Recently, you might have heard about various controversies at the ABC involving the replacement of its news director, and also about Four Corners and its reporter Mahmood Fazal.

There’s been much innuendo flying around, and backgrounding of journalists by senior sources from the ABC, especially about Fazal. The reporter, who was sacked by the ABC in May, has been pursued relentlessly across the media for months now, accompanied by pictures of him looking menacing on front pages everywhere. But if you can’t quite figure out what the actual allegations are, you’re not alone.

I’m not going to recap the whole saga, but I do want to point out a couple of things, because I believe they’ve been missed or ignored in the broader coverage. And I need to make a disclosure here: I know Mahmood; I’ve worked with him, I’ve commissioned him, and I think he’s a very good journalist.

Mahmood Fazal was a Four Corners reporter, and before that he worked in other ABC positions and freelance roles, and earlier he was employed by Vice. And unfortunately the recent episode isn’t the first time he’s been smeared on the basis of things which amounted, in the end, to very little. For example, a series of text messages allegedly written by Fazal were blasted across the front page of the Nine papers – when there was no proof that they were real, and despite Fazal informing the paper that they were false. The messages were provided to the Nine papers by a serial fraud, technical analysis suggested they were fraudulent, and they always read as fake to me. In another case, Fazal was harangued by the Nine papers for warning a journalist/influencer of serious physical threats against him by a criminal gang (which were, based on past evidence, well-founded). Did they believe Fazal shouldn’t have passed on the warning? Or that he should have risked his own safety, and that of the threat’s target, by publicly exposing it? Their articles implied that he was complicit.

The coverage this time has become a particularly dangerous pile-on. The ABC Ombudsman is currently conducting an independent review of whether the Four Corners programs complied with the ABC’s editorial standards. But while investigation is ongoing, Mahmood Fazal is apparently guilty until proven innocent.

Two episodes of Fazal’s Four Corners and one of his Background Briefings have been withdrawn. This is before any actual findings. In a strange and unprecedented move, the episodes have been removed pre-emptively with the reported speculative reasons being leaked to the press to paint a negative picture about his reporting. The allegations involve confidential sources, whose identities have now been exposed, and who may or may not have been what they appeared to be.

If you can’t see the problem yet, let me explain: when a journalist uses a confidential source, there is a moral contract not to reveal their identity to the public – for their own protection. In the case of the ABC and Four Corners, a journalist and their managers will assess the veracity of the source and proceed on the basis of this assessment. From this point, the media outlet is also obliged to protect that source.

In cases involving Fazal, media outlets including the ABC itself have now leaked the identities of two of his confidential sources – without proving anything about anyone, other than that their sources’ stories may have changed in the interim.

Confidential sources do change their stories when their identity is exposed. They can have various accounts of their actions, especially if they involve illegality. They can do more than one thing, and they can make bad decisions. They can also move in and out of criminality. That’s life.

Media Watch, when discussing the issue in its recent episode, exposed the identity of one of Fazal’s formerly confidential sources. In revealing that her story had changed, the show was suggesting that Fazal’s reporting had been duplicitous, or fabricated. It implied even though this source had clearly spun different stories in the past, she was now telling them the truth. The same source has since slammed Media Watch over how it dealt with her. She has reportedly also lodged a formal complaint with the ABC Ombudsman. “You did not need to name (me),” she said on Instagram. What (Media Watch) did, she alleges, “is use me as a scapegoat”.

Did Media Watch expect the confidential source – whose name and face they broadcast – to admit on national television, or earlier on TikTok, that she had been a coke dealer?

I would trust the journalist who had been carefully cultivating his sources, checking claims, running them past his superiors and getting their approval, et cetera, over someone making a couple of calls to a source they’ve never met and are about to expose. Documents I have seen from ABC sources indicate that the legal department and senior managers had approved the use of Fazal’s sources and the manner in which they were filmed; they had been briefed on the extensive research that had gone into the story and were satisfied for it to proceed. If anything, they were more concerned about the police response, and did not want to expose themselves to certain details about the sources (to limit their own liability from charges they might be concealing knowledge about, or failing to report, serious offences).

If Fazal, as a new journalist at Four Corners, made any mistakes in his first episodes, he did it with the approval and oversight of his managers at the ABC. They had responsibility over what they aired.

Four Corners’ executive producer during this period, Matthew Carney, is on the record stating “Mahmood Fazal’s stories were all subjected to the Four Corners’ rigorous fact check, verification and legal processes. The identities of anonymous interviewees were independently verified with multiple sources before they were published. Those verifications came from policing and law enforcement bodies, as well as court records and court evidence such as phone taps.”

So what changed? In recent months, amid other political machinations at the ABC, unsourced accounts of alleged improprieties in Fazal’s reporting started leaking out of the ABC. Ironically, this scapegoating was done under the guise of protecting the reputations of the ABC and Four Corners. It had the opposite effect.

The ABC people behind this campaign are playing a dangerous game. In fact they are risking all of their future confidential sources. In 2023, ABC management gave up confidential footage of Woodside protesters to the police to prosecute them. If anyone is promised anonymity by the ABC, they’ll have to weigh up the fact that it’s apparently conditional.

Exposing sources doesn’t just defy basic journalistic norms. Exposing them in the way the ABC has done also contravenes the ABC’s own editorial policies. Its guidance notes relating specifically to anonymous sources requires management to approve their use, and also lists the specific steps that must be undertaken before their identity is exposed. These do not appear to have been followed. (Presumably the ABC Ombudsman will now investigate Media Watch’s alleged breach of ABC editorial standards.)

This leads me to the other injustice of this situation: all of the editorial managers involved in Fazal’s stories have since left – and not necessarily because of this controversy. So there’s literally no-one left to defend the journalist, the journalism, or explain the decisions made in the making of these programs. There is, however, a document trail – which an independent investigation must consider.

I suspect the new ABC managing director Hugh Marks and chair Kim Williams are using this situation to justify running a broom through the senior news management, and perhaps this is why we’re not hearing any public defence of some basic journalistic principles. Staff and former staff are remaining mostly silent while the allegations, rumours and innuendo spread.

What seems to have been forgotten in all this is that the ABC has a duty to defend both its employees and their sources until there is a proven reason not to.

This isn’t the first time the ABC has hung a staffer out to dry. Stan Grant, Nour Haydar, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Antoinette Lattouf, Sami Shah and many others from diverse backgrounds have left the national broadcaster in recent years due to a lack of support, or were pushed out. People need to think seriously about this problem.

Fazal has never made any secret of the fact that he came from a background different from the ABC norm. He grew up around crime figures, and had been involved with them as a young adult. The ABC knew this, and hired him anyway, believing in his reporting. He had worked hard to establish himself as a journalist. He would bring a different perspective. Apparently they don’t want that anymore.

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Anna Funder on AI’s breach of copyright and theft of art

Anna Funder is the acclaimed Australian author behind award-winning books Stasiland and All That I Am, and her most recent Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell’s Invisible Life.

Recently she travelled to Canberra with a group of other artists, writers and musicians to lobby MPs that their work had been stolen and ingested into AI computer programs without consent or payment, and in breach of copyright.

I spoke to Anna about the impact of big tech’s theft on Australian artists, and what should be done about it.

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Jayson Gillham on speaking up for Palestine and his case against the MSO

Earlier this year, acclaimed Australian concert pianist Jayson Gillham sued the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for unlawful discrimination over their cancelling of a concert he was set to perform in August 2024 following his dedication of a solo piece to journalists in Gaza who had been targeted and killed by Israel.

This month, Jayson lost his case as a Justice rejected his contention that the MSO took “adverse actions” against him because of his statements.

I sat down to talk with him about the role of artists during political upheaval; speaking up about Palestine, the fallout of his trial and verdict, and his upcoming tour.

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First Dog on the Moon on finding humour in the miserable state of the world

First Dog on the Moon is a Walkley-Award winning political cartoonist at The Guardian, as well as a book illustrator and public performer. He has described his politics as “anarcho-marsupialist”.

We chatted about the state of political satire in Australia, the legacy of Australian political cartooning compared to political journalism, the rise of One Nation, and the editorial freedoms afforded by the cartoon form.

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Dr Alan Pearce on the terrible toll of head injuries in the AFL

Following the recent Four Corners episode on concussion in the AFL, Dr Alan Pearce wrote in the Conversation that the crisis of long-term brain damage in Australian rules footballers may be deepening.

There’s been an increasing number of diagnosed cases of CTE - chronic traumatic encephalopathy - in brains donated to the Australian Sports Brain Bank, and a concerning proportion of donated brains come from cases of suicide, some of whom are disturbingly young.

In this interview he explains the little-understood risk to AFL players, both professional and non-professional, from head injuries.

Dr Alan Pearce PhD is an Adjunct Professor at Swinburne University and a neurophysiologist whose primary research focus is on sports-related concussion. His research centres on brain physiology to quantify cognitive and motor impairments post-concussion, and he is regarded internationally for his research.

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The second appearance of Jillian Segal marked a nadir for the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, and the best example yet of the deep confusion of the commission’s objectives. If the royal commission was set up to examine the antisemitism that led to the Bondi attack, why had it become a platform for an evidence-free attack on the public broadcasters and their coverage of Israel?

In her testimony, Segal couldn’t name a single example of antisemitism in ABC or SBS coverage of Israel, let alone in any local stories. Instead, she relayed anecdotal generalities held by her “stakeholders”, the pro-Israel majority of the local Jewish community. She mounted vague accusations that the public broadcasters had created a “negative impression” of Israel in their Gaza coverage, which she then parleyed into “perceptions” of antisemitism.

While purporting to address this antisemitism, Segal instead used her privileged position to make a series of wild and unsupported claims about the ABC and SBS. It was the coverage of Israel’s actions in Gaza and Middle East that had created the negative impression about Israel, she suggested. (The senior counsel assisting, Richard Lancaster SC, unfortunately didn’t ask whether Israel’s genocide in Gaza might also have contributed to this impression.)

For all of Segal’s assertions about how the local Jewish community was being conflated with the state of Israel and blamed for Israel’s action, it was her testimony that insisted on the link between them, as if any criticism of Israel’s actions constituted antisemitism. The counsel assisting, keen to understand what she meant by an “anti-Israel perspective”, asked Segal whether something that’s “critical of Israel’s actions” was anti-Israel? It was, she said.

This is absurd. Imagine trying to argue that any criticisms of Trump’s proposed invasion of Greenland or the ICE killings in Minnesota were anti-American. Or that criticism of Russia’s invasion was prejudiced and racist. Is any nation’s conduct beyond criticism?

Time and again, Segal failed to provide genuine examples of bias by the national broadcasters. In one case, she spoke of a BBC report picked up by the ABC that erroneously stated that 14,000 Gazan babies would die in the next 48 hours as a result of acute malnutrition, when aid was being withheld by Israel. The BBC corrected its report, saying that while acutely malnourished babies could die within days, it was inaccurate to suggest that all 14,000 babies would die in this timeframe. The UN agency estimated that 14,000 babies would be acutely malnourished over the coming 11 months, and that they were at risk of dying. The ABC reported the BBC’s original version in the morning, and corrected it by 4pm the same day. This was not quick enough for Segal, who used this as a key example of the ABC creating a negative impression of Israel.

The ABC ombudsman looked into the episode and noted that it breached editorial standards. But it was not an example of bias: it was an inaccuracy which was corrected, logged and investigated. It beggars belief that Segal would present this an example. Thousands of babies were at risk of starving to death in Gaza as food was withheld by Israel, but no, it was the ABC that was responsible for any negative impression of Israel – by misreporting the estimated rate of starvation.

“Do you accept that the incident doesn’t suggest a lack of balance by the ABC?,” asked counsel assisting. Segal replied that the issue of balance was complicated and needed to occur across the quantum of stories on an issue. She then suggested, “if you wanted balance after that negative story, should there have been a very positive story about what was being done positively in the Middle East to feed children?” This is ludicrous, implying that the doctrine of balance requires that if the media report something, they must also report its opposite. (EXCLUSIVE: The hospitals Israel ISN’T bombing! Plus breaking news on the snipers’ bullets not found in children’s skulls.)

Yet the counsel assisting moved straight on. Perhaps he believed Segal had adequately exposed her own flawed logic.

Segal then attested that the Gaza death toll had been “grossly inflated” in SBS coverage, claiming that the figure of 70,000 dead was put out by the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry and had been rejected by the UN. This is completely untrue: the UN has accepted this figure, and so has the IDF. It is in fact widely believed to be a conservative estimate; esteemed medical journal Lancet published much higher figures, while other experts put the number of deaths in Gaza as high as 680,000.

That Segal, the government’s official envoy, would present false material and bad-faith arguments to a royal commission is disturbing, but it also draws attention to deeper flaws in the commission. A royal commission is set up to inquire but surely also to test evidence, yet the weeks of hearings so far have been dominated by partisan voices whose testimonies have been widely accepted and transmitted, unchallenged as unvarnished truth. Newspaper headlines after Segal’s appearance proved how easy it is to exploit the royal commission’s hearings for political purposes (“Shock claims about ABC’s Gaza coverage”; “Segal: The ABC should not be marking its own homework”).

Reviews of editorial practices and public complaints to the ABC about the Israel/Gaza issue, by both the Australian Communications and Media Authority and the ABC Ombudsman’s Office, have found no examples of antisemitism in the national broadcaster’s coverage – nor have any examples from SBS coverage been identified. This didn’t bother Segal. On the contrary, it apparently proved her underlying assertion – they must be incapable of overseeing editorial standards. Her suggestion was that a new oversight body was required, which rather undermines any claims to independence. The most trusted news organisations in the country should be overseen by a board proposed by a partisan lobbyist with no media experience, apparently.

It’s worth pointing out that the ABC is, if anything, insufficiently critical of Israel, and often avoids the sort of language it commonly uses in other circumstances. It still avoids the use of the word genocide in its coverage, despite major human rights groups, the specialist UN committee and genocide scholars being unequivocal about it. The ABC rarely describes the war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers or its leaders as war crimes; it rarely refers to the ICC’s arrest warrant against alleged war criminal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; it rarely describes the invasion of Lebanon as an illegal invasion, or the illegal stealing of land in the West Bank as such. Policies of starvation, arbitrary imprisonment, the targeting of children and the deliberate destruction of the conditions of life in Gaza are barely commented upon, let alone condemned.

Let’s return to this fact, though: the royal commission was called as a result of the Bondi massacre. In January, I asked “How could a royal commission investigate the influence of antisemitism in this case without examining the motives and actions of the accused? Or are we to believe the commission could closely examine the Bondi massacre and make conclusions about underlying motivations without looking into the circumstances and beliefs of the actual perpetrator? In this case, it would be looking at everything but the most salient facts.” And so it has transpired. The royal commission has become a political project unmoored from the Bondi massacre.

The relationship between antisemitism and criticism of Israel is obviously a vexed one, and the distressing experiences of genuine antisemitism described in the royal commission cannot be ignored or glossed over. But it is rank hypocrisy for Segal to complain about people conflating them while driving a single-minded campaign to undermine the independence of Australian cultural institutions in order to dictate what constitutes freedom of expression about Israel.

Antisemitism has undoubtedly risen since the October 7 attacks by Hamas. So too have genuine and fair criticisms of Israel.

Don Watson on America’s storied history and strange present

On July 4, 1776, 250 years ago this week, the Continental Congress in America officially adopted the Declaration of Independence, which severed the 13 American colonies from Great Britain, and established the United States of America as an independent sovereign nation.

To mark the 250th anniversary, I speak to Don Watson, author of American Journeys and The Shortest History of the United States of America, about the contradictions and dynamics that created the nation we know today – and where it is headed under Trump.

“You can’t deny that the real miracle is that out of these 13 fractious colonies they created a republic and it survived for 250 years. These men, for all their hypocrisy, were bloody geniuses – and how they did it really puts to shame a hell of a lot of democratic efforts since.”

“Don’t underestimate the thrilling nature of Trump to his constituency; to hear him tearing into all those things which had long been the glue of America excited people in a classically – shall we say – fascist way.”

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The children left behind by Australian sex tourists in the Philippines

In 2015, author and journalist Margaret Simons and photojournalist Dave Tacon published their investigative essay Fallen Angels on the children of Australian sex tourists who’d been abandoned to live in poverty in the Philippines. The Walkley Award-winning essay has since led to the establishment of a charity to support those children and their families.

I spoke to Margaret about what originally drew her to the story, her first experiences visiting the Philippines, her ongoing journalism and efforts to track down the fathers, her charity providing welfare support to the children and their mothers, and the ethics of her decision to get involved.

More information about Margaret’s charity project can be found here.

“There was a particular little girl, who in the story I call Merrill, who had an Australian father who was refusing to acknowledge her of support her in any way, and she was living in dire poverty and begging in shopping centres … we very quickly realised that Merrill was one of many, many, many, many kids with foreign fathers”.

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Senator Barb Pocock on the KPMG scandal

The Greens have referred KPMG to the National Anti-Corruption Commission for suspected corruption breaches, in the wake of recent allegations that KPMG has been misusing confidential client information to get more audit work, and also mistreating a whistleblower from inside the company.

Greens finance and public service spokesperson Senator Barbara Pocock tells me why KPMG needs to be held accountable, and how the government must overcome its dangerous over-reliance on KPMG and other big consulting firms such as PWC.

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Peter Garrett On AUKUS

Australia’s AUKUS submarine deal is reportedly costing the country more than $350 billion, and continues to be shrouded in secrecy. Musician, environmentalist and former Labor minister Peter Garrett is leading a new public inquiry into the deal.

In this interview he unpacks the lack of parliamentary scrutiny that has necessitated the inquiry, the viability of AUKUS for Australia’s security in a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape, what the inquiry has revealed so far, and what we can expect next.

More information can be found at at the AUKUS Public Inquiry website here.

“All of the signs point to significant and extreme difficulties in actually having these submarines delivered at all … The point is that the Australian public have a massive stake in this; they’ll have to pay for it, if it turns out to be something which is not going to meet and fulfil the legitimate defence needs of the country then they’ll bare the consequences for that. As much as anything else, a public inquiry allows the opportunity for people to be heard, as they should in a democracy.”

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A reckless, corporatised council and a management that cooked its own books to enable the mass sacking of staff jobs are just some of the breathtaking revelations in the auditor’s report into the Australian National University’s (ANU) financial management

In its sober and objective way, the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) report lays bare the ANU council’s disastrous cost-cutting program known as Renew ANU, as well as the numerous issues with the council itself, which was chaired by Chancellor Julie Bishop.

News outlets have previously reported on the catastrophic Renew ANU, with accusations of bullying trailing Bishop in the wake of the mess, and the whole scandal leading to her recent departure. It also caused the resignations of several other council members, and of Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell, who stepped down in September 2025 – not to mention the hundreds of staff forced out in the executive blood-letting. But the ANAO report also provides the clearest picture yet of the governance problems and managerial bastardry that plagued ANU, versions of which also threaten the university sector more generally.

The report found that the ANU Council approved the $250 million Renew ANU program (with its savings target of 16.5% of total expenditure) “without clear evidence it was needed, achievable, urgently required, or likely to have the intended impact”.

It found that the ANU had possessed strong overall financial health in recent years, on measures like audited net operating results, credit ratings and net assets, while acknowledging a trend of declining average five-year surpluses.

Concern about financial sustainability is common across our universities, due to constraints on public funding and a reliance on international and other full-fee paying students. These pressures are undeniably affecting the educational experience of students and the satisfaction of staff. Nevertheless, our largest universities, now run like large corporations, are fundamentally wealthy organisations with billions each in assets. The ANU is no exception. Like any large institution, its long-term sustainability requires active management, but according to the ANAO it did not face any immediate financial crisis.

The ANU Council, responsible for the entire control and management of the university, “approved Renew ANU without a clear understanding of the problem, the options available, implementation risks, or the expected impact of the program on the university’s purpose, financial sustainability, and people”.

The council’s decision-making on Renew ANU, which largely rested on staff cuts, should have considered “additional information, options, and perspectives, including alternative ways to address identified financial problems”.

What went wrong at ANU?

The ANAO analysis revealed that in the years 2023, 2024 and 2025, ANU management diverged from standard auditing practices and in doing so altered the university’s underlying operating results and forecasts. The financials presented to the council were much worse than the properly audited figures, and subsequently were used to justify a radical cost-cutting program. Then, instead of consulting with critical stakeholders such as staff and students, ANU employed a private consultancy to help design the cure to these self-generated and overstated financial woes.

