Publication
$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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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,...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
‘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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
‘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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
‘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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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,...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
‘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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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,...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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’...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
‘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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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,...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
‘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...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Feast of ‘Australiana’ a dinner winner
Six years ago, during Victoria’s punishing Covid lockdowns, young chef Hugh Allen began taking therapeutic walks through his home town. Then 24 and head chef at vaunted Melbourne fine diner Vue de Monde, Allen, now 30, was pondering the future, his...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Coal king flies high … after ‘peak ESG’
Coal baron Matt Latimore has a message for the naysayers who believe the glory days for his industry are over. “I think it is definitely a case that peak ESG has passed and there’s more realisation and pragmatism around … and we’re not quite in the...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Richest of rich ... and the biggest losers
Software is so old hat. Old industries are back in fashion for our richest billionaires, while a couple of one-time technology gurus have suffered a massive cut in their fortunes. For the first time in eight years, the total fortune of the annual...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
RATE RISE WE HAD TO HAVE
Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock is hoping a second consecutive interest rate rise – bringing Australia to the highest in the Western world – will not tip the country into a recession, warning that the days of 2 to 3 per cent growth are over. Ms...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
THEIR VOICES WERE SILENCED WITH BULLETS
For 47 years innocent Iranians have been killed again and again by the Islamic regime, each time under a different label: “enemy of Islam”, “rioter”, “spy”, or “a threat to national security”. This time, when millions of people took to the streets in...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Unmasked: the nation’s shyest billionaire
Australia’s most reclusive billionaire is a cryptocurrency magnate who is living quietly on Melbourne’s fringe. It’s here he has gone to extreme lengths to protect his identity. But while Russell Wilson is far from well known, his career and life to...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
‘Holy crap, it worked!’: the tech guru, his staffy cross, CHATGPT and a cure for cancer
Riddled with cancer, Rosie the rescue dog had only months to live, until her dogged owner collared a chatbot to collaborate with elite medical scientists in the quest for a cure. Now the hi-tech teamwork has unleashed an experimental medicine that...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
From ‘don’t panic’, to a genuine Chris Crisis
Labor has declared a “national crisis”, increased petrol supply by allowing dirtier fuels and released reserves, as the price of oil jumped above $US100 a barrel in the wake of further attacks by Iran on the Strait of Hormuz. While US President Donald...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Bondi inquiry crisis: PM’S top expert quits
Former spy boss Dennis Richardson has abruptly quit the antisemitism royal commission over concerns his authority and ability to make recommendations relating to intelligence and law enforcement in the wake of the Bondi massacre had been diminished...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
WAR’S TOXIC PENALTY
Anthony Albanese has ordered Australian military personnel into a Middle East war zone for the first time since Afghanistan as the Reserve Bank warned that the Iran conflict could unleash “toxic” inflation and higher interest rates. An E-7A...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
CRUDE SHOCK OF WAR
Inflation in Australia could jump as high as 5 per cent in coming months amid concerns of an imminent petrol supply crunch, as the war with Iran and the shuttering of the Strait of Hormuz threaten to spark a global oil crisis. The mullahs defied...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
‘Light from darkness’: love emerges from the horrors for two Bondi heroes
Amid all the misery and grief still attached to last December’s Bondi massacre, there is a story that brings a smile to the face of everyone who hears it. It’s a story of love found in the most unlikely of places and, at its deepest, a reminder that...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
HELLFIRE FOR IRAN
Iran has delayed announcing a new supreme leader fearing he will be assassinated, as Donald Trump declared he would be choosing the country’s next ruler, Israel boosted its campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the US claimed Iran’s military...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
WORLD’S WIDE WAR
Donald Trump’s military campaign against Iran is spiralling beyond the Middle East as NATO air defences intercepted an Iranian missile on its way to southern Turkey, a US submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka and Europe moved to defend...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
ROAD TO REVOLUTION
