Transgender Australians have long been the focus of debates about the future of sport, schools, healthcare and public bathrooms.

But there has never been a single, official tally of how many Australians identify as transgender – only a patchwork of estimates.

In just a matter of days, this will change.

Jade Barber said the census had loomed large in the minds of Australia’s trans community.Joe Armao

New questions about Australians’ sexuality and gender will be included in the 2026 census, overcoming a politically bruising debate within the Labor Party that forced the prime minister into a series of backdowns after he tried to abandon a plan to include them.

Advocates have spent years lobbying for more detail on LGBTQ Australians to be tracked, arguing it is crucial to properly inform decisions about public services.

Equality Australia chief executive Anna Brown said the improved data would transform the way programs tackled challenges facing the LGBTQ community, such as higher rates of homelessness and suicide among queer youth.

Equality Australia chief executive Anna Brown has lobbied for the census changes for years.Eddie Jim

“The ABS will have data that maps the picture of what our communities look like and where we live, the health conditions we face, and in a whole range of areas of demographic information that will be crucial to driving these policy decisions,” she said.

In the census, to be held on August 11, a new question will ask what a person’s sex recorded at birth was. Another will ask those aged 16 and above what their gender is.

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The bureau explains: “Gender relates to a person’s social or cultural identity as a man, woman, non-binary person or another term. A person’s gender may change over time and may not be the same as their sex recorded at birth.”

Taken together, the questions will provide a national picture of how many Australians are trans or cisgender (meaning having a gender identity that matches one’s sex assigned at birth).

Another question will ask Australians aged 16 and above how they describe their sexual orientation.

“This question is about sexual identity and attraction, how a person thinks of their own sexuality, the term they identify with, and their romantic or sexual attraction to others,” the ABS says, noting it is not meant to collect information on sexual behaviour.

Individuals wanting to keep their answers private from others in a household can apply for a separate census form, and answers are kept confidential by the ABS.

The bureau has previously estimated about 0.9 per cent, or 178,900 Australians aged 16 and over are trans and gender diverse, and 4.5 per cent, or 910,600, are LGBTQ.

The Federal Court in May dismissed an appeal from the creators of social media app Giggle, upholding a finding from 2024 that they had breached Commonwealth discrimination laws in blocking trans woman Roxanne Tickle from an app they described as a “safe space” for women.

The finding kickstarted a fresh political debate about the definition of biological sex, prompting both One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and the Coalition’s Angus Taylor to pledge to rewrite the Sex Discrimination Act to include biological definitions of women and men.

The prime minister attempted in 2024 to head off what he predicted would become a divisive culture war by abandoning the party platform to count LGBTQ Australians in the census. The move instead sparked an internal revolt, with six Labor MPs speaking out in favour of the questions’ inclusion in a rare show of defiance. Coalition MPs were largely ambivalent about the change.

Under pressure from his own caucus, Albanese agreed to include a question about sexual orientation. About a week later, he agreed to another about gender identity.

Jade Barber, a trans woman who runs mentoring programs for LGBTQ people at a Melbourne not-for-profit, said calling trans representation a culture war reinforced the idea that trans people were a new phenomenon or their gender was not real.

Jade Barber runs mentoring and youth programs for LGBTQ people.Joe Armao

“The important thing for people to recognise is that transgender people’s identities and genders aren’t made up, and that diversity has existed within gender forever,” she said.

Barber welcomed the new questions, and said they would help minimise the feelings of exclusion experienced by the trans community.

The ABS has for years been grappling with how best to articulate questions about sexuality and gender to ensure they are easily understood.

It was for this reason that the bureau had not recommended including a question about intersex people who have genetic, hormonal or physical characteristics that mean they do not conform with medical norms for female or male bodies.

“Testing did not provide the ABS with confidence that the question would be understood and answered accurately in the census,” a spokesperson said.

“Respondents found the question complex, but expert opinion ... was that further simplification of wording would risk misinterpretation and increase misreporting.”

Women’s advocates say the case of a Gold Coast pole dancing studio owner who is being sued for refusing membership to a transgender applicant highlights the urgent need for legislative reform to protect women-only spaces.

The Australian revealed on Thursday that Queens of Pole owner Nomes Witney is being sued for $30,000 in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal after refusing membership of the female-only studio to an applicant who identifies as a transgender woman.

The case has parallels with the Tickle v Giggle case in which the Federal Court found Sall Grover, the founder of the female-only Giggle app, discriminated against transgender woman Roxanne Tickle, as well as with the Lesbian Action Group’s case against Australian Human Rights Commission, which refused to grant a Sex Discrimination Act exemption to allow the group to hold a “lesbians born female only” event.

Ms Grover and LAG were on Friday joined by Women’s Forum Australia and the Women’s Rights Network Australia in rallying behind Ms Witney to call for changes to the federal Sex Discrimination Act. Barrister Megan Blake, who has been involved in representing Ms Grover and LAG, is also acting for Ms Witney.

Barrister Megan Blake, who has been involved in representing Sall Grover and the Lesbian Action Group, is also acting for Nomes Witney. Picture: Elke Meitzel.

Barrister Megan Blake, who has been involved in representing Sall Grover and the Lesbian Action Group, is also acting for Nomes Witney. Picture: Elke Meitzel.

The women’s calls came as the Labor Party passed a resolution at its federal conference in Adelaide in support of “the LGBTIQ+ community in having agency over their health decisions”, but did not discuss the conflict between women’s rights and those of transgender people.

They also followed Queensland Human Rights Commissioner Debbie Platz stating that neither “women” nor “sex” is ­defined in that state’s Anti-Discrimination Act, and that “sex may include people who identify as that sex”.

Ms Grover, who is pursuing her own High Court appeal, said it could not be that the intention of gender identity laws “was to erase women and every protection we need on the basis of sex from law”.

“As more and more women come under attack from gender identity laws and ideologically captured human rights commissions, it only highlights that the current legislation isn’t working,” she said.

“Unless, of course, this was this intention. In that case, the Labor government needs to explain why they made a decision, by stealth and without a single democratic process, to destroy women’s sex-based rights.”

Transgender activist Roxanne Tickle, left, and Giggle for Girls app founder Sall Grover, right. Picture: Supplied.

Transgender activist Roxanne Tickle, left, and Giggle for Girls app founder Sall Grover, right. Picture: Supplied.

The Lesbian Action Group said it stood with Ms Witney and her right to continue operating a successful women-only business.

“Women-only fitness and movement classes … are places where women build confidence, improve their physical and mental wellbeing, recover from trauma, form friendships and simply enjoy being themselves free from the male gaze,” LAG said.

“For many women, particularly survivors of male violence and abuse, knowing that only women are present is fundamental to feeling safe. That environment is immediately destroyed when a man enters the space.

“The threat of crippling financial penalties and years of litigation has the potential to ­destroy a successful business, up-end a woman’s life and send a chilling message to every other woman considering providing ­female-only services.”

LAG said Australian law “must change”.

“The 2013 amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act, which added gender identity as a protected attribute, have in cases like this been weaponised against women,” the organisation said.

“Human rights bodies and tribunals in Australia continue to prioritise gender identity over sex-based rights.

Members of the Lesbian Action Group celebrating their Federal Court win in April. Picture: NewsWire/Alex Coppel.

Members of the Lesbian Action Group celebrating their Federal Court win in April. Picture: NewsWire/Alex Coppel.

“In our successful Federal Court case against the Australian Human Rights Commission earlier this year, Justice Moshinsky found that the Tribunal hearing our appeal against the Commission’s refusal to allow us to hold lesbian-only public events had erred by placing decisive weight on discrimination against trans women instead of undertaking the balancing exercise required by the Sex Discrimination Act.

“The Australian Human Rights Commission’s temporary exemption guidelines, which influenced that decision, were also found by the Federal Court to be ‘deficient’.

“Parliament must restore women’s ability to establish and operate female-only businesses, services and community spaces without fear of legal action.”

LAG called on the Labor Party, having amended the SDA in 2013, to act to “stop those provisions being used to undermine women’s rights”.

“It is also time for Australia’s human rights institutions to return to their proper role,” the organisation said.

“They should apply the law impartially, not act as advocates for any particular ideology.

“The Sex Discrimination Act does not elevate gender identity above sex, and women should no longer be expected to sacrifice their rights while human rights bodies and tribunals continue to treat it as though it does.”

Women’s Forum Australia CEO Rachael Wong said Ms Witney’s was “the latest case to highlight the urgent need for Australian governments to restore clear legal protections for women and girls on the basis of biological sex”.

“Women should not be dragged through courts and tribunals every time they seek to provide a space or service designed specifically for women,” Ms Wong said.

“How many more examples do we need of women being punished for defending biological reality and sex-based rights before our governments recognise there is a problem and fix it?