The ANAO found that in 2023 ANU made a series of variations to its reporting of investment returns, which influenced the reported financials significantly. Damningly, the report said “there is no approved documented basis for one-off adjustments to ensure reporting validity or consistency”. The motivation for the accounting trickery seemed intended only to justify the cost-cutting.

There was no urgent problem with the university’s finances. Government funding for ANU had fallen 24.4 per cent (in real terms) between 2006 and 2024, and this had forced a greater reliance on student fees. But while these didn’t cover the shortfall (of around 25 per cent since 2020), the gap was filled by investment income, consultancy and contracts, and other income drawn from the ANU’s $6 billion asset base.

The ANU has an AA+ credit rating. Its staffing bill was in line with other major universities. From the audited financial results of the past five years, the ANAO reported that the ANU had large average surpluses from 2020-2025, albeit with some Covid-related dips in 2020 and 2022.

The ANU council itself was partly at fault for some underlying risks though: it lacked mechanisms to control spending when the financial shock of the pandemic occurred, and didn’t do a great job of introducing financial management improvements in the aftermath either.

One alarming fact buried in the ANAO report is that the biggest financial hit borne by the university during Covid was not from the reduction in student fees (which fell around $32m in 2020) but from the fall in ANU’s investment earnings (around $172m in 2020).

Yet instead of acknowledging and addressing the real source of these unusual weak results, or accepting that the pandemic’s effects were not structural and instead the result of an isolated event, the ANU council embarked on an organisational restructure aimed at cutting costs, especially from staff. From January to April 2024, the university executive sought external advice on ANU’s business model, and consultant Nous was contracted. The measures proposed did not focus on changes to investment losses and financial risk management. They targeted employment expenses ($100m), with a further $150m to then be identified by an Expenditure Taskforce.

The staff union estimated Renew ANU would cost 650 jobs.

Bizarrely, according to the auditor’s report the ANU’s own analysis suggested that $250 million in savings “would not be achievable”, yet “no adjustment to the savings target or timeline was considered or made.” Furthermore, Renew ANU “only addressed one of the pressures and conditions faced by ANU between 2020 and 2024, namely overspending, and did not address lack of enrolment growth and poor financial management.”

The fallout

In the face of executive attack and a lack of consultation, academic staff were confused, furious, and losing their jobs. Council members resigned amid the furore, criticism was discouraged, and matters were made worse by accusations involving Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell.

“The Australian National University keeps making headlines for all the wrong reasons,” Julie Hare wrote in the AFR in March 2025. “Vice chancellor Genevieve Bell faced calls to resign, less than a year into her tenure, for having a second job at Intel; she came under pressure over her management of pro-Palestinian protests on campus; then it emerged that Bell’s boss, chancellor Julie Bishop, racked up $150,000 on travel and has been hiring her business partner to write speeches for ANU events.”

Amid the Renew ANU cuts, one school at ANU appeared “immune from the maelstrom: the School of Cybernetics. It is the creation of Bell, the Australian-born anthropologist lured to the university in 2017 to establish a new branch of engineering”.

The school founded by Bell had “two academic staff members to every student, at a time when tutorials in other parts of the university, which have long been the smallest in the country, are blowing out to 30 or more.” Six of the school’s academic staff had no research outputs.

There was further controversy when it was revealed that one of the school’s professors, Andrew Meares, was a former press photographer for 26 years, and a close acquaintance of Bell’s. “With no academic background, and no apparent expertise in cybernetics,” wrote the AFR, “Meares went from senior fellow to associate professor in just three years – a speedy career trajectory – to full professor a year later.” Meares was made a tenured professor in the School of Cybernetics despite a promotion panel recommending against his promotion.

The Saturday Paper reported that four months after Bell resigned as Vice-Chancellor, she was presented with a “show cause” notice alleging “serious misconduct” concerning her involvement in the promotion of the former Sydney Morning Herald photographer. She was reportedly “suspended from her ongoing role as a distinguished professor and barred from entering the campus or speaking to staff, students and members of the governing council”.

The ANAO report didn’t delve into the various scandals involving persons behind Renew ANU, but in reaching its own harsh conclusions, it didn’t need to. In the wash-up, the Renew ANU implementation cost $35.9 million in redundancies and general expenses before being retired in October 2025, and ANU reported that it achieved $74.8 million in annual salary savings. It cost hundreds of jobs, and caused untold psychological harm to ANU staff and students. In evidence to Senate estimates recently, interim vice-chancellor Professor Rebekah Brown said that the cost of the reputational damage to the university from the episode was in the order of $100 million.

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The ANU council responded by thanking the ANAO for its recommendations, “all of which have been accepted”, and recognising the opportunity “to strengthen governance, financial advice and reporting practices”. However, the council did not accept “the characterisation that the Renew ANU savings target was approved without an understanding of the nature, scale or urgency of the financial challenge”.

The ANAO’s pithy reply suggested that this was hard to accept: the council couldn’t possibly have offered an informed approval of Renew ANU, because it lacked “evidence of key decisions, supporting analysis and the rationale for choices made”, according to the ANAO. It also said materials provided to the council lacked “feedback from meaningful consultation with staff and students”, and had never included any “analysis to demonstrate that the $250 million savings target was both necessary, and achievable”. Damning.

Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell walked away last year with a severance package of more than $400,000. Chancellor Julie Bishop tendered her resignation in May, and the ANU council thanked her for service: “In her six years in the role and through her advocacy, the Hon. Julie Bishop has raised the university’s profile domestically and internationally”, and the Council “wishes her well for the future”. The ANU faces years of hard work to rebuild its reputation.

Martin McKenzie-Murray on first responders and his new book Sirens

Future Perfect, RRR

Martin McKenzie-Murray’s new book, Sirens, is an intimate and remarkably powerful portrait of three first responders – a paramedic, a police officer and a firefighter – who are motivated by a desire to serve the community, but they are drawn to their work by more complicated impulses as well. In telling their stories, McKenzie-Murray draws on his own experience and his research into trauma and recovery to ask profound questions about human motivation and survival. I spoke to him on 3RRR about the research and writing of his book.

McKenzie-Murray is The Saturday Paper’s associate editor, and a two-time Walkley finalist and winner of the Melbourne Press Club’s Quill Award for commentary. He has worked as a teacher, speechwriter, columnist for The Age and adviser to the chief commissioner of Victoria Police. His first book, A Murder Without Motive, was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Awards for crime writing. His second, The Speechwriter, won the Russell Prize for Humour Writing.

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Bhaskar Sunkara On Zohran Mamdani And popular Leftism

Spin Cycle, RRR

Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin magazine, President of The Nation journal and a columnist for Guardian US. He was previously Vice Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America and in 2019 authored The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality.

In this interview on 3RRR, I spoke to Bhaskar about popular leftist politics in the US, and the significance of the rise of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who Bhaskar supported from early in his campaign. We also discussed the coming US midterms, the Democratic Socialists’ place in Democratic politics, and the fading power of Trumpism.

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‘A serious mess’: The crisis inside the corruption watchdog

7am podcast

Paul Brereton – the outgoing head of Australia’s National Anti-Corruption Commission – resigned recently. Brereton’s time leading the body charged with investigating serious corruption in the Commonwealth public sector has ended in a crisis of confidence – over Robodebt, his ongoing Defence links, and whether the watchdog properly managed conflicts of interest.

Brereton says he has become a distraction from the commission’s work. But his resignation raises the question: do the NACC’s problems end with him?

I spoke to host Waleed Aly about how Australia’s anti-corruption watchdog ended up in crisis – and whether it can recover.

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The NACC was established to weed out corruption in the public sector. As its commissioner Paul Brereton quits, we reveal an internal culture of integrity breaches, secrecy and silence.

The inaugural commissioner of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, Paul Brereton, resigned unexpectedly this week, leaving the country’s peak integrity organisation in crisis. Brereton’s tenure has been disastrous, and the ramifications will continue to unfurl for months.

Brereton departs three years into a five-year term, having built an organisation with over 200 employees and a budget of more than $60 million per year, but with a legacy of no significant corruption findings, a serious public trust deficit, and a pile of tainted Defence investigations.

The NACC has also lost one of its three deputy commissioners recently: Nicole Rose, who similarly resigned unexpectedly, also two years short of her term. This leaves the NACC with just two deputy commissioners in coming months.

“The ongoing focus on matters relating to me personally rather than the commission’s work is drawing attention away from the commission’s core purpose,” wrote Brereton in his resignation statement. More specific reasons for his abrupt departure remain a matter of speculation, but in Senate estimates on Tuesday, he mentioned, in albeit cranky terms, his belief that the constant scrutiny of his Defence ties was unlikely to recede. He refused to accept that he had mishandled disclosures about them.

The Attorney-General’s Department had revealed that an updated draft report by NACC Inspector Gail Furness into Brereton’s handling of his Defence conflicts had been shown to Brereton in recent weeks, so although her investigation is ongoing, Senator David Shoebridge pursued the obvious line of questioning: did this report influence Brereton’s resignation? (Brereton’s reputation, and the NACC’s, could scarcely have survived another negative finding with him at the helm.)

Brereton stated that the content of the inspector’s latest draft was not material to his resignation. He also revealed that the legal advice he has received thus far in response to the inspector’s investigation has cost the taxpayer $204,000.

In something of a bombshell, Furness opened her evidence to Senate estimates on Tuesday night by stating that she had commenced yet another investigation into Brereton — a third investigation by her — into a complaint about his conduct. That investigation, which began in April and which Brereton did not mention to the estimates committee, is also ongoing.

Furness said this latest investigation is unrelated to her other investigation into Brereton’s conflicts with Defence and the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF), but she was unable to provide further details.

Brereton’s Defence work arguably breached NACC’s own integrity policy

Without second-guessing Furness’ conclusions about her investigation into Brereton’s Defence conflicts, there is already significant evidence of Brereton’s mishandling of his disclosures on the public record.

Brereton did not initially reveal the nature of his ongoing consulting work with the IGADF to anyone other than former attorney-general Mark Dreyfus. Brereton characterised it as voluntary and informal, and Dreyfus had accepted this in writing.

Even in his annual declarations of interests to the attorney-general, Brereton had stated only that he had a more general “affiliation” with the IGADF.

In September 2025, the ABC reported that Brereton was continuing to consult for the IGADF despite having left his position as assistant inspector-general of the ADF. While knowing of his vague “affiliation”, neither the NACC’s CEO, Philip Reed nor NACC Inspector Gail Furness was aware that this meant the commissioner was continuing to consult to the IGADF. (The details were exposed later via Senate estimates and FOI document releases.)

The policy also dictates that “staff members should not engage in secondary employment if it: could create a perceived or actual conflict of interest; cannot be performed wholly in private time; and may reflect adversely on the NACC.” Brereton’s consulting work with the IGADF arguably breached all three conditions.

Brereton also sought to avoid media scrutiny of his perceived conflicts. When direct questions were put to the NACC by the ABC, Brereton told his media team that “it may be best not to respond”.

Brereton’s Defence ties led to him eventually stepping away not just from IGADF-related referrals but also from all Defence-related referrals, at the insistence of his deputies.

The damage is ongoing. Serious questions remain unanswered. What will happen to the many Defence-related referrals that Brereton influenced or presided over in the years prior to declaring his ongoing Defence ties? Will his decisions be revisited? If not, why not? The Defence Department is potentially the NACC’s biggest “customer”, so the implications are enormous.

Why no-one knew about the breaches

Even close observers of the NACC might be unaware that it has an integrity policy — because, despite the NACC’s promises to do so, it has never officially published it.

Worse, Commissioner Brereton’s actions posed an “integrity risk” for the NACC according to its own integrity policy.

The policy lists as an integrity risk “staff member misconduct, including potential breach of the APS Code of Conduct, or maladministration (that does not also amount to corrupt conduct)”.

The commissioner was found to have engaged in “officer misconduct” in relation to robodebt by the NACC inspector in October 2024. At the time, he refused to resign despite repeated calls, including from eminent lawyers and former judges. These calls would have been considerably stronger and more effective if it had been known at the time that this finding demonstrated an integrity risk for the NACC, by its own admission.

Consider the following questions, which we put to the NACC two weeks ago:

• Does the NACC have an integrity policy (or a policy guiding internal integrity principles, policies and values)?

• If so, is the NACC’s integrity policy published on the NACC website? The website states that “the National Anti-Corruption Commission has a range of internal integrity plans and policies in place”, but only one plan (about the childsafe program) is published.

• If the NACC has an integrity policy, could it please provide this? If not, why not?

The NACC refused to answer any of these questions.

Put simply, the NACC refused to acknowledge that it even had an integrity policy. Doing so, and then publishing it, would have revealed its obvious multiple breaches of its own policy.

The only reason the policy is known to exist is because it was revealed via the NACC’s FOI disclosure log. For an organisation apparently dedicated to integrity and accountability, this represents an astonishing failure of judgement.

A “please explain” letter from Attorney-General Michelle Rowland to Brereton resulted in him updating the declaration with more details.

The NACC “requires all employees to disclose the nature of any secondary employment”, according to its own integrity policy, which defines secondary employment as including “any activity that may be perceived as a conflict of interest”.

The IGADF comes under the jurisdiction of the NACC, and referrals relating to its work have been made to the NACC. Ergo, Brereton, by not properly disclosing his ongoing IGADF work, did not comply with the NACC’s little-known integrity policy.

NACC’s culture of secrecy and silence

Brereton presided over a culture that was secretive, hierarchical and increasingly defensive. These qualities may have been appropriate in Defence organisations, where Brereton thrived, but they were never suitable for an integrity body.

While confidentiality is obligatory in anti-corruption investigations, the organisation’s own conduct must be transparent and accountable, and its integrity absolute. The examples of Brereton and his team mishandling the robodebt investigation and the commissioner’s Defence disclosures are a matter of public record, but the NACC’s attempts to silence legitimate inquiries and criticisms have gone well beyond that.

Early this year, researching an investigation into the NACC’s deputy commissioners that would eventually be published in The Point, we approached the NACC with detailed questions about a report that had been published by the Daily Telegraph about its deputy commissioner, Nicole Rose. Written in 2020 by journalist Natalie O’Brien, the article revealed that Rose had been appointed to her previous job in highly unusual circumstances, and that her highest academic qualification was a diploma of hotel management.

Asked whether Brereton or Rose contested any of the facts relayed in it — noting that the account remained on the public record — the NACC replied (without providing evidence) that the “Daily Telegraph articles published in 2020 contain false and defamatory information. The baseless claims made by the journalist were dealt with by the then responsible minister, and in Senate estimates at the time.”

O’Brien said the article was vetted by lawyers and was watertight. She added that “we received no complaint about inaccuracy or defamation at the Telegraph when we published. The ‘allegations’ were upheld for all to see in the [FOI] documents.”

The NACC then approached our publisher, alleging that our article, which The Point was preparing to publish, would contain false, misleading and inaccurate reporting — before it had even read the article.

Soon after our article was published, a NACC representative approached another publication, warning it against mentioning our article in relation to the sudden resignation of deputy commissioner Rose, making thinly veiled legal threats.

If the NACC had any objections to our work, or any corrections or amendments to propose or request, it could have made them to us directly. (NF: To me, each of the above responses by the NACC seemed defamatory.)

These are not the standards we should accept from the nation’s premier integrity agency, or indeed from any government body. If this is how the NACC responds to scrutiny, it needs a complete reset.

The process to appoint a permanent new commissioner and deputy commissioner, to be conducted by the Attorney-General’s Department, will be pivotal to the success or failure of an organisation that has so far produced more headlines about its own mismanagement than its achievements.

NACC CEO Philip Reed admitted the two senior departures would present “challenges” in prioritising the work of the two remaining deputies until temporary “acting” replacements are appointed, but he didn’t see any issues with the NACC’s capacity to manage its current workload more broadly.

Attorney-General Michelle Rowland thanked Brereton for his leadership, service and contributions to the NACC. “A merit-based process will commence to appoint a new commissioner of the NACC.”

For the sake of the NACC’s future, it must be a rigorous and transparent process. The new appointments must be the best and most qualified candidates available, because any more missteps will risk destroying the NACC forever.

The National Anti-Corruption Commission’s performance since its inception has been widely condemned. The leadership of Commissioner Paul Brereton, in particular, has drawn heavy criticism.

The mismanagement of his conflicts of interest, firstly in relation to Robodebt and then his potential conflict arising from defence-related investigations, have undermined the reputation of an institution whose success relies on its transparency and accountability, as have the NACC’s inordinate secrecy and its refusal to hold any public hearings to date.

As a result, greater responsibility for NACC investigations has been placed in the hands of its three deputy commissioners. However none of these deputies has been a judge or senior legal professional. By comparison, the dozens of assistant commissioners who’ve served the NSW ICAC, for example, have overwhelmingly been SC or KC, and many were also judges.

Indeed, the NACC’s three current deputy commissioners as a group represent the least qualified combination of deputies permitted under the NACC Act.

Figure: legislated requirements for qualification of appointments

This months-long investigation by The Point raises major concerns about the suitability of all three deputy commissioners, casting serious new doubt on the legitimacy of the NACC as currently constituted.

Following the March publication of the NACC’s long-awaited Robodebt report, the Centre for Public Integrity, while welcoming the report, raised concerns that go to the heart of the NACC’s credibility. It said the protracted Robodebt episode had highlighted “ongoing structural concerns” about the design of the NACC: “In particular, we note the absence of a transparent (emphasis added), arms-length and merit-based appointment process for the Commissioner. Without a clearly independent appointment process, governments cannot readily point to an objective mechanism to reassure the public when trust is challenged.”

Those same concerns about the appointment of the Commissioner apply equally to the appointments of the deputy commissioners.

Two current NACC Deputy Commissioners were appointed to the NACC straight from jobs into which they had been parachuted by Coalition governments: Nicole Rose and Ben Gauntlett were both “captain’s picks” into public roles that ordinarily required the use of a transparent merit-based selection process. In neither case did the Coalition do this.

Deputy Commissioner Rose, the delegated decision maker who decided not to investigate the Robodebt Six, has a diploma of hotel management as her highest academic qualification. She was handed two CEO roles, at AUSTRAC and CrimTrac, by then Justice Minister Michael Keenan, ahead of vastly more experienced candidates, including a judge, barristers, and a former police commissioner.

Deputy Commissioner Gauntlett, meanwhile, was handpicked by Scott Morrison’s Coalition Government as Disability Discrimination Commissioner, a move that was condemned by numerous human rights legal experts at the time for not being an open merit-based selection process as required.

Until the Government delivers “a powerful, transparent and independent NACC – one with teeth”, as promised by Prime Minister Albanese – the NACC will continue to be a running sore in the nation’s integrity framework, mistrusted and maligned by the public. It could be argued that the NACC was set up to fail.

Nicole Rose was appointed NACC deputy commissioner by the Albanese Government for a five-year term commencing 1 July 2023. She was previously the CEO of AUSTRAC, Australia’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulator and financial intelligence unit, and before that the CEO of another law enforcement agency, CrimTrac. (When CrimTrac was folded into the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, Rose was for a short period deputy CEO of ACIC.)

“Ms Rose brings to the NACC diverse experience in law enforcement, intelligence and regulatory environments,” states her brief bio on the NACC website. While true, a deeper look at her work history raises serious questions about her appointment by the Attorney-General, not just to her current position, but also to her previous two roles.

In February 2020, the Daily Telegraph published an investigation by senior reporter Natalie O’Brien into Rose’s AUSTRAC appointment, revealing “the meteoric rise of a woman with limited police experience to the top of Australia’s financial crimes watchdog ahead of candidates with decades of law enforcement and legal experience”.

Based on Freedom of Information (FOI) documents solicited over months (and still available), the article describes how Rose “was parachuted into the job running the $75 million agency in a ‘unique’ behind-the-scenes deal” in 2017.

There were 22 candidates for the position: “eleven had law enforcement backgrounds including a Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner, and one was a judge”. Rose, who was then on a secondment to the Attorney-General’s Department, was listed in the job advertisement as the contact person for inquiries about the application process. She was also on the four-person panel that interviewed the seven shortlisted candidates.

The panel recommended three candidates as “highly suitable” for the role.

Yet, two months after the interviews, Minister Keenan bypassed the process and appointed Rose CEO on the grounds that she was an “eminent person”.

The Daily Telegraph described the appointment as “a back room deal”, in part because the FOI documents provide no explanation as to how or why this decision was made.