Israel has vowed to eliminate any Iranian leader who threatens the Jewish state, “no matter what his name is or where he hides”, as hardliners in the regime prepare to appoint a new supreme leader, with the son of assassinated ayatollah Ali Khamenei...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
WAKE UP, FREE WORLD
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is fighting Iran on behalf of “slumbering democracies” that are asleep to the threat of the Islamist regime, as Donald Trump holds open the option of US boots on the ground to eliminate Tehran’s...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Double jeopardy for Israel
Israel is fighting Iran and its proxies on two fronts after a resurgent Hezbollah attacked the country’s north to avenge the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with the Jewish state returning fire at targets in Beirut as the war against the mullahs...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
DEATH TO TYRANNY
Donald Trump has launched a historic attempt at regime change in Iran, with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and much of his military leadership killed in a barrage of missile strikes, sparking widespread celebrations from Iranians. Amid the largest...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Jewish mum’s role in jail break from hate
Ellie Nagel is sitting in Sydney’s Parklea Prison, an entirely unfamiliar setting for this Jewish religious studies and classical Hebrew teacher and mum of three. “It was my very first time entering a prison, but I made an appointment and went there to...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Hamas diaries: how fanatical killers still fight on under Israeli soldiers’ feet
The grainy surveillance footage captured something unusual: shadowy figures moving through a torrential dust storm in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza. Wrapped in blankets to evade satellite detection, at least one carried a Kalashnikov rifle. A short time...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Two more ‘extremists’ among Australian ISIS brides, Syrian camp chief reveals
The head of Syria’s Roj internment camp has revealed two additional Australian ISIS brides considered to be “extremists” are being held separately from the group of 11 women and 23 children at the centre of a political stalemate over their...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Warning Bell: focus on antisemitism first
Royal commissioner Virginia Bell has issued a veiled swipe at activists and agitators who risk derailing her long-awaited federal inquiry, insisting her overriding priority will be confronting entrenched antisemitism in the aftermath of Australia’s...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Potential $420,000,000,000 hit of Hanson’s migration policy ... and a widow’s warning
One Nation’s plan for “net zero” migration could blow out Australia’s debt by almost $420bn over the next 10 years, while barely making a dent in the nation’s welfare bill over the same period, bringing into question the core of Pauline Hanson’s...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
GP squeeze, flat tax: no price tag on grievance
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce says metropolitan-based GPS should be barred from participating in Medicare unless they spend a period of time practising in the regions, downplaying the impact of bulk-billing rates by declaring there was an “an abundance...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Caught in headlights, downfall complete
A stunned Andrew Mountbattenwindsor was released after 12 hours under arrest but the nightmare for the eighth in line to the throne, and the royal family, has only just begun. Several unmarked vehicles arrived at his former home – Royal Lodge in...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Arrest of Andrew: the royal reckoning
Andrew Mountbatten-windsor’s fall from grace has plumbed dramatic new lows with his arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office – the biggest scandal to engulf the royal family in modern times. King Charles’s brother, who once swanned around...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Henchman’s daughter walks straight in door
The daughter of a sanctioned Iranian military leader – who acted as an adviser to the Ayatollah and has been accused of involvement in Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs – was granted permanent residency and obtained health qualifications...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Albanese’s message for ISIS brides: no sympathy and expect full force of the law
Thirty-four Islamic State-linked Australians trying to return home from Syria deserve no sympathy and will face “the full force” of the law, Anthony Albanese has declared, as his government considers issuing temporary orders to prevent some of them...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
NINE’S HUSH-MONEY SCANDAL
The Nine newspapers paid Ben Roberts-smith’s former lover $700,000 in hush money after she made allegations against its star reporter, Nick Mckenzie, in a secret agreement the media giant fought to have suppressed for 50 years. The extraordinary...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
CONVICT CEO RIDING A UNICORN
It was, depending on who you ask, a “robust” exchange of ideas, or “just a couple of blokes talking”. When Regal portfolio manager Jackson Aldridge buttonholed Oliver Curtis, CO-CEO of data centre technology company Firmus, at a Morgans small caps...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
TURN BACK THE VOTES
New Liberal leader Angus Taylor has vowed to deliver an “Australians first” agenda that includes hardline immigration policies, unabashed patriotism and economic liberalism, declaring the nation’s borders were currently open to people who “hate our way...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
WILL GOOD OPPOSITION START TODAY? DO ... OR DIE.
Angus Taylor is poised to become the 17th Liberal leader on Friday morning, as several Sussan Ley allies concede she is likely to lose a spill and leading conservatives warn the desertion of two million supporters since May risks the very survival of a...
Read Full Story (Page 1)