The local councils of Australia's two largest cities have moved closer to phasing out the use of gas stoves after signing on to a global movement to push kitchens towards electrification.

The City of Sydney and City of Melbourne have both agreed to build no council facilities with fossil fuel connections by the end of the decade, and to phase out all fossil fuel use in their buildings by 2040 after becoming supporters of the Global Cooksafe Coalition (GCC) yesterday.

The two councils also committed to exploring planning controls that could see the use of gas stoves in new buildings outlawed, similar to legislation already in place in the ACT and Victoria.

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"We are in a climate emergency and we need to do everything we can, urgently, to lower our emissions," Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said.

"The City of Sydney is committed to net zero emissions in our area by 2035 and reducing fossil fuel use is critical if we are to reach that target.

"That's why we're investigating constructive ways we can continue our transition away from gas use, including changes to the city's planning controls to ensure kitchens in new commercial and residential developments can run on renewable electricity."

The commitment follows a motion in September when Sydney councillors voted in favour of staff "investigating additional options to reduce gas use, including changes to planning rules".

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The City of Melbourne, meanwhile, also launched its Retrofit Melbourne plan that will help all buildings in the council area to become "zero carbon ready" – that is, highly energy efficient and powered solely by renewables – by 2040.

Retrofitting existing buildings is not only necessary for our environment and emissions reduction targets," Lord Mayor Sally Capp and councillor Elizabeth Mary Doidge said.

"It offers inspiring and updated facilities for our city's employees, boosts property values for better tenant attraction and retention, and enables a range of co-benefits including healthier and more comfortable buildings, and precinct revitalisation.

"Addressing the issue of decarbonisation, just in the existing mid-tier commercial building sector, means Melbourne needs to retrofit about 80 properties each year to meet our climate goals.

"Currently, we average seven."

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The GCC is an alliance of chefs, doctors, property developers, climate bodies and other groups aiming to completely phase out gas cooking by 2045 due to the health, energy efficiency, cost and climate benefits provided by electrification.

It welcomed the support of the two councils, and called on other governments to move quickly in a similar direction.

"We're delighted that the City of Sydney and the City of Melbourne have joined with us and our property partners to work towards fossil fuel free kitchens in our cities," Australian program manager Virginia Jones said.

"It's now time that our leaders, across all levels of government, recognise the urgency of these types of reforms."

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Peter V'landys will attend a state dinner hosted by US President Joe Biden at the White House, as a guest of Anthony Albanese.

The Prime Minister extended the invitation to the ARLC chair and NSW Racing boss last month, reported The Sydney Morning Herald.

Albanese is in the US as part of a four-day visit to discuss AUKUS and the unfolding conflict in the Middle East.

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The avid Rabbitohs fan will bring V'landys to the White House to mix with some of America's most influential people ahead of the NRL's opening season in Las Vegas next year.

State dinners have honoured visiting heads of governments or reigning monarchs over the last 150 years.

Fellow ARL Commissioner and former Queensland premier Peter Beattie has endorsed the trip, telling the publication the move was a rare and great opportunity for rugby league.

"This is a networking opportunity from the gods. Anyone who is anyone will be there," Beattie said.

"There's no doubt Peter has the personality that gets him through the door, but it will open up even more doors for the game."

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Beattie, who once attended a state dinner during his stint in politics, said the rugby league has tried to crack into the US market before and failed.

"But we've never tapped on the door of the biggest power players in the country that you need to be successful in the US market. Peter V'landys is doing that," he said.

The NRL is preparing to open next year's competition with a double-header in Las Vegas.

The historic event will be held at the Allegiant Stadium, the same venue which will host the Super Bowl.

The South Sydney Rabbitohs, Brisbane Broncos, Manly Sea Eagles and Sydney Roosters have been picked to kick off the opener.

Australia Post has launched an investigation after workers were filmed hurling packages carelessly into a delivery van.

The footage, taken at a Sydney distribution centre, has gone viral after it was posted to TikTok over the weekend.

"The way Aus Post treats people's packages … just throwing them around, like no one gives a shit … look at them," the man filming can be heard saying.

"What a joke."

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An Australia Post spokesperson said what was seen in the video did not reflect the high standards the national postal service expected of its workers.

"The vast majority of our network takes pride in their job delivering for all Australians, and it's disappointing to see it's not the case here," the spokesperson said.

"We sincerely apologise and are investigating the matter as a priority.

"Australia Post regularly reminds team members about correct handling procedures."

