>Hollywood star Zac Efron has visited a Mornington Peninsula workshop that’s playing an important part in building his $3.76m future home in NSW.
>...
>In 2020, Efron bought a 128ha rainforest land parcel in Tweed Valley, an area located between the Gold Coast and Byron Bay.
>In short:
>People who steal guns or possess stolen firearms would face a mandatory minimum jail term of three months under proposed new laws in Tasmania.
>But the state government's draft legislation won't limit the number of firearms an individual can own, despite support for the measure from the police commissioner and gun safety advocates.
>What's next?
>The proposed legislation is open for public consultation until August 7.
>Good news for lovers of no-nonsense, guitar-driven hard rock.
>You know the type: big chords, screaming guitar solos, singalong choruses, the kind that made Australian icons like The Angels and AC/DC global stars.
>One of the country's most exciting young bands is carrying that tradition forward from a place few would expect in the remote desert community of Akaye, also known as Mulga Bore, a couple of hundred kilometres north-east of Alice Springs.
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>NAIDOC Week has become a modern celebration of First Nations history, culture and achievements. But its beginnings were forged in determined activism.
Have you heard the news? Australia finally has a new political party. I say finally because the teals have been a party on the sly all along.
By Gemma Tognini
7 min. read
View original
Oh, they denied it, but come on. If it walks like duck … They wear the same colour, for heaven’s sake. They are known as the teals, they’re co-branded, they share almost identical funding sources. And wait until you get to their voting patterns.
For those not paying attention, a recently published analysis that interrogated how the teals voted and who they voted with, dating back to May 2022, shows a true affinity for the shade green. They sided with the Greens, overwhelmingly and within cooee of each other, in terms of percentages.
Mackellar MP Sophie Scamps has voted with the Greens 74.8 per cent of the time. Wentworth’s Allegra Spender has voted with the Greens 66.8 per cent of the time. So far Bradfield MP Nicolette Boele, who was elected in May last year, has voted with the Greens 74.7 per cent of the time. Which leads me to my local member of parliament, Warringah MP Zali Steggall. Her record? A 72.2 per cent track record of siding with the Greens.
That’s the recent past; let’s talk about the here and now.
From left, teals MPs Allegra Spender, Kate Chaney, Monique Ryan, Sophie Scamps, Nicolette Boele Zali Steggall at this week’s Midwinter Ball at Parliament House.
From left, teals MPs Allegra Spender, Kate Chaney, Monique Ryan, Sophie Scamps, Nicolette Boele and Zali Steggall at this week’s Midwinter Ball at Parliament House
After what seems like an insufferably long period of denying they’re a party, and scoffing at anyone suggesting they might become one, two of the teal MPs have finally teamed up. Spender and Steggall have relaunched themselves to the world as Community Strong Australia.
It’s the party nobody asked for and nobody needs. It brings to the table all the energy and gravitas of two authoritarian school prefects, ready to conquer year 12 and beyond. They embody a head girl and her erstwhile deputy, ready to hand out detentions at will.
Flinders University Associate Lecturer Josh Sunman says the formation of Community Strong Australia “comes with risk” for Teal independents Zali Steggall and Allegra Spender. “It is really interesting, we have often seen the Teal independents described as having party-like structures, in that they are Independents, but at the same time they are affiliated,” Mr Sunman told Sky News Australia. “Part of their brand is that they're seen as staunchly independent advocates for their community, and by becoming a bit more party-like, I think it could potentially hurt their independent brand.”
Humour me, will you, as I take a moment to comment on the branding of this new entity. This is the territory of my day job and the visual identity of this party immediately caught my eye. I’d love to see the creative brief behind this one. If it was a hand held out to receive a large soft stool sample, then congrats to the designers – you nailed it.
Now to the name. “Community”: small, insular, local. “Strong”: low-key union vibes.
Local is totally fine if you’re the mayor of your local government area. Local is fine if you’re dealing with micro issues that have no bearing on, or connection to, matters of national importance. Community Strong Australia says cake stalls and local markets. It doesn’t say geopolitical strategy, energy security or sovereign risk.
This new party, like the teal party before it, is a rolled-gold example of when perception trumps reality.
Community Strong Australia Logo
The teal MPs are electorally irrelevant. What that means is this government, with its whopping majority in the lower house, doesn’t need their votes as a group or as individuals. No teal MP has the ability to influence anything, let alone in their own electorate. They talk a big game, they get airtime, but that’s it. Smoke, no fire.
This is a point I have made publicly many times over. Which leads me to something I previously had decided to let slide because of the inanity, pettiness and smallness of it.
However, as the saying du jour goes, I changed my position. Why? These are serious times. We are in times that require cohesion, servant leadership and maturity. We are getting none of that.
So, a couple of weeks ago, I reiterated the point about lack of electoral influence when commenting on a social media post about the government’s attempt to flog off prime defence land assets such as HMAS Penguin in Mosman on Sydney’s lower north shore. It is bang in the middle of the seat of Warringah. We have a government drunk on spending and wanting to pawn the family jewels, and a local member impotent in the face of it.
