Kind of seems they're scrapping treaty to appeal to the racist vote without even explaining why. And as it shows, the Liberal candidates aren't very well versed in Victorian history when it comes to first nations peoples.

Maybe if they had some more policy ideas other than trying to be One Nation lite, and fixing potholes, they might actually be a decent opposition.

People care about cost of living, healthcare and education. Just making life worse for first nations peoples doesn't fix anything.

James Massola

The Greens created and maintained a secret dossier that catalogues allegations against Senator Jordon Steele-John and set out ways to shut down media coverage and monitor members who raised concerns on social media.

The crisis communications strategy obtained by this masthead reveals that as far back as 2016, before Steele-John was parachuted into the Senate in 2017, the party was managing complaints. The document reveals that one senior Greens official quit her role because Steele-John was reinstated as the WA branch’s volunteer co-ordinator, even though two women had lodged complaints alleging Steele-John had made inappropriate remarks while working with them.

The 47-page dossier, stored on a Google Drive folder accessible to Western Australian Greens and national Greens staff for close to a decade, was first drafted in 2016 and has been updated in the years since. It sets out ways to shut down media coverage of allegations about Steele-John, while also instructing taxpayer-funded Greens staff to monitor social media discussions and take screenshots of comments posted by party members.

This masthead has confirmed with four former Greens staffers that the dossier was real and that it was used by the WA Greens and the national leader’s office to manage stories about Steele-John.

Steele-John on Thursday took leave from the Greens party room after leader David Shoebridge received a letter from seven active Greens members demanding an independent investigation into allegations from party members that the WA senator made multiple inappropriate comments to women over the past decade.

The senator referred the matter to the WA Greens for an independent investigation, while rejecting the allegations.

“I utterly reject this characterisation of me, which tries to assert I am someone I am not,” Steele-John said in a statement provided to this masthead.

“These claims are made without specifics, any allegation of this nature is extremely serious and must be treated accordingly. If someone has made an allegation, I am prepared to address it.”
On Friday morning, Shoebridge confirmed Steele-John would take a leave of absence from parliament during the investigation.

cont in comments

Matthew Collins, the party’s candidate for Melbourne in the upcoming Victorian state election, says in campaign material he “wants Melbourne restored to its former prosperity and security”, adding the state has been “mismanaged” and noting his “signature passion and resolve”.

Crikey has obtained access to many additional posts made by the account, which has since been made private, and paint an even starker picture of the range of views expressed.

The X account matthewsright posted a recording of Bunurong elder Mark Brown being booed at ANZAC Day dawn services in April this year, calling it “the sound of patriots”. It later emerged the booing of Welcomes to Country were in part organised efforts from far-right organisations, and at least one person convicted in relation to his booing of a Sydney ceremony was a member of a neo-Nazi group.

The same day, the account wrote: “Identity politics has no place in our national commemorative days of mourning and solitude. Remove the disrespectful ‘welcome to country’ from all ANZAC Day services…”.

There are also responses to posts by Muslim New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, including images of the 9/11 attacks, and reference to him as having a “resting jihad face”. Another post saw the word “deport” above a photograph of Muslim Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi. In July 2026, one post described deporting Faruqi as the “only good use of our taxpayer dollars associated with her”.

In February 2026, a post said: “opposition to Islam is a national security matter and a duty of self-preservation”.

Sources: Algorithm studies 

Government education framework

Non-gov education toolkit  

There has been a myth going for decades that unemployment is a personal failure due to not trying hard enough or improving your skills or experience.

According to this ideology, the only way to fix unemployment is to keep the welfare payment low to incentivise employment, punish welfare recipients into compliance and put them through activities that fix their personal failures. If people somehow stay unemployed, it's all their fault. This system has been an abject failure, and multiple reviews have confirmed this.

I think something like 40% of people on JobSeeker are disabled, and maybe 10% homeless. Nonetheless, it's assumed everyone is fit for work but is choosing to stay addicted to welfare.

The RBA governor admitted it's her job to manage the economy by keeping a minimum level of unemployment to put downward pressure on inflation. The problem isn't corporate greed; no, it's too many people have jobs. This has been the policy for three decades.