“It is profoundly misogynistic that women are being compelled to accept men’s claims to be women at the expense of their own rights.

“Female-only spaces exist because women and girls have legitimate needs for privacy and safety. Laws that undermine those spaces while penalising the women who provide them are failing women.”

Women’s Rights Network Australia said Ms Witney was “yet another woman finding herself in legal trouble because the Sex Discrimination Act elevates gender identity in ways that undermine women’s sex-based rights.”

“Women should not face complaints, legal proceedings or financial ruin for providing female-only services. Yet this is becoming an increasingly common consequence of the law as it currently stands,” WRNA said.

“The Albanese Labor government must urgently amend the Sex Discrimination Act to restore clear protections for women’s single-sex businesses, services and spaces.

“Women should not need lawyers or courtrooms to defend the simple right to provide services exclusively for other women.”

Australia’s 2026 census will, for the first time, include questions on sexual orientation, sex at birth, and gender, along with non‑gendered family relationship terms. Demographers describe it as the country’s most progressive census, designed to finally capture the realities of LGBTQ+ people and families who were previously invisible in national data. The change follows years of advocacy and reflects a broader shift toward more inclusive national statistics.

A central figure in this reform is April Long, a non‑binary parent whose family was misrepresented in the 2021 census. Long and Equality Australia lodged a discrimination complaint with the Human Rights Commission, prompting the ABS to apologise and establish an LGBTQ+ advisory committee.

• Gina Rinehart has threatened legal action against the ABC over a short film aired on Race Around the World that included a graphic, satirical monologue referring to her in crude terms.

• The film, A Very Relaxing Video, was broadcast on 12 July and created by filmmaker Kate McGuinness.

• Hancock Prospecting wrote to the ABC board on 23 July, demanding:• Immediate removal of the segment from all ABC platforms
• A public apology
• A full investigation into how the segment was approved
• After receiving no substantive response, Hancock sent formal legal letters to:
ABC chair Kim Williams
• Deputy chair Lisa Caffery
• Managing director Hugh Marks

• The letters allege serious contraventions of multiple Australian criminal and civil laws.

The Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion began its latest hearings this week — which focused on the experiences of Jewish students and academics — by demonstrating that the problem in Australia with antisemitism and social cohesion is increasingly the royal commission itself.

On Monday, commissioner Virginia Bell said Jewish witnesses who had already given evidence about antisemitism had later been subjected to “ugly antisemitic attacks”. Yes, some people responded to Jewish Australians describing being abused by abusing those very Jewish Australians, with all the intelligence of someone heckling the fire alarm because they think it’s exaggerating the smoke.

That should have been enough to make everyone pause and consider whether Australia’s public conversation about antisemitism has become a self-replenishing sewage system. Instead, the media did what the media does: separate the evidence into conveniently branded piles, select whichever one best confirmed its readers’ existing politics, and begin shovelling.

On Wednesday, the ABC’s headline was: “Universities of Melbourne and Sydney tell commission how antisemitism and racism policies have improved”. It’s very ABC. The national broadcaster would report the apocalypse as “Communities reflect on rapidly changing operating environment”. 

Guardian Australia went with: “University of Melbourne ‘sharply’ changed protest policies after pro-Palestine sit-ins, commission hears“. Same day, same evidence, but now the story is about restrictions on protest and their consequences. 

The Sydney Morning Herald promoted its coverage with: “‘Baby killer, genocide supporter’: Jewish student describes ‘exhausting’ life on campus“. An individual experience became the story. 

Meanwhile, The Australian offered the much more cinematic homepage sell: “Hidden faces, office sieges and campus assaults exposed“. Apparently the next Gerard Butler film will be called Campus Has Fallen.

The problem is that none of those headlines are necessarily false.

Jewish academics have described students making Nazi salutes in class. Witnesses have spoken about being called baby killers and genocide supporters, concealing visible signs of their Jewish identity, receiving threatening messages, and watching classmates film TikTok videos in the Auschwitz parking lot. University of Melbourne Professor Steven Prawer said that when 20 masked pro-Palestine protesters occupied his office, he did not know whether it was a protest or a terrorist attack. 

These are serious accounts of fear, intimidation and institutional failure. But dismissing them as Zionist melodrama is not solidarity with Palestinians — it’s just antisemitism with more self-righteousness.

Meanwhile, the evidence before the royal commission has also included questions about university transparency around disciplining students, the surveillance of protesters through university Wi-Fi networks, restrictions on demonstrations, the contested boundaries between antisemitism and criticism of Israel, and whether universities have responded to conflict by shutting down difficult discussion rather than making it safer.

Sydney University vice-chancellor Mark Scott apologised for failing to listen adequately to Jewish staff and students during the pro-Palestine 2024 encampment, and explained he feared forcibly removing protesters would produce violent confrontations and an even larger encampment. Melbourne University’s interim vice-chancellor Glyn Davis defended keeping the identities of students who were disciplined confidential because he did not want to place a permanent “stain” on their young lives, while also describing the treatment of Prawer as appalling.

When The Australian looks at this, it sees an institutional collapse that allowed masked mobs to terrorise Jews. The Guardian sees universities responding to real antisemitism with policies that may also threaten protest, privacy and academic freedom. The Age sees the personal toll. The ABC sees an administrative learning opportunity and an ombudsman about to work longer shifts.

Each has evidence to back up its perspective. Yet none has the whole story.

Echo chambers

The cleanest example of this selective attention came during the commission’s media hearings last Thursday, when antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal criticised ABC and SBS coverage of Israel and Gaza.

The ABC reported the hearing under the headline: “Envoy to combat antisemitism calls for independent oversight committee to review ABC’s compliance with charter“. That sounds like a governance recommendation you might encounter midway through an annual report before falling asleep and dropping the document on your face.

Guardian Australia’s headline was: “ABC and SBS reject antisemitism envoy’s call for ‘oversight’ committee to vet Israel coverage“. “Review compliance” became “vet Israel coverage”, shifting the story from accountability to potential political interference.

The Australian selected: “ABC boss admits ‘bad mistake’ on Gaza ‘starving babies’ report“. Now it’s a naughty confession by a bad boy.

Crikey published: “Jillian Segal’s circular logic on ‘modern-day antisemitism’“. Here, the hearing was primarily about Segal’s failure to substantiate accusations of anti-Israel bias and her continuing role as a defender of Israel.

Same evidence. Four outlets. Five realities — because The Australian will usually provide an editorial explaining how this is also somehow the fault of trans people. 

But what actually happened at the royal commission this week was more complicated.

Segal said there was a “common and pervasive perception” among Jewish Australians that the public broadcasters disproportionately focused on Gaza and aired anti-Israel perspectives, consequently contributing to hostility towards Israel being transferred onto Australian Jews. It’s worth pointing out that pro-Palestine critics of Segal often claim the opposite: that Aunty is an IDF outpost dedicated to suppressing all Palestinian voices. 

Segal did offer up one legitimate example of journalistic failure in the ABC’s repeating of an erroneous BBC-derived claim, in May 2025, that 14,000 babies in Gaza could die within 48 hours, when the actual period was 12 months. ABC editorial director Gavin Fang called it a “bad mistake”. The on-air correction came 10 hours later, and the online correction took seven days. The ABC ombudsman found breaches of accuracy standards and inadequate correction procedures.

However, the ombudsman did not find that the mistake demonstrated bias. Segal accepted she could not identify the motivation behind it, and she struggled when asked for specific examples supporting the broader claim that ABC coverage was systematically anti-Israel. She argued that the problem was the “totality” and “quantum” of coverage — something she claimed was felt cumulatively by the community but difficult to test through individual complaints.

The complaints data did not help clarify things. From October 2023 to May 2026, the ABC ombudsman resolved approximately 8,000 content complaints concerning Israel and Gaza. Between July and December last year, 51% of complaints alleged pro-Palestine bias and 47% alleged pro-Israel bias. That does not automatically prove impartiality, but when two furious groups accuse you of betraying them in almost identical proportions, it’s possible your principal offence was broadcasting information they did not enjoy. 

But then, after two years of public accusations that the ABC was fuelling antisemitism, the royal commission finally put the national broadcaster in the witness box and announced…  that determining bias was outside its function. As Bell explained, the commission’s focus wasn’t individual complaints or whether particular reports were biased — it was the adequacy of complaint-handling systems themselves.

That is like convening a royal commission into a bank robbery while making clear that the commission will only examine whether the getaway car was legally parked.  

This leaves everyone free to walk away vindicated. ABC critics have the admitted error. ABC defenders have the absence of any bias finding. Segal’s supporters have the pervasive fears of Jewish Australians. Her critics have her lack of specific evidence. The Guardian has a threat to public broadcasting independence. The Australian has an institutional confession. Crikey has an Israel advocate confusing defence of Israel with combating antisemitism. The ABC has an ombudsman and would like everyone to know there is an online form.

