A recent Pew Research poll, released last month, showed that for the first time, more Australians view China favourably than the US.

Looking closer, we can see the big shift started between Pew’s Spring 2023 and 2024 polls (northern hemisphere), when favourable views of the US fell from 52 per cent of Australians to 40 per cent. It was the year Israel began its genocide in Gaza with full support from the Biden administration, prompting mass protests in Australia.

The slide has continued with Donald Trump returning to the Oval Office in January 2025 and sparking numerous global crises – kidnapping the Venezuelan president, attacking Yemen, bombing Nigeria, declaring war on Iran (and causing a global fuel crisis) as well as the International Criminal Court, imposing tariffs and threatening allies such as Canada and Denmark.

Australians – like most countries surveyed by Pew – are also gradually changing their view of China. This was not the case during Trump’s first term, when low US favourability among Australians (30 per cent) was met with even less favourable views of China (12 per cent).

The Pew results are in line with another recent poll by the Lowy Institute – a hawkish think tank founded by pro-Israel billionaire Frank Lowy – showing Australians’ trust in the US at a record low.

Source of global instability

Many Australians are acutely aware of the global shifts underway, and the primary drivers of those shifts – despite a political and media class that would rather pretend otherwise.

The US is charging ahead with its multi-pronged assault on a global order that has privileged Australia for decades. That was made most obvious for millions of Australians when the US-Israeli war on Iran sent fuel prices skyrocketing and prompted three interest rate rises, deepening an already unbearable cost-of-living crisis.

Australians, like much of the world, are now paying the price for America’s policies – and many of them know it. China, on the other hand, appears like an anchor of desperately sought stability. Years of anti-China rhetoric from politicians and media alike is failing to stack up against a reality obvious to anyone who cares to look: the US, not China, is the current source of global instability.

Rising AUKUS pressure

Public sentiment on the US has been shifting all year. In May, one third said in an Australia Institute poll that AUKUS was not in the nation’s best interests and 59 per cent wanted a more independent foreign policy.

Momentum has also been building politically. Peter Garrett – the former Labor minister and Midnight Oil frontman – is crowd-funding a public inquiry backed by independents David Pocock and Andrew Wilkie. Labor MP Ed Husic has also called for a rethink, on top of longstanding opposition to the deal from the Greens, Paul Keating and Malcolm Turnbull.

Despite the pressure, the Albanese government remains stubbornly committed to a junior role in an alliance that is costing taxpayers at least $368bn, despite America’s erratic and dangerous behaviour.

The government is already making $4.2bn in down payments for submarines it is not guaranteed to receive, expanding a base in Fremantle – including new housing for 1,000 US troops – and granting US nuclear submarines “enduring access” to Australian soil.

The prime minister is effectively tying Australia to any future US war with China, at a time when most Australians want some distance from an unhinged Washington – and for good reason.

Nine months since the so-called Gaza ceasefire and Palestinians are still pulling children from under the rubble; families are still burying their dead; and the space in which 2 million people are expected to survive has shrunk to less than a third of the size it was three years ago. This is not a ceasefire: it’s the same structural violence under a different name.

It is a continuation of the genocide that is calibrated to be violent enough to keep the Palestinians suffering daily, yet silent enough to avoid triggering international outrage. This is a ceasefire that still kills, confines and denies aid. It doesn’t dismantle the mechanisms of violence, but normalises the continued disregard for Palestinian lives.

Amid this uncertainty and ongoing violence, our Palestinian colleagues have continued to run field hospitals, treat injured patients, provide mental health support, distribute water and provide general healthcare to people in Gaza. This is what they’ve observed.

1. The killing continues

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, at least 1,185 Palestinians have been killed and 3,816 injured since the so-called ceasefire was announced on 10 October 2025. This is roughly one Palestinian killed or injured every hour and 20 minutes: for nine months straight. As of 19 June, over 265 children have been killed according to UNICEF. Israeli forces continue to carry out daily strikes across Gaza, while expanding their area of control everyday.

For MSF staff in Gaza, the line between treating patients and becoming one is terrifyingly thin.

On 16 July, an Israeli strike near an MSF clinic in Al-Mawasi sent four injured people to our teams. The following day, two apartment buildings housing our staff in Gaza City were struck without warning, trapping families inside as explosions shattered windows. In one building, rubble and bodies crashed into the lower-floor apartment of an MSF staff member.

The same day, MSF teams in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, treated 12 people, seven of whom were children, who were injured after Israeli forces struck a funeral in Al-Nuseirat. In total, this strike killed eight people and injured 20. Among those killed was an MSF staff member’s 21-year-old son. Our colleague got the news while working in another emergency room.

These were not isolated incidents, they’re merely a snapshot of 48 hours in Gaza.

2. Confinement of Palestinians has become another weapon

The yellow line, negotiated as part of the ceasefire under the guise of safety, has instead become another mechanism of Israeli forces’ control and violence.

The yellow line is moving. It is neither clearly marked nor fixed, shifting westward whenever Israeli forces decide it should – without negotiation or warning.

Just last week, one mother told our teams that her 14-year-old son, who has Downs syndrome, was shot by Israeli snipers near the yellow line while he was playing near his home. The boy, who was treated by MSF staff, miraculously survived.

When the so-called ceasefire was announced, Israeli forces controlled roughly half of Gaza. Today, almost two million Palestinians are confined to approximately 30 per cent of the Strip.

Around 90 per cent of people have been forcibly displaced, many multiple times, and most are living in overcrowded tents or makeshift shelters. Scabies, respiratory infections, rat bites and other diseases are rife.

When strikes are not enough to force people out, overcrowding, disease and deprivation are left to do the rest: a slower method of making the remaining third of Gaza unliveable for the people trapped inside it.

3. Homes continue to be destroyed, and people are forced to flee

East of the Israeli-controlled yellow line, homes and entire neighbourhoods continue to be levelled. West of it, in the shrinking areas where Palestinians are confined, Israeli strikes continue to hit tents, shelters and the few buildings still standing.

By the time the ceasefire was signed, around 60 per cent of Gaza’s population had already been made homeless, with roughly 77 per cent of housing units damaged – most of those destroyed outright.

Today, almost a million Gazans live in tents or makeshift shelters, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council, most without reliable access to clean water, electricity, healthcare or necessities. Yet Israeli forces continue to destroy what little shelter remains and issue so-called evacuation orders that force people to flee again.

Like everyone else in Gaza, our colleagues are often given only moments to leave when these displacement orders are announced. They abandon what few belongings they possess, with nowhere safe to go. Even on nights without orders, uncertainty remains. Families go to sleep not knowing whether they will wake to another displacement order or at all.

The sudden and arbitrary orders for people to flee their homes and shelters continue to be used as a tool of psychological warfare by Israeli forces. Repeated displacement and lack of security is not a consequence of the military campaign. It has become one of its defining features, ensuring that Gazans never feel safe regardless of a ceasefire.

4. Aid has become another tool for military gain

As an occupying power, the Israeli state has an obligation under international law to ensure Palestinians in Gaza have access to aid, regardless of political negotiations, military agreements or conduct of hostilities.

Instead, aid continues to be used as an instrument of oppression. Supplies continue to be delayed by shifting restrictions at crossings and aid is folded into ceasefire negotiations as though they are political concessions.

In Gaza, medical supplies are rapidly depleting and some MSF projects are expected to run out of key items, including medicines for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and chronic respiratory conditions. Israeli authorities are enforcing inadequate transport conditions for cold-chain medicine, prohibiting fridge trucks which are necessary to prevent delicate items like insulin or vaccines from spoiling.

Engine oil is also running critically low, which is essential to keep generators and vehicles running. Without it, hospitals, water systems and transport come to a halt, putting lives at risk, including babies in incubators who rely on generators to keep them alive. Our teams have been unable to directly bring in any supplies in Gaza since 1 January this year.

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Rather than fulfilling its obligations as the occupying power, Israel has instead deregistered international humanitarian organisations, including MSF, forcing international staff to leave Palestine and blocking medical cargo from reaching people in need. In their place new proposals have emerged to confine Palestinians to tightly controlled camps, where access to shelter and aid would be contingent on being inside militarised enclosures supervised by Israeli-approved forces.

5. Psychological wounds continue to be inflicted

Across Gaza, MSF teams continue to see overwhelming levels of grief, anxiety, sleep disturbance and psychological distress in both adults and children. Rather than easing, these symptoms continue to accumulate under ongoing airstrikes, displacement and deteriorating conditions. Some patients, including mothers, tell our teams they are experiencing suicidal thoughts.

Humanitarian partners operating a toll-free hotline report a 14 per cent increase in remote counselling sessions between March and April 2026, reaching more than 9,600 sessions last month.

For Palestinians, a ceasefire would mean conditions for people to grieve, begin rebuilding their lives and recover from the violence they have endured. This has not happened in Gaza.

Iman Abu Shawish, an MSF mental health supervisor in Gaza, says repeated displacement orders are having a profound psychological impact, provoking high-stress reactions in the body, “for example muscular and abdominal pain, shaking, and fatigue”.

“It affects children [too], the way they play, their emotions, and we see cases of children building tents as a game. The games recreate evacuations; those are their flashbacks revealed through their only form of expression.”

“So even if their current living conditions are bad, living in tents, barely making ends meet, evacuation means restarting from zero. Humans crave stability, but evacuation means chaos, change, loss. For Gazans, that is the cruel reality for more than 21 months now.”

The protection of civilians does not begin when a ceasefire is signed. Civilians must be protected and aid facilitated during active hostilities as well. Nine months into this so-called ceasefire, the wounds of war are still being inflicted.

“I have been surprised at the extraordinary amount of energy that has been applied to stop this. I’ve always taken the view there’ll be different views […] That’s democracy.”

So said Labor’s Ed Husic, musing on the fate of motions he’d intended to put to the ALP national conference.

As the Australian’s Simon Benson quipped, the event proved more “coronation than congress”, with no votes contested and every issue resolved on the voices.

The PM could not contain his satisfaction, praising the “most purposeful and united national conference I have attended since I joined the Labor Party back in 1979”.

Anthony Albanese has, after all, made ‘social cohesion’ central to his administration, going so far to anoint Peter Khalil as ‘Special Envoy for Social Cohesion’. But, as Husic’s lament suggests, ‘cohesion’ – a term that implies universal agreement – possesses, at best, an uneasy relationship with ‘democracy’, a concept that requires contestation.

‘Social cohesion’ has been bandied about for a long time: the Sydney Morning Herald declared it under threat as far back as 1851. Andrew Jakubowicz notes that Gough Whitlam referred to the term in his 1972 ‘It’s time’ campaign speech. Infamously, John Howard identified Asian immigration as a threat to ‘social cohesion’; the anti-racist academics associated with the Scanlon Foundation have made it central to their research paradigm.

But if you look at Proquest or other databases of Australian media, you find that, from about 2024, the term’s usage spiked massively.

That’s significant because, in many respects, the substantive divisions in mainstream politics are much more muted than in the past.

Think about Gough Whitlam and the deep unease the Australian and US security services felt about a Labor government they regarded as dangerously radical. Or go back further, to when, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the ALP’s flirtation with bank nationalisation induced near hysteria among big business and its supporters.

For most of the 20th century, the major parties presented distinctive visions of society, with quite different ideas about national security, social policy and (in particular) the economy.

