A firearms manufacturer hoping to represent One Nation in New South Wales wants to repeal gun laws introduced following the Bondi beach massacre, after arguing “every single one” of the rifles he produces was banned in the state.

Earlier this month, One Nation’s NSW leader, Mike Newman, and the federal MP Barnaby Joyce revealed Jeff Bacon would be second on the party’s upper house ticket in the March state election.

Bacon is the managing director of Oceania Precision, a weapons manufacturer based in Tamworth.

The announcement of his candidacy was made in Tamworth before Bacon hosted a One Nation forum on firearms legislation attended by gun lobby groups and local gun clubs, as well as Newman and Joyce.

Newman said Bacon was “not only a firearms owner, but he is also a manufacturer and also he is an innovator” with “patents across the world”. He said Bacon would be “my go-to man on the firearms industry”.

Bacon ran as the lower house candidate for Tamworth with the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party in 2019. He joined the Nationals in 2023 before defecting to One Nation.

On 3 October this year, he said in Tamworth that running for parliament again “wasn’t a hard decision”.

“To be honest I’d rather continue in my business than be in some way forced to step into politics,” he said.

“[But] I’m going to do everything that I can do – not only to fight for the repeal of the legislation.”

In a statement at the time, Bacon said: “One Nation will repeal the firearms element of the Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Act, restoring rights to what they were when we had a functioning system before December last year, when the Minns government and the Liberal party rushed legislation through on Christmas Eve.”

In December 2025, Labor and the Liberals changed the law to limit recreational licence holders to four firearms and primary producers to 10, and legislated for NSW to participate in a joint buyback of weapons with the federal government. NSW is the only state to sign on to the federal scheme so far. It is due to begin on 2 November.

The NSW parliament also voted to recategorise weapons including straight-pull and lever-release rifles meaning recreational hunters will no longer be able to own them.

One of the alleged Bondi shooters, Indian national Sajid Akram, owned six weapons on a recreational hunting licence, including straight-pull rifles allegedly used during the antisemitic attack on 14 December that killed 15 people during Hanukah celebrations.

Oceania Precision’s website describes its rifles as “built specifically for law enforcement”. It currently advertises one model: a select-fire tactical rifle which it describes as “restricted” for law enforcement.

As recently as June, it described itself as a manufacturer for the “Australian domestic and professional market”, according to website snapshots from the Internet Archive.

At that time, it advertised two models for the commercial market, the straight-pull SP25-TAC and the lever-release Renegade, although archived webpages suggest both have been described as “not available in NSW” since last year, before the firearms changes enacted after the Bondi shootings.

In January, Bacon told the Northern Daily Leader that the government’s firearms reforms had seen “every single one” of his rifles banned in NSW, the paper reported. He said his business would be “broke in six months if this continues – we’re done, we’re finished”.

“I’m in the middle of two manufacturing runs right now,” he said at the time.

“We’re on hold right now, we just don’t know what’s happening. We’ve had all of our orders cancelled.”

In August, Bacon told trade website Defence Connect that his business was at risk of collapse after the gun reforms.

“Our entire research and development budget is funded through our commercial sporting sales,” he said at the time. “These revenue streams have been severely impacted, significantly reducing our ability to invest in ongoing innovation and product development.”

The laws recategorising straight-pull and lever-release weapons have yet to take effect. Owners will be able to surrender them over a 12-month period under the buyback – after which they will become illegal for those on recreational licenses.

One Nation is running on a platform of repealing the buyback and most changes to firearms laws in NSW since the Bondi attack.

After One Nation won the Farrer byelection in South Australia in May, the Oceania Precision Instagram account posted a picture of Bacon with the federal leader, Pauline Hanson. The caption stated: “The 2027 NSW state election is fast approaching, we need to support the people who support our industry, join the party today.”

In Tamworth in early October, Bacon said he supported changes voted through as part of December’s reforms which will make Australian citizenship a requirement for recreational firearms licence after the buyback is complete.

“What happened at the end of last year was a tragedy but what followed was probably some of the worst politics that we’ve ever seen,” he said when launching his upper house tilt. Bacon said the weapons industry hadn’t been consulted.

He cited a survey by gun lobby group the Shooting Industry Foundation of Australia which suggested that half of the dealers in NSW were facing closure.

One Nation is polling at 25% of the primary vote in NSW, according to a Sydney Morning Herald Resolve poll in September. If that support eventuated in March, the party could win at least five upper house seats. The Coalition was on 24% in the Resolve poll.

The NSW Nationals voted against changes to firearms laws in December while the Liberal party supported them.

The opposition leader, Kellie Sloane, has walked back her support since then. The Liberal party announced last month that it would scrap caps for primary producers and freeze the buyback while an inquiry examined other changes.

The Resolve poll suggested that opposition to the gun reforms among One Nation voters – at 33% – was higher than for the other major parties. But a majority still supported the post-Bondi changes or were undecided.

The poll suggested 63% of all voters supported the reforms, slightly lower than after the attack, while 19% were opposed and the rest remained undecided.

Newman, speaking alongside Bacon earlier this month, said the firearms debate had become “a very sore point in the regions”.

Stephen Bendle, a senior advocacy adviser to the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, founded after the Port Arthur massacre, said attempts by One Nation or the Coalition to wind back the reforms was “outrageous politics that ignores the victims and survivors of Bondi and the expectations of the community”.

“The outrage is being led by commercial interests in the firearm industry. Mr Bacon and everyone else needs to understand that times change,” Bendle said.

“Many industries have to adapt to changing circumstances, whether they are government regulation or market forces. But in every case, the community determines what is in the community’s best interest.”

Bacon and One Nation did not respond when contacted for comment.

The Greens created and maintained a secret dossier that catalogues allegations against Senator Jordon Steele-John and set out ways to shut down media coverage and monitor members who raised concerns on social media.

The crisis communications strategy obtained by this masthead reveals that as far back as 2016, before Steele-John was parachuted into the Senate in 2017, the party was managing complaints. The document reveals that one senior Greens official quit her role because Steele-John was reinstated as the WA branch’s volunteer co-ordinator, even though two women had lodged complaints alleging Steele-John had made inappropriate remarks while working with them.

The 47-page dossier, stored on a Google Drive folder accessible to Western Australian Greens and national Greens staff for close to a decade, was first drafted in 2016 and has been updated in the years since. It sets out ways to shut down media coverage of allegations about Steele-John, while also instructing taxpayer-funded Greens staff to monitor social media discussions and take screenshots of comments posted by party members.

This masthead has confirmed with four former Greens staffers that the dossier was real and that it was used by the WA Greens and the national leader’s office to manage stories about Steele-John.

Steele-John on Thursday took leave from the Greens party room after leader David Shoebridge received a letter from seven active Greens members demanding an independent investigation into allegations from party members that the WA senator made multiple inappropriate comments to women over the past decade.

The senator referred the matter to the WA Greens for an independent investigation, while rejecting the allegations.

“I utterly reject this characterisation of me, which tries to assert I am someone I am not,” Steele-John said in a statement provided to this masthead.

“These claims are made without specifics, any allegation of this nature is extremely serious and must be treated accordingly. If someone has made an allegation, I am prepared to address it.”

On Friday morning, Shoebridge confirmed Steele-John would take a leave of absence from parliament during the investigation.

The resignation

In an email sent to WA Greens members on July 29, 2017, Sarah Nielsen-Harvey – then a party co-convener – announced that she was resigning after less than a year in the job, saying she wanted to focus on her university studies. Co-conveners are administrators who oversee the party’s governance and provide day-to-day management and co-ordination.

The letter contained an oblique reference to turmoil inside the WA branch: “There are also a few things that over this year that have manifested in behaviour and culture that I cannot in good conscience continue being involved with right now”.