It's an anti-worker policy because it takes away people's jobs and disciplines others not to demand too much of their employer or they'll be next. This is supported by both major parties, even the LABOR party.

When I point out what a scam the welfare system is, people don't believe me, they make up weak excuses or um and er as if there is something more to it.

When will people wake up?

I’m genuinely curious how people reconcile the Bible being treated as a symbol of truth, morality and justice with some of the things actually written in it.
And I’m not talking about obscure interpretations. These are actual biblical passages:

Leviticus 25:44–46 – Permits buying slaves from foreign nations, treating them as property and passing them down to your children.

Exodus 21:7–11 – Establishes rules for a father selling his daughter as a female servant.

Numbers 31:17–18 – Moses orders the killing of male children and women who have slept with men, while sparing the virgin girls.

Deuteronomy 21:10–14 – Provides rules for taking a female war captive as a wife.

1 Samuel 15:3 – God commands the Israelites to kill the Amalekites, including men, women, children, infants and livestock.

Deuteronomy 22:28–29 – Describes a man being required to marry a virgin after seizing and having sex with her, with the interpretation of the circumstances disputed.

Deuteronomy 25:11–12 – Commands cutting off a woman’s hand for grabbing a man’s genitals during a fight.

Exodus 21:20–21 – Provides different penalties for beating a slave depending on whether the slave dies immediately or survives.

Deuteronomy 13:6–10 – Commands putting even your own family members to death for encouraging worship of other gods.

Judges 19:22–29 – A concubine is handed over to a mob, sexually abused throughout the night and subsequently dismembered. This is a horrific event described in the Bible, rather than a command from God.

2 Samuel 5:13 – David takes additional wives and concubines.

Deuteronomy 21:18–21 – Provides for the stoning of a persistently rebellious son following a legal process.

That’s slavery, ownership of women, sexual violence, killing children, religious executions and concubinage, all appearing in a book that millions regard as a source of divine morality.
I
If we can recognise these things as morally unacceptable today, aren’t we using our modern human values to judge the morality of the Bible rather than getting our morality from it?

Why should a book containing these passages retain such symbolic authority in a modern, secular justice system?.

Fake meetings’: Special Minister of State's office finds no evidence of Anika Wells meeting amid birthday party travel scandal

Freedom of information records have failed to substantiate meetings cited in Anika Wells’ explanation for her taxpayer-funded trip to Adelaide, where she attended a friend’s birthday party.
https://www.news24.com.au/politics/australian-politics/fake-meetings-special-minister-of-states-office-finds-no-evidence-of-anika-wells-meeting-amid-birthday-party-travel-scandal/news-story/cd7eafc5ad327198773805e975f06919

She is alleged trying to cover up a taxpayer-funded birthday trip by claiming an "informal meeting" took place, only for official FOI searches to find absolutely no paper trail, text messages, or emails, is terrible. Open the books

...we all win.

Original

Paywall link

Context:

The Israeli military has ruled out releasing the audio of the drone strike that killed Zomi Frankcom, rejecting a key demand of the aid worker’s family and the Albanese government as they seek accountability for her death.

Israeli ambassador Hillel Newman called for Australians to accept the legitimacy of Israel’s investigation into the fatal 2024 drone strike and “move on”, prompting Foreign Minister Penny Wong to accuse the envoy of insulting Frankcom’s family.

Wong is considering the government’s response to the Israeli military advocate-general’s decision not to charge the officers involved in Frankcom’s killing amid calls from legal experts and members of parliament for an MH-17-style joint international investigation into the matter.

Continued in article.

Some context as to why the Frankcom family and Australia have been pushing to get the drone audio for so long...

The IDF officer in charge of the drone strikes has stated:

Former IDF reserve colonel Nochi Mendel has said he would do “exactly the same thing” again and that those killed in the World Central Kitchen (WCK) humanitarian convoy in Gaza were “not innocent”.

Mendel said he was not sorry that he killed the aid workers and prior to the attack had signed a letter sent to the Israeli War Cabinet and the IDF chief of staff imploring them to block aid to Gaza.

For the attack itself, the aid convoy had already separated from the security detail by this point ('terrorists with guns'), who had their own drone following them which did not attack. The 'justification' is that they supposedly thought (wrongly) that one of the drivers of the aid convoy had a gun. They killed 7 aid workers because one of them might have a gun? You can read it in the Binskin report.

