Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Friends stage ‘Run for Kylie’ events for the Australian academic jailed on spying charges, as her family say they remain strong and hopeful
The family of the detained academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who faces 10 years in jail in Iran on espionage charges – have said they “remain strong and are far from giving up hope”, as hundreds of her friends marked the second anniversary of her detention on Sunday.
Moore-Gilbert, a dual UK and Australian citizen, was seized by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as she attempted to fly out of the country following an academic conference at which she had spoken.
China’s state media outlets claim Australian intelligence agents questioned several Chinese journalists and seized their devices
Australia has cancelled the visas of two Chinese scholars because of security concerns, according to reports, adding a new element to the spiralling diplomatic dispute over the treatment of journalists.
Chinese diplomats have also aired claims that Australian intelligence agents have questioned several journalists from Chinese media organisations and searched their devices “in violation of legitimate rights”.
Sources say authorities make two prisoners follow the British Australian academic everywhere in the Covid-ravaged Qarchak jail
Kylie Moore-Gilbert has enough money to buy food and water inside Iran’s notorious Qarchak prison, but is closely surveilled everywhere she goes, sources inside the jail say.
Fellow prisoners report that the British Australian academic appears to have so far escaped infection in the wave of Covid-19 sweeping through the prison, but that her communications with the outside world are strictly proscribed, according to Roya Boroumand, executive director of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center (ABC) for Human Rights in Iran.
Officials acknowledge ‘clear differences’ exist in Australia’s relationship with China as they prepare to spell out how Covid-19 is reshaping the global order
Covid-19 has fuelled protectionist and authoritarian trends around the world as some countries take advantage of the pandemic to erode the rule of law, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade warns.
As officials prepare to face a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday, Dfat has also acknowledged “clear differences” exist in the relationship with China, while insisting Australia seeks a constructive partnership “that is not defined by those differences”.
Former Western Australia premier Colin Barnett calls legislation ‘patronising’
The former premier of Western Australia Colin Barnett has blasted the federal government’s proposed foreign relations bill as “complete overkill”.
Appearing on the ABC’s Q+A on Monday night, the former WA Liberal leader was asked about the intention of the legislation to be considered by parliament, which would give the federal government power to veto agreements that state and local governments and universities enter into with foreign governments.
That is where we will leave the live blog for this evening. If you want to follow the latest global coronavirus news you can follow our other live blog here.
Coalition to introduce laws to prevent Australian governments and universities making ‘detrimental’ deals with foreign powers
The Morrison government will pursue new powers to stop state, territory and local governments and universities entering agreements with foreign governments that it considers detrimental to Australia’s foreign policy objectives.
The government will introduce legislation next week empowering the foreign affairs minister to review and cancel agreements – such as Victoria’s decision to sign up to China’s belt and road initiative – if the commonwealth judges the arrangement adversely affects Australia’s foreign relations.
Richard Marles accuses the Coalition of mishandling a relationship that ‘needs to be managed by the adults in the room’
The Morrison government has been asleep at the wheel when it comes to the relationship with China, while its handling of a submarine project has made Australians less safe, the deputy Labor leader has declared.
In a sharpening of the opposition’s political attack following months of restraint during the coronavirus pandemic, Richard Marles accused the Coalition of mismanaging ties with Australia’s largest trading partner by failing to speak with a single, clear message.
Charges against Bernard Collaery and his retired Asis agent client confirm the government has few regrets about an exploitative exercise against a friendly neighbour
In the first week of January 2019, a private jet landed at Presidente Nicolau Lobato International Airport in Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste. The former Victorian premier Steve Bracks emerged into the monsoonal heat and was greeted by staff from the office of Xanana Gusmão, Timor-Leste’s chief maritime boundary negotiator. They drove Bracks to the waterfront café at the Novo Turismo Resort and Spa, where Gusmão was waiting.
The subject of the meeting was Bernard Collaery, Gusmão’s former lawyer, who was pleading not guilty to breaches of Australia’s intelligence act. Collaery’s charges related to an Australian Secret Intelligence Service operation in Dili in 2004, in which Canberra is believed to have recorded Timor-Leste officials’ private discussions about maritime boundary negotiations with Australia. In 2013, the Australian government revealed the allegations of spying.
The Australian government and its partners had no choice but to recognise the new reality in the territory and offer some of its citizens a way out
I feel sorry for Chinese foreign ministry officials, with whom I have had many good conversations over the years. They have been pushed to lambast Australia and other Western democracies with such frequency that they risk running out of fresh invective, hyperbole and idiom.
Julian Hill is looking at the government’s spend on consultants (an evergreen sentence, no matter what political party is in government)
New analysis by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has found that the big four consultancy firms – Deloitte, Ernest&Young, KPMG and PwC – now collectively reap $800m a year in government contracts.
But only 20% of that figure is spent on actual consultancy contracts, meaning the Morrison government is paying top dollar to large consultancy firms to work as contractors doing the day-to-day work of public servants.
The Australia Institute has begun a new campaign to have truth in advertising part of Australia’s political advertising.
An open letter coordinated by the Australia Institute and signed by 29 prominent Australians calls for parliament to pass truth-in-political advertising laws that are nationally consistent, constitutional and uphold freedom of speech.
Signatories to the open letter include former political party leaders and politicians, Dr John Hewson, Cheryl Kernot and Michael Beahan; former supreme court judges, the Hon Anthony Whealy QC, the Hon Paul Stein AM QC and the Hon David Harper AM QC, as well as barristers, community leaders, business people and other prominent Australians.
Australia was lobbied to make the submission to the court by Israel, which is not a party to the court. But the office of the prosecutor has rejected Australia’s argument, saying it had not formally challenged Palestine’s right to be a party to the court before.
Political prisoners, including the University of Melbourne academic, have overwhelmingly been excluded from furloughing
Iran has temporarily freed 70,000 prisoners from jails around the country out of fear coronavirus could spread through prisons unchecked, but British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert has not been released.
Chief medical officer says Australia is ‘incredibly well prepared to isolate and deal with’ any more cases
Australia’s chief medical officer has warned there will likely be more cases of the deadly coronavirus confirmed in the country, as the federal government explores plans to evacuate Australian citizens from the pandemic’s epicentre in central China.
Prof Brendan Murphy, Australia’s chief medical officer, said more cases of 2019-nCoV were likely, following the confirmation of four cases.
Melbourne University academic rebuffed bid to recruit her in exchange for her release, letters reveal
Iran tried to recruit the British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert as a spy for Tehran in exchange for her release, but the overture was furiously rebuffed, letters smuggled out of Evin prison reveal.
Moore-Gilbert, a Cambridge-educated academic specialising in Middle East politics, is currently being held in Ward 2A, an isolated Revolutionary Guard-run wing of Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, serving a 10-year sentence for espionage, a charge she, and the Australian government, rejects as entirely false.
Letter comes as human rights groups urge foreign governments to take a stronger line with Tehran
The imprisoned British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert has begged the Australian prime minister to secure her release from an Iranian jail, as human rights groups urge foreign governments to take a stronger line with Tehran.
A Cambridge-educated academic specialising in Middle East politics, Moore-Gilbert has been imprisoned in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison since September 2018, after she was arrested at Tehran airport while trying to leave the country after attending an academic conference.
Tehran’s foreign ministry says it will not submit to ‘political games and propaganda’
An Australian academic jailed in Iran for espionage must serve out her sentence, Tehran’s foreign ministry said on Saturday, stressing it would not submit to “propaganda”.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert reportedly began a hunger strike in Tehran’s Evin prison on Tuesday after losing an appeal against a 10-year jail sentence.
Cheng Jingye also says detained Australian writer Yang Hengjun’s rights are being protected
China’s ambassador to Australia has labelled reports that one million Uighurs are being held in detention “fake news”, seeking to excuse mass incarceration as a deradicalisation measure.
At a rare press conference at the Chinese embassy in Canberra, Cheng Jingye claimed the mass detention in Xinjiang province had “nothing to do with human rights, nothing to do with religion” and was “no different” from other countries’ counter-terrorism measures.
Brutal winter, poor healthcare and limited food raises fears for welfare of infant, born to Sydney woman Rayan Hamdoush
An Australian woman has given birth to a baby boy in the al-Hawl camp in Syria, prompting revived calls for Australia to rescue 67 nationals still held in the camp.
Rayan Hamdoush, 24, from western Sydney, was pregnant when she entered al-Hawl. She gave birth to the boy on 30 November. The boy’s father, Samer Hajj Obeid, also from Sydney, is missing.