NSW police said emergency services were called to the intersection of Joseph. Gilbert Street, Cabramatta, around 3:15pm, where they found two children, both aged under five, had been struck by a car.
NSW Ambulance paramedics treated the children at the scene. before they were taken to hospital in a critical condition, where they have since died.
NSW police said they are yet to be formally identified.
A 33-year-old woman known to the children was treated for minor injuries at the scene, while the driver – a 56-year-old man – was uninjured, arrested. taken to hospital for mandatory testing.
An investigation has commenced, and a media conference will be held soon.
And with that, we are going to put the blog to bed. Before we go, let’s recap the big headlines.
The One Nation leader. Pauline Hanson, addressed the National Press Club for the first time since entering politics 30 years ago. She attacked multiculturalism, calling for a “monocultural society” where English is the only language spoken at home, proposed scrapping SBS. implementing a subscription model for the ABC, and attacked transgender rights. She also said too many pregnancies were terminated in Australia.
Hanson also attacked a Guardian Australia reporter for asking about her daughter, Lee Hanson, who is employed as a senior adviser to New South Wales One Nation senator Sean Bell, despite living. working in Tasmania.
Kyle Sandilands settled his legal dispute with ARN Media with a $12m cash payment over three years,. Jackie O Henderson’s $82m claim against the broadcaster will continue. The shock jock agreed to drop his $85m lawsuit against Kiis FM in return for a cash payment. $1.5m in advertising contract on ARN’s stations for a new broadcasting venture.
The Australian government has lowered its travel advice for a slate of Middle Eastern countries, including Bahrain, Israel, Kuwait, Qatar. the United Arab Emirates from Level 4: do not travel, to Level 3: reconsider your need to travel. Some parts of Israel remain at a do not travel warning.
Two children died after being struck by vehicle in Sydney’s south-west. NSW police said emergency services were called to the intersection of Joseph. Gilbert Street, Cabramatta, at about 3.15pm, where they found two children, both aged under five, had been struck by a car.
Thank you for spending part of your day with us. We will be back tomorrow to do it all again.
The National Press Club says it has referred the banner incident at Pauline Hanson ’s speech today to the Australian federal police. adding it believes no club personnel were involved.
If you missed the One Nation leader’s first appearance at the nationally televised address today. a banner appeared behind her on the stage in an apparent stunt that read: “I opposed a pay rise for workers”.
Guardian Australia has confirmed ACT policing has received the complaint about the “alleged unauthorised access. interference with equipment at a building at Barton” and have been onsite for forensics testing.
The press club said it had referred “relevant footage. other evidence to the AFP for further investigation” and referred to claims by progressive activist group GetUp that it was responsible. The statement said David Sharaz, who works for GetUp. is Brittany Higgins ’ husband, was in attendance and seen filming the incident.
The press club’s statement continued:
double quotation mark It appears that two persons entered the club building yesterday afternoon without permission. installed a separate drop-down screen in front of our media wall/ light box. It is evident. a further person present during the address activated a remote device to trigger the unfurling of the coiled banner.
David Sharaz was seen filming the incident on his phone and, after the banner had lowered, left abruptly.
We understand that this is likely to form part of the AFP investigation.
When the investigation has concluded. the club will consider its legal options against the perpetrators, including recovering costs for the significant damage to the media wall/ light box.
The statement apologised to Hanson.
Sharaz has been contacted for a response.
Protest camp at Sydney public housing estate scheduled for demolition told to leave by noon tomorrow
Homes New South Wales has issued a notice to a protest encampment at the Waterloo public housing estate. telling those camped there that they must leave by midday tomorrow.
The supporters set up camp there 24 days ago in opposition to the staged demolition of the public housing estate. which was scheduled to begin on 25 May.
double quotation mark Homes NSW has permitted you to be on land under its ownership for the last 24 days.
During this time, we have seen evidence of forced entry into the worksite, vandalism and damage to property and equipment.
This letter is formal notice. you are required to leave stage 1 area by 12pm midday on Thursday 18 June 2026. You will need to remove all structures, items and rubbish currently onsite.”
Homes NSW said in the letter. “any ongoing attendance” passed that time “without our express permission” will be treated as trespassing.
The NSW government is demolishing Waterloo south. which housed vulnerable Sydneysiders in 750 public housing properties, to make way for 3300 properties. It’s expected the $4b redevelopment will take between ten and 15 years.
Half of the new properties will be private, 20% will be “affordable” housing,. the remaining 30% will be a mix of public and community housing.
The tenants displaced by the redevelopment are being relocated to other social housing estates in nearby suburbs. have been promised they can return when the new homes are complete.