I commented on a community post about a pending protest meeting, simply to the effect that this situation is an excellent example of how voting teal is a wasted vote because they lack influence.
Soon after, I had a response from Steggall’s verified account. It was sarcastic, dismissive and came complete with a rolling-eye emoji: “So says a journalist at the Australian …” Like I said, all the late-teen energy and gravitas of a school prefect. I responded politely, reminding my local MP that as I’m a constituent, she works for me, and pointing out that what I said was not personal but an incontestable fact. If she had any influence over what happened in her electorate, HMAS Penguin wouldn’t be on the chopping block. Attacking me, rather than addressing my point? It’s the hallmark of the person with no point to make.
I don’t know if Steggall runs her own social media account or if that post was made by a staff member. I suspect it’s the latter; one would presume an MP has more to do.
Either way, it indicates two things: the first, an obscene level of entitlement. Even if it was a staff member responding, the fact they did so without any shame says it all. Piss off, minion. The message was clear and others noticed. And the second thing this interaction delivered was validation for my point, though unintended I’m sure. A vote for the teals or any other independent in the lower house is a wasted vote.
Perhaps you voted teal here or in other electorates, and I’m sure you have your reasons, but let me spell it out logically.
You voted teal to punish the Coalition, perhaps to feel as if your vote might count. What you did, though, is help elect a Labor government that is there only because of Greens preferences. You directly elected local MPs who are just a different shade of green and who are powerless to do anything at a local or a national level other than squawk from the sidelines and take shots at constituents and, while you’re at it, the national newspaper.
Shadow Health Minister Anne Ruston reacts to the formation of Community Strong Australia by two Teal independents. “Well, you’ve only got to have a look at the track record of the so-called Teals, I mean, they usually vote together,” Ms Ruston told Sky News host Jaimee Rogers. “Their main funding source is the same, so I think they have been acting as a semi-party for some time,” she said. “It is a party of two. I’m not sure that many Australians would think that two people joining together is really a party. “Just look at the track record of their voting, look where their funding comes from, and I think it tells the whole story.”
Oh, the irony of the socialist march across the nation being facilitated by the wealthiest Australians in the most enviable addresses in the country: Wentworth, Curtin, Warringah.
Here we have it, people, a Pyrrhic victory writ large. You have enabled Labor to make us a weaker, less secure, less prosperous country. The party is doing its best to drive Australia off a cliff and the teals are filling their tank up at the servo. Wait, sorry. The teals are manning the charging stations along the way because, of course, they’re driving electric vehicles. The Greens are laughing all the way to the communal bank.
This political shaking, this fracturing of the traditional order, it’s painful but needed. Why? Something had to wake us up. The party I vote for has much work to do, a herculean amount. The party in government has betrayed Australians, has a dangerous socialist agenda. Our Treasurer is economically illiterate. Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese delivered a so-called widow’s tax in this budget and their response to our outrage? Stop your fussing. We’ll fix it later. In a domestic or romantic relationship, this behaviour would be called financial coercive control.
We are in nation-shaking days. I see in my own circle of friends and clients people who previously were politically disengaged but now awakened from a lengthy slumber and driven by the rage of betrayal. It is quite something to behold.
As always, I’m the tragic optimist. Perhaps these are not just nation-shaking days. Perhaps they’ll prove in time to be nation forming, or re-forming. That’s my hope. That all of this will be worth it. A lot depends on us. I’m game if you are.
Community Strong Australia is electorally powerless and a wasted vote for constituents. They talk a big game, they get airtime, but that’s it.
Have you heard the news? Australia finally has a new political party. I say finally because the teals have been a party on the sly all along.
Anthony Albanese will seal a new security treaty with Fiji to keep China at bay and clear the way to export billions of dollars worth of uranium to India in a diplomatic blitz next week bolstering six critical international relationships.
By Ben Packham
3 min. read
View original
The Prime Minister will fly to Suva to sign a new “Vuvale Union” with Fijian counterpart Sitiveni Rabuka on Monday; head to Solomon Islands for talks with counterpart Matthew Wale on Tuesday; and return to Australia to meet his Papua New Guinean, Tongan and Samoan counterparts in Brisbane and host them at the State of Origin decider on Wednesday.
He will then travel to Melbourne the following day to meet with the leader of the world’s most populous nation, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, green-lighting high-level uranium and defence agreements.
The Fiji deal is being billed as a gold-standard agreement that could come close to the level of Australia’s PukPuk mutual defence treaty with Port Moresby, which will come into effect next week with an exchange of letters between Mr Albanese and PNG counterpart James Marape.
Mr Rabuka said in a speech earlier this year that the Vuvale Union would recognise the nations’ interests were intertwined, ensuring “we will co-operate to find solutions and act together as is necessary to face common challenges”.
The statement came close to the PukPuk treaty’s commitment that Australia and PNG will “act to meet the common danger” if either comes under attack, but it’s unclear whether the Fiji deal will bind the nations in a new alliance like that with Port Moresby.
In Solomon Islands, Mr Albanese will celebrate the country’s 48th anniversary of independence with Mr Wale, and continue talks on a new security treaty with Honiara which began last month in Canberra.
