Breaking news: water is wet.

In short:

Newly surfaced emails have revealed sensitive court data was sent to India more than a decade ago.

A spokesperson for the Federal Circuit and Family Court said the current court leadership was unaware of the earlier data offshoring.

What's next?

Shadow Attorney General Michaela Cash and Greens leader David Shoebridge are both calling for an investigation. 

Kos samaras latest article. What is everyone's thoughts

"The first politician who has an honest conversation with Australians about the world they actually live in will win. Not the best slogan or the biggest promise. The truth.

The truth is this. The 30 years after the war were never normal. One wage bought a house, raised a family and funded a retirement. That happened in a few dozen countries, once, for about three decades. Growth per person ran at 3.8 per cent a year, after nearly 40 years it’s now at 1 per cent. Seven workers for every retiree. The West had the world's factories almost to itself and cheap oil. Every one of those conditions is gone and no government can bring them back. Some are actually accelerating the decline of prosperity in the west, like Trump. Yes, a note to some of you Trump fans, please stay away from any job that requires economic skills.

The new world has now become the old world. It has more in common with 1930 than with anything in the last 40 years. Slow growth. An ageing country. A fair share that has to be chosen on purpose rather than delivered by the tide.

In 1930, a workers wage was mostly consumed by basic material needs, food, fuel and a roof over one’s head. Hello 2026.

Which brings me to immigration.

Blaming migrants for the end of the boom is the laziest, most empty-headed response available to Australian politics. It requires no thought, no plan and no courage. There is no migration cut that makes a house cost three times a wage again. A smaller intake does not restore seven workers for every retiree. It drives the ratio towards two, faster. It makes the problem worse while pretending to solve it. Anyone selling it is not offering an answer. They are offering a scapegoat so they never have to explain the arithmetic because explaining it and actually working towards a solution means one thing - empowering employees.

Link below."

An Australian woman has been charged after allegedly lacing a colleague's curry with snail poison.

Police in the state of Western Australia say the alleged victim made a meal for her co-workers in February, which they shared at morning tea.

But when the 58-year-old returned to eat leftovers at lunch, she noticed bright green granules in the food and that her tongue felt numb after tasting it.

The accused - who was in a relationship with the alleged victim - has been charged with endangering the life, health or safety of another person after a months-long investigation, and will face court on 5 November.

Police allege the 43-year-old woman - who hasn't been named - visited a chemical storage shed before returning to the staffroom where the curry was kept.

After tasting it, the alleged victim handed the meal over to detectives, who identified the substance as snail pellets containing metaldehyde, a poisonous substance.

Commissioner Col Blanch told reporters the poison can cause serious injury or death.

"We're just very thankful that the person who tasted the curry was aware of something that wasn't quite right," he said, according to the Seven Network.

So my grandma is paying 1.1 mil to stay at aged care.

If she wants an ice cream or something, that’s an extra charge.

If she wants to turn on the free to air TV that’s IN HER ROOM, that’s 8 dollars per day. It’s free to air TV.

If she wants one social activity per fortnight , that’s an extra charge.

Oh yeah .. also wifi costs like 7-8 dollars a day.

To also have one extra hot meal a day, that’s an extra charge too.

That’s kind of ridiculous don’t you think? So to just have wifi and tv, that’s an extra 6k a year.

Greens leader David Shoebridge has refused to say whether the party will release the findings of an inquiry into allegations against Greens senator Jordon Steele-John.

Steele-John,32, has rejected allegations that he made inappropriate comments towards women and has taken leave from the Greens party room.

Shoebridge denies he knew about historic complaints about the Western Australian senator between 2017 and 2025, until a letter from seven Greens members demanding an investigation into "concerning behaviour" landed on his desk this week.

"I've been leader now for two weeks, and when I received these complaints, I took the most timely action that I believe you could take, and I'd ask people to judge me and on the response that’s been taken, the timely response that's been taken," Shoebridge told reporters on Friday.

"This is a process that will be commissioned by the WA Greens, and the parameters that we are very clear about is it will be fair, and it will be independent, and it will be timely. But it is not my role to put parameters around what we have said must be and will be an independent process.