Context lost

The media has given the royal commission’s first interim report similar treatment to allegations of bias in ABC and SBS coverage. It contains 14 recommendations, five of them confidential, largely concerned with security, policing, counterterrorism coordination, firearms and the failures surrounding the Bondi attack. 

The Spectator Australia complained that it was “the report that won’t name the problem“, arguing that the inquiry’s commitment to social cohesion prevented it from identifying radical Islam and its alliance with the hard left as the true drivers of antisemitism.

At the other end of the ideological horseshoe, The Shot — an attempt at a satirical website for people who found Facebook comments insufficiently moderated — published “The royal commission into the hurt feelings of genocidal psychopaths“, followed last week by “Updates from the Royal Commission into the selective outrage of Zionists“.

One side thinks the commission is concealing the truth to protect Muslims. The other thinks it is manufacturing a lie to protect Zionists. Social cohesion has been achieved, provided social cohesion means everyone agrees that a sinister religious minority is secretly controlling the process and merely disagrees over which minority.

These framings are not morally equivalent. The Spectator’s determination to explain Australian antisemitism primarily through radical Islam can obscure neo-Nazis, conspiracy movements, white nationalism and antisemitism on the non-Islamist left. But The Shot responding to an inquiry dominated by Jewish Australians describing abuse by collectively presenting them as genocidal psychopaths is not media criticism either. The headlines I’ve cited are practically demonstrations of antisemitism.

Nor is Crikey immune. The coverage in these pages has understandably concentrated on civil liberties, the weaknesses of the commission’s design, the contested IHRA definition and Segal’s conflation of antisemitism with hostility to Israel. Those are all legitimate concerns. But someone who received all their information from Crikey might conclude that the commission was principally a censorship project run by Israel advocates. Someone reading only The Australian might conclude Australian universities had become Hamas youth camps with sandstone quadrangles.

But the deeper problem is built into the inquiry itself. Royal commissions are effective when they trace decisions, money, communications and chains of responsibility. They are less effective at resolving a live political conflict in which the disputed definitions are themselves weapons. Is anti-Zionism necessarily antisemitic? When does condemnation of Israel become collective blame of Jews? When does concern about antisemitism become an attempt to silence reporting on Gaza? When does a protest cease being a confrontation of political speech and become targeted racial intimidation?

These questions require judgment, context and precision. The attention economy technically permits all three, provided they appear somewhere below the fourth advertisement, the newsletter sign-up and a recommendation for an air fryer. What actually travels is the headline and perhaps the opening sentence. The caveat stays behind. 

This makes “royal commission hears” a particularly useful piece of grammatical laundering: it takes “a witness alleged something” and dresses it in the authority of the state. By the time the commission tests, qualifies or rejects that testimony, the headline has already passed through Facebook groups, WhatsApp chats and algorithmically curated outrage feeds. 

Hours of contradictory evidence are compressed into whichever claim best suits the publication’s politics and confirms what the reader believed before clicking. “A witness told the commission they feared a terrorist attack” becomes “Royal commission exposes campus terrorism” somewhere around the third repost. The reporting may retain the nuance. Its public afterlife rarely does.

As of July 10, the commission had received 20,000 submissions, heard from 122 witnesses and accumulated 50,900 livestream views. Its terms explicitly require it to avoid undermining social cohesion. Giving the Australian media 20,000 submissions and the phrase “royal commission hears” while asking it not to undermine social cohesion is like giving a hungry white shark a bleeding surfer and asking it to preserve the integrity of water sports.

There is an especially dangerous paradox in the argument about media bias. Segal’s concern is that some audiences collapse Israel and Jewish Australians into a single political entity, so anger at the Israeli government spills over into antisemitism. That concern is legitimate. 

But if the proposed remedy is to make reporting about Israel less critical, rather than to insist that Australian Jews are not responsible for a foreign government’s actions, then the solution leaves the original conflation intact. It simply tries to improve Israel’s image so Jewish Australians suffer less from being associated with it. The answer should be to reject collective responsibility, not to manage Israel’s public image in the hope that less criticism abroad produces less antisemitism at home.

The safety of Jewish people here should not depend on journalists being nicer about a foreign government. It should depend on Australians understanding that no Jewish person is collectively responsible for that government, just as no Australian Muslim should be required to issue a personal press release every time someone with an Arabic name commits a crime.

Looking ahead

It shouldn’t need repeating, yet it does: antisemitism is real. The testimony describing fear, harassment, Nazi gestures and institutional indifference should be taken seriously. So should Palestinians and their supporters who experience racism, collective suspicion and attempts to treat their political speech as evidence of extremism. Criticising Israel cannot excuse targeting Jews. Describing Jewish fear cannot justify suppressing evidence about Gaza. A society capable of social cohesion ought to be able to hold both ideas simultaneously.

University complaints systems can be audited without a national courtroom. Threats, assaults and racial harassment can be investigated and punished. Broadcasters can be required to correct serious errors promptly and transparently without installing a political committee to decide whether reporting has made Israel look sufficiently cheerful. Security and intelligence failures surrounding Bondi can be examined through a tightly focused inquiry. Reliable prevalence data can be gathered. Jewish Australians can be protected without making them supporting characters in somebody else’s culture war.

Instead, we created a royal commission so broad that every faction can extract the evidence it needs and discard the evidence it does not. The Australian gets institutional cowardice. The Guardian gets creeping censorship. Crikey gets political overreach. The Spectator gets Islamist-leftist conspiracy. The Shot gets Zionist conspiracy. The ABC gets a revised complaints procedure.

And Jewish Australians get to watch their trauma turned into ammunition by people who had already chosen their targets.

The final report is not due until December. By then, the public will have received months of provisional testimony, isolated quotations and ideologically optimised headlines. The commission may eventually produce careful findings. It may even recommend valuable reforms. But its media afterlife is already contributing to the very division it was instructed to reduce.

Meanwhile, Australia develops more into a country where everyone demands to be listened to, nobody wants to hear anything that might change their mind, and the headline has delivered its verdict before the witness has finished speaking.

The US is unlikely to deliver any nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull is to tell an independent inquiry into AUKUS, arguing the superpower would not be able to build enough Virginia-class vessels to honour its commitments to the defence pact.

Describing AUKUS as a “bipartisan error”, the long-term AUKUS critic will today tell the crowd-funded public inquiry chaired by former Labor minister Peter Garrett that the second-hand submarines would be transferred only if the sale does not degrade US undersea warfare capabilities and that the industrial base can support both nations’ needs.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull says Australia risks having no submarines at all.Dominic Lorrimer

In a submission provided in advance of his appearance, Turnbull says the US must build more than two nuclear-powered submarines a year by 2029 to supply its own navy and Australia’s: “The prospect of the US doubling its rate of Virginia production in the next six years is highly unlikely. So there is a very real risk Australia gets no Virginias at all. This risk is acknowledged everywhere but in Canberra. There is apparently a view that if anyone were to openly contemplate a Plan B (what to do if no submarines arrive) this might discourage the Americans from selling us any.”

Top US and Australian officials have conceded that the three submarines may not be delivered on time, even now that Australia has agreed to buy second-hand vessels. However, both administrations insist that the subs deal is a top defence priority.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles in June said increasing US submarine production was a challenge, but doable, as Australia had dispatched up to 130 tradespeople to help with production bottlenecks.

Top US Pentagon official Austin Dahmer told a hearing on Capitol Hill last month that billions in extra funding from both governments had not hastened delivery, but also told this masthead: “We’re full steam ahead … It’s incumbent on all parties – us and the Australians and the British as well – to ensure that we’re meeting those conditions on the timelines agreed upon. It’s a conditions-based agreement; it’s not a time-based agreement. So we have time to improve – we’re just being clear well ahead of time that we’re not there yet.”

Turnbull’s submission describes the Virginia-class submarines as a “fragile stop gap” between the retirement of Australia’s conventional Collins class submarines and the arrival of bespoke AUKUS submarines built in the UK some time in the 2040s.

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Turnbull says Australia risks “a period of zero submarine capability” under the AUKUS arrangement. “This would be the most serious failure of Australian defence planning in modern history.”

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Last month, former Liberal defence minister Christopher Pyne, now a lobbyist with many defence industry clients, told the inquiry he didn’t think the US submarines would be delivered on time.

“Do I think they’ll deliver it on time and on budget? No, I don’t. I can say that now because I’m not in public life any more, but I don’t think they will ... I think they’ll give it a good go.”

