The inquiry, by former war crimes prosecutor Regina Weiss heard from 15 victim-survivors of Reynolds, who used his roles in football and basketball clubs to groom his victims.
Reynolds killed himself in September 2018 while being investigated over allegations of child abuse and grooming, but still received a full police funeral.
“What was known to a small number of Tasmania Police, including the highest echelons of policing at the time, was that Reynolds was being investigated for grooming, sharing explicit images with and procuring teenage boys, including coercing them to take photos of themselves naked and of their penises,” Ms Weiss found.
The case was only reopened in 2022, when a coroner investigating police suicides publicly linked Reynolds’ death to allegations of child abuse, at the time gathering dust in that Launceston file room.
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Senator Fatima Payman has announced her resignation from the Labor Party as she delivered an emotional statement on Thursday.
This comes after Ms Payman was indefinitely suspended from the Labor caucus after she crossed the floor to vote with the Greens on Palestinian statehood.
“I am torn, deeply torn,” Ms Payman said during a media conference on Thursday.
“When history looks back, it must see that we stood on the right side of humanity, even when it was difficult – sadly, I do not believe our principles align with those of the leadership of the Labor Party.
“With a heavy heart but a clear conscience, I announce my resignation from the Australian Labor Party – I have informed the Prime Minister that, effective immediately, I will sit on the crossbench to represent Western Australia.”
#FatimaPayman
Joe Biden is meeting governors in an attempt to calm nerves after telling an ally his campaign may be unsalvageable and a new poll shows Donald Trump has opened up a six-point lead.
Biden dug his heels in over his re-election campaign, telling staffers: “I’m not leaving”.
Biden’s call to campaign staff comes amid an all-hands effort by the president and his senior advisers to reassure politicians, boost party morale and convince sceptics that he is capable of serving another four years in office.
White House advisers immediately came out to deny Mr Biden was considering standing down. White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a brief denial on social media that the claim was “absolutely false.”
And press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters the president had told her he hadn’t told associates he was considering whether to withdraw from the race.
“That is absolutely false,” she said, adding: “That’s coming directly from him.”
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#JoeBiden#World
Footage has emerged of the Pro-Palestinian supporters that climbed on top of federal parliament House and draped signs across the building declaring: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”
The protesters managed to jump the 2.5 metre green security fence on the grassy hill to the right of the front entrance. The fences were installed in 2017 as part of a $126.7m security upgrade.
The protesters, reportedly members of the Renegade Activists group, were arrested after they ended their demonstration from the top of the federal Parliament House after about an hour.
The group of four, who had flanked large banners from the roof, including a Hamas symbol, had to slowly climb down the glass top above the main entrance.
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Pro-Palestinian supporters have climbed on top of federal Parliament House and draped signs across the building calling “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.
The protestors, of which there were about four on the roof and a few dozen on the ground joining in chants, were wearing masks.
Police assembled and directed the public away from the protest.
The protestors are chanting “if they don’t give us justice, they don’t get no peace”.
One of the protestors on the roof, a young white man, read a statement from his phone to those gathered below.
“Australia is a nation founded on genocide,” he said.
“There has been a steady complicity of war crimes and genocide abroad.”
The protestor said the government MPs were “genocide enablers” and “subservient to the US empire”.
Read the latest updates at the link in our bio.
Big spenders competing for lunch with #AnthonyAlbanese and his bride-to-be Jodie Haydon? #PeterDutton and David Littleproud bonding over the love of barramundi and their distrust of supermarkets?
It could only be the Midwinter Ball – the social event of the parliamentary year where that unusual mix of politicians, business leaders and media figures act like they’re at the Oscars or the Met Gala instead of freezing-cold Canberra.
Celebrating 25 years of raising money for good causes with the help of auctions and big-ticket sales for people wanting to sup with the federal elite, at least 600 people filled the Great Hall of Parliament House on Wednesday for a night of high fashion and frivolity.
