Defence Minister Richard Marles has hit back after Labor elder statesman Paul Keating renewed his criticism of the AUKUS submarines deal.

The former prime minister accused the federal government of switching its strategic reasoning for acquiring the nuclear-powered vessels in an opinion piece for the Australian Financial Review.

Keating's new onslaught came after Marles told federal parliament this week the new submarine fleet was needed far from Australia's shores to protect shipping passages against blockades.

READ MORE: Labor MP questions safety of AUKUS nuclear submarines waste

Keating likened his comments with Australia's forward defence policy of the 1960s which led to the country's involvement in the Vietnam War.

"Marles is implicitly arguing that Australia's defence policy should no longer be the defence of the continent but a forward defence posture – a forward defence which would allow nuclear submarines, with their indefinite seakeeping, to attack remote targets such as threats to Singapore's oil refineries or of course, the Chinese coast itself.

"In other words, the old 1960s forward defence policy. The policy which lured us into Vietnam – with all its heartbreak."

But Marles told Today this morning that circumstances had changed from when Keating was prime minister from 1991 to 1996.

He said Australia's overseas trade had undergone major expansion since the Keating era, but the Asia Pacific region had also experienced a major military build-up.

"We live in a part of the world where we are seeing the biggest conventional military build-up since the end of the Second World War. That's not a scenario that you can ignore," Marles said.

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"We have a country today which is much more connected in terms of trade with the world than we ever have been before, certainly than we were in the 1990s, and we face the situation that the old capability, or the existing capability, which is a conventional submarine will become less capable in the 2030s.

"To maintain that we need to move to a new technology, which is nuclear-powered submarines."

Nationals leader David Littleproud said Keating was "living in a 1990s utopia that doesn't exist any more".

While he backed Marles over the AUKUS deal, he said government backbench MPs risked splitting on issue.

Keating last week decried the AUKUS submarine announcement as the "worst international decision by an Australian Labor government" since World War I.

He told a National Press Club event that China had never threatened to invade Australia and the Albanese government should choose 40 to 50 conventional submarines over nuclear propelled vessels.

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AFL great Doug Hawkins has spoken of the terror he felt when lightning struck the booth he was sheltering in on his worksite in Melbourne.

The former Western Bulldogs champion told 9News the thunder he heard from the Yarraville worksite during the thunderstorm about 8.30am yesterday was the loudest he has heard in his 62 years.

"I packed myself. It scared the sh-t out me", he said.

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Hawkins said the small hut he sheltered in during the storm shook for up to 10 seconds after one loud bang.

Lightning had struck the hut.

"I was going to get to my car but it was about eight metres away," he said.

"But I was too scared to go.

"The big tough footy player, Dougie was actually too scared to come out."

After the storm passed, another employee told him he looked pale and that his eyes were crossed.

He felt light-headed and generally unwell so he went to see a doctor, who told him to go to the hospital to have his heart checked.

READ MORE: Keating in new blast at AUKUS submarines deal

Hawkins was cleared.

"I'm lucky," he said.

"It could have been worse."

The severe storm left more than 50,000 homes and businesses without power across Victoria and damaged some homes.

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Parental leave laws were again thrust into the spotlight last year after the Albanese government revealed new parents would be offered 26 weeks of paid leave by 2026.

But for many families, three years is just too long to wait for the shared paid parental leave extension.

It also isn't just a matter of more time with the baby but questions have been raised about why superannuation isn't also paid on top of parental leave.

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This can be one of the largest disruptors for women who take time out of the workforce for caring responsibilities and end up with less superannuation than their male counterparts at retirement.

To tackle these issues, some businesses are taking their own measures to close the gap in gender inequities.

Among the most prominent is accounting giant PwC, which has turned parental leave on its head ahead of the federal government changes.

National leader Martina Crowley told the Forbes Women in Business Summit this week that the company last year moved parental leave from 18 to 26 weeks of paid leave – in line with the government proposal.

"That's fantastic for working families," she told the summit.

PwC has also removed the definition about needing to be a primary and secondary carer so "more non-birthing males will take parental leave".

Employees can also take it up to two years after the birth of the child.

"It is a game-changer," she said.

"It will enable us to attract more female talent to our organisation and retain the ones with the sparks that we want to get back after they have time to enjoy their family."

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PwC hasn't just increased the length of leave but the company has introduced superannuation for not just the 26 weeks but the whole year of parental leave.

"When we went through the process of changing the policy, it was tricky, it took us time at the executive board to get there," she said.

Managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand Melanie Silva said it isn't just about increasing the length of leave, it is about reframing how companies look at it.

"I still think across the board parental leave is a problem that needs to be solved, a gap that needs to be solved," she said.

"If we could just reframe that for a hot minute and say 'okay, someone is going away for 12 months' that creates a step-up opportunity for someone.

"When I took my maternity leave, at last count 10 people ended up doing flips into different roles.

"Those people are better because they got to walk a mile in my shoes, they got to learn from experiences they never would have had."

She said her having a baby created an "amazing development opportunity for the team".

Silva emphasised companies should be looking at parental leave as an opportunity for other employees to step up and take on different responsibilities instead of the problem of filling a gap.

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JBWere executive Maria Lykouras said despite all these moves in the tech and finance space, in the 25 years of her career, gender inequities have not changed enough.

"In financial planning in general, for every female there are four males and when you look at leadership level in the wealth management space it is worse than that," she said.

"In 25 years we have not moved where we need to go."

Lykouras said her company has implemented flexible working to retain women and remove the dilemma of choosing between personal and professional lives.

"Flexible working to show women you don't need to make choices between personal and professional lives and that you can do both," she said.

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Many of the world's most iconic structures come with unusual stories.

French intellectuals and artists at first hated the "monstrous" Eiffel Tower; the British hid the Taj Mahal under bamboo scaffolding to stop it being bombed by the Luftwaffe during World War II; and it took a big leap of faith for the Golden Gate Bridge to be painted its now iconic, but then unorthodox, burnt orange.

If Saudi Arabia's proposed one-kilometre-high Jeddah Tower ever gets finished, architectural historians will also have a rich storybook to dig into.

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But, right now, that seems a big if.

Announced in 2008 by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, construction of the building has been plagued by delays and may not ever recover from an apparent power play involving two of the world's wealthiest men.

Over the past five years, the tower has not grown an inch taller than the 63 storeys it reached in 2017, when construction ground to a mysterious and sudden halt.

Planned to stand an imperious 252 storeys, Jeddah Tower was primed to dwarf regional rival Dubai's 828m Burj Khalifa, currently the world's tallest building.

Topped out, Jeddah Tower would be at least the equivalent of three stacked Eiffel Towers.

That now looks a long way off.

Current photographs of the tower show a deserted site and a lonely skeleton of empty concrete floors, standing around 250m tall, about one-quarter of its proposed final height.

When Prince Alwaleed announced the project it was estimated to cost around $US1.3 billion to build, marginally less than the $1.5b Burj Khalifa.

The tower was to be the crown jewel in a totally new waterfront development called Jeddah Economic City, 80 kilometres to the north-west of Mecca.

It would also be a prestige project – both for Saudi, to softly assert its regional dominance over the United Arab Emirates, and Alwaleed, personally.

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At the time, Alwaleed was one of Saudi's highest-flying entrepreneurs, and the ambitious Jeddah Tower project seemed a natural fit.

Around the turn of the millennium, Alwaleed was making serious big money moves which had projected him as the face of Saudi business abroad.

Enriched with unimaginable oil wealth, the grandson of the first king of Saudi Arabia was snapping up sizable stakes in companies like Apple, News Corp, Netscape and Motorola, and investing heavily in Coca-Cola, Ford and other global powerhouses.

His property portfolio was headlined with glamour investments in some of the world's most prestigious properties, including the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, New York's Plaza Hotel, London's Savoy Hotel and Monaco's Monte Carlo Grand Hotel.

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When Paula Bunting turned 50, as well as celebrating with her family, she received a gift in the post.

She was delivered a bowel cancer screening kit, which is sent to all Australians aged 50 to 74 every two years.

A few weeks later, she carried out the instructions and sent off a sample, along with her husband Ian's test.

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But when they received their results, Bunting was floored by the letter addressed to her.

"It came back with, 'Your bowel screening test results have come back positive'," she told nine.com.au.

"I looked at it and I thought, 'It can't be right.'

"My doctor said I needed to get a colonoscopy straight away.

"I thought it was a mistake."

Bunting was so sure the results were wrong she went ahead with a planned cruise and didn't tell her family.

She didn't have any symptoms and was super fit.

But after her holiday, the former army training instructor from Strathtulloh, in Melbourne's west, finally did go for those tests.

She was told she had a 4cm tumour in her colon, also known as the bowel.

"I just couldn't believe it. Biggest shock of my life," she said.

She needed 30cm of her bowel removed in a six-hour surgery.