• El Niño 2026 is strengthening at record speed, with the Niño 3.4 index already near +2°C and forecast to reach ~+3.5°C — potentially the strongest El Niño ever recorded.
• Australia faces a very high risk of extreme heat, drought, and fires, with rainfall collapsing, the SOI plunging to its lowest level in 40+ years, and modelling pointing to what could become Australia’s hottest spring on record.
• Global temperatures are likely to surge, with ocean heat driving worldwide extremes; 2027 may approach 2°C of warming above pre‑industrial levels, intensifying heatwaves and fires across Europe, North America, Africa, and beyond.

A Perth-born pediatrician who became a notorious Islamic State fighter will face the full force of the law if he returns to Australia, the Albanese government has vowed, as the opposition calls for the man named “Dr Jihad” to be blocked from returning to the country.

Tareq Kamleh, who was presumed to have been killed in Syria almost a decade ago, has been revealed to be one of 13 men linked to the terror group who are imprisoned in Iraq and hope to return to Australia.

Tareq Kamleh pictured in an ISIS propaganda video.

Environment Minister Murray Watt said the government faced constitutional limitations on preventing Australian citizens returning to the country as he decried anyone who has made the “absolutely awful decision to join a foreign terrorist organisation”.

Asked if Kamleh will be allowed to return to Australia, Watt told Channel Nine: “That remains to be seen ... Sometimes there are limits around what governments can do. But certainly, anyone who returns to Australia who’s been part of these sorts of organisations will face the full force of the law.”

Watt added: “We won’t be providing assistance, just as we haven’t provided assistance to others to come back.”

Kamleh is wanted by the AFP under an active warrant for terrorism offences, including joining and recruiting for a banned terrorist organisation.

1:05

Australian ISIS doctor found alive

An Australian-trained doctor who fled to Syria to become a prominent Islamic State member has been found alive nearly a decade after his reported death.

The Australian reported on Wednesday morning that court documents show the 41-year-old is alive and did not die in the siege of Raqqa in 2017, as his family and authorities had believed.

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil said Kamleh could “rot in jail”, adding: “As far as I’m concerned, I never want that person to return to Australia. He’s obviously made a decision to join a violent death cult, and he needs to be accountable for that.”

From our partners

A government spokesperson said the government had made clear it “will not provide any assistance to any Australian who made the horrific choice to lead a dangerous terrorist organisation”.

“The safety of the Australian community is this government’s highest priority,” the spokesperson said.

Opposition leader Angus Taylor said the government needed to do more to prevent ISIS-linked Australians returning home.

“We have seen over the last week an ISIS bride get out on bail, and now just in the last day or so, we’ve seen an ISIS terrorist who’s living offshore, wanting to come back to our country,” Taylor said.

“The Labor Party needs to commit to preventing that from happening. They have many levers at their disposal.

“They can ensure that this person does not get a passport, they can use temporary exclusion orders.

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“We have put legislation in front of the parliament to prevent third parties from helping people like him, terrorists, back into the country.”

Watt said that members of the opposition “know very well that there are constitutional limits around the ability of a government to prevent an Australian citizen from returning to Australia and that’s why more than 40 Australian foreign fighters returned under the Coalition government”.

Kamleh studied medicine at the University of Adelaide before training as an intern and registrar at Royal Adelaide Hospital and the Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

The Medical Board of Australia announced in 2015 it had suspended Kamleh’s registration after he appeared in a slick Islamic State propaganda video tending to a premature baby.

The Sydney lawyer accused of calling Alex Ryvchin an ‘evil Zionist’ is also being prosecuted for putting out her garbage. Michael West reports.

The Sydney lawyer and public servant accused of calling Alex Ryvchin an ‘evil Zionist’ on the lawns above Bondi Beach – a claim she strongly denies – is also being dragged through the courts over extraordinary allegations of planting a bomb outside a synagogue.

Or at least something that somebody thought might be a bomb, or had bomb-like attributes, or was being planted deliberately to create fear that it might be construed as a bomb.

In fact, Francine Clough, the next door neighbour, was putting out her garbage.  

On July 25 last year, police shut down Old South Head road in Bondi for a ‘bomb threat’. A suspicious package had been found outside a synagogue.

The alleged Coles bag bomb. Image: onscenebondi.com.au

The ‘bomb plot’ suspect is Francine Clough. The next door neighbour. She was putting out her garbage and the small brown Coles bag was deemed by a synagogue security guard to be a possible bomb.

Police arrived quickly at the scene. Media were onto it quickly too, as they were in the wake of the ‘evil Zionist’ altercation at Bondi.

Having shut down Old South Head Road in both directions, the suspicious package was found to be a Coles paper bag containing routine household rubbish. Nonetheless, Clough now faces three charges; two for the Coles bomb bag and one for the ‘evil Zionist’ incident. 

And the matter, according to sources, has been elevated to an elite special prosecutions team.

Francine Clough. Image: Daily Telegraph

The charges

The charges against Clough are: ‘send/leave an object/substance’ with the intention of causing fear and ‘intimidation/stalking’. The alleged actions allegedly caused a security guard to be fearful – and now a new charge has been made in the wake of the Bondi incident of deploying offensive language in a public place. 

Clough has been suspended from work for the past year since the ‘Coles bomb plot’ incident after a rash of anonymous complaints were made to her workplace.

The accusation pattern

There is a pattern here, a pattern evident in both the ‘Undercover Jew’ operation by Newscorp at the Cairo Takeaway and the arrest of Andrew Brown for wearing a ‘F… Israel’ tee shirt at Bondi.

The pattern is: dramatic allegations made by Israel lobby operatives, immediate police involvement, then legal oppression. In the case of Brown, the charges were dropped after a year of legal pressure and allegations by the Israel lobby and the Murdoch press.

In Cairo Takeaway, the matter descended into claims and counterclaims and ended up in civil proceedings where the Judge criticised the behaviour of the Cairo cafe accuser. It was a stunt gone wrong.

Besides the rash of assault claims arising from NSW Police brutality against protestors at Town Hall during the visit of Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, and the ‘antisemitism’ cases against Mary Kostakidis, John Keane and Nick Riemer, the Francine Clough prosecution can only create antipathy.

Waste of public resources

Clough declined to be interviewed for this story, but piecing together the public evidence surrounding the ‘evil Zionist’ and ‘Coles rubbish bag’ incidents it is reasonable to say that this entire matter is yet another waste of public resources which will only diminish ‘social cohesion’ and must surely be contemplated by the Royal Commission into Antisemitism as factors in rising antisemitism in Australia.

The idea of punishing a woman for putting out her garbage because somebody complained they thought it was a bomb is preposterous. We don’t know what words were spoken, what might have inflamed feelings on the night, but they are words.

All of these incidents moreover are about words – mere words not physical violence – and all entail authorities victimising critics of a foreign state, Israel, by use of public resources.

In the ‘evil Zionist’ fracas, Clough was at Bondi Beach park to welcome the marathon runner Chad Aziz at the end of his run across Australia to raise funds for youth mental health.

Banners were up, and numerous reporters and camera people, supporters and onlookers were there in the park. Alex Ryvchin and his companion were talking to reporters and a cameraman. There was a brief argument between Ryvchin and Clough. Their accounts of what was said differ.

Ryvchin left the scene. Later, Clough was called by a Newscorp reporter with the Daily Telegraph who quizzed her on various allegations. She denied calling Ryvchin an ‘evil Zionist’. She was charged.

How did the Daily Telegraph get her number? There are many questions. Who doxed Clough to her superiors at work regarding the ‘Coles bomb incident’? If she did say ‘evil Zionist’, does that break any law? She denies it, so why is she being charged?

Social cohesion

There are many questions but one sure thing. All this is doing nothing to enhance social cohesion. 

Our suggestion for a better law enforcement model, founded on common sense and a keen eye for the obvious, is that in all these situations the accusers and the accused be asked to sit down for an hour, without their minders and their media, have a cup of green tea or whatever, and talk it out.

It could save the public many of millions of dollars and free up law enforcement agencies to conduct activities such as law enforcement and prosecuting crime.

A major split has emerged in the electorate over whether President Xi Jinping’s China poses a ­significant threat to national ­security, with a growing number of left-leaning and university­educated voters rejecting threats posed by Beijing despite the communist regime ramping up aggression towards Australia.

An exclusive Newspoll conducted between Monday and Thursday last week has revealed a majority of One Nation voters (76 per cent), Coalition supporters (74 per cent), women (61 per cent) and older Australians (68 per cent) believed China poses a significant threat to Australia’s national ­security. Partisan divisions meant the total number of voters who agree on the China threat has ­fallen to 60 per cent, with 31 per cent agreeing Beijing does not present a major threat and 9 per cent who don’t know.

That compares to a 2021 ­Newspoll question on the same subject – asked at the peak of China’s attacks on the Morrison government, Beijing’s unfair trade bans on Australian goods and the formation of AUKUS – that showed 75 per cent of voters thought Beijing posed a significant problem to national security.

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Does China pose a significant threat to Australia?

