Nadesalingam, Priya, Kopiga and Tharunicaa were given a five-day reprieve – then moved to Christmas Island
The officers came in the early morning.
On 5 March last year, Australian Border Force officers accompanied by Serco guards stormed the modest Biloela home of Tamil husband and wife Nadesalingam and Priya, and their two Australia-born daughters Kopiga, 2, and Tharunicaa, then just nine months old.
Continue reading...Its general secretary is gone but the question remains: how do you fix a party branch synonymous with sleaze and scandal?
One of Labor’s favourite Chinatown eateries was packed as Kaila Murnain readied herself to speak. It was 2014, the year before the fateful Labor fundraiser at the centre of this week’s explosive anti-corruption hearings.
But the scene was largely the same. The Eight Restaurant in Haymarket was at capacity, the room full of wealthy donors cosying up to some of the most powerful Labor figures in the state.
Continue reading...Some day, I hope to visit the country with my grandparents, whose belief in independence was always unshakable
In my family, the thought of Timor always lingered in the air.
At birthday dinners, or Easter or Christmas with the cousins (like all Timorese, cousins is an imprecise term), we would talk about the football or our jobs or studies.
Continue reading...The Indigenous massacres project produced in collaboration with the University of Newcastle wins digital history prize
Guardian Australia has won the digital history prize in the New South Wales premier’s history awards for its Indigenous massacres project, The Killing Times.
The collaborative series with the University of Newcastle’s colonial massacres research team found there were at least 270 frontier massacres over 140 years as part of a state-sanctioned and organised attempt to eradicate Aboriginal people.
Continue reading...We will never understand the impact of colonial oppression if we underestimate white women’s role in it, writes Ruby Hamad
On 21 September 2018, at the peak of the #MeToo movement that had supposedly shattered the silence around the sexual assault and harassment of women, 75 women, most of them white, convened in Washington DC to profess their support for the embattled supreme court justice nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.
A psychology professor, Christine Blasey Ford, had claimed Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her decades earlier when she was just 15. Ford’s testimony was buttressed by two other women with similar allegations, but this was not enough to stop Kavanaugh being confirmed.
Continue reading...Peter Dutton says family of four ‘not owed protection’ after they were removed from deportation flight in Darwin thanks to court injunction
A Tamil asylum-seeker family whose deportation was halted in mid-air on Thursday night do not deserve protection from Australia, Peter Dutton has said.
The family of four were put on a non-commercial flight from Melbourne bound for Sri Lanka about 11pm on Thursday.
Continue reading...Former judge also asked to report on whether NSW gambling laws need to be overhauled
A public inquiry into allegations of wrongdoing at casinos run by Crown Resorts will decide whether the James Packer-dominated group is fit to hold a licence in New South Wales and whether the state’s gambling laws need to be overhauled.
Terms of reference, released by the NSW Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority on Thursday, show the inquiry, to be headed by former judge Patricia Bergin, will also investigate whether Packer’s decision to sell almost 20% of Crown to Hong Kong billionaire Lawrence Ho breached the gambling group’s licence to build a high-roller casino at Barangaroo in Sydney.
Continue reading...Adrian was held in seclusion 99% of the time between 24 September 2012 and 18 June 2018
Disability advocates have expressed outrage at revelations an intellectually disabled man judged unfit to face criminal charges was effectively detained in permanent solitary confinement for six years.
The case of Adrian, whose real name has been suppressed to protect his identity, is contained in a scathing report by the Queensland ombudsman into the state’s forensic disability services system.
Continue reading...US court orders Craig Wright to share cryptocurrency haul with the estate of American programmer David Kleiman
The Australian man who claimed to have invented cryptocurrency bitcoin has been ordered to hand over half of his alleged bitcoin holdings, reported to be worth up to $5bn.
The IT security consultant Craig Wright, 49, was sued by the estate of David Kleiman, a programmer who died in 2013, for a share of Wright’s bitcoin haul over the pair’s involvement in the inception of the cryptocurrency from 2009 to 2013.
Continue reading...Constable dismisses suggestion that according to police checklist he should have taken her to hospital
The police officer who arrested Tanya Day at Castlemaine train station said he did not think she needed medical attention despite police guidelines stating that intoxicated people who cannot provide intelligible answers should be sent to hospital.