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Luckily, the cancer hadn't spread and the mother-of-three didn't need any more treatment, which she described as "a miracle".

Bunting asked her doctor what would have happened if she hadn't sent off that screening test when she did.

"She said, 'Paula, you would've eventually started getting signs and symptoms and you could be dead by 55'," she said.

Bunting, now 56, is urging all Aussies to send off their tests amid a drop in screening rates.

"Just do it, it's not hard," she said.

"It can save your life if you get on top of it early."

She's now working with the Jodi Lee Foundation to raise awareness of bowel cancer.

READ MORE: Nurse urges people not to ignore symptoms after bowel cancer diagnosis

An Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) report shows bowel cancer screening participation rates have dropped.

Anatomical pathologist Dr Nick Musgrave, who is working with Pathology Awareness Australia on the issue, called it "extremely concerning".

"When identified and diagnosed early, bowel cancer has a high survival rate, but late-stage bowel cancer diagnosis does not have the same positive outcomes," Musgrave said.

"It is extremely concerning that more people are not participating in the screening program and doing the test.

"This is one of the cancers that we are able to screen for so we must do everything we can to reduce the risk of having advanced disease."

Screening participation dropped to 40.9 per cent in 2020-2021, an almost three per cent decline from the previous screening period.

Do you have a story? Contact journalist Sarah Swain on ss****@******om.au

More than 2.6 million Aussies were invited to send tests over that period, yet a huge 1.5 million did not return a sample.

Experts say the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the screening drop.

But even in normal times, around 60 per cent of Australians don't bother to complete the test.

Bowel cancer is Australia's second deadliest overall cancer overall, after lung cancer.

However, if caught at the earliest stage, 99 per cent of people survive at least five years.

That drops to 14 per cent at stage four.

Under the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program (NBSCP), Australians aged 50 to 74 are sent testing kits in the mail to collect a faecal sample that is then posted to a pathology laboratory to be examined.

Blood in stools, unexplained weight loss, abdominal pain, unexplained anaemia and a persistent change in bowel habits can all be signs of the disease.

For more details, visit Bowel Cancer Australia.

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Protesters have filled the streets of Paris and other French cities, with violence marring several marches, a day after President Emmanuel Macron further angered his critics by standing strong on a bill raising the retirement age that his government forced through parliament without a vote.

Strikes upended travel as protesters blockaded train stations, Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, refineries and ports.

More than 250 protests were organised across the country and union leaders praised the "significant" mobilisation.

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In Paris, street battles between police and black-clad, masked groups who attacked at least two fast food restaurants, a supermarket and a bank reflected intensifying violence and drew attention away from the tens of thousands of peaceful marchers.

Police, pelted by objects and fireworks, charged multiple times and used tear gas to disperse rioters.

A haze of tear gas fumes covered part of the Place de l'Opera, where demonstrators converged at the march's end. Police estimated the "radical elements" at some 1000 people.

Amid the chaos, one police officer was seen falling to the ground with his shield.

Colleagues dragged him to safety. Police said he was being treated but didn't elaborate or say whether there were other injuries.

Violence also marred other marches, notably in the western cities of Nantes, Rennes and Lorient — where an administrative building was attacked and the courtyard of the police station was set afire and its windows broken — and in Lyon, in the south-east.

Thursday's nationwide protests were the ninth organised by eight unions since January, when opponents still hoped that parliament would reject Macron's measure to raise the retirement age by two years, to 64.

But the government forced it through using a special constitutional measure.

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In an interview on Wednesday, Macron refused to budge from his position that a new law is necessary to keep retirement coffers funded.

Opponents proposed other solutions, including higher taxes on the wealthy or companies, which Macron says would hurt the economy.

The Constitutional Council must now approve the measure but opponents refuse to give up.

"We are trying to say before the law is enacted … that we have to find a way out and we continue to say that the way out is the withdrawal of the law," the chief of the moderate CFDT trade union, Laurent Berger, told The Associated Press.

High-speed and regional trains, the Paris metro and public transportation systems in other major cities were disrupted. About 30 per cent of flights at Paris Orly Airport were cancelled.

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The Eiffel Tower and the Versailles Palace were closed on Thursday due to the strikes.

Protesters staged blockades on major highways and interchanges to slow traffic around big cities.

Violence, a recurring issue at protests, has intensified in recent days at small, scattered protests against the pension reform and Macron's leadership — in contrast to the largely peaceful big demonstrations staged by unions.

Authorities expected violence to be more intense on Thursday and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin had said 12,000 security forces would be in French streets, with 5000 in Paris.

