Publication
MEDICINE CALAMITY
Australian patients risk losing access to lifesaving medicines, with the nation “cleaved off” from global drug development, amid growing demands for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to pay more for innovative therapies. One of the nation’s leading...
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FLIPPIN’ NOT ENOUGH
Employers, entrepreneurs and an ex-labor premier have dismissed Anthony Albanese’s olive branch on his capital gains tax overhaul as insufficient in addressing the bill’s “devastating consequences”, after the ALP offered small business major...
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Hanson’s insurgency: hot war on every policy
Pauline Hanson has launched a battalion of policy wars with Labor and the Coalition heading into the next election by pledging massive cuts to government spending while ending the “transgender insurgency” and Islamic fundamentalism in Australia. The...
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Strategy of the rebellion
One Nation’s star recruit Barnaby Joyce is set to take on Jim Chalmers as the populist party’s Treasury spokesman and bid to sharpen an economic agenda labelled vague and expensive, as Anthony Albanese goes on a cost-of-living blitz to starve Pauline...
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Iran truce but PM eyes peace offering to voters
Anthony Albanese is considering new cost-of-living relief measures and extending the $2.5bn fuel excise cut beyond June amid voter frustration following the budget, as economists warn against ongoing stimulatory spending following an initial peace deal...
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Socceroo young guns storm world stage with double shot of glory
This is how you have a crack. The Socceroos were sledged as inferior, unworthy opponents by Turkey before their World Cup clash in Vancouver. They absorbed 27 minutes of intense pressure before a rocketship called Nestory Irankunda found space and...
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Rare Eyre: centre awash like ’74
The Australian continent’s chameleon centre has changed colour and character, smiling beneath a big, blue outback sky. The formerly parched sand dune country enfolding Kati Thanda-lake Eyre is now lush and green. Not since 1974 has the vast salt pan...
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Judge’s unflinching verdict: egregiously slow colleagues are a threat to rule of law
In an extraordinary rebuke, Federal Court judge Ian Jackman has named and shamed six fellow judges who have failed to deliver decisions in cases up to three years after hearing them, condemning the “egregious” delays as “a real and growing threat to...
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Damning letters reveal Victoria’s rot as Allan’s premiership teeters on the brink
Premier Jacinta Allan’s government was forced to provide bailout guarantee letters to the state’s fire agency and environmental watchdog after concerns emerged about their deteriorating financial positions, as Labor MPS increasingly conclude a...
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Retaliation first, deal with Trump second
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defied Donald Trump by retaliating against an Iranian missile bombardment on the Jewish state, in an escalation that threatens to derail Washington-iran peace talks. Shattering the fragile April 7...
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Tearing down status quo
Core support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has surged ahead of Labor for the first time in Newspoll history, as Anthony Albanese’s popularity hit record lows and an overwhelming majority of voters declare Australian politics is overdue for a big...
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Farm, family, free-range: Franklin seizes life restart … even the nappy changes
How should a footballer prepare for life after the game? Especially a footballer like Lance “Buddy” Franklin, who was one of the best ever to play? “It’s not an easy transition,” says Franklin. “People struggle. You hear bad stories.” Depression,...
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Disgraced exec’s KPMG cushion: board overrules legal, HR chiefs
The Albanese government is considering a freeze on KPMG after data showed the embattled firm collected millions in public sector audit contracts and as partners continue to depart. Amid another bruising day of parliamentary hearings, which have...
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Greens light on tax turns red
The Greens and crossbenchers are demanding Jim Chalmers extensively wind back his extraordinary ministerial powers in the government’s new tax laws if he wants Labor’s budget revenue raid on property and capital gains swiftly passed through the...
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MARLES GUARANTEES PACT, WARNS XENOPHOBIA A DEFENCE RISK Internal torpedo alert: PM faces AUKUS strife
Anthony Albanese faces a revolt over AUKUS with rebel Labor MPS, former ministers, teal independents and unionists demanding the Prime Minister reconsider his backing of the agreement while claiming there is growing uncertainty over its rollout under...
