans as a judge on a revamped new season of My Kitchen Rules.
Seven dropped him from his $800,000 contract in May 2020 after being involved in a string of controversies. (Pictured with his wife by him Nicola Robinson)
