Source : the age
Thanks for joining us.
It’s been an enormous week in Australian news, so if you need a recap, we’ve got you covered:
Politics
- Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has described revelations that a secretive Christian sect had paid far-right agitators to disrupt the 2025 election campaign as “a fundamental change to our democracy”. But the sect behind the campaign, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, stonewalled queries about the intervention when questioned before a parliamentary committee investigating the election today.
- A Russian-Australian citizen has been arrested by federal police in Brisbane over allegations he was covertly and deceptively collecting information about the Ukrainian Armed Forces, while believing he was acting for the Russian Federation. Vladimir Teslov, a 27-year-old man from Victoria, did not appear for his hearing today, and his case was adjourned to early October.
- The government reached deals on several key policies: Bills to cut spending on the NDIS, limit gambling advertising, preserve tax concessions for widowed investors and force tech giants to compensate Australian news outlets for their journalism all passed.
- Politicians joined the family of Zomi Frankcom in condemning Israel’s decision not to pursue a criminal investigation against Israeli soldiers who attacked Frankcom’s Gaza aid convoy in 2024, killing her and six other aid workers.
- And Prime Minister Anthony Albanese paid special tribute to our own Tony Wright, who is stepping back from daily newsroom duties after half a century covering Australia. Hear more from Tony below.
There is arguably no worse time for Australia’s book industry to experience a cyberattack than mid-July.
The Christmas season starts in September, Children’s Book Week is under way and Father’s Day is soon.
It is when a bumper crop of books is published, and it marks the beginning of the crucial shopping period when retailers earn a major chunk of their annual revenue.
But if a publisher can’t distribute their books and shops can’t get stock, tidings of comfort and joy swiftly vanish.
Daily transits will be capped at one of the world’s most crucial trade choke points as of early September.
The Panama Canal Authority is gearing up for a longer-than-usual El Niño season expected to reduce water levels, it said walking back a previous pledge to not limit vessel passage.
Under the new measures from September 4, the canal will limit daily transits 34 vessels, and reduce the number to 32 from September 15. The canal handles about 5 per cent of the world’s trade.
The canal had registered an average of 35 daily transits through June 2026, corresponding to vessel demand, with the capacity to handle around 40 crossings a day.
The government should lift income support payments to at least $600 a week – a near 50 per cent increase – and cap gas prices and rent increases in response to rising unemployment, the Australian Council of Social Services says.
On Thursday, the ABS confirmed the unemployment rate had risen to 4.5 per cent, and a further 4000 people became unemployed in July.
ACOSS CEO Cassandra Goldie said there were now 100,000 more unemployed people than in 2022, and noted the RBA expects unemployment to rise to 4.8 per cent by 2028.
“That’s another 50,000 people out of paid work,” she said in a statement.
A Liberal MP has slammed the intense focus on a secretive wealthy Christian sect, after the latest revelations about that sect’s efforts to campaign for the Liberal Party at the 2025 election.
This morning, this masthead revealed that the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren, secretly paid far-right activists for an “influence campaign” to disrupt Albanese government appearances.
The church appeared for several hours before Canberra’s Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters today.
Appearing on ABC News, Ben Small repeated a line from Liberal MPs earlier this year, calling the committee a “hyper-partisan witch hunt led by the Labor party-controlled committee on electoral matters”.
Australia has fallen further behind its ambitious target to build 1.2 million new homes by the end of the decade.
The timeline to meet the target has been pushed back by another three months since April, according to the government’s housing advisory body.
The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council’s latest quarterly report, released on Friday, forecast the target will be reached by the end of 2030 – 18 months later than the mid-2029 deadline.
Although building approvals have risen by 26 per cent and commencements have jumped 15 per cent since the start of July 2024, progress has been stifled by the Middle East conflict and higher interest rates in 2026.
Russian drones damaged a border crossing with Moldova in the Ukrainian southern region of Odesa overnight, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine said on Friday.
Passengers and vehicle traffic was halted through the Tabaky checkpoint and is being diverted to other crossings, the service said on the Telegram messaging app.
The Moldovan side has been informed of the situation, it said.
Overnight, Russian airstrikes killed 17 people and injured more than 40 in Kyiv.
Reuters
Indonesian police are searching for four Australians who flew out of Bali the day after allegedly assaulting a Perth father who died in hospital on Thursday evening.
Paul Dougan, from Gosnells in Perth’s south-east, underwent three surgeries, including one to remove his spleen, after the attack on August 5.
A statement from Denpasar City Police revealed Dougan was allegedly attacked while at the One Tribe One Life Lounge and Cafe in Kuta in the early hours of August 5.
Dougan had allegedly reprimanded an Australian man for hitting a woman when the man, along with four others, turned on him.
Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan has been moved back to prison after spending a few hours overnight in hospital, a spokesman for his party said on Friday.
Khan, 73, was transferred to a hospital in Islamabad early on Friday for a medical examination, following a Supreme Court order this week.
A spokesperson for Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, confirmed Khan had been taken back to Adiala prison in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. Khan has been imprisoned since August 2023. He says the cases against him are politically motivated, an accusation the government denies.
His lawyers say his health has deteriorated in prison and that he has lost significant vision in his right eye.
The government has said medical reports disclosed no condition requiring immediate treatment.
Reuters
AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett ended her press conference fielding questions about the wider world context of the foreign interference charges laid today.
She declined to detail whether police had begun their investigation on the advice of Ukraine.
Asked if charges would have been laid had the alleged situation been reversed and the man had allegedlysupplied Ukraine – an Australian ally – with Russian information, she said: “We target criminal offending, not countries.”
“Our job is ensuring that Australia does not become a safe haven for people who think they can conduct foreign interference on our shores,” she said.
“This is about sending a message.”
