‘Yes but I Hate You!’ Trump and Turnbull’s Explosive Phone Call | Nemesis

Feb 5, 2024 | Malcolm Turnbull describes his infamous call with Donald Trump over Australia's refugee swap deal as 'tough'

Growing Up Gay in the Country I The Feed | Reupload

Oct 6, 2014 | Ivan hasn’t been back to his rural hometown of Tumut NSW in 21 years. He left as a teenager after a childhood of bullying about his sexuality, and never looked back. Until now.

A Gay Farmer on Love, Isolation, and Disrupting the Meat Industry in Australia | The New Yorker | Reupload

Jun 9, 2021 | In “Alone Out Here,” by Philip Busfield and Luke Cornish, an Australian rancher who is openly gay in a conservative industry fights to reduce carbon emissions through his cattle farming.

Royal Countdown Begins as Princess Mary Is Crowned Queen of Denmark | 7 News Australia

Jan 14, 2024 | In just a few hours, the woman once known as Mary Donaldson, will become Queen of Denmark. Huge crowds are expected to gather in Copenhagen to watch the Hobart-born Crown Princess, and her Prince, take the throne. 7NEWS at 6pm. More local news: 7news.com.au/news/sydney

Australians Gather in Copenhagen to Assist Danes in Welcoming Denmark's New Monarchs

Jan 12, 2024 | Tens of thousands of people are expected to line the streets of Copenhagen to welcome Denmark’s new King and Queen as Australian-born Princess Mary will ascend to the throne alongside her husband Prince Frederik.

Amalienborg Castle, which is the royal residence, will see people from both Denmark and Australia brave the cold to catch a first glimpse of the new monarchs. The coronation party will then travel to Christiansborg Palace where they will ascend to the throne.

Australia’s Ambassador to Denmark Ms Kerin Ayyalaraju is preparing a gift for the royal couple as an acknowledgement to Princess Mary’s Tasmanian roots and is encouraging messages of support from Down Under.

The event will begin just after 11:30pm AEDT [Australian Eastern Standard Time] and 1:30pm in Copenhagen, capital city of Denmark

From a Sydney Pub to Denmark’s Royal Throne: Crown Princess Mary – A life in Pictures

Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark, visits the set of Danish TV Series The Killing in Copenhagen in 2012. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
A casual drink with friends heralded the beginning of a fairytale journey after Tasmanian real estate manager Mary Donaldson met Denmark’s Crown Prince Frederik. Here is a look at how her life was transformed after her marriage to Frederik, and on the eve of becoming Queen Mary
Click here for the picture gallery.

Australian Royal Crown Princess Mary to Be Queen

Jan 1, 2023 | More than 20 years after a chance meeting in a Sydney bar, Mary Donaldson will complete her journey from Tasmanian law student to queen of Denmark. Queen Margrethe II, unexpectedly announced that she would abdicate on January 14, at the age of 83.

How Australia’s Mary Donaldson went from commoner to Danish Queen: An unconventional journey from Australia’s middle class to European royalty began in an unremarkable bar in Sydney in 2000 »

King and Queen Plan to Visit Australia in 2024

THE TELEGRAPH: Public reaction to the visit could indicate the level of support for the monarchy in the country, where calls for republicanism are growing

The King and Queen are expected to travel to Australia and New Zealand in October CREDIT: Shutterstock
The King is planning to visit Australia next year in what is likely be a key test of his popularity as monarch, the Sydney Morning Herald has reported.

His Majesty, accompanied by the Queen, is expected to travel to Australia just before or after the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa, which is being held in late October.

“King Charles is planning to visit Australia and New Zealand in October,” the newspaper reported, quoting an anonymous diplomatic source, who had contact with the monarch. » | Roger Maynard in Sydney | Tuesday, December 5, 2023

When I saw this photograph, I was reminded of my childhood: I was reminded of the nursery rhyme, Old King Cole was a merry old soul. And a merry old soul was he. …

As much as I respect our monarchy and our king and queen, I must say that that photo looks rather anachronistic in 2023.