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Sexy little number that conceals our modesty
The Albanese government has been accused of “cooking the books” by using more than $10bn in veterans’ welfare payments and $2.1bn in intelligence agency funding to bolster its headline “defence spending” figure. A breakdown of the government’s...
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BUSINESS IN AN ABYSS
Exasperated business leaders concede Australians are increasingly uninterested or unconvinced by their campaigns on tax and economic policy, forcing them to consider new, unconventional strategies including mobile game advertisements to reach voters in...
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Koala jab scandal: vaccine debacle exposed by eminent scientist at rival university
The developers of a “historic” vaccine to save koalas from endemic chlamydia disease have walked away from published findings that it slashed deaths by nearly two thirds, amid accusations they have botched the research. Professor Keith Chappell, a...
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THE RAISER GANG
TREASURY CHIEF’S BLUNT MESSAGE TO AUSSIES HIT BY BUDGET TAX INCREASES CONTRADICTORY MESSAGES ON IMPACT FOR NATION’S HOUSING SUPPLY ALBANESE’S CARVE-OUT WARNING: DON’T EXPECT BIG RE-WRITE OF POLICY Treasury secretary Jenny Wilkinson says the proposed...
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Miracle of Saint James for blue believers
Unbelievable. The greatest escape. Nathan Cleary was outplayed for most of the night. Quiet. Ineffective. Overshadowed. Then he inspired a controversial and breathtaking 22-20 State of Origin victory for NSW like he was waving a baton … sealed by a...
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ALP’S budget shambles: rethink, retrofit, repeat
Anthony Albanese has opened the door to potential capital gains tax exemptions for industries other than technology, amid concerns among the business sector and Labor ranks over a landmark policy that is being retrospectively “patched up” and “shifting...
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Labor’s start-up carve-up
Anthony Albanese is leaning towards offering only “narrow” concessions to his new capital gains tax regime for start-ups in the tech sector, as business groups and some Labor MPS push for broader compromises to protect entrepreneurs across the economy...
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‘WITHOUT FAITH, I WOULD FALL APART’ ‘Holding on to hopeful faith’ Watch Chaya Schlanger’s moving message
Wrapped in a protective cocoon between her father and her daughter, Chaya Schlanger is ready to speak publicly for the first time since terrorists robbed her of the man she married 19 years ago: Eli Schlanger, known to so many simply as “the Bondi...
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CARVE-OUT CATCH-22
Concerns are rising inside the Albanese government over how to carve out start-ups from new capital gains tax rules without undermining the changes, as Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar and teal MP Allegra Spender join forces to strike a CGT deal for...
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KEATING’S STRONG DEFENCE OF CGT CHANGE MINNS INPUT, MAX PAIN
NSW Premier Chris Minns has thrown a bomb into the Albanese government’s post-budget sales pitch by calling for “urgent action” to reduce the tax burden on workers including the 47 per cent rate paid by those earning more than $190,000. The rare...
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Race to avert ‘kick in entrepreneurial groin’
Labor’s capital gains tax reform is a “grab without any commensurate benefit” that will only hurt workers and force an inevitable political walk-back, ex-reserve Bank board member John Poynton has declared, as business pushes for a complete rewrite of...
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Labor stamps all over trust
Businesses and families across the country face the prospect of a surprise stamp duty bill if they are forced to restructure their trusts in the wake of Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers’ tax changes, as a multi-billiondollar fight looms over the...
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RAGE-BAIT BUDGET
Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese’s big-taxing budget has been rated the worst for the economy since 1993, with younger Australians unconvinced that Labor’s new measures will reduce inflation or deliver on intergenerational equity and housing. A...
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Inside the cutting-edge surgery that will change young Oscar’s life for good
Twelve-year-old Oscar Tanner is lying flat on his tummy, his body almost completely covered by blue sterile sheets. His back is cut open. There’s a cavity at the base of his spine and a long incision all the way to his collarbone. At just 25kg, he...