Today, however, a furious agreement prevails – at least in respect of fundamentals. When it comes to, say, core issues such as the US alliance or economic models, the distinctions between Labor and Liberal are relatively trivial.

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It’s not just a question of policy, either.

Most Australians think of the First World War as an era of ANZAC-inspired unity. In reality, the two referendums staged over conscription led to a polarisation almost unimaginable today. On a single day in 1916, campaigners for both the Yes and No sides staged multiple competing street meetings in almost every suburb and town in the country.

Back then, progressives and conservatives could mobilise mass organisations. Political parties of all stripes held regular and well-attended meetings. Trade unions, church groups, community organisations: collectively, they provide a scaffolding for public engagement in politics.

Today that’s gone, as Labor’s choreographed national conference exemplifies. In the 21st century, top-down media management governs the old participatory, member-based organisations.

Ironically, the decline of mass politics explains why, despite the policy consensus among mainstream parties, so many people see the public sphere as hopelessly divided. In his much-discussed new book, Anton Jäger argues that the collapse of the old institutional forms contributes to what he calls “hyperpolitics”: the shrill clamour epitomised by (though not constrained to) social media.

“In earlier times,” he writes, “individuals were embedded in dense social networks and participated in a wide array of intermediate associations. Today’s societies are composed of increasingly atomized and isolated individuals. As long as history moves along smoothly and predictably, this need not necessarily be a problem. But when societies enter choppier waters, atomization amplifies their volatility – and the collective incapacity to respond to today’s political and ecological crises.”

The polarisation around culture war flashpoints is real. But compared to the historical divisions that once separated, say, a trade unionist committed to socialism and a conservative fearful of the Red Menace, it’s shallow and unstable. Crucially, the noise generated by online outrage rarely translates into real-world outcomes.

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Jäger describes hyperpolitics as “the product of a hard but hollow environment, an attempt to break the iron grip of neoliberalism without the requisite tools to do so”.

That’s what makes the demand for ‘social cohesion’ so ironic.

The genocide in Gaza led to huge protests all over the world, a campaign that brought vast numbers of ordinary people onto the streets in opposition to the pro-Israel consensus of the establishment. For a time, the sentiment seemed likely to develop into a struggle of the old type: a participatory movement with real political heft.

The spike in media references to ‘social cohesion’ came in response, part of a concerted attempt by politicians and pundits to quell popular anger over Gaza. In that context, the anti-democratic connotations of the phrase could not be clearer. Genocide is the crime of all crimes. It’s not a matter about which, in the name of consensus, we should agree to disagree. Rather, we need the killing to stop and the perpetrators brought to account.

As Ed Husic discovered, a consensus imposed from above is not democratic. Nor is it sustainable. The major political parties might agree that a genocide can be passed over as a minor unpleasantness best forgotten. But that’s a fantasy. Genuine disagreements cannot be papered over like that.

A real response to Gaza might contribute to a democratic revival. Social cohesion as a substitute for justice will not.

On paper democracy is meant to represent the will of the people, but in practice it’s the interests of the few who tend to win out.

Deepcut has reviewed instances where the Albanese government has engaged with lobbying campaigns. Our analysis shows a pattern of Labor consistently siding with powerful lobbyists against the public and national interest.

The following is a non-inclusive selection of significant moments when the Albanese government, for better or worse, appeared to give way to lobbying on a particular issue.

And these decisions are often against the public will – on almost every issue listed below, the Albanese government has gone against public opinion. For example, more than three-in-five Australians support a gas tax, 83% say the supermarkets deserve some blame for the cost-of-living crisis, three-in-four Australians want a ban on gambling ads and 79% hold a negative view of Israel. On these big issues, the vast majority – from left to right – are in agreement. Yet, as we show below, the prime minister has repeatedly stood with powerful interests.

AI and datacentres

Public opposition to datacentre construction is widespread worldwide and growing in Australia. There are already at least 162 datacentres operating in Australia with another 90 in the works. Internationally, there are questions about the financial stability of major AI companies and individual projects given the trillions of dollars AI companies have borrowed. There is evidence AI use leads to deskilling, undermines the integrity of scientific research and makes it harder to deal with climate change. Datacentres are said to increase the physical temperature in host neighbourhoods, guzzle water in some builds and have a short working lifespan.

Despite it all, Australia is embracing AI. The prime minister announced the decision in a significant speech mid-July following a sustained lobbying blitz by OpenAI, Anthropic and other tech companies looking for a favourable outcome on copyright. Albanese’s speech appeared to adopt the idea of “sovereign AI”, a concept that has been promoted by tech CEOs and consulting firms that relies on the language of national sovereignty to encourage individual governments to develop their own indigenous AI systems. It has also been criticised by some commentators as “nonsense” and financial analysts as a convenient way for chip makers to boost sales.

Compare the quotes:

“This Industrial Revolution is about the production not of energy, not of food, but the production of intelligence and every country needs to own the production of their own intelligence which is the reason why there’s this idea called Sovereign AI. You own your own data. Nobody owns it.” – Jensen Huang, Nvidia Founder, 12 February 2024.

“This is our time to decide what AI looks like here in Australia. It is not a question of ‘if’ or ‘when’ AI will transform our economy, we are past that. The question that matters, the choice that we have – is how. How we apply our enduring values of fairness and opportunity to make this technology work for us.” – Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, 15 July 2026.

Gas tax

It is a well-known problem: Australia exports a lot of gas at bargain-basement prices despite the companies that produce it having made massive windfall profits as the result of the Russian war in Ukraine ($100bn according to the Australia Institute) and the US/Israeli war on Iran. Early reports suggest Australian oil and gas companies have been quick to cash-in on the Iran war, selling their cargoes at a premium.

Despite mammoth profits, the government earns more in HECS repayments than from the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax. Not to mention the climate costs – methane gas is a fossil fuel that is 80 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year period.

Momentum to tax Australia’s gas properly drew threats of a multi-million dollar campaign from the fossil fuel industry targeting the government, reminiscent of the mining tax campaign over a decade ago, prompting the prime minister to fly to Perth and reassure the resource sector that that wasn’t the case. Albanese has since consistently sought to kill off the idea whenever it crops up. This is thanks in part to direct lobbying by the Western Australian Premier, Roger Cooke, whose home state is a focal point in production, and decades of overlap between the resources sector and governments.

Compare the quotes:

“It shouldn’t need to be said that this would be the worst possible time to impose an investment-destroying tax on an essential energy sector and put Australia’s energy security at risk.”- Samantha McCulloch, chief executive of Australian Energy Producers, 23 April 2026.

“The middle of a global fuel crisis is the worst possible time to jeopardise these partnerships, or the investment that underpins them,” – Anthony Albanese, 29 April 2026.

Supermarkets

It’s almost as if Australia has always had Coles and Woolies. The ACCC estimates that Coles holds a 29% market share, Woolworths 38%. It’s not a stretch to suggest this level of market power is ripe for abuse – the ACCC illustrated how in legal action against the duopoly alleging they had engaged in secret pricing schemes. There have been repeated calls over the years, including from the Nationals and the Greens, to break up this arrangement. So far the Labor government has not been interested, despite massive public relations failings leaving these companies vulnerable, instead preferring “proper” competition measures. The government’s preference has been to wait for the ACCC review, but the regulator’s conclusions have blunted any momentum for change when it decided against divestiture and even suggested a duopoly did not exist.

Economic power like this tends to go beyond lobbying in the sense that it has its own gravity, with both retailers squeezing their suppliers, throwing their weight around in negotiations and engaging in a practice known as “landbanking”. Despite the supermarket giants coming under tighter scrutiny amid a cost-of-living crisis, the Albanese government has refused to break the duopoly’s apparent stranglehold on the nation’s food supply.

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Compare the quotes:

“... what we would have some concerns around is what the unintended consequences could be through a divestiture law to impact the grocery space. Our view would be there are a number of things that would be potential unintended consequences – higher prices for customers, potential lower investment in the grocery sector within Australia, potential poorer outcomes for regional outcomes and maybe job losses.” – Coles CEO Leah Weckert, 16 April 2024.

“We have a private sector economy in Australia and not a command and control economy. We’re not the old Soviet Union. So, we need to be very careful about the language that we use.”– Anthony Albanese, 22 February 2024.

North West Shelf extension

The North West Shelf is one of the largest gas projects in Australia. The field’s operation was expected to draw to a close in 2030, but Woodside applied to extend the project’s operational life out to 2070 – two decades beyond the 2050 target set under the Paris Climate Agreement. Murray Watt, as one of his first acts as incoming environment minister, pushed through the approval, announcing his decision in May 2025 but only releasing the full detail in September after protracted negotiations with the company. This decision swept aside concerns about the catastrophic effect of climate change, and objections from Mardudhunera woman and the former chair of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, Raelene Cooper, about the potential effect on ancient rock art on the Burrup Peninsula. The approval is currently before the courts.

Compare the quotes:

“Since the minister announced the proposed approval in May, we’ve been working very closely with the government to try to get a final approval that supports the government’s future gas strategy. We’re pretty frustrated that we don’t have that yet. And with discussion under way in Canberra on how to improve Australia’s productivity, I think this is a great test case.” – Meg O’Neill, former Woodside CEO and chair of national oil and gas industry association, Australian Energy Producers, 19 August 2025.

“What we’ll continue to do is act in Australia’s interests but also in the interests of engaging in action on climate change. We know that gas has an important role to play in the transition. We’ll continue to make decisions based upon our domestic law and the Environment Minister will be making a decision in the coming period.” – Anthony Albanese, 11 September 2025.

Gambling ads

Most seem to agree that, to date, Labor has “capitulated” to the gambling industry on the question of advertising. The idea for a total ban on gambling advertising itself began within Labor, but when it came to the crunch, the Albanese government chose to limit the frequency of these ads rather than ban it outright. This is despite evidence suggesting one in five young women and one in seven young men were likely to start betting for the first time after seeing an ad, and half of those at risk of gambling harm reporting that they were likely to increase their bets.

The gambling industry is a big donor to the Labor Party – $4m in the last five years – and has powerful allies. Gambling ads, although demonstrably harmful to society, are big business for the AFL and NRL, as well as media companies. Instead of opting for better mental health outcomes by banning gambling ads, the Albanese government sided with the big end of town.

Compare the quotes:

“Look, it’s entertainment. You don’t gamble to win money. You don’t do it to become rich. You do it to entertain yourself. (It’s) just like you go to a restaurant and you buy a meal – that’s entertainment. As long as you’re responsible with what you’re spending on that entertainment, it’s no different than anything else. I’m encouraging entertainment.” – NRL CEO Peter V’landys, 6 May 2023.

“We’re getting the balance right here, letting adults have a punt if they want to but also making sure Australian children don’t see betting ads everywhere they look.” – Anthony Albanese, 2 April 2026.

Hate speech laws

Over the last two decades, the pro-Israel lobby has actively lobbied to criminalise elements of political speech with vague definitions of what is considered ‘hate’. With anti-Israel sentiment rising in Australia as a result of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the lobby has succeeded since October 2023 in pushing the Albanese government to adopt a raft – though not all – of its recommendations on hate speech.