After it became aware of the growing controversy the Attorney-General’s Department provided the following statement: “Whilst it may not be readily apparent from the documents, the (former) Minister for Justice recommended the appointment of one of the candidates found highly suitable by the panel. However, before that proposal could be finalised, the candidate was no longer available… The Minister for Justice subsequently exercised his option to appoint an eminent person.”

Despite requests by the journalist for documentation or further information about this unusual decision, including why the two other “highly suitable” candidates weren’t approached, no explanation was ever provided.

A few days after publication of the article, Labor Senator Louise Pratt raised the matter with Rose in Senate Estimates: “How is it that you are responsible for the recruitment process but actually end up with the job at the end of the day?” and “Can you please take us through the process that you were asked to undertake in order to recruit for this statutory appointment.”

Rose replied, “There was a recruitment process. I suggest that the attorney-general’s [department] be approached as they ran that recruitment process … I did not apply for the job. I was approached by the minister sometime after that process was complete.”

Detailed questions had been put to the Attorney-General’s Department, and Rose, by journalist Natalie O’Brien at the time, but both declined to respond.

The Point approached the NACC for a response to the Daily Telegraph’s account, including whether Commissioner Brereton or Deputy Commissioner Rose contested any of the facts relayed about Rose’s AUSTRAC appointment (noting that the account remained on the public record).

The NACC replied, “Deputy Commissioner Rose was appointed as a Deputy Commissioner … following a rigorous merit-based selection and vetting process managed by the Attorney-General’s Department.”

It also stated (without providing evidence) that the “Daily Telegraph articles published in 2020 contain false and defamatory information. The baseless claims made by the journalist were dealt with by the then responsible Minister, and in Senate Estimates at the time.”

Natalie O’Brien rejects these imputations, saying the article was vetted by lawyers, and was watertight. Furthermore, “we received no complaint about inaccuracy or defamation at the Telegraph when we published. The ‘allegations’ were upheld for all to see in the [FOI] documents.” Those FOI documents remain accessible and support her account.

*

This information didn’t raise any red flags in the Attorney-General’s Department as it considered appointments for the new National Anti-Corruption Commission. But what preceded Rose’s AUSTRAC appointment was even more alarming.

FOI documents revealed that Justice Minister Keenan had also appointed Rose as CEO of CrimTrac in 2015, after stating, as reported by O’Brien, that he wanted to “directly appoint” a new head “without conducting a full selection process”.

Rose was hand-picked to run the $80 million agency starting April 2015. CrimTrac was established in 2000 to provide national, technology-based policing information systems, such as DNA and fingerprint databases, to state and territory police. Its biggest project in 2015, by a significant margin, was the creation of the $52 million Biometric Identification Solution (BIS), a new identification capability to recognise fingerprints, palm prints and facial images. The project turned into a $34 million disaster.

The 2019 postmortem on BIS by the auditor general noted: “none of the milestones or deliverables met”. The contract, which was signed and managed by Rose, “did not explain the milestones and performance requirements in a manner that was readily understood and applied”, the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) stated.

The Point does not allege that Rose was responsible for the failures that led to the termination of the BIS. However, this information shows that it was known within Minister Keenan’s portfolio that BIS was in deep trouble before he appointed Rose into the second job as CEO of AUSTRAC in 2017.

Under Rose, CrimTrac started a tender process for the BIS in June 2015 and signed a contract with NEC Australia in April 2016.

The project was in trouble almost immediately, with the ANAO finding that “the first contract milestone (and arguably the most important), Solution Design, was supposed to be completed by June 2016, two months after the contract was signed. This milestone was not met and project monthly reports began being reported as ‘red’ (‘requires corrective action’) shortly thereafter, in August 2016.” The project would never get back on track.

CrimTrac was folded into the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) in July 2016 following a merger with the Australian Crime Commission, and the newly amalgamated agency was tasked with delivering and maintaining national information sharing systems. According to the ANAO report, “There was awareness at all levels within ACIC that BIS was encountering serious difficulties.”

Nevertheless, Rose, now deputy CEO of ACIC, wrote in CrimTrac’s final annual report in September 2016, “The new Biometric Identification Services will deliver an improved tool to Australian policing agencies that will contribute to the effectiveness of operational policing, improve safety of frontline police and enhance community safety and security … The service is expected to start in mid-2017.”

By June 2017, however, more than a year after the BIS contract was signed, “a PwC review commissioned by ACIC reported that the program was yet to define a robust governance structure with roles and responsibilities across the project and that decision-making governance was unclear.” The result: CrimTrac and NEC Australia were in a running dispute over where responsibilities lay amid ongoing failures to hit targets.

Four months later, in October 2017, having abandoned the AUSTRAC executive recruitment process, Minister Keenan appointed Rose as AUSTRAC’s new CEO.

CrimTrac’s BIS project was officially terminated in June 2018.

*

The process of appointing deputy commissioners to the new NACC in 2023 was overseen by Attorney General Mark Dreyfus, with proposed candidates requiring the approval of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Anti-Corruption Commission (PJC-NACC).

Dr Ben Gauntlett commenced his five-year term as deputy commissioner of the NACC on 1 July 2023. He had previously spent almost five years as Disability Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), where he was “a champion for increasing meaningful employment opportunities for people with disability, increased access to accessible housing for people with disability, greater community awareness of disability rights and disability discrimination, and strengthened legal and policy frameworks to protect disability rights.”

Gauntlett was one of two commissioners appointed to the AHRC “without an open, merit-based selection process”, wrote the Australian Human Rights Institute (AHRI) in 2019.

Also critical of the appointment was the executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre, Hugh de Kretser: “The Morrison Government has undermined the independence and effectiveness of the Commission.”

AHRI director Professor Justine Nolan warned that the appointment put Australia’s status on the international stage at risk. “The Australian Human Rights Commission’s current ‘A status’ means it has full participation rights at the UN Human Rights Council … Australia’s ‘A status’ is now in jeopardy, thanks to the government’s handpicking of commissioners.”

Her fears were warranted: the relevant international body didn’t immediately reaccredit Australia’s human rights commission as an A-status organisation, instead deferring consideration of its re-accreditation application for 18 months. A black mark for Australia.

Unlike Rose, Gauntlett did have academic legal qualifications, but his general background as a barrister followed by almost five years as a human rights commissioner was hardly ideal for a senior role at the NACC, and included little experience fighting corruption.

When the NACC began considering the Robodebt Six referrals, Gauntlett was tasked with “considering options for dealing with the public official who was not a public servant”, according to NACC Inspector Gail Furness in her October 2024 report on the NACC’s original decision not to investigate the Robodebt referrals.

This “public official” was recently revealed to be former prime minister Scott Morrison. Inspector Furness added that Gauntlett “circulated various drafts of his review of the options for dealing with [Scott Morrison]” between January and March 2024, and his work on it had commenced as early as November 2023.

Deputy Commissioner Rose confirmed in her formal decision letter (setting out reasons the NACC would not open an investigation into the Robodebt referrals) that she had received Gauntlett’s work in relation to Morrison and that she was “assisted in my decision-making by his memorandum”.

Gauntlett was thus placed in a position of influence in the NACC’s decision-making process around Morrison less than six months after he had left a role for which he was hand-picked by Morrison’s government. (There is no evidence, and it is not alleged, that Gauntlett was in any way influenced or acted with impropriety.)

In response to questions, the NACC replied that Gauntlett’s appointment as Disability Discrimination Commissioner was “consistent with legislation that existed at the time”. (To address public concerns about the controversial human rights commissioner appointments, in October 2022 parliament passed legislation requiring all Commissioner roles to be publicly advertised and merit tested.) The NACC added that it was “confident its Deputy Commissioners made all appropriate declarations of actual or perceived conflicts of interest concerning their involvement in the Robodebt referrals.”

*

The third deputy commissioner is Kylie Kilgour, who commenced in February 2024.

In October 2024, NACC Inspector Gail Furness found that Commissioner Brereton had engaged in officer misconduct for not having appropriately managed his Robodebt conflict of interest. The NACC accepted the Inspector’s recommendation that it revisit its decision not to investigate the Robodebt referrals by appointing an independent person to reconsider it.. The NACC appointed former High Court Justice Geoffrey Nettle KC to do this. He found that each of the six referrals raised a corruption issue and should be investigated.

The NACC decided it would, finally, investigate the Robodebt Six, and in February 2025 announced this in a media release, which ended with an ambiguous line: “The Commissioner and other Deputy Commissioners who were involved in the original decision not to investigate the referrals will not participate in the investigation.” It was not clear whether this included Kilgour or not.

As has been reported previously by Michelle Fahy and Elizabeth Minter, Kilgour was involved in the NACC’s original decision not to investigate the Robodebt referrals. She worked alongside Commissioner Brereton and deputy commissioners Rose and Gauntlett crafting the public statement that explained why the NACC would not investigate the Robodebt Six officials.

Kilgour was also involved in the editing of, and discussions regarding, the letters that were sent to the six officials advising them they were not going to be investigated. She was included in emails dating back to March 2024 from Commissioner Brereton outlining changes he wanted made to the public statement and the letters to the officials.

Despite this history of involvement, the NACC later announced that Kylie Kilgour would lead the Robodebt investigation.

Anthony Whealy KC, chair of The Centre for Public Integrity, said that all of the NACC’s deputy commissioners were “arguably tainted” and should not be involved in any way in the Robodebt investigation. (In May 2025, investigative journalism site Undue Influence put a series of questions about the matter to the NACC. It refused to answer any of them.)

Kilgour’s role sits under Brereton and alongside Gauntlett and Rose, and she was privy to the NACC’s considerations, but there were further reasons to be concerned about her appointment to run the new investigation.

An FOI disclosure related to Kilgour’s appointment as deputy commissioner and the vetting process managed by the Attorney-General’s Department revealed a conflict declaration by Kilgour of an affiliation either related to herself or her immediate family. The detail was redacted, but the Attorney General’s Department stated that “any such conflicts of interest have been managed in accordance with the Commission’s policies and procedures. She has no conflicts of interest in relation to the people subject to the Robodebt Royal Commission referrals.”

The following is not included in that FOI, but Kilgour is married to Tom Bentley, the long-time (2007-2013) deputy chief of staff to Julia Gillard. Gillard was the Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations when Robodebt Six member Kathryn Campbell was appointed deputy secretary of that department in May 2010. Bentley was still working for Gillard when, as prime minister, she announced in December 2010 that Campbell would become the secretary of the Department of Human Services – the role in which Campbell became heavily involved in the creation of the Robodebt scheme. If the NACC has been dogged by perceptions that it’s too enmeshed in the club of Canberra mandarins who all knew each other, the appointment of Kilgour was unlikely to disprove them.

The Point does not allege any wrongdoing by Kilgour or Bentley, or that Kilgour had an undisclosed conflict of interest. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that it took the government nine months to provide the FOI documents, and when it did they were heavily redacted.

*

A final example of the lack of transparency by the Attorney-General’s Department raises serious concerns about its role in the appointment of senior NACC officials.

Kilgour was not the Albanese Government’s first choice to fill the vacancy left by the departure of interim Deputy Commissioner Jaala Hinchcliffe in February 2024. The Government had nominated NSW Supreme Court Justice Stephen Rothman. But the parliamentary committee that oversees the NACC rejected Rothman upon learning of his long-term Labor and union connections – which included twice running for office as a Labor candidate, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

How did a candidate with Rothman’s partisan background get through the supposedly robust and transparent selection process? The Sydney Morning Herald reported that pertinent information about the candidate’s background “was either not gathered in the departmental vetting process or knowingly withheld from MPs required to tick off or veto the nomination”.

According to PJC-NACC committee member and Greens senator David Shoebridge, the Attorney-General’s Department gave committee members “sanitised” documents about the candidate “rather than the original version provided by the candidate”. Helen Haines, deputy chair of the PJC-NACC, was contacted in relation to this article but declined to comment.

*

Shoebridge believes that “after almost two years in operation [the NACC] has produced more scandals than anti-corruption finding.”

“From appointments to secrecy to its disrespect for whistleblowers and complainants, it’s hard to point to a single part of the NACC that is delivering for the public.”

One can only speculate why the Albanese Government chose candidates that had been previously appointed via such compromised recruitment processes for these top roles at the NACC. Dozens of highly experienced, credentialed and well-regarded candidates would have been queueing up to be involved in Australia’s inaugural federal anti-corruption body.

Compare the composition of the NACC with that of the NSW ICAC, for example. The current commissioners sitting under the Chief Commissioner at ICAC are Helen Murrell SC and Paul Lakatos SC. Murrell is a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the ACT with decades of experience as a judge in various courts, as head of several tribunals, and as a senior barrister. Lakatos is a former judge of the NSW District Court, also with decades of experience as a barrister and counsel assisting, including for the ICAC.

“The government of the day chooses who is appointed to the NACC, and by extension they must take responsibility if their appointees’ qualifications and experience are not sufficient for the role,” says Bill Browne, Director of the Democracy & Accountability Program at the Australia Institute. And given that a single deputy commissioner could be responsible for running a major corruption inquiry, “it would make sense for deputies to have commensurate legal experience.”

*

After almost three years of mismanaging the Robodebt case, the NACC published its final findings in March in a convoluted 445-page report. The NACC conducted no public hearings – on the grounds that even these circumstances were not “exceptional” enough to warrant them.

Kathryn Campbell and Scott Morrison were cleared, along with two other senior executives. Deputy Commissioner Kilgour – who has never been a judge or even admitted to the bar, although she is a former deputy commissioner of Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) – effectively declared that Robodebt royal commissioner and former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland Catherine Holmes got it wrong in many of her damning judgements about the parties responsible.

Journalist Rick Morton, who literally wrote the book on Robodebt, said the reasons given by Kilgour “in many of these scenarios are risible and, to borrow one of her phrases, tax credulity”.

For example, Kilgour excused the behaviour of some of the most senior public officials referred for potential corrupt conduct but “inexplicably” criticised the exact same conduct from other public officials also referred.

Morton wrote that “at times in her report, Kilgour displays a naive understanding of the real-life behaviour of senior public servants, wondering aloud in her official report how or why such officials could ever do the wrong thing while at times finding they did just that.”

The NACC did find that two executives acted corruptly, but it will not be referring them to the Commonwealth Director for Public Prosecutions.

After all the pain and heartache borne by the victims of the Robodebt scheme, after a royal commission, a successful class action, two senate inquiries, an ombudsman’s investigation, a Public Service Commission taskforce, and an eventual NACC investigation, not a single person will face charges over Robodebt. The worst case of maladministration in Australian Government history, costing billions of dollars, not to mention the lives lost and hundreds of thousands of people left scarred by the experience, has ended with a whimper.

The one national institution tasked with ensuring integrity in the public sector by detecting and preventing corrupt conduct involving public officials has done nothing of the sort.

UPDATE: On May 4, nine days after the publication of this investigation, the NACC announced that deputy commissioner Nicole Rose had resigned.

How will history regard the government of Albanese, Chalmers, Marles and Wong? It will record that after two and half years of genocide by Israel, Australia’s leadership invited Israel’s president for a state visit. Australia refused to condemn the raft of war crimes committed by Israel and supported by the United States, first in Gaza and then in Iran and southern Lebanon. In Gaza, these included the killing of tens of thousands of women and children, as well as the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure, hospitals, universities, power and water utilities, bakeries, agriculture, holy sites and homes – deliberate acts motivated to destroy the conditions of life. The Hamas attack of October 7 may have been the inciting incident, but history will also place it in the context of Israel’s broader oppression of Palestinians. Genocide, by definition, is never justified.

Australia has said nothing while Israel has continued to assassinate journalists, medics, aid workers, diplomats, foreign and spiritual leaders across the Middle East. Worse, it has done nothing even to dissuade Israel – no sanctions, no calls for justice or statements of support for the ICC arrest warrants, not even stopping our arms trade to Israel. On the contrary, our government actively attempts to frame criticism of Israel as antisemitic. (Is it antisemitic to criticise Israel’s recent “quadruple tap” strike on Lebanese medics?)

Labor ministers have turned a blind eye as cultural institutions around the nation silenced, punished and purged themselves of pro-Palestinian voices. While Israel literally pursues total dominance of an ethno-nationalist Greater Israel “from the river to the sea”, including the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon, state governments here banned the use of this phrase even as a call for peace and justice. With no pushback from Albanese.

Then Israel initiated an illegal war on Iran, supported by the incontinent US administration. As has been reported elsewhere, although notably less in Australia, the war had no clear objective and was done without proper planning, ignoring all warnings about its consequences, which killed thousands and threatened to cripple the global economy. Albanese was the first foreign leader to support it.

By now, it’s obvious how stupid, unpopular and costly the Iranian misadventure has become, and Australia’s leaders are backsliding, but have still not put any significant conditions or limits on our alliance with the US or Israel. We have not withdrawn our early support.

There is disparity between what our leaders say and what they do, but it’s the latter that will survive on the public record. Penny Wong puts out statements of deep concern every few days, and Albanese reissues weak calls for everyone to stop fighting, but Australia quietly continues to provide staff, equipment and surveillance capacity to the US/Israeli war effort. US diplomatic efforts are now geared towards reaching a deal on Iran’s nuclear capacity similar to that which Trump tore up in his first term; towards re-opening the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war started; and to rejecting Iran’s control of the Strait, which it didn’t exert before the war.

It’s barely acknowledged in Australia that Iran’s regime is more entrenched than it was before the war, that its new spiritual leader is more hardline than the old one (his father). Or that the original Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons development; and that this died when he was assassinated, and his son has not reissued it. Any Iranians who believed the war was about rescuing them from the yoke of the evil regime were rapidly disabused of this notion, whether by the bombing of their schools and hospitals or by our government’s introduction of visa legislation to prevent them from seeking refuge here. If anything, the war has strengthened Iran’s hand, as well as that of its ally, Russia. In short, it’s a total disaster.

It’s also apparently a topic of global taboo that the only nation on earth that wants fighting to continue across the Middle East, and refuses to stop, is Israel.

Our allies, Israel and the US, are hostile and unhinged, their actions extremist and clearly illegal – yet we stand strong with them, albeit with an occasional eyebrow arched in disappointment. Strangely though, this disparity between what Australia supposedly supports, and it actually supports, remains relatively unexamined. Meanwhile, the Australian public opposes the war/s strenuously, not that anyone in the major parties cares about that. While political commentators point out ad infinitum that support for the major parties is sliding, they nevertheless ignore that it’s bipartisan rubbish like this that is further destroying public trust in our political systems.

*

As a leader, Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist and megalomaniacal idiot without historical comparison. He lies with deranged commitment, is deeply corrupt, and is the image of loudmouthed incompetence. Every reasonable person knows this. But he’s also a product of American systemic failure – of its media, justice system, and politics. He’s a symptom as much as a cause, and the continued incapacity of anyone to hold him or his goons to account demonstrates that the failure is ongoing.

Albanese, in his stout efforts not to condemn, believes he is preserving a relationship between Australia and the US that is much larger than Trump. He dismisses criticism of Trump as if it’s all just about his provocative social media posts. Trump is not America, and our relationship will outlast him.

If that’s the case, though, why not criticise him? Why not send a signal about the kind of America we support? Does anyone believe that Democrats or American career diplomats would hold it against us in the future? The contrary is more likely, because whoever is picking up the pieces in the future will need allies, and need to prove America deserves them. In the unlikely event the Democrats can’t even defeat this lame duck, we definitely don’t want to be America’s great ally, because everything Trump’s MAGA movement touches turns to shit – and the only form in which MAGA rule exists is fascist, corrupt, authoritarian, isolationist, anti-science, anti-regulation, anti-immigration and aggressively white nationalist.

Albanese often cites our deep defence ties with America as the reason to maintain them. But surely defence ties should work in service of our national interests, rather than as an excuse for betraying them. We’re writing cheques that too often get cashed for illegal wars.

America under Trump is no longer the guarantor of our security, our trade, or the international rules-based order, and has demonstrated it will be disloyal to even its closest allies. Are we so naive to think we would be treated better? It’s no longer to our global advantage to be regarded as a close US ally.

*

Markets have forgotten how to price Trump’s stupidity, because based on his track record traders keep thinking he’ll reverse course when things get bad. Trump takes this as affirmation to keep putting out mixed signals, and on we roll, slowly degrading with each turn. The media relays his absurd boasts as if they’re true – it’ll be over in two days; two weeks; we’ve virtually won; we have achieved regime change. And this is the dynamic that is destroying America’s standing in the world – everyone knows he’s nuts, let’s just humour him.