Five days later on August 3, the independent website True Crime News Weekly published a story about allegations made against Steele-John by two volunteers, whose names this masthead has chosen not to publish. The story alleged that Steele-John, who was not yet a senator, had been accused of making inappropriate comments by “at least two young female members of the Greens in Western Australia.”

Eventually, the two women decided not to pursue the complaint and, as the crisis communications dossier makes clear, a form of words was agreed: the two women had had a “dispute of an interpersonal nature” with Steele-John but had decided to leave it there.

The real reason she resigned

However, the dossier includes a follow-up email sent on August 17, 2017 to senior party office bearers, including former state Greens leader Elizabeth “Giz” Watson and co-convener Grahame Bowland, in which Nielsen-Harvey made clear the real reason she had quit the party.

“I would just like to clear up a few things after receiving accusations that I am ‘about to wreck the good reputation of the Greens’. I am incredibly hurt by this and it is an unfair allegation,” she began. “I could have included my concerns of… allegations in my resignation email. I did not.” She then detailed contact with journalists, including at Junkee, True Crime News Weekly and The Australian, about her resignation and the allegations against Steele-John, but states that she had not assisted any of the journalists.

“I would like to know where along this journey, since this time last year, it is me ruining the good reputation of the Greens,” Nielsen-Harvey wrote. “I am not the one allegations were levelled at. I am not the one who, after being made aware of the allegations, decided to still dismiss member involvement in choosing their senator, despite the very real risk that these allegations could very well come up and jeopardise retaining our Senate spot on this rotation. I am not the one who has chased down and tipped off journalists.

“I am not the one trying to silence members into not talking about this at all. The bullying that has happened since Jordon’s decision to accept the role has astounded me. Never have I felt unsafe to go to a Greens meeting or office. Thanks.”

In a separate post to a private Facebook group on August 4, Nielsen-Harvey wrote that she was “disgusted” by the Greens’ decision to re-employ Steele-John as volunteers co-ordinator in the lead up to the 2017 WA state election, when the party was aware of the allegations against him.

Nielsen-Harvey remains a member of the Greens, but holds no administrative or elected positions. Watson, a former leader of the party in state parliament and now a co-convenor of the WA Greens with Simone Collins, said on Thursday the branch was supporting the commission of an independent inquiry into Steele-John.

In November 2017, Steele-John was parachuted into the federal Senate when former WA Senator Scott Ludlam was disqualified because he held dual citizenship. Steele-John has since made a name for himself as the party’s chief spokesman on the NDIS and mental health. He has cerebral palsy, uses a wheelchair and has advocated for disability rights throughout his nine-year tenure in the Senate.

Monitoring Greens members

But the dossier contains more than the complaints of one former party co-convener. It contains more than a dozen screenshots from a private Young Greens Facebook group, and from X, in which party members and supporters discuss the allegations made by the two women against Steele-John and the party’s handling of them.

Then state convenor Sophie Greer, who helped deal with the initial complaint from the two women, was required to “reach out to them” – Greens members – if they had posted something negative about the newly minted senator and to take screenshots when people discussed the allegations.

Greer is now Steele-John’s chief of staff and is a frontrunner to win the number one spot on the party’s Senate ticket ahead of the next election.

Under headings including “what is to be shared on background”, “potential initiators of media story”, “complaint received by the party” and “external management plan if story printed”, the dossier sets out how the party should kill the story.

Steele-John was to “undergo training with Will [Kelly, a senior media adviser for Greens leaders Richard Di Natale, Adam Bandt, Larissa Waters and now David Shoebridge] in case he was asked about the allegations.

Kelly and Steele-John were instructed to “ensure RDN [then leader Richard Di Natale] are [sic] provided with information”.

It adds that “Sophie [Greer] & Tim [Oliver] to keep an eye on Australian Young Greens discussion group”.

Di Natale was contacted for comment, and subsequent former leaders Bandt and Waters. Steele-John, Shoebridge, Bowland, Watson, Nielsen-Harvey, Greer, Oliver and Kelly have also been contacted for comment.

A statement provided by Shoebridge’s office on Friday says: “This is not a document made by, used by, or seen by the Leader’s Office. The office is committed to having the matters comprehensively investigated with a fair, independent and timely process.

“Everyone deserves a safe workplace, and all complaints should be considered in a fair and robust process.”

In a statement from the WA Greens, current co-conveners Watson and Collins confirmed the authenticity of the leaked crisis communications manual.

“The Greens WA responded to allegations about Jordon Steele-John in 2016. The allegations were not substantiated and the named persons have never lodged a formal complaint,” they said. “Reference has been made to an internal document that has been provided to the media. This document outlines the management of communications about this matter.”

The pair said that Greens WA support the commission of an independent inquiry and that they had no further comment.

The dossier provides “pivot responses” for Steele-John if he was asked about the allegations made against him in the True Crime News Weekly article. He was to issue the following statement: “The Greens take allegations like those in that article very seriously and the Party has never received a complaint of the nature outlined on that blog. I’d suggest you talk to The Party for more on that one”, and afterwards, alert Greer and Oliver.

Other scenarios are also war-gamed – such as Steele-John being asked about “Greens and Women”, “Young Greens not supporting Jordon” and Nielsen-Harvey’s decision to quit, with a stock response instructing journalists to seek more information from the WA head office of the party.

When a journalist calls

Page after page of screenshots show inquiries from at least five media outlets over the next three years following the story in True Crime News Weekly.

The journalists were provided with the stock responses set out in the crisis communications dossier, including that “the allegations were investigated by The Greens (WA). As The Greens (WA) had not received a complaint ... they were only able to identify the individuals concerned as media outlets had their names.”

“The individuals identified had previously spoken to a Party Co-convenor for advice on handling a (sic) interpersonal conflict between themselves and Jordon Steele-John. This was of an interpersonal nature... Jordon has not behaved improperly.”

Who might leak?

In the section titled “potential initiators of media story”, senior party officials are assessed on the likelihood that they could assist journalists pursuing the story.

Nicole Harvey and Grahame Bowland, both former state co-conveners, were considered “unlikely” to assist in a story about Steele-John. “Nicole is unwilling to break the confidentiality of her conversation with the women,” the dossier states.

It goes on to say that “Grahame has a friendly relationship with one of the two women, and wouldn’t put them in a harmful situation. He also does not know details of what the two women brought to the Party”.

But former co-convener Nielsen-Harvey is listed as a potential risk to the party’s reputation because “Sarah has already written on AYG [Australian Young Greens] Discussion Group, personal Facebook page & spoken to journalists, none of these have landed articles”.

It goes on to state “Sarah is still a member of The Greens (WA) – Sophie [Greer] or Chilla [Bulbeck, another party official] to attempt to call SNH” and warns “Do not put anything in writing to SNH in first instance”.

What Shoebridge knew

At a snap press conference on Thursday after this masthead revealed the letter, Shoebridge said he was not previously aware of the allegations reported by this masthead against Steele-John. “No, I received the correspondence in my capacity as leader of the Australian Greens, and I’ve dealt with it with … urgency,” he said.

Asked in the press conference about the NSW Young Greens raising claims against Steele-John in 2018, Shoebridge said he had not known about this.

“I was in a different parliament,” he said. “I do not recall having any involvement at all in that, and I don’t think people would expect an upper-house MP in a state parliament to have any role in that.” The Greens have previously faced questions about the transparency of their complaints handling.

Former leader Adam Bandt was briefed in 2021 on a series of scathing assessments of his party’s culture, leading him to order compulsory workplace training for all parliamentarians in the party, but his office still failed to stop a subsequent alleged culture of bullying in the office of then-Greens senator Dorinda Cox.