The progress on the new security deals follows the sealing of a long-awaited agreement with Vanuatu, in which Port Vila ruled out the use of its territory for foreign military bases.
Mr Modi will reprise his 2023 Sydney visit when he arrives in Melbourne, with a major event at Marvel Stadium that is expected to attract some 30,000 Indian Australians.
He and Mr Albanese will finalise a new agreement during the trip to supply Australian uranium to India, after a past agreement faltered due to concerns over non-proliferation safeguards.
Multiple sources have told The Australian that “technical issues” preventing Australian uranium exports to India have now been resolved, opening the way to a multi-billion dollar trade to feed India’s energy needs.
“It has to be only for civil nuclear energy purposes,” a source told The Australian.
Australia-India Institute chief executive Lisa Singh said: “India’s energy needs are on a scale that we cannot fathom. It has an economy that is developing at a rapid speed, and has a population of 1.4 billion people. So, if we can assist in that delivery of clean energy, then we should be definitely playing a role. It’s a win-win for both of our countries.”
James Batley, a former Australian high commissioner to both Fiji and Solomon Islands, said the Fiji treaty would continue Australia’s push to deny China a strategic foothold in the region.
“They said in their foreign policy white paper a couple of years ago that ‘we want to be friends with everybody, but when it comes to security, we lean towards our traditional partners’,” Mr Batley said. “So that’s already in black and white. The question is how far (the treaty) might go?”
He said believed Mr Rabuka “may be inclined” to enter into a mutual defence arrangement like the PukPuk treaty, “but whether it goes as far as the PNG one is a different question”.
Mr Batley said the upcoming Vuvale Union and the government’s recent Nakamal Agreement with Vanuatu highlighted its success in Pacific diplomacy.
“We might even speculate that there’s a FOMO factor at play, as country after country signs up to a deeper strategic relationship.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has launched a diplomatic blitz to seal security treaties with Pacific nations and to finalise a multibillion-dollar uranium deal with India.
Ben PackhamFOREIGN AFFAIRS AND DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT
Anthony Albanese will seal a new security treaty with Fiji to keep China at bay and clear the way to export billions of dollars worth of uranium to India in a diplomatic blitz next week bolstering six critical international relationships.
Boys outnumber girls in general maths classes this year – a subject in which females traditionally outnumber males.
By Jackson Graham, Alex Crowe
3 min. read
View original
In 2026, enrolments in all four year 12 maths subjects had rebounded to pre-COVID levels.
Greg Ashman, maths researcher and deputy principal at Ballarat Clarendon College, said the dip post-COVID among all students was probably because they found online learning challenging during the pandemic.
“Maths is very hierarchical, and the next bit builds on the last bit. If you haven’t had optimal teaching because you’ve been instructed online, then these subjects feel harder and fewer students go into them,” he said.
“What the figures seem to suggest is that happened, but now we’re recovering from it – that’s obviously a very positive thing.”
In Victoria, the number of girls doing maths methods fell from 7009 in 2021 to 6177 in 2023. Since then, the number of girls in methods this year has rebounded to 7218 students, 3 per cent higher than in 2021. While experts point to this as a positive sign, boys’ enrolments are now more than 10 per cent higher than they were over the same time.
Year 12 student Krisha Parikh is bucking the trend by tackling general and specialist maths this year at Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School, after finishing methods in 2025.
Parikh said she learnt to love maths from her data analyst dad.
“He tried to help me refine my skills and actually become more confident in math and I just developed a love from there,” she said.
Parikh said she has seen the real-world application of maths skills, including through an uncle who runs a successful business and another who works for a major consulting firm.
“I think that kind of influenced it as well,” she said. “I’m a bit of a math enthusiast.”
Ashman said the disproportionate intake of males studying maths overall could be because girls often outperform boys in subjects that require writing skills.
“If you’re a young man and you see the people around you are better than you at writing, but you can hold your own when it comes to maths, you might start to identify more as a maths person,” he said.
“If you layer in societal stereotypes about what subjects men and women are supposed to be good at, you can see why there would be a slightly disproportionate uptake.”
However, girls are outnumbering boys in VCE foundation maths, a new subject designed to equip students to tackle numeracy problems encountered in everyday life. The subject is made up of 54 per cent female students and has been growing since its addition to the curriculum as a unit four subject in 2023.
Enrolment numbers are also rising in the VCE VM subject numeracy, which is unscored and was introduced in 2023, with 4087 girls and 5539 boys this year.
“More Victorian students than ever are studying maths, with enrolment growth across every VCE mathematics subject – general mathematics remains the clear favourite, and foundation mathematics has gone from strength to strength since we introduced it in 2023,” a Victorian government spokesperson said.
“Gender differences in subject choice are not uniform – that’s true across the curriculum, not just maths – and our job is to make sure every student, whatever they choose, gets the support to succeed.”
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From potholes to power lines, anger is swirling in regional Victoria – and residents are turning to One Nation for answers.
By Benjamin Preiss, Alexander Darling
10 min. read
View original
The rollout of VNI West drew criticism for being short on answers when the Australian Energy Market Operator first revealed its preferred route for the transmission project.
Hide says anