In short:

More than 50 writers and moderators have withdrawn from the Bendigo Writers Festival over concerns about their freedom of speech.

It has resulted in the cancellation of the opening night gala.

The writers who have withdrawn say they are concerned the event's code of conduct impinges on free speech in relation to the war in Gaza.

In short:

The Department of Defence has allowed at least 35 military export permits to Israel approved before the Gaza conflict to remain active.

New information reveals that the majority relate to military-specific goods.

What's next?

As Australia insists it does not supply weapons to Israel, there are calls for transparency over what the permits contain.

"This precedent was set last year and I knew that."

Found this podcast today co-presented by Antoinette Lattouf.

Quite interesting to hear her thoughts and details about how the court case unfolded. Especially her comments on Ita Buttrose's disdain for having to be at the court.

In brief

Be sure your dodgy modelling will find you out. I’m starting to think economists have become so used to pretending to know more about the economy than they really do that they don’t notice the way they mislead the rest of us.

The Productivity Commission has proposed a radical change in the way companies are taxed which, it tells us, would improve the economy’s productivity and leave us better off. It has commissioned modelling that, it implies, supports its case for change.

Its modelling shows the benefit from cutting the rate of company tax would take years to materialise, and still be trivial, but the commission thinks we should do it anyway.

De-paywalled archive link: https://archive.is/eYz66

Opinion

Recognising Palestine is a distraction. We need sanctions to stop Israel killing my people

Amal Naser
August 11, 2025 — 5.35pm

They are killing my people. My family. My homeland.

I am the granddaughter of Nakba survivors. In 1948, my grandparents were expelled from Lydd, Historic Palestine, along with 80 per cent of its people by Israeli militias. My father grew up in a refugee camp, no home, no stability, only the dream of return. I grew up with their stories, and I grew up watching Israel’s ongoing crimes: the occupation of the West Bank, the siege of Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of villages across Palestine. I never needed a state to tell me I was Palestinian or grant me my self-determination. We did that ourselves by keeping our struggle alive.

Amal Naser, centre, with fellow Harbour Bridge protest organiser and Palestinian Action Group member Josh Lees, and NSW Green Jenny Leong. Credit: Wolter Peeters

Witnessing these injustices gave me the determination and stamina to fight for my homeland. For years, I have witnessed institutions of power fail us, allow crime after crime to occur against the Palestinian people with full impunity. I knew it was us, the people, the masses, who could end this torture.

For nearly two years, I have organised weekly rallies with the Palestine Action Group to stop what Amnesty International, B’Tselem (the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights) and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories have called by its name: genocide.

Last week, we led one of Australia’s largest ever demonstrations on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We were driven there by the images from Gaza: children starved to skeletons, families crushed under rubble, messages from our families pleading that we fight, and a disgust that our government – by its inaction – is complicit in this slaughter. We also knew that a march this big and this symbolic could never be ignored. Our demands were clear: sanctions on Israel and an end to the two-way arms trade.

And yet, the government instead offers us “recognition” of a Palestinian state, as though that is what we have been demanding. Recognition, while I watch my homeland be exterminated, while Netanyahu vows to occupy Gaza indefinitely, while Israel expands its settlements across the illegally occupied West Bank, is as hollow as the condemnations Western leaders have offered as Israel’s crimes escalate.

Recognition is not enough. You cannot “recognise” a state while you allow Australian-made components to help arm the regime destroying it. You cannot fight for the dead while helping make the weapons that kill them. And I don’t mean that metaphorically. Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s largest weapons manufacturers, has made record profits on the back of the genocide and has confirmed that every single F-35 jet contains Australian parts and components. (I note that I can no longer find this mention on its website.) UN experts have noted that exporting parts could be a violation of international law.

These jets are destroying and obliterating Gaza. It is the bare minimum that we cease exporting these parts to Israel, along with the armoured steel used in Israeli armoured vehicles. Instead, Defence Minister Richard Marles declares that we are an F-35 country while seeking to recognise the state whose extermination his government, by its failure to stop exports, participates in.

The reality is that Israel acts with impunity because of the ongoing support it receives from governments like Australia. The same impunity that allowed my grandparents’ expulsion in 1948, that sustains the occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza, that today enables the deliberate starvation of a population.

For nearly two years, I have watched bombs fall on hospitals and schools. I have seen my family members killed. I felt alone as I saw videos of screaming children on my screen and the world had abandoned us. I was enraged when Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announced a complete siege on the Gaza Strip on October 9, 2024, and declared that the people of Gaza, my people, my family, would be treated as “animals” – and the world failed to stop it.

“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” Gallant said.

Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, has indeed been wildly disproportionate and a violation of international law.

I have listened to leaders issue hollow words as the massacres escalated: the invasion of Gaza, the killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab by 335 bullets, the flour massacre, the tent massacre in Rafah, the killing of more than 60,000 people. The crimes grew. The condemnations got louder. The actions stayed the same.

Israel will not be stopped by speeches or hand-wringing. It will only be stopped by cutting off supplies to its military killing machine: sanctions, an arms embargo, an end to trade with this regime. Indeed, this is the bare minimum that Australia must do to meet its legal obligations to prevent and punish Israel for this genocide.

This is not abstract for me. I carry the grief of generations, and I get messages from family in Gaza begging us not to stop protesting against this atrocity. I will not.

Our movement is being heard. The pressure is rising. The government is scrambling; not out of principle, but because the people are demanding it. In 2003, the Howard government rejected the mass opposition in the streets and went on to invade Iraq, leaving millions dead in war and occupation, for nothing. The Albanese government must reflect on its legacy, on how it would like to be remembered: a government that serves the interests and desires of its people, or one complicit in a genocide.