This was revealed by this masthead in 2024, after 20 staff left Cox’s office in just three years and several lodged formal complaints alleging a hostile culture.

Cox defected to Labor last year.

In 2021, Victorian Indigenous Aunty Geraldine Atkinson sought a formal apology from then-Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe over what she characterised as “a tirade of abuse” and later said she received no acknowledgment from Bandt. In 2023, Thorpe quit the Greens, claiming she had been bullied and undermined by several of her party room colleagues and had lodged a written complaint about her treatment with Bandt and the parliament’s workplace misconduct support service.

Sources:
Algorithm studies 

Government education framework

Non-gov education toolkit  

Labor and the Coalition have blocked a vote on a bill that would have banned the shackling of incarcerated women during childbirth, with the government saying it was the responsibility of the states and territories.

Independent senator Lidia Thorpe introduced the bills, which would prevent shackling and stop children being strip-searched, into the Senate.

“In 2026 people can be shackled while giving birth, and children canalso have their clothes removed by adults to examine their bodies legally,” Thorpe told the Senate.

“The people sitting in this room have the power to end these barbaric, inhumane traumatic and totally unnecessary practices.”

The government said “the responsibility of the criminal justice system predominantly sits with state and territory governments”, while the Coalition said it “understands the intent” of the bill but also would not support its passage.

Paul Scarr, a Queensland Liberal senator, broke ranks to condemn the major parties, describing himself as “deeply concerned” by the Australia-wide practice and vowing to raise it with the Queensland attorney general, Deb Frecklington.

He urged the prime minister to convene a national cabinet meeting.

“What I’ve heard deeply concerns me and I do hope that this vote shouldn’t be an end to this matter, we’ve got to do better than this and we’ve got to look at ways this issue can be addressed,” Scarr said.

The only data on giving birth while incarcerated was from 2017, when 25 women gave birth.

Fifteen years ago, the UN general assembly adopted the Bangkok rules on the treatment of female prisoners, which state that prison should be a last resort for pregnant women and that “instruments of restraint shall never be used on women during labour, during birth and immediately after birth”.

The rules were adopted unanimously by the general assembly. But around the world, they are regularly flouted.

Thorpe told Guardian Australia she was disheartened by the government and Coalition blocking the vote on the bill, and promised to reintroduce it.

She said every senator she had spoken to about the bill ahead of debate on Thursday was shocked by the practice, yet failed to support the bill.

“It’s just so demoralising and so disrespectful and disappointing to all of those women and children that are being tortured through these outdated, barbaric practices,” she said.

“The hearts were bleeding from all of these senators, but come vote time they blocked the vote from happening because they did not want to be seen out there in this country to be supporting these practices.”

She argued there was no legal advice to say the government could not override the states to ban the practice.

The Greens leader, David Shoebridge, was scathing of the two major parties in rejecting the bill.

“The Labor party and the Coalition come in here and say it’s a matter for states and territories if they want to shackle women to a bed while they’re giving birth we’ll just let them do that,” he told the Senate. “Don’t torture women giving birth and don’t strip-search children.”

The independent senator David Pocock said the government should support bills from the crossbench.

“Unfortunately it seems to be when a bill is brought forward in good faith by crossbenchers the government has this policy that they will not support any bills other than their own bills and I don’t think that speaks to a healthy democracy.”

The National Justice Project described both shackling and the strip searching of children as “inhumane, traumatic and profoundly harmful”

The fact that they continue to occur would shock many Australians, it feels unimaginable to think about them happening to you or members of your family,” systems reform advocate Maureen Harris said.

“They are discriminatory in their impact on First Nations Australians. They breach our international human rights obligations and our responsibilities to protect children and ensure safety and dignity for women in childbirth.”

A national response is necessary, Harris said, and a failure to vote for the bills was an abandonment of those responsibilities.

Mish Pony is the chief executive at Flat Out, which supports incarcerated women, trans and gender diverse people.

They said the practice of shackling during childbirth should be immediately abolished and that the commonwealth had the power to do so.

“Labor and the Coalition have decided to leave this up to the states and territories. The national prisons guidelines already state that restraints are not to be used during and immediately following childbirth, yet the practice continues,” they said.

“It is clear that leaving it up to the states and territories is no longer an option.

“The commonwealth is ultimately responsible for ensuring Australia meets its international human rights obligations and has the power to legislate to do so, as it has before.”

The Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives said the practice was “inconsistent with safe, respectful and culturally safe maternity care and poses unacceptable risks to the health, wellbeing and dignity of women and babies”

Exclusive: Out-of-pocket costs for abortion care to be covered regardless of who wins November election as Jess Wilson says Liberals and Nationals ‘will not allow Labor to play politics on this issue’

Victoria will become the first state in Australia to make access to abortion care free, no matter who wins the November election, with the Coalition matching Labor’s promise just hours after it was announced as it attempts to neutralise the issue.

The opposition leader, Jess Wilson, on Thursday afternoon told Guardian Australia a Liberal National Coalition government would match Labor’s commitment to cover out-of-pocket costs for abortion care up to 16 weeks’ gestation. This would include GP and specialist consultations, scans, tests or medication, which can quickly add up to more than $1,000.

The commitment means Victoria will become the first state in Australia to offer free universal access to abortion services, following the Australian Capital Territory which began covering out-of-pocket costs in 2023.

The Coalition would also expand the Victorian patient transport assistance scheme so that women in regional Victoria who must travel long distances for abortion care would also be eligible for subsidised travel and accommodation.

“The Liberals and Nationals will not allow Labor to play politics on this issue,” Wilson said.

“Labor has had 12 years to improve access to healthcare but are instead choosing to play politics.”

However, the Victorian opposition would not match Labor’s commitment to extend access to medical abortion from nine to 10 weeks’ gestation or its plan to commission a clinical review into whether it could safely be offered at up to 12 weeks’ gestation.

Currently, medical abortion is subsidised through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme for use up to nine weeks but the World Health Organization’s guidance allows for up to 12.

“Only Labor will protect a woman’s right to choose,” Labor’s health minister, Ingrid Stitt, said when she announced the election commitment on Thursday morning.

Stitt’s statement suggested that One Nation could use abortion as a negotiating chip with the Coalition in the event of a hung parliament. It read: “Polling shows the Liberals and One Nation can only form a government together. And One Nation wants to make abortion a criminal offence.”

However, Wilson on Thursday again ruled out changes to abortion laws under a Coalition government.

“Victorians know where I stand on this issue. There will be no changes to abortion laws under a government I lead. Full stop. And I think it’s incredibly disappointing to see Labor playing politics with women’s reproductive rights five minutes before an election,” she said.

Wilson has previously described abortion as a personal decision that should be made by women in consultation with healthcare professionals.

The premier, Ben Carroll, earlier on Thursday said Labor “decriminalised abortion and we will stand up for it” as he warned that One Nation posed a threat.

“Let’s be very clear: you’ve seen the leader of One Nation very clearly say that he wants to roll back access to abortion. He wants to rob women of their right to choose their own future,” Carroll told reporters.

Abortion was decriminalised in Victoria in 2008, with women able to obtain a termination during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, and later if they obtain the agreement of two doctors.

The Greens say WA senator Jordon Steele-John has taken leave from the party room following reports he made inappropriate comments towards women.

The Sydney Morning Herald has reported that a letter from seven party members was sent to Greens leader David Shoebridge on Tuesday night.

The letter states the group has been made aware of "multiple allegations" against the senator that span from 2017 to 2025.

"These allegations all concern his behaviour in the presence of women," the authors wrote, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

"We are aware of multiple women who have taken up roles or volunteered in the party, who because of these allegations, have been warned not to … be alone with him."

One former WA Greens convener told the ABC that it was well-known within the party that there were concerns about Senator Steele-John's behaviour towards women.

In a statement to the ABC, Senator Steele-John said he had referred the matter to the WA Greens.

"I utterly reject this characterisation of me, which tries to assert I am someone I am not," he said.

"I have referred this matter to the WA Greens, so that a fair, independent process can be commissioned that upholds the principles of natural justice and ensures procedural fairness for everyone involved.

"These claims are made without specifics, any allegation of this nature is extremely serious and must be treated accordingly.

"If someone has made an allegation, I am prepared to address it."

In relation to one of the alleged complaints, the senator said he was the victim of abuse and had been working with WA Police to address it.

Senator Shoebridge said the party was taking the concerns "extremely seriously" and that the matter had been referred to the WA Greens, who will commission an independent inquiry.

In a press conference on Thursday afternoon, Senator Shoebridge said he was unaware of any allegations against Senator Steele-John before he received the letter on Tuesday.

"I've dealt with it with the urgency which I think is appropriate," Senator Shoebridge said.

"I will not be engaging in a running commentary on the matter, because it is going to a fair and independent and timely process."

He did not put a timeline on the inquiry process or say whether the findings would be made public, and added that the integrity of the complaints process was "essential".

The ABC has been told Senator Shoebridge's office has consulted with the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service and the WA Greens.

Senator Steele-John entered parliament in 2017 after then-WA senator Scott Ludlum was ruled ineligible due to his dual citizenship.

His portfolios include disability inclusion, health and mental health.

He has been one of the Senate's most vocal opponents to the government's NDIS cuts.

The Health Department is running a consultation on specialist fees. It closes 12pm Monday 19 October.

The questions focus on what doctors charge. They don't ask about the $7.56b a year taxpayers give private health insurers, where our premiums actually go, or why Medicare rebates haven't kept up with costs.

If your premiums keep going up, your policy covers less than you thought, a claim got knocked back, or you only bought cover to avoid the tax penalty, tell them in your own words. It takes about 10 minutes.

Have your say here:

https://consultations.health.gov.au/medicare-benefits-and-digital-health-division/options-to-address-excessive-fees/

Not affiliated with any party, insurer or lobby group. Sources are on the last image, with links in the comments. Happy to be corrected.

A social media account associated with a One Nation Victorian candidate has been made private. But Crikey has the screenshots, which show an array of disturbing, fringe views.

A social media account that appears to be run by a One Nation candidate has a history of posting offensive, Islamophobic, ableist and racist content, as well as references to far-right conspiracy theories.

Matthew Collins, the party’s candidate for Melbourne in the upcoming Victorian state election, says in campaign material he “wants Melbourne restored to its former prosperity and security”, adding the state has been “mismanaged” and noting his “signature passion and resolve”.

Social media outlet Toilet Paper Australia first identified a selection of posts expressing extreme, fringe and offensive views on the X account matthewsright as having been made by Collins. The Herald Sun later reported the contents of these posts.

Crikey has obtained access to many additional posts made by the account, which has since been made private, and paint an even starker picture of the range of views expressed.

matthewsright’s sordid social media history The X account matthewsright posted a recording of Bunurong elder Mark Brown being booed at ANZAC Day dawn services in April this year, calling it “the sound of patriots”. It later emerged the booing of Welcomes to Country were in part organised efforts from far-right organisations, and at least one person convicted in relation to his booing of a Sydney ceremony was a member of a neo-Nazi group.

The same day, the account wrote: “Identity politics has no place in our national commemorative days of mourning and solitude. Remove the disrespectful ‘welcome to country’ from all ANZAC Day services…”.

The writer also claimed to have met opposition leader Jess Wilson, and said he had “been around her more than most”. The account described the opposition leader as an “entitled, narcissistic, spoiled brat”.

There are also responses to posts by Muslim New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, including images of the 9/11 attacks, and reference to him as having a “resting jihad face”. Another post saw the word “deport” above a photograph of Muslim Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi. In July 2026, one post described deporting Faruqi as the “only good use of our taxpayer dollars associated with her”.

In February 2026, a post said: “opposition to Islam is a national security matter and a duty of self-preservation”.

“To oppose parties like [One Nation and Restore Britain] or decry leaders such as [Rupert Lowe and Pauline Hanson] as some sort of criminal monsters is an insult to the intelligence of the public and common sense in general. Resistance to the Islamisation of the West cannot be stopped, nor should it. We have to carry the fire!”

A post from January 2025 read: “the gender tyrants are the satanic grooming cultists who wear the [pronoun] badges to signal their malicious intent to each other … this helps them lure their vulnerable prey.”

The account has also made several references to conspiracy theories such as the “deep state” and the “New World Order”. One post read: “Covid was released on purpose to unseat Trump, destroy any resistance to the uniparty and guarantee an indefinite deep state grip on power”, and in May 2025 said that Australia Day and ANZAC Day would “be further bastardised and watered down until they’re entirely co-opted and repurposed to suit NWOstralia”.

In a post responding to Pope Leo’s calls for peace in the West Bank in mid-August, the account said: “Christendom is under assault and his holiness is cringepoasting Islamist slop”.

Another tweet, responding to a post about a “decolonisation forum”, read: “Islamofascist foid is retardmaxxing. How about they decolonise constantiople (sic) and armenia and syria and kurdistan”. In a similar vein, the account referred to Australian Financial Review journalist Mark Di Stefano as a “retard”.

Linking Matthew Collins to the account

Neither Collins nor One Nation Victoria answered questions or repeated follow-ups from Crikey. In a call made to a phone number associated with Collins, on being told Crikey’s reporter was the caller, a man replied, “Fuck off, cunt,” and immediately hung up.

There are, however, many posts that link Collins directly to the account.

The night after One Nation’s “Meet the Candidates” event held on August 3, matthewsright implied he was in attendance or had intimate knowledge of the event itself, saying “a large contingent of moronic authoritarian terrorist thralls came out to stand in the rain last night in an attempt to disrupt and prevent [Pauline Hanson] and [Victorian leader Warren Pickering] from even holding a campaign event”.

Archives of the account’s tweets show dozens of posts in support of One Nation and Pauline Hanson, many regarding the upcoming Victorian state election. In early May, the account, then bearing a profile image of Collins wearing a One Nation shirt and appearing to hold an Australian flag, said “policy documents won’t be released for a time. There’s 900+ candidates applicants (sic) being reviewed at the moment.”

The profile image comes from a photograph taken by The Age during the Nepean by-election, which featured Victorian One Nation MLC Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell alongside Collins. The X account posted the photo and wrote on May 4, two days after the Nepean by-election: “I love that I had the idea for this photo … We were taking pics for ourselves then the Age guy came up and wanted a shot too. Such a great moment on what was an awesome and hard fought, honest, clean campaign.”

On May 5, the matthewsright account refers to relatively intimate knowledge of the One Nation candidate vetting process, and wrote: “Policy documents won’t be released for a time. There’s 900+ candidates applicants (sic) being reviewed at the moment.”

There is also a YouTube account with the same username, profile picture and description as the X account matthewsright. It lists a clip of Collins playing The Seekers’ “I am Australian” on the harmonica.

A Twitch account with similar details also carries references to Collins’ wedding, and sources speaking to Crikey on the condition of anonymity corroborated those details, as well as attested that the X account belongs to Collins.

An additional post by matthewsright in early August, in response to a video of apparent shoplifting, said: “I used to arrest coward dogs like these all the time. But there’s nothing you can do when they do the flash mob group theft.” Sources said Collins previously has claimed to work in retail security for makeup giant Sephora.

Collins is running against Victorian Greens leader Ellen Sandell, who holds the seat with 60% of the two-candidate-preferred vote.