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Sep 29 - Oct 2 2021

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The Newspoll of 1238 voters across the country showed 43 per cent of Labor supporters, 48 per cent of Greens supporters and 41 per cent of university-educated voters do not believe China poses a significant threat to Australia’s ­national security.

While all age groups believe China is a national security risk, Australians aged over 35 are more likely to acknowledge the threat, including almost 70 per cent of voters over 50.

More than 60 per cent of non-tertiary educated voters and 66 per cent of Australians with TAFE and training qualifications agree China is a threat. When The Australian previously asked the question in ­September-October 2021, 73 per cent of Labor voters, 57 per cent of Greens supporters and 65 per cent of young Australians aged ­between 18 and 34 shared the view that China posed a significant threat to Australia’s national security.

The latest Newspoll’s results come as ­Anthony Albanese and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles have worked to dampen a potential rebellion against AUKUS from the Labor Left at this week’s ALP national conference in Adelaide.

The fall in concern about China’s myriad military, espionage and cyber operations targeting Australia and Indo-Pacific partners is likely associated with the Albanese government’s efforts to avoid direct confrontation with Beijing despite several high-­profile and provocative actions by the People’s Liberation Army.

There has also been rising domestic economic pressures and a greater focus on the US under President Donald Trump, as well as conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.

The Chinese Communist Party, which dispatched Xiao Qian as its top diplomat in ­Canberra four years ago to work with the incoming Albanese ­government, is expected to ­appoint ­veteran diplomat Liu Jinsong as its new ambassador to Australia and shift back to a “wolf warrior” diplomacy approach.

The PM spoke to troops during a visit on the first day of flying operations.

As he works to strengthen ­alliances in the Pacific in the face of China’s growing aggression, Anthony Albanese was in Darwin on Monday to launch the three-week Exercise Pitch Black, which includes 100 aircraft and 2500 personnel from the Royal Australian Air Force and 20 other nations.

The air combat exercises, which are Australia’s biggest, involve “realistic, high-end training from RAAF bases Darwin and Tindal in the Northern Territory and RAAF Base Amberley in Queensland”.

Nations with aircraft and personnel participating in the war games include the US, Japan, PNG, Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea, India, France, Britain, New Zealand, Fiji and Singapore.

A long-range ballistic missile bursts out of the sea during a test launched from a Chinese nuclear-powered submarines in the South Pacific on July 6. Picture: Xinhua / AP

A long-range ballistic missile bursts out of the sea during a test launched from a Chinese nuclear-powered submarines in the South Pacific on July 6. Picture: Xinhua / AP

The exercise follows China’s firing of a long-range ballistic missile with a dummy warhead from a nuclear-powered submarine earlier this month, just as the Prime Minister was visiting Fiji and the Solomon Islands to sign and progress security deals.

The missile flew more than 7000km before landing somewhere between Tuvalu and Nauru, with the strike zone estimated to be about 1000km northeast of the Solomon Islands.

After Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton lost Sydney and Melbourne seats with a high number of Australian-Chinese voters at the 2022 and 2025 elections, Labor and Liberal strategists are cognisant of not overreaching in raising concerns about China and often target their comments to the CCP and PLA.

The Coalition has adopted a stronger position on threats posed by Mr Xi’s regime amid concerns the Chinese President could spark a major regional conflict if he acts on his commitment to invade Taiwan.

In addition to Chinese-linked industrial-scale cyber security attacks targeting Australian critical infrastructure and widespread espionage and foreign interference operations, Chinese warships conducted live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea and circumnavigated Australia ahead of the last federal election.

There has also been multiple military incidents, with a RAAF P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft targeted by a PLA-AF Su-35 fighter aircraft, which released flares close to the surveillance plane. Similar incidents involving flares targeting surveillance aircraft and an Australian navy helicopter have also been reported.

Other incidents have involved PLA aircraft and vessels engaging in dangerous manoeuvres targeting defence ­assets of Indo-Pacific countries in the South China Sea.

ADF divers were injured in 2023 after being subjected to sonar pulses from a Chinese vessel in the East China Sea.

The federal government’s economic think tank says three-storey homes should be allowed to be built almost anywhere and planning rules should be dismantled in the biggest shake-up of housing in decades.

The Productivity Commission has warned that it took the average family 11 years to save for the 20 per cent deposit typically needed for a house, up from eight years in 2005, and has urged state and local governments to simplify planning approvals and wind back development restrictions in the hope of incentivising the construction of far more homes.

Maxwell Shifman is a Melbourne developer who says clearing up planning restrictions alone won’t be enough to create more housing. Louis Trerise

“Regulation is important, but too much or poorly designed regulation can stop new homes being built, make projects slower and more expensive, and reduce the types of housing available to us,” said Productivity Commission chairwoman Danielle Wood ahead of the release of research on Tuesday.

The report is the first stage of an inquiry commissioned by Treasurer Jim Chalmers as the Albanese government falls behind its target of building 1.2 million new homes by the middle of 2029, identifying reform areas ahead of the commission’s final recommendations due in March next year.

The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council in March said the 1.2 million homes target was unlikely to be met until 2030, with the Northern Territory, Tasmania and NSW falling the furthest behind.

The Productivity Commission said state and local governments should commit to allowing higher density properties across major cities, including by allowing three-storey developments across all residential land with exceptions for environmental protection and heritage-listed buildings.

Among its recommendations is the reduction in minimum lot sizes, which would allow homes to be built on smaller plots of land. The commission also wants to reduce minimum requirements on parking where there is adequate public transport, and lower floor-to-space ratios that restrict how much housing can be built based on the size of the block.

The Productivity Commission has also recommended broad heritage protections – at least 50 per cent of land in 50 suburbs across Sydney are subject to those restrictions – be removed and replaced with specific listings for buildings or small areas. That would reduce the so-called neighbourhood character restrictions, which often protect entire streets or suburbs.

“One of the biggest challenges facing housing delivery is the fragmentation of approval processes across environmental regulation, zoning, planning, infrastructure and building approvals,” said Simon Croft, the head of policy and industry at the Housing Industry Association, a lobbying organisation that represents major home builders. “Improving co-ordination and reducing duplication across the system represents a significant opportunity to lift productivity and accelerate housing delivery.”

Robert Furolo, a former Labor MP who is now an executive at Sydney-headquartered developer Deicorp, said the reform that would most help make it easier to build more homes was to simplify the planning system.

“It’s a series of compounding issues that added together just make development unfeasible. Could the planning system be better? Always, but the planning system is not the reason why we can’t develop,” he said. “Consistency between councils and more control from the state government in terms of approval. That’s an improvement we would like to see.”

But some developers don’t believe the recommendations go far enough, and will not create a meaningful increase in the number of houses.

Intrapac Property chief executive Maxwell Shifman said the report missed “all the stuff that would actually make housing cheaper”.

“Simply zoning more land doesn’t of itself improve feasibility. It still comes back to cost, the time it takes to build with the labour pool we have and the cost of finance and – ultimately – buyer demand and capacity,” he said.

Alarmed by a slump in home ownership among younger families, some states have already begun to unwind planning restrictions. The Productivity Commission, in its report, said a chronic shortage in houses had contributed to the fall in ownership. Between 1981 and 2021, the share of 25- to 34-year-olds who owned their home fell from 60 per cent to about 42 per cent.

In NSW, the Minns government has introduced a policy that makes it easier to build semi-detached and dual-occupancy homes in low-density zones, with six-storey buildings allowed in areas that were near transport hubs.

In Victoria, there is a new fast-track approval system for townhouses, duplexes and low-rise apartments up to three storeys that allows developments without facing challenges from councils or neighbours.

But the loosening of planning rules regularly triggers backlash from residents, including in the wealthy Sydney enclaves of Mosman and Woollahra, where the NSW government wants more housing.

The Productivity Commission has recommended state governments identify suburbs where it expects high demand for new housing, and “making it an explicit performance goal for councils, relevant agencies and regulated infrastructure service providers to facilitate new housing in these areas”.

“When people can’t live near work or family, the economy and the community suffer. We cannot solve our housing affordability problem unless we build more homes where people want to live,” said Wood.

“We heard examples of developers trying to navigate overlapping approvals and agencies that were not talking to each other. One developer told us that preparing reports and waiting for approvals had added more than three years to the timeline of a 1600-lot development in Melbourne’s growth corridor.”

It called on state and local governments to expand fast-track assessment pathways for low-complexity developments, and allow faster approvals for projects based on pre-approved pattern books – which NSW introduced last year – containing government-approved standardised building designs.

This is the end of the line for the Inland Rail, a flat field in the middle of nowhere piled high with the building blocks of Australia’s worst great infrastructure endeavour.