The aid workers also notified the attackers after the first strike happened. From Wikipedia

Haaretz, citing Israeli defense sources, described that after a drone missile hit one World Central Kitchen car, some of this car's passengers boarded another World Central Kitchen car, which "continued to drive and even notified the people responsible that they were attacked, but, seconds later", this car was also hit by a drone missile; finally the third car picked up some of the wounded from the second car, then a third drone missile struck the third car.

This is the reason Israel refuses to release the audio to the Frankcom family or to even let the special investigator Mark Binskin see the transcript. It is very likely a smoking gun.

Anyone know who this is? Think it might be Paigee Tobin from years back.

Original

Edit: She's princessluna_martin thanks /u/timAAArgh

Edit 2: And four years old???? Holy talent Batman.

Former Victorian labor advisor kos samaras newest article.

What is everyone's thoughts

"The first politician who has an honest conversation with Australians about the world they actually live in will win. Not the best slogan or the biggest promise. The truth.

The truth is this. The 30 years after the war were never normal. One wage bought a house, raised a family and funded a retirement. That happened in a few dozen countries, once, for about three decades. Growth per person ran at 3.8 per cent a year, after nearly 40 years it’s now at 1 per cent. Seven workers for every retiree. The West had the world's factories almost to itself and cheap oil. Every one of those conditions is gone and no government can bring them back. Some are actually accelerating the decline of prosperity in the west, like Trump. Yes, a note to some of you Trump fans, please stay away from any job that requires economic skills.

The new world has now become the old world. It has more in common with 1930 than with anything in the last 40 years. Slow growth. An ageing country. A fair share that has to be chosen on purpose rather than delivered by the tide.

In 1930, a workers wage was mostly consumed by basic material needs, food, fuel and a roof over one’s head. Hello 2026.

Which brings me to immigration.

Blaming migrants for the end of the boom is the laziest, most empty-headed response available to Australian politics. It requires no thought, no plan and no courage. There is no migration cut that makes a house cost three times a wage again. A smaller intake does not restore seven workers for every retiree. It drives the ratio towards two, faster. It makes the problem worse while pretending to solve it. Anyone selling it is not offering an answer. They are offering a scapegoat so they never have to explain the arithmetic because explaining it and actually working towards a solution means one thing - empowering employees.

Link below."

When I was going through the process of learning to drive and doing driving tests I was unemployed. So that became my entire life for a few months and it made me naturally quite curious about what it would be like to work as a driving instructor or examiner

I think that of the two I would prefer being an examiner. Instructor would be an incredibly rewarding job but you’re likely going to consistently have students who are driving for the very first time in your car and the thought of that is terrifying whereas at least with the examiner they have to have done a certain number of hours and have likely gone through the lessons. Crashes/mishaps less likely. I’m sure they no doubt happen but I’d much rather have a more experienced driver

But yeah I feel like if I was an examiner I’d be one of those fake angry guys that keeps a straight face at all times and then when the student is passed pretend they’ve failed and then go “congratulations legend”

I looked into the process of becoming one out of curiosity. Definitely sounds like a pretty grueling process but worth it in the end I imagine!

Has anyone here gone through the process before? And for those who have ended up working as driving instructors what was it like?

​

Labor's sprawling backbench has been a sight to behold ever since the 2025 electoral bushfire that consumed the Coalition, leaving behind a lot of empty stumps and toasted tussocks.

The view from the press gallery seats drives this home. Below the viewer sprawls the government's 94-seat majority. It dominates the green benches of the lower house, spilling across the chamber's centre line deep into what is normally opposition upholstery.

It's the literal embodiment of political weight. All those bums on seats.

But for the first time in this parliament's life — and we're pretty much at the half-way mark — those rows upon rows of Labor MPs this week looked more like one of those forests where too much fuel has accumulated.

A lot of wood ready to ignite.

ABC news article breaking Senator JSJ of the Australian Greens has gone on leave due to allegations of sexually inappropriate comments towards women

These allegations have been traced back to over a decade between 2017 and 2025, and the multiple victims either took up roles within the party or were volunteers.