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INCOME TAX WAR
Angus Taylor has vowed to index income tax brackets to inflation if he wins the next election, using his first budget reply speech to roll out a $22.5bn pitch to workers as he aims to restore the Coalition as a viable electoral force. With Anthony...
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Backfiring tax: Gen Z victims
Jim Chalmers has rejected indexing income tax rates to tackle bracket creep and will instead consider bolstering the new $250 end-of-year offset to provide future relief for workers, as more than 500,000 young Australians were left in the firing line...
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$77BN TAX GRAB
Jim Chalmers has unveiled $77bn of net tax increases but will continue to deliver deficits until mid-next decade, with a hit on housing investments and trusts dwarfing the relief of a new $5-a-week tax cut. The budget reaching balance in 2034-35 is...
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Tax creep will eat your ‘WATO’
Jim Chalmers will give back about half of what an average worker loses in a year’s worth of bracket creep when he delivers sweeteners in his fifth budget on Tuesday night, where investors could face a further shock of a potential 30 per cent minimum...
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NET ZEROES HAVE A LIMIT
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher says it would be unsustainable for the government to indefinitely continue “supercharged” spending on the net-zero transition, as Labor lays the groundwork for breaking promises in Tuesday’s budget while denying tax...
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CASH FOR TRAGIC TOWN CAMPS: $45M ... BUT $24M GOES ON STAFF COSTS
The Little Sisters town camp, on the southern outskirts of Alice Springs, is a small cluster of about 20 houses on one circular bitumen road. It’s early noon on a bright weekday when we visit with Warlpiri woman Bess Nungarrayi Price and all is quiet,...
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‘CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY’
Two Isis-linked women were arrested on arrival in Melbourne from Syria on Thursday night on crimes against humanity charges related to the enslavement of a Yazidi woman, with a third women arrested in Sydney for entering a terrorist area and joining a...
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Loss and found: a Covid fix
Jim Chalmers is planning to roll out a Covid-era business tax relief proposal allowing companies to reduce their tax retrospectively, in a move that aims to lift productivity growth and save investment from crashing as forecast by the Reserve Bank on...
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Handouts row: Take a hike, Jim
Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock has warned that government handouts to households amid an economic crisis sparked by the Iran war will make it harder to temper inflation, as the RBA lifted interest rates for the third consecutive meeting days...
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BEARING WITNESS
‘AAM’ TESTIFIES ABOUT HER CHILDREN’S EXPERIENCE ON A MELBOURNE BUS Are there any f..king Jews on this bus? I can smell Jews. If there are any Jews, we’re going to burn this bus WITNESS BEN ON HIS ARMY RESERVE COLLEAGUES It started out with a joke...
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Ryvchin first to his feet with a Bondi call for healing and justice
Australia’s most prominent Jewish leader Alex Ryvchin will implore the royal commission this week to drag the country out of a “flaccid mindset” that has let antisemitism flourish and allowed “the worst of us” to determine how good and honest people...
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A 25-year quest for medical holy grail
Scientist Elizabeth Ng is clutching a small flask with a clear mixture inside it that she’s just retrieved from inside a bioreactor. The colonies of cells clearly visible inside the flask are the genesis of life: pluripotent stem cells. They’re...
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PERIL IN THE INTERIM
Anthony Albanese presided over a crunch in counter-terrorism funding even as the nation’s terror threat level rose, antisemitism royal commissioner Virginia Bell has revealed, as she warned Jewish Australians were now at greater risk than they were in...
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First, do no more harm, Dr Chalmers
Jim Chalmers is facing warnings he must bank NDIS cuts and Iran war-fuelled tax windfalls instead of falling into a last-minute May budget spending splurge, as the Treasurer declared inflation would get worse after it raced on Wednesday to its highest...
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Age legend to air left-wing media’s failure on antisemitism at royal commission
The antisemitism Royal Commission will hear evidence from the former editor of The Age, Michael Gawenda, that Australia suffered a major failure of journalism after October 7, accusing “the left liberal media” – the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the...