Still, having a respected monarch is a whole lot safer and better than having a republic. Were we to have a republic, we could end up with a president like Trump! Just imagine that! Perish the thought! – © Mark Alexander

Australian PM Called Thatcher a ‘F------ B----’ in Angry Phone Call

THE TELEGRAPH: The two leaders were at loggerheads over British and Irish Lions tour to apartheid South Africa until Mrs Thatcher withdrew the team

Margaret Thatcher and Bob Hawke were said to have a 'love-hate relationship' CREDIT: Getty Images
A former Australian prime minister called Margaret Thatcher a “f------ b----” during an angry phone call about the British and Irish Lions tour in 1986, a new memoir claims.

Bob Hawke, the Labour prime minister from 1983 to 1991, contacted his British counterpart to persuade her to call off the rugby tour in South Africa in protest against apartheid.

John Brown, the former Australian sports minister, has said in his new memoir that the conversation proceeded on diplomatic lines for about 10 minutes when “suddenly the mood changed”.

“Thatcher had popularised the expression ‘the lady is not for turning’ and she was obviously determined to maintain her stance supporting South Africa,” he recalled.

“I could see Bob, as I had seen him many times before, becoming agitated and angry. Eventually he reached the limit of his patience,” Mr Brown wrote. » | Roger Maynard | Friday, December 8, 2023

Antisemitic and Islamophobic Incidents Surge in Australia

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Tensions between religious groups in Australia have risen since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

Posters plastered across Sydney portraying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as Adolf Hitler in disguise. A record increase in reports of Islamophobia, including threats to Muslim community organizations. Antisemitic chants at a pro-Palestinian rally and charges that Nazi salutes were performed outside a Jewish museum.

Australia has experienced a flurry of incidents targeting Muslims and Jews, making it one of many countries reporting a rise in such cases since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.

Reports to the Islamophobia Register Australia, an independent organization that tracks anti-Muslim sentiment, have increased tenfold since the start of the war, Sharara Attai, the executive director of the group, told an Australian news service, adding that many more incidents have likely gone unreported.

Interfaith relations have become strained, with at least two Australian rabbis resigning last month from the Jewish Muslim Christian Association, a group that works to promote religious harmony, after some faith leaders failed to condemn the Hamas attacks, which killed some 1,400 people in Israel. Members of the country’s roughly 100,000-strong Jewish community have been left feeling isolated, representatives said, over a perceived absence of sympathy for the suffering caused by the attacks. » | Natasha Frost | Monday, November 6, 2023

L'ANTISÉMITISME EN FRANCE :

Refuser la banalisation de l’antisémitisme : Depuis le 7 octobre, les juifs français sont confrontés à une multiplication des agressions et des actes de haine. Mais ce phénomène n’est pas uniquement lié à une nouvelle explosion du conflit au Proche-Orient : en réalité, l’antisémitisme, sous ses différents visages, s’est installé dans notre société. »

Victorian Neo-Nazis under Police Investigation over Alleged Salute for TV Cameras

GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA: Investigation into Thomas Sewell and Jacob Hersant comes a week after new laws took effect in Victoria outlawing the Nazi salute

Victorian police are investigating a man who allegedly made a Nazi salute on the steps of the county court on Friday, just a week after the gesture was made illegal in the state.

Neo-Nazi group leaders Thomas Sewell and Jacob Hersant were convicted on Friday after pleading guilty to a violent affray in the Cathedral Range state park in May 2021.

The pair were being interviewed by reporters outside court, when footage shows Sewell saying “heil Hitler” and Hersant raising his arm in an alleged Nazi salute before stopping and saying “Nearly did it … it’s illegal now isn’t it?”. He then smiles as the pair walk off.

A spokesperson for Victoria Police said on Friday the incident was now under investigation. » | Josh Taylor | Saturday, October 28, 2023

Australia Rejects Proposal to Recognise Aboriginal People in Constitution

THE OBSERVER: Voice to parliament referendum fails in defeat that Indigenous advocates will see as a blow to progress towards reconciliation

Australians have resoundingly rejected a proposal to recognise Aboriginal people in the country’s constitution and establish a body to advise parliament on Indigenous issues.

Saturday’s voice to parliament referendum failed, with the defeat clear shortly after polls closed.

To succeed, the yes campaign – advocating for the voice – needed to secure a double majority, meaning it needed both a majority of the national vote, as well as majorities in four of Australia’s six states.