Compare the quotes:

“For more than 15 years, spurious civil liberties arguments have been used to justify burdening hate speech laws with unnecessary additional elements that for all practical purposes have been impossible to prove.” – ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim, 13 January 2026.

“We engaged very deliberately and collaboratively with the members and leaders of the Jewish community on developing the draft legislation, just as we did on developing the terms of reference for the Royal Commission. And I thank those members, such as Peter Wertheim and Daniel Aghion and others who spent many hours before the release of the draft legislation, engaging.” – Anthony Albanese, 21 January 2026.

Salmon farming

The salmon farming industry in Tasmania has long been a flashpoint between community and industry. What started as a community campaign was given prominence with the publication of a book by Australian author Richard Flanagan. Despite community objections over the health, animal welfare and environmental impact from the floating fish pens, the federal Labor government sided with capital.

The Albanese government chose to ignore advice that it should protect the Maugean skate, an endangered fish species, but the PM wrote to the salmon industry to say that environmental laws will be changed to allow the industry’s continuation. Albanese’s steadfast support for salmon producers owes much to the lobbying effort of the Labor Right-aligned Australian Workers Union, which worked with industry to defend it against various grassroots campaigns.

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Compare the quotes:

“For years the AWU has had to defend the salmon industry against unhinged attacks and misinformation. It’s striking how inner-city ­activists are flexible about their own environmental impact, such as frequent air travel, but have no qualms about demanding extreme measures that put blue-collar jobs at risk.” – AWU Secretary Paul Farrow, 3 December 2024.

“We think this is an important industry. A Labor Government will always defend jobs.” Anthony Albanese, 15 January 2025.

A NSW Supreme Court judge has raised concerns that the state’s education minister, Prue Car, interfered in what was supposed to be an independent investigation into an Islamic school principal over anti-Zionist posts.

Last Friday, Assistant Justice Monika Schmidt overturned a ruling by an Education Department committee that Sheikh Abdulghani Albaf was not a fit and proper person to hold the position of principal at New Madinah College, in Young, after he made a series of posts attacking Israel in 2023 and 2024.

The judgment reveals close contact between the investigator looking into the case for an independent committee within the department and the offices of Ms Car and the then-acting minister, Courtney Houssos.

It also shows that the investigator tasked with looking into the case was aware that the minister did not want Sheikh Albaf to return to school when the new year started in February.

Under the law, the committee was required to act independently of the minister when recommending to her whether or not she should find Sheikh Albaf a fit and proper person.

“The evidence does raise a concern, I accept, about whether these requirements have been observed,” Justice Schmidt said in her ruling.

However, she made no ruling on the issue and instead decided in favour of Sheikh Albaf because he had been denied procedural fairness in other ways.

“... the evidence does establish that the Sheikh was denied the procedural fairness he was entitled to receive, before the Committee made and published its determination that he was not a fit and proper person. It having adopted an approach which needs to be revisited, if justice is to be done,” Justice Schmidt said

“Given that the challenged determination must be set aside, the Committee will be able to take the necessary steps to ensure that it does not take such an irrelevant consideration into account, when it makes any further decision about Sheikh Albaf,” Justice Schmidt said.

Sheikh Albaf’s social media posts included calling Israel a “Zionist terrorist” state and describing “Zionists and all who support Zionism” as “simply [having] no moral compass whatsoever”. In a post in January 2024, he shared, ”May Allah destroy the Zionist terrorist regime. May they burn in the lowest pits of hellfire for their oppression aggression.”

After the Bondi massacre, the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) “received media enquiries” about Sheikh Albaf’s posts, Justice Schmidt said.

On 19 December – four days after the massacre – NESA asked the college to provide information to a senior inspector, Brooke Prideaux, who would prepare a report for the committee.

It was the second time NESA investigated the posts – an earlier probe last year resulted in changes to the school’s social media policy but no findings against the principal.

After receiving NESA’s notice in December, New Madinah College investigated the posts and decided that Sheik Albaf could continue, but put him on six months probation.

Sheikh Albaf voluntarily stood down as principal during the investigations.

In February, the NESA committee said it disagreed with the school’s assessment and was planning to find Sheikh Albaf was not fit and proper.

It invited a response from him. He instead took the Education Department to court, resulting in the airing in public of details of the extensive involvement in the NESA investigation process of the offices of Ms Car and Ms Houssos.

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These included:

• NESA initially refusing to give New Madinah College more time to respond to its concerns after the minister’s office said that “this has been going on for too long” – even though the school had previously been told the demands wouldn’t be pursued until February and many of the staff were on holidays

• A December 18 handwritten note to NESA from acting minister Houssos in which she said: “I note in the school’s response to the initial concerns, they said this does not reflect the principal’s current values. This is directly contradicted by the recent offensive and hateful posts. Please keep me updated on your investigations.”

• NESA’s investigator, Ms Prideaux, and other authority staff being aware that Car did not want Sheikh Albaf to return to his job, but failing to disclose this to him

• NESA CEO Paul Martin telling the chair of the school’s board that there was a lot of political pressure and Sheikh Albaf should stand down until the matter “went to sleep”

• Under cross-examination, Ms Prideaux also gave evidence that during a committee meeting to decide Sheikh Albaf’s fate the executive director of teaching standards at NESA, Lyn Kirkby, said “that the minister did not want the principal at the school when the students resumed on 2 February; that this had already been communicated to her superiors; that it had also been discussed before the meeting; and that she was aware of this, before she prepared her report; but that she had not mentioned it there,” Justice Schmidt said in her ruling.

The NSW Education Department didn’t answer Deepcut’s questions about the minister’s involvement because the matter is still before the court. The parties have been given two weeks to confer on next steps following Sheik Albaf’s victory.

“NESA acknowledges the judgment by the NSW Supreme Court on Friday 24 July,” a department spokesperson said.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where … ” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“ … so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

There is a lot in Alice in Wonderland which can sum up what we saw from the Labor national conference. Where should Labor go from here? It doesn’t seem to matter, it’s leadership said. As long as it’s somewhere.

It’s no use going back to where some of these identities were yesterday, or anywhere in the past – because they were different people then. Now, these people are disciplined. Ordered.

Or, as leader Anthony Albanese said on Insiders on Sunday:

“We are a united party, we’re cohesive. There is broad agreement about our general direction. We know who we are and what we stand for and the direction in which we want to take the country. And that stands in stark contrast with the chaos on the other side of politics.”

Albanese had a good conference. He got what he wanted, and any of the debates he didn’t want – on Israel, AUKUS, a gas tax or the direction of the Labor party, were away from the main floor, or decided before delegates arrived to vote.

Much has been made about Ed Husic’s attempts to force debate on the main conference floor, including being unable to find a seconder for his motion to harden the party’s stance on Israel, with acknowledgement of the “acts of genocide”. There is already talk about how, by going against factional colleagues, as well as the party position, Husic has ‘ruined’ any chance of a cabinet comeback.

First of all – that’s not how politics works. Husic is one of the most popular members within the Labor party base, and the party leadership is smart enough to know he is speaking for a large group of members disappointed in the party but remaining attached because of Husic’s dissent.

Husic won’t lose preselection – he is speaking for his branch. He won’t lose his seat because he’s speaking for many in his community. And so, as soon as there is a change of leadership, Husic will be rewarded with a cabinet position – as the new leader’s way of proving they are different. Bringing Husic back under the tent is how the new leader will seek to differentiate themselves from Albanese. And, at some point after the next election, Labor will start looking for a change in leadership.

Secondly, one of the ways Labor quelled dissent was by giving unions and powerplayers some treats in the shape of more on industrial relations and re-assurances the climate wouldn’t get in the way of the gas future. Anyone watching the conference could see which way it was heading the moment Albanese announced his new workers’ court. That was the price for quelling dissent and it was cheaply bought, but as with everything else in this world, you get what you pay for.

It won’t be long until the same tide for change and action which Albanese believes he has faced down will once again roar back to life. No matter how much Albanese believes discipline means never having to say you disagree, the fights he is refusing to have are not going away.

Albanese is living in the past, still trying to prove to people that the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era could have been avoided if people just sat quietly and let the change happen. But it wasn’t any single issue which caused the last Labor government to collapse – it was a lack of direction, action, or even Labor ideals. The same ingredients are present in this recipe, it’s just Albanese in charge of the kitchen. But not even his incrementalism can stop these pots boiling over.

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What Labor risks now is what happens when it is dragged to a change it could have led. That’s already happening – Labor is being outflanked on gas and calls for action on Israel. It’s among the last defenders of neoliberalism in the nation, a position that even Andrew Hastie and Matt Canavan have previously said is untenable. On Friday, it quietly announced the greenwashing ‘Climate Active’ program, which allowed businesses to claim they were ‘carbon neutral’ with a state-sponsored tick of approval from the government while also increasing emissions, was ending. Along with the greenwashed tick, the term ‘carbon neutral’ is also being retired.

This isn’t because the government finally had a realisation that the 15-year-old program was useless – it was because it knows it can’t just sit back and pretend to be doing something by dressing nothing up as action without consequences anymore.

The unions and delegates which failed to publicly support Husic and other ‘troublemakers’ at the conference (while privately agreeing with their stances) are already sniffing the wind. Labor’s issue isn’t the next election, it’s what happens after. The longer they allow Albanese to pretend ‘discipline’ is a stand in for good government, the longer it will take to crawl back. If they do.

Or, as the Duchess tells Alice, “tut, tut, child. Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.”

The Queensland government’s controversial ban on two pro-Palestine phrases will be challenged in the High Court after seven plaintiffs lodged a writ of summons and statement of claim on Tuesday.

The court application – seen by Deepcut – seeks to strike out “s 52DA of the Criminal Code and the amendments to the Police Powers Act” on the grounds they “impermissibly burden the implied freedom of political communication and are thereby invalid”. The plaintiffs are represented by Marque Lawyers and led by Stephen Keim SC.

“The Queensland government is directly attacking the Palestine solidarity movement. Those who have been paying attention know that it is one front in a broader campaign to erase Palestinian voices from public life,” Remah Naji, the first plaintiff, told Deepcut.

Queensland’s ‘Orwellian’ laws

The state government, led by LNP premier and pro-Israel hawk David Crisafulli, banned two phrases on March 5 – ‘from the river to the sea’ and ‘globalise the intifada’ – both commonly chanted at pro-Palestine protests.

The LNP government couched the ban in the Fighting Antisemitism and Keeping Guns Out of the Hands of Terrorists and Criminals Amendment Bill, inserting into s 52DA of the Criminal Code a prohibition of the two phrases.

The ban has since provoked the arrest of several peaceful protesters, including four of the plaintiffs.

The laws were widely condemned at the time as “a dangerous threat to fundamental rights” by Amnesty International and “Orwellian” by the Greens.

The Human Rights Law Centre said “the selective prohibition of two Arabic and Palestinian political phrases … undermines the rights to freedom from discrimination, freedom of expression, and equality before the law”.

The laws passed with the support of Bob Katter’s Australian Party. Labor, the Greens and two independents voted against.

Palestinian, Jews, First Nations among plaintiffs

The plaintiffs, listed below, hail from a diversity of backgrounds, which Naji said was by design.

“It was intentional to demonstrate that people from a broad cross-section of society care about their ability to protest a genocide,” Naji said.