On the other hand we have Israel, a nation that now believes itself to be unbound from international rules and moral norms, entirely reconciled to its own unceasing aggression, uninterested in diplomacy, and committed to its own impunity regardless of the consequences to the rest of the world. Critics of its war crimes are all antisemites, and its own soldiers are innocent despite their well-proven crimes. Netanyahu is not popular, but there are smashing levels of support for the many wars he leads. Recent polling in Israel had two thirds of the population opposing a ceasefire.

Israel’s campaign of destruction in Gaza has become the playbook for its invasion of southern Lebanon. Its security services have given the green light to ever-more-brazen violence by illegal settlers in the West Bank. It has re-invaded the Golan Heights, bombed numerous other neighbours unprovoked, and has hit civilian infrastructure in Iran as if the Geneva Convention never existed. As a thought experiment, would Israel have invaded Lebanon and attacked Iran if the world had stood up to it over Gaza?

Polls, voting patterns and diplomatic relations across the world demonstrate how quickly the US and Israeli regimes are losing support. As fuel, fertiliser and chemicals start running out around the world, the contempt and anger will only accelerate. Yet neither regime will reform itself without external pressure. What’s more, American support for Israel is rapidly sliding, both for its ongoing military assistance and in terms of general approval ratings.

But while other Western leaders – across Europe and notably in Canada – are starting to find their voices, the Albanese government remains locked into its position of empty rhetoric, appeasement and quiet acquiescence, with not a thought for independence or independent action. Leaders are what leaders do, and Albanese leads nothing.

*

If there is one thing the Iran war has proved, it’s that global supply chains are too fragile to bear the insanity and aggression of the American and Israeli governments. They are stretched to breaking point, and they are now breaking.

Before Trump did his best to undermine the global rules-based order, the US was its greatest beneficiary. In the mistaken belief that being a giant gorilla smashing things would make America great again, Trump’s tariffs and assorted threats against friends, enemies, trade agreements and multilateral organisations undermined every element of America’s standing – its investment attractiveness, reliability, even its soft power. International trade relies on stability and predictability, and Trump delivers the opposite. He’s mentally incapable of acting responsibly or predictably, or of running a serious government.

To make matters worse, the war on Iran has birthed an extreme version of asymmetric economic warfare at the very moment the world’s leadership is least capable of dealing with it. When Netanyahu travelled to the White House to make his habitual pitch to American presidents to join Israel’s attack on Iran – for decades Iran was apparently weeks away from developing nuclear weapons – neither leader took the likely consequences seriously. Strategic analysts knew that Iran’s first move, if placed under existential pressure, would be to block the Strait of Hormuz. This alone was enough to disrupt the global economy. When Trump took the bait from Netanyahu, the Iranians demonstrated that some mines and a fleet of cheap drones was all you needed to block the Strait. Shipping insurance brokers would do the rest. Drones could also strike refineries, power plants, oil export facilities, data farms, embassies, airports, whatever. The US also realised that its anti-missile systems were both much more expensive and harder to produce en masse – and America was paying Israel’s bills.

Albanese and co will spend the next six to twelve months minimum scurrying around to manage the shortages and economic fallout. A ceasefire tomorrow won’t change this, because the supply crisis is already baked in, courtesy of at least six weeks of stalled ships, not to mention the damage to energy infrastructure throughout the Gulf. The Australian government didn’t cause this mess, but they supported it. Things will get worse, and public sympathy is waning for a stance which amounts to “Why do the terrible things we support keep having such terrible consequences?”. So if Albanese cares about his legacy as much as I believe he does, he must realise that unless he changes course, history will remember him as a supporter of Trump, and Netanyahu, and all the chaos they caused.

Richard Denniss on Australia’s expensive and unfair high school system

Richard Denniss (The Australia Institute) and I talk about Australia’s high school problems.

Richard Denniss is co-CEO of the Australia Institute. He is a prominent economist, author and public policy commentator, and is the author of several books including Econobabble, Curing Affluenza and Dead Right: How Neoliberalism Ate Itself and What Comes Next? Most recently he wrote the long essay, Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us.

He talks about his new research paper, “Australia’s private high school problem”, which describes how Australia has one of the world’s most privatised high school systems. These schools charge families high and rising fees and receive significant government funding, all without delivering substantially better results. Meanwhile the state system suffers from serious under-funding.

Listen here to our conversation.

Christine Kenneally on Moltbook, Claude Code and the latest AI developments

Christine Kenneally talks to me about some big recent stories and developments in the land of AI.

Kenneally is a journalist who writes on science, language and culture. Trained as a linguist, she has written for The New York Times, the New Yorker, Slate, New Scientist, and The Monthly, among other publications, and she’s written several books including Ghosts of the Orphanage. She’s currently writing a column about artificial intelligence for the Monthly.

Listen here to our conversation.

William Partlett on the National Anti-Corruption Commission

William Partlett and I talk about the National Anti-Corruption Commission.

William Partlett is an Associate Professor at Melbourne Law School and Stephen Charles Fellow at the Centre for Public Integrity.

His research at the Centre for Public Integrity looks at how integrity institutions can strengthen democratic accountability and prevent corruption, and he talks to Nick Feik about the slow progress and missteps made by Australia’s National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC).

Listen here.

Dr Alexa Scarlata on today’s TV viewing habits and local content concerns

Dr Alexa Scarlata talks about the shifts in viewership away from traditional linear TV services to catch-up and subscription services, and how this affects both the revenues of local broadcasters and the local content being made and consumed in Australia.

Scarlata is Lecturer in Digital Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne. She is a scholar of media and cultural industries, and recently she co-convened a symposium at RMIT called “100 years of broadcast TV – what can we learn heading into an uncertain future?”

Her research considers internet-distributed television, content production and national screen policy.

Listen here to our conversation.

The Spirit of Tasmania is more than a daily passenger service linking the island state to the mainland. It is a lifeline for Tasmanians, an umbilical cord across Bass Strait transporting tourists and goods that keep the state functioning. But Tasmania’s dependence on the mainland is far deeper than what can be shipped aboard its ferries. Two thirds of state government revenue also comes from across the water, making Tasmania more reliant on Commonwealth support than any other state. Even so, Tasmania is barely managing. Its public sector finances have been deteriorating for the past decade and its debt levels are sky-high and rising. It struggles to provide basic services such as health and education. Its political system is in perpetual upheaval, while somehow never changing.

There’s something symbolic about the state’s catastrophic fumbling of the Spirit of Tasmania project. Faced with an opportunity to improve links and welcome more visitors from the mainland, the state’s leaders, whose straightforward task was to deliver two new ships to replace the two old ones, have made every mistake it would appear possible to make. But this rolling failure, almost comedic in its ineptitude, is an unconscious cry for help from a deeply troubled state.

As the government prepares to embark on an even more expensive and complex project, the new stadium at Hobart’s Macquarie Point, the distress flares of the Spirit of Tasmania are burning brightly.

In 2017, when the Tasmanian government first announced the two new Spirit of Tasmania ships, the project was miraculously already “two years ahead of schedule”. Ahead of which particular schedule wasn’t clear, but the bottom line from the then premier, Will Hodgman, was that the next-generation vessels would be delivered by 2021. It was a heady prospect both for the Liberal government and the people of Tasmania. Even more impressive was that Hodgman could announce this achievement before his government had even signed the construction contracts.

The new Spirits, IV and V, would be based in Devonport, and would be 30 per cent larger than the existing Spirits (I and II), increasing passenger and freight capacity by around 40 per cent. The 212-metre-long new vessels would each accommodate 1800 passengers. TT-Line, the state-owned company that operates Spirit of Tasmania, “had carefully assessed vessel types and fleet configurations over the past several years to determine the most appropriate vessel to operate daily crossings on Bass Strait”, according to then chair Mike Grainger. The financial disaster of Spirit of Tasmania III, which travelled unprofitably to Sydney and back from 2003 to 2006 before being sold off, was no doubt still fresh in local minds.

The tourism industry was enthusiastic about the new plan, and already counting the days. Businesses began investing to accommodate the incoming hordes.

TT-Line was expected to sign the contracts for the new build in the first half of 2018, according to then infrastructure minister Rene Hidding. As it happened, the former bankrupt used-car salesman and police minister would not be the one to oversee the contract signings: he stepped down from his ministerial responsibilities for a failed bid at the parliamentary speakership, and soon afterwards resigned from parliament altogether following allegations of historical sexual abuse against a minor. (Hidding denied the allegations.)

TT-Line announced in May 2018 that it had contracted German shipbuilder Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft (FSG), at a reported total cost of about $700 million. The work would start immediately, TT-Line chair Grainger said, and both vessels would be delivered in time to commence operations in 2021.

In further good news, Grainger welcomed the investment by port operator TasPorts, also a state-owned company, of between $50 and $60 million to extend berthing facilities in Devonport to accommodate the new ferries. TT-Line had worked “very closely” with both TasPorts and the government during its deliberations on vessel replacement – or so it said.

The project sprung its first leak a few months later. In February 2019, TT-Line put out a statement that the FSG shipyard in Germany was in a “difficult financial situation”, although Grainger was quick to assure the public that “we continue to have solid contracts in place with FSG to build the new Spirits of Tasmania, and the detailed ship design work is progressing as planned.”

Almost a year later, in January 2020, Tasmania’s new premier, Peter Gutwein, conceded that construction of the Spirits had been “delayed”. Opposition infrastructure spokesperson Shane Broad was more forthcoming: “not a single day’s work has been done on the two new ships”.

The following month, the contract with FSG was mutually cancelled. (As it happens, FSG would regain financial stability soon afterwards, and continue building other vessels.) But there was a silver lining for Tasmanians: “Plan to have new Spirit of Tasmania vessels built in Australia,” announced the headline of Launceston’s Examiner in July 2020. Premier Gutwein, not one to miss the opportunity in the adversity, had set up a taskforce to investigate options for building the ships locally. New infrastructure minister Michael Ferguson agreed that, with the economy struggling from the Covid pandemic, it was a good time to look inwards: “The greatest opportunity for us is to maximise Tasmanian jobs, Australian jobs.”

The next thing Tasmanians knew: “TT-Line will sign a contract with Finnish-based Rauma Marine Constructions (RMC) for the construction of two new roll-on/roll-off ships to replace the current Spirit of Tasmania vessels as soon as practical.”

“We are very pleased,” added Grainger in TT-Line’s April 2021 statement, “that the government agreed with TT-Line’s original position,” confirming that the two steel monohull vessels would be built in Finland.

This would have also pleased Paul Lennon. The former premier resigned in 2008 after corruption allegations destroyed his public standing (the allegations remain unsubstantiated). He was now a lobbyist for RMC.

It had been knocked off its Australian course, but now it was full Finnish steam ahead for the Spirit of Tasmania. Construction on the much anticipated new vessels was expected to start in the European spring of the following year. The first ship was to be delivered in late 2023.

Spirit of Tasmania IV was still not completed in mid 2024 but was due to arrive in Tasmania “by the end of the year”, according to official reports. But a new problem was emerging. Well, two in fact. Maybe three. TT-Line’s chosen contractor, RMC, like the previous one, appeared on the brink of financial ruin.

“They said, ‘we’re having trouble’,” TT-Line’s Grainger told a parliamentary committee. “We knew that they were having trouble paying their subcontractors – they made it quite clear that their costs had escalated to an extent that they couldn’t continue.”

RMC had in fact been in trouble since late 2023, but TT-Line apparently hadn’t told the treasurer about its concerns until after the government’s re-election. TT-Line chief executive Bernard Dwyer said RMC had asked for extra money to continue the build. TT-Line eventually agreed to pay another €50 million (about $80 million), but had kept the extra payment to the shipbuilder secret, according to Dwyer, because it feared subcontractors in Finland would pull out if they heard the company was in trouble. This wasn’t the only stumbling block.

In June 2024, with the new ships already almost three years overdue, the government revealed that the cost of upgrading the port at Devonport to house them had also blown out. Somehow, despite the assurances of close collaboration with TasPorts, TT-Line had radically underestimated the extent of the necessary work. Only now, seven years after the beginning of the project, did TT-Line or the government understand the full implications of the problem: the ships they ordered were too big for the port’s berths.

TasPorts’ initial investment of $50 to $60 million for the port upgrade would be insufficient. Now, the cost was estimated at $375 million, and was primarily to be borne, after some legal wrangling, by TT-Line instead.

The upgrade to Berth 3 at Devonport was expected to be finished by 2027. In the meantime, the government had asked TasPorts to undertake “additional and immediate work” to upgrade Berth 1, so that it could act as temporary home for the arrival of the first new ship. The cost of the ships’ delays was becoming enormous: economist Saul Eslake estimated that every 12 months would cost the Tasmanian economy $350 million. “Work will progress immediately,” said TasPorts chief executive Anthony Donald.

Work on Berth 1, the proposed temporary home, did not begin immediately.

A key problem was that Berth 1 was too shallow, meaning that the new Spirits, with greater carrying capacity, would initially have to reduce their loads and operate with the same number of passengers and freight as the existing ships – otherwise they would sit too low in the water and scrape the bottom. The government and TasPorts would be investing tens of millions of dollars in a temporary solution that wouldn’t solve anything.

Another problem, according to Tasmania’s biggest freight shipping company, SeaRoad, was that there was a “huge” risk of collision if the new vessels used Berth 1, as the port was too narrow at that point for its own ships to navigate into Berth 2.

With admirable clarity, SeaRoad executive chair Chas Kelly told ABC Mornings that “when ships are getting very close together – everything’s good, until it’s not”. Unsurprisingly, the temporary berthing solution would never proceed.

One Australian engineering consultancy, Alpha Systems, used the whole fiasco as a case study of what not to do when managing large infrastructure projects. It applied its expertise to the manifold problems of management and coordination, but in truth probably didn’t need particular proficiency to come to these conclusions: “From a systems engineering and assurance perspective, this situation serves as a textbook example of what can go wrong”. One of the most apparent problems, Alpha Systems also wrote, was that “there seemed to be no clear linkage between infrastructure delivery milestones and the readiness of the vessels to enter service”. To put it even more clearly: it’s no good getting new ships if there’s nowhere to park them.

It also emerged that treasurer and infrastructure minister Michael Ferguson had been “aware of concerns” about TT-Line’s Berth 3 problems since October 2023, but for nine months had failed to mention them to the public. In August 2024, he told a parliamentary inquiry that he had raised this issue with TT-Line at the time, but had been “firmly assured” that the project was on track. As to which track, it wasn’t clear.

But TasPorts chair Steven Bradford told the inquiry he’d been “consistently concerned” about TT-Line’s progress in upgrading Berth 3 since even earlier – October 2022 – and regularly raised the issue with both TT-Line and Ferguson.

“Why is TT-Line, as a ferry company, leading the major infrastructure upgrades of the port?” asked Josh Willie, a Labor MP and the current opposition leader. “Why isn’t it TasPorts?”

Ferguson replied that it was within TT-Line’s authority to decide to manage its own berthing arrangements. Despite being shareholder minister, responsible for monitoring the broader role of government businesses, his hands were apparently tied.

Willie followed up: “You’ve got one company [TasPorts] that has a history of infrastructure upgrades around ports and you’ve got another company [TT-Line] that doesn’t have such a history and is a ferry company. Did you have any concerns about the risk being loaded onto TT-Line for that upgrade?”

Ferguson replied that he valued the TT-Line board and management and had accepted their assurances, while reiterating that these were decisions only the board could make.

The inquiry also revealed that TT-Line’s tender with the proposed builder of the Berth 3 upgrades had fallen over months earlier – during the election caretaker period – and the project had to be re-tendered entirely, causing further delays.

“This was a surprise to me as minister for infrastructure and formerly the minister for transport,” Ferguson said grimly.

TT-Line issued a statement the same day: “The Board of TT-Line Company Pty Ltd has disputed elements of the evidence presented” to the inquiry. Chair Michael Grainger looked forward to “setting the record straight” when he appeared before it. The media were salivating. Premier Jeremy Rockliff instead asked Grainger to resign, with immediate effect.

In the face of the biggest infrastructure disaster in Tasmanian history, TT-Line was now under new leadership. The company’s next public statement didn’t mention board appointments, however, or plans to redress the growing cluster of berthing problems. It took a sunnier approach.

“Superior facilities for pets on board new ships: Spirit of Tasmania has prioritised the comfort and safety of all pets travelling on board its two new ships with exceptional new pet-friendly facilities. Each new ship Spirit of Tasmania IV and V – will feature 18 pet-friendly cabins available for passengers who wish to have their pets with them in their cabin during the journey.”

The highly anticipated ships were “due to commence operating on Bass Strait between Geelong and Devonport in 2025”, TT-Line added, with ongoing but misguided positivity.

In late August 2024, under great public pressure, Michael Ferguson relinquished his position as infrastructure minister and his share of responsibility for the whole debacle. In an act of Yes Minister-ish bravery, Premier Rockliff took on the infrastructure portfolio himself.

TT-Line chief executive Bernard Dwyer tendered his resignation a few weeks later. “His positive approach, energy and will to achieve the best for Tasmania will be sorely missed,” said acting chair Damian Bugg, who nevertheless asked Dwyer not to appear at the forthcoming parliamentary hearing “for his own wellbeing”.

TasPorts chair Stephen Bradford retired soon afterwards, after “nine fulfilling years”. But he did want to make one point before he departed: “We make mistakes,” he told ABC Radio Hobart. “We have [made] some howlers, but one of those mistakes was not Berth 3 and we have been unfairly blamed with this fiasco.”

Finally, however, the first new Spirit of Tasmania ferry was completed. TT-Line took possession of the vessel in Finland in September 2024. But where would it go?

When the government announced it would house the new vessels in Scotland – possibly for years, at an eventual cost of $800,000 per month in port fees – the decision was widely lambasted. The delay, now six years, was already going to cost the Tasmanian economy $3 billion. Facing growing furore, and with another election fast approaching, the Rockliff government responded the only way it knew how – by embarking on a public relations campaign. Advertisements ran in The Advocate, Examiner and Mercury newspapers, listing 16 eminently reasonable questions under the headline “Spirits replacement update”. Among them: “What is happening?”, “Are the ships going to stay in Scotland until 2027?”, “Why can’t they be brought back to Tasmania?” and “Have TT-Line and TasPorts been held responsible?” Unfortunately, the answers given by the government only served to highlight the true scope of the problems it had presided over.

Some were asking if the ships could at least be rented out while in Scotland, to recoup some of the berthing costs. “Tasmania finds itself in a farcical position where the brand-new Spirit of Tasmania ferries it purchased may end up being hand-me-downs by the time they reach the state’s shores,” the ABC reported. Stories began leaking of the efforts to find alternative uses. News website Pulse Tasmania discovered the Scottish government was in “advanced negotiations” to lease the first new Spirit of Tasmania ferry to house Ukrainian refugees. Documents obtained under freedom of information laws showed that TT-Line appointed a shipbroker to investigate possible lease options for the completed Spirit. In response, 12 parties expressed interest in using it for ferry operations, and two for accommodation, including as a “floating accommodation facility in California to house displaced residents”. Ultimately, none of these came to fruition.

Premier Rockliff fronted the media in October 2024, declaring several times that he was “pissed off” at the poor progress, as if his administration were frustrated bystanders. But, as ABC reporter Adam Langenberg pointed out, there were still many questions to answer: “Like, if it’s going to take two and a half years after works started for the permanent berth to be built, why on earth didn’t construction start ages ago? And why did the government, TT-Line and TasPorts keep saying things were fine when there was no way the berth could be built in time?”

A few months later, there was some good news to alleviate the bad, this time announced by state Transport Minister Eric Abetz. “I can confirm that we have found a way to significantly accelerate the build of the new Devonport berth,” he wrote in a courageous Facebook post on May 9, 2025. “This is now anticipated to be completed by October 2026, four months sooner than previously planned.” This was despite the promise of delivery by 2021. But one couldn’t fault his can-do attitude, particularly given his own admission that “the build isn’t without risk”.

Later the same day, Abetz told parliament that the berth works in Devonport were now set to cost $493 million – up from $375 million, earlier estimated at $90 million, after an initial promise of $50 to $60 million. Abetz said it was “fanciful to suggest” that the original figure was ever realistic. “Excessive optimism was a major failing of past management of the project,” he said drily. “The government and I are comfortable we are now receiving robust and accurate advice from the company for this project.”

