Australia

In evidence this morning the judge overseeing the case, Justice Michael O'Bryan, asked Coles to explain what it was telling customers with its prominent marketing campaign, featuring giant red hands pointing down.

"It's really asking a bigger question about what ordinary consumers understand about the Down Down program," Justice O'Bryan said.

In response, legal counsel for Coles John Sheahan KC said: "In terms of what consumers would take from the advertising campaigns and the red hand — not much."

"It's an indication that Coles is trying to keep prices low," he said.

[…]

Mr Sheahan said the ACCC case was too complicated because it relied on an assumption that the average shopper understood the many factors that went into deciding a price while they were browsing the aisles.

"It's too complex to credibly attribute to an ordinary, reasonable consumer walking down the aisle at Coles," he said.

"What they would be concerned [about] when they're walking down the aisle … is whether the claimed discount was, to use of the expression yesterday 'fair dinkum.'"

[…]

"In the end, all prices are temporary. Nothing lasts forever," Mr Sheahan said.

He said both sides accepted that the pricing tickets customers were shown in store were "literally correct".

Mr Sheahan repeated Coles's defence that it also reflected a genuine discount.

If Coles added background information about the price history to the ticket it would be too difficult to understand, he said.

The real gender ideologues at work:

Aiv Puglielli, the Greens’ equality spokesperson, on Wednesday moved a motion calling on the upper house’s legal and social issues committee to investigate the scale of such crimes, as well as the state’s current response and support available to victims.

It follows what Puglielli described as a “disturbing” and “terrifying” series of attacks targeting gay and bisexual men across several states and territories since 2024. In some instances, videos of the attacks have been recorded and posted on social media.

As of October 2024, 35 people had been arrested in relation to such incidents, Victoria police confirmed in a statement to Guardian Australia.

Police said the alleged offenders – most aged between 13 and 20 – had used fake profiles on dating apps to lure their victims.

“The victims are then allegedly assaulted, robbed, threatened and subjected to homophobic comments,” a police spokesperson said.

[…]

During the June 2025 sentencing of a 19-year-old Victorian man who met and assaulted two people after speaking to them on the gay dating app Grindr, the court heard he admitted to police he had been inspired by vigilante-style videos he had seen on TikTok.

Puglielli said the inquiry would examine how influencers sharing far-right, misogynistic and homophobic “alpha male” content operate online, and how to protect young people from their messaging.

He alleged some perpetrators, often very young men, had been “groomed and radicalised by far-right manosphere influencers”.

This is so, so important to read in full. For me to be told that a critically important part of my identity is reducible to my sexuality — an embarrassingly marginal part of my life — is not merely insulting but ridiculous. To tell children that not merely what they have, but what they are, is a fetish and that therefore they are for all practical purposes not allowed to even discuss it until they turn eighteen is murderous cruelty. Post-egg-crack, I don't know what I would have done if I'd not been able to establish friendships online with other trans women my age who had similar life trajectories.

Queer identity is one of being born into a secret society that you as a member have to discover as rite of induction. If you fail, misery tends to visit you again and again, without having a good explanation for it, dissatisfaction, and shame from an unknown source.

In this light, the push to #AgeVerification for social media and internet access is especially awful. With "queer" being equated to sex stuff exclusively, queerness is effectively banned in the era of life where teens are supposed to discover love, and have first, clumsy experiences. But while the cishets generally experience queerness from porn and get their fingers sticky to what they view as fetish, it is so much more. Especially for trans kids, research on who and what they are is postponed to a time when devastating damage is already taking place, and a lot of it in fact irreversible, or a huge effort and cost to correct.

The State Library of Victoria (SLV) conceded it had “created unintended concerns” with its proposal to cut 39 jobs and reduce services to focus on more “digital experiences”.

Musician Nick Cave was among 220 distinguished names to sign an open letter calling for the board to explain the restructure, which would have halved the number of reference librarians, from 25 to 10.

In a statement, board president Christine Christian said the library had “decided to withdraw” the proposal after “careful consideration of feedback”.

“Our focus will remain on strengthening services, modernising operations and ensuring the library continues to thrive as a leading home for history, arts, culture and knowledge for the next generation,” she said.

An email was mistakenly sent to a junior doctor who allegedly spoke up about being rostered on for 10 night shifts in a row, a practice which has been deemed unsafe for staff and their patients.

The message from a manager stated, “I wonder if any of them realise that they are a doctor and that this is what happens.

“Oh, that’s right… I forgot.

“Life style before career.

“God help us in the future.

“We are going to have a workforce of clinical marshmellows.”

Doctors Union President Dr Nicholas Spooner said the email was not an isolated incident at one hospital.

“It is a symptom of the broader crisis within our public hospitals that is playing out across NSW,” he said.

“Hospitals are severely understaffed and can’t meet patient demand. We have a toxic workplace culture that demands doctors risk their own health and safety to fill rosters.