The defeat will be seen by Indigenous advocates as a blow to what has been a hard fought struggle to progress reconciliation and recognition in modern Australia, with First Nations people continuing to suffer discrimination, poorer health and economic outcomes.

More than 17 million Australians were enrolled for the compulsory vote, with many expats visiting embassies around the world in the weeks leading up to Saturday’s poll.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, called for Australians to show “kindness” to each other after the referendum. (+ video) » | Elias Visontay | Saturday, October 4, 2023

Albanese wanted to end two centuries of silence, but we said no – and failed our First Nations people: The prime minister thought that with the voice he could bend the country towards progress without breaking it. Peter Dutton made sure he couldn’t »

Australian voice referendum live results »

Pro-Palestine Protesters Chant 'Gas the Jews' Outside Sydney Opera House

THE TELEGRAPH: Small group lights flares and chants anti-Semitic slogans in unverified footage of the scene

Around 1,000 pro-Palestinian supporters marched through downtown Sydney on Monday evening to the city’s iconic Opera House CREDIT: Dean Lewins/AAP
Australian police are investigating a pro-Palestinian protest outside the Sydney Opera House, after footage emerged of a small group appearing to chant anti-Semitic slogans at the demonstration.

Around 1,000 pro-Palestinian supporters marched through central Sydney on Monday evening to the city’s Opera House, which the government had illuminated in the colours of the Israeli flag following Saturday’s attacks by Hamas.

More than 900 Israelis were killed in the attacks, Israel reports. Meanwhile, Gaza’s health ministry said at least 687 Palestinians had been killed in Israeli retaliatory air strikes.

Unverified footage shared by the Australian Jewish Association and featured on Sky News appeared to show a small group outside the Opera House lighting flares and chanting “gas the Jews”. » | Telegraph’s Foreign Staff | Tuesday, October 10, 2023

As El Niño Arrives, Australian Region Sees ‘Catastrophic’ Fire Conditions

THE NEW YORK TIMES: The authorities ordered school closures on the south coast of New South Wales, where springtime temperatures were expected to near 100 degrees.

A controlled burn in Sydney, Australia, this month. The area is experiencing temperatures far above normal. | Cordelia Hsu/Reuters
Less than three weeks after the official start of spring in Australia, temperatures in many towns have set records, some as high as 60 degrees above normal. Ski resorts have closed weeks ahead of schedule. At the Sydney Marathon over the weekend, dozens of people were hospitalized after running in a heat wave.

On Tuesday, the authorities said the state of New South Wales was experiencing “catastrophic” fire conditions on its southern coast, with high winds and temperatures approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit. They ordered 20 schools to close and residents in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, not to light fires outdoors. Firefighters were already battling dozens of blazes across the country.

And in a possible omen for the months ahead, they also officially declared the arrival of the El Niño weather pattern, heralding the first hot and dry summer in the continent in three years.

Australia is bracing for a particularly dangerous fire season four years after the deadly Black Summer, when wildfires killed or were blamed for the deaths of nearly 500 people and scorched more than 60 million acres. The previous few seasons have had cooler and wetter La Niña conditions. » | Yan Zhuang, Reporting from Sydney, Australia | Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Australia Bans More Single-use Plastics - BBC News

Sep 1, 2023 | Australia has introduced a ban on thick plastic shopping bags and mass balloon releases to cut down on single-use plastics. Authorities in three states are also banning a range of products including plastic cotton buds.

Conservationists have said that Australia has become a world leader in banning single-use plastics. Scientists say that more than 171 trillion pieces of plastics are estimated to be floating in the world's oceans.

‘Robinson Crusoe-style Living’: The Australians Turning to Private Islands

THE GUARDIAN: Sale of Temple Island on the Great Barrier Reef for $1.75m reflects trend towards Australians seeking isolation and pristine environments

Temple Island, off the coast of Queensland on the Great Barrier Reef, is up for sale for the third time in 40 years, amid increased interest in the purchase of private islands. Photograph: Richard Vanhoff/Private Islands Online
The way Bill and Barbara Collyer tell it, a private island is just about the best place to raise a family. The middle-income couple (Barbara is a public servant and Bill is a Queensland University of Technology lecturer) bought their own slice of paradise in 1985 after seeing a tiny ad in the Courier Mail listing the island for $120,000. They held on to Temple Island for 30 years.