Abetz’s optimism would also prove to be fanciful. Three weeks later, he advised that a technical issue with the liquefied natural gas systems on board both ships had been identified. TT-Line had been planning to sail the completed Spirit IV to Hobart for a final fit-out, and the fault had been noticed during a weather-related delay. The journey was postponed again until the repairs were completed. But Tasmanians should look on the bright side, according to Abetz: it was actually “good news” the issue had been identified before the ship had departed from Scotland. “Thank goodness for the weather,” he said. “She might have been well into the deep oceans and then suffer[ed] a mechanical issue, the full extent of which I am not apprised of.”

In June 2025, Spirit of Tasmania V was completed and handed over to TT-Line, although the official ceremony was held in Finland, where the new ship remained due to the lack of suitable docking facilities in Australia. TT-Line didn’t put a timeline on its passage.

In August last year, Spirit of Tasmania IV finally arrived in Tasmania. But once the fit-out took place in Hobart, the ship was to be moved to Point Henry in Geelong. Remarkably, a new problem had emerged: a mismatch between the ships’ hulls and the new wharf fenders in Devonport. The extent and cost of the hull upgrades were not yet known, but new TT-Line chair Ken Kanofski assured the public: “In the scheme of things, this is a very, very minor issue.”

“Part of the solution,” Kanofski told ABC Radio Northern Tasmania, was likely to be “some minor modifications to the fenders and some minor modifications to the ship”. But he wanted to state clearly: “There is nothing wrong with these ships.” And as if to prove it, TT-Line released pictures of the “state-of-the-art” ferry and issued tickets for free, self-guided tours of the new vessel. All three days sold out, and new pictures showed the interior of a genuinely impressive new ship, which would remain tantalisingly out of service for a long time yet.

It later emerged that TT-Line had made changes to the specifications for fenders at the Devonport wharf in 2023 without proper consultation with TasPorts. As Kanofski told a parliamentary committee in late October 2025, “TT-Line reiterated, as the client, that they wanted the specification that they asked for, and refused permission for TasPorts to speak to the shipbuilder.” He said TT-Line’s view was that “they’re our ships and we know what we’re doing”. Evidently, however, they didn’t.

Kanofski was frank about the failures of his predecessors at TT-Line. “The project … did not have what I would call the normal checks and balances and governance that I would expect to see in a project of this scale,” he said. He blamed “human error” for the fender problem, which would cost TT-Line an extra $9 million.

The parliamentary committee also heard that TT-Line was running out of cash, so the government had approved a $400 million increase to its borrowing limit in July, taking its credit line to $1.4 billion. The latest TT-Line annual report showed that its financial position had been affected by falling passenger numbers on the still-operating Spirits I and II. Some of that may be attributable to “some of the bad publicity that we’ve been receiving for two years”, Kanofski said. “That’s just speculation.” The fall in numbers may also be attributable to TT-Line moving its Victorian departure point from Port Melbourne to less populous Geelong two years ago, but that’s also just speculation.

Unfortunately, TT-Line’s best laid plans ran aground again in October. “Spirit of Tasmania IV ship unable to dock at interim berth at Point Henry in Geelong,” ran the ABC headline. “State-owned ferry operator TT-Line has been forced to scrap plans to dock Spirit of Tasmania IV at a berth in Point Henry in Geelong after a safety assessment found it was not strong enough,” wrote ABC reporter Lucy MacDonald. As TT-Line had explained, “a mooring safety assessment indicated that the berth required infrastructure works”.

The new vessel would instead be temporarily stored across at least three locations around the Port of Geelong.

In November, Tasmania’s auditor-general told a budget estimates hearing that he had referred TT-Line to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), suspecting its directors were in breach of the federal Corporations Act. He had formed the view back in July that the company was insolvent. “The level of debt that they had at that point in time was not likely to be able to be repaid based on the forecasts available,” he said.

“The definition of insolvent is really quite clear in the legislation,” the auditor-general said. “It is an offence under the legislation to trade when you or a reasonably informed director would be of the position that you were insolvent.” He had told TT-Line of his view in July, yet four days later the government had approved an increase in TT-Line’s borrowing limit. TT-Line chair Kanofski said the board disagreed with the auditor-general’s “commentary on insolvency” and remained “confident of its position”, citing privileged advice the board had received.

Eric Abetz, now treasurer, was asked whether he too was confident in this advice. He replied that the TT-Line board was an “exceptionally fine body of men and women”.

“They are responsible for determining whether the company of which they are the board is trading solvent or insolvent,” Abetz said, in a statement that was only partially true.

The following week, Kanofski was asked to appear at another parliamentary committee hearing. He said the auditor-general’s statements about insolvency were “absurd”. TT-Line effectively owed its debt to the state, he explained, and the Tasmanian treasurer would never enforce insolvency. That, he said “would be perverse”. Evidently, the lessons of moral hazards past remain unlearnt.

In the meantime, the government announced in December that it would proceed with the construction of the new Macquarie Point stadium on heavily polluted land in the heart of Hobart. Having initially promised to cap its contribution at $375 million, the government was now committed to limiting the state’s contribution to $875 million. “The figures that we have are on the very best of professional advice from quantity surveyors,” Treasurer Abetz affirmed, “and we, at this stage, do not see any blowout.”

At the time of writing, it is impossible to envisage what new catastrophes will befall the Spirit of Tasmania replacement project. Spirit IV remains in Geelong, while Spirit V is berthed in Scotland. TT-Line remains confident that they will have their first sailings in October.

I’ve been presenting a radio show on 3RRR this month (Uncommon Sense, Tues 9am-midday), and have enjoyed talking to Osman Faruqi about the rise of One Nation; Jess Hill about her ongoing work on family violence; Richard Cooke about the cultural impact of Wikipedia on its 25th birthday; and Rachel Withers about the week in politics. If you’re interested in any of these conversation, please clink the links below to listen:

Osman Faruqi on the Rise of One Nation

I speak to Osman Faruqi about the rise of One Nation, the state of the media, and what’s happening in right-wing politics in Australia.

Osman Faruqi is an award-winning journalist and editor who’s worked across news, politics, current affairs, arts and entertainment – at the ABC, the Nine newspapers, Junkee and Schwartz Media. Last year Faruqi started up his own independent news and podcast outfit Lamestream with colleague Scott Mitchell.

Lamestream provides rigorous analysis and commentary on the increasingly right-leaning political and media landscape in Australia.

Listen here to our conversation.

Jess Hill on Updating her Landmark Book ‘See What You Made Me Do’

Investigative journalist and author Jess Hill discusses her work on family violence.

Hill started out in journalism as a producer at ABC Radio National and then became a foreign correspondent but in recent years has gravitated towards journalism about family and sexual violence. Her work has been widely acclaimed, winning Walkley Awards, Our Watch Awards, a Premier’s Literary Award, a Stella Prize and much more. She also made a documentary TV series for SBS based on her book, See What You Made Me Do.

In this conversation, Hill talks about her continuing, developing work in the area, which has prompted an update of her book. The new edition of See What You Made Me Do is out through Black Inc and on shelves now.

Please note: this conversation discusses issues including domestic violence, gendered violence and sexual assault.

Listen here to our conversation.

Richard Cooke on Wikipedia’s Wild Cultural Impact

Richard Cooke is an author, reporter and screenwriter. He has been published by many of the best outlets in the world including the The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Republic, WIRED and the Paris Review, and he is a multiple Walkley winner. His books include Tired of Winning, a stunning series of essays on Trump’s first term; a Writers on Writers contribution on Robyn Davidson; and Dark Star Rising, a short biography of Elon Musk.

Richard wrote a stunning essay a few years ago called “Wikipedia is the Last, Best Place on the Internet” and will soon be expanding it into a book. He’s perfectly placed to talk about the cultural impact of Wikipedia on its 25th birthday.

In the second half of the conversation, they discuss recent trends in US politics under Trump. Listen here.

Rachel Withers on Isaac Herzog’s visit, the Coalition in crisis and One Nation’s Latest Polls

Rachel Withers and I discuss the week in politics.

Withers is an independent journalist and political commentator. She has written for publications including Crikey, Meanjin and The Monthly and co-presents RRR’s Spin Cycle on Thursday evenings.

The week in local politics has been dominated by the visit of Israel’s president Isaac Herzog, and the protests against his visit. What was touted by Albanese and the pro-Israel community as an opportunity for healing after Bondi has turned into anything but.

In the second half of the conversation, we discuss the ongoing problems of the Coalition. Listen here.

The catalyst for the implosion of Adelaide Writers’ Week may have been the board’s exclusion of Randa Abdel-Fattah on January 8, but the fight over her inclusion in the program had been running at board level for months.

A letter of resignation from the board by Tony Berg, dated October 22, cited the invitation of the outspoken Palestinian-Australian author as a key reason for his resignation for the Adelaide Festival Board (which oversees Adelaide Writers’ Week). “I cannot serve on a board which employs a director … who programs writers who have a vendetta against Israel and Zionism,” he wrote. The letter revealed that festival director Louise Adler had told the board about Abdel-Fattah’s invitation in September. Berg, who is a governor of the Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce and identifies as a supporter of Zionism, also cited examples of writers programmed by Adler in previous festivals who were “regarded as antisemitic”, and said that he could not remain on the board “while these travesties continue and while we are now forced to put up with them for another 18 months”.

The letter from Berg, addressed to the South Australian arts minister Andrea Michaels, demonstrates that tensions around inviting the author began internally, and preceded any Jewish community pressure campaign by many months.

The communications that took place in September between director, board and the government about Abdel-Fattah also rolled out in the wake of the most dramatic collapse (until then) of any Australian writers’ festival in recent history.

Bendigo Writers Festival took place in mid-Aug, and was ruined by the withdrawal of over 50 writers (including Abdel-Fattah and many writers invited to appear at Adelaide) who refused to sign a code of conduct that they believed curtailed their right to speak openly about Israel’s actions in Gaza. Put simply, the Adelaide board and South Australian government were debating the Abdel-Fattah matter knowing the degree of damage that a similar board-level act of censorship had already caused. (The board chair at the time, Tracey Whiting, has been asked whether she was warned by Adler of the likelihood that withdrawing Abdel-Fattah’s invitation would lead to a boycott; and why she might have disregarded any warning but we did not hear back by deadline.)

Berg’s departure from the board was one of three in late 2025, and three new board members, journalist Daniela Ritorto, lawyer Nicholas Linke and businesswoman Donny Walford, were appointed by the Labor government. The newly composed board held to its position of supporting Adler’s programming, but the political heat behind the scenes was rising. The board established “a sub-committee to oversee the ongoing Board-led review, and guide decisions about Adelaide Writers’ Week in the near and longer terms. This includes ongoing engagement with relevant Government agencies and the appointment and/or advice of external experts.” One source close to the festival says SA premier Peter Malinauskus was regularly agitating for Abdel-Fattah’s cancellation leading up to the January 8 statement – as his subsequent comments would confirm. Former Writers Week director Jo Dyer has reported that festival organisers secured assurances from ASIO and the police that the festival would be safe for all to attend, and shared them with the board and government. Dyer also writes, “Steve Bracks was enlisted to counsel the Premier against demanding a course of action that would torpedo one of his state’s finest assets. But the Premier was not for turning”.

Eventually, the board relented. They had seen what had happened at Bendigo, and they did it anyway. Indeed, they nodded to the anticipated fallout in their statement: “We understand these Board decisions will likely be disappointing to many in our community. We also recognise our request to Dr Abdel-Fattah will be labelled and will cause discomfort and pressure to other participants.”

The emergence of the Berg resignation letter casts new light on the rationale used by the festival board to uninvite Abdel-Fattah. “Whilst we do not suggest in any way that Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’s or her writings have any connection with the tragedy at Bondi,” said the board’s January 8 statement, but “given her past statements” (unspecified), “we have formed the view that it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.”

This reference to Bondi would now seem a convenient, even opportunistic justification to “solve” a problem that had been a running sore at the festival since September. Abdel-Fattah called it “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship and a despicable attempt to associate me with the Bondi massacre.”

Malinauskas told ABC Radio Adelaide on Friday morning, January 9, that he “wholeheartedly” supported the board’s decision. He had “thought about this a lot” before informing the board of his position.

Two days later, when nearly a hundred of Writers Week’s guest speakers had pulled out, and posters on social media had questioned the premier’s influence over the disaster, Malinauskus shifted his rhetoric – though not enough to cast serious doubt on his involvement: “My opinion was sought and it was offered, and I was more than happy to offer my opinion and make it clear and strongly known,” he said. “I made clear to the board every single step of the way that I have a view but I also made clear to the board that I wouldn’t be instructing them or intervening on them or threatening cancelling funding or anything like that.”

The final part of that sentence is a nod to the fact that he has no legal authority to direct the decisions of the Adelaide Festival board; the rest of his new statement confirms he had communicated with the board numerous times – very clearly on the subject.

The following day, on Monday, Malinauskas confirmed that he had known about the festival’s invitation of Abdel-Fattah since September, and had expressed his “concern about it” in writing to the board, and this was “before I received any representations from the Jewish community.” (The Jewish Community Council of South Australia had expressed its strong disapproval of Abdel-Fattah by this stage too.)

With stunning effrontery, Malinauskas then said, “The people who run this festival, which is the board … have got this into a pretty awful situation.”

(Former board chair Whiting has been approached for comment on whether she had direct conversations with the premier about Abdel-Fattah, what was the nature of these conversations, and whether she shared his characterisation that the board sought his opinion on the matter.)

Two days after the board announcement that prompted the boycott, with the festival obviously at risk, an emergency board meeting was held on Saturday morning. Writers’ Week, which last year drew a record 160,000 attendees, was set to run from February 28 to March 5, but now appeared unlikely to proceed at all. By then, virtually every high-profile guest had withdrawn or was in the process of withdrawing. The common theme of statements accompanying withdrawals was that artistic freedom of expression was under threat, and that one didn’t need to agree with Abdel-Fattah to believe that censoring her in this manner was unacceptable.

If any proposal was raised during the emergency meeting to revisit the Abdel-Fattah call, it was rejected. The board stood by its earlier decision. Why? They would not say. Soon afterwards, three board members resigned – the same three who had recently been appointed by the government. And then the chair resigned.

Tracey Whiting announced her resignation in a LinkedIn post: “Recent decisions were bound by certain undertakings and my resignation enables the Adelaide Festival, as an organisation, to refresh its leadership and its approach to these circumstances.” It was unclear what these “certain undertakings” were, or why as an independent director she was bound by them, but it appeared to hint at political interference.

This left the Adelaide Festival board with only three members, Leesa Chesser, Mary Couros and Brenton Cox. It no longer had a quorum and was now in breach of the Adelaide Festival Corporation Act, which states that “At least two members must be women and at least two must be men.” There was only one man, Adelaide Airport managing director Brenton Cox, remaining.

Until further appointments were made by the Governor at the behest of the government, the board appeared to lack the authority to reverse its decision on Abdel-Fattah (in the unlikely event it would make that decision). Indeed, it may even be unable to make the decision to announce the festival’s cancellation. Rather than allow a single Palestinian author to speak, it doomed the best literary festival in the country – for 2026 and possibly beyond.

Adelaide Festival proper starts on February 27, and must navigate the crucial coming weeks without a functioning board. (Although Malinauskas told InDaily on Monday that he had received advice that the board was “still formally constituted and capable of making decisions”.) Several acts have already withdrawn. The club component of the festival’s contemporary music program has been abandoned, with every artist programmed reportedly pulling out.

Adelaide Festival Corporation executive director Julian Hobba issued a placeholder statement on Monday that offered little reassurance and seems to suggest they’re in a holding pattern: “Following the Adelaide Festival Board’s decision on Thursday January 8 and the significant community response, Adelaide Writers’ Week and Adelaide Festival are navigating a complex and unprecedented moment and will share further updates as soon as we are able.”

A recent economic impact report found the 2025 event contributed $62.6 million to the South Australian economy. It involved 1700 artists and over 350,000 attendees (including Womad). Serious damage to the festival would be disastrous to the state economy.

In the meantime, Louise Adler resigned, with a barnstorming defence of free speech and artistic expression on the way out (“art in the service of ‘social cohesion’ is propaganda … They are coming for you”). Abdel-Fattah has appointed legal representation, while historian and guest-invitee Henry Reynolds asked his lawyer to put a series of sharp questions to the festival board about its “general approach to matters of governance and due process”, which had caused him and so many others such disappointment and concern. They remain unanswered.

*

The story of Adelaide Writers’ Week 2026 is still unfolding, but it’s a tragedy that’s already familiar. Tales like it now haunt cultural institutions across the nation: ABC, Creative Australia, State Library of Victoria, State Library of Queensland, Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, National Gallery of Australia, Monash Museum of Art and Bendigo Writers Festival (which won’t run in 2026) have all been badly damaged in Gaza-related censorship scandals. In truth, they have damaged themselves. Their boards have demonstrated little respect for free artistic expression, instead undermining their own institution’s values and processes under political pressure. Pressure by political leaders, organised lobbying campaigns by pro-Israeli groups, and outright harassment by right-wing news outlets have sought to silence pro-Palestinian voices; boards have surrendered to these campaigns; and arts communities have responded fiercely, drawing attention to the hypocrisy at play and the decline in official support for free speech.

The writers invited to appear at Adelaide, like artists around the country, were staunch in their belief that it’s not the place of corporatised boards to decide which voices are allowed to speak, especially on issues as grave as antisemitism and genocide. What’s becoming increasingly evident, however, is that pro-Israel lobbyists, major-party politicians and timid board members are willing to sacrifice any arts and cultural organisation, even their own, to silence dissent.

*

On Tuesday afternoon, Jan 13, the remaining members of the Adelaide Festival board resigned, and announced that Adelaide Writers’ Week would not proceed in 2026. They apologised (sort of) to Randa Abdel-Fattah, and “our audience, artists and writers, donors, corporate partners, the government and our own staff and people”:

“It is the Adelaide Festival’s position that the event can no longer go ahead as scheduled for this year. This is a deeply regrettable outcome.

We recognise and deeply regret the distress this decision has caused to our audience, artists and writers, donors, corporate partners, the government and our own staff and people. We also apologise to Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah for how the decision was represented and reiterate this is not about identity or dissent but rather a continuing rapid shift in the national discourse around the breadth of freedom of expression in our nation following Australia’s worst terror attack in history.

We acknowledge and are committed to rebuilding trust with our artistic community and audience to enable open and respectful discussions at future Adelaide Writers’ Week events ... With this in mind all remaining members of the Adelaide Festival Board will today step down…”

What a terrible, terrible waste.

The Bondi massacre was unprecedented, unforgivable, unjustified and horrific. The aftermath presented an opportunity for serious reflection on the nature and causes of antisemitism in Australia, to honour the lives lost, the grieving families, and to protect the nation from any similar future acts. Instead we have seen a descent into partisan politicking the likes of which we’ve never seen before in Australia.

As Robert Manne wrote recently (“Don’t mention the war: After Bondi”), and others have pointed out, the response by the media and political class to previous Australian mass shootings was firstly to set aside partisan politics in the spirit of healing and solidarity. In the weeks following the Bondi massacre, the mainstream media has done the opposite. It has weaponised community grief, launching a campaign against the prime minister and taking every opportunity to generate political heat and score political points. Without evidence, it has re-broadcast outrageous claims about the causes of the tragedy, and about where responsibility lies. News editors have also given a helping hand to unscrupulous politicians such as Barnaby Joyce, Pauline Hanson and Andrew Hastie to steer public debate towards anti-immigration.

Manne called the response to the Bondi massacre “seriously strange”, and his essay is essential reading. I would go further and describe the response to Bondi as disturbing and alarming. Excepting the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, those seeking calm, reasoned and dignified responses to the crisis have found very few in the major news outlets.

We don’t know the exact beliefs of the Bondi killers yet of course, but that hasn’t stopped the re-broadcasting of claims and subtle imputations that they were somehow influenced by peace marchers and pro-Palestinian protesters. The underlying claim – sometimes stated outright – is that the pro-Palestinian protests created an “atmosphere” of antisemitic hate that led to the killings. This has barely been examined, let alone rebuffed, by most political commentators – across The Australian, the Murdoch tabloids, the Nine papers, even the ABC and Guardian. So let’s do so now: there is no evidence for it. Anyone who has attended or paid any attention to these marches knows that their overwhelming purpose was peaceful, that they were against mass violence, and that organisers (including several Jewish groups) were insistent that their protests were against the slaughter and starvation of Palestinians by Israel and avowedly not against Jewish people as a whole – and especially not those living in Australia. It is concerning that this even needs to be said, but when people are marching against mass violence, it’s because they are against mass violence. Most Australians strongly oppose mass violence against civilians, and this applies both to Bondi and Gaza.