The revelations about Collins’ social media activity are the latest in a line of various vetting-related issues with One Nation candidates in the upcoming state election. Crikey was first to report on Northern Metro candidate Mark Nicholson’s claims to have been a criminal lawyer, for which we found no record of admission, while other candidates appear to have inflated their CVs in different ways.

To understand who truly owns Sydney, ignore the corporate logos on Martin Place office towers or the portfolios of commercial players such as Dexus, Mirvac and Charter Hall and look instead to the Catholic Church, one of the harbour city’s largest non-government property owners for more than two centuries.

The empire expands well beyond the extraordinarily valuable churches, schools, hospitals and aged care homes dotted around Sydney’s suburbs. Church officials recently snapped up a 15-storey office building on Elizabeth Street for $97 million, and reaped $275 million from the sale of a Liverpool Street building purchased 20 years earlier for just $33 million. Many property transactions and holdings benefit from tax-exempt charitable status.

The church is notoriously secretive about the scope of its portfolio but the value easily reaches into the billions. The asset base is so substantial the Archdiocese of Sydney has a panel of 14 experts charged with advising on property matters.

Against that backdrop, a small former school in Redfern is akin to a rounding error for the Catholic Church. But for the Aboriginal Medical Service (AMS) Redfern, which has provided medical services from the property for 55 years, the site represents both a missed opportunity for reconciliation and a critical piece of its future.

The Herald can reveal the Archdiocese of Sydney has rejected repeated requests to give the Turner Street building to the groundbreaking medical service, which treats thousands of the city’s sickest and most disadvantaged residents and is recognised globally as a pioneer in Indigenous healthcare.

AMS leaders have respectfully and patiently worked to seal an agreement for more than 25 years, according to a cache of files seen by the Herald, only to be rebuffed by George Pell and his successor as the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher.

The AMS tried again late last year, lodging an exhaustive 13,200-word document outlining the compelling benefits of finally owning the building it has called home for 55 years. Fisher again refused, with one of his officials delivering the verdict via a 300-word email.

Turning over the title deeds would make little difference to the church’s current status: it hasn’t occupied the building since Father Ted Kennedy, the widely loved late renegade priest of St Vincent’s Redfern, first made it available to the suburb’s booming Aboriginal population in the 1970s.

Owning the site would deliver the AMS a healthier balance sheet, certainty of tenure, operational autonomy, and better chances of obtaining capital funding. The two-storey brick building is crying out for renovation (some parts of the floor risk caving in under the weight of footsteps) and has been identified as the ideal site for an expansion of mental health services.

The bigger picture is that the property represents a practical test of the church’s commitment to reconciliation. Transferring ownership to First Nations people would constitute a powerful act of recognition and healing between two groups that once worked closely together in Redfern, but have since drifted apart as more conservative elements of the church solidified their influence. This point has been repeatedly made to Fisher, to no avail.

“The church can help us help others,” said AMS chief executive LaVerne Bellear. “The people who come here aren’t just ‘Aboriginal people’. They are the church’s people as well. There’s no difference between them and us – only that we’ve got brown skin.”

Former federal minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney argued that the church would not miss the site, and said donating it would be a powerful demonstration of its publicly stated commitment to reconciliation.

“Turn those words into action ... I just don’t think the church can really explain why they wouldn’t give the lease over – perhaps apart from the fact that they don’t trust people,” Burney said. “And that to me is not very Christian.”

Father Frank Brennan, a Jesuit priest who worked in the parish of Redfern and served as a professor of law at the Australian Catholic University, described the request as “very reasonable and proper”.

“The AMS has a proven track record. They’ve been there for more than 50 years, they’re not going to move, they own some land there already, and handing over this additional section would seem to me to make a lot of sense.”

The position of archbishops Fisher and Pell stands in contrast to the North Sydney Sisters of Mercy, who donated a school and convent they owned in Redfern to the Aboriginal Medical Service in 1978, enabling its expansion. The remainder of the site is still owned by the church hierarchy.

The gesture was seen as a pioneering act of reconciliation through Christian generosity – something modern church leaders seem unwilling to replicate.

Campaigners believe next month’s 40th anniversary of a watershed speech in Alice Springs by Pope John Paul II might give Fisher cause to reconsider. The address – which forms part of a mural inside Redfern’s St Vincent’s Church – was the first time the Catholic Church leadership truly acknowledged the suffering of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia.

In an area littered with false starts, missteps and outright failures, the AMS Redfern stands out as a rare Indigenous policy success story.

In 1972, more than a dozen Aboriginal alcoholics were arrested for squatting in the terraces on Redfern’s Lawson Street and hauled before the courts. The magistrate released the men into the care of Kaye and Bob Bellear, the latter of whom would become Australia’s first Indigenous judge. He died in 2005.

Ted Kennedy, the local priest from 1971 to 2002, let the Bellears house the men in an old Turner Street school building owned by the Archdiocese of Sydney and the Sisters of Mercy. The Aboriginal Medical Service eventually moved in, with the late renowned ophthalmologist Professor Fred Hollows as a co-founder and its first medical director.

Kaye Bellear told the Herald Archbishop Fisher risked looking “mean-spirited”.

“The Catholic Church is absolutely not struggling on the property front in Sydney or anywhere else in the world,” she said. “The church owes the Aboriginal community an act of reconciliation and this would be a good one for the Redfern community.”

Today, the AMS treats nearly 5000 patients a year through 50,000 different visits. It offers GP consultations, immunisations, sexual health screening, mental health support, dental treatment, aged care support, and drug and alcohol services. “The waiting room is packed by 7.30am,” Bellear said. The groundbreaking Aboriginal-controlled structure has been replicated around Australia.

Marcia Ella-Duncan, the first Indigenous woman to represent Australia in international netball, has credited the service with saving her life after doctors discovered an aortic aneurysm in her abdomen during a routine health check.

The church-owned building and a small adjoining car park form the only components of the Redfern health campus not owned by the AMS.

Explaining the decision by the Sisters of Mercy to give their properties to the AMS in the 1970s, Superior General Sister Patricia Kerin invoked the words of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace: “It is not enough for the Christian community to acknowledge the injustice – the injustice must be righted.”

The sisters wrote to Bishop Peter Ingham in 1997 calling for the remaining property owned by the church at the Redfern site to be given in trust to the Aboriginal people of inner Sydney. The sisters said such a move would be a big step “towards confessing our wrongs of the past and our seriousness in seeking reconciliation”. Their plea was rejected.

The progressive Kennedy continued fighting for the cause, one of many sources of friction with the ultraconservative Pell. Kennedy was unable to secure an agreement before he died in 2005 but his good friend Danny Gilbert has been trying ever since.

Gilbert, the chairman of top-tier corporate law firm Gilbert + Tobin, has spent more than 25 years sending letters to Pell and later Fisher outlining the case for transferring ownership to the AMS.

“Ted – together with the remarkable Mum Shirl and numerous other Catholic women and men – forged a relationship between Aboriginal people and the Catholic Church in Sydney unlike anything seen before or since,” Gilbert told the Herald.

“The opportunity to honour that legacy has been staring the church in the face for more than 30 years. Gifting the old school property to the Aboriginal Medical Service would not be an act of charity – it would be an act of justice and fidelity to the church’s own spiritual and pastoral life.”

Gilbert’s latest entreaty included a lengthy report into the building’s history and potential future under Redfern’s Aboriginal custodians.

The letter was addressed to Archbishop Fisher, but he did not respond personally. Instead, Michael Digges, the executive director of administration and finance for the archdiocese, replied in January saying it was “not possible” to gift 36 Turner Street because it forms part of the “stable patrimony” of the St Vincent de Paul Church in Redfern. Stable patrimony is a term the Church uses to describe assets that provide financial security through future preservation of value.