The advocates defending the homes have argued. the government’s plan to redevelop Waterloo is a reneging on a “pre-election 2023 promise to save Waterloo”.
Ron Hoenig, the state MP for Heffron, sent letter. texts to tenants in the lead-up to the 2023 election urging tenants to send the Liberal party a message – “Hands off Waterloo” – by voting Labor.
Melbourne now has the highest-earning suburb
The ATO has released its 2023–24 statistics and there are some interesting headline figures in the mix.
Net capital gains reported by individuals rose from $37.8bn in 2022–23 to $40.6bn in 2023–2024. with the biggest source of capital gains for individuals coming from real estate.
The postcode with the highest average taxable income ($321,988) was 3944 in southern Melbourne. This is the first time Victoria has had the highest-earning postcode.
For the last 15 years. surgeons have remained the highest-paid occupation with the 4,280 individuals reporting an average taxable income of $519,998 in 2023–24.
Net tax from companies for the 2023–24 income year increased by 3.3% to $145bn (compared to $140bn in 2022–23).
NSW police said emergency services were called to the intersection of Joseph. Gilbert Street, Cabramatta, around 3:15pm, where they found two children, both aged under five, had been struck by a car.
NSW Ambulance paramedics treated the children at the scene. before they were taken to hospital in a critical condition, where they have since died.
NSW police said they are yet to be formally identified.
A 33-year-old woman known to the children was treated for minor injuries at the scene, while the driver – a 56-year-old man – was uninjured, arrested. taken to hospital for mandatory testing.
An investigation has commenced, and a media conference will be held soon.
Housing peak body responds to Pauline Hanson’s address
Spokesperson for Everybody’s Home, Maiy Azize, said:
double quotation mark Senator Hanson claims to be for the battlers of Australia but we have failed to see her campaign for more social housing that’s actually affordable for the people who are doing it the toughest,. that we are severely lacking in this country.
It’s disappointing that we did not hear a word about the need to massively expand public. community housing but instead heard her support tax breaks that line the pockets of investors and push housing out of reach for everyday Australians.
The solutions that will make the biggest difference to housing affordability. fairness in Australia include building social housing at scale, strengthening renters’ rights, and seeing the parliament – including Senator Hanson – pass investor tax break reform.”
Prayers for Coogee shark attack victim
A massive wave of support continues to build for Coogee shark attack survivor Leah Stewart. with a dedicated fundraising campaign almost tipping the $400,000 mark late on Wednesday.
On Tuesday evening a prayer vigil was held at the Castle Hill Adventist Church for Stewart, who serves as a teacher. deputy principal at Hurstville Adventist School in Sydney’s south. Church members, colleagues. friends gathered in small groups to offer collective prayers for the victim, her partner, and her 18-month-old daughter.
In a statement, Hurstville Adventist School described the profound impact the event has had on its staff and students.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with Leah and her family. We are providing support to our students, staff and the wider school community,” the statement said.
The 35-year-old mother remains in a critical condition in the intensive care unit at St Vincent’s Hospital after an attack by what is believed to be a 3.5-metre great white shark on Saturday.
Her brother, Joshua Stewart, established the official GoFundMe campaign to assist with extensive long-term medical care, rehabilitation,. prosthetics after her arm was amputated.
Coogee Surf Life Saving Club. Randwick city council will host a community swim at Coogee Beach this Sunday at 9am.
The council said the event will provide a secure environment with heightened safety protocols including a drone, jetskis,. inflatable rescue boats. After the swim. the Coogee SLSC will host a beachside barbecue, with all proceeds donated directly to support the Stewart family.
Greens senator condemns Hanson’s press club address
Senator for South Australia Sarah Hanson-Young has called a press conference in response to Pauline Hanson’s speech, calling it “deplorable”.
double quotation mark Is there anyone in this country that Pauline doesn’t hate? Is there anyone she’s not willing to beat up on and punch down to? Pauline Hanson has shown today she’s the same old crank she’s always been. She’s the same old racism, same old division, same old fear, same old nastiness. A leopard never changes its spots.
Hanson-Young accused Hanson of having no answer, only divisive politics. She said:
double quotation mark She’s got no ideas every time she highlighted a problem, she had no answer,. that’s because she’s only got people to blame. She wants to blame immigrants. she wants to blame Indigenous people, she wants to blame people living on the NDIS, she wants to blame young people, she wants to blame workers. She’s got no ideas of how to fix the system. And was it offensive? Well, it is what you expect from such a deplorable person like Pauline Hanson.