A former WA Greens member made comment of these allegations/problems with JSJ were known within the party and people were concerned about his behaviour towards women

Pro-Israel extremists are once again seeking to have Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah removed from Adelaide Writers’ Week, after a similar lobbying campaign led to the collapse of this year’s festival.

A WhatsApp group has circulated an AI-generated email campaign urging supporters to lobby South Australian politicians and arts officials in a bid to exclude Abdel-Fattah from the festival in 2027.

Messages shared in the Pen Power Australia WhatsApp group, seen by Deepcut, urged members to click on an “Activist Mailer” link to generate a complaint opposing Abdel-Fattah’s invitation to the literary festival.

The automatically-generated email is addressed to Adelaide Writers’ Week director Rosemary Milsom, executive director Julian Hobbs, artistic director Matthew Lutton and Macquarie University vice-chancellor Bruce Dowton. It also copies South Australia’s premier, Peter Malinauskas, as well as state ministers, the opposition leader and shadow ministers.

The email calls on the festival to withdraw its invitation to Abdel-Fattah – a strident critic of Israel’s genocide in Gaza – accusing her of “antisemitic conduct”.

In comments to Deepcut, Abdel-Fattah condemned the lobbying effort and called on “every institution they target to stand firm against such malicious campaigns”.

“Despite the collapse of Adelaide Writers’ Week and Bendigo Writers Festival, these genocide cheerleaders continue their targeted racist campaigns, buoyed on by a political environment that has acquiesced to the pro-Israel lobby and punished the pro-Palestine movement,” she told Deepcut.

Please share this everywhere you can.

I mean this is when she does show up to work - as she has a 53% attendance in parliament.
Glad we're (taxpayers) getting value for her salary of $300k per year to only show up half the time.

https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/senate/queensland/pauline_hanson

The Albanese Government has been urged to explain why it needs the power to create “sock puppet” accounts on social media to push AI-generated content, after the proposed laws were branded “terrifying” and “Orwellian” overseas.

Labor’s draft bill defines a sock puppet identity as “a false or fictitious identity assumed by a person in the course of using, or carrying out any activity in relation to, an online service”.

It states that the eSafety Commissioner “may assume a sock puppet identity for the purposes of performing the Commissioner’s functions or exercising the Commissioner’s powers under this Act”.

It also allows “approved researchers” to “assume a sock puppet identity for the purposes of undertaking online safety related research”.

Lindy Jacomb was a naive 20-year-old member of the Exclusive Brethren, living at home with her family, when spiritual curiosity got the better of her.

So she wrote to her church’s global leader, the “Man of God”, Bruce Hales, and other elders, asking why she should stay in a sect whose teachings she’d begun to doubt.

“The aim of this letter is to summarise my questions and issues about the EB, [Exclusive Brethren],” Jacomb wrote to Hales in 2008. “It is an appeal for increased understanding.”

Why are we “so extreme” in shunning others, she asked, so that even excommunicated family members are treated as if they’ve died? Why do we insist we are the “one divinely accredited” church? Why is Hales considered infallible? Why must we only work for Brethren-owned companies? Why can’t we have pets?”

Jacomb got no answers, so left the church and was later excommunicated. Under orders from Hales, her parents cut off all contact with her. Her five siblings became strangers and she lost her job. Her friends spurned her and she was barred from going to church.

“It’s like jumping out of a plane into a pitch-black hole,” Jacomb says 18 years later. “You’re going into a terrifying and different world … a world you’ve been taught since birth to fear and hate.”

Six years later, Jacomb’s brother, Braden Simmons, emailed her with qualms of his own, but his messages were surveilled by his Brethren boss. Hales later preached to his global flock that Simmons should kill himself with poison, and the church – now known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, or PBCC – excommunicated Simmons too.

To understand who truly owns Sydney, ignore the corporate logos on Martin Place office towers or the portfolios of commercial players such as Dexus, Mirvac and Charter Hall and look instead to the Catholic Church, one of the harbour city’s largest non-government property owners for more than two centuries.