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Social unrest in France also risks tarnishing the sheen of King Charles III's first overseas trip as monarch, scheduled next week, with striking workers refusing to provide red carpets and uncollected garbage piling up in Paris streets.

Macron insisted Wednesday that the government's bill to raise the retirement age must be implemented by the end of the year.

Critics attacked him for the statement, describing him as "self-satisfied," "out of touch" and "offensive."

Large swathes of society oppose the pension reform.

The Education Ministry said in a statement that about 24 per cent of teachers walked off the job in primary and middle schools on Thursday, and 15 per centin high schools.

At Paris' Gare de Lyon train station, several hundred strikers walked on railway tracks to prevent trains from moving, brandishing flares and chanting "and we will go, and we will go until withdrawal" and "Macron, go away."

READ MORE: Teen accused of torturing 13-year-old girl allegedly carried out similar attack days prior

"This year perhaps maybe our holidays won't be so great," said Maxime Monin, 46, who stressed that employees like him, who work in public transport, are not paid on strike days. "But I think it's worth the sacrifice."

Fabien Villedieu, a unionist with SUD-rail, said the strike at France's railway company SNCF is open-ended. "There are actions every day everywhere … with one, two, three or four protests. One, two, three or four blockades," he said. "What do we need to do to make the government listen?"

In the northern suburbs of Paris, several dozen union members blocked a bus depot in Pantin, preventing about 200 vehicles from getting out during rush hour.

Nadia Belhoum, a 48-year-old bus driver participating in the action, criticized Macron's decision to force the higher retirement age through.

"The president of the Republic … is not a king, and he should listen to his people," she said.

In one chant, protesters yelled, “f*** off Posie f*** off”.

Shocking dashcam footage has captured the heart-stopping moment a Volkswagen crossed a solid white line in inner-city Brisbanecolliding with an oncoming car and flipping on its side.

The vision – captured in the riverside suburb of Toowong and posted to social media yesterday – shows a white Volkswagen cross onto the opposite side of the road before slamming into an oncoming car.

The hatchback then rolled on its side, narrowly missing a nearby pedestrian.

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It's the latest in a string of recent road accidents along the nation's east coast.

In Adelaide, an apparently impatient van driver was involved in a chaotic clash that shocked onlookers yesterday.

Dashcam footage of the incident showed the white van drive onto a median strip, in a suspected bid to overtake traffic at an intersection ahead.

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It comes as the latest statistics today showed child poverty levels had stagnated.

Lisa was attempting to hail a taxi home when she was forced into a car and assaulted by four men in Melbourne's south-east more than 40 years ago.

She was driven to a deserted spot by the Brighton Beach foreshore, where each of the men sexually assaulted her.

"It's something you never get over, it never leaves you. I have flashbacks of being in the car and them just laughing at me while it's all going on," the woman said today.

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Detectives said Lisa, who was 19 at the time, was forced into a Ford sedan with a black stripe on the side near Redan Street in St Kilda, about 2am on December 12, 1982.

After the assault, she was pushed out of the car after the assault and the men fled the scene before the woman was found by some passersby, who notified police.

Sexual Crimes Squad Detective Inspector Mark Burnett said the attack had "life-changing consequences for the victim".

"She still suffers the physical and emotional impacts of this on a daily basis," he said.

An investigation was conducted at the time and the forensic exhibits were stored.

After advancements in DNA technology, the exhibits were re-tested and a DNA profile of an alleged offender was matched to someone already in the system.

Elftherios Christoforidis, 51, was convicted of abduction, false imprisonment, three counts of rape and aggravated rape in 2016.

He was sentenced to seven years imprisonment with a minimum term of five years.

"You just feel like useless, you feel like you're worth nothing, you feel like you're not good enough," Lisa said.

"I just wanted to get home, and get home safely."

READ MORE: Family reveal living 'hell' after video of teen's alleged torture

Burnett said despite the breakthrough arrest, three more men were still on the run.

"While someone has already been charged in relation to this assault, that does not mean the investigation ends there," he said.

"We believe there were three other men involved in this incident, and we are determined to pursue every avenue of inquiry we can to provide answers to the victim after over 40 years."

Police are keen to speak with anyone who has any information about the incident or who may have been responsible.

"If you know anything about this incident, then now is the time for you to come forward and speak to us," Burnett said.

"Historical sexual offending matters are incredibly complex, but we know people's circumstances can change over time, and this appeal might be the prompt needed to help close a terrible chapter in someone's life."

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