"And we are committed to undertaking that process, and committed to doing justice to the matters that have been raised, and justice to any party that has been involved in the matter, and I think that should be actually a bedrock. That should actually be a bedrock of politics."

When asked about the minutes of a NSW Young Greens meeting in October 2018 raising sexual harassment claims against Steele-John, Shoebridge denied he knew about it.

"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."

In a statement, Steele-John said the allegations lacked specific details.

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

"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.

"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."

The letter sent to Shoebridge contains accusations he says the party takes "incredibly seriously".

"When matters like this are raised, they require a fair and independent and timely process for them to be dealt with. The WA Greens are commissioning that process," he said.

The senator will self-refer matters outlined in the letter to an independent complaints process.

SBS News has contacted Steele-John's for comment.

Steele-John entered parliament in 2017 at 23 and is the party's spokesperson for disability and mental health, leading a campaign against NDIS cuts.

Just came across this. If you’re missing teeth, in VIC and want to Make Australia Great Again, check it out.

In short:

The final cost of Hobart's new AFL stadium is still unclear, with the current estimate more than a year old.

Tasmania's premier would not commit to limiting the state's contribution to $875 million.

What's next?

An updated price tag is expected to be released before the end of the year.

An acting icon best known for his small roles across a range of some of the most iconic films and TV shows ever produced in Australia has died aged 74.

Gary Waddell died earlier this week after a short battle with dementia. Waddell’s career on Australian film and TV spanned nearly 50 years and included parts in iconic shows like Blue Heelers, Home and Away, A Country Practice and Rake.

He also appeared in films including Charlie’s Country and Chopper.

Family, friends and former colleagues have sung the praises of the “hilarious, beautiful, charming” and “naughty” Victorian, who first appeared on Australian screens as the leading man of edgy 1975 drama Pure Sh*t, in which he played a heroin addict.

Singer-songwriter Lo Carmen said Waddell was a “one-of-a-kind, heart-of-f**king-gold dude”.

“He used to turn up at our place with little cars and books and old cool toys and gifts for our son Dutch, just because he was full of love,” Carmen said.

“We’d stand around talking about books and films and food and nothing and everything and laughing our heads off for the next two hours.

“You’d be in tears of laughter. I don’t know why on earth he wasn’t cast in everything.”

Waddell’s talent managers said he “passed away peacefully” after living with dementia “over the last few years”.

“Gary was one of a kind, a true artist in every sense of the word, and his body of Australian work was so utterly impressive,” they wrote on Facebook.

“The SJM team send their love to Gary’s family at this time. Thanks for everything Gary, you will be missed. We’ve hat a lot of fun over the years.”

Waddell most recently appeared in the 2022 film The Survival of Kindness.

A South Sudanese Australian comedian has delivered a passionate call for his community to take control of youth crime “casting a shadow” over all of their lives.

Emo Majok, from Perth, reserves much of his social media posts for humour, with clips of his stand up performances, skits and life on the comedy tour.

But last week Mr Majok made a post he “never thought I’d be making” after feeling compelled to speak out on an issue he said was impacting the perception of innocent people.

“I wanna speak directly to my community, because quite frankly what we’re seeing from our young youths is dangerous, embarrassing and unacceptable,” he said.

“We can’t keep defending it just because they look like us. Wrong is wrong.

“We can’t let a small percentage become the identity of an entire community.”

Mr Ajok, who has also shared posts of his work with youth support organisation Armed for Life, said South Sudanese Australians were “not a crime statistic”.

“We are family, workers, students, professionals – people that are contributing to society every single day,” he said.

“Every time I hear something happen, I hear ‘deport them’. Deport them where?

“Some of these people were born here. Australia isn’t a hotel where citizenship disappears when someone commits a crime.

“If an Australian citizen commits a crime they should face the Australian justice system.”

Crime involving youths of South Sudanese descent has been most prominent in Victoria, where a string of high-profile incidents have sparked calls for change.