History is watching. Lives are hanging in the balance.

Recognition is not enough. It never has been. Only action can end a genocide. On August 24, 2025, we will be in the streets again as part of a massive Nationwide March for Palestine. And we will not stop.

Amal Naser is a third-generation Palestinian refugee and organiser with the Palestine Action Group.

Funnily enough I had completely forgotten the history of this term:

The Streisand effect is a digital age term, coined after entertainer Barbara Streisand tried to suppress publication of a photo of her Malibu home in 2003. At the time, the picture had only been downloaded six times, including twice by her own lawyers. Public awareness of the case showed the photo had been viewed 420,000 times by the following month.

The historic Harbour Bridge protest for Palestine on August 3 proved what opinion polls had already shown: A majority want federal Labor to sanction Israel for its genocidal starvation policy. This has Labor, both state and federal, worried that they are losing the so-called “middle ground”.

Immediately after the march, federal Labor ministers were clearly reeling from the images of hundreds of thousands of people standing in the rain for hours for Palestine; they know many were joining their first protest.

...

Labor is now looking for cover and its sudden rush to support a two-state solution may be it. Just what a Palestinian state covering an obliterated Gaza and a besieged West Bank would look like has not been answered by the government, even if the Zionists in charge of Israel’s genocidal policy were to accept it (which they won’t).

The productivity comission propses to reduce the tax paid by all companies bar the top 500, they’d get no cut in conventional company tax, but would pay the new 5 per cent cash flow tax.

On paper, the commission’s partial switch from conventional company tax to a tax on companies’ net cash flow – which allows them to write off the full cost of new assets immediately – ought to improve productivity.

The join statement by 24 business lobby groups says that “while some businesses may benefit under the proposal, it risks all Australian consumers and businesses paying more for the things they buy every day – groceries, fuel and other daily essentials”. Get it? This is the lobbyists’ oldest trick: “We’re not concerned about what the tax change would do to our profits, dear reader, we’re just worried about what it would do you and your pocket. It’s not us we worry about, it’s our customers.” Suddenly, their professed concern about the lack of productivity improvement and slow growth is out the window, and now it’s the cost of living they’re deeply worried about. They’ve been urging governments to increase the GST for years, but now they don’t want higher prices.

In short:

The government has effectively killed a bill to introduce legislation that would charge protest groups for police fees if they held more than three demonstrations a year.

The bill was reintroduced following the weekend's pro-Palestinian march over Sydney Harbour Bridge, which drew crowds of over 100,000 people.

Two Labor MPs told the ABC there was also "heated" debate about a motion on Gaza during caucus on Tuesday.

Organisers of today’s pro-Palestine protest in Sydney have successfully addressed Premier Minns’ ‘concerns’ about the impact it would have on traffic, by seemingly getting the whole city off the roads and marching along side them.

“Turns out roughly a hundred thousand people wanted to cross the bridge at the time of the march,” said one organiser, “which would have been the worst traffic Sydney has ever seen, but luckily they were all protesters walking around so it was fine.” [...]

One of the largest protests in Australian history. Entire Harbour Bridge covered in people.

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has slammed reports that Australia still sells ‘weapons parts’ to Darth Vader, clarifying that any parts Australia makes for the construction of the Death Star are ‘non-lethal’.

“It is gross misinformation to say that we are in any way part of the Death Star trade just because we sell parts for it,” said Wong.

“The death laser is the lethal part. We don’t sell the laser energy. We only provide parts that help them shoot the laser beam.” [...]

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says claims from his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu and diplomatic officials that there's no starvation in the war-torn territory were "beyond comprehension".

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said she was "incredibly distressed" by the images she had seen from Gaza.

But she did not directly respond to questions about whether she believed people were starving in the territory or if Israel's policies had contributed to the deteriorating humanitarian situation for the region's 2.2 million residents.

"We all want to see aid flow into Gaza and we all want the war to end and we all want the suffering to cease," Ms Ley said.

"It's very complex on the ground. It's not something that we can make judgments about every move that is made.

"If we want the war to end, and we all do, we know the simplest, quickest way is for Hamas to surrender and release the hostages."

Video of Sussan Ley refusing to answer the question (timestamp 23:50 if link doesn't take you there)

The UK wants to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in the next general election in 2029. 5 experts give their verdicts on if Australia should do the same.

cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/22987236

I'm wondering whether I'll have to wait a long time after royal accent for the new penalty rates bill [1] to enjoy not having to work 40 hours a week (and finally be able to work a standard 38).

From what I can tell, the bill only requires the Fair Work Commission to make/update awards such that you must be paid overtime, meaning the professional employees award won't be valid anymore (where they don't have to unless you earn less than 1.25x of minimum wage).

I'm wondering what your opinion/guess is (not legal advice) on whether we'll need to wait for the award to be updated, or can just go to our employers and say: hey, I'm working 38 hours unless you want to pay me overtime.

I was part of my union, but since engineers are barely in the union, being part of a Professionals Australia (the union for my industry) was kind of a waste of time, and I tried many times to get in touch with their organiser team to push membership in my company to not avail.

Since then I let it lapse because I thought they were doing a pretty bad job, since you can't have solidarity by yourself. In any case, that's why I can't ask them

[1] Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025:

https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;db=LEGISLATION;id=legislation%2Fbills%2Fr7335_first-reps%2F0001;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbills%2Fr7335_first-reps%2F0000%22;rec=0

This is not yet law.

Ammends this act: [2] Fair Work Act 2009: https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2009A00028/latest/text

Hmm was it science or was it diplomatic negotiation?