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‘Worst nightmare: five-year-old Sharon, snatched from her bed’
A picture of innocence, five-yearold Sharon Granites makes a gentle peace sign for the camera. It should be a parents’ screen saver or kept folded in a wallet. Instead it’s the haunting image distributed by police as they try to make sense of what...
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‘Assassin’ No.3: pure evil comes to Trump dinner
Donald Trump says he is a target for would-be assassins because he has “changed” America, after a man armed with multiple weapons rushed a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ dinner in Washington, exchanging gunfire with law...
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Two wars, two widows, one bond: shared sorrow a path to rare joy
The 64-year age gap dissolves in peals of laughter when Jess Taylor and Betty Bull get together. They may have lived through different times, confronted disparate challenges, but there is one thing they know in their bones: the price of war. Ms Bull,...
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Cell to cenotaph: Roberts-smith vows to take part in Anzac Day commemorations
Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-smith has declared that Anzac Day is so “sacred” that his prosecution for war crime-related murder won’t stop him attending the public commemorations on Saturday. In a move that threatens to overshadow the 111th...
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NDIS INTERVENTION
Anthony Albanese has ordered the biggest shake-up of Labor’s $50bn-a-year disability scheme in a high-stakes bid to avoid debt and deficit blowouts in the budget by cutting 160,000 NDIS participants and slashing $12bn in taxpayerfunded social...
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THE BUDGET’S LIFEBOAT
Labor will unveil sweeping changes to the NDIS aimed at reining in the cost of at-home care and other multibillion-dollar scheme expenses, while demanding states commit to their biggest investment in support of reforms to the $50bn-a-year program. As...
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Chalmers’ stag do: where no one leaves unscathed
The Australian economy has become “hostage” to the war in Iran, with stagflation baked in, rising risks of fuel rationing and the worst pre-crisis fiscal position of any recent global shock pushing the Albanese government into a rethink of its savings...
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Chalmers sounds red alert
Jim Chalmers has vowed to slash red tape in the May budget as an alliance of major business groups warns employers and consumers are being hit by the double whammy of high regulatory costs and the impacts of the Iran war. The Alliance of Industry...
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‘Executions’ and immunity: prosecutors give soldiers deals to testify against BRS
In a stunning development in Ben Roberts-smith’s impending war crimes trial, prosecutors have revealed that four Australian soldiers who have admitted complicity in executing detainees have been granted immunity from prosecution in return for their...
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FUEL FARCE INFLAMED
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen says a massive fire at one of the nation’s two oil refineries will not trigger an immediate escalation in the national fuel security plan nor lead to higher prices at the bowser, as he backs drilling for...
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Blood feud to olive branch in 48 minutes: Rinehart son’s sudden judgment change
At 11.18am Perth time on Wednesday, John Hancock penned one word that had been missing from the wretched decades-long feud that has cleaved Australia’s richest family: “reunification”. After years of bitter legal battles with his mother Gina Rinehart,...
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CRISIS TURNS R-RATED
Risks of a global recession and a hit to the Australian economy from a prolonged Middle East war have prompted the International Monetary Fund to warn the Albanese government off untargeted spending and urge it to use tax windfalls for buffers against...
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CHRIS-DIAGNOSIS OF AN OIL CRISIS: WE DONT NEED NO MORE FOSSIL FUELS
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has seized on the fuel crisis sparked by the conflict in the Middle East to declare the government must keep electrifying the nation and build Australia’s sovereign capability through renewables, insisting...
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Diesel diplomacy pumped up
Anthony Albanese has warned major Asian fuel producers may consider prioritising their domestic markets if the oil supply crunch worsens, ahead of a second consecutive week of travel to meet the leaders of Malaysia and Brunei in an aim to prevent...
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Paradise lost: mystery of missing pearls
In the turquoise waters off Manihiki in the northernmost limits of the Cook Islands, something terrible has happened to the lagoon’s once-lucrative and worldrenowned black pearl farms. Since 2020, the black pearls, which once buoyed the islands’...
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BUDGET SPOILS OF WAR
Jim Chalmers is set to bank a mammoth $8.1bn windfall in company tax revenues from soaring commodity prices, which the Albanese government will partially use for fiscal repair but also to help underwrite big-spending programs and cost-of-living...