List of plaintiffs:

• Remah Naji – Palestinian-Australian and former Greens candidate for the Brisbane seat of Moreton

• Stephen Heydt – Jewish-Australian and retired psychologist, arrested for wearing a T-shirt with the prohibited phrase

• Edward Carroll – Jewish-Australian, truck driver and manager, arrested for chanting and holding a sign with the prohibited phrase

• Kathryn Dennehy – retiree and former journalist, arrested for chanting and wearing a T-shirt with the prohibited phrase

• Philip George Monsour – songwriter of Lebanese descent

• James Francis Hillier – visual artist, faced a police complaint over artwork containing the prohibited phrase

• Samuel Woripa Watson – filmmaker and First Nations man, participated in the Global Sumud Flotilla and was arrested in June for speech containing the prohibited phrase

Pro-Israel lobby push to ‘tackle’ phrases

In submitting the Bill to state parliament in February, the Crisafulli government described the laws as “a suite of changes focused on terrorist symbols and phrases” and a bid “to stamp out antisemitism and terrorist extremism”.

The proscription of the two phrases – framed by the government as targeting ‘antisemitic’ and ‘terrorist’ slogans – falls in line with statements from pro-Israel groups in recent years, and is now being challenged by the plaintiffs.

In November 2023 – a month after Israel’s genocide in Gaza began – a policy analyst for the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) called the “river to the sea” chant “genocidal” and “globalise the intifada” an “incitement to genocidal violence”. The analyst also called for federal and state governments to act.

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In April 2024, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) – the nation’s most prominent pro-Israel lobby group, of which the antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal was previously president – labelled chants of ‘intifada’ “a terrorist campaign” and ‘from the river to the sea’ a call “to wipe out the modern state of Israel”.

In May 2024, the Zionist Federation of Australia referred to ‘from the river to the sea’ as “violent hate speech”.

In December 2025, following the Bondi shooting and two months before the Queensland government proposed its Bill, Segal put the “intifada language” in her sights, telling ABC radio “we need to tackle that”.

But the plaintiffs argue such framing is incorrect. The writ of summons contains more than two pages of explanation of the phrases, insisting neither has “an inherently antisemitic” or “violent meaning”.

“We are forcing the Queensland government to answer, on the record, why these specific words are considered criminal. We are forcing it to face a community that carries its history with pride, and that will not give up on human rights, including our right to speak out against Israel’s crimes and violations of international law,” Naji said.

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink – an hour-long talk with Palestinian scholar and author Tareq Baconi on the trauma of ethnic cleansing, growing up queer in Amman and why the Palestinian struggle is feminist.

You hear it often in progressive circles: where is Australia’s Zohran Mamdani?

The Democratic Socialist mayor of New York has won hearts worldwide for his unapologetic focus on the cost-of-living crisis, specifically targeting housing, transport and childcare.

Mamdani’s full suite of policies can be found on his Promises Tracker, which shows three out of 100 completed since coming to office, with 18 underway. A First 100 Days website tracked his actions from January 1 to April 10, giving some idea of his priorities.

Australia doesn’t have a position quite like the NYC mayorship, which possesses powers well beyond our local councils (although it’s also worth noting that several of his policies do rely on state funding, which he has had to lobby for). We do however have some politicians pursuing similar goals at the local, state and federal level, to varying degrees of success.

Here are a few of Mamdani’s signature policies, and their equivalents in Australia.

Affordable rents

During his campaign, Mamdani pledged to freeze rents for NYC’s one million rent-controlled units (the mayor is able to appoint members to the city board that makes such determinations). He fulfilled the former on June 25, when the Rent Guidelines Board approved zero percent increases for one- and two-year leases for rent-stabilised dwellings.

What does the Australian public say?

Regulating rents is popular in Australia; a 2023 Australia Institute poll showed three in four Australians back rent caps (limiting increases), while Essential data from the same year showed 60% supported a rent freeze (preventing increases for a set time period).

What do our politicians say?

The Australian Greens regularly call for widespread rent freezes, most recently in response to the fuel crisis. Former housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather often demanded one in negotiations with Labor, though this was dismissed as being outside the federal government’s purview (Chandler-Mather argued that the Commonwealth could coordinate state and territory freezes). South Australian Greens MLC Robert Simms recently renewed calls for one in his state, after last year proposing a two-year freeze, while the NSW Greens are now campaigning for rent controls, including caps.

It’s worth noting that the Victorian, Tasmanian, SA and WA governments all froze rents at various points in the pandemic, though there has been little appetite from the major parties in the years since.

One Nation does not support rent caps or freezes, vehemently opposing a Greens push in 2022. Their cost-of-living policies do not mention rents, with their main focus on reducing demand by cutting immigration.

Universal childcare

Mamdani pledged to make childcare free for all children aged six weeks to five years — a pledge which, as the Promise Tracker notes, requires state action. Early state funding commitments allowed his administration to roll out free care for 2-year-olds in low-income areas, with goals to expand the program over four years.

What does the Australian public say?

Recent polling on the idea is hard to come by, though a 2021 Australia Institute poll found that 59% of Australians support reintroducing free and universal childcare.

What do our politicians say?

Federal Labor came to office with a focus on “Cheaper Childcare”, pledging to increase various subsidies; RMIT’s promise tracker gave this a tick in 2023. More recently, the government asked Deloitte to investigate pathways to universal care, which Anthony Albanese has said he would like to be his legacy. As the Australia Institute notes, it won’t be universal care if the government continues to subsidise costly private providers, who can simply increase their fees.

The Greens believe that childcare should be “free, universally accessible and publicly funded,” though it doesn’t appear to be something they are actively campaigning for, while the Victorian Socialists argue for the same.

One Nation wants to reduce government funding for childcare (as well as opposing paid parental leave), and has a family income-splitting policy aimed at encouraging one parent to stay home. The Liberal Party, meanwhile, focuses on “parental choice”, regularly pushing for subsidies to be expanded to include nannies and grandparents.

Free buses

Mamdani has promised to eliminate bus fares, building on a pilot that made five routes fare-free. The $800 million policy has not yet been started according to Promise Tracker, although a separate pledge to expand priority bus lanes to reduce travel times is underway.

What does the Australian public say?

A recent poll showed 78% of respondents back free public transport during “cost shocks”, even if they wouldn’t use it themselves. Numbers on ongoing free PT are harder to come by, though many experts acknowledge it is “popular”, even as they argue money would be better spent on improving services.

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What do our politicians say?

The Victorian Labor and Tasmanian Liberal governments recently introduced free public transport in response to the fuel crisis, although sadly there are no plans to make this permanent. Other states were all quick to rule out the idea, although Queensland’s outgoing Labor government did introduce 50c fares in 2024, a popular policy the LNP opposition pledged to keep.

The Greens, who initially pushed for the 50c fares in Queensland, have campaigned for it to be rolled out nationwide, while independent Senator David Pocock and the Greens each called for free nationwide public transport during the fuel crisis. Socialist Alliance and the Victorian Socialists argue all public transport should be free, permanently.

One Nation does not have formal public transport policies, though its South Australian MPs recently voted against a Greens bid to make PT free during periods of fuel rationing.

City-run grocery stores

One of Mamdani’s most socialist policies calls for city-owned and run grocery stores, which would aim to keep costs low as they would not need to turn a profit. This promise is in progress, with a planned pilot network (one in each borough) to cost about $60 million.

What does the Australian public say?

This idea hasn’t been polled in Australia, but public sentiment towards the major supermarkets is overwhelmingly negative: 79% believe they are price gouging according to a recent poll, while 83% said in 2024 that supermarkets deserved some blame for the cost of living crisis, with trust in Coles and Woolworths now at record lows.

What do our politicians say?

No one currently appears to be proposing government-run supermarkets in Australia, although the Victorian Socialists’ cost-of-living policies come close, including putting price caps on essential items sold in supermarkets. The Greens have long called for stronger divestiture powers to break up the big supermarkets if they misuse their market power, as well as pushing to make price gouging illegal.

The Albanese government recently outlawed price gouging, banning major supermarkets from charging “excessive” prices for a grocery product – a rule to be enforced by the ACCC. But the prime minister dismissed calls to break up the supermarkets.

One Nation and the Coalition also talk about “cracking down” on the duopoly, with the latter going to the last election promising divestiture powers as a “last resort”.

Taxing the rich

Mamdani vowed to fund his promises by raising corporate taxes, and introducing a “City Millionaire Tax” of 2% tax on incomes over $1 million — both of which are “in progress”. He also announced a new tax on second homes above $1 million, which has since been passed by the state legislature.

What does the Australian public say?

Polling conducted for Oxfam in 2025 shows 72% of Australians support the introduction of a wealth tax on billionaires and the super-rich.

What do our politicians say?

The Greens have previously proposed various forms of wealth taxes to fund their pledges, with a current campaign to tax the wealth of the top 1%. The Victorian Greens will go to November’s state election promising a new land tax on investments worth more than $5 million, inspired in part by Mamdani’s policies.

The Victorian Socialists, unsurprisingly, go further, with calls for a 10% wealth tax on billionaires, a 90% marginal tax rate on income over $300,000 pa, and a company tax of 50%.

Some Labor members pushed for a billionaire tax to be on the agenda at last week’s ALP National Conference, building on recent changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax. Albanese, however, cautioned against an “anti-wealth sentiment”, arguing Labor stands for “equality of opportunity,” not “equality of outcomes.”

Coalition and One Nation are vehemently opposed to wealth taxes, having both fought against Labor’s recent increases to taxes on passive income.

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink – an hour-long talk with Palestinian scholar and author Tareq Baconi on the trauma of ethnic cleansing, growing up queer in Amman and why the Palestinian struggle is feminist.

It took the Albanese government 10 months to respond to Aftab Malik’s inaugural report as Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia. Given the wait, you might have expected sweeping reforms. Instead, the response was so light on substance it could’ve been an email.

Labor accepted 35 of the envoy’s 54 recommendations, backing them with almost $42 million for mosque security, community grants, an Islamophobia Education Taskforce, leadership programs and research into Islamophobia. Those are welcome investments and no one should dismiss the value of funding that will make Muslim communities safer and better supported.

But what Anthony Albanese didn’t accept proved to be the most telling.

Malik called for an inquiry into anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian discrimination. Yet despite the countless reports of people being abused, vilified or even losing their jobs for expressing support for Palestine or simply wearing a keffiyeh, it was not considered a priority for the Labor government.

Equally baffling was its refusal to strengthen legal protections against religious discrimination. Malik also urged the government to review whether Australia’s counter-terrorism framework has unfairly targeted Muslim communities and whether existing legal protections were sufficient.

Instead, Albanese said he had “confidence” in the nation’s security agencies. For those whose lives have been upended by flawed security investigations or years of over-securitisation, his words offered little consolation to their ongoing trauma.

Even worse, it maintains a problematic status quo that Muslim religious and community leaders should continue to expend hours of time doing complex counter-terrorism work that ultimately fails their communities anyway.

It’s how the AFP can run an undercover operation encouraging an autistic 13-year-old boy to engage in terrorist activity even when his parents went to authorities for help, and still publicly stand by it.

“We operate our terror laws on the basis of appropriate advice from national security agencies,” Albanese said.

So, if Australia’s existing institutions are already equipped to deal with Islamophobia, why was there a need to appoint a Special Envoy in the first place?