The video comes as Australia Post heads into its most hectic time of the year with a surge in parcel deliveries for Christmas.

Australia Post has warned customers they need to send any deliveries by December 18 if they want it to arrive in time for the big day, or the December 21 if it is being delivered via Express Post. 

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Tuta Ngarimu might be gone, but he will never be forgotten.

A promoter feared there was nowhere for his act to stay on the same weekend.

Yousra Abu Sharekh's days begin in the southern Gaza Strip often after sleepless nights amid blaring ambulance sirens and the clamour of neighbours in the brief pause between relentless Israeli airstrikes.

By daybreak, the 33-year-old mother is on the hunt for bread, lining up for hours at bakeries to buy one bag to feed her two children.

Without electricity, disconnected from her relatives and terrified by the sounds of warplanes overhead, she rushes in the afternoon to see her sick mother at a crowded UN shelter 20 minutes away.

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There, she finally can charge her phone and check on her 66-year-old father who stubbornly stayed behind in their northern Gaza City home, refusing to heed Israeli evacuation orders.

Only two weeks ago, Abu Sharekh had a thriving life, working enthusiastically at a coveted new job and caring for her family.

"I feel either we were dreaming then or we are in a nightmare now," she said.

"Everyone was making plans, enjoying their lives the best they could. Suddenly we are wandering the streets without fuel to drive our cars, electricity, water or food. Homes are lost, people are being killed."

It's a view shared by many among Gaza's tiny but budding middle class for whom hard-won progress despite Israel's 16-year blockade and the slow erosion of Gaza's state institutions was reversed in a matter of days.

After Israel declared war following Hamas' violent rampage across the border fence, their dreams of good jobs, attending foreign universities and buying homes were dashed.

Now when thinking about the future, many draw blank, unable to imagine an existence beyond the daily fear of being killed in an airstrike.

They include graphic designers seeking shelter in tents outside overcrowded UN facilities, architects living among dozens of other relatives and UN workers grappling with the destruction of their houses.

Before the war, an aspirational middle class had emerged from the rubble of earlier conflicts in Gaza.

Despite the enduring blockade and severe limits on travel, they were able to invest in their children's education, local businesses, even private beach-side bungalows and fancy eateries.

Against the rising current of unemployment and precarious economic conditions, a small portion of society in Gaza managed to prosper.

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Abu Sharekh graduated this summer with an engineering degree from Portland State University, in Oregon, as a Fulbright scholar.

She returned home ecstatic to have landed a job with al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City and to be reunited with her family.

Within the span of a week starting October 7, those hopes vanished as if crushed under the rubble of the flattened homes in her Gaza City neighbourhood.

Survival grew precarious.

Her workplace became the scene of a horrific explosion.

Sharing a home with 70 other displaced relatives in a home in Khan Younis, Abu Sharekh said the day starts with anxiety about how to get bread to feed the many children there.

Abu Sharekh's two sons, ages five and 10, survive on canned beans.

Water is rationed, just 300 millilitres per person every day.

At night, their quarters are plunged into darkness.

Still, Abu Sharekh says it's better than the overcrowded and dirty UN shelter at the Khan Younis Training Center, where her mother stays.

The shelter, housing nearly 11 times its designated capacity with nearly 20,000 people, is the most overcrowded among the 91 UNRWA installations where nearly half a million Gaza residents have sought refuge.

Tents have cropped up outside, triggering painful memories of the mass displacement of the 1948 war with Israel, which Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe.

"It's undignified," Abu Sharekh says.

Men and women stand in line to use the same toilet facility.

The wait is so long that fights break out. Garbage is piled outside.

There is no steady supply of food or water.

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Her mother, a cancer survivor, suffers from gastrointestinal issues and needs a toilet for two to three hours a day. That has been impossible in the shelter.

"It was heartbreaking, I was inside the shelter's administration building, she was outside, and I was begging the man at the door just to let her in to use the toilet," she said.

"I couldn't do anything for her to get in, I was so helpless, can you imagine?"

But her 63-year-old mother didn't feel safe anywhere else, despite warnings from relatives that even U.N. shelters were not impervious to Israeli bombardment.

The UN reported nearly 180 internally displaced Palestinians at their facilities have been injured and 12 killed since the start of the war.

Abu Sharekh's father, traumatised by tales of his parents' displacement from their village in what is now the Israeli city of Ashkelon in 1948, was adamant history would not repeat itself, she said.

"That was the main point for him," she said.