Charities due to benefit from the ball included Rural Aid Australia, OzHarvest Australia, Fearless Women, Roundabout Canberra, Pink Elephants and Ukraine Crisis Appeal.
See all the pictures at the link in our bio.
#MidwinterBall
"I know not everyone loves milk as I do. Some can’t drink milk. Won’t drink milk. Don’t drink milk for physical or religious or philosophical reasons. And that’s fine, as adults.
It’s believed three-quarters of the world’s people get a substantial nutritional benefit from the milk of species not our own. This can seem odd at a time when we’re told that cows are causing climate change, that we don’t need a diet containing animal products to have complete nutrition, and that plant-based eating has the lowest footprint on Mother Earth.
With so many new “milks” appearing on the market, my aim is to unpick what is good, and bad, and perhaps not yet widely known, about drinking the milk from humans and other animals."
Read the full opinion piece by Matthew Evans at the link in our bio.
The Albanese government has dramatically scaled back Australia’s participation in America’s biggest military exercise as the nation faces a decade-long capability crisis following years of under-investment in defence.
Australia’s contribution to the biennial Rim of the Pacific war games off Hawaii is the smallest in at least a decade, and comes amid Anthony Albanese’s decision to skip next week’s NATO summit in Washington in a move the Coalition has warned could signal an early election.
The Australian Defence Force has sent just 320 personnel, a single warship and one P-8A maritime reconnaissance aircraft to RIMPAC 2024, which the US has hailed as its biggest yet.
It comes despite what the government has lauded as “record” levels of Defence spending, with a $5.7bn boost for the portfolio in the next four years, and an extra $50bn over the coming decade.
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#Defence
The Vatican’s first auditor-general, Libero Milone, has described the death of cardinal George Pell as “shrouded in mystery” and revealed he made a heartfelt vow to “get to the truth” for his colleague while paying final respects at his coffin in Rome.
Milone, a former partner with multinational accounting giant Deloitte is the only man left alive of the high-powered trio – led by Pell – who launched Pope Francis’s reforms of the Holy See’s corrupt, sclerotic financial systems.
But on June 18, 2017 – 11 days before Pell had to return to Australia to face historic child sexual abuse charges – Milone and his deputy, the late Ferruccio Panicco, a specialist forensic accountant, were sacked in mysterious, violent circumstances.
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After a presidential debate performance widely considered disastrous for Joe Biden, focus has turned sharply to what will happen before the US election in November.
In episode two of our Global Roundtable election series, seasoned observers from the newsrooms of The Australian, The Wall Street Journal and The Times of London bring expert perspectives on the debate fallout for Democrats and Republicans, the state of both campaigns and the path to victory.
Anchored by The Wall Street Journal’s Editor-at-large Gerard Baker watch the WSJ’s Kim Strassel, The Times’ Daniel Finkelstein and The Australian’s Greg Sheridan as they discuss the likely scenarios for the US and the impact on Canberra and London.
Watch the full episode at the link in our bio.
The startling illustration of the housing problem, which major banks declared was the largest policy crisis Australia faced, came as July 1 marked the start of a five-year promise by the Albanese government to build a million new homes.
Academics dispute a direct correlation between the net overseas migration intake, including temporary residents, and the housing shortfall.
However, the housing industry has declared the shortfall is probably an underestimation.
Housing Industry Association chief economist Tim Reardon said 120,000 homes would have to be built to accommodate natural population growth and replacement of ageing stock before migration was even taken into account.
According to official statistics, only 163,836 new dwelling were constructed in 2023 – an 11-year low and 10.4 per cent down on the previous year.
Continue reading at the link in our bio.
#Housing#Property
Australia faces a ‘harmful sexual socialisation of an entire generation’ if unfettered access by children to pornography is not reversed with tech companies given six months to act or face forced regulation.
The call for action follows a spike in the exposure of young Australians to pornographic material on platforms including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat, which “violates their terms of service”.
With Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton warning of the need for stricter age-verification rules amid concerns about the social perils of porn, tech companies have been set an October deadline to present preliminary codes.
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