Now a new family has a chance to buy, with the island near Mackay put up for sale again – although it will set buyers back $1.75m.

“We went there every school holidays,” Barbara says. “It was a great place. The kids just would run wild, you know, they all learned to fish and swim and drive cars.

“It was just the isolation and, you know, being able to do your own thing. We would get a shock if someone pulled up in a boat on the beach.” » | Andrew Messenger | Thursday, August 31, 2023

Australia’s Internet Providers Are Ditching Email, to the Disgust of Older Customers

THE GUARDIAN: ‘This screws us royally,’ says one disgruntled iiNet user as internet service providers such as Telstra and TPG curtail email accounts for customers

After 30 years, Simon* is facing the prospect of moving.

“I think we’ve been using their products since we built the house,” he says. “We’ve gone through dial-up and then eventually there was an ADSL connection.”

The Canberra-based iiNet customer has had the same email address since the 1990s. For millennials and younger, the notion of getting your email address from the company you pay for broadband might seem antiquated. Free online services such as Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook and others not tied to the internet provider are the default. It is now not uncommon for someone to set up their own email address in a domain of their choosing.

But in the nascent days of the internet before Google and Microsoft were the online internet behemoths, getting your email address from your internet service provider was the norm, and even attractive as a bundle package – and a way for internet providers to lock you into their service.

The cost for relatively small – by comparison to Google – companies to offer the service has gone up in server and administration costs without the economies of scale. » | Josh Taylor | Saturday, August 19, 2023

‘Avalanche’ of Demand for Nazi Artefacts ahead of Australian Ban on Sale of Hate Symbols

THE GUARDIAN: Jewish groups decry ‘vomit-inducing’ frenzy of auctions before impending law change that will also prohibit public display of items

Sellers says collectors, not neo-Nazis, buy their memorabilia, but the rush of sales has been condemned as a ‘twisted obsession’ by the Anti-Defamation Commission. Photograph: Invaluable auction house
Australian militaria shops say there is an “avalanche” of demand for Nazi artefacts in anticipation of an impending ban on the sale of Nazi symbols.

A bill introduced to federal parliament in mid-June will ban the public display and sale of Nazi symbols, making it an offence to seek to profit from such material in stores or online. It will not ban private ownership or transfers of artefacts that are not for profit.

Sellers say the bill has prompted a frenzy of buying and selling, with signed pictures of Hitler, Himmler and Rommel sold at an auction last weekend on the Gold Coast. » | Mostafa Rachwani | Friday, June 23, 2023

Winning bidders of ‘despicable’ Nazi memorabilia urged to donate items to Sydney Jewish Museum: SS paraphernalia and an album of 500 photos from concentration camps which sold for $25,000 among items at Queensland auction »

Northern Ireland sale of Hitler memorabilia to go ahead despite outcry: Bloomfield Auctions rejects accusations it is acting immorally and insulting the memory of Nazis’ victims »

China’s Illegal Police Stations in 53 Countries around the World | 60 Minutes Australia

Jun 18, 2023 | It’s well known that China won’t stand for any criticism. There, opponents of the communist regime are simply not tolerated. But it seems Beijing now thinks it also has the right to ignore international borders and silence dissent anywhere it sees fit. Around the world it’s setting up illegal outposts called “Chinese Overseas Police Service Stations”, and as the name implies, the objective of these offices is clear. Our law enforcement agencies deny there are any of these stations in Australia, even though Chinese authorities openly publicise their existence.

But as Tara Brown reports in a special 60 MINUTES investigation, that’s not the end of the intimidation. China is also using disgraceful new tactics to target Australians who dare to speak out.

Australia to Ban Recreational Vaping - BBC News

May 30, 2023 | Australia is set to ban recreational vaping as part of major crackdown amid what experts say is an "epidemic". This means that vape products can only be sold with a prescription. New measures will have to be passed by Parliament before becoming law. However, there are fears that the ban will fuel a black market.

Disposable vapes should be banned to protect children, UK paediatricians say: Single-use e-cigarettes growing in popularity among young people despite unknown health effects and environmental impact »

Why am I not surprised? Governments have created this problem with their relentless war on tobacco and smoking. One can but shake one’s head. – © Mark Alexander