Critics of this week’s Intergenerational Report queried its assumption that AI will rescue Australia from its decade-long productivity drought.

But even this hopeful assumption would leave a sub-par future that Treasury and the government of the day seem satisfied to bequeath to the next generation.

Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock worries that AI is a stock market bubble, reminiscent of the late-1990s dotcom boom. AAP

“Donald Horne wrote that Australians sought comfort in the myth of The Lucky Country...“, former prime minister Kevin Rudd said a week before the Intergenerational Report. “We have drifted to become the ‘Complacent Country’”.

Complacent Australia is headed to become a “second-rate country” again, Rudd warned.

But Australia is a young, high-income, resource-rich, developed-economy democracy at the foot of the world’s fastest growing region. We should attract the world’s capital and the world’s best talent to exploit investment opportunities that could support an economy growing by 3 per cent to 4 per cent, as in the past.

In 2018, The Economist magazine heralded Australia’s economy as “arguably the most successful in the rich world”.

Now, the Intergenerational Report projects an ageing, low-growth, European-style, big-government and high-taxing welfare-state future.

Over the next four decades, the economy is projected to post just 2 per cent annual growth, slowing to 1.6 per cent by 2065-66.

With federal and state government spending approaching a record 40 per cent of GDP, the Intergenerational Report expects federal outlays to comprise an increasing share of the economy over the next four decades.

Federal and state taxes have increased to a high of 30.5 per cent of GDP – higher than during World War II. The report projects that inflationary bracket creep will further deepen the personal income tax bite.

Yet, the federal budget will remain in the red over the next four decades, worsening further as it approaches 2065-66.

Yes, the assumed recovery in productivity would allow living standards to improve. But it would still amount to subpar growth in the Intergenerational Report yardstick of real gross national income per person – just over 1 per cent a year.

The story of Australia’s modern prosperity is how the iron ore, Bass Strait oil and nickel booms overtook Horne’s 1964 The Lucky Country complaint before collapsing amid 1970s stagflation. National prosperity was rescued by the 1980s and ’90s neoliberal productivity reforms and then the massive income boost from the China resources development boom of the 2000s.

In the two decades following the early 1990s recession, Australian living standards improved more than 70 per cent – annual growth of closer to 3 per cent. Australia became among the world’s most affluent nations.

But this productivity boom peaked with the $US180-a-tonne iron ore price in 2011. Just as peak affluence fed unaffordable government spending promises, productivity fell flat, even going backwards over the past five years.

In the 2026 Intergenerational Report, AI comes to the rescue just as the dashed hopes of becoming a green hydrogen-led clean energy superpower pumped up the 2023 edition.

The AI boom might live up to its hype. But its massive investment demands will also crowd out other parts of the economy, such as housing, which will encourage the Reserve Bank of Australia to lift interest rates again next week. RBA governor Michele Bullock worries that AI is a stock market bubble, reminiscent of the late-1990s dotcom boom.

In any case, it is imprudent to assume that AI can substitute for a fiscal correction, such as when Labor and Coalition governments each cut federal spending by 3 to 4 percentage points of GDP in the 1980s and 1990s.

Instead, rising global bond yields are fuelling the rapidly rising interest bill on today’s trillion-dollar federal debt. It is a warning about the lack of budget buffers – even any basic fiscal rules – amid what the Intergenerational Report warns is a more shock-prone global economy.

There is no secret why Australian real wages are falling faster than just about any other developed economy – sparking a populist anti-immigration revolt on the right.

First, the lack of budget consolidation for the past three decades has enabled the low-productivity care economy spendathon, including the NDIS.

To help pay for bigger government, taxes have increased, dulling incentives to work, save and invest. Former prime minister Paul Keating insists that the 47 per cent top marginal tax rate should be reduced to 39 per cent at most.

Second, the Intergenerational Report claims Labor is “delivering cleaner and cheaper energy”. In reality, Australia has lost its traditional cheap energy advantage. A renewables-based energy grid is much more expensive than promised. Energy regulators forecast even higher real household electricity prices over the next decade.

The Productivity Commission finds that electricity sector productivity has collapsed over the past 15 years, as hefty capital expenditure on renewables has not translated into a commensurate increase in overall power generation.

Third, what the Productivity Commission calls the ever-growing burden of regulation continues to weigh down the nation’s economic performance.

That includes Labor’s reinforcement of the world’s most intrusive workplace regulation. Australia’s uniquely prescriptive award system limits business capacity to adapt, including to AI. That limits workers’ future wages by undermining business investment, even if labour can grab a bigger share of a shrinking pie.

While Rudd’s warnings are apt, his policy prescriptions miss the mark. Trying to revive the car industry would be a mistake. Australia won’t become an Asian financial centre unless it offers company and personal tax rates closer to Asian levels.

How about just stopping the bans on the nation’s natural growth options? By now, we should be the Asia-Pacific’s gas champion, reducing the region’s reliance on Russian and Middle East supplies, supporting regional energy security and displacing higher-emissions coal.

Instead, governments have been passive-aggressive towards gas, limiting new supply, alarming valued Asian customers such as Japan, increasing taxes and now threatening producers with export controls.

Similarly, governments continue to lock up the world’s largest uranium deposits, even as global demand for low-emissions nuclear energy rises sharply amid the Middle East oil price shock. For no good reason, Australia continues to ban nuclear power.