These outlets have brushed over the intelligence failures that led to two men associated with Islamic State (IS) acquiring weapons, planning the attack, and travelling undetected to the region of the Philippines where IS train militants. And nowhere has it been noted that Islamic State is not pro-Palestinian: its fundamental goal is a caliphate – a global theocracy – with no national or territorial borders. Islamic State groups have even denounced Hamas, in some cases fighting physical battles with them over their differences. So if the Bondi massacre was an Islamic State operation, or driven by Islamic State ideology, it was almost certainly not a pro-Palestinian one.

People have a right, even a moral obligation, to speak out about genocide if they believe a genocide is in progress. I don’t need to point out the welter of evidence now supporting this in the case of Gaza. Indeed, in 2026 it requires an almost impenetrable degree of delusion or intellectual dishonesty to deny the legitimacy of these claims. This is the same mindset that renders all criticisms of Israel’s actions as antisemitic.

Linking the Bondi killers with pro-Palestinian protests is entirely “vibes”-based, and concocted for political purposes. To prove the point: this bizarre imputation of blame has already been leveraged to change NSW law to ban such protests.

NSW authorities’ own role in fomenting antisemitism, however, has remained entirely unexamined. In early November, NSW police approved a public rally of neo-Nazis in front of NSW parliament house, where far-right activists paraded underneath a sign calling to “abolish the Jewish lobby”. Why is the “atmosphere” of antisemitic hate being blamed on those defending Palestinian human rights, rather than those actually enunciating antisemitic hate?

Clearly NSW authorities have some soul-searching to do, as do national intelligence agencies, but it is dispiriting that they would seek to direct public blame and anger away from their own failings and towards a peace movement.

Similarly, the fact that anyone, let alone someone closely associated with terrorist networks, was able to legally acquire a stash of guns like those used in the attacks should indicate a serious problem with our gun laws. Yet instead of analysing actual failures around the massacre, media coverage recently has been dominated by a growing chorus of calls for Anthony Albanese to hold a royal commission. These follow weeks of loaded accusations against him, including that he “hasn’t done enough” to combat antisemitism and in fact had inflamed antisemitism. These claims were given their initial impetus by none other than Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu – the man who is subject to an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity because he has overseen the indiscriminate killing of tens (or hundreds) of thousands of civilians and the total destruction of Gazan society; because he has enforced deliberate starvation, withholding critical aid for civilians; because he has prevented humanitarian organisations from safely providing welfare and health services to men, women and children; and overseen the murder of journalists and their families. This is the man whose views have shaped the Australian media pile-on against its own leader.

Netanyahu’s government is killing more than 15 people every day in Gaza, even after promising a ceasefire. I wonder if it ever grates on Albanese – getting moral lectures from this man?

What makes the media’s post-Bondi campaign against Albanese even stranger is that he could scarcely have been a better supporter of Israel in recent years. Netanyahu pointed to the Australian government’s very conditional recognition of the state of Palestine as a driver of antisemitism. This rewarded Hamas for the murders on October 7, according to Netanyahu.

Albanese in reply pointed out that his government was only doing what 150-odd other countries had already done.

Even so, Albanese, leading a country whose majority strongly disapproves of Israel’s violence in Gaza, has done little to rebuke or curtail Israel. His government hasn’t imposed sanctions against any Israeli government figures or on any trade, and hasn’t ceased Australia’s involvement in weapons trade to Israel. Ministers’ rare statements of disapproval towards Israel have been of the wet-lettuce variety – gestures only. At every stage, Albanese has reiterated his strong stance against antisemitism and his support for the people of Israel. He appointed an obviously pro-Israel envoy to combat antisemitism, and appeared alongside her when she handed in her divisive report; he set up AFP Special Operation Avalite to crack down on threats, violence and hatred towards the Jewish community; he announced tougher hate speech laws; he put $32.5 million into strengthening security at Jewish community sites including synagogues and schools; and put $8 million into a museum fund for historical exhibits about antisemitism. To prove his ongoing support for Israel, Albanese even invited its president, Isaac Herzog, to visit Australia.

In the wake of Bondi, pundits have argued, most prominently in the Murdoch papers but elsewhere too, that Albanese should have better understood and reflected the public mood, and taken responsibility for both the “atmosphere” that led to the attacks, and the anger since it. Take a step back: why on earth would the focus of all vitriol after a mass killing such as this be directed personally at Anthony Albanese? Should he have overseen tougher gun laws? The calls for tougher gun laws have seemingly dissipated already. Was he responsible for the intelligence failures? Or the “atmosphere” of antisemitic hate? Can they point to a single offensive thing he has said since the massacre? Honestly.

I called the campaign against Albanese disturbing and alarming earlier, but it’s not really strange, is it? It’s just another News Corp-led smear campaign, a power play to undermine and browbeat a Labor prime minister using the grief of others for political gain. News Corp, the company that launches hate campaigns against minorities for fun, that has long fought against hate-speech protections and anti-discrimination laws. Yes, that News Corp. The strange thing – disgraceful, more like – is that they would stoop this low so soon after a mass killing. Doubly disgraceful has been the enthusiastic participation in the campaign by virtually every other major news organisation.

The heavily orchestrated, weeks-long calls for a royal commission are now fuelled by an argument, both stated and implied, that Albanese is resisting a royal commission because he is afraid of what it would reveal. In other words, he is now trying to cover up his failure. The more he resists, apparently, the guiltier he becomes. Anyway, you know who else has resisted calls for an independent inquiry into a historically unprecedented mass killing of Jews on home soil, that might have exposed embarrassing intelligence failures and politically disastrous past calculations? Benjamin Netanyahu.

Many of the arguments for a royal commission are legitimate – of course we want to understand how it happened – but all fall down for one key reason, which has as yet been ignored entirely by the legacy media: there is no way to hold an effective royal commission into the Bondi attacks without jeopardising the trial of the alleged perpetrator. Once a case is before the courts (that is, when the accused has been charged), even a royal commission is subject to sub judice laws. It would be impossible for the commission to openly discuss, investigate or conclude anything about the motivations or actions of the accused in relation to the Bondi shootings – anything that would influence the court – until the criminal proceedings are concluded (which is likely to take years). To do anything else would risk prejudicing the jury.

As lawyer Fiona Roughly wrote in the UNSW Law Journal, quoting an earlier legal judgement, “If a royal commission were to be established ... and tasked to inquire into the same matter the subject of pending criminal proceedings, the commission ‘would almost certainly be held to be an interference with the course of justice and consequently to constitute a contempt of court.’”

How could a royal commission investigate the influence of antisemitism in this case without examining the motives and actions of the accused? Or are we to believe the commission could closely examine the Bondi massacre and make conclusions about underlying motivations without looking into the circumstances and beliefs of the actual perpetrator? In this case, it would be looking at everything but the most salient facts. Perhaps some believe that private/closed hearings into these aspects would be an acceptable way forward, but this surely defeats the purpose of an open royal commission. In the meantime, the lumbering nature of royal commissions and the secrecy would give critics endless material with which to beat Albanese and pro-Palestinian voices over the head. (By the way, it’s almost undeniable that if Albanese had immediately called a royal commission, News Corp would be attacking him for kicking the can down the road, because he needs to take responsibility and do something now, not in three years!)

Or worse, are those calling for a royal commission saying that the accused’s right to a fair trial is secondary? I think some are, and the corollary logic is chilling: a politically motivated campaign obviously intended to harm the sitting prime minister has overridden the most basic principle of our legal system.

No doubt there’s a section of the community already saying that circumstances are exceptional. It is naive in the extreme to believe that just because we are certain of the outcome, we can ignore the proper process of the law. It would be an incredibly dangerous precedent, especially for a nation whose media is dominated by an organisation as ruthless and unprincipled as News Corp. For what it’s worth, when over 130 lawyers signed a letter calling for a royal commission, it was a royal commission “into antisemitism”. The Daily Telegraph, 7news, and AFR and others reported them as calling for, variously, a “Bondi shooting royal commission”, and “a royal commission into the Bondi terror attacks”. Very different.

*

An open letter by the progressive Jewish Council of Australia asks us “to stand strong against those who are weaponising the Bondi massacre to push bigotry, hatred and division. Jewish safety and the safety of every other marginalised group go hand in hand. Pitting Jewish safety against Palestinians, Muslims and migrant communities, and eroding all of our civil liberties, doesn’t make Jews safer. It makes the real fight against antisemitism harder.”

Robert Manne’s essay speaks memorably “of the strange atmosphere of strictly enforced unreality that has accompanied the growth of antisemitic sentiment in Australia since October 7”. I would add that this characterisation also applies to all legitimate criticism of Israel in Australian public life. Major media outlets in Australia still cannot speak the truth of Israel’s genocide, and are therefore themselves complicit in the suppression of genuine dialogue about both antisemitism in Australia and the actions of Israel.

Writes Manne, “the sharp rise in antisemitic acts — insults, tweets, graffiti, arson, but no physical violence so far as I am aware before Bondi — did not occur for no reason. They are self-evidently connected, in ways we must try to understand in open, non-censorious discussion, to the character of Israel’s war in Gaza following the murder of 1200 and the kidnapping of 250 of its innocent citizens at the hands of Hamas.” Manne is careful to distinguish antisemitism from legitimate criticism of Israel and its “annihilation of a people, their cities, towns and market gardens, and their culture”.

If the connection between rising antisemitism and the “character of Israel’s war” was included in the royal commission’s terms of reference, though, one could easily imagine support for it evaporating. An open, non-censorious discussion on antisemitism, if we are a thoughtful society, will not be driven by political journalists seeking a scalp or news outlets with an agenda. We will need to find our own way to navigate it. It’s not at all clear that the public shares the media’s enthusiasm for a royal commission; reader comments online and social media indicate otherwise – and public trust in the effectiveness of royal commissions has rightly taken a hit in recent years. Albanese may believe there’s no genuine thirst for another one, and that there are more direct and safer means to investigate the failures and causes of the Bondi attack (he has pointed to a limited intelligence inquiry, and the state royal commission that’s already been announced). He will have discerned the partisan political and personal edge to the campaign too. Being Albanese, there’s every possibility he will fold under pressure, but he has every right to reject the calls.

Investigative journalism is a foolish thing to do these days. Apart from a handful of flagship roles in big legacy media houses, it’s underfunded and unsupported. It’s also time-consuming and fraught with financial peril thanks to our defamation laws. Complex or difficult stories can attract large audiences but often don’t, so in economic terms are hard to justify; clickbait is cheaper and liftouts about travel or food are far more lucrative. For similar reasons, many other issues are off-limits. An industry reliant on gambling, real estate and retail advertising is not going to dig too deep into those subjects.

For a freelancer, investigative journalism can feel like volunteer work. Days or weeks of work can culminate in a piece worth as little as $300 to a news outlet; even then, the piece is often paywalled and likely to irritate powerful people. Nevertheless, the outlet has edited and legalled it, so it’s better than (almost) nothing.

The job is getting harder, too. At the same time as the traditional business model behind journalism has been collapsing, governments and corporations have become more adept at hiding their wrongdoings and failures. Freedom-of-information services have been degrading for several years, and bureaucracies spend more time hiding information than providing it. Their objective is seemingly to find ever-trickier ways to avoid providing information. “I’ll take that on notice” is the new motto. And every journalist requesting information from a government bureaucracy knows this script:

Journalist: Here are detailed individual questions about an important issue of public interest. Can you help to inform us?

Department spokesperson: Here are some motherhood statements about how much the government cares, none of which touch on the questions you asked.

It’s often only when a whistleblower contacts a journalist that we learn just how secretive and media-managed normal operations of the state have become, or how broken. This is when the journalist might also have to face the fact that if they don’t cover this particular massive problem, no-one will.

*

There’s a cliche in old journalism movies. After months of dogged, dangerous investigation, the journalist finally breaks the story wide open, and in the final scene we see newspapers spinning off the printing press with the big scoop emblazoned across the front page. This is the conclusion: now that the scandal has been exposed, consequences will inevitably follow.

Today, in the real world, the story ends thus: the exposé is published and draws outraged responses from a small number of engaged readers, but most media don’t follow up the story because it’s not theirs. And a day or two later the caravan has moved on. The target of the exposé rides out the scandal with some well-organised PR support, a minister is “consulting with stakeholders”, and barring a handful of press releases by concerned independent MPs or special interest groups, nothing more comes of it.

If, over time, related stories mount up, or social media goes crazy and the political embarrassment becomes too great to ignore, the relevant minister puts out a statement that they are shocked – shocked! – and saddened by this situation that has been going on under their noses for years, but which – truly – they had no idea about. The next step in the long road to justice is the minister calling an inquiry or royal commission. Bravo! everyone cries, as the can is kicked down the road for another year or so. When the resultant report is issued, it outlines the alarming scope of the problem and painstakingly lays out how this could (should) have been avoided and what must be done to address it. The government ceremoniously accepts most or some of the recommendations, and then … ? Two years later, nothing has changed. Rinse and repeat.

The other difference between the classic movie version of the story and today’s reality is this: the scoop might not hit the headlines at all. The work would have been delivered not by a large and fully-funded investigative team, but more likely by an independent news website, a self-funded podcast, or a journalist either working 18-hour days because they don’t have a team or working freelance for peanuts. Behind them, providing a huge bulk of unpaid labour and research, is a self-organising group of retired and/or volunteer citizen journalists, frustrated current and former employees, academics, non-government organisations, think tanks and activists. Forget rich people – these are the real philanthropists.

*

For reasons I don’t fully understand, I’ve been drawn in recent years to stories that are notably complex and hard to tell – maybe because they are complex and hard to tell. As I said: foolish. I’ve written about carbon offsets, climate policy failure and Australia’s booming fossil fuel exports, corruption at Home Affairs, child abuse in state institutions, insurance and climate risk, failures at the NACC, failures in hospitals and state education, the silencing of Israel’s critics by Australian cultural organisations, the killing of Meanjin and the corporatisation of universities. I chose these subjects because there was so little public understanding about them; little, in any case, that matched the truth of them. Individual journalists are covering some of these things, of course, but their work is rarely taken up, even by their own publications. This points to a systemic issue, because on most complex problems, only sustained attention can create broad understanding and public pressure.

Not that my work has been particularly effective: if you want a tabulation of issues that contemporary Australia must address but never does, you could start by reading that list back again. Other journalists will have their own lists, which seem only to be growing.

Even issues like Robodebt, which you could classify as a success in terms of effective media scrutiny, took years of dogged reporting by a small handful of committed journalists to gain enough traction to warrant official attention. But after everything we’ve learnt about the cruelty and malfeasance in the worst policy failure in Australian government history, has anyone faced prosecution or punishment of any kind? No.

A lack of sustained scrutiny breeds complacency and inactivity among leaders. If, like the Albanese government, your overriding goal is your own political ascendancy, why would you take on any big problem you don’t need to?

The combination of unambitious governments and systemically weak media is how you end up with seemingly intractable problems like we have in housing, aged care, employment services, scientific research, higher education or the NDIS. It’s how you end up with a climate policy that ignores our role as the world’s second-largest emissions exporter, or a gas policy that leaves Australians paying high prices due to a “shortage” while 80% of our gas is sent overseas by companies paying virtually no tax or royalties. It’s how gambling companies get to run amok online, or how you end up paying $370 billion for nuclear submarines and a closer alliance with Trumpian fascism but “can’t afford” to properly fund the CSIRO, the BOM or universities. Or dental care or mental health.

It’s how you end up with an oligopolistic economy, unrestrained neoliberalism, and sociopathic tech bros running rampant and untaxed through our democracy.

Even the capacity to explain or describe the worst of society’s problems often seems beyond the media, despite the mountains of content it produces. To borrow from Sean Kelly’s recent Quarterly Essay (citing writer Adam Phillips and philosopher Michel Serres), “What do we not want to know about ourselves?”

*

Journalism’s objective isn’t to bring change. It’s to observe, record, explain. Having said that, journalism still rests on a fundamental optimism, a belief that facts and truth will eventually be the basis of positive action; if people understand a problem, they will act. I don’t even know if this is true, but I prefer it over moral nihilism. Perhaps you don’t even need to be so idealistic. Understanding a problem is surely a necessary precondition to fixing it, so we should at least start with that. Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will, as Gramsci put it.

Put another way, if you’re writing about an issue as troubling, for example, as institutional child sexual abuse – or police brutality, inequality, injustice or corruption – and you don’t want your work to effect change, you probably shouldn’t be a journalist, because you’re either not taking your role seriously or … you’re a person who shouldn’t have any influence over other people.

Cynics, conservatives and executives in the media will often mock “activism” in journalism, arguing that journalists who wish to see particular outcomes from their reporting are forgetting objectivity, and bringing their personal politics and values into reporting. I find this argument specious and vapid. Journalism always rests on testing claims and verifying facts – if it didn’t, it wouldn’t be journalism. Rigour and process, not ideology, are journalism’s engine. Journalists and commentators who tell you they don’t let their culture, background or opinions influence their work – and who remain miraculously immune from their own unconscious biases – are either deluded or genuinely think their views are inherently neutral or impartial.

“Activist” is commonly used to undermine journalists who work on Indigenous affairs, environmental, or social justice and equity issues, or who incorporate basic principles of accountability into their practice. (Next time you hear “activist” used as an accusation, check who’s saying it: they’ll almost always be privileged and white.)

This points to a troubling but fundamental bias that is baked into almost all of our major news organisations today (are there any exceptions?): editors, managers and senior journalists are not sceptical of power, but rather of power’s critics. They are more oriented towards reproducing power. For example, they would never describe right-wing or pro-business campaigns in their own pages as “activist”. Journalists and commentators whose views cleave closer to power are treated as responsible, objective and normal.

This is a problem, because actively holding power to account should be at the core of journalism.

*

There’s a meta version of “stories of powerlessness that are apparently too difficult or niche for a national audience”. It’s called Tasmania. I’ve lost count of the number of stories I’ve encountered in the island state that should have scandalised the nation, but have been met with a shrug by the mainland media.

For example, did you know that the Tasmanian government recently paid $75 million in a class action settlement to 129 victims of child sexual abuse at the hands of dozens of government employees in its only youth detention centre? Probably not. Amid the lack of national attention, the Ashley Youth Detention Centre is still open, and this year almost 50% of its detainees reported they’d been victims of abuse. There is now a second class action in train for the many further Ashley victims who missed the first one. The impoverished state has estimated its total liability for child sexual abuse claims at over $600 million. Six. Hundred. Million. Dollars.

You cannot tell me that this didn’t deserve national attention, or that they wouldn’t have been leading national bulletins for weeks if they broke in Melbourne or Sydney.

Did you know that Tasmania has a functional adult literacy rate of 50%?

I’ve written about these and so many other scandals. Local Tasmanian reporters have also written about the horrific environmental impact of the salmon industry; about the clusterfuck of the biggest infrastructure project in the state’s history, the new Spirit of Tasmania vessels; about the dire state of the health system; about the cost of housing and the madness of building an unaffordable AFL stadium, and the ballooning government debt. In terms of ongoing national coverage, though, all of these stories have been outweighed by the annual nude swim that happens in Hobart’s River Derwent during Dark Mofo.

Call me an activist or whatever, but the lack of national scrutiny has cost Tasmanians dearly. It’s cost all Australian taxpayers, because they are the main contributors to Tasmanian government revenues.

*

I started this piece, strangely enough, because I wanted to write about a rare accountability win – an example of how scrutiny can, just every now and then, lead to positive change.

In mid 2023, the Commission of Inquiry into the Tasmanian Government’s Responses to Child Sexual Abuse concluded. The Commissioners’ report was devastating – an indictment of the government and its bureaucracy, of the police and independent authorities, of the whole justice system. Yet in over 2000 pages of the report, not a single person was held responsible for any of the abuse investigated. The government had rigged the game, and the Commissioners couldn’t reveal any names or make any other findings of misconduct; evidence gathered couldn’t be used to launch prosecutions. Literally everyone got off scot-free.

It took weeks for the public to see what had happened. Even then, it was only due to the sustained efforts over years of a small group of whistleblowers, victim-survivors, a handful of journalists and one particularly brave parliamentarian, independent Meg Webb. She led the charge in parliament, calling for justice and accountability. The local press picked it up, and the Rockliff government panicked and called another inquiry, the Woolcott Review, to look into what hadn’t happened after the first inquiry.