Home ownership is falling fast among poorer Australians who are approaching retirement. Between 1981 and 2021, home ownership rates among the poorest 40 per cent of 45-54 year-olds fell from 68 per cent to just 54 per cent.

Most older working Australians who rent do not have sufficient savings to keep paying rent in retirement. The poorest 40 per cent of renting households aged 55-64 have less than $40,000 in net financial wealth.

Commonwealth Rent Assistance, which supplements the Age Pension for poorer retirees who rent, is far too low.

The government has lifted the maximum rate of Rent Assistance by 27 per cent – over and above inflation – in the past two budgets. But even after these increases, a single retiree who relies solely on income support can afford to rent just 4 per cent of one-bedroom homes in Sydney, 13 per cent in Brisbane, and 14 per cent in Melbourne.

And the rents paid by people who get Rent Assistance have increased nearly 1.5 times faster than the maximum rate of the payment since 2001.

Well said, this fellow:

Supporters of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and elements of the media have steadfastly defended the indefensible – the atrocities against Palestinians – and this campaign has deliberately created a serious confusion in our national discussion about what antisemitism is.

Antisemitism is not criticism of Israel or Zionism, nor is it a timeless or mystical hatred. It is not something caused by migration. It’s a political and historical form of racism that takes different shapes in different contexts. Right now, it is real, escalating and sometimes lethal – but it is being tackled in exactly the wrong way.

We have heard calls not only to investigate how a massacre occurred, but to place universities, protest movements, migrants, cultural institutions and human rights bodies under suspicion. As though they are responsible for bloodshed.
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I want antisemitism confronted. I want it named and addressed with urgency. But I do not want it treated as a political tool, a justification for silencing dissent or expanding state power in ways that will ultimately harm us all.

Do I hear dominoes falling with grim predictability? Plus: there's a Northern Territory Government? You learn something new every day.

In short:

Health Minister Steve Edgington has announced the Northern Territory government will no longer fund puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormone treatments for children.

He said the government's public health focus would instead "remain on adolescent mental health services".

What's next?

Mr Edgington says the policy will affect "a handful of young teenagers" who had been accessing the treatments through the NT's public health system.

[…]

Children in the Northern Territory will no longer have access to publicly funded puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormones after Health Minister Steve Edgington announced the government would follow Queensland's lead in suspending the treatments. […]

"Territory kids deserve to grow up free from these dangerous, ideologically driven practices with irreversible consequences," he said.

"The Territory's public health focus will remain on adolescent mental health services."

The move follows pressure from the Australian Christian Lobby, which presented a petition to the government in October 2024, calling on it to "suspend all medical and surgical transitioning for children in the NT".

Key findings

• The housing sub-function of the Federal Budget was $3.5 billion in 2021/22, but this did not include key housing support measures such as Commonwealth Rent Assistance and property tax concessions. With these included, actual 2021-2022 federal expenditure on housing is estimated at $27 billion.
• The share of federal housing spending going to the lowest 20% of income earners declined from 44% in 1993 to 23% in 2023, while the share going to the top 20% increased from 9% to 43%.
• In the last decade alone, the share going to the top 20% of earners has increased by over a third.
• The share of total federal housing expenditure going to property investors rose from 16.5% in 1993-94 to 61.4% in 2021-22.
• Investor tax concessions have grown from $1.5 billion in 2000 to an estimated $17 billion in 2024, effectively operating as a shadow housing policy with a significant impact on the market.
• In 2023-2024, federal investor tax breaks will be worth almost five times the amount spent by the Federal Government on social housing and homelessness services through the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement and the $2billion Social Housing Accelerator Fund, announced in 2023.
• Strategic expenditure on social housing and homelessness services, which are negotiated between the Federal and State/Territory Governments, once made up well over half of total federal housing spending. Now just 7% of total federal housing expenditure goes toward these programs.

You can't make this stuff up:

Insiders at Australia’s biggest private company – Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting – have lifted the veil on what they describe as a “bizarre” culture within the organisation that includes annual requests to thank Australia’s richest person.

While not compulsory, the thank you messages are encouraged by senior executives and are requested across the company, including from workers at its mine sites.

[…]

One former employee describes the thank you messages as a “wild concept”, particularly given that Rinehart has become the country’s richest person in part off the back of her staff’s work.

“We are encouraged to email her thanks for literally making her the richest person around,” he says. “Because the transaction where I work my guts out and she becomes even more rich is not enough – we should thank her yearly, apparently.”

[…]

Insiders have told Guardian Australia that staff are frequently exposed to political material, with an email seen by the Guardian encouraging workers to listen to Trump’s inaugural address.

The email, sent as an Australia Day message by Veldsman, talks about Rinehart’s visit to the US and Trump’s “strong commitment to creating a field that attracts investment into the US, something our government here in Australia could learn a thing or two about! While Australia has punched above its weight on the global stage, we are faced with increasing headwinds brought about by ill-conceived tape and tax that is stifling business.”

Guardian Australia understands that Hancock Prospecting distributes the conservative magazine the Spectator in the company’s office buildings and mining sites.