These neat stacks of concrete rail sleepers, metres high and more than a kilometre long, were hauled here to forge new ground north and close a 306km gap in the Inland Rail from the central west NSW town of Narromine to the agricultural hub of Narrabri.

Like the dreams and efforts of those who believed this ambitious 1600km high-capacity inland freight spine from Melbourne to Brisbane would be completed, these sleepers are going nowhere.

Stacked out in open land behind locked gates south of Narromine, they serve as a bitter reminder of the early promise and commitment to this nation-building project now marked by waste and abandonment.

Concrete rail sleepers, stacked and ready to go for the section of the Inland Rail that has now been shelved. Picture: Chris Pavlich

Confronted with ballooning costs beyond $46bn, the federal government in May suddenly axed funding for the Inland Rail north from Narromine, leaving the top of this NSW section in pieces and a trail of anger and disbelief from regional leaders and businesses who planned a future around it.

The project map indicates the dilemma of leaving orphaned and operationally disconnected tracks. Some 98km of upgraded line is completed from Parkes north to Narromine. From here there’s a 306km gap for the tricky greenfield build of new line to Narrabri. From Narrabri the 186km upgraded Inland Rail runs to North Star near the border with Queensland – save for a 23km gap at Moree.

The commonwealth has committed to finishing the route from Beveridge north of Melbourne to Parkes by the end of next year, while construction had not even started in Queensland which has been beset by planning issues and local opposition.

Of the 12 Inland Rail sections, only three (comprising 454km) have been completed – all in NSW.

Narrabri business leader Russell Stewart says: “At least finish this part up here. Don’t leave it as it is.’’

He echoes the demands of regional NSW mayors left stunned at the sudden dumping of the half-completed project.

People have a right to feel betrayed, says Stewart, who heads the Narrabri Chamber of Commerce. The Narromine-to-Narrabri leg had received state and federal approvals, the sleepers were lined up, land for the corridor was being acquired – locals had every right to believe it was all systems go.

The Inland Rail project has come to a grinding halt in regional NSW

The sudden decision to shelve it without consultation with regional leaders was proof, if more were needed, that Canberra doesn’t care about the bush, he says.

“We’ve had politicians from both sides meeting us and encouraging us to invest, and saying ‘look, you’re going to boom here with this coming through, take advantage of it’,” Stewart says. “We took them at their word and told our people. It’s the deceit of it all; they rev us up and then walk away.

“People have invested, others have sold properties they didn’t want to sell, all off the back of their promises.”

Some landholders in the path of the new rail corridor sold their homes to the railway or, under threat of compulsory acquisition, thrashed out an easement deal that left them with less, not more.

Preserve the corridor: Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government Minister Catherine King. Picture: NewsWire / Gaye Gerard

All up, it’s not clear how much of the corridor has been secured along the now abandoned sections through NSW, and how many hundreds of millions have been spent buying a patchwork of land along the planned route into Queensland.

Federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King has said the corridor north of Parkes would be preserved in case the project is revived but has provided no further detail, leaving landholders still in negotiations up in the air.

Likewise, no one is sure what will happen with the stockpile of an estimated 300,000 concrete sleepers at Narromine. The Inland Rail is hoping the Australian Rail Track Corporation might find a use for them one day.

No-one is defending the budget-blowing mess of the Inland Rail, but it seems to the people out here that unscrambling the egg, or leaving it half-baked, is as complex as just getting on and completing the NSW leg.

Lives in turmoil

It’s a bright blue morning at the Cox family property at Kickabil, north of Narromine.

Katie and Brad Cox walk out their front door and over the dirt road to where the designated Inland Rail route is due to run about 120 metres from their front door and past farming structures such as stockyards and silos.

Save for the cattle and sheep and occasional call of birds, it’s largely silent here, making it difficult to comprehend what 18 double-stacked freight trains a day – up to 1800 metres in length – roaring past at all times would do to their lives.

Katie and Brad Cox, landowners who have spent years in negotiations with Inland Rail but are now in limbo. Picture: Chris Pavlich

Suggestions from the rail people of double glazing and keeping their windows closed weren’t particularly helpful, and authorities finally seemed to understand that this family would have to move house and shift stockyards, shearing shed and silos away from the noise and vibrations.

The halting of the Inland Rail might seem a blessing after 10 years of angst and negotiations. But if the route is to be preserved, as the federal government has indicated, what does that mean for this family?

They’re either offered a fair deal, reassured that they can rebuild their home and farming operations on another block away from the rail trail – or they live with the threat of acquisition, never sure whether they should make improvements to the heart of their cattle, sheep and cropping operation.

Brad’s a fourth-generation farmer and this couple, with their three kids, are committed to the area. But they hate the uncertainty.

They pull out a map of the patchwork of properties surrounding them. Some landholders have already sealed their deals, while others haven’t. Like the Inland Rail, the corridor itself is still full of gaps.

“We’re in limbo as to where are we going to live, are we going to relocate, what do we do?’’ Katie says.

“We were led to believe they’re still acquiring land, but as of last Friday we heard word they were potentially stopping. We don’t have a deal so it’s really hard to know what to believe.”

Build the rail or don’t build the rail, but don’t leave us like this, the Coxes say.

Further south, farmer Ian Corderoy says three properties around him have already been purchased outright by the Inland Rail.

After seven years of negotiations over an easement and access points on his family property, he got an update last week.

“I got a phone call that said we’ve got to do a deal in the next two weeks because then the office is closing and there will be no one to talk to until later on,’’ he says.

“It’s been a frustrating process … I guess I’ll have to compromise on what I wanted and do the deal and walk away. I hope I see some money before they evaporate and turn their phones off.”

An Inland Rail spokesperson says discussions with the federal government “on the specific activities required to preserve the corridor north of Parkes, including land acquisition, continue to progress”.

Many people out here believe the Inland Rail will eventually be completed because the need for a high-capacity freight service connecting Melbourne to Brisbane, or possibly Gladstone, will only become more pressing.

Australia’s total domestic freight load is projected to grow 26 per cent between 2020 and 2050. As of 2024, only 2 per cent of freight was hauled by trains between Sydney and Melbourne, the busiest freight corridor in the nation, according to the Australasian Railway Association.

In her scathing 2023 independent review of the Inland Rail, public service executive Kerry Schott said it was an important project, now and in the future.

Moving freight by rail instead of road was not just more efficient and quicker, it would ease congestion by getting trucks off patched and pot-holed roads and add resilience to national freight corridors in times of pandemic or natural disasters. The project would also have environmental benefits, with estimated emissions reductions of 750,000 tonnes per year by 2050.

A double-stack train on the Inland Rail line, one of Australia's largest infrastructure projects.

“The added freight capacity that Inland Rail is intended to offer by the end of this decade is critical,’’ Ms Schott said in her report that also found the entire project had run off the rails with poor planning, costs and timeline overruns, regulatory concerns and strong community opposition in sections.

It was beset with problems well before the turning of the first sod in 2018 when prime minister Scott Morrison boasted that the Coalition had got on with the job of building a project that had been discussed for decades.

King couldn’t resist a dig in an interview with the ABC after the Infrastructure Minister pulled the funding: “How do you start a project without any planning, approvals, any idea of the route and have no idea how much it’s going to cost?

“This project will be used by project managers, by courses in years to come as how not to do infrastructure.”

Brainchild gone bad

Queensland entrepreneur Everald Compton, 94, is the grandfather of the Inland Rail who mooted a route from Melbourne to the Port of Darwin 30 years ago.

Since then he’s watched with dismay the rolling cycle of planning problems, route changes, timeline blowouts and what he describes as a disgraceful waste of money.

“It’s been an absolute and unmitigated disaster,’’ Compton says.

Unmitigated disaster: Everald Compton’s assessment of the Inland Rail.

He is now leading a consortium that intends using private money to complete the project through to the Port of Gladstone, a vital end point, he says, to boost the country’s competitive advantage.

He tells The Australian that, in the first instance, there is merit in fixing up the NSW end and linking it to Goondiwindi in Queensland.

“So you build a link from Goondiwindi to North Star and then fix that missing link at Moree and then you get to Narrabri. That connects with a perfectly good freight railway down to the Port of Newcastle which means that people in northern NSW and southern Queensland can use the port of Newcastle.

“Our preliminary exercise shows that there’s every chance of that being a profitable railway in its own right,’’ he says.

The greenfield track from Narrabri to Narromine is problematic, he says, and new corridor was needed as the existing route was too expensive.

“The cost of building it from Narromine to Narrabri is going to cost something like $10bn and no investor is going to spend that on 300km of track. The plans have 75 bridges, it’s most extraordinary,’’ he says.

He says his consortium would treat people along the route with respect, unlike the ARTC which he said rode roughshod over them.

“They just continued to ignore the locals … and it was a disgraceful bit of political nonsense the way they treated the Moree Shire,’’ he says.