If the government was serious about addressing institutional failures, these were the recommendations that warranted the closest consideration and yet they were ignored.

One of the most predictable aspects of the government’s response was its repeated invocation of “social cohesion” (Albanese argued that tackling Islamophobia was a way to “strengthen our social cohesion”).

Communities don’t become more cohesive because governments tell them to. They become more cohesive when people have confidence that the institutions designed to protect them are prepared to confront discrimination, even when doing so is politically inconvenient. For Muslim Australians, there remain legal blind spots that leave Islamophobia discrimination insufficiently addressed.

At federal level, religion itself is not protected under the Racial Discrimination Act and the Australian Human Rights Commission has called for laws expressly prohibiting religious discrimination. One key reform Malik called for was clarifying that Muslims are protected as an ethno-religious group under the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), just as Jews and Sikhs are.

What is hard to ignore is the disparity between the government’s response to Islamophobia and its response to antisemitism. The contrast hasn’t been lost on Muslim communities. Bilal Rauf, the spokesperson for Muslim peak body Australian National Imams Council, described the absence of legal consequences and enforcement as “one glaring omission”, saying it left many questioning whether Islamophobia is being treated with the same urgency as antisemitism.

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None of this is to suggest every recommendation by the Islamophobia Envoy or any independent advisory group should deserve a rubber stamp. Governments are elected to govern, not outsource decision making to independent advisers, as Albanese made a point of saying himself during the press conference announcing the response (yet, did the complete opposite for with the antisemitism envoy’s recommendations)

But if you’re going to reject the recommendations that ask the hardest questions of government, you should at least explain why. The government did not provide specific responses as to why individual recommendations were accepted, rejected or merely noted – a level of transparency the Islamic Council of Victoria has since called for.

That matters because transparency is what distinguishes a considered policy decision from a political one. Without clear reasons for rejecting individual recommendations, it becomes impossible to know whether they were dismissed because they lacked merit or simply because they asked questions the government was unwilling to answer.

Muslim communities, many of whom have long supported Labor, have a right to know what their federal government is doing on their behalf, even when it doesn’t align with their interests.

And the ordinary Muslims from all walks of life who spent months sharing their experiences with Malik during consultations across the country shouldn’t be left to speculate why key recommendations were knocked back.

Against a backdrop of rising Islamophobia, this should have been the moment for a more honest national conversation about whether Australia’s laws and institutions are doing enough to protect Muslim communities. Instead, Labor delivered a response that acknowledged the problem but largely avoided confronting the systems that help sustain it.

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink – an hour-long talk with Palestinian scholar and author Tareq Baconi on the trauma of ethnic cleansing, growing up queer in Amman and why the Palestinian struggle is feminist.

A freelance cameraman in the Canberra Press Gallery has been condemned for leaving a derogatory comment on a social media post in which he called the keffiyeh a “teatowel”.

The cameraman, Dale Fletcher, responded to an Instagram post by Shane Bazzi – a Greens candidate in the upcoming NSW state elections – concerning an ACT police investigation into alleged racist abuse sustained by Bazzi.

“@actpolicing are now asking for the public’s help to identify the man who called me a terrorist and threatened me with violence in Canberra on 21 July 2025 while I was wearing a keffiyeh and Palestine hoodie,” Bazzi wrote.

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A day later, Fletcher left a response – since deleted – telling Bazzi to “ … stop wearing the teatowel. It looks bloody ridiculous anyway”.

Freelancing for Seven Network

Fletcher appears in numerous photos on his Instagram page working with the Channel Seven team at Parliament House.

Neither Fletcher nor the Seven Network responded to questions, but Deepcut understands from sources within the Press Gallery that Fletcher is a casual with Seven and was seen during the last parliamentary sitting period working for the network.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young stressed the need for “high standards of behaviour for all people working within Parliament, including the media”.

“Media organisations have a responsibility to ensure that respect and integrity are upheld by all of their employees,” she told Deepcut.

Bazzi says he raised the matter with the Press Gallery Committee, whose secretary replied in an email, seen by Deepcut, that “Channel 7’s bureau are aware of the comment and have given us assurances that it will be dealt with”.

“I also contacted Seven myself however still have not received any response or acknowledgement from them,” Bazzi told Deepcut.

Media turbocharging racism

Hanson-Young called out mainstream media for “platforming and legitimising the openly racist views of people like Pauline Hanson and One Nation”, which she says “are giving license to individuals to feel they can act with impunity”.

“Racism and hate speech are turbocharged online and media organisations have a responsibility not to fuel it further,” she said.

The senator, and Greens spokesperson for communications, called on media organisations “to lead from the top to stamp out racism and hold politicians and their own employees to account”.

It’s not the first time the keffiyeh has drawn attention at Parliament House. In September last year, an Australian of Jordanian descent was denied entry into the public gallery of the House of Representatives for wearing a hatta – a similar cultural garment to the keffiyeh.

The refusal was due to a ban on the keffiyeh imposed by house speaker and Labor MP Milton Dick.

“The keffiyeh is a powerful symbol of Arab heritage, identity and resistance,” Bazzi said.

“Anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia have become so emboldened by the media and political class. It is deeply disturbing for anyone to make such a comment, let alone someone who works in the Canberra Press Gallery,” he said.

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink – an hour-long talk with Palestinian scholar and author Tareq Baconi on the trauma of ethnic cleansing, growing up queer in Amman and why the Palestinian struggle is feminist.

High-profile Palestinian-Australian academic, Randa Abdel-Fattah, is taking legal action against the Greater Bendigo City Council and La Trobe University over the dramatic collapse of the Bendigo Writers Festival last August.

Abdel-Fattah will argue political belief and activity discrimination while being contracted by the Council, and a failure by both the Council and La Trobe University to meet Victoria’s human rights obligations.

The reputable festival fell apart in August 2025 amid a mass withdrawal of authors protesting a sudden imposition of a code of conduct that participants argued would have restricted free speech.

“Three days before I was scheduled to appear, everybody at the festival was emailed and asked to commit to a code of conduct which included La Trobe University’s Anti-Racism Plan,” Abdel-Fattah told Deepcut.

“And when I looked at it, I could see that La Trobe University’s plan adopted the Universities Australia definition of antisemitism, which is in fact even worse than IHRA, if that’s possible, in that it specifically equates anti-Zionism and antisemitism,” she said.

Pro-Israel lobby behind Bendigo chaos

A Deepcut investigation revealed that 5A – a small pro-Israel group focused on academia – lobbied both La Trobe University and the Council regarding a La Trobe-sponsored panel involving Abdel-Fattah.

“It was all instigated by a complaint by 5A against me,” she said.

“There was this panic as to what to do about me. Should we cancel the panel, should we just impose a code on her and the panel only – there’s paper trails for that.”

Abdel-Fattah will file an application claiming political belief discrimination at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) while being contracted by the Council; as well as arguing that both the Council and La Trobe University failed to comply with the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006.

The academic is seeking a public apology, compensation and a commitment to freedom of political expression.

“I feel very strongly that taking a stand and defending myself and my reputation are very important because the professional cost has taken such a toll,” she said.

“I refuse to be bullied into silence and I will fight back against the shameless impunity with which institutions act to suppress and erase my voice as a Palestinian.”

The battle for free speech

The legal action is the latest in a broader contest for free speech as pro-Israel groups seek to impose a definition of antisemitism – known as IHRA – that restricts criticism of Israel.

In the backdrop hangs the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion where pro-Israel perspectives have dominated with little scrutiny and sought to conflate criticism of Zionism and Israel with antisemitism.

“One of the motivations for me to pursue this case is because these definitions of antisemitism are being used completely as a blunt weapon against us all across every sector,” Abdel-Fattah said.

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The federal government controversially adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism after the Bondi shooting last December, and has been rolling it out across the public service, prompting concerns from within the public service that their free speech was being curtailed.

Those concerns spread to the healthcare sector last month after AHPRA – the national regulator for 900,000 healthcare workers – also adopted the IHRA definition amid sustained pressure from the pro-Israel lobby and without wider consultation.

‘I have unshakeable faith’

The mother-of-four has faced relentless attacks from the pro-Israel lobby, and their allies in the political and media establishment, since the Gaza genocide began in October 2023.

In February 2025, months before the Bendigo debacle, the Australian Research Council (ARC) suspended Abdel-Fattah’s $870,000 research grant following direct pressure from Education Minister Jason Clare. The ARC reinstated the grant 10 months later after finding the academic committed no wrong-doing.

The drama didn’t end there. In January, Adelaide Writers’ Week cancelled Abdel-Fattah’s scheduled appearance at the behest of Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas, causing another revered festival to collapse after writers withdrew in protest.

Asked if she was prepared for renewed media and political attacks, Abdel-Fattah said she’s not panicking.

“I don’t take the attacks personally. They attack us here to enable their genocide in Palestine. Once you understand their playbook, you understand how to protect your mental health,” she said.

“I have a very strong support system. I have unshakeable faith as a Muslim and that is what constantly grounds me. I have a conviction that what I’m doing is right for myself and for the cause.”

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink – an hour-long talk with Palestinian scholar and author Tareq Baconi on the trauma of ethnic cleansing, growing up queer in Amman and why the Palestinian struggle is feminist.

The Federal Court’s dismissal of pianist Jayson Gillham’s case against the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) will have significant implications for artists and workplace rights more broadly.

Let’s break this down (and I’ll try keep the legal jargon to a minimum).

What happened

In August 2024, the MSO cancelled a scheduled recital of Gillham the morning after he introduced his performance of the piece “Witness” with a statement dedicated to journalists killed by Israel in Gaza.

Gillham took the MSO to court arguing that it contravened the general protections provisions of the Fair Work Act by taking adverse action against him because he expressed a political belief.

It is important to note that this was not an unfair dismissal case, as Gillham was an independent contractor, not an employee of MSO. The Fair Work Act is a federal law that normally applies to employees, but the general protections provisions – which make it unlawful for bosses to take adverse action against employees for exercising their workplace rights – applies to independent contractors as well.

Narrow interpretation of ‘workplace rights’

The Court did not accept that Gillham had a “workplace right” to be free from discrimination in the expression of his political views.

Gillham claimed his workplace right came from the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act (EEO Act), which makes political opinion discrimination unlawful. But the Court found that the EEO Act was not a workplace law as defined by the Fair Work Act – neither for contractors nor employees.

In other words, workplace rights cannot be sourced from State anti-discrimination laws for general protections claims in the federal Fair Work Act. They can only be sourced from the anti-discrimination provisions in the actual Fair Work Act. The problem with that? The Fair Work Act’s provisions concerning discrimination only cover employees, not contractors.

And in the space where the Fair Work Act does apply to contractors – the protection from adverse action for workplace rights – the Court also did not rule in Gillham’s favour. The Court accepted that the cancellation of Gillham’s performance was adverse action, but did not consider MSO’s other actions – such as sending a message to concert attendees apologising for Gillham’s statement – as adverse action, even though it accepted that this message had the potential to damage his reputation.

The Court reasoned that these subsequent actions were taken after MSO terminated his engagement. But at the time MSO took other actions, MSO and Gillham were negotiating his return to the stage, so it is at least arguable that his position as an independent contractor was impacted by the MSO’s actions. The Court didn’t come to this conclusion.