In a 2017 letter, the then-Vicar General Gerald Gleeson said the archdiocese could not accede to the request in part because of the “parlous financial state” of the parish, which he claimed was at that point $1.1 million in debt. He also invoked “demographic changes” occurring in Redfern and claimed it was “unclear” whether the suburb would remain a suitable location for the AMS. He even said a rent-free lease would no longer be possible, although the church has since offered the property for a peppercorn annual fee.

Bellear vowed the service would go nowhere else. “This is an Aboriginal landmark in Sydney,” she said. “This will always be a health site. The issue is that we are full to the brim.”

Fisher declined the Herald’s request for an interview. A spokesperson for the archdiocese said the parish “has always and will continue to support” the AMS.

“This has never been in doubt,” the spokesperson said. The spokesperson said the AMS proposal would require a complex subdivision of the land because the site included the heritage-listed parish church, a shared driveway, and adjoining buildings, “all together making the concept of subdivision impractical”.

However, the AMS last year engaged town planners to study the site. In contrast to the claims of the church, the lengthy examination of town planning and heritage issues confirmed a subdivision was possible to enable the AMS to own the former church building.

The archdiocese spokesperson did not address questions about whether it accepted that retaining the property limited the ability of the AMS to seek capital grants and expand services.

“As the property cannot be subdivided and gifted, the parish has not been charging any rent to AMS and offering the alternative of a 10-year lease with holding over provisions on a peppercorn rental for several years now,” the spokesperson said.

“This would provide both affordability and the security of tenure that would enable AMS to seek capital grants to extend its services. This solution can be implemented immediately and would enable the good work of AMS to continue uninterrupted.”

The Herald sought the archbishop’s response to criticism that this decision represents a missed opportunity for reconciliation. The spokesperson would not say whether the archbishop would accept an offer to tour the AMS.

Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek, whose federal electorate covers Redfern, told the Herald she would “love” to see the archdiocese agree to help.

“Giving the AMS certainty about its future would help protect an institution that has meant so much to so many people, and ensure it can keep delivering these services for generations to come.”

Gilbert said the church has a rare chance to do good for people who most need it. “Reconciliation demands more than words. It demands action. It is long past time for the archdiocese to make this gift.”

Lindy Jacomb was a naive 20-year-old member of the Exclusive Brethren, living at home with her family, when spiritual curiosity got the better of her.

So she wrote to her church’s global leader, the “Man of God”, Bruce Hales, and other elders, asking why she should stay in a sect whose teachings she’d begun to doubt.

“The aim of this letter is to summarise my questions and issues about the EB, [Exclusive Brethren],” Jacomb wrote to Hales in 2008. “It is an appeal for increased understanding.”

Why are we “so extreme” in shunning others, she asked, so that even excommunicated family members are treated as if they’ve died? Why do we insist we are the “one divinely accredited” church? Why is Hales considered infallible? Why must we only work for Brethren-owned companies? Why can’t we have pets?”

Jacomb got no answers, so left the church and was later excommunicated. Under orders from Hales, her parents cut off all contact with her. Her five siblings became strangers and she lost her job. Her friends spurned her and she was barred from going to church.

“It’s like jumping out of a plane into a pitch-black hole,” Jacomb says 18 years later. “You’re going into a terrifying and different world … a world you’ve been taught since birth to fear and hate.”

Six years later, Jacomb’s brother, Braden Simmons, emailed her with qualms of his own, but his messages were surveilled by his Brethren boss. Hales later preached to his global flock that Simmons should kill himself with poison, and the church – now known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, or PBCC – excommunicated Simmons too.

On Friday, Bruce Hales will appear before a joint standing committee of parliament and insist that his is a mainstream religion.

The committee will quiz him about the Brethren’s secretive involvement in the last federal election campaign and its members’ activism on polling booths as well as alleged payments made to neo-Nazi affiliates and far-right figures to disrupt the prime minister’s events.

He’ll be asked if he egged the campaign on with a statement to his flock that “Australia needed to be happy again, smiling again” – a statement followed by webinars conducted by his sons and played on repeat to activate the faithful, then later translated into a slogan on the campaign trail.

Hales will, judging by his submission published on Wednesday, deny all this when he appears before the committee.

He will not swear on the Bible – Brethren never do – but he will insist that his flock acted of their own free will, and that, like in a normal church, he as leader cannot be held accountable for the self-motivated actions of his parishioners.

“I had no involvement in any members volunteering for any political party and was not aware this occurred until reporting appeared in the newspapers,” Hales told the committee in his submission.

Church insiders speaking out for the first time, as well as those who have left Hales’ religion and felt the lash of its punishments, disagree.

“There is no way that level of organisation can happen within the PBCC on any topic without it being organised by Bruce and the boys,” wrote one insider, insisting on anonymity to protect their safety and that of their family. “If anyone attempted this … they would be shut down immediately.”

“We are confident,” wrote a group of 12 shunned members, including Simmons, in a letter to the committee this week, “that the genesis of the observed activities lay in a personal decision of Mr Bruce Hales. However, because of the unique doctrinal framework of the PBCC, any regulator seeking to construct an evidence-based response … faces unique challenges.”

Salted throughout Hales’ published ministry to his flock are references to authority, obedience and the danger of independent thought.

“Independence has no place – you can’t talk about independence because it’s not allowed for … get rid of it in your youth,” Hales preached in Leeds in 2011. “The idea of absolute authority is vested in the [Brethren] assembly … we have to submit to it so that no one, no one is greater than the assembly,” he said in 2004.

The Brethren assembly, he preaches, is all-encompassing: “The house of God would involve our whole lives ... you can’t take one part of your life, and say, ‘That’s something different from what I am in the assembly’,” he said in 2010.

“The overriding thing I would say is that you’ve got a system for everything.”

Jacomb says these doctrines are pummelled into Brethren members from birth. After she was ejected, Jacomb became for a time a Baptist pastor. She now runs a charity called Olive Leaf Network that helps people escaping high-demand organisations – what were formerly known as cults. She also helps people still trapped inside it because they fear the human cost of leaving.

“This is not about mainstream Christianity,” Jacomb says. “This group does not fit that category. Yes, people have a right to practise their religion, but they also should have the freedom to leave their religion if they want and not suffer harm, physical, mental, psychological, spiritual in doing so.”

She says the PBCC restricts where its members live, their education, travel, social connections, sexual life (all marriages are approved by Hales), and employment. It sucks huge financial resources, under pressure of social isolation, out of its members and their businesses to fund its “ecosystem” of global “charities” and investment funds.

“They might look like lovely white-collar businessmen who are upstanding citizens and living in quiet suburban homes, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t serious levels of coercive control going on,” Jacomb said. “It’s very challenging to wake society up that this can be a reality.”

It’s all enforced by the threat of shunning, and losing everyone you love.

Jacomb says the church’s spokesman, Lloyd Grimshaw, belled the cat on shunning when he gave evidence at the committee in August. Asked if church members voted, Grimshaw said they had not traditionally but that “it was never a test of fellowship”. His words suggest other matters are.

A test of fellowship, said Jacomb, was “an action taken that means you would be excommunicated because it was not aligned with the church’s doctrine”.

Asked about this, Grimshaw told this masthead that, “where an individual chooses to live outside the principles of our faith, they may, as a last resort, be ‘withdrawn from’.”

“Comparable practices exist in many faiths, including excommunication in the Catholic Church. Singling out one church for practices shared by many is not fair reporting. We ask that our members be treated with the same respect afforded to any other faith community.”