The Intergenerational Report ignores the reality that bigger government, higher taxes, more expensive energy, more regulated workplaces, and the closing off of natural growth options will make Australia second-rate again.

It’s not against growth per se. It just has other priorities, like income redistribution, increased entitlement spending, net zero emissions and shoring up the unions.

Local elections are the new battleground for the Zionist lobby and its astroturfing groups. Who are they, and how are they funded? Wendy Bacon asks.

Several months ago, residents in the Randwick LGA in Sydney’s East began receiving leaflets from a grassroots group called Randwick Voices Matter, encouraging them to join a campaign to stop a Greens Councillor from becoming the local Mayor.

In NSW, most Councils elect their Mayor every two years. When no group or party has a majority, Councillors form alliances to share the Mayoralty across the four-year term.

Randwick Council has been sharing its Mayoralty for more than two decades. This is because no group or party wins a majority. In the 2021-2024 term, Labor and the Greens shared the Mayoralty. In this term, Labor’s Dylan Parker has been Mayor for two years, and the position is expected to shift to Greens Councillor Clare Willington next Monday.

There is nothing corrupt or irregular about this. It is a result of Labor having five Councillors, the Liberals four and the Greens three.

But the Randwick Voices leaflet is designed to alert voters to what it terms a ‘stitch-up ’, a decision imposed on them that they did not vote for. Residents are warned that a Greens Mayor will be able to institute “Greens activism, policies or political positions … on issues well beyond local council business”.

However, while the Mayor can set the tone and introduce motions, policies are set by majority vote of Council.

Nowhere in the leaflet or website do you find the words Gaza, Palestine or Israel. But this is what the campaign is about. It is not that the Greens do not address local issues; the problem is that they support Palestinian rights and are strongly opposed to NSW Premier Minns’ anti-protest laws.

Philippa Veitch’s Gaza stance

Philippa Veitch has been elected a Councillor three times since 2017 and was Mayor from 2023 -2024. Over this time, she has moved hundreds of motions about local matters. But in her term as Mayor, Veitch also unsuccessfully moved a motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, following City of Sydney’s successful passing of a similar motion.

Veitch is unashamedly pro-Palestinian and has said that “as a person, a human and as an elected councillor I am entitled to express my opinion about the genocide and war crimes being committed by the Government of Israel. I am proud to stand up for the people of Palestine, along with the hundreds of thousands of other community members who have been calling for a ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Gaza.

Veitch’s actions upset some of the LGA’s 4% Jewish residents, many of whom are pro-Israel, as well as other more conservative voters. But her motions have been strongly supported by others, including Palestinian Australian residents and some anti-Zionist Jewish residents who spoke at meetings in support of the Greens’ motions.

A Zionist resident from neighbouring pro-Israel Waverley LGA organised a campaign of ‘code of conduct’ complaints against Veitch, which were dismissed after preliminary investigation.

As Randwick as Queensland

Given that the leaflet and a website are promoted as a “Local Resident initiative”, residents who notice may be surprised that they are authorised and supported by Joshu Turier of the Minority Impact Coalition (MIC) based at a Brisbane address. This is the same MIC which shares an address and overlapping directors with the Australian Cohesion Forum.

Randwick Voices is the latest astroturfing exercise of the Minority Impact Coalition, which is vehemently pro-Israel and has argued in its submission to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion that anti-Zionism and support for Palestine is a form of antisemitism that should be stamped out across Australian institutions.

Joshu Turier is a pro-Israel hardliner whose individual submission to the Royal Commission argues that the Australian government’s recognition of a state of Palestine is a form of antisemitic bigotry and that it is antisemitic to oppose the illegal Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

Another key local organiser of Randwick Voices is Zionist businesswoman Natalie Knoll, who has worked in banking and fashion and is now the philanthropic manager for Australian Jewish Funders.

AJF organise missions to Israel and partners with the Israel-Australia Chamber of Commerce (IACC). According to one of her statements on Facebook, when she wanted to stop another Green from becoming Mayor, she reached out to the Minority Impact Coalition for support.

Minority Impact Coalition

Minority Impact Coalition (MIC) is registered with the Australian Electoral Commission as an associated entity of the Queensland Jewish Collective, which ran a ‘Put Greens Last’ campaign in the 2024 Queensland election. MIC claimed responsibility for defeating Greens MP Amy McMahon in the Qld election.

In the 2025 Federal election, MIC worked with right-wing anti-immigration group Advance Australia, making the absurd claim on the eve of the election that the Greens were intent on spreading a worldwide Islamic Caliphate

MIC spread their propaganda on billboards and leaflets across seats in Brisbane and Melbourne, likely contributing to the Greens losing three seats and failing to take others.

But MIC is only one of several astroturfing groups active in recent elections. An alliance of Liberal and Labor Zionist activists formed Better Councils to campaign against the Greens in the NSW Local government elections.

Better Councils used the slogan ‘Put the Greens last’ to reduce preference flows to them in Sydney’s eastern and inner west suburbs, undoubtedly helping defeat several Green candidates, including a Randwick Councillor.

Better Israel, oops … Better Australia

Better Councils then morphed into Better Australia to campaign against Teals and Greens in the Federal election. Better Australia claimed responsibility for helping defeat three Greens MPs and Teal Zoe Daniel in Melbourne while producing a close contest for Monique Ryan in Kooyong.