Was Gillham cancelled because of his political remarks?

A crucial finding in the Court’s decision was the clear distinction it made between Gillham’s political expression and the impact of the political expression on MSO’s business and reputation. The Court accepted the evidence of the MSO decision makers that they were concerned only with the consequences of Gillham’s statement on the MSO, rather than the political content of the statement itself.

It found that MSO had a policy of not supporting either side of the “Israel-Gaza conflict” and that it would have taken the same action had Gillham made pro-Israel remarks.

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This is difficult to reconcile with the other evidence in this case. The MSO took the decision to cancel Gillham incredibly swiftly – at a meeting at 9:30am the morning after his recital. The MSO arguably expressed a pro-Israel position in its December 2023 statement on the war. The evidence also showed that certain MSO staff and board members involved in the actions against Gillham had pro-Israel positions and found Gillham’s statement “offensive”.

Consequences of the decision

This decision is a setback for workers’ freedom of speech.

The narrow interpretation of what is a workplace right effectively means that all workers – employees and contractors – will no longer be able to rely on State anti-discrimination laws when making general protections claims under the Fair Work Act. This applies not only to political opinion discrimination, but to all unlawful discrimination, including race, age, sex, disability and sexuality.

The Court also found that there is a custom or practice that classical musicians do not make statements on sensitive political or social issues from the stage without approval of the host.

So classical musicians are effectively prevented from making any personal statements of a topical nature on stage, without approval of their bosses. And bosses can now more easily argue that they dismissed or cancelled their workers because of the impact of their political expression, rather than the expression itself.

The bigger picture here is the inadequate free speech protections for workers – now further limited by this ruling. There is no individual right to freedom of speech in the Constitution and political opinion discrimination is not unlawful in New South Wales, South Australia or under federal anti-discrimination laws, so it’s even worse for workers in these two states.

The Court ruling makes clear the urgent need for a Human Rights Act and other reforms to protect our fundamental civil and political rights, which are fast eroding.

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink – an hour-long talk with Palestinian scholar and author Tareq Baconi on the trauma of ethnic cleansing, growing up queer in Amman and why the Palestinian struggle is feminist.

The prime minister’s speech on AI on Wednesday began by boasting of banning social media for those under 14. He was unable to point to any actual success other than it had “sent a signal and set a standard” and started “conversations within families and friendship groups”.

He suggested it showed “what Australia can do, when we back ourselves”.

The lack of actual evidence of success or meaningful change in company behaviour made it a perfect example to lead off a speech on the government’s AI policy framework.

It was a speech that was quickly welcomed by the AI sector.

Data Centres Australia (seriously, there is a lobby group for absolutely every parasitical industry in this country) told Guardian Australia that “it was great to hear him really outline that Australia wants this investment, that we’re leaning into it, that he wants to make sure we don’t miss this opportunity”.

Ok, but what is that “opportunity”?

What actual good for Australians are we to get from this “investment”?

Consider what Albanese touts as the benefits of AI:

“It’s changing the way our universities teach and the way students learn.”

Ok, but is that a change for the better? How do they improve the way students learn? Give me one fricken example.

“It’s helping small business owners cut the time they spend on paperwork.”

Give me strength. Is it ensuring they don’t underpay their workers?

“It’s driving productivity and it’s driving discovery.”

Any evidence of this productivity boom? Nope. Probably for the best given the propensity of LLMs to fabricate that we are not after facts.

“It’s building new screening tools for cancer and disease.”

OK good – but is this what these data centres are geared towards being used? And if this is the best thing, then why do we need to allow AI companies to strip mine the world’s literary and artistic output for free?

“It is a critical – and urgent – innovation priority for our defence force and security agencies.”

Mostly what he’s talking about is cyber security threats that come from AI. Sure, you can use it for some strategic planning, but let’s not pretend we are all going to be safer because our army uses AI to wargame how to defend ourselves from an invasion.

And that’s it. That is the big deal that we are talking about.

Would you buy a product based on that pitch? It reads like an email from a company that somehow got through your spam folder.

It’s not that much worse than Danielle Wood’s – the head of the Productivity Commission – recent speech spruiking AI.

“AI is a general-purpose technology – something that can be put to a wide range of uses, from medical research to graphic design – with the potential to transform our economy,” she said.

Wood seemed utterly ignorant that using AI to generate “graphic design” means devaluing an artist’s skills and using a machine that derives its images based on the theft of millions of artists’ work.

Pfft, smell the “new era of productivity growth and abundance”.

OK, but what about all that “frontier AI investment” Albanese is so “serious about attracting”?

It’s mostly GPU chips, cooling equipment and other imported machinery rather than job-creating construction:

And while there is an expectation of more construction to come, the increase is hardly anything that is going to lead to a mass of work, let alone comparable to the mining boom:

The biggest expected boost remains for machinery and equipment – essentially imports to plug into the datacentre:

But hey the “investment” will all make the GDP look better.

Is that enough of a reason?

At this point, we are still searching for the actual benefits – other than medical research – which is making companies suck up the entirety of human knowledge and creation for free.

Albanese made it clear in the speech that he wants to protect Australian authors and artists, which is a good thing. I suspect it’s the result of some serious pressure after Senator David Pocock raised the prospect that the government was going to do a deal on copyright laws in exchange for more funding for the arts.

But Australians have already had their works stolen, and what will be done to ensure recompense or to avoid it happening again?

And what does “the best way to secure the strongest copyright protections for Australian artists is for Australia to be active and involved” mean? That sounds rather like those copyright protections remain up for negotiation.

Then there is the small matter of energy.

Albanese said that the government “will create a legal obligation for the next generation of large-scale data centres to underwrite new power supply” and that they will need to “put at least as much energy into our grid as they take out of it”.

Ok, but what type of energy?

He suggested he wants these companies to build “new renewable generation – and firming – to strengthen our national energy resilience”.

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Anyone who has spent more than a minute looking at energy policy over the past 20 years knows “firming” means fossil fuels – likely gas-generated energy.

The Climate Council has estimated that in NSW and Victoria alone there are 74 data centres in the pipeline that would need a combined level of energy equivalent to just over nine Loy Yang A coal-fired power stations. Even if all of that was generated through new renewable energy, does anyone think we have the capacity to build that – and also increase renewable use by other industries?

That’s if the AI industry doesn’t pop given it is clearly an absurd bubble based mostly on being able to ‘train’ itself on ‘free’ (stolen) work and for which turning a profit remains rather elusive.

But in a world where boasts are made of policies without actual achievement, I guess such worries are irrelevant.

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink – an hour-long talk with Palestinian scholar and author Tareq Baconi on the trauma of ethnic cleansing, growing up queer in Amman and why the Palestinian struggle is feminist.

Prominent Greens Senator David Shoebridge has called on the antisemitism envoy, Jillian Segal, to “correct the record” after she sensationally claimed last week the Gaza death toll was “grossly inflated”.

Segal made the remarks while testifying at the Royal Commission on July 9 in relation to coverage by SBS that included UN statistics on the Gaza death toll. Segal claimed the UN accepted the statistics were “grossly inaccurate” after a recount, but failed to provide evidence when pressed by Senior Counsel Assisting Richard Lancaster SC.

A fact check by Deepcut revealed several inaccuracies in Segal’s testimony and found no record of a UN statement to that effect.

“SBS and ABC have not reported death tolls that are ‘grossly inflated’, in fact the figures from the Gaza health ministry are conservative when compared to what other institutions, such as Lancet, have estimated,” Shoebridge told Deepcut.

“Claims by Ms Segal that the UN have said the figures are ‘grossly inaccurate’ must also be corrected, because they are not truthful. At a time when tensions are so high, people in positions of power and authority cannot be so casual with the truth, especially about a genocide,” he said.

A legal expert warned that Segal could be in risk of breaching the Royal Commission Act 1902 if found to have intentionally provided false or misleading evidence to the Commission.

Anne Aly silent as Segal’s power goes unchecked

Deepcut sent questions to the multicultural affairs minister and Segal’s boss, Anne Aly, regarding the inaccurate statements and potential risk of breach of the Royal Commission Act.

The minister, and only Muslim member of cabinet, failed to respond – an unusual practice for a sitting government minister. Government media departments typically respond to requests for comment, even if they intend to dismiss queries with generic answers.

Labor controversially handpicked Segal – former president of pro-Israel lobby group ECAJ – as Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism on July 9, 2024. This was despite several conflicts of interest, including her continued role as a top ECAJ executive and an international board member for Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science ­– a prominent research centre that assists the Israeli military in the development of AI, drones and advanced military technologies. Labor also refused to dismiss Segal after revelations her husband donated $50,000 to far-right campaign group, Advance Australia.

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Instead, the unelected political appointee has seen her power grow, successfully pushing the federal government to adopt the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism, which includes criticism of Israel.

The government has been quietly rolling out the definition across the public sector, while Segal presses for external oversight to vet ABC and SBS coverage for what would be deemed as objectionable criticism of Israel – an extraordinary interference in media reporting.

The Albanese government also handed $102m of taxpayer money to ECAJ in the last budget, and $26m to embed antisemitism curricula within education – fulfilling a key recommendation in Segal’s widely-criticised antisemitism action plan.

Palestinian voices must be heard

Another win for Segal was lobbying a reluctant federal government to agree to a Royal Commission on antisemitism in the aftermath of the Bondi shooting.

However, the Commission has come under fire for platforming pro-Israel perspectives without interrogation, while refusing to hear Palestinians and conduct a thorough examination as to the causes behind the Bondi shooting.

“The Royal Commission absolutely must hear from as broad a cross section of the community as possible,” Shoebridge said.

“Part of the task before this Royal Commission is to consider social cohesion, that cannot be validly done if it airbrushes out Palestinian voices and Palestinian experiences.

“Picking and choosing who is listened to, and who is silenced, based on a narrow political narrative will only degrade trust further. That is a pathway to less, not more, social cohesion.”

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink – an hour-long talk with Palestinian scholar and author Tareq Baconi on the trauma of ethnic cleansing, growing up queer in Amman and why the Palestinian struggle is feminist.

The birth of her second child is something Noor Hammad wishes she was hopeful for. Instead, she approaches her due date with increasing dread.

“I’m in the final months of my pregnancy, but I have no sense of purpose or clear vision for my children’s future,” Noor told Deepcut.

While a tentative ceasefire agreement signed between Israel and Hamas in October has allowed some medical and humanitarian aid into Gaza, the reality for expectant mothers like Noor remains dire. In May, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that none of the Strip’s 37 hospitals are fully functional, and that 17 remain entirely unusable.

“Medical care keeps deteriorating. Ambulances still cannot reach many areas. All the hospitals are just tents with no resources,” Noor says.

“This is my biggest fear. I’m afraid for my son.”

Israel’s war on Palestinian babies

Earlier this month, Palestinians observed 1,000 days since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip – a campaign of destruction that the UN says has killed at least 73,110 Palestinians, including at least 21,638 children.

A separate UN report in June determined that Israel’s genocide has caused miscarriages, stillbirths, premature births, congenital defects and anomalies, and maternal deaths in childbirth to soar in Gaza. In March, one in three pregnancies in the Strip was classified as high-risk.