The deaths of two boys, 12-year-old Chol Achiek and 15-year-old Dau Akueng, in an alleged gang attack in Melbourne’s west sent shockwaves around Australia.

Data released by the Victorian government last year showed how South Sudanese youth were overrepresented in the state’s justice system.

Young people of South Sudanese descent aged 10 to 24 years comprised 22 per cent of the average daily number of young people in custody, and 11 per cent of the average daily number of young people under community supervision.

That was while comprising only 0.5 per cent of the Victorian population in that age group.

Former SBS journalist Ajak Deng Chiengkou, who previously worked in youth support in Melbourne, recently spoke about some of the issues facing young people in the community.

He explained that a cycle of barriers facing young people including language and bullying could lead to them dropping out and becoming “vulnerable” to other lifestyles.

Parents who faced similar issues could also be left in the dark on their kid’s troubles at school or on social media until it’s too late, he said.

“Who comes to Australia to expect his child to be killed by another child? Nobody,” he said.

“Who comes to Australia to allow his child to become a thief? Nobody.

“It is not the expectation, we come from a war torn country and our expectations when we are in Australia is for our children to succeed.”

He said many African parents shared the concerns of the mainstream Australian community and believed “that the violence is not acceptable”.

“The majority of the African parents do no support what is happening with young people,” Mr Chiengkou said.

“In fact they actually blame the system, they think the system is playing a part.

“because when a child committed a crime, he’s arrested, then he’s released only to commit another crime.

“The same child would be arrested how many times, 10 times. Why? Because the justice system have a different argument, the police have a different argument and the parents have no power.”

In his video, Mr Majok recalled friends who were going “off track” in their youths being sent back to South Sudan to reconnect with their roots and culture.

“Suddenly you remember why you’re in Australia in the first place,” he said.

“I’m not saying sending every troubled child overseas fixes everything. They need education, employment opportunity, tough parenting, (in) some cases intervention.

“Families should not surrender responsibility to the government … and then when it ends up in the courts or with the police, act surprised.”

Mr Majok moved to Australia as a refugee at the age of eight and settled in the Girrawheen area of Perth.

He said there were so many success stories for young people to look up to in the community, with South Sudanese Australians rising to the top of athletics, basketball, football, modelling, entertainment and corporate fields like lawyers and business.

“We have so much talent in our community. That’s what hurts me, we have so many people shining, but yet we’re allowing the small minority cast a shadow over the ones that are doing so well,” Mr Majok said.

“We cannot let that 1 per cent be the public face of the other 99. And to the young people doing this, you are not just ruining your own future.

“Every time your face ends up on the news, and African child that has had nothing to do with it gets looked at differently on the train, at school, at work or at the shopping centre.

“That’s not fair. But it is a reality that we deal with.”

His message to the wider community was it was fair to demand justice for criminals but that “collective punishment is not justice”.

“We need accountability from the young people committing these crimes, from the families, the community leaders, and the white Australian community,” he said.

“Our community has so much talent and so much to offer to allow such a small group of people to write our story for us.

“This is our house. It’s time to clean it up.”

‘Fake meetings’: Special Minister of State's office finds no evidence of Anika Wells meeting amid birthday party travel scandal | News24

A coroner has been brought to tears as she found the death of an eight-year-old girl at one of Melbourne’s busiest hospitals was preventable.

Amrita Lanka was just eight years old when she died at the Monash Children’s Hospital in 2022.

For her parents, it has been years of anguish.

“They just left her to die,” Amrita’s father Chandra Sekhar said.

The cause of death was lymphocytic myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle.

On Wednesday, Deputy State Coroner Paresa Spanos found it was preventable.

“While I accept (emergency departments) are busy places and Dr (Patrick) Tan was a relatively junior doctor with many responsibilities, the clinical management and care he provided to Amrita was wanting ... and thereby contributed to the death,” Paresa said.

Amrita had presented to the ED with nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

Doctors suspected gastroenteritis; inflammation of the stomach and small intestine.

At 3am, a new doctor reviewed Amrita. By then, her symptoms had worsened.