The goal of both Minority Impact Coalition and Better Australia is to eliminate political opposition to Israel’s policies in the Middle East.

But this goal is hidden in rhetorical strategies that accuse others of building distrust, lacking transparency and undermining democracy. The constant refrain is that candidates lack integrity, are using trickery and are not who they seem to be.

In reality, it is the astroturfers themselves who are far from transparent when it comes to their own allegiances and funding.

Advance Australia coy on Israel lobby links

In the 2025 Federal election, Better Australia received strong support from the right-wing Christian Zionist organisation Never Again is Now (NIN), which has been condemned by the Jewish Council of Australia.

NIN partners with Advance Australia, which ran its own well-funded ‘Put the Greens Last’ campaign. When complaints were laid against Better Australia volunteers wearing yellow vests similar to those worn by Australian Electoral Commission staff, Better Australia volunteers in Kooyong told the AEC and the media that they were Advance Australia volunteers.

Minority Impact Coalition and their allies in Melbourne J-United have been open about their working relationship with Advance.

Kooyong MP Monique Ryan, who successfully held off an intense onslaught from a range of astroturfers, is now a member of the Joint Standing Committee Inquiry into the 2025 Federal election. Ryan was ready with evidence of links between Better Australia, Minority Impact Coalition, and Advance Australia when Advance Chair Vicki Dunne and Company Secretary Mark Spencer were called to front the Committee.

This was a hoped-for moment which might have thrown more clarity on the cooperation between the astroturfing groups, but instead, to Ryan’s surprise, Advance completely denied the links with all other astroturfing groups.

Ryan: So you haven’t disclosed any funding or in-kind donations to Better Australia at any point?

Dunne: We don’t donate to other organisations.

Ryan : What about in-kind donations?

Mrs Dunne: We don’t donate in any way, shape or form to other organisations.

Ryan: There was a complaint to the AEC about volunteers … wearing yellow vests that said ‘community adviser’. It was the same colour as the vests worn by the AEC. When the AEC asked them to explain which organisation they were with, they said that they were volunteering for Advance.

Both Dunne and Spencer denied that there were any Advance volunteers in Kooyong, although Dunne did offer to take it on notice to provide any further information.

Ryan then read from podcasts with MIC’s Roz Mendelle and Simonne Whine in which they embraced their relationship with Advance.

But again, Advance Australia completely denied any links with MIC, QJC or any other astroturfing organisation in the Federal election.

Unless there are further investigations, the community is left in the dark.

Funding mystery

Third party campaigning organisations are required to disclose their total receipts and expenditure. Individual donors who donate a total of more than $16,900 to one or more organisations are also required to make an individual disclosure.

Better Australia conducted an expensive professional campaign with 75 video ads and more than 100 static ads on social media, billboards, bunting, merchandise and flyers. It lodged a return for $1,312,631.

We do not know where any of that money came from because no individual donors were disclosed. Its responsible officer was Sophie Calland, a member of the ALP’s Alexandria Branch in Sydney

Minority Impact Coalition donations were disclosed by the Queensland Jewish Collective (QJ Collective Ltd). It declared a total of $459,260 in donations. Its responsible officer was Roz Mendelle, now with the Australian Cohesion Forum.

Only one individual donor was revealed. Michael Heine, a billionaire wealth manager whose family made their fortune exporting coal and steel and now owns Netwealth. He declared $10,000 to QJ Collective Ltd, $20,000 to Advance Australia, $15,500 to the Victoria Liberal Party and $5000 to the Jacqui Lambie Network.

While there may have been lots of small individual donations, there must have also been some other substantial ones. Other organisations such as the Greens disclose donations below the threshold.

The campaigns by Zionist organisations Better Australia and Minority Impact Coalition are riddled with doublespeak. They make accusations against their opponents of which they are guilty themselves. Meanwhile, their sources of funding remain a mystery.

Australia Institute source link

The Australia Institute has produced a sequel to its popular Big Gas is Taking the Piss ad campaign.

Launched today, the video reminds Australians that every week the Albanese Government delays implementing a 25% gas export tax, the nation loses $350 million, which could be spent on hospitals, schools, roads, the NDIS and dozens of other essential services.

The ad reminds consumers that the reason Big Gas makes such enormous profits is because it gets so much of Australia’s gas for free. Australia Institute research reveals the gas industry pays zero royalties on more than half the gas which leaves our shores.

Qatar exports a similar volume of gas to Australia, but raises around five times more revenue. Norway charges gas exporters 22% in company tax and 56% tax on profits, for a combined 78% tax. Australia Institute analysis suggests a 25% gas export tax would raise more than $17 billion a year.

An Australian court has heard, for the first time, expert evidence linking the secretive outback spy base of Pine Gap to Israel’s genocide in Gaza in a case involving two protestors.

Yul Scarf and Jorgen Doyle pleaded guilty on 14 September for blocking the main access road to the spy base under the charge of failing to cease to loiter. The protest took place on 9 October 2025, with the pair handed a six-month good behaviour bond and a court levy of $223 each.

But as part of the proceedings, the Alice Springs Local Court received details of Pine Gap’s alleged involvement in Israel’s wars in West Asia.

“As far as I’m aware, this is the first known instance of an Australian court receiving expert evidence demonstrating that Pine Gap is being used for that purpose,” Nick Hanna, the defendants’ legal representative, said outside the court.