Jacomb’s excommunication made her persona-non-grata including with her own family. So when she started emailing her brother Braden Simmons in 2014, and his Brethren boss read those emails and informed the church elders, Simmons too was punished for breaching the “doctrine of separation”.

The following year, Hales took to the pulpit. Simmons’ contact with “opposers” – his sister – was “rotten poison,” he preached.

“He might as well get a shot of ... arsenic. How do you get arsenic into you?” Hales asked his flock. “He’d be better to take arsenic, or go and get some rat poison or something, take a bottle of it.”

“That would be better, to finish yourself off that way [rather] than having to do with the opponents of the truth.”

After Hales’ comments were printed and distributed globally to the 56,000-strong Brethren flock, Simmons says, “People treated me with kid gloves. I think they worried I was a mass murderer, that if they spoke to me I might cut their head off … You’re left with this enormous, quite bizarre stigma.”

Simmons insisted on meeting Hales face to face. When he did, he found the spiritual leader had nothing useful to say to him. In conversations with his friends, Simmons strongly criticised Hales.

“It took me 48 hours to get shunned.”

On Friday, the electoral matters committee will ask hard questions of Hales – unprecedented for a man who for decades has answered only the inquiries of his own acolytes. He tried to get out of the grilling but failed.

At stake is not just his church’s reputation, but millions of dollars in tax exemptions.

Charities in Australia are prohibited from campaigning for political parties, and Hales’ church runs a dozen charities with hundreds of millions in assets. Research in the UK reveals the Brethren use these riches almost entirely for their own benefit. A finding that the church was involved in electioneering could seriously imperil these generous concessions.

A number of right-wing groups have leapt to Hales’ defence. Holding him to account is a threat to religious freedom, they say.

Turning Point USA, the controversial US right-wing organisation, called on the Trump government to lobby Australia over Hales’ questioning, with pastor Lucas Miles worried that, “If this approach succeeds against one church, it becomes a precedent of intimidation for all”.

The Coalition members of the committee have labelled Hales’ grilling a “witch-hunt”. The Anglican Bishop of South Sydney, Michael Stead, and his organisation, Freedom for Faith, say the Brethren is a simple “mainstream Christian denomination,” whose members “have as much right as any other Australian to participate in the electoral process”.

“Religious leaders (are not) automatically responsible for the political choices, associations or conduct” of their members, Freedom for Faith told members of the committee in an email. (Neither they nor the Coalition responded to recent questions about Hales’ long history of antisemitic comments.)

Experts who know the Brethren better say these defences are wrong-headed. Reverend Tim Costello, a senior fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity and former president of the Baptist Union of Australia, said Hales’ church “regard the rest of us Christians as so unfaithful that they will not worship, fellowship or even eat or drink with us.

“And the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren break up families … this is not freedom of conscience or freedom of religion.”

International expert on religious sects Steve Hassan said freedom of religion also meant the freedom to leave without reprisal. Groups with harsh practices such as the Brethren, he said, had become adept at “hiding in plain sight”.

The alleged stunts organised by the Brethren with neo-Nazi associates were “straight out of the MAGA playbook,” Hassan said, and part of a growing trend of “authoritarian cults pushing extremist agendas and mixing with the far-right”.

Extremism expert Josh Roose has called for the Brethren’s alleged use of neo-Nazi associates to tail and heckle politicians on the campaign trail to be investigated, and teal donor Climate 200 has referred the church to the charity regulator for investigation.

—

In comments to The Australian this week, Hales said, “The truth will prevail”. A group of 12 former church members, including Simmons, hope so.

Two signatories to the letter have already given evidence to the electoral matters committee. Ben Woodbury agreed everyone should have the right to support a political party, but, “the level of coercion behind it … isn’t accounted for”. Cassie Davies said, “this was not typical individual political participation; it was structured and directed”.

In their letter this week, the group wrote there was no chance Hales’ sons and their acolytes brought thousands of Brethren members together to campaign without his assent. This was a church endeavour, they say, and the fate of one young Brethren man proves it.

The man, who this masthead has chosen not to name to protect his privacy, was in Australia from the United Kingdom last year and was involved on the Brethren campaign trail. Shocked at what he was hearing, he secretly recorded a co-ordinating meeting, then leaked the audio to former church members. The recording found its way to this masthead.

The man was immediately put on a flight back to England, where his local priests passed an assembly judgment to have him kicked out of his family home and separated from his parents. He told this masthead at the time this was “because of the audio I recorded”. Church elders called him a “traitor”.

Eighteen months later, the ex-members say in their letter, the young man is still living in a small caravan in his parents’ backyard. He has limited contact with them or anyone else.

The former members ask if this man’s transgression was election-related and the election had nothing to do with the church, why is he being punished under church religious law?

“The PBCC continues to hold him in that position today,” the ex-members wrote, “even as it proclaims no involvement in the activities he revealed.”

Asked about this, the church spokesman provided no answer.

Pro-Israel extremists are once again seeking to have Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah removed from Adelaide Writers’ Week, after a similar lobbying campaign led to the collapse of this year’s festival.

A WhatsApp group has circulated an AI-generated email campaign urging supporters to lobby South Australian politicians and arts officials in a bid to exclude Abdel-Fattah from the festival in 2027.

Messages shared in the Pen Power Australia WhatsApp group, seen by Deepcut, urged members to click on an “Activist Mailer” link to generate a complaint opposing Abdel-Fattah’s invitation to the literary festival.

The automatically-generated email is addressed to Adelaide Writers’ Week director Rosemary Milsom, executive director Julian Hobbs, artistic director Matthew Lutton and Macquarie University vice-chancellor Bruce Dowton. It also copies South Australia’s premier, Peter Malinauskas, as well as state ministers, the opposition leader and shadow ministers.

The email calls on the festival to withdraw its invitation to Abdel-Fattah – a strident critic of Israel’s genocide in Gaza – accusing her of “antisemitic conduct”.

In comments to Deepcut, Abdel-Fattah condemned the lobbying effort and called on “every institution they target to stand firm against such malicious campaigns”.

“Despite the collapse of Adelaide Writers’ Week and Bendigo Writers Festival, these genocide cheerleaders continue their targeted racist campaigns, buoyed on by a political environment that has acquiesced to the pro-Israel lobby and punished the pro-Palestine movement,” she told Deepcut.

Murdoch media follows Abdel-Fattah’s UK book events

The Pen Power Australia email comes in tandem with a Murdoch media campaign that targeted Abdel-Fattah’s UK tour promoting her book, Discipline.

The email labelled Abdel-Fattah’s remarks in the UK “particularly disturbing”, claiming she “described Australians as ‘nut cases’ and Australian institutions as ‘white supremacist’”.

This appears based on a Daily Telegraph article referencing the remarks.

Murdoch outlets in Australia, which have staunchly supported Israel as it slaughters civilians en masse and causes devastation throughout West Asia, ran repeated headlines attacking Abdel-Fattah while on tour. Another article in Adelaide Now sought to provoke controversy around the author’s UK book tour, and tie it to Abdel-Fattah’s upcoming appearance at Adelaide Writers’ Week.

Abdel-Fattah called the Murdoch media campaign a “shameless obsession”.

“To hunt me down at every public event in the UK and maliciously cherry pick my lines to feed into a media and lobby machine that will do anything to try to silence me only goes to show how desperate these barrel-scraping reporters and pro-Israel lobbyists are,” she said.

The Murdoch media blitz comes two months after incessant media attacks led to the death of British scholar Jason Arday. Murdoch’s UK outlets were found to have published the most articles attacking Arday, in what was roundly condemned as a bullying campaign that uniquely targeted the academic due to his African heritage.