The registrar suspected myocarditis and further blood tests raised new concerns.

He thought they were “spurious” and he “did not think Amrita looked very unwell”, the coroner said.

Later, the young girl was moved into acute care where she suffered a brief cardiac arrest.

Before a proposed transfer to the Royal Children’s Hospital, she went into cardiac arrest again and could not be saved.

As the coroner read part of her mother’s impact statement, she was brought to tears.

She took a very long pause, needing to compose herself as she said Amrita was the most precious, talented, beautiful child.

Monash Health acknowledged the coroner’s findings and said it will “carefully consider them”.

It said that since Amrita’s death, it has since made changes.

Police arrested a knife-wielding man in central Footscray on Wednesday afternoon.

Officers were called to Byron Street at about 4.30pm on 14 October following reports that a man was threatening passers-by with a knife.

A 37-year-old man of no fixed address was arrested and later charged with possessing a controlled weapon and possessing methyl-amphetamine.

He was bailed with conditions to appear at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on 6 April 2027.

There were no reports of injuries to members of the public.

The theft of a cherished church bell from a South Australian regional township has been condemned by the local mayor, who says his community has been deprived of an irreplaceable "time capsule" from its past.

The brass bell was stolen from outside St Peters Anglican Church at Mallala some time this month, and is among a growing list of objects of historical and sentimental value that are believed to have been targeted by metal thieves across the state.

Recent thefts of plaques from two sites in suburban Adelaide — the Burnside District Fallen Soldiers' Memorial at Rose Park and The Gums Reserve War Memorial Garden at Tranmere — prompted a strong rebuke from the state government this week.

The thefts have led to calls from local councils for a crackdown on the black market for stolen metal.

Police are investigating the theft of the Mallala bell, which was on a stand outside the church's door and is believed to have been stolen between the afternoon of Friday, October 2 and the following Thursday evening.

Adelaide Plains Mayor Mark Wasley expressed support for stronger regulation of scrap metal sales and told 891 ABC Adelaide the bell was "pretty well irreplaceable".

"Things like this [bell] are part of the fabric of our communities and we've had memorials that have gone missing or actually been stolen over the period of time, but these memorials are like a living time capsule," he said.

"A plaque that you can see has been prised off a wall — the people who receive them, they must know."

Mr Wasley said it was "very disappointing" to learn of the bell's disappearance, saying its weight meant more than one person may have been involved in its theft.

"It's just unbelievable that someone would think to go there and remove it," he said.

He urged whoever had taken it to just "leave it on the doorstep at the church — we would be more than happy with that".

"For generations, the bell has marked important occasions including church services, weddings, funerals and community gatherings, making its loss deeply felt by parishioners and residents alike."

Mr Wasley said that, when he was a teenage member of the St Peters congregation, he had the duty of ringing the bell, which is estimated to be more than a century old.

Burnside Mayor Anne Monceaux this week described the loss of the plaques at the Rose Park memorial as "devastating" for the community.

"This is of course a month off of Remembrance Day where we do have a ceremony at this location to remember the fallen from World War I."

Councillor Lilian Henschke said while a small number of the items had been recovered, staff had since conducted a check on the number of missing plaques across the council area.

"Staff quickly found that there were 27 plaques missing through the whole City of Burnside, and nine of those — the most plaques stolen — were from this area, this avenue of honour, this very significant war memorial," she said.

"I'm calling for an audit of all of those scrap yards that don't have a licence."

In August, the bust of South Australian suffragist Mary Lee was taken from its plinth along North Terrace in Adelaide's CBD.

The SA government has introduced laws for a crackdown on the sale of stolen metal, through the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2025.

The Act is not expected to come into effect until 2028 — but Attorney-General Kyam Maher told ABC Radio this week the government was looking to accelerate the introduction of the laws targeting "idiots who would steal plaques [and] things commemorating others' sacrifice and achievement".

"We've seen this in different forms recently, with busts cut down on North Terrace — so if it can be sped up we would certainly look to do that," he said.

