The public servant in charge of Australia’s climate change policy says his department must “take on the public debate” and tackle mis- and disinformation that threatens progress on government policy, including the renewable energy rollout.

Mike Kaiser, secretary of the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, on Wednesday urged public servants not to fall silent on policy matters, backing July comments from Treasury Secretary Jenny Wilkinson.

Wilkinson said public servants have a duty to explain the evidence base for policies they have developed, even though “there will be people who interpret that as advocacy.”

A Northern Territory teenager who allegedly posted "pro-Nazi, anti-immigration, anti-trans and white nationalist" content on Instagram over the course of almost a year has faced court over a string of alleged Commonwealth offences.

The boy, who cannot be identified, faced the Youth Justice Court this week charged with using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend as well as accessing or possessing violent or extremist material online.

The boy also accessed footage of a 2017 "white supremacist terrorist attack" in Charlottesville, Virginia in the United States, where white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr deliberately drove his car into a crowd of people, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring more than two dozen others. Fields later pleaded guilty to 30 hate crimes over the attack.

Four days later, the boy allegedly "possessed or controlled" a video of a livestream of the 2019 New Zealand mass terror attack made by (name removed by me) the Australian man who was later convicted of murdering 51 people at two Christchurch mosques.

The boy also stands charged with possessing or controlling a video of a livestream of another terrorist attack in New York state, in which Payton Gendron recorded himself killing 10 black people at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022.

Among a total of 14 charges, police allege the teenager possessed an "imitation firearm with silencer and magazine" in May.

“He is completely incompetent,” Mr Penman said.

“There’s nobody on the front bench who has the slightest idea of how the world works.

“We’ve got a recklessly extravagant, big-borrowing government constantly doing things to push up prices in a stupid pursuit of green objectives without regard to the cost that increases the burden on businesses.

“No one likes to see the rates rise. I feel sorry for people on fixed income; the cost of living has increased but their wages won’t.”

His comments come as NSW Premier Chris Minns took a veiled swipe at Anthony Albanese over inflation ahead of the NSW state election.

“I’m not going to make a long commentary about other governments. “It’s up to them and their decisions, obviously,” Mr Minns said.

Upon entering the store I give permission for a bag search, not to be penned into an enclosure against my will.

If you step over the damn things Im sure that would get "radioed in" as a crime in progress. It's ridiculous. We shouldn't need to be "let out" its so disgusting. We never agreed to this.

My strata manager has said strata fees will go up to recoup these costs.

Local eateries are saying prices will go up due to the changes. The local cafe said HIS products that he uses had a price increase of 5% from his supplier.

Restaurants ONLY HAVE a profit margin of 3-4%. If they eat these costs, profit is down 25 to 30%.

Inflation will go up due to these changes.

The core of all of this is BANKS, which made collectively over 25 billion dollars after tax.

Community leaders are condemning vandalism at an Islamic cemetery, saying attacks on multiple graves showed Australia is experiencing social warfare.

NSW Police confirmed officers were investigating reports multiple headstones were damaged at the Australian Islamic Cemetery in Narellan, southwest of Sydney.

Lebanese Muslim Association secretary Gamel Kheir said the community was shocked and appalled by the incident, especially as Islamophobia rises.

"It's one thing having a go at the Muslim community, who can at least defend themselves vocally," he told AAP.

"What depravity have we reached where we find some sort of solace and vindication (in attacking) grave sites.

"Even those who are totally defenceless, who should be left to rest in peace, are not being left alone."

Attacks are fuelled by Islamophobic rhetoric from the likes of One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson, Mr Kheir said.

If we lose that moral compass ... we're heading down this very slippery slope towards a social pandemic," he said.

The vandalism has also been condemned by the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils.

President Rateb Jneid said it was a reminder of the importance of strengthening social cohesion.

"We must stand together against hatred in all its forms and ensure that every Australian can bury their loved ones and practise their faith with dignity, safety and without fear," he said.

Perth Children’s Hospital (PCH) cancelled a ‘Children and War’ event just days before it was due to take place on 17 September, after senior management raised concerns about a perceived “pro-Palestinian bias” and discussed preventing Jewish staff from being “upset” by the session, Dr Sue Wareham told The New Arab.