He described an increasingly desperate situation in their Gaza City neighbourhood: people breaking into homes looking for food and wandering the streets in search of supplies.

She fears he won't pick up when she calls.

Or that scrolling through social media, she will find her home among the several destroyed nearly every day.

A strike damaged the home she shares with her husband and levelled the building her brother lived in.

"All my furniture, all my memories, windows, doors, everything is broken," she said.

She didn't want to leave, either.

But her husband persuaded her, telling her at least the children should be spared the horror of airstrikes, and that they should stay together.

"But as we discovered, there are airstrikes everywhere."

EXCLUSIVE: One year ago, Sydney schoolgirl Tran Kha Han lost her mother in unthinkable circumstances.

Now, the 10-year-old's family is fighting for her not to lose her home as well, after being told by the Department of Home Affairs her application for permanent residency can no longer proceed because of her mother's death.

Tragedy struck the family on October 23 last year, when Han's mother, Pham Huyen Trang, was on an outing with friends to regional NSW.

The car she was travelling in was swept off the road in floodwaters north of Mudgee.

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Trang's husband and Han's stepfather, Linh Hoang, was at the family's home in Sydney's Bonnyrigg when he got the call from police late at night.

"They just said there has been an accident and she is missing," Hoang said.

While the three other passengers in the car managed to escape and survive, Trang did not.

The 36-year-old's body was found by emergency services on the banks of the flooded Cooyal Creek the next morning.

The fatal accident came less than two years after Trang and Han moved to Sydney from their native Vietnam to start a new life as a family with Hoang, who is Australian.

Hoang, 41, told 9news.com.au he met and fell in love with his "beautiful wife" in 2016 when he went on a holiday to Vietnam with friends.

"We just connected and then I flew back a few more times to see her," he said.

The couple got married in 2018 and then applied for an offshore partner visa so that Trang and her daughter could move to Australia.

A provisional partner visa was granted, allowing Trang and Han to come to Australia in 2020.

Trang was just a few months away from being eligible to apply for a permanent partner visa, which would have also granted permanent residency to her daughter, when she died.

Hoang said the family was still struggling to make sense of their loss 12 months on, which came just as Trang and Han had settled into their new lives.

"(Trang) was always happy and cheerful. She was hard working and just really loved her daughter," he said.

"She came here for a better life and this is what happened."

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Han, who had an extremely close relationship with her mother, was suffering greatly, Hoang added.

"Han cries a lot and misses her mum so much," he said.

"She was a lively, outgoing girl but now she avoids social situations."

Adding to the family's distress is the uncertainty about whether Han will be able to stay in Australia.

As Han was named as a dependent on her mother's visa application, her application had been "suspended" by the Department of Home Affairs, Hoang said.

"They haven't given any more details about what is going to happen. She could be told tomorrow that she has to go back to Vietnam, or in six months time, no-one knows."

Hoang said Han had no-one to care for her properly if she was sent back to Vietnam.

"Han's biological father was not involved in raising Han at all and her grandparents are old and not able to look after her," he said.

"I've spoken to her grandparents and they want her to stay here. They think Australia will offer a better education for her and a better life." 

"Han also wants to stay here. She has all her school friends here, she has her life here."

Hoang said his late wife's sister, Han's aunt, was also living in Sydney, and had been able to provide much-needed emotional support for Han. 

Migration Agent Nguyen Minh Thanh, who is handling the family's visa matters, said he had lodged an application for ministerial intervention into Han's case in June, but was yet to receive a response, leaving the family to live in a painful limbo.

"I have spoken to the girl a few times and she was crying every time," Thanh said.

"She's always afraid that people will ask her to leave the country because her mum is not here to protect her. 

"Her mental health is getting worse. She wants to stay here with her stepfather and continue her mum's dream – be a good citizen of this beautiful Australia."

A government spokesperson said: "The minister's office is aware of the case, however is unable to comment further due to privacy."

9news.com.au understands the outcome of the application for Immigration Minister Andrew Giles to intervene in Han's case could hinge on the family being able to formalise custody arrangements for Han.

Thanh said custody was not in dispute in Han's case.

Han's biological father did not have the means to support his daughter and had not expressed any interest in applying for custody, he said.

Her biological father was also aware of the family's efforts for her to stay permanently in Australia and was not opposed to them, Minh said.

The family has started an online petition calling on Australian authorities to let Han stay in Australia, which has so far attracted more than 10,000 signatures.

Contact reporter Emily McPherson at em********@******om.au

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