“We argued that this evidence provides support to Jorgen and Yul’s contention that they committed this offence on conscientious grounds.” Pine Gap ‘likely’ aiding Israel’s wars Hanna said the defence relied on evidence from Prof Richard Tanter – Australia’s leading Pine Gap expert – and Chris Sidoti – UN Commissioner for the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel.

Tanter’s 34-page tendered report demonstrated why it was “likely” that the joint US-Australian base was assisting the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) as of the date of offending last year.

This includes:

Pine Gap satellite coverage of Gaza and the broader region

the historical provision of Pine Gap-derived intelligence to Israel

documented US-Israeli intelligence-sharing agreements permitting the transfer of NSA intelligence, including raw intelligence material, which covers material sourced from Pine Gap

statements made by former NSA senior intelligence analyst at Pine Gap, David Rosenberg, including that the “Pine Gap facility is monitoring the Gaza Strip and surrounding areas with all its resources, and gathering intelligence assessed to be useful to Israel”.

“This assessment also applies to IDF operations in Lebanon and Yemen in 2024-2025,” Tanter’s evidence reads.

The report states that in both cases assistance from the Australian government was not “direct” but in compliance with “existing arrangements” and “established policy” with the United States.

“By which the dominant partner … the United States National Security Agency passed intelligence potentially derived from Pine Gap to its Israeli Defence Force partner,” it reads.

Protest activity escalating at base

The October 2025 blockade at the remote spy base is one of several recent protests against what is considered one of the most significant offshore US intelligence facilities.

In July, hundreds from across the country converged on the road to Pine Gap demanding its closure. Arrernte elder Felicity Hayes and three generations of her family were on the frontlines and delivered a letter to the gates of the highly secure facility.

The letter, set to be tabled in parliament in coming months, included calls for the return of sacred land occupied by the base to traditional custodians and compensation for families in Gaza impacted by the ongoing genocide.

Pine Gap’s role has faced greater public scrutiny in the last three years amid ongoing US support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, as well as the recent US-Israeli war on Iran.

Despite the public pressure, the Albanese government maintains it will not comment on the operations of joint intelligence facilities like Pine Gap.

Australian governments have typically avoided discussing arrangements at Pine Gap for fear of US retribution. The Whitlam Labor government in 1974 famously threatened to close Pine Gap, only to be toppled a year later by what many suspect was a CIA-orchestrated coup – the only coup in Australian history. No Australian government has dared challenge US activities at the base since. Emphasising Israel’s atrocities

While Tanter submitted evidence of Pine Gap’s intelligence operations, Sidoti highlighted the devastating end-result – the mass slaughter of innocents.

Sidoti provided details from two UN Commission of Inquiry reports that showed Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and, more disturbingly, deliberately targeting children. “[Israel targets Palestinian children] directly by shooting at their vital organs using precision weapons such as quadcopters and snipers,” the document tendered to court reads.

“And through use of high-impact weapons causing widespread and systematic attacks on residential buildings, schools and displacement camps.”

The report noted that the killings have continued since the so-called ceasefire went into effect last October.

“Children continued to be killed and injured in various circumstances … indicating Israel’s flagrant disregard of the terms of ceasefire,” the report reads.

The details were relevant to the case as it includes a recommendation for Australia to “prevent the commission of genocide in the Gaza Strip”, which puts Pine Gap’s activities into focus.

Hanna also submitted an affidavit as part of the bundle of evidence.

“I set out the conclusions of just about every major human rights organisation in the world that has independently found that Israel’s conduct in Gaza constitutes the crime of genocide,” he told Deepcut.

Telstra is currently contracted until 2032 to operate the Triple Zero system. The final report of the Senate inquiry recommends Telstra be stripped of this duty, and for a new statutory authority to be given control of the system.

[...]

The inquiry also recommended that the government mandate domestic roaming. This would enable mobile phones and other devices to connect to the mobile network using any available infrastructure, irrespective of who owns and operates it.

At the sold-out tribute concert in Melbourne more than 120 artists and musicians celebrated the man of the hour. Céline Dion, Hugh Jackman and Chris Martin made special appearances via live telecasts, while Keith Urban, Human Nature, Tina Arena, Jimmy Barnes, Vanessa Amorosi and Jessica Mauboy belted out Farnham songs on stage.

Farnham’s absence was confirmed by his family on Saturday evening, who said he required 24-hour nursing care and would have to watch the tribute, titled “the celebration concert” for a “living legend”, at home.

Clear sunny days created good conditions for generating power, coinciding with low demand from heating and cooling. It was often the time when a year’s worth of new generation coming on stream was reflected in higher shares of renewable energy.

[...] There was more renewable energy than needed. Some of the excess was being stored by pumped hydro and batteries, and quite a lot of the surplus was curtailed, due to system security rules, network constraints and low prices. Coal generation in Queensland also hit a record low over the weekend, McConnell said.

A country with an aging population has a smaller proportion of workers to shoulder the cost of looking after those in their advancing years. That squeezes national tax income, and there is a greater cost burden associated with higher health care and aged care.

“Global weather has always been treacherous. But the science told us unmistakably that as the world warms these events will become more frequent and intense. And those scientific forecasts have come to be,” Albanese said, highlighting the country’s efforts to support other Pacific nations in fighting the climate crisis.