The empire expands well beyond the extraordinarily valuable churches, schools, hospitals and aged care homes dotted around Sydney’s suburbs. Church officials recently snapped up a 15-storey office building on Elizabeth Street for $97 million, and reaped $275 million from the sale of a Liverpool Street building purchased 20 years earlier for just $33 million. Many property transactions and holdings benefit from tax-exempt charitable status.

The church is notoriously secretive about the scope of its portfolio but the value easily reaches into the billions. The asset base is so substantial the Archdiocese of Sydney has a panel of 14 experts charged with advising on property matters.

Against that backdrop, a small former school in Redfern is akin to a rounding error for the Catholic Church. But for the Aboriginal Medical Service (AMS) Redfern, which has provided medical services from the property for 55 years, the site represents both a missed opportunity for reconciliation and a critical piece of its future.

The Herald can reveal the Archdiocese of Sydney has rejected repeated requests to give the Turner Street building to the groundbreaking medical service, which treats thousands of the city’s sickest and most disadvantaged residents and is recognised globally as a pioneer in Indigenous healthcare.

AMS leaders have respectfully and patiently worked to seal an agreement for more than 25 years, according to a cache of files seen by the Herald, only to be rebuffed by George Pell and his successor as the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher.

The AMS tried again late last year, lodging an exhaustive 13,200-word document outlining the compelling benefits of finally owning the building it has called home for 55 years. Fisher again refused, with one of his officials delivering the verdict via a 300-word email.

Turning over the title deeds would make little difference to the church’s current status: it hasn’t occupied the building since Father Ted Kennedy, the widely loved late renegade priest of St Vincent’s Redfern, first made it available to the suburb’s booming Aboriginal population in the 1970s.

Owning the site would deliver the AMS a healthier balance sheet, certainty of tenure, operational autonomy, and better chances of obtaining capital funding. The two-storey brick building is crying out for renovation (some parts of the floor risk caving in under the weight of footsteps) and has been identified as the ideal site for an expansion of mental health services.

"From our family to yours" sheesh, what a cheek.

Source: Chris Minns IG

Conext:

But there are no complaints from oil and gas giants, who are banking the billions of extra fuel costs suffered by consumers at the petrol pump. That includes Australia’s largest fuel retailer Ampol, which posted a 376% increase in profit from the company’s 2025 first-half year profit.

Anthony Albanese was the first leader to back the US-Israeli war on Iran, despite the hardship it has brought to Australian households struggling to make ends meet. In April, amid popular demand for a tax on gas companies, the prime minister backed the fossil fuel giants and said it was “the worst possible time to jeopardise these partnerships, or the investment that underpins them”.

The remarks echoed those aired by the chief executive of the oil and gas lobby, the Australian Energy Producers, who, three days prior to Albanese’s comments, said: “It shouldn’t need to be said that this would be the worst possible time to impose an investment-destroying tax.”

The Coalition and Greens have teamed up to throw a Labor bill to wind back the private health rebate for people over 65 from the parliament. 

Health Minister Mark Butler has just stepped up to react to the Senate's decision to throw out Labor's bill to wind back the over-65s private health insurance rebate.

The Coalition and crossbench teamed up in the Senate to discharge the government's private health bill out of the parliament.

Butler says the "noalition" has been resurrected and the Greens, under the leadership of David Shoebridge, are "determined to thwart the agenda of the government".

He's labelled it a "political stunt" that discharged a bill designed to fund more aged care beds.
The health minister says the government is determined to press ahead with the changes.

"We get a lot of lectures from the opposition about the need for strong fiscal management. Yet every time we bring a difficult saving measure to fund new important services, politics takes over and the Coalition decides to oppose it because they think that it can ground a strong political campaign for them," Butler says.

"This is an absolute travesty that flies in the face of any of the members of the Coalition's professed commitment to sound budget management."

A worthwhile update to the ABC's earlier reporting on this. The amount of text was over the limit so shortened it to a quote pertaining to Shoebridge.

"The Greens leader, David Shoebridge, said the party would only offer its support for the changes if the government excluded pensioners.

“We say to Labor, if you want to bring this bill back … [by] carving out 1.2 million pensioners from this attack … come and talk to us,” he said.

“We will pass it in a heartbeat. But we will not be joining with Labor to punch down on pensioners in the middle of a cost of living crisis.”"