One emergency room and paediatric nurse told the UN’s independent commission of inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory there was “a direct targeting by Israel to affect the long-term health outcomes of babies”.

“There is no reason why we cannot bring medications into Gaza to help pregnant women and babies,” the nurse said. “It makes no sense except to think that this particular group is being targeted due to which there is a higher mortality rate among newborns.”

Noor is one of thousands of mothers in Gaza who have suffered the consequences of Israel’s targeting first-hand. In January 2024, she gave birth to her first child, Hoor, in a plastic tent outside Khan Younis.

Life became a daily struggle to keep herself and Hoor alive. They both suffered from malnutrition, living off lentils and pasta and going without meat, fruit, vegetables and milk for five months. Hoor would have crying fits at the sound of bombs going off, and basic necessities like nappies became enormously expensive.

Food and medical supplies remain scarce in the Strip, making life an exhausting ordeal.

“Alhamdulillah, my daughter and I are alive, but we are not well,” Noor says. “We are surrounded by tents, destruction, insecurity, and a lack of clean water and electricity. There are no basic necessities for life.”

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Dreams of ‘a warm home free of rodents’

Since the ceasefire came into effect in October, Israel has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians. The breach is consistent with a decades-long pattern of Israel systematically breaking ceasefires, truces and treaties to which it is party, including via invasion, bombing, and assassination.

“We are not in a real ceasefire,” Noor says. “Every day there are new attacks, injuries, and deaths.”

Since the ceasefire came into effect, however, Israel has slowly allowed small numbers of Palestinians to leave the Strip for medical and humanitarian reasons. Most crossings into the Strip remain closed, with only the Rafah crossing at the Egyptian border allowing the limited movement of people.

After more than two years of being trapped inside the Strip, Noor believes any future for her children lies beyond the Rafah checkpoint.

“We have goals and dreams that we have been waiting for years to achieve,” she says. “We have so many wishes we want to fulfil, but Gaza after the war is no longer suitable for living at all.”

A qualified clinical nutritionist, Noor is crowdfunding money and applying for academic scholarships that would allow her and her family to travel to a host country. There, she hopes, she can give her children a life they deserve.

“We will live safely in a small, warm home free of rodents and insects,” she says. “We will continue our studies and work hard to build the life we dream of for our children.

“When we leave Gaza, we will finally feel like human beings and not numbers.”

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink – an hour-long talk with Palestinian scholar and author Tareq Baconi on the trauma of ethnic cleansing, growing up queer in Amman and why the Palestinian struggle is feminist.

It’s a saga that’s been dragging on for three years, and one that pits corporate might – backed by political power – against grassroots activists striving for a better future.

In June 2023, Kristen Morrissey – a music teacher – released stench gas in the lobby of Woodside Energy’s Perth headquarters during a protest about the company’s ongoing fossil fuel extraction. The protest focused on the development on the Burrup Peninsula in northern Western Australia that is said to place ancient Indigenous heritage at risk.

The non-toxic gas, ethyl mercaptan, is commonly used in the mining industry to alert workers to hazards. Morrissey released it from a canister in her handbag, prompting the evacuation of 2,500 Woodside employees from the building and a response from the bomb squad.

Woodside presented the event as a direct assault and, in a state where fossil fuel giants are deeply enmeshed with local politics, authorities took them at their word. Not long after, the state’s counter-terror police were unleashed, carrying out raids against the music teacher and fellow activists Emil Davey and Joana Partyka as part of their investigations.

During early court hearings, police prosecutors presented the protest as a “form of terrorism”. Two years later, the activists were convicted for creating false belief, with Morrissey copping an extra charge of causing poison to be administered.

In July 2025, Morissey was sentenced to 11 months prison, suspended for 18 months and Partyka was sentenced to seven months prison, suspended for 12 months. Davey was handed a community-based order.

Woodside seeks damages, information

That was not the end of it for Woodside, with the company filing a civil case against the three activists in December 2023, seeking to pursue the activists for cleaning costs and lost productive hours.

As there were pending criminal proceedings, the activists refused to comply with the request at the time and there were no new developments until the company recently sought to continue its discovery application.

Woodside is seeking to force the activists to hand over any documents that “identify or contain a description of other persons involved in the planning, preparation and/or execution of the incident” and to compel them to appear as witnesses in any future matter.

Should they refuse, the activists risk being charged with contempt of court – an offence that carries with it the potential for jail time.

Partyka, a Greens staffer, alleged the company’s continued pursuit of the matter was a strategic lawsuit against public participation – or SLAPP suit – designed to “make an example of us”.

“This is not a genuine bid to recover damages,” she said. “They’re a multi-billion dollar corporation. I don’t think they’d be pursuing this if it had not been a successful protest action.”

Partyka said the continued application showed the “influence of corporations on our democracy has been super charged” in recent times.

“Their influence and their power, it’s become this flywheel where it’s self-perpetuating. The more power they get, the more power they get. This is just symptomatic of that,” she said.

Woodside was contacted but a spokesperson said the company does not “comment on matters that are before the court”.

Silencing community with SLAPP suits

Regina Featherstone, a senior lawyer from the Human Rights Law Centre, said she had no knowledge of the matter and could not speak to specifics, but added that generally Australia was unusual in that it has no protection against SLAPP suits.

“A SLAPP is a lawsuit or legal tactic that is brought to silence some sort of engagement, political engagement, free speech or some sort of public participation, whether they are journalists, climate defenders, victim-survivors, or whistleblowers,” Featherstone said.

“Really, it’s somebody, a powerful actor or person, weaponising the law not for a legitimate purpose, but rather to silence.

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“It’s intended to cause financial and emotional distress by tying someone up in legal proceedings and draining all of their resources.”

Unlike in Canada and the US where a court can quickly end a lawsuit if it qualifies as a SLAPP-suit, Featherstone said there are no similar protections in Australia with the exception of outdated laws in the ACT.

Without reform, she said these tactics will continue to be relied upon by large companies with significant resources.

“What’s at stake are the values and pillars of the democracy that is the foundation to Australia,” she said. “If we can’t have individuals and organisations taking positive steps for, and speaking up for the environment, or other public interest issues, our democracy is in jeopardy.”

The WA Supreme Court will hear the matter on Thursday, July 16.

Correction: The teaser was amended on 15 July 2026 to clarify that Woodside had branded the activists “extremists” as opposed to building a “terrorism” case, which was an argument put forth by police prosecutors.

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink – an hour-long talk with Palestinian scholar and author Tareq Baconi on the trauma of ethnic cleansing, growing up queer in Amman and why the Palestinian struggle is feminist.

The antisemitism envoy, Jillian Segal, could be at risk of misleading the Royal Commission after sensationally claiming the Palestinian death toll in the Gaza war was “grossly inflated”.

Testifying at the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion yesterday, the unelected political appointee also claimed the UN had revised its Gaza death count and found it to be “grossly inaccurate”.

We’ve fact-checked Segal’s claims and discovered several inaccuracies in her testimony.

What Segal said

Senior Counsel Assisting Richard Lancaster SC asked Segal to clarify part of her statement to the Commission concerning SBS’s use of casualty data from the Gaza health ministry, and if she had “any particular criticism of the statistics themselves that have been produced by that health ministry?”

Segal responded:

“I’m not an expert on that but I believe that it is well-known and even accepted by the United Nations that those statistics have been grossly inflated. And that then, when they have done a recount of the numbers, they have found them to be grossly inaccurate and to not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants and that that has been revised even under the United Nations’ enumeration of it.”

She later appeared to doubt the veracity of casualty figures citing the Gaza health ministry due to the Gaza Strip being controlled by Hamas.

“My criticism is I think they needed to draw to the viewers’ attention that the Gaza health ministry, controlled by Hamas, the organisation attacking Israel and a participant in the war and is listed as a terrorist organisation here in Australia, was the determinant of the numbers. That’s all. It’s just a question of accuracy and of impression that one gives of accuracy to the community.

Claim 1: the Gaza death toll is “grossly inflated”

Verdict: False

The latest Palestinian casualty toll in Gaza, according to the UN, is 73,110 deaths with 173,599 injured since October 7, 2023.

The most recent age and gender breakdown of Palestinians killed as of May 7, 2026, and published by the UN, is 21,638 children, 11,127 women and 5,174 elderly. Combined, these demographics represent 52% of the total death count.

Segal’s claims appear to relate to reports in May 2024 that the UN had halved its estimate of women and children killed in Gaza, and were in line with Israeli official claims that the death tolls were “exaggerated”.

But Israel changed tune in January this year, accepting that at least 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed, and that more were likely buried under the rubble.

Claim 2: the UN accepted numbers are ‘grossly inflated’

Verdict: False

Contrary to Segal’s assertions, the UN did not accept that casualty figures were “grossly inflated” or “inaccurate”. The UN explained the discrepancy in May 2024, which resulted from the Gaza health ministry updating its list of fatalities with the details of those they had been able to identify. It made clear that the overall number of deaths were unchanged.

“What’s changed is the Ministry of Health in Gaza has updated the breakdown of fatalities, for whom full details have been documented,” Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, said at the time.

Meaning, out of the total number of those killed in Gaza, the health ministry had yet to identify roughly 10,000 bodies as of May 2024. The UN’s breakdown of deaths per age and gender were updated to reflect the casualties the Gaza health ministry had identified.

“And the Ministry of Health says that the documentation process of fully identifying details of the casualties is ongoing,” Haq said in May 2024. “And so then the details of those which of those are children, which of those are women that will be reestablished once the full identification process is complete.”

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Claim 3: accuracy of figures in doubt

Verdict: False

Segal cast doubt over the reliability of the Palestinian death toll due to Hamas’s role in governing the Gaza Strip. Haq, however, said the UN had “experience of coordinating with the Ministry of Health on casualty figures every few years for large mass casualty incidents in Gaza and in past times, their figures have proven to be generally accurate”.

Numerous UN officials have similarly attested to the reliability of the figures since October 2023, including verification by the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights.

Credible doubts have been expressed, however, concerning the under-reporting of the death toll.

Prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, estimates an under-reporting of the mortality figure by 41%, which the UN partly attributes “to the collapse of health and reporting systems”. A World Health Organisation (WHO) report from May this year noted that “all 36 hospitals and 176 health facilities have sustained damage”, with little over half partially functional.

The collapse of Gaza’s health system has not only hindered reporting, but is potentially contributing to an undocumented tally of indirect deaths, which Australian experts estimated could lead to a final death toll in excess of 680,000.

Claim 4: UN figures don’t distinguish between combatants and non-combatants

Verdict: True

The UN figures, drawing on the Gaza health ministry, do not list the number of Palestinian combatants killed. It is thus unclear how many of the 34,896 slain men are combatants.

Israel claims to have killed about 22,000 Palestinian fighters, but classified Israeli military intelligence figures from May 2025 say that only 8,900 combatants had been killed – meaning 83% of the dead, per Israeli estimates, were civilians.

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Dehumanising and misleading

Segal could be at risk of breaching the Royal Commission Act if found to have intentionally provided misleading evidence, a legal expert says.

“She should correct the record when supplying her supporting evidence to the Commission, as she undertook to do,” Rita Jabri Markwell, a solicitor at Birchgrove Legal, told Deepcut.