Louise Adler condemns campaign

The new Pen Power Australia campaign follows the festival’s dramatic collapse earlier this year, with Adelaide Festival apologising to Abdel-Fattah in January and acknowledging that its decision to exclude her from the 2026 program had been a mistake. Organisers then invited her to participate in the 2027 event.

Louise Adler, director of the 2026 Adelaide Writers’ Week, resigned after the Adelaide Festival Board decided to cancel Abdel-Fattah’s appearance despite her strong opposition.

“I’m not surprised that the Israel lobby is once again agitating for Dr Abdel-Fattah to be disinvited from Adelaide Writers’ Week in 2027,” she told Deepcut.

“I would, however, be very surprised if the new board of Adelaide Festival capitulated. It would cause irreparable reputational damage to Australia’s premier literary festival with a heritage of over 60 years.”

The decision to remove Abdel-Fattah from the 2026 event followed a letter from South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas to the festival’s chair, in which he stated he was “deeply concerned” that the organisers were not prepared to remove her. Deepcut later revealed Pen Power Australia’s lobbying role to have Abdel-Fattah excluded from the 2026 lineup.

Her cancellation prompted a mass boycott by writers and artists, with more than 180 writers withdrawing from the festival. The controversy also resulted in the resignation and replacement of the festival’s board.

Emails obtained under freedom of information by ABC News revealed that the festival’s executive director had warned that as many as 80 to 90 writers could withdraw if Abdel-Fattah were disinvited.

Pen Power Australia has previously coordinated campaigns targeting public figures and institutions that have openly criticised Israel for its genocide in Gaza. The pro-Israel group has also coordinated mass complaint campaigns to the ABC regarding their coverage of the Gaza genocide.

Australians who despite their high take-up of some AI tools remain among the world’s most sceptical, have a low tolerance for tech overlords. GetUp’s successful campaign against Coles’ partnership with Palantir, the data company that licenses its software to the US military who bomb children and immigration officials to track individuals, shows the vulnerability of public brands who lean in too close to the beast.

[...] Even more significant may be the failure of the Firmus IPO, which was to have been the biggest Australian float since Telstra. The decision not to list the company followed the withdrawal of a datacentre in Sydney, the first major project to fall over due to local community pressure. There are a range of possible reasons the bid failed, including accusations of greed, but surely the growing community backlash to datacentres had some scratching their heads about the prospects of a hyper-scale out.

The competition watchdog is suing Australia’s largest egg supplier, Sunny Queen, and 11 other producers over allegations they engaged in “cartel conduct” for at least six years to manipulate the market.

We now have a gov in Colombia that would just love to start mining/fracking next to water sources because allegedly first world countries already solved that shit and you have nothing to worry about, is that true?

look what can happen if you have politicians who are t serving corporations

Very early every morning, Glen Morris picks up some chalk and updates the blackboard that has given his Spring Hill cafe an air of social media notoriety.

Last Thursday, it was a light-hearted message to Glen’s Espresso’s new Wharf Street neighbours.

“I’m not sure if One Nation have done their due diligence putting their head office 3 doors down from my blackboard,” Morris wrote in response to news One Nation was relocating to a nearby building owned by the party’s billionaire backer, Gina Rinehart.

As Morris went on with his day, one of his new One Nation neighbours took a photograph of the blackboard. Within a couple of hours, it was up on the right-wing party’s official Facebook page.

“Oh, we did [due diligence],” the party said in the caption. “We’re very lucky to be surrounded by a number of cafes serving delicious coffee (yours included). We will always support small businesses, regardless of the owners’ politics.”

What happened next was a sustained campaign of review-bombing, phone calls and abuse from One Nation supporters.

“We started noticing within that hour-and-a-half period that we were getting one-star reviews on our Facebook and Google profiles from people who’d never been to the coffee shop and were intent on maligning the shop in ways that would ruin the business if the reviews were upheld,” Morris said.

“We were fortunate enough that our ratings on both Facebook and Google were running at a flat five stars, which is nice, but all it takes is a dozen or so one-star reviews to go up and suddenly your rating sucks and you look terrible.

“So it was a definite and deliberate attempt by their followers to ruin someone’s livelihood, based on what I perceived to be a fairly innocuous joke that wasn’t in any way harmful.”

Luckily for Morris, whose business has a reputation for irreverence, the review-bombing was noticed by Google and the reviews from the 24-hour period were wiped.

But in the moment, Morris said, he was furious to have his business dragged through the mud so he contacted One Nation with screenshots of the reviews, with no response.

“They captioned [their post] in a way that wasn’t antagonistic, but it also didn’t make it clear that it’s actually all tongue-in-cheek, that I’d been making coffee for them all week and we were actually getting on fine,” Morris said.

“One Nation demands tolerance for their own opinions, but refuses to extend that right to their critics.”

One Nation, which has previously cited a boycott of this masthead over its reporting of the party, did not respond to requests for comment.

Griffith University political scientist Paul Williams said online mobs were becoming more prevalent, particularly in the “hard-right” of Australian politics.

“It’s like there’s now an army of barrackers that we’ve not really seen before, whose mission seems to be destroying any hint of progressive thought,” he said.

“And if that means taking down a business, well, it’s a case of whatever it takes.”

Williams said there was an irony in One Nation supporters engaging in a form of cancel culture, something leader Pauline Hanson described in 2021 as “killing debate, freedom of speech, and shutting down conservative political representation”.

He said it appeared her party had no issues when it came to shutting down progressive speech.

“In the hard-right, rationality doesn’t have to make sense,” he said. “The whole ideology is full of paradoxes, contradictions and non-sequiturs.”

For the record, Morris said he welcomed One Nation workers and volunteers to Glen’s Espresso.

“The people I’ve been serving for a week or so will read the blackboard and then look up and [say to me] ‘Oh well, actually, I’m a volunteer down there’, and they’re all lovely – these are people who I’m getting on with absolutely fine,” he said.

“The people I’ve told about the dramas have been very apologetic and said that’s not their intention and not what they want to do – but it’s all well and good for individuals to be pleasant to deal with, but sicking the mob on a small business doesn’t compute with that.”

It was not the first time Morris’s blackboard has stirred up political trouble.

During the 2014 G20 leaders’ summit in Brisbane, Morris got wind that then-South African president Jacob Zuma was staying in a hotel near the original Glen’s Espresso coffee cart in Ann Street.

Morris decided to reference historical rape allegations levelled against Zuma – of which he was acquitted in 2006 – on his blackboard.

“His security detail came down and had a bit of a conversation about what my intentions were,” he said.

“You have fun with it, but I’m not out to hurt or offend people unless they desperately deserve it.”

The [Redbridge/Accent] poll indicates that the Coalition lifted its primary vote by 1 point to 30 per cent as Labor remained steady at 24 per cent since the last survey. Meanwhile, One Nation fell 1 point to 24 per cent while the Greens recorded their highest-ever primary with 16 per cent of first preference votes.

[...] Other voter surveys this year have suggested a hung parliament is the most likely outcome, but Redbridge director Tony Barry and Accent Research principal Shaun Ratcliff said that, if the results of the poll were replicated on election day, the Coalition could form majority government.

The peak body for the oil and gas industry was the only stakeholder the New South Wales government met with before a decision to reopen gas exploration approvals for the first time in more than a decade, documents released under freedom of information laws suggest.

Taylor, speaking directly before Hanson, began his speech by admitting Coalition governments “got some important things wrong”. Taylor – who served in the Turnbull and Morrison ministries, including as energy minister – said they had “made the mistake of signing up to net zero”, and allowed “immigration numbers to creep up”.

I made a short video about hitchhiking in Adelaide 😁.

it was a fun experience and I hope you guys could check it out.

Study source: Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Bullying in Adolescents Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Bullying in Adolescents
Alexis Olson