For 18 months, nothing seemed to happen. A dwindling group of activists suffered, but kept agitating and collecting information and stories. Then, a small miracle.

The Woolcott Review was published, and it was a quiet marvel. Things had been happening behind the scenes. Every problem raised by victim-survivors, whistleblowers and journalists was considered, investigated and discussed by the review’s authors. Solutions to complex problems were proposed – clever, well-informed, achievable ones. New regulators were in place. The old guard was being pushed out. Reforms proposed by the original commission were slowly being introduced, and those that hadn’t were flagged. The weight of labour and quality of thought behind the review was remarkable, and it was all geared towards protecting children’s lives. It honoured the task at hand, and matched the exertions of those who’d been working at it for years.

It’s possible that this review will go the same way of other reviews – that’s up to the Tasmanian government. The children currently held in Ashley are still unsafe, and many alleged abusers remain unpunished. Other systems of child protection are desperately under-resourced and in need of reform.

But the blueprint was finally there, and slowly being implemented. The world working as it should was momentarily reflected back at us. All it took was years of unacknowledged, morally injurious work by dozens of damaged people; facts and investigations and narrative accounts. It shouldn’t have felt so strange and disorienting to experience a win, but it did. Good things can still come of this foolish business.

On the phone, Derek Elias is distressed. “I just can’t handle it anymore,” he says. “I’m trying to report crimes – what else am I supposed to do?”

Elias is still technically employed by the Department of Home Affairs, but he hasn’t worked full-time since July 2021, when he walked out on his role in Operation Sovereign Borders following what he describes as “a significant probity breach” involving lucrative Home Affairs contracts in Nauru.

His job was to administer offshore detention contracts worth billions, and it wasn’t the first time he’d raised concerns. “The renewal of broken contracts was a licence to print money for contractors,” he says, “and this seemed of little concern to the political ambitions and careers of the most senior staff at Home Affairs.”

Elias has spent years privately trying to engage Home Affairs and other agencies, including the National Anti-Corruption Commission, to address issues of probity and accountability and the department’s treatment of him, but to no avail. The mental stress has left him unable to work full-time, uninsured, unrepresented and on the verge of losing his family home. His only remaining option, as he sees it, is to speak out.

Elias was appointed assistant secretary for regional processing contracts in December 2019, having worked in different roles at Home Affairs since August the previous year. He quickly learnt that it was standard department practice to avoid tender processes by extending existing contracts. It was easier, faster, politically uncomplicated and would align them with existing national security priorities and arrangements.

A tender process for new contracts can take years, and neither the department nor the then Coalition government wanted to do anything that would “risk” having to return asylum seekers to Australia in the interim.

By early 2020 the numbers of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island were only a fraction of what they had once been, so service requirements had changed radically, but contractors bluntly refused to alter the basic terms of the existing arrangements. They knew they had Home Affairs over a barrel, and that the only way Home Affairs could ensure asylum seekers remained offshore was to extend the existing contracts.

The Australian taxpayer would be paying for things that no longer existed and services no longer required, but because Home Affairs had acquiesced to the government’s “no returns” policy, regardless of the cost, the department had little leverage in contract negotiations. (Offshore processing on Nauru would reportedly cost Australia $485m in 2023, even though there were just 22 refugees and asylum seekers left at the regional processing centre.)

As had been alleged in media reports for years, both contractors and officials on Nauru and Manus Island had been milking these contracts for millions, through subcontracting arrangements to local allies and a multitude of other dubious means, with little oversight. To give two examples among many, Paladin Group, whose Australian entity was originally registered to a beach shack on Kangaroo Island and which had only a handful of employees and no track record, made over a million dollars in profit per week from its Manus contracts, while its security workers on the ground were being paid $1.50 per hour. Former executives alleged Paladin had been making ex-gratia payments to various parties with close ties to senior PNG officials. (Both Paladin and Canstruct have previously denied any wrongdoing.)

The Nine newspapers recently reported on payments that included multimillion-dollar insurance premiums for art, a luxury car and a yacht. Studying one particular contract, Elias realised Home Affairs hadn’t completed the negotiations on the fee schedule even as it was being implemented. In that contract alone, he identified up to $6 million in questionable payments. “All of the contracts had different problems with them,” he says.

As a relative newcomer to the department, Elias raised his queries and objections: Why are we paying this? Where’s this paperwork? He says the most common answer was “Don’t ask.”

Elias says his colleagues and superiors would be alarmed by his questions, fearful of the consequences of upsetting the government. They would “stare at you like you had three fucking heads,” he says.

The other response was, “What are you going to do about it?” When it became evident that he thought it appropriate to report his concerns, he was on his own. At this stage, he was exhausted from working long days and late hours, turning around hundreds of pages of documents he had no chance of scrutinising effectively. He says he did so in order to get the contract extensions on track – “otherwise it was my neck”.

Elias developed insomnia and symptoms of social withdrawal. He started smoking again and drinking heavily. Eventually he took leave on grounds of ill health.

His first statement to Comcare, the agency that administers government employees’ insurance claims, compensation and workplace health and safety, attested that his medical illness was related to concerns about the toxic workplace culture at Home Affairs and issues of probity, accountability and questionable business practices in contract management. There was an irreconcilable tension between the transparency and responsibility that was the official objective of his role and the work he was being asked to complete.

His unhappy experience at Home Affairs was not unusual. In 2024, and in several previous years, Home Affairs was branded the worst Commonwealth public service department in which to work, according to the APS census. It received the highest number of workers’ compensation claims and also shared top position for the most bullying, harassment and discrimination complaints.

Elias’s Comcare statement went to the department, which disputed its claims and blamed his ill health on alleged pre-existing conditions. The department also alleged he was bitter at not getting a promotion.

Elias was in charge of administering billions of dollars of government contracts, and was raising alarms about the working conditions but, instead of following up his allegations, Home Affairs threw all its efforts into discrediting him.

At an Administrative Appeals Tribunal hearing about his compensation in 2023, Elias alleged that “a decision had been taken [by Home Affairs] to take basically my whole team’s eyes off contract delivery. I found this to be both extraordinary and very stressful … My team was effectively blinded from being able to manage the money that we were entrusted to actually manage.”

His allegations were strenuously denied by Home Affairs, which also mounted counterclaims about his reliability as a witness. In his evidence to the hearing, Elias became the most senior departmental official to detail serious concerns about Australia’s Pacific Solution regime.

The process of presenting contemporary medical evidence for compensation purposes, which continues today, has been long and traumatic for Elias, and has exacerbated his ill health.

His Comcare case has now dragged on for years. Representing himself for reasons of both cost and complexity, Elias believes the years of lawfare waged against his claims are due to the risk he posed and questions he raised. He says he has been “vilified for raising legitimate concerns regarding the expenditure of public monies and for sustaining a mental injury at work”.

Elias says he asked – “begged” – to brief the secretary of the department, Stephanie Foster, on his concerns but was ignored.

He has repeatedly raised his concerns with the Commonwealth Ombudsman, the Attorney-General’s Department, various ministers, Comcare, the Australian Government Solicitor, the NACC, the Merit Protection Commissioner and the Australian National Audit Office.

He also contacted the Australian Human Rights Commission and assisted the Australian Federal Police in Operation Integra, which was investigating contractors defrauding the Commonwealth. With the exception of the latter two organisations, he says, “I have met with stout refusal to engage across the board.”

For Elias, who has a PhD in anthropology and had a long and successful career prior to Home Affairs, the entire experience has been bewildering and exasperating. Nothing in his overseas postings as a United Nations diplomat and representative, or at UNESCO or the UN Office for Sustainable Development, prepared him for what he would experience at Home Affairs.

In conversation, he is funny, self-aware and intelligent, albeit clearly affected by the events of his recent life. He often presents as under siege, highly stressed and overwhelmed by the challenges facing him.

Elias has had virtually no income for almost two years and is not yet fit to return to full-time work. Many hours are taken up each day with the correspondence and conversations required by his ongoing legal affairs.

Furthermore, he says, “I have no prospects for future work given my long absence and the public destruction of my reputation. I am facing foreclosure of the family home. I continue to borrow money from friends to survive.”

Elias says he is using his superannuation, released on compassionate grounds, to pay for ongoing medical assessments. “I no longer have the funds to support consultations with my treating psychologist and psychiatrist. I have sold the family car. My family no longer has health insurance and I have been declined health insurance even if I return to work.”

Meanwhile, Home Affairs and Comcare have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars either attacking his health or defending their own decisions regarding his compensation claims. “The squandering of public monies for political reputation or protecting APS careers is quite frankly obscene,” Elias says.

Like many whistleblowers, Elias says he never sought to be a whistleblower. He believes he was just trying to do his job properly. Also, like many whistleblowers, he has paid a heavy price. In fact, he says, he only recently decided to speak publicly out of desperation, as a last resort, having seen all other avenues closed to him. While the risks of speaking out are also enormous, he believes he has little left to lose.

“I’m at the end of the road,” he says.

What he wants now is not about compensation. It’s about some degree of acknowledgement and moral redress. This is necessary for his welfare and to enable him to provide for his family.

“I’m just falling over,” he says. “Because I keep repeating the same story over and over, which is why I don’t get better mentally. The only way I can possibly get better is by somebody doing something about these things, otherwise they’ll be in my head forever. And I can’t live with them in my head forever.”

He says he “could have got rid of this stuff four years ago” if those responsible had acknowledged his concerns and looked into his allegations.

Instead, it was “attack, attack, attack”.

Despite the growing number of allegations involving massive corruption in Australia’s offshore detention regime, there are still few signs that the government or any of its authorities will seriously investigate them.

There is every chance they never will. Instead, the cost will continue to be borne by taxpayers, asylum seekers and whistleblowers.

Home Affairs declined to give specific responses to The Saturday Paper about Derek Elias and his allegations, but stated that “the Department’s contract management frameworks across regional processing operations have significantly matured over the past decade.” It also said that “The most recent APS survey shows strong progress in workplace culture, with improvements in all categories measured” and that “staff recommending Home Affairs as a great place to work rose by 12 points, and those feeling inspired daily increased by 11 points”.

The pressure on the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) is rising. Amid a series of new revelations about its chief commissioner, the NACC faces major challenges in regaining public trust. But while the strain is beginning to show, there have been few signs of progress either in terms of results or accountability.

“If public confidence is being impacted, it’s not our work that’s creating a public confidence impact,” NACC chief executive Philip Reed told Senate estimates last week. Indeed, it would be difficult to judge the NACC by its work, because the public has seen so little of it. In more than two years of operations, the NACC has initiated and completed only one successful corruption investigation — a low-level bribe case involving a Western Sydney Airport procurement manager.

The NACC has over two hundred employees and an annual budget of over $60 million, but has yet to land a single major finding from over 5,000 referrals. “The commission has 38 corruption investigations underway, and 12 of those are joint investigations,” Reed told estimates. It has also “finalised 10 investigations, nine when it became clear that corrupt conduct would not be found and one where a corruption finding was made”. By any stretch of the imagination, it hasn’t been a strong start for the integrity watchdog.

“As the commission enters this next phase — this third year of operations — complex investigations will reach completion, and the commission’s operational achievements will gradually become more visible,” Reed said in tacit acknowledgement of the growing criticisms.

But perhaps of greater concern than its glacial progress has been the missteps made by NACC commissioner Paul Brereton. The robodebt investigation, the most high-profile of NACC’s cases, has been thoroughly mismanaged and continues to cost the organisation dearly. Revelations of previous ADF links between commissioner Brereton and former DHS secretary Kathryn Campbell undermined the NACC’s initial decision not to take on the robodebt investigation.

This decision was later reversed after the intervention of NACC inspector Gail Furness, when Brereton was found to have engaged in “officer misconduct”, ironically becoming the first senior public figure subject to a negative finding under the NACC legislation. The recent estimates hearing revealed that the NACC will spend over $1.1 million for an independent counsel, Geoffrey Nettle, to assist the rebooted robodebt investigation. Meanwhile, robodebt victims are still waiting for justice, and the NACC investigation drags on.

But even the damage done by the perceived conflict involving Kathryn Campbell failed to convince Brereton to sort out his Defence relationships. A recent ABC report revealed that Brereton continued to consult with the ADF while working for the NACC. At the Senate estimates hearing, Reed attempted to exonerate Brereton by explaining that it was unpaid consulting work related to his previous work on the Afghan war crimes case (which coincidentally also sits in limbo). But Greens Senator David Shoebridge raised the obvious criticisms: How could Brereton both be a senior officer of the ADF and the head of the organisation tasked with investigating it?

“The fact that the head of the NACC retains the rank of major general, the third highest rank in the Defence Force, and continues to have an active role with Defence, means there is a real question mark over his ability to undertake investigations of Defence with appropriate objectivity and free of bias,” said Shoebridge. “The fact that the role is honorary, meaning it is not paid, doesn’t remove the questions of bias. In fact, it highlights it.” Shoebridge pointed to the fact that there had been 120 active referrals to the NACC on Defence-related matters that are affected by Brereton’s actions.

Brereton consulted for the inspector-general of the Australian Defence Force on 11 occasions while head of the NACC, and most of these consultations came after his “close association” with Campbell was publicly exposed and criticised.

Brereton’s ongoing work with the ADF has also exposed his NACC colleagues. As Shoebridge said to Reed in Senate estimates, “You took it on notice and you didn’t advise of his work with the [ADF]. Mr Reed, because of Mr Brereton failing to tell you that, you’ve misled this committee and you’ve misled the parliament, haven’t you?”

Reed disagreed, albeit acknowledging that Brereton had retained his rank in order to keep serving the ADF in a consulting role. Shoebridge continued pressing: “When I asked you what duties he’s performed as a major general, you said there were none. You checked with him, and he said there were none, and that wasn’t true.”

Reed replied, “I think this comes down to an understanding of or the use of words in the English language.” (!)

Senator David Pocock, at the same estimates session, joined in on the criticisms of Brereton. “Why on earth do we allow a commissioner on $800,000 a year to engage in things which potentially mean we’re going to have to get someone else to do the job for which he’s been paid so much?” Pocock asked Reed. “You’ve got to understand: this is bonkers if you’re out there in the public.”

The ongoing lack of transparency, built into the design of the NACC by the Albanese government, has become a running sore. Jason Koutsoukis reported in The Saturday Paper that Albanese had personally overruled a push in cabinet by then attorney-general Mark Dreyfus to give the NACC wider discretion to hold public hearings. Albanese insisted that hearings be held in private unless “exceptional circumstances” existed. So far, there have been no public hearings, to the obvious detriment of the organisation’s reputation.

NACC deputy commissioner Kylie Kilgour was forced to defend the lack of public hearings this week, telling an anti-corruption commission conference in Melbourne, “absolutely, we will do a public hearing” — but none of the investigations had yet met the threshold of exceptional circumstances. If a case such as robodebt, which Kilgour is now investigating, does not meet the threshold, what will? This involves a matter of broad public interest and which the NACC has already stumbled on. If there was ever a case for public hearings to restore public trust, this is surely it.

Kilgour was put in charge of the robodebt investigation because she was the only commissioner or deputy commissioner not tainted by the NACC’s previous failures (* see below). A recent FOI request by citizen-journalist Jommy Tee revealed an odd historical fact in relation to her appointment, raising further questions about NACC transparency. The disclosure related to her selection as deputy commissioner and the vetting process managed by the Attorney-General’s Department, in which Kilgour declared in September 2023 an affiliation either related to herself or her immediate family. The detail was redacted from the FOI disclosure, but the NACC has since stated that “any such conflicts of interest have been managed in accordance with the commission’s policies and procedures. She has no conflicts of interest in relation to the people subject to the robodebt royal commission referrals.”

The following information is not included in the FOI, but Kilgour is married to Tom Bentley, a long-time (2007-2013) deputy chief of staff to Julia Gillard, including when she was PM. Of interest here is that Gillard (with Bentley) had responsibility for the Education Department when Kathryn Campbell was appointed deputy secretary in education. Bentley was also working for Gillard when she subsequently announced that Campbell would become secretary of human services, the role in which she became involved in the robodebt matter. Bentley was later a founding member of Open Labor, a group committed to the renewal of the ALP.

“Her marriage and her husband’s former role were already in the public domain,” a NACC spokesperson said. “DC Kilgour has no political affiliations.”

This is not to allege any wrongdoing, or even a conflict of interest, but it took the government nine months to provide the FOI documents, and when it did, they were heavily redacted. It’s also questionable whether the information about Kilgour’s affiliations — which we put to the department based on original research — was in fact “already in the public domain”. If it was in the public domain, why redact it? And if this information wasn’t in the affiliations disclosure, why not? Either way, it’s clear there remains little inclination towards openness either from government or the NACC itself.

As for the ongoing robodebt investigation, Kilgour says, “It’s being taken extremely seriously,” and “when I can, I’ll speak much more publicly about all of that.” In the meantime, we’ll have to take her word for it.

Voters anticipated the NACC would bring much-needed integrity and oversight to public affairs in Australia. They expected it would bring scrutiny to the allegations around, among others, the “sport rorts” affair and similar discretionary grants schemes; Eastern Australia Agriculture’s “watergate” sales to the Commonwealth; the web of unusual financial interactions around former Liberal minister Stuart Robert’s Synergy 360; the many allegations around Home Affairs’ huge offshore detention contracts; the government’s $30 million acquisition of land near the proposed Western Sydney Airport that was valued at $3 million a year earlier; not to mention the raft of scandals related to defence contracts. These are the tip of the iceberg, yet the NACC has failed to make a dent in any of them.

Many whistleblowers I’ve corresponded with in recent months remain in the dark about information they’ve provided to the NACC. Many also remain unsafe due to the lack of whistleblower protections once supported by Labor, and have come to distrust the NACC altogether. Transparency experts and a growing number of parliamentarians who initially supported it have also become outspoken in their dismay.

The NACC is yet to prove itself in any way, and after more than two years, it’s incumbent on both the Albanese government and chief commissioner Brereton to restore its reputation in whatever way they can. The public will need to see results or resignations — stat.

• Amendment/correction: As pointed out by journalists Michelle Fahy and Elizabeth Minter in May, the statement that NACC deputy commissioner Kylie Kilgour was “not tainted” by the NACC’s previous failures is not entirely true.

  As they write: Kylie Kilgour joined the NACC in February 2024, and soon after she joined, “she worked alongside Commissioner Brereton, deputy commissioners Nicole Rose and Ben Gauntlett, and other senior NACC staff [in] crafting the public statement that explained why the NACC would not investigate the six officials. She was also involved in the editing of, and discussions regarding, the letters that were sent to the Robodebt 6 advising them they were not going to be investigated. Ms Kilgour was included in emails dating back to at least March 2024 from Commissioner Brereton outlining changes he wanted made to the public statement and the letters. NACC Inspector Gail Furness, who conducted an inquiry into the NACC’s refusal to investigate the six officials for corruption, also referred to all three deputy commissioners being involved in editing the public statement.”

  Read their full investigation here.

Chris Hedges is an American journalist and commentator with a long and storied career. He worked for The New York Times for 15 years, including as its Middle East Bureau Chief during the Iraq war. He was also Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. He is a Pulitzer prize winner, the author of 16 books, has taught at Columbia and Princeton, and has also spent seven years reporting on Gaza.

In September he was invited to address the National Press Club (NPC) in Canberra. The invitation was, however, soon rescinded.

“I was scheduled to give a talk at the National Press Club of Australia on Oct 20 called ’The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists,’” he wrote on his substack early this week. “It was to focus on the amplification of Israeli lies in the press, which most reporters know are lies, betraying Palestinian colleagues who are slandered, targeted and killed by Israel. But, perhaps inadvertently proving my point, the chief executive of the press club, Maurice Reilly, cancelled the event.”

He believed the press club was “caving to the Israel lobby”. The NPC denied there had been any pressure from anyone outside the board. It said rather that it hadn’t cancelled the event – it had only ever “tentatively agreed” to his booking in the first place, and “when more details of the address were made available we decided to pursue other speakers on the matter”.

But this is untruthful. The NPC’s Chief Executive had sent written confirmation on 8 September (“I write to confirm arrangements for Chris Hedges to appear at the National Press Club of Australia on 20 October 2025”). It had also listed the talk on the website along with the date, ticket price and a photo of Hedges.

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NPC CEO Maurice Reilly tried to explain the change of heart by saying that its program already included other speakers “in favour” of the Palestinian cause, and told Hedges that “that in the interest of balancing out our program we will withdraw our offer.”

