Paul J. Berating

Today's Top Stories

⚡ Top Story

Australia sues firm for billions over forever chemicals

The government is making its "largest legal claim ever" against a multinational company after 28 defence bases were contaminated with "forever chemicals".

Twenty-eight defence bases doused in foam that doesn't break down, and we're suing 3M in 2026 for chemicals they sold us in the 1970s. The lawyers will retire on this one. Meanwhile the groundwater at Williamtown still glows in the dark and the locals are reading toxicology reports instead of the property pages. Justice arrives by the decade in this country, and the half-life arrives by the millennium.

Guardian Australia · Tom McIlroy Political editor

Segal hands $200k antisemitism contract to Morrison's former adviser — no tender, no competition, no surprise

Antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal awarded a $200,000 contract to a firm founded by Scott Morrison's former adviser Yaron Finkelstein without going to public tender, citing 'an absence of competition'.

Limited tender 'due to an absence of competition' — the four most expensive words in Canberra. Two hundred grand to a Morrison staffer to advise the antisemitism envoy, no contest, no questions. The job market for mates is the only one in the country still running at full employment.

SMH · Rob Harris

A decade on, the ABS is still rehearsing the same fall

A scathing review of the 11 August census warns the ABS still has critical security gaps to close — a decade after the 2016 collapse.

Ten years on from the night the ABS site fell over like a card table at a wedding, and the review's found the same holes in the fence. Lessons learned, apparently — just not by the people running the count.

Michael West Media · AAP

War crimes office wants to know who tipped the cameras off

The office prosecuting Roberts-Smith couldn't keep his arrest off the morning bulletins and has now asked the corruption watchdog to find out who in the building was running the press list.

Someone in the building tipped off the cameras so the perp walk had a film crew. The office investigating war crimes can't keep a Tuesday morning arrest off the front page. Talleyrand ran a foreign ministry on whispers; we can't run a press embargo for forty minutes. Refer it to the NACC — they'll investigate it the way the AFP investigates the AFP.

Michael West Media · AAP

Inflation pressures set to expand despite fuel reprieve

Annual trimmed mean inflation is tipped to rise despite the easing of fuel prices, as the impacts of the Iran war flow through to the broader economy.

Bowser goes down a few cents and Treasury sends out the bunting. Meanwhile the Iran war's seeping into every container ship, every freight invoice, every loaf of bread — and trimmed mean inflation climbs because that's what it does when a war in the Strait of Hormuz meets a economy that imports everything that isn't a rock. The petrol pump is a magic trick. The numbers underneath are the rabbit dying in the hat.