“Ms Segal will become aware of the error, and if she doesn’t correct it at that stage, it becomes more arguable that she has intentionally given misleading evidence, which is an offence under the Royal Commission Act,” she added.

Markwell warned the federal government could also face a racial discrimination complaint given “this discussion is going on about Palestinians without any opportunity for Palestinian organisations to reply”.

The Australia Palestine Network Advocacy (APAN) said Segal’s claims “adds injustice to the one already inflicted on our people”.

“When those realities are diminished or questioned, it sends a deeply damaging message that Palestinian lives are somehow less worthy of recognition, empathy or protection,” Hiba Farra, APAN vice president, said.

“That is precisely the kind of dehumanisation that has enabled this catastrophe to continue.”

Listen to the latest episode of Deepthink – an hour-long talk with Palestinian scholar and author Tareq Baconi on the trauma of ethnic cleansing, growing up queer in Amman and why the Palestinian struggle is feminist.

It was a wet, miserable Sunday night. An announcement had gone out to meet at a nondescript factory on June 14 in the Wollongong suburb of Unanderra. Roughly 300 turned out – a mix of local residents and activists from Sydney. It’s their 10^th picket in two years targeting a factory belonging to Bisalloy Steel – one of several manufacturing companies in Australia that form part of a global arms supply chain sustaining Israel’s wars and atrocities.

“It has been two and a half years since the genocide in Gaza began, and the company’s owners and investors are well aware of where their products are going,” says Safaa Rayan, a spokesperson for the Wollongong Friends of Palestine (WFOP) – a group of local residents formed out of a shared outrage over Israel’s actions in Gaza.

An immediate glance at its website shows a benign operation – Bisalloy Steel manufactures, as its name suggests, steel products for a variety of industries. But so much of Australia’s material support for Israel is just that – obscure, hidden, scattered.

A scroll down its page reveals one of the sectors Bisalloy supports ­– defence.

Australian steel for Israel’s wars

The company prides itself on being “Australia’s only manufacturer of high-tensile and abrasion-resistant quenched and tempered steel plate” – essential for military use as it helps “protect against the ballistic projectiles seen in hostile, extreme environments”, as Bisalloy’s website states. One of its products is military-grade armour steel – suitable for armoured personnel carriers, light armoured vehicles and infantry fighting vehicles, among other military applications.

A key client that was impressed by Bisalloy’s armour steel was Rafael Advanced Defence Systems – a major Israeli state-owned defence company.

“The performance of Bisalloy and its BISALLOY® Armour steel range during our testing and evaluation program was highly impressive,” Ido Spitzer, then Rafael Australia’s General Manager, said in 2018 upon signing a contract at the time worth $900,000.

Prior to October 2023, Bisalloy was open about its connections to the Israeli military, Greens Senator David Shoebridge says.

“Before the genocide started, companies like Bisalloy were putting out glossy brochures about their trade with the Israeli military industry. This included sending armoured steel to companies like Plasan, which also supply parts to the settler militias,” Shoebridge, who attended the Wollongong picket, says.

“Following the genocide there has been a desperate attempt by both the Albanese government and these weapons suppliers to muddy the waters. That was designed to hide the truth so that the two-way arms trade can continue behind closed doors,” he says.

Defending the relationship amid scrutiny

Bisalloy’s share price has skyrocketed 122% since the Gaza war began in October 2023 (from $2.06 on Oct 2, 2023 to $4.57 on June 28, 2026), despite the company saying in 2024 that exports to Israel made up only 0.6-1.9% of its revenue. WFOP claims that the revenue figure does not include “products with end-use applications in Israel, exported through intermediary companies or countries”.

Bisalloy’s chairman, David Balkin, defended the company’s relationship with Israel, criticising the protesters for disrupting operations. Protests have forced the company to move its past two annual general meetings online.

“… our business continues to be targeted by protesters who want to stop Australian trade with Israel and who seek to end our 20-plus-year business relationship with several leading Israeli companies,” he said in November 2025.

But the company is coming under closer scrutiny, and not just from protesters. On June 25, the Federal Court required that the Australian government disclose “any decision, and any reasons for any decision, to grant a permission” to Bisalloy to export “items listed on the Defence and Strategic Goods List 2024 (Cth)”. The due date for the “list of documents” is July 17.

Pro-Israel lobby links

WFOP’s Rayan says Bisalloy’s refusal to end its contracts with Israeli companies “seems more ideological than financially driven”.

Balkin is a prominent figure in Australian pro-Israel circles, having served as president of the Jewish Communal Appeal (JCA) in the late 2000s.

In 2011, he and current-antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal stepped down from JCA’s executive committee, but both remain as honorary life governors. Prior to being appointed as antisemitism envoy, Segal served as president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) – Australia’s top pro-Israel lobby group – from 2019 to 2023.

According to Michael West Media (MWM), Balkin is the largest shareholder in Bisalloy, followed by Peter Smaller – executive chairperson of Southern Steel Group and former president of Jewish National Fund Australia (JNF).

MWM reports both JCA and JNF as “fundamentally pro-Israel organisations”, and notes that former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and pro-Israel Liberal Senator Dave Sharma hold shares in Bisalloy.

Labor letting it ride for fear of the US

Shoebridge has been sharply critical of the Albanese government’s refusal to end the arms trade with Israel, despite a recent poll showing eight-in-ten Australians hold a negative view of the rogue state.

According to the Greens senator, Labor is resisting public pressure for fear of the US.

“The main thing stopping the Albanese government from taking a stance against the genocide in Gaza is their fear of the US. For the US, Israel is an essential projection of US military, economic and diplomatic force in [West Asia] and every US ally knows this,” he says.

Instead of creating distance from an erratic and increasingly authoritarian US under Donald Trump, Labor has tethered Australia to the US military industrial complex through AUKUS, which Shoebridge sees as contrary to the national interest.

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“The Labor Party has gone all in on AUKUS, gone all in on integration of the US and Australian industrial base, and pushed to make our entire military interoperable with the US. This makes us incredibly vulnerable to US push back.”

That push back would likely come if Australia acted against Israel, such as by prohibiting companies like Bisalloy from supplying Israeli firms – and, ultimately, the Israeli military.

Shoebridge believes this stems from a lack of courage within the Albanese government to stand up to both the US and Israel.

“Labor knows what to do, there is no knowledge gap here, what we have is a principles gap. There is a choice here between pushing back on a genocide or cosying up to the US, and the last four years tells us that Labor will pick the US every single time.”

Government inaction, however, seems only to be stirring determined Wollongong residents to continue the struggle.

“We are building ground for the fight against AUKUS,” says Jet Hunt, a local resident and WFOP member.

“We don’t want our town to materially support genocide, violence and war – not in Palestine, not in Lebanon, not anywhere.”

Got a tip? Send an email to tips@deepcutnews.com or send an anonymous Signal to @deepcut.25.

And the conversation met expectations.

We weaved through our personal journeys, explored the contest between queer and cultural identities and discussed why he believes the Palestinian struggle is feminist.

Tareq shares how the trauma of ethnic cleansing manifested differently within his household. We question whether Israel is succeeding in its decades-long quest to colonise the Levant.

We close the discussion by revisiting faith, and appreciating the role it has played in sustaining the Palestinian and Lebanese people as they endure unimaginable suffering.

His memoir, Fire in Every Direction, is available online and in bookstores.

Where to watch/listen

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Arsen Ostrovsky heads the Sydney office of one of the nation’s most prominent pro-Israel lobby groups – the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).

Last week, he was among several pro-Israel supporters to provide testimony to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. The Commission has come under fire for its indulgence of pro-Israel perspectives, while refusing Palestinian voices despite anti-Palestinian sentiments expressed by several witnesses.

Ostrovsky is a prolific social media user and has been a vocal supporter of Israel, with 396,000 followers on Elon Musk’s X.com. He was injured in the Bondi shooting last December, sharing shortly after that a “bullet grazed my head” with an image of his bloodied face. Following the attack, the image was altered using AI to promulgate a conspiracy theory – since debunked by AAP FactCheck – that Ostrovsky had faked his wounds.

In February this year, Ostrovsky addressed a US conference of the frequently-criticised pro-Israel lobby group, AIPAC, where he “spoke about defending the Jewish state in global forums – from the United Nations and The Hague to the media and digital battlefield”.

He told the Commission about the online abuse he endured after the Bondi attack:

“... the effect does take considerable emotional toll. To be told that you do not have the same rights, to be told that you are not a victim, to be told that you deserve this in some way, it not only dehumanises you, it not only tries to erase what happened to you, but what it does do is effectively incites (SIC) any further violence, and I feel like there are things that would be said in public and would not be acceptable, yet somehow are allowed to persist online.”

However, Ostrovsky himself has a past record of controversial online statements, including content that was flagged for potentially dehumanising Palestinians. Here are a few:

‘No civilians’ in Gaza

On January 30, 2025, Ostrovsky tweeted a video of an Israeli-Palestinian prisoner swap, saying that he had difficulty empathising with “any ‘civilians’ of Gaza” and that they were “indistinguishable from the savages of Hamas”. The tweet received 1.2m views.

On February 22, in a now-deleted tweet, Ostrovsky said there were “no civilians” in Gaza. The tweet received 166,000 views.

On October 13, 2023, Ostrovsky tweeted an image of a cockroach with the head of former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, under a boot emblazoned with “IDF”. The post’s visibility was subsequently limited by X.com, with a warning that it “may violate X’s rules against Violent Speech”. The warning highlighted its dehumanising content.

“Throughout history dehumanisation has played a key role in the perpetration of atrocities.

“The specific use of imagery to depict a people as ‘bugs’ or ‘insects’ is textbook Nazi propaganda – as popularised by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf against the Jewish population,” the warning read.

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In the International Court of Justice’s finding in January 2024 that Israel was plausibly committing genocide in Gaza, it cited a UN committee report noting “the sharp increase in racist hate speech and dehumanisation directed at Palestinians since 7 October”.

Beheaded babies

Ostrovsky also repeatedly pushed the later debunked narrative that babies were beheaded on October 7 at Kfar Aza. An April 2025 investigation by Le Monde found that while the “unfounded allegation” may have emerged organically, “Israel had done nothing to fight it and has more often tried to instrumentalise it than deny it, fuelling accusations of media manipulation”.

The source of the rumour is widely attributed to members of ZAKA, a voluntary ultra-Orthodox organisation in Israel which assists in the recovery of bodies in line with Jewish practices post-disasters.

On October 11, before the story had been debunked, Ostrovsky retweeted a news report from i24 that received 1.1m views.

Later that day, he tweeted:

On October 15, 2023, he condemned a pro-Palestine rally in Melbourne for aligning with those “who behead babies”, despite the allegation at the time being unsubstantiated and later found to be unfounded.

On October 30, 2023, he cited the beheading claim once more to oppose calls for a ceasefire. At the time, according to the UN, Israeli forces had already killed 8,309 Palestinians in Gaza, 70 per cent of whom women and children:

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Ostrovsky’s testimony received substantial mainstream media coverage in Australia, with an ABC report leading with his remarks to the Commission without providing context of his past statements or his pro-Israel advocacy. Other prominent pro-Israel figures such as Steven Lowy (son of billionaire Frank Lowy), Dr Lee Koffman and MP Josh Burns appeared last week, alongside several experts on online hatred.

The Royal Commission continues.

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