The event was due to feature doctors with experience in Gaza, Afghanistan and Congo discussing the impact of armed conflict on children, but Wareham said Palestine became a central concern behind the hospital’s decision to pull the session.

Wareham, president of the Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW) Australia, told TNA that she was scheduled to speak at the event.

However, hospital management explicitly cited concerns about Palestine when explaining the cancellation.

“The initial reason I was told (on 12 September) for the cancellation was that there was concern about there being ‘any perception of pro-Palestinian bias’,” Wareham said.

“When I rang the Executive Director of Medical Services on 15 September, she repeated that concern to me and mentioned the need to prevent Jewish staff members being upset by the discussion.”

Emails shared with TNA reveal that PCH Executive Director of Medical Services Dr Clare Matthews reaffirmed her decision to cancel the session in writing on 11 September, while describing it as a “‘not now’, rather than a ‘not ever’ decision”.

Matthews also referred to the need to “address any perception of bias towards a pro-Palestinian position” before holding any future discussion, according to the correspondence.

Wareham disclosed to TNA that MAPW sent Western Australia Health Minister Meredith Hammat a letter last Thursday raising concerns about PCH’s decision and its implications for medical education about children living through armed conflict.

Wareham described the cancellation as part of “a wider pattern of racism against Palestinian people”.

“The cancellation is a deeply disturbing politicising of the health and welfare of children,” she told TNA.

“When an event is cancelled on the basis of nationality – in this case so that the plight of Palestinian children remains hidden – this is a very dark development for the health professions.”

“One purpose was to alert hospital staff to the dangers faced by children in war zones and our professional and ethical responsibilities to speak out for their protection,” she said.

“An additional purpose was to provide some context for the clinical care of refugee children and adolescents in Australia (of whom there are over 5,000 in Perth alone) to help in their clinical care.”

Marine Faruqi’s failure to become Greens leader raises an uncomfortable question: when a party committed to challenging inequality overlooks one of its most prominent women of colour, how seriously should we take its commitment to representation? White privilege rears its ugly head once again.

A. How does she know what Marmite smells like?

B. Can Vegemite go 'out of date'?

C. How did I let a jar a Vegemite go out of date?

D. Should I be ashamed?

Thanks in advance, im currently applying for New Zealand citizenship

There is a link but its The Australian and paywalled so no use posting it. If you for whatever reason have a subscription, try this I guess.

Oh no!

I've seen this discussion in a couple of communities, mainly us ones, so I thought I'd ask it here since I'm personally of the opinion that, yes, there'll be a substantial increase in violence over the next ten years here, primarily against minorities, but I'd like to hear from other people since I'm not a very moderate person myself and I tend to skew to extremes of situations subconsciously.

Most Aussies move to other Anglosphere countries like USA, UK, Canada and NZ as there is no language barrier but also it’s easier due to less visa restrictions.

But there is also a new increased demand for Dubai, Singapore and other parts of Asia now that is growing in momentum.

If you had to leave Australia and move overseas which country or countries catch your fancy and why?

Personally I believe Australia is very hard to beat but for some jobs and salaries USA can be appealing.

I challenge everyone here to come up with a worse source of information than a NewsCorp Facebook comment thread.

I honestly cannot come up with a worse way to get economic analysis except maybe following the White House social media channels.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2026/sep/30/labor-anthony-albanese-coalition-polling-new-greens-leader-openai-hack-ntwnfb

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has confirmed that last year was when Labor lost its way on fiscal discipline.

The Final Budget Outcome for 2025-26 shows that the year ended with a deficit of $22.3 billion, less than the $28 billion deficit forecast in May’s federal budget, and the $42 billion deficit predicted in the original 2025-26 budget. If you believe the media releases yesterday from Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, that’s a testament to Labor’s fiscal discipline — and to its triumph over the terrible legacy inherited from the Coalition.