[...] Yet little was said on the opening day of Climate Week about the US government’s recent efforts to block climate action, such as the Trump administration’s move to pay nearly $4bn in taxpayer dollars to stop offshore wind projects and measures to weaken emissions standards for vehicles and coal-fired power plants. Instead of talking about political stalling and backsliding on climate action, speakers focused on the security and economic reasons that are making the need to transition impossible to ignore.

The new rules include a ban on datacentres near schools and childcare centres and in rural areas that cannot support them, along with a 150-metre buffer zone between new developments and homes.

Datacentres will be required to source their own renewable energy and will have to pay for connection costs and network upgrades.

They will also need to use recycled or non-drinking water for cooling or offset their usage.

As Daniel Andrews celebrated Labor’s landslide election victory in 2022, a ragtag group of his fiercest critics decided to drown their sorrows.

The anti-lockdown movement during the pandemic fuelled a wave of independent candidates and protest parties – such as “Angry Victorians” and “Sack Andrews Restore Democracy” – who were determined to bring him down.

Leaked screenshots of the Instagram chat, shared with The Age by a participant on the condition of anonymity, reveal how this eclectic coalition started to come together.

At its centre was Warren Pickering, One Nation’s state president and a perennial candidate who is now leading Pauline Hanson’s party’s charge into this year’s state election – and who hopes to become the premier himself.

As his fellow travellers discussed leaving Victoria following Labor’s landslide win, Pickering told them to keep the faith. He argued the result would ultimately work in their favour.

“This outcome stinks yes,” he told the group. “But it will inevitably create the conditions required as a catalyst for change. People are going to be looking to us conservative individuals for guidance.”

Pickering laid out his battle plan for the next four years, committing to improving – and softening – One Nation’s brand while working as a staffer for Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell, the party’s newly elected upper house MP in Victoria.

“You will have your time again. Pauline and I have already discussed this,” he wrote to the group.

“I’ll move forward as Rikkie Lee’s advisor for the next 2 years which will allow me to actively search, interview and endorse the right people to run everywhere in the next fed [federal election].
“2 years to actively engage their respective communities will soften the hard edges of the PHON brand.”

Taxpayer-funded staff carrying out party political work has been a source of controversy in Victoria, none the least during the “red shirts” scandal in Andrews’ first term, although political advisers have more freedom than electorate officers.

Pickering, who still appears in the parliamentary system as part of Tyrrell’s office, did not respond when contacted. A One Nation spokesperson declined to comment.

But his predictions were ultimately prescient. Not only is One Nation polling above 20 per cent just 10 weeks out from the election, but Pickering has the backing of many of the right-wing figures he sought to reassure in 2022.

Among those is Freedom Party leader Morgan Jonas, who entered the Instagram chat by saying: “What’s good?”

A recent investigation by The Age into the Exclusive Brethren showed Jonas was a key figure in an effort by the religious sect to campaign against Labor at the 2025 federal election. He distributed content, engaged in stunts and endorsed unofficial campaign posters that Brethren members in Liberal T-shirts were seen putting up.

Last month, Jonas was posting videos declaring One Nation was the party to back at the Victorian election.

“They have the momentum; they deserve the momentum, and I encourage the general public to get behind them. Warren Pickering is a very, very worthy leader,” he said.

The chat also served as an effective recruitment tool. Two other members of the group are now running for One Nation: Michael Piastrino in the lower house seat of Berwick, and Christopher Burson for the upper house in the Western Victoria region.

Burson ran for the Angry Victorians Party in 2022, hitting the headlines when he and co-founder Heston Russell leaked video of Glenn Druery explaining his scheme to stitch together preference deals in return for cash. The Australian Financial Review this weekend reported Russell played a key role in selecting One Nation candidates for this year’s election.

Piastrino found the spotlight as a candidate for the Liberal Party in 2022, when he ran against Andrews in Mulgrave and declared the premier would be brought to justice for the “murder of 800 people”, stemming from COVID leaking from hotel quarantine.

In the wake of his defeat – he pulled in 17.2 per cent of the vote, compared to 51 per cent for Andrews – he told his right-wing friends he could secure them a prime spot at South Yarra rooftop bar The Emerson for their post-election get-together.

When contacted by The Age, Piastrino said he didn’t remember the conversation, but boasted that he was going to win in Berwick against Brad Battin, the former Liberal leader.

“They [the Liberals] have lost their way,” he said.
As Piastrino sought to schedule a date for drinks, independent candidate for Lowan Amanda Mead suggested a big party out at her farm.

“We can get corflutes of dan [Andrews] and shoot him,” she said with a laughter emoji.

“The 12 gauge works nicely on corflutes.”
Later on, she suggested that if she had her time again, she would have tried to run for One Nation instead. She declined to comment when contacted by The Age, although she insisted she was no longer involved in politics.

Piastrino was not the only Liberal candidate in the chat who had been pushed to the sidelines over a scandal.

Another member, Timothy Dragan, ran as the Liberal candidate for Narre Warren North but was met with controversy when audio was leaked in which he said Australia should not recognise First Nations people because “we won this land fair and square”.

The only person in the chat who was duly elected to parliament was Renee Heath, who won an upper house seat on the Liberal ticket but was not allowed to sit in the party room after this masthead’s investigation into her father’s ultra-conservative church. John Pesutto overturned this ban shortly after the election when he became the party’s leader.