Senior Constable Stephen Thomas told an inquest into the 55-year-old Yorta Yorta woman’s death in custody that he also did not tell her she had been placed under arrest, saying it was “the most low-key arrest I have ever done”.
Continue reading...Standup comedian also takes aim at callout culture that sees public figures held to account by audiences
Dave Chappelle has come under fire for his latest Netflix special in which he claims he does not believe Michael Jackson sexually assaulted young boys, and makes jokes at the expense of Jackson’s accusers.
In a standup set that seemed designed to provoke precisely the backlash that it was critiquing, Chappelle took aim at a prevailing callout culture that sees celebrities being held to account by audiences and in the media for perceived or actual crimes and for the offensive things they say.
Continue reading...Mark Butler signals Labor won’t retreat from policy following election defeat
The shadow climate change minister, Mark Butler, has doubled down on the need for policy to drive the transition to electric vehicles in Australia, arguing electrification is “unstoppable” and declaring Australia will become like Cuba if the Coalition continues to obstruct progress.
In his first significant comments post-election about the controversy around Labor’s policies to curb emissions from vehicles, Butler has used a speech to a conference in Sydney to blast the brutal partisan campaign the Morrison government ran during the federal election contest.
Continue reading...Inquiry hears that asylum seekers detained in PNG do not have access to phones, preventing medical evacuation
Asylum seekers held in a Papua New Guinean detention facility are being prevented from talking to lawyers and doctors, blocking them from medical evacuation to Australia approved under new medevac laws.
David Manne, the executive director of Refugee Legal, told a Senate inquiry on Monday that he had lost contact with one client who had been approved for urgent evacuation weeks ago but was then detained at the Bomana detention facility in Papua New Guinea.
Continue reading...They have already been suffering in inhumane conditions for six years. All this is well known and makes no difference
Migration agent says housing and other economic factors are also driving residents to consider moving
Hong Kong’s continuing political unrest has led to a surge in applications from residents seeking to emigrate, including to Australia, and some migration agents are reporting a doubling in inquiries as the protests run into their third month.
Australia was the top destination for Hong Kong emigrants in 2018 – nearly a third (2,400) of the 7,600 Hongkongers who left last year went to Australia.
Continue reading...Incarceration rates have risen 130% since 1985, according to new research by Labor MP and economist Andrew Leigh
Indigenous Australians are now more likely to be in prison than African-Americans, according to new research by Labor parliamentarian and economist Andrew Leigh warning that Australia has entered “a second convict age”.
Leigh’s new working paper finds that in 2018, around 43,000 Australians were in prison, a rate of 221 for every 100,000 adults – which he says is a significant jump since incarceration rates began climbing in 1985.
Continue reading...The 150 sq km field of floating rock was created by an underwater volcanic eruption near Tonga
A giant raft of pumice, which was spotted in the Pacific and is expected to make its way towards Australia, could help the recovery of the Great Barrier Reef from its bleaching episode by restocking millions of tiny marine organisms, including coral.
The pumice raft, which is about 150 sq km, was produced by an underwater volcano near Tonga. It was first reported by Australian couple Michael Hoult and Larissa Brill, who were sailing a catamaran to Fiji, on 16 August.
Continue reading...Australia’s PM flies into Biarritz, where he will have talks with world leaders – and a chat with Donald Trump
Scott Morrison will try to push countries further on taking action against terrorist and violent extremist material on social media during a series of meetings on the sidelines of the G7 summit.
Australia’s prime minister arrived in the French surfing town of Biarritz on Saturday night (early Sunday AEST) for the high-powered international forum.
Continue reading...Analysts say sending a warship to patrol the Strait of Hormuz risks binding Australia to an incoherent and inflammatory US foreign policy
Australia’s announcement this week that it will join US-led freedom of navigation operations patrolling the Strait of Hormuz brings the number of American allies willing to contribute to America’s latest Middle East sortie to just three.
The increasing tensions in the narrow, but critical, strait are almost universally regarded as an avoidable, US-created crisis, the result of Washington tearing up the Iran nuclear deal.
Continue reading...WA Labor president apologises to Indigenous Australians for walkout by right faction union delegates
Western Australia’s Labor conference has turned chaotic after a large number of delegates walked out during a Welcome to the Country ceremony and tribute to the former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke.
It was reported a large portion of the crowd heckled Perth MP Patrick Gorman and the WA Labor president, Carolyn Smith, before storming out of the complex.
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