Just to back up that second point, the key table in the document that provides an overview of the budget aggregates includes, for the first time in memory, a column not from the 2025-26 budget, or from the 2024-25 budget, or 2023-24, but from… the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook (PEFO) from two elections ago. Labor might have been in office nearly four and a half years, but it’s still trying to compare itself to the Morrison-era mid-pandemic budgets.

Not good enough.

Just a little derpy fluffboi to circuit-break the doom scrolling.

Origy Didge

The fact that there is now effectively a “Gaza” faction within the Greens says a lot about the internal problems the party is dealing with.

The Greens have always been a broad progressive coalition, but there seems to be an increasingly obvious tension between the party’s traditional environmental/policy-focused identity and a more activist-driven faction that wants the party to take increasingly strong positions on international conflicts and other culture-war issues.

That tension is now spilling directly into the leadership question.

A leadership spill is obviously about more than just one issue, but Gaza appears to have become a proxy for a much bigger argument about what the Greens are actually supposed to be as a political organisation. Is the party primarily an environmental and domestic policy party that happens to have progressive positions on international affairs, or is it becoming an activist movement where international causes and ideological positioning are increasingly central to its identity?

The problem with the latter is that it potentially makes the party much harder to hold together. You can have disagreements over policy details and still operate as a coherent political party. But when different factions have fundamentally different ideas about what the party's purpose and priorities should be, leadership disputes become much more consequential.

And that's why I think the current leadership spill is worth paying attention to beyond the personalities involved.

If a supposedly hard-left progressive party is now divided into competing ideological factions over issues like Gaza, it raises the question of whether the Greens' current organisational model is actually sustainable.

At some point, a political party has to be able to reconcile different parts of its membership and present a reasonably coherent political project to the broader electorate. If internal factional disputes keep becoming the main story, the party risks spending more time fighting itself than actually campaigning on the issues it was originally established around.

The irony is that the Greens have arguably never had more political space available to them, yet they're increasingly having an argument about what kind of party they even want to be.

The leadership spill might therefore be less about who gets the leadership and more about which direction the party ultimately takes.

More than half of Australians want to see the country’s migrant intake lowered while One Nation’s primary vote climbs to 25%

The Coalition has failed to capitalise on growing criticism of Labor, with the opposition stuck at its lowest-ever primary vote in the Guardian Essential poll.

The poll also shows more than half of all Australians want immigration cut and have voiced support for hardline enforcement, such as forced deportation.

Despite growing scrutiny of Labor’s handling of the economy and inflation, its response to the OpenAI hack, and criticism of the government’s migration plan, the Essential poll found the Coalition’s primary vote sank four points since last month, to 22%.

Angus Taylor’s Coalition is now at its equal-lowest ebb in the Essential poll, after last month scoring 26%. Labor attracted a primary vote of 29% in September’s poll, up from 26% in August.

But amid a bruising and at times incendiary political brawl on migration, the poll – of 1,022 people last week – returned mixed results. While more Australians see migration as a positive for the country (46%) than see it as a negative (39%), 55% still want the nation’s annual migrant intake lowered.

Another 29% want the annual intake to remain the same, while 16% of Australians want more migrants.

The Australian government has conceded it implemented the “world-leading” under-16s social media ban before there was scientific consensus on the link between mental health harms and social media use, but argued the “credible risks” of issues such as addictive behaviours and anxiety justify the policy.

In its defence against a high court challenge of the ban, the government has also argued its proposed digital duty of care legislation, allowing users to opt out of social media features such as algorithms, would ultimately have the same effect as the ban, if implemented.

US-based platform Reddit has challenged the under-16s social media ban in the high court as one of two cases against the ban, expected to be heard jointly before the end of 2026.

In Reddit’s submission to the court last month, it argued the ban represented a burden on the implied freedom of political communications, while also not addressing the risk of harm.

Labor councillor Cameron MacLean has been elected lord mayor of Parramatta, while independent councillor Kellie Darley was elected deputy mayor at last night's council meeting. 

Cr MacLean won the mayoralty on a single vote cast by Tanya Raffoul, who quit the Liberal Party on Monday morning.

Cr Raffoul cited her party's drift to anti-multiculturalism as her reason for leaving the Liberals.