Life-saving club to host swim event after shark attack
Coogee Surf Life Saving Club. Randwick city council will host a community swim at Coogee Beach at 9am on Sunday, 21 June.
The club said the swim provides a supportive. community environment with additional safety measures provided by a drone, jetskis, inflatable rescue boats and board paddlers, along with lifeguards and life savers.
Everyone in the area and neighbouring surf clubs are welcome to join the event.
The meeting point for the swim is near the Coogee boat shed on the north side of the rainbow steps.
Coogee SLSC President, Ben Heenan, said:
double quotation mark Our community takes a lot of strength from the ocean,. people will come back to the ocean in their own time. However, they will come back to the ocean with friends, with family and with members of the community.
We are offering the swim on Sunday to all members of the community as a potential step towards coming back into the ocean. finding strength from the ocean. People can come down just to chat. not enter the ocean, they can dip, they can swim a lap of the bay – whatever the next best step for them is.”
A woman with IS links has been refused bail after a magistrate found she posed an unacceptable risk of endangering the community. AAP has reported.
Zeinab Ahmad. 31, looked straight ahead as chief magistrate Lisa Hannan handed down her decision in Melbourne magistrates court on Wednesday.
Ahmad was charged with slavery offences in May after returning to Australia with other family members of former Islamic State fighters.
Ahmad moved to Syria with her first husband, Dawod, in January 2015. he became a member of Islamic State before he was killed in a drone strike in May 2016, the court was told.
The judge found Ahmad’s application should be refused because there were no exceptional circumstances. the risk she posed to the community was unacceptable.
Judge Hannan pointed to the lack of compelling evidence showing Ahmad had renounced IS or changed her beliefs.
‘For a long time it felt like no one was listening’: Former Don Dale detainees awarded exemplary damages
The high court of Australia has reduced the compensation payouts awarded to four former Don Dale youth detention centre inmates who were unlawfully teargassed in 2014. marking a turning point in a decade-long legal battle.
Today. the high court determined that while exemplary damages are necessary, the initial $200,000 per person payout was excessive, slashing the exemplary damages to $50,000 for each of the men.
One of the four men. Leroy O’Shea, made a statement after today’s decision, released via the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA):
double quotation mark Winning this case means a lot to me. It’s not just about the money – it’s about recognition that what happened to us was wrong. For a long time it felt like no one was listening to what we went through. The decision shows that young people in detention still have rights and deserve to be treated with dignity and care. I hope it helps make sure things like this don’t happen to other young people in the future.”
The group first sued the government in 2015, with a trial judge ruling that the deployment of the CS gas was lawful,. the court of appeal dismissed an appeal against the dismissal of their claims. In a 2020 decision. the high court ruled that the four former detainees were entitled to damages, ordering the Northern Territory (NT) to pay almost $1m ($200,000 each). However, the NT government contested the scale of compensation. during the appeals process, disturbing footage of teenagers being handcuffed and hosed down after being teargassed at the notorious Don Dale Detention Centre was seen as evidence.
NAAJA civil managing lawyer Andrew Roberts said successive governments have fought against accountability for 12 years:
double quotation mark At the end of the day, these were vulnerable children in the care of the state …
Even to this day. the government has not apologised for their wrongdoing or held any of the individual officers to account. This is an incredibly important outcome for our clients, who have carried the weight of this with them for many years. who can now begin to heal and move forward.”
Legal bid on welfare debt calculation fails in high court
The high court has rejected an appeal from a man challenging the lawfulness of a method used to calculate welfare debts for almost two decades.
Matthew Chaplin. a then casual worker receiving youth allowance in 2014-15, challenged a method known as income apportionment, which was used to calculate welfare debts from at least 2003 until 2021. The method spread a welfare recipient’s income across fortnights in which they had not worked. The commonwealth Ombudsman deemed the method to be unlawful,. the federal government retrospectively validated the affected debts and set up a compensation scheme. It also proposed a different method to recalculate the debts. Chaplin’s high court case argued that the recalculation method was not legally sound.
The high court rejected his appeal on Wednesday. Chaplin’s lawyers. Victorian Legal Aid, said the ruling provided “clarity on a complex question of law that potentially impacts up to three million people”.
Lucy Adams, VLA’s director of civil justice, said:
double quotation mark Mr Chaplin’s case also highlights the need for effective guardrails when it comes to social security debt raising. Right now, Centrelink can raise. pursue debts as far back as it likes, when people often don’t have the evidence they need because it’s many years later. As recommended by the Robodebt royal commission, the Australian Government should implement a six-year limitation period. It’s crucial that Centrelink acts lawfully and that our social security system is fair and accountable. We thank our client Matthew for his courage to pursue this matter.