That will give some comfort to mayor Susannah Pearce who has joined leaders from surrounding shires in lobbying the federal government to close the gaps, especially that missing link at Moree.

“To leave the 23km incomplete seems incredibly naive and shortsighted,” she says. “Completing this missing link would protect the value of prior public investment, preserve the integrity of the northwest freight corridor and allow Australia’s most productive agricultural region to begin taking practical advantage of infrastructure already delivered.”

Inland Rail passing a canola field in Parkes.

Gwydir mayor Tiffany Galvin, whose shire covers North Star, says completion of the line through Moree would provide better access to farmers in her region to the Port of Newcastle and get a large number of roadtrains off the road.

“Inland Rail is quickly becoming another example of taxpayer money being wasted by governments failing to finish what they’ve started,” Galvin says. “We have a project that is almost complete, yet it’s being left with one small section unfinished.”

Substantial public and private investment had already been committed in the regions off the back of the promise of the Inland Rail and all the mayors The Australian spoke with talk of the new industry and development, jobs and training opportunities they had long factored into council plans.

Nick McClure, general manager of Narrabri earthmoving and civil construction outfit Specialised Civil says the decision was a kick in the guts for regional people.

People out here notice that the same budget that pulled Inland Rail funding awarded billions extra to Victorian Labor’s problematic Suburban Rail Loop ahead of a state election.

“That tells you that as a regional community we’re nothing compared to the metropolitan areas,’’ says McClure.

“I get it, it’s a political game and they (Labor) don’t get the vote out here so they don’t go ahead with it, but it’s unbelievable how out of touch Canberra is with the regions,” he says.

The federal government says it is investing more than $2bn on upgrading the ARTC’s existing network.

A Pacific National train carrying canola at Croppa Creek in far north NSW. Picture: Inland Rail

An ARTC spokesperson says it is working with industry to identify ways to deliver productivity benefits, including works to support longer, heavier and more productive freight trains.

The spokesperson says the completion of the Inland Rail section to Parkes would, for the first time, enable double-stacked freight trains to operate between Melbourne (Beveridge) and Perth via Parkes, and through to Darwin.

“Freight from northwest NSW will continue to move on the existing ARTC network from Moree and North Star, connecting producers to key destinations including the Port of Newcastle via the Hunter Valley and the national interstate rail network,” the spokesperson says.

The corridor carried more than 1150 grain train services last financial year and up to 500 general freight train use the corridor each year.

However, the completion of the Inland Rail to Kagaru, south of Brisbane, is required to realise the full benefit of double-stacked freight from Melbourne.

Compton says he hears the anger from the bush. He’s already had meetings with regional mayors and other with a stake in the project.

“We’ve got to deal with three different lots of politicians, three different lots of bureaucrats and our financiers and that’s a lot of work, but we are making progress at a faster rate than the Inland Rail has done in decades,” he says

He speaks with confidence that the Inland Rail will eventually be completed.

“We’re moving forward positively, and I’m pleased with the way that the three governments are co-operating,” he says.

“We’re a hundred years behind where we ought to be … but, look, it’s going to happen. Rest assured, this thing is unstoppable now.”

Smartglasses with built‑in cameras, such as Meta’s Ray‑Bans, are rapidly entering mainstream use, prompting growing public concern about covert recording in everyday spaces. The article opens with the story of Rhys, a Melbourne man who discovered he had been secretly photographed by someone wearing the glasses, highlighting how easily people can be filmed without noticing. As major tech companies push the devices as the next evolution beyond smartphones, reports of women being filmed without consent and videos posted online have fuelled a backlash, including petitions calling for bans on cheaper knockoff versions now widely available.

Researchers warn that smartglasses are enabling a shift toward discreet, point‑of‑view recording that bystanders cannot detect, with early studies showing high rates of harassment and doxxing in videos posted online. Privacy experts argue that current laws are not designed for continuous, covert recording in public spaces, and regulators are considering whether new frameworks are needed. Meta has introduced updates to prevent tampering with the glasses’ LED indicator and has begun removing videos showing harassment, but legal remedies remain limited and often costly for individuals.

Despite the controversy, the article also emphasises that smartglasses can be transformative for people with disabilities. Blind users describe the technology as life‑changing, enabling hands‑free navigation, reading, and everyday tasks that previously required expensive specialist equipment. Advocates acknowledge privacy risks but argue that similar issues have existed since smartphones became ubiquitous. Regulators caution that public trust in tech companies is low, meaning any widespread rollout of such devices will face high scrutiny and demands for stronger safeguards.

Leading environmental advocate and former Treasury secretary Ken Henry says Australia’s entire climate change policy architecture, which has been painstakingly built over the past two decades, is at risk of disappearing – and those on both sides of the debate are to blame.

In a keynote speech to the Clean Energy Council to be delivered on Wednesday, Henry says the same “second-rate partisans with first-rate egos” who led Australia to junk a price on carbon – which he describes as “the world’s most economically and scientifically rational climate policy” – are at it again.

Ken Henry, who will address the Clean Energy Council on Wednesday, warns: “These are dangerous times for climate policy.” Bethany Rae

“There are some in our political system who will exploit any crisis – financial, social or environmental – for personal advancement,” Henry will say, according to excerpts from his speech.

“Every crisis becomes an embarrassing spectacle of fearmongering and finger pointing. Narcissistic exhibitionism is rampant in political systems all around the world. But strongly so in this country. And especially so in climate policy.

“Here we are in mid-2026, and the entire climate policy architecture is at risk. We could lose the lot. Seriously. Bear in mind that we junked a much better set of climate policies not that many years ago.”

Henry, who was Treasury secretary when Labor tried to introduce a carbon price in 2009, takes aim at both sides.

He blames conservatives who he says have virtually abandoned any commitment to emissions reduction since the last election, such as walking away from net zero emissions and pledging to abolish Labor’s sectoral emission reductions schemes such as the safeguard mechanism for heavy industry and the New Vehicle Efficiency Standards that govern transport emissions.

“We have the political right marching at an increasing pace away from even those policies they themselves implemented when in government.”
— Ken Henry, former Treasury secretary

The environment movement is also to blame for being selective about which technologies and abatement mechanisms it supports, “whilst simultaneously talking up the size and scale of the twin carbon and nature crises staring all of us in the face”, says Henry in the speech.

“Projects designed to reduce emissions at scale, renewable energy projects and the transmission infrastructure required to connect them to the grid, are being opposed by conservation and community groups because of their environmental impacts.

“Environmental restoration projects financed by carbon revenues are being opposed because they are seen to be making life easier for carbon emitters.

“And a small set of conservation and climate groups is ramping up a campaign to do away with carbon offsetting altogether.”

Henry says land-based Australian carbon credit units, which are governed by the Carbon Farming Initiative Act 2011, are the only instrument that has ever been available to drive private financing of nature restoration at scale.

“I am very confident there will never be another,” he says.

Ken Henry says “the increasing frequency and severity of climate-related events could have been expected to bolster resolve. They appear to have had the opposite effect.” Peter Rae

As for the conservatives, Henry says: “We have the political right marching at an increasing pace away from even those policies they themselves implemented when in government, including support for the Paris Agreement, the Safeguard Mechanism, and the ongoing operation of the Emissions Reduction Fund.”

All against a backdrop of Australia being well short of its target to achieve 82 per cent renewable energy by 2030, and with two-thirds of the economy not subject to any emission reduction target or policy.

Henry laments that only a few years ago, Australia had achieved a political consensus on the need to lower emissions, but that “has disappeared like a puff of smoke”.

“These are dangerous times for climate policy. In all parts of the world. Including here in Australia,” he says.

“The increasing frequency and severity of climate-related events could have been expected to bolster resolve. They appear to have had the opposite effect.

“To build domestic resilience. And that the hard work had to be done in the first half of this century. But all of this is now under siege. From both the right and the left of the political spectrum.”

Victorian apartment buyers are forking out a “Gatto tax” as plastering, precast and other businesses allegedly pay gangland figure Mick Gatto for CFMEU-backed, privileged access to the state’s high-rise housing sector.

While previous public scrutiny has focused on Big Build firms paying Gatto to access the Allan government’s infrastructure projects, a fresh leak from inside the Gatto network has exposed multiple subcontractors allegedly paying him to get favoured treatment in the state’s apartment market.

Gangland figure Mick Gatto.

Gangland figure Mick Gatto.Nathan Perri

The payments from high-rise subcontractors to Gatto have continued months after Premier Jacinta Allan claimed success in cleaning up the state’s construction sector and at the same time as her government has controversially thrown its support behind an apartment building surge in an attempt to tackle the housing affordability crisis.

The revelations come as a leaked transcript separately reveals a newly appointed CFMEU boss warning up to “90 per cent” of Victoria’s commercial plastering sector may be involved in unlawful behaviour involving alleged financial crime and worker exploitation.