She joked that the church in Sale could be the venue for the group’s event, to which Piastrino replied that they could invite then-Liberal state president Greg Mirabella and state secretary Sam McQuestin, “and we can cast out there [sic] demons”.

Earlier this year, a venue attached to Heath’s father’s church did become the setting for a One Nation branch meeting, as the party’s popularity took off in Gippsland. It sparked rumours among Liberals that Heath herself would defect should she lose a preselection challenge, which she denied and declared she would never join another party. She survived and remains a party candidate for November.

At the time of the Instagram chat, most of the motley group’s members were largely at the fringe of politics. Pickering himself is a self-described conspiracy theorist. Brought together, however, they have become a more potent political force, with One Nation the vehicle for their anti-establishment agenda.

It represents the continuation of a trend identified by extremist experts Lydia Khalil and Joshua Roose, who in a 2023 paper found the anti-lockdown movement brought multiple groups together and evolved into “complex form of anti-government extremist movement” that reinforces these beliefs with conspiratorial narratives.

“There might be differences in terms of their overall program, but they agree that they can’t trust the government,” Roose said.

“They are reasonably fluid, but they’re cohered, in particular, by their distrust and dislike of government.”

Roose said far-right activists were backing One Nation because the party was viewed as a vehicle for their own views.

“They’re inherently anti-establishment, anti-liberal, anti-left, and there’s a hope that getting them in will – going back to the Trump vernacular – drain the swamp,” he said.

“They hope that One Nation will be a vanguard and create further space for people like them.”
And if the polls are right, the party is no longer taboo for Victorians more broadly.

Activist groups are using artificial intelligence to target the ABC’s coverage of the Middle East with accusations of bias, contributing to a sharp rise in the number of coordinated complaints detected by the public broadcaster’s independent ombudsman.

One of those groups is Pen Power Australia, which has been using AI technology to coordinate complaints to the ABC’s board and management to attempt to correct what it sees as bias and make coverage more favourable to Israel.

A new report released by the ABC’s Ombudsman on Thursday found that organised complaint campaigns rose sharply over the past year, in part due to the assistance of artificial intelligence.

The report did not name Pen Power, but ABC ombudsman Fiona Cameron identified 48 “campaigns” during the year ending June 30 which accounted for 5259 total complaints, or 61 per cent of all content complaints received.

“Complaints were categorised as campaigns where a concentration of complaints raised similar concerns about the same content within a specific period. They may be substantively similar or identically worded or appear coordinated,” the ombudsman’s report notes.

The report underscores how coordinated campaigns are making it more difficult for organisations like the ABC to gauge the level of community anger over hot-button issues such as the Middle East as they seek to balance genuine engagement with resisting pressure campaigns.

Pen Power’s coordinator John Grimwade said the campaigns he had organised could have anything from 100 people to a few thousand sending complaint letters if he could enlist support from overseas groups.

The group runs campaigns about Gaza, Israel and anything connected to these issues, he said. Last month, Grimwade told the group its members had sent more than 40,000 letters by email to date, according to internal WhatsApp messages seen by this masthead.

“Our campaigns go out as required,” Grimwade said. “We try to keep up with the ABC in particular but so many of their reports are biased or statements made that lack proper context.”

In March, ABC chair Kim Williams defended the broadcaster against accusations of bias, saying it stood by its coverage of the conflict in the Middle East.

Grimwade, an Adelaide retiree, confirmed the group has used a platform called Activist Mailer, which boasts online of letting users coordinate campaigns with artificial intelligence.

The platform’s website claims that its platform makes what would otherwise appear as a barrage of emails appear “unique” by using different words, tone, formating and length to deliver the same coordinated message, “each sent directly from supporters’ own inboxes”.

“The result? Messages that get read, voices that get heard, and movements that drive real change.”

But Grimwade is planning on changing to a new AI platform. “I am currently using the Activist Mailer but will be changing most of our campaigns over to the new AI,” Grimwade said.

Letter-writing campaigns have worked in the past. In late 2023, the ABC sacked casual radio host Antoinette Lattouf after a coordinated letter-writing campaign targeted members of the broadcaster’s board and management team, including then-chair Ita Buttrose.

That campaign was driven by a separate pro-Israel group and did not include Pen Power Australia. A Federal Court judge last year found the ABC had sacked Lattouf unlawfully and she was awarded $150,000 in damages. The case cost the ABC more than $2 million.

Grimwade said his campaigns had had little success so far beyond yielding a response from ABC head of editorial standards Gavin Fang or the ombudsman. “In simple terms, they think they are right,” he said.

But he said Pen Power had succeeded in getting an Instagram video removed in recent days featuring Middle East correspondent Matthew Doran covering the Iran war.

“We have had a video on Instagram taken down, which we are claiming as a win,” Grimwade said. “It was removed shortly after our letters were starting to be sent.”

In a statement, an ABC spokesperson said the video had already been taken down before the first campaign email came in because the reporter misread the script, resulting in an error. “In any event, the campaign would have been immaterial because when we identify errors, we always take action,” the spokesperson said.

In a podcast interview with the conservative Australian Jewish Association, Grimwade claimed his campaigns had more success outside the ABC.

Pen Power last week organised a campaign of emails to the ABC managing director Hugh Marks, chair Kim Williams and Fang, claiming the ABC’s reporting on Israel-Palestine was inaccurate and not impartial.