Hanson’s immigration statements examined
Just returning to. speech earlier this afternoon by Pauline Hanson to offer a bit more context on the immigration front.
In the speech. the One Nation leader suggested social cohesion wasn’t possible when nearly a quarter of Australians spoke a language other than English at home.
double quotation mark Again, the 2021 census showed that 1 in 4 people, 23% speak a language other than English at home, the most common being, Mandarin. Arabic. How can you generate social cohesion if people can’t speak the language? In that same census. 872,000 people self-reported, as speaking English ‘not well’ or ‘not at all.’ Under the failed policy of multiculturalism, all cultures are allowed equivalence to ours. Surely opposing that is not racist, it’s common sense.”
But let’s rewind. The 23% figure she stated, which is accurate, doesn’t mean those people can’t also speak English. Instead. the population of those self-reported as speaking English “not well” or “not at all” sits at about 872,000 people, or about 3.4% of people in Australia.
The census reports some other interesting facts. About 80% of those who can’t speak English well or at all were born overseas – that means 20% weren’t. Nearly two-thirds of the group had arrived in Australia more than 10 years ago.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics also noted one-third of people who spoke Khmer. a language of an ethnic group in Cambodia, could not speak English well or at all. The ABS said this was the highest proportion of any language group.
Alright, it’s a whirlwind of bloggers today for you. Cait Kelly is up on deck now for the rest of the arvo. Take care!
More than 28,000 Australians applied to buy SpaceX shares
Elon Musk’s SpaceX shares proved popular with Australian investors before its share market debut. according to the local lead retail broker, CommSec.
CommSec said in a statement that retail investors opened a record 37,000 international accounts ahead of the US company listing. “many” of which then applied for SpaceX shares.
CommSec then received over 28,000 applications to buy shares at the company’s initial public offering, which happened last Friday. CommSec said that was a record number, while the largest Australian IPO received just a quarter as many applications.
The tech business reportedly received applications globally from three times more investors than it could sell to. suggesting not all 28,000 Australia retail investor applicants bought in.
CommSec declined to comment when asked how many people were initially allocated or have bought SpaceX stock on CommSec. We do know one institutional investor that got shares though: Gina Rinehart.
SpaceX sold its shares for US$135 and they closed at US$201.80 on Tuesday. Investors have seen a near 50% return in just three trading days. The company is now valued at US$2.66tn, giving founder Musk an estimated net worth of US$1.3tn.
A lot of investors are happy to sell: 555m shares were issued on Friday but 322m sold on Tuesday.
Childcare centres are “out of control” says Hanson. after the government just announced a $3.6bn two-year agreement to continue funding a 15% wage rise for childcare educators.
There are a final few questions to Hanson (Hanson’s speech ran way over time).
The One Nation leader says there needs to be an investigation into how much money goes into childcare,. won’t say what she would do to overhaul the system.
double quotation mark I was a mother of four children. I didn’t have a university degree to look after my children. Why do we now expect these childcare centres to have students or people with some sort of degree to look after a child? It’s just got out of proportion. It’s just ridiculous.
We know. Hanson is in favour of women staying at home with their children – per her income splitting policy that would allow men to essentially share their income with their partner so they pay less tax.
Queensland attorney general pressed on future of state’s Aboriginal children’s commissioner role
Earlier, Queensland’s attorney general faced questions about the future of the state’s designated Aboriginal children’s commissioner.
Deb Frecklington announced reforms yesterday that would fold the state’s family. child commission into a new super-agency responsible for child safety. The body is led by two commissioners, one of them the Aboriginal. Torres Strait Islander Children’s Commissioner, who must have an Indigenous background under state law. The commission investigates. makes recommendations about the system, and also includes the child death review board which reports on the deaths of children known to the system. Frecklington revealed yesterday that both bodies would become part of the new commission which will be responsible to the attorney general,. insisted that the investigatory agencies could remain independent of the department. Queensland does not currently have an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Commissioner. The attorney general allowed the term of the previous incumbent, Natalie Lewis, to end earlier this month.
Frecklington told media on Wednesday that under the legislation establishing the new body a deputy commissioner role would be required to hold “demonstrated experience in Aboriginal. Torres Strait Islander affairs”. She was pressed on whether that person would be required to have Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islaner descent. “There must be a position that has demonstrated (experience in) Indigenous, Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander affairs. There are so many children, Queensland children across the system that are in need of protection, every single one of them,. we will ensure that every single one of them is represented by the commission,” she said.
About half of Queensland children in out of home care are Indigenous.
Hello again: we’re back to general news after that speech…
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