It’s true that the NPC’s program had a handful of other speakers on the subject of Gaza, but you would hope that such a club had several speakers over the course of two years of almost unimaginable human rights violations; a conflict the Israeli government has prevented international journalists from accessing. The other speakers “in favour” of the Palestinian cause were not, in any case, activists but impartial human rights experts. The NPC has never had a Palestinian speaker. The NPC has also never invited someone to speak specifically about the killing of journalists. Hedges was proposing to talk to the Australian press and public about the worst crime against journalism in recorded memory: the killing of over 270 journalists and media workers by Israel since the start of the genocide. Surely this had special relevance for a press club?

Yet it’s clear from Reilly’s own explanation that the NPC cancelled Hedges’ talk upon learning of its proposed content.

How do you “balance” a talk about how 270 journalists have been killed? You can’t, obviously. Hedges in his substack replied, “This is not balance, unless we accept a world where truth is balanced by lies. It is an abandonment of the fundamental mission of journalists — to hold power accountable. But most egregiously, it is a terrible betrayal of our colleagues in Gaza who have been killed for chronicling the daily savagery in Gaza, for doing their job.

“No doubt, the corporate sponsors and wealthy donors of the press club are pleased. No doubt, the club is able to slither away from its journalistic integrity. No doubt, it is spared the attacks that would come from allowing me to speak.”

*

The National Press Club joins a long and sad list of Australian cultural institutions that have surrendered to political pressure (implied or real) and attempted to cancel or censor critics of Israel. Those that have betrayed their own principles over Gaza include the ABC, Creative Australia, State Library of Victoria, State Library of Queensland, National Gallery of Australia, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Bendigo Writers Festival, Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, Monash University Museum of Art, and who knows how many others.

As with all of these situations, we may never know who exerted the pressure, or how. We only know the purpose of the pressure and who the targets are: anyone openly critical of Israel’s extreme aggression in Gaza, in favour of Palestinian human rights, and calling for an end to the genocide. (I have written previously about the damage these institutions have caused themselves.)

The National Press Club’s surrender is particularly dispiriting though – not to mention ironic – and it’s been mirrored in the response by the mainstream media. The two are obviously linked. At the time of writing, not a single major news outlet has covered the cancellation of Hedges’ talk. Here is a journalist-run institution, dedicated to free expression and the craft of journalism, cancelling a journalist for proposing to inform other journalists about the historic mass killing of journalists – and it isn’t newsworthy? Two years into a genocide, it’s still OK to silence people who are trying to speak about it?

The board members of the National Press Club, mostly journalists themselves, have remained silent on the decision to cancel Hedges. Representing most of the largest media outlets in the country, they appear untroubled by the censoring of a fellow journalist for raising Israel’s killing of their colleagues. If anyone needs to understand why the media has been so bad at covering Gaza over the past two years, here is one key reason: a refusal to honour basic journalistic principles.

Will no mainstream journalists speak up even in defence of their own profession? Or the right to free expression? At the time of writing, only independent journalists and commentators such as Lamestream, We Used to be Journos and Pearls and Irritations have touched this story.

Institutions such as the National Press Club were established to uphold and strengthen civil society. They are supposed to be the protectors of our culture, values, history, intellectual and artistic freedom. Over the past two years we have learnt just how weak they have become: unable to stand up for their own independence; unable to uphold their own values; unable to resist any amount of political pressure. The long march of neoliberal managerialism through our institutions has left them so underfunded or corporatised as to be virtually defenceless against organised campaigns, especially threats involving funding and political pressure. Sadly the war in Gaza left them as the most obvious targets too. But maintaining basic processes and principles should be non-negotiable. The lack of leadership has been truly depressing.

In the case of the NPC, the board has denied it cancelled Hedges based on any outside pressure, but perhaps outside pressure wasn’t necessary – the call was coming from inside the building. A brief look at the NPC’s list of sponsors reveals the problem. Among them are no less than ten firms with links to the arms industry that is profiting from Israel’s destruction of Gaza, including four of the very largest defence manufacturers in the world – BAE, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Thales.

One wonders what is the point of having a National Press Club, if it won’t stand up for journalism.

A version of this article was first published in Crikey, Oct 3.

Albanese was first elected on a pledge to “end the climate wars”, and in a strange way, with the support of the media, he succeeded. Stranger still, this appears to be the desired outcome for both major news outlets and the government. Never mind the science: today’s mainstream media would prefer not to engage in the troublesome realities of the climate issue.

The emissions target announcement should have been a significant moment for a government with a sweeping majority, but the response from most political commentators, rather than present it with due seriousness and rigour, was to tie a bow on it. They set aside any skepticism and simply reflected Albanese’s own “middle path” messaging – all the way to the UN general assembly, where somehow this pointedly underwhelming climate policy became evidence of his statesmanship.

When political strategy is given greater weight than objective realities, the result is the failed coverage of an issue like climate change. How did Albanese benefit from his announcement? What does it say about Sussan Ley’s leadership? et cetera. All but the most important questions.

Whether because it’s too complex, boring or depressing, Australian newsrooms treat climate policy as a game of political strategy, refusing to consider the real-world consequences. Policy “debates” occur in a bubble of denial, in which only the positions of the two major parties exist, even though these are utterly and inherently nonsensical. The policies of the Greens, whose raison d’être is environmentalism, are treated like an irrelevance.

Responsible reporting about Australia’s response to climate change would be framed by reality. Unfortunately the key facts – which make a mockery of Albanese’s climate claims – are largely absent from the coverage. Presumably part of the reason is that readers don’t click on this stuff. They actively don’t want to read it. But should that fact shape the way news outlets report on what is a real and imminent threat to those readers’ lives?

Australia is the third largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world. It is committed to extending and expanding fossil fuel extraction and export out to 2070 and beyond. The emissions from these exports are more than three times larger than Australia’s total domestic emissions – yet for the purposes of our climate policy, they don’t exist; we don’t count them. This means the emissions targets announced last week don’t apply to around 80% of the emissions for which Australia is responsible.

Further, we aren’t even reducing domestic emissions by any significant degree: excluding “land-use”-related accounting tricks, real emissions have barely moved under Labor, indeed barely at all since 2005. And despite announcing the new emissions target, the Albanese government has no legislated policies to enforce actual emissions cuts – across any part of the domestic economy. Its Safeguard Mechanism allows Australia’s biggest polluters to buy unlimited, cheap, bogus “offsets” instead of cutting emissions.

Meanwhile, the government continues to spend over $10bn annually subsidising fossil fuels. It continues to approve massive new coal and gas mines and expand existing ones, against all scientific advice. It collects minimal revenues from fossil fuel companies, while sparing them the responsibility of paying for any climate impacts.

Rather than mitigating climate change, Australia is unequivocally and inarguably exacerbating it. The climate destruction that Australia is fuelling is approaching fast: every major scientific organisation and every climate risk report, even from our own government, is telling us this.

The media, however, would prefer not to engage.

Across the major media outlets – the ABC, Guardian, Nine, News Corp – journalists instead complimented the Albanese government on how well it had managed its climate message, and the tactics it had used to show how it had shaped a vacuous policy debate. The cumulative effect of this type of coverage meant that the Albanese government sailed through its climate-related week of announcements without being held to account.

Speaking to The Australian this week, Albanese cited his government’s emissions target range as too high for business groups and the Opposition, but not high enough for the Greens – as if this proved that it struck the right balance. Readers will find this kind of framing everywhere in the media, most particularly in Labor-briefed articles that try to situate Labor as the centrist “natural party of government”, as per Albanese in the same interview. But common as it is, this framing is utter rubbish, especially on climate matters.

Unfortunately we exist in a world of scientific realities and consequences, not one in which you can make physics go away with media management and accounting tricks. Emissions from Australian fossil fuels are contributing disproportionately to climate change, whether we count them or not. This science is not up for debate, whether or not the Coalition, government or Woodside beg to differ.

Imagine 99 out of 100 doctors told you that you had cancer, but one paid cancer-denier told you not to worry. Would you base your treatment on the one? Yet this is what Labor is doing.

*

In the Guardian, under the headline “From New York to London, Anthony Albanese plots statesmanlike course through global turmoil,” chief political correspondent Tom McIlroy also waxed that Albanese had shown he can hold his own on the global stage “while promoting Australian ideas on climate, Gaza, and social media”.”At a special climate meeting convened by the UN secretary general on Wednesday, the prime minister promised Australia would “do more than just guard against the very worst” and said no nation could go it alone.”

McIlroy continued:

A glossy profile in the paper dubbed Australia “the country pushing through climate partisanship”. It fell to Albanese himself to acknowledge the anti-net zero debate currently roiling the Coalition, even as he detailed careful cooperation with the Pacific and outlined why he views the challenge as an economic opportunity for the world’s 14th largest economy.

But, compared with Trump – who called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” – Australia is viewed as moving in the right direction, in part enabled by the government’s landmark parliamentary majority. “This is the decisive decade for acting on the environmental challenge of climate change,” Albanese told the stylishly produced event, “and seizing the economic opportunities of clean energy.

Albanese might have said these things, but they are completely inconsistent with his government’s actions. (Pacific leaders hate Australia’s climate policy because their islands are sinking while we expand our fossil fuel exports. And what of this “decisive decade”, into which we boldly march with no new policies?) McIlroy’s framing is openly admiring, and to an exact degree, Albanese’s own framing.

He continues:

It’s possible that in years ahead the domestic political debate will be shown not to have given enough credit to Albanese, Bowen and Labor figures for their work on climate internationally, even if they’re already being recognised overseas for making badly overdue process. Asked about Cop31, Bowen calls negotiations “a work in progress”.

7.30’s political editor Jacob Greber at least pulled the curtain back on Albanese’s media management, labelling it a “dump and run”.

“It’s been a shade over a week since the federal government dropped what might be regarded as the biggest and most important climate policy announcement in a decade,” wrote Greber. “Since then, it has been mostly silence,” he added, as if this were a marker of success.

Greber highlighted the dynamics – “reporters were given zero time to absorb several hundred pages of climate advice from the Climate Change Authority, Treasury and other departments” – but still couldn’t help but admire the chutzpah. “Nicely done”, Greber commented, only semi-ironically.

But he topped the piece by saying…

“As a national topic of debate, it’s been subsumed in the political discourse by the latest internecine Liberal Party stoush and prime minister’s selfies with the US president.

“But in terms of political craftsmanship, it’s been a stunning display. Aided by the good fortune of having a divided and marginalised opposition, the whole package was a masterclass in media management by the government.”

Here is a political journalist congratulating a government for dodging the inconsistencies and fallacies of its “most important climate policy”, not to mention the inconvenient fact that Labor has not significantly reduced emissions, and doesn’t have policies to do so. The target range Labor trumpeted is insufficient in terms of the science, but also meaningless. It’s a charade designed to look like the government is taking action. Are we so used to government failure in climate policy that negation of the issue is treated as a political achievement?

Greber argued it takes time to turn the ship after years of Coalition denialism. Having said that, he added that “unless emissions start to fall soon, that excuse will become very tired.” Will it though? Given journalists have been excusing climate-intransigent governments for three decades now, I doubt it. Not while they’re also praising the government for slick PR, anyway.

Paul Bongiorno in the Saturday Paper lauded Anthony Albanese for “putting his stamp on Australia’s sovereignty at the apex world forum of the United Nations General Assembly” by “carefully but successfully (navigating) his way to defy Trump on Palestinian recognition, climate change action and social media bans.” Trump was deceiving the world about climate change, but the Australian PM’s deception was cleverer: he had managed to deceive the rest of the world that Australia was taking action.

The most galling aspect of the week’s climate politics was this: the same news outlets that complimented Albanese also reported on the terrifying National Climate Risk Assessment released a few days before the emissions target was announced; as well as on the government’s approval of the North West shelf out to 2070, the most polluting project in the Southern Hemisphere. But rather than pointing out the contradictions, or that these make a mockery of Labor’s climate claims, the media applauded him for his tactics, instead of pulling apart the actual policy.

It’s understandable that political journalists view the world through the frame of politics – where success is judged according to the capacity to convince, lobby, influence. It’s probably inevitable, too, that political journos and editors come to see themselves as crucial cogs in the machine of national affairs. But when those same political journalists dominate newsrooms and front pages, over those with specialist expertise and knowledge, and they are handed the responsibility above all others to frame debates about society’s biggest challenges, the consequences ricochet.

Perhaps it’s easier to contemplate runaway climate destruction in the future than to imagine a disruption to traditional two-party politics.

In February, Meanjin’s performance and sustainability were the focus of a review commissioned by Melbourne University Press (MUP). The report, delivered a month before the publisher’s controversial axing of the 85-year-old journal, was never released publicly. Its list of recommendations did not include closing Meanjin.

Nothing in the final recommendations pointed towards this outcome either. Delivered in July, the review was conducted by arts, cultural and nonprofit consultant Kate Larsen. The recommendations remain confidential for now, but it’s understood they were of a structural/organisational nature — to ensure the journal’s sustainability — rather than about any staff’s personal performance.

Larsen released a statement last Thursday saying that, “like the rest of Australia’s literary community”, she was “shocked and devastated” to hear of the closure. MUP never showed her full review to the Meanjin team, many of whom had provided information to it.

Readers will no doubt see the irony in a cash-strapped organisation paying an independent consultant for three months to provide strategies for financial viability, only to ignore the findings on the grounds of financial viability. They will also understand that the window of July to early August (when staff were notified of the impending closure) allowed no time to even begin to implement any of the report’s recommendations.

The revelation comes amid continued scepticism around MUP’s official explanation for closing the journal being based on “purely financial grounds”. Former staff believe the decision had a political component.

Meanjin’s former poetry editor Jeanine Leane said that the sudden closure was “part of a wider shrinking of publishing spaces that provide venues for rigorous social debate and allow for differences and diverse voices”. The “cancellations of artists and fellowships — not just at Meanjin — [has been] intended to curtail social discourse”, and the forces allied against free speech were trying to “edit the national conscience”.

“Meanjin allowed people to speak out.”

Former Meanjin deputy editor Eli McLean said, “Considering the University of Melbourne’s track record of censoring and surveilling certain modes of political speech on its campuses, I am not surprised that so many people have come to the conclusion that there may have been political motivations for Meanjin’s abrupt closure.”

The journal’s book reviews editor Cher Tan questioned the haste and the lack of contingency planning. Staff contacted were devastated by the closure, confused at how suddenly it happened, and dismayed that it had been done without any consultation.

*

Meanjin’s (former) editor Esther Anatolitis is subject to a non-disclosure agreement and has not made any public statements. (Why a simple matter of financial viability for a small magazine would necessitate a non-disclosure agreement is unclear.) However, it’s understood that, for months, Anatolitis had been under growing pressure from management. There are two narratives on why this was.

The first is that it started around the publication of a Spring 2024 essay entitled “Jews, antisemitism and power in Australia” by Melbourne academic Max Kaiser, which was critical of Australian Jewish organisations’ support for Israel’s actions in Gaza. (Meanjin had also published other writers on Gaza both before and since then.)

The narrative from university and MUP sources is that as the journal’s costs rose (for distribution, production, paper, etc) and subscriptions fell, management and Anatolitis fell out over how to address this — or indeed whether it represented a significant issue, compared to all the other times past that Meanjin and MUP had been cash-strapped.

“I think anyone who has looked at the actual sums involved can see that the financial arguments just don’t add up,” Kaiser says.

“It’s hard not to surmise that Meanjin was killed at least in part because it was too problematic politically and culturally for the University of Melbourne. Certainly the current editors were not at all afraid to publish challenging work, including work supporting a free Palestine. Meanjin was one of the few spaces in Australia where such perspectives could be explored freely and where someone like myself could publish a long-form essay as cultural/political intervention.”

*

Everyone understands that literary magazines exist on subsidies. They always have. Meanjin, housed under MUP since 2008, lived off subsidies and subscriptions for 85 years, and its cost base was very small indeed. In 2025, it had two part-time staff; the handful of other workers were freelancers. No-one was paid handsomely.

Nevertheless it’s also understandable that the magazine’s owners would seek an audit such as the Larsen report every so often. Meanjin subscriptions had risen during the Covid pandemic — as did for many magazines — and have fallen back since. McLean has stated that he believed they were trending up again recently, and he had been feeling positive about the journal’s future. Either way, rather than treating low subscriptions as a reason to invest effort, MUP chose to kill the publication.

It is worth noting that MUP, rather than Meanjin’s editor, is ultimately responsible for Meanjin’s finances. We understand the editor was not responsible for, or privy to, budgets and distribution contracts.

Prior to the August decision on Meanjin’s closure, Anatolitis and MUP’s relationship had soured to the degree that Anatolitis had appointed a lawyer, Josh Bornstein, to represent her interests. If MUP sought to get rid of her, or believed she was the problem, it presumably didn’t have sufficient grounds, given that it did not fight to pursue the action. Instead it sacrificed the whole magazine.

*

It was put to me by two informed sources that the university administration had decided to pull its funding for Meanjin, and that this was the reason the journal was financially unviable. The University of Melbourne, Australia’s wealthiest university, put a mere $220,000 annually into running it, a fraction of the earnings of a single executive.

But when this was put to MUP chair Professor Warren Bebbington and the university administration, both flatly denied it.

Bebbington cited the university’s original statement denying it had any involvement in the cessation decision, adding: “It was a decision of the MUP board alone, and whoever told you that our decision followed a university decision to withdraw Meanjin’s funding is completely misinformed: it did not.”

Bebbington also added, “If you wanted to develop your own picture of why Meanjin became unviable, many of the comments on Georgie Kibble’s (sic) story in today’s Australian [link], the lead Letter to the Editor in today’s Age by head of Readings Mark Rubbo [link], or Guy Rundle’s blog on Meanjin last Friday [link] might help.”

Each piece of writing represents a depressing and pessimistic vision of Australian literary culture, certainly strange choices for the chair of MUP to tout. (Among the comments under The Australian piece: “Meanjin meandered then marched over to the far left which made it less and less interesting and relevant” and “Meanjin is no loss. For a long while it has been indulgent and stupid as any writers festival. Why did it take the soporific UMELB so long to bring on the beneficial execution.”)

A university spokesperson reiterated earlier statements: “The decision to cease publication of Meanjin at the end of 2025 was made independently by the Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) Limited Board. The MUP board chairman subsequently informed the University of Melbourne Finance Committee of MUP’s decision in August. The Finance Committee noted the MUP board’s decision to cease publication of Meanjin and that therefore the contribution towards Meanjin would cease from 2026.”

*

Pressure can be levied in many and varied ways, and while we should accept these statements, there are other reasons to believe Meanjin’s closure had a political component.

MUP made scant effort to save the journal before shutting it down. In addition to not implementing any recommendations of the Larsen review, MUP neither called out for public support in any form, nor appealed to subscribers or the broader public, nor waited for any possible grants from the new Writing Australia literary body, established in July. It didn’t approach philanthropists (some of whom have reportedly already expressed interest in saving it). It didn’t seek a new home for Meanjin. It simply folded the 85-year-old institution.

As it stands, MUP is holding on to the copyright for the journal and promises to open the archives to all and sundry (including AI bots, presumably). “The journal is not for sale”, MUP’s chief executive and publisher Foong Ling Kong told The Guardian on Thursday. This stance of officially protecting its legacy while not allowing anyone else to exploit or continue it will not be popular among Meanjin’s supporters, and the issue threatens to play out over months: there are still two editions of Meanjin to come out. The last scheduled edition will be the 85th anniversary edition in December.

Despite the lack of clarity and competing versions about motives and culprits, some things in this ugly episode are irrefutable: another venerable cultural institution has been terminated by a corporate managerialism that places little value on literary expression, and the university behind it refused to fight for its preservation.

“Its loss is not just a literary blow,” concludes Max Kaiser. “It signals a narrowing of public debate and unfortunately a chilling message to people daring to support the publication of inconvenient truths. I do not know exactly what the machinations were that led to the decision to close Meanjin, but I think we should all be very disturbed by it.”

Regardless of MUP’s own stance or financial constraints, the university also refused to step in to save Australia’s second-oldest literary journal. What this means for the literary community is the loss not just of a precious independent outlet for writers but also the financial support it entailed for writers and editors. MUP’s decision led to the loss of $220,000 from the university, grants from Creative Australia and the Copyright Agency, and other financial support for the magazine.

The shallow pond is nearly dry.