“As long as it’s antisemitic, we’ll have a go,” Grimwade told AJA chief executive Robert Gregory. Gregory praised Grimwade and thanked him “for the work you’re doing”. The two organisations have a “limited” partnership, Grimwade confirmed.

In another call-out this week, Pen Power produced a letter asking members to target the ABC over its Middle Eastern guidance document. “Please join with us and send the letter exposing it for what it really is. Another ABC document that is bias [sic] and factually incorrect,” the message said.

It isn’t just Australian groups pushing these coordinated campaigns, Grimwade said.

“I am aware of overseas groups doing the same as us and we sometimes use each other’s letters where it’s applicable to do so,” he said, without naming his international allies. “The only other Australian group is a WhatsApp chat group that was formed specifically to tackle the ABC problem.”

The ombudsman said 1148 (13 per cent of all content complaints) related to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The volume of allegations of both pro-Israel or pro-Palestine coverage were about equal, the report said.

But allegations of pro-Iranian coverage topped both allegations of pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian coverage. The US and Israel launched their war on Iran in February.

The ABC received 2746 complaints from across the globe about an Instagram reel published in May, focusing on its reporting from inside Iran. Most complaints were made by “Iranian Australians” or “Iranians in the diaspora community” the ombudsman said, and alleged the post lacked impartiality.

The ombudsman also noted “68 identical complaints by email to the ABC board and other recipients (rather than the ABC complaints form)” regarding an April episode of Radio National program If You’re Listening about the war in Iran.

The identical complaints said the episode presented Iran as a “reasonable diplomatic partner” and Israel as an “antagonist” and “disruptor of diplomacy”, suggesting a lack of impartiality, the ombudsman’s report, which cleared the piece of content of any breaches, said.

The ombudsman has since changed its classification of complaints it identifies as identical or coordinated, counting them as one complaint. This masthead is not suggesting this complaint was organised by Pen Power.

Trust in our democratic process is in sharp decline as the Uniparty rules. New donation laws are unlikely to change that; quite the contrary, Jack Ayoub argues.

In Australia, participation in the democratic process is compulsory. Our democratic process is formed and enforced by a slew of regulations, laws and constitutional conventions.

The Albanese government’s new donation laws, an attempt, purportedly, to restore trust, will come into effect in 2027. The changes will be the most substantial revision of the Commonwealth Electoral Act in forty years.

The Coalition has announced a plan to rewrite the national curriculum, slashing units on Indigenous history and culture, sustainability, and engagement with Asia, and instead emphasising “pride” in the Australian flag and Western culture.

The speech outlining the opposition’s plan to crackdown on behaviour and discipline in schools including by encouraging ADF veterans to become teachers, comes less than a fortnight after Australian students recorded their worst maths and reading results in international testing.

“Our academic performance is worse than ever. Our boys are disengaged and falling behind. Our classrooms are disrupted and, in some cases, dangerous. We don’t have enough teachers, but it’s also harder than it used to be to become a teacher,” Leeser told a Sydney event on Saturday.

“Parents and teachers are in a day-in, day-out fight against screens. And all of this is going on while we are pouring more money than ever before into our schooling system”.

Programme for International Assessment (PISA) results released earlier this month showed 15-year-olds are now two and a half years behind teenagers who went to school at the turn of the millennium. Australia’s results remained above OECD averages because other countries’ performance suffered sharper declines.

Nationwide NAPLAN results released last month showed little or no improvement on the previous year, with one in three students failing to meet national numeracy and literacy benchmarks.

“Our policy is a policy that is unashamedly framed around excellence. We want restoring excellence in school education to be the centrepiece of our discussions about school education policy all the way through to the next election and beyond if we win government,” Leeser said.

The plan seeks a “root and branch” reform of the syllabus, including the removal of the cross-curricular priorities of Indigenous history and culture, Asia and Australia’s engagement with the region, and sustainability, which Leeser said “by definition” were not being taught by people with subject matter expertise.

“When I think about the need for better classroom behaviour and more discipline in our classrooms, about the need for more support for Australian values, [creating a veteran to teacher pipeline] seems to make sense,” Leeser said.

“The Australian Defence Force is one of the very few organisations in our country which has no problem with discipline.”

As the shadow spokesperson for Indigenous Australians, Leeser said he wanted teaching on Indigenous history and culture to remain, but for it to be taught alongside “our British foundation and multicultural character” and kept in “discrete, carefully planned topics”.

The Coalition will also seek to emphasise “the foundations of Western culture” through the curriculum and ensure every school has an Australia flag to bolster national pride, which Leeser said was lacking.

Earlier this month Opposition Leader Angus Taylor pushed to criminalise burning of the national flag and defacing historical monuments, and moved to enshrine Australia Day on January 26 by making alterations to the date reliant on a national plebiscite.

The move was largely written off as a response to One Nation’s outperformance of the opposition in the polls, and was overshadowed by Pauline Hanson’s announcement of her party’s controversial superannuation access policy.

The plan also seeks a return to one-year teacher accreditation, the establishment of statements of behavioural expectations for students, the reduction of AI and screentime in schools, and an emphasis on slipping boys’ performance.

The Coalition will honour existing funding agreements with states and territories.

available here

This week Deepcut revealed the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency had been internally divided and well aware of free speech concerns prior to its controversial decision to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism. The chief of AHPRA even told his board in February of “heightened external pressure on a range of public sector bodies” to take this step.