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WORLD IN STRAIT JACKET
Tehran is demanding control over the Strait of Hormuz and the acceptance of its uraniumenrichment program in a series of maximalist demands after Donald Trump stepped back from threats to wipe out Iranian civilisation and unveiled a tentative last...
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NOW, THE TIME OF TRIAL
Australia’s most celebrated soldier Ben Roberts-smith spent the night in Silverwater jail and faces a life behind bars if convicted on five counts of murder, in a historic war crimes trial that could become one of the most consequential in the nation’s...
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YOU BE THE JUDGE: IS THIS WORTH NEARLY $900,000 IN TAXPAYER FUNDING?
Taxpayers are being billed $170 an hour to transcribe interviews with Islamic activists by Israel-hating academic Randa Abdel-fattah. A children’s picture book and young adult fiction novels were cited as “research achievements’’ in her successful...
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Hanson surges into the sunshine as voter slide dogs Labor and Coalition
Labor and the Coalition are facing a One Nation bloodbath in the battleground state of Queensland, as young Australians, women and voters in the Sunshine State shift away from Anthony Albanese, raising alarm in ALP ranks about losing seats that were...
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See the light: rock tourism sparkles again
It was a wild idea that became a wild success, then a global phenomenon. When English bricklayer turned commercial lighting specialist Bruce Munro put 50,000 solar-powered bulbs on stems and planted them in the ground at Uluru, he was told his work...
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PM’S $1BN CALM-KEEPER
Anthony Albanese will declare the May budget will be the most ambitious since Labor was elected and will balance long-term reform with addressing immediate costof-living pressures, as he unveils $1bn of interest-free loans for businesses being smashed...
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‘No longer a low-debt country’
Jim Chalmers is considering increasing government spending in a May budget to “reflect the times” of an oil shock and cost-of-living pressures, with Westpac forecasting Labor could reap $60bn in windfall revenues over the next five years because of the...
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Reckoning for crazed cop killer: hunt now on for evil allies who spirited Freeman away
The death of Australia’s most wanted man, Dezi Freeman, in a hail of bullets after he brandished a police pistol when he was cornered near the Victorian-nsw border has sparked a national manhunt for whoever helped him evade authorities for up to 216...
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No return of Covid nannies
Business is urging Jim Chalmers to hold the line on delivering a reforming May budget despite Australians coming under growing cost-of-living pressures due to the Middle East war, with national cabinet to discuss voluntary work-from-home measures...
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Can’t see the wood for the … net-zero zone
The naked stumps point to the sky, like a macabre memorial to the avenue of grand native trees that once lined this dirt country lane in the central west of NSW. The once-leafy corridor, with its centuries-old trees and listed biodiversity values,...
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NATION COMES A CROPPER
Australian farmers are warning the nation is racing towards catastrophe due to dwindling fertiliser supplies and no immediate federal government rescue plan, raising the prospect of multi-million-dollar crop losses and rising food prices and...
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EPIDEMIC OF EMPTY
Australia’s port operators warn that a diesel scramble could stall trade nationwide, paralysing container terminals and emptying supermarket shelves, while the escalating fuel crisis is threatening fresh vegetable supplies and forcing companies to...
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CONFIDENCE KILLER
Jim Chalmers has warned that the economic impacts of the Iran war could be as damaging as the Covid pandemic or the global financial crisis, telling business leaders his doomsday predictions of the local impact from the Middle East conflict released...
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With a South Australian senator like this, do Libs need enemies?
Pauline Hanson will pitch a policy agenda to voters disillusioned with the major parties that prioritises abolishing the Department of Climate Change, replacing large-scale renewable projects with coal and nuclear, and delivering tax incentives to help...
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‘Are you for Australia?’ Mali’s Hanson strategy
Labor needs a clear economic case for immigration and must put the question of “are you for Australia?” before appealing to sneering progressives, South Australian election victor Peter Malinauskas has declared, as he counsels Anthony Albanese and...
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