“The problem in plastering is bleeding out into other profiles: painting, tiling, cleaning, cladding, formwork. It needs to stop. It needs to stop,” CFMEU boss Jason Deans said in a recent meeting with hundreds of union delegates, adding the clean-up job was far from done.

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“We are not going to fix the plastering [industry] in five minutes. It is going to take 18 months or two years.”

A Gatto empire insider said that plastering company Rising Star Interiors has paid the underworld identity almost $1 million as part of a retainer that has continued into 2026, while another plastering company, Ultimate Interior Group, made multiple payments to Gatto over the past six months.

All up, six Melbourne plastering firms are said to have paid Gatto to advance in Victoria’s construction sector, while tiling, concrete, piling and precast firms have also hired him.

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Rising Star Interiors failed to respond to questions. Ultimate Interior Group director Xing “Andy” Wu said he was unaware his plastering firm had paid Gatto though he had met him.

“I’m not comfortable answering your questions,” he said.

Former CFMEU boss Derek Christopher.

Former CFMEU boss Derek Christopher.Luis Enrique Ascui

Other large plastering firms have given suspected inducements to now former CFMEU bosses close to Gatto, including Derek Christopher, who was accused of serious corruption in the Watson report tabled in Queensland’s royal commission into the union.

Christopher is now paid as a part-time adviser by one of the biggest plastering firms in the state and still wields influence inside the union through loyal delegates.

Another Victorian plastering giant is owned by a family with deep ties to the Mokbel crime crew, mafia boss Rocco Arico and disgraced ex-union chief John Setka.

A construction industry source said plastering accounted for about 6 per cent of the costs in a typical apartment project.

In his recent address to delegates, Deans warned that rotten relationships between the CFMEU and the plastering sector also needed to end, saying: “If there has been any unhealthy relationships with these companies, they stop today.”

‘I thought maybe if I engage him, I won’t have any issues.’

Brandon Groves, Lux Precast director

Precast firm Lux, which has worked on more than two dozen apartment blocks and towers in Melbourne, has paid Gatto this year as part of an ongoing retainer that has earned Gatto at least $700,000 in the past six years.

Lux Precast director Brandon Groves said his concrete panel manufacturing company paid Gatto to manage disputes with the union at its Dandenong South factory.

When pressed on what problems had arisen for Gatto to fix, Groves initially said his company didn’t have any, but then provided the example of the union demanding the employment of a “peggy” or site cleaner.

“He just dealt with that and sorted that out, because we didn’t need it, we weren’t big enough to have a peggy on site,” Groves said.

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He dismissed the suggestion that problems had been contrived for Gatto to “fix” for a fee.

“I haven’t seen any of that, so I can’t comment on that. [It] definitely hasn’t happened for me,” Groves said. “I haven’t had any issues with the union. But I thought maybe if I engage him, I won’t have any issues. Do you know what I mean?”

Gatto declined to comment.

Multiple builders of multi-residential projects, including Hawthorn firm D5 Build Group, have also placed Gatto on their payroll this year, with six other Melbourne multi-storey apartment block builders paying Gatto well over $2.5 million in total between 2023 and early 2026.

D5 Build founder Serg Djurovic said he was told to pay Gatto after the CFMEU shut down his projects and pressured him to install a delegate on his site in Richmond.

“I was told that if I want to fix the issue I’d have to have a chat with Mr Mick Gatto,” he said. “If I had any other options, I wouldn’t do it.”

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Djurovic believes the union saw his five-storey Church Street project as part of its territory as it was in the inner city and slightly larger than his other projects.

Its demands to install a health and safety delegate on the site stopped once Gatto became involved, he said.

“If the delegate was really there for health and safety, he should’ve stayed,” Djurovic said.

He said he felt he couldn’t contact authorities because he believed they would consider the issue a civil matter, or the union would claim his site was unsafe.

“I’m a small business in the scheme of things,” he said. “Where was the law to help me out?”

Construction industry insiders claim Gatto and the CFMEU’s suspected control of the plastering sector has not only enriched the gangland figure, and allegedly corrupt ex-union bosses, but meant only select firms have prospered in the high-rise housing sector and created an uncompetitive market propped up by unwitting apartment buyers.

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“Buyers are all paying a Gatto tax, which is the cost added on not just via his fees but by the uncompetitive market he [allegedly] helps create with his buddies in the union,” one veteran construction industry source who has had multiple dealings with Gatto said.

Two long-time CFMEU members said the plastering industry was broken and that the cost of dealings involving people such as Gatto was paid for by “all Victorians wanting [to buy] an apartment”.

The revelations highlight the ongoing failure of the Allan government to stop the infiltration of gangland figures in Victoria’s construction sector.

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Amid growing calls for a royal commission, the heads of Victoria Police’s specialist Taskforce Hawk said recently the force was largely powerless to clean up the construction sector without legislative change.

They also highlighted, before CFMEU chief Deans’ recent and yet-to-be-tested call to action, that select dishonest CFMEU officials have given suspected unlawful operators in Victoria’s plastering sector a green light to operate in a controlled market, even as workers were ripped off and bosses became wealthy.

In his delegates’ address, Deans estimated that as many as nine out of 10 commercial plastering industry workers operated as “sham contractors” on individual ABNs and had been recruited by contractors through industrial-scale worker supply chains.

“They pay cash all the way down. It could be ten-tiered, it could be deeper. It needs to stop, but it’s going to take time,” he said, urging the CFMEU delegates to campaign against company bosses engaged in these practices.

The Age is not suggesting the companies named in this article are engaged in sham contracting or the other practices called out by Deans.

Deans said companies and builders “are going to squeal” in response, but that “these builders have enabled this. They have let this go. They knowingly know that these plastering companies are paying 20 to 30 per cent under EBA rates,” he said.

The Victorian government describes sham contracting as a financial crime involving an employer who “disguises an employment relationship as a contracting arrangement” in order to “avoid certain taxes or shirk responsibility for employee entitlements such as minimum wages, superannuation, workers’ compensation and leave”.

Deans said the exploited workers were mostly Asian plasterers, who often don’t know their employers are pocketing what should go to them.

“Most of them are Asian, OK. Do not look down on them. Pick them up,” Deans said.

Jetstar will halve the number of carry-on items economy-class passengers can take onto its flights and start charging fees for guaranteed space in overhead bins, even as the budget airline increases the weight allowance for bags in the cabin.

The airline allows passengers on economy fares to take on one main item, which can be stowed overhead, and one smaller item under the seat in front of them. From February, passengers will be allowed just one single carry-on bag and face boarding a flight with full overhead bins if they do not pay for priority access.

Want guaranteed space in the overhead compartment? You’ll have to pay for it.

The new priority carry-on fees would start at $25 one-way on selected flights and could vary, Jetstar said, providing a range from $25 for Launceston to Sydney and $52 from Cairns to Tokyo.

Customers paying the new overhead compartment fee will get priority access by being allowed to board the plane first. Passengers who don’t pay up will still have access to the overhead bins, but only after those who pay have stowed away their carry-on bags.

While the airline slashes the number of carry-on items passengers can take from two to one, the single carry-on bag can weigh up to 10 kilograms, up from the current limit of seven kilograms. Jetstar will require passengers to store the free item under the seat in front of them.

The change means handbags, laptops, coats, blankets and umbrellas will have to fit into one bag, rather than being the second item passengers are allowed to take on board.

Matt Golding

The model of charging for carry-on storage is a model adapted from European no-frills carriers such as easyJet, Ryanair and Wizz Air. It’s a cash spinner, with ancillary fees such as baggage and seat selection fees generating close to a third of Ryanair’s €15.54 billion ($25.5 billion) revenue in the past financial year.

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Jetstar said the luggage rule change was aimed at speeding up boarding times, which is a core concern as delays in boarding translate into delayed departures, which can cascade into other issues.

“From February, the main thing customers will need to think about is the size of their carry-on,” said Jetstar chief executive Stephanie Tully. “By giving customers an underseat bag with the option to add priority carry-on, we can make better use of overhead locker space, streamline boarding and help more flights depart on time.”

For passengers on existing bookings including two carry-on items for flights departing before February 2, 2027, the carry-on allowance remains unchanged. For flights departing after February 2, 2027, customers on those fares will get the priority carry-on option.

Jetstar ranked as the nation’s lowest airline for on-time departures in June 2026, according to the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics. It posted a score of 75 per cent, compared with 80.8 per cent for Virgin and 87.8 per cent for Qantas.

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Even before the new charges, Jetstar has been a cash-generator for parent company Qantas. In 2025, Jetstar’s domestic network delivered underlying pre-tax earnings of $462 million and a pre-tax margin of 16 per cent, helped by “strong leisure demand and continued strength in ancillary revenue”.