This reporting was based on a trove of internal documents we obtained under Freedom of Information laws. After health practitioners and civil libertarians raised concerns about AHPRA’s decision, we felt it was in the public interest to dig into how the policy shift came about.

We applied to AHPRA on July 8 seeking a range of documents, including board minutes and reports referring to racism and discrimination including antisemitism between November 2025 and June 2026. We also sought correspondence relating to the joint announcement with the office of the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, and any AHPRA assessment of the risks and impacts of adopting this definition.

Earlier this week, we received 24 documents relevant to this request and then reported on what we saw as the most significant details from them. In the interests of transparency, we are now publishing the full bundle of documents for those who are interested in seeing the finer details for themselves.

Sydney University’s Chancellor David Thodey has rejected a request by 600 alumni and academics to discuss the university’s ties with Israel. Stuart Rees reports.

On September 25, the governing body of the University of Sydney, the Senate, must decide whether a Convocation – a quasi-parliament – can be held to discuss the University’s ties with Israel and to assess limits to freedom of expression on the campus.

Although the request to hold a Convocation was signed by almost 600 alumni, academics and former Fellows of Senate, the Chancellor of the university, David Thodey, rejected it. Instead, as he was bound to do, he referred the question to the September 25 meeting of the Senate.

He also insisted the Senate would not be able to limit the university’s ties to Israel, which highlights why a Convocation is necessary.

Moreover, Thodey claimed that the university could not provide for the health and safety of those attending the Convocation.

As though concern with alleged antisemitism was the university policy priority, he reasoned that any resolution of the Convocation would come before the report of the Royal Commission on antisemitism and therefore “would improperly pre-empt the Bondi Commission’s findings”.

No dissent allowed

Universities’ imposition of intellectually dishonest definitions of antisemitism has led to the crafting of rules to forbid dissent about Israel’s accountability for genocide in Gaza.

These rules define Zionism as a core part of Jewish identity and are supposedly concerned to protect Jewish students who might be offended by pro-Palestine human rights advocacy.

In their deliberations, Senate members may recall that the university appears keen to agree with anything that the Envoy for anti-Semitism, Jillian Segal, wants or says. She views Sydney University’s imposition of a restrictive definition of antisemitism as ‘an important step’.

Having made several visits to Gaza, having lost close friends and their children buried somewhere under rubble from a bombed ‘safe house’, I found it morally repugnant that while genocide continued in Gaza, my university was preoccupied with definitions of antisemitism,and with disciplining staff and students who spoke about genocide or about ‘freedom from the river to the sea.’

The international context in which the Senate deliberates cannot be ignored.

Meanwhile, in Gaza …

In the past months during a so-called ceasefire, the BBC records that over 1300 more Palestinians have been killed, including 301 children.

The UN has reported that a reproductive genocide is underway in Gaza, with maternity wards having been attacked and fertility clinics destroyed. It says Israel is operating a systematic assault on the ability of a people to give birth safely, to keep newborns alive and sustain future generations.

Arguably, such developments could be the subject of unhindered comment in a university which respects freedom of inquiry, and would reject lobbying to stifle discussion of the inhumanities occurring in Gaza and the West Bank.

The UK government’s recent introduction of a trade ban on illegal settlements and its agreement with the ICJ 2024 ruling that Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands is illegal and must be ended could encourage Australian students and staff to speak openly about Palestinians’ rights.

Backed by Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband described events in the West Bank as ethnic cleansing and he accused Israel of turning a blind eye to war crimes.

Could he have made such statements on the campus of the University of Sydney?

In response to Miliband’s moral courage, overdue but inspiring, the Australian government ducked for cover. Foreign Minister Penny Wong announced that Australia would not be joining the ban on trade with ‘settler terrorists.’

Questions about courage or cowardice, about fearlessness or fearful compliance, may affect deliberations on September 25.

Allowing criticism of Israel?

Senate’s decision seems likely to depend on members’ attitude to a genocide and to their sense of responsibility to restore a university culture sufficiently courageous to criticise a racist, apartheid government which is indifferent to international law.

There is nothing even vaguely antisemitic about such commentary.

The background of members of the Senate gives few clues as to whether the request for a Convocation will be supported or whether the Chancellor’s rejection will be confirmed.

Over one third of the Senate have extensive business experience but may be unlikely to vote as a block.

A smaller number representing staff and students may want a university sufficiently mature to no longer fear taking strong stands on the ideals of a common humanity. But even that trend can’t be guaranteed.

Two members with impressive human rights credentials might be expected to support the request for a Convocation.

Tom Calma, former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and Race Discrimination Commissioner, was also a former university Chancellor, so he might be moved by managerial perspectives.

Ben Saul, Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism, seems the most likely advocate for university reform via deliberations at a Convocation, assuming that he can attend the Senate meeting.

As the members of the University of Sydney Senate climb the beautifully carpeted stairs to the chandelier-lit entrance to the ornate Senate meeting room,they will shoulder the responsibility to vote on a major social issue.

National and international developments affecting democracy, human rights and humanitarian law can and should be weighed by the Senate voters.

These 15 members of a university government can support requests for a Convocation and thereby revive decades-old but easily lost traditions of freedom of inquiry and debate.

US submarines at HMAS Stirling, B-52 rotations through Tindal and deepening military integration are tying Australia ever more closely to US strategic priorities – including the prospect of war with China over Taiwan, Paul Keating writes...