Australian PM Scott Morrison has been flying high for the past year – but he’s in sudden danger of being brought crashing back to earth after one of his upper house MPs abruptly resigned from the Liberal party. MP for Hughes, Craig Kelly, has been targeted as a “maverick” by
As the war between the Australian government and Facebook drags on, signs are growing that the Big Tech titan has badly miscalculated. Aside from the horror publicity for Facebook, the Australian government immediately retaliated by pulling all government advertising on the platform. Now private companies are following the government’s
It’s often said of the left that if they didn’t have double-standards, they wouldn’t have any. Victorian premier Daniel Andrews is easily the furthest-left state leader in Australia. Naturally, he’s got double-standards in spades. This is, after all, the premier who did nothing when thousands of
The Morrison government has notched up a significant win in reaching a deal with Facebook over its world-first Big Tech news laws. The Australian government will be seen to have taken on a multinational titan and won. That’s the first global bully dealt with. There’s still Australia’s
Damn, just when I was enjoying it. Facebook has announced that it will restore Australian news pages within days. The social media giant has reached a deal with the Morrison government over Australia’s world-leading laws to regulate Big Tech. So who blinked? Well, both parties have given ground. This
It’s a story that will probably be familiar to BFD readers: yet another indigenous corporation involved in a major tourism development is mired in accusations of nepotism and corruption, while local indigenous communities continue to struggle. Only, this time it’s in Northern Australia: the renowned Kakadu National Park,
The diminished crowd at this year’s Australian Open final in Melbourne may not be exactly representative of public opinion in Victoria, but the crowd reaction at the trophy presentation might spell trouble for both the Federal and Victorian governments. For the Victorian government, it might be seen as a
Here in Tasmania, professional Aboriginal agitators are going all-in on their latest campaign: to “hand back” “stolen” Aboriginal petroglyphs in Tasmanian museums. Never mind that, as one local Aboriginal man said, the museums actually saved the artworks from almost certain destruction. His preference, he said, was for the artefacts to
Fan Yang Deakin University Robbie Fordyce Monash University Facebook’s “news ban” in response to Australia’s proposed media bargaining code, has been hard to miss if you’ve spent any time on social networks recently. The social media platform has effectively halted all posting of links from Australian news
The world was shocked to discover that gangs of Pakistani Muslims had been allowed to prey, unchecked, on white and Sikh British girls for decades. They were allowed to get away with it because police, social workers and politicians knew all about it – and turned a blind eye. Even after
When the Chinese Communist Party brought the ban-hammer down on Australian exports, from wine to barley, they no doubt expected it to be the short, sharp shock “disrespectful” Australia needed. Instead, it was Beijing which was shocked. Far from folding immediately and begging for forgiveness (and money) from China, the
The war between Big Tech and the Australian government is heating up. First shot fired was Google threatening to pull its services from Australia entirely. Now Facebook has gone nuclear and canned all local and international news. The move is the latest in the high-stakes standoff against the Morrison government’
When it comes to the industrial-scale rape of underage girls by gangs of racist criminals, trying to identify the “worst” aspect of the abomination seems pretty pointless. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that there are some twists to the horror-show that clearly made the victims’ sufferings infinitely worse. One of those
According to One News, Kiwi international relations experts are aghast at the latest trans-Tasman war of words, which they say is proof of different values and a worsening relationship between Wellington and Canberra. Australia’s decision to strip citizenship from a dual Australian-New Zealand national currently detained in Turkey has