Harry De Ruiter from Daws Road Recycling supported calls for an audit of unlicensed yards, and said his family's business worked closely with police in cases of suspected theft.

"Something like a plaque would absolutely ring alarm bells on our end," he said.

"They're a new type of thing that they're stealing — a lot of builders nowadays have cameras up on sites, and alarms and stuff like that, so I guess these people have turned to the high value of brass at the moment.

Mr De Ruiter said care needed to be taken to ensure crackdowns did not discourage legitimate recycling.

"We support it on the high-value items like brass and catalytic converters and copper and the most stolen type of items," he said.

"But our fear is that if it expands out from that into other forms of scrap metal, it might deter people from bringing in their garden shed or their old fence."

A teenager accused of abducting a seven-year-old girl from her grandparents in Adelaide’s northern suburbs has been granted strict home detention bail days after a magistrate initially refused his release.

Barry-Peter Smith, 18, is accused of snatching the child from a pram while she was on her way home with her grandparents and sibling at Paralowie on October 5.

Police allege Smith watched the girl playing at a local park before following the family along Niven Dr.

He was charged with child abduction.

The court had previously heard he then allegedly grabbed the seven-year-old and ran off carrying her in his arms.

The child was allegedly released after a member of the public heard her grandparents screaming for help and intervened.

Smith appeared in court this week, where a magistrate ordered his release on strict home detention bail.

The court heard Smith has allegedly made admissions to “kidnapping”, but concerns were raised about his intellectual disability and his ability to remain in custody while the matter progresses through the courts.

Under his bail conditions, Smith is prohibited from undertaking child-related work and cannot go within 100 metres of a school or playground.

He is also banned from being near any person under the age of 18.

The decision comes little more than a week after Smith was initially refused bail, with the court at the time finding he remained a risk to the community.

The victim’s grandparents, Aurelia and Brian Bandt, previously told 7NEWS they were still struggling to come to terms with the incident.

“I was yelling ‘help’, I was screaming ‘help’,” Aurelia said.

Brian said a passerby stepped in and stopped the alleged abduction.

“They held their arms out to try and stop this guy which caused a bit of a panic, and they put the child down,” he said.

The grandparents have since told 7NEWS they have not felt safe going for walks since the incident.

Smith’s case is expected to return to court at a later date.

Anyone else feeling like the numbers today were pretty grim?

Unemployment is 4.7%, the highest in five years and about 39,000 jobs disappeared in September when economists were expecting a gain of around 20,000.

What bugs me is that this isn't the deal we were meant to get. Rates go up, jobs get a bit softer, inflation comes down. Instead we're getting the jobs hit and prices that won't budge. Headline CPI was 4.0% in August, trimmed mean is stuck at 3.6%, electricity is up 13.2% and the RBA has hiked four times this year to 4.60%, the highest since 2011.

And the RBA is kind of stuck. Hike again and you risk tipping more people out of work. Cut and inflation gets comfortable. Their own staff are even worried that weak productivity means we might have to live with higher unemployment to get inflation back to target. Interest rates can't fix productivity, that's a government job.

So that's why I think it's a fiscal problem now. Right now the RBA is carrying the whole load while the budget isn't helping. If the government is adding demand while the RBA is trying to cool it, they're pulling in opposite directions. Labor needs a proper budget repair plan: restraint where spending is feeding inflation, and real effort on housing supply and productivity, which is where a lot of the price pressure is coming from.

Because if people are paying more on their mortgage, paying more for power, and watching jobs go, they won't care about the economic theory. They'll just remember it at the next election. Labor is running out of time to show it has a plan.

Keen to hear what others think

The stunning 2km Bondi to Tamarama coastal walk in Sydney’s east has again been transformed into a giant sculpture park. This year’s Sculpture by the Sea marks 30 years since the first exhibition in 1997. It has grown to become known as the world’s largest free outdoor sculpture exhibition. Here’s a look back at some favourite pieces

The NAB Monthly Business Survey for September shows business confidence dropped four points, placing it among the weakest readings in the survey’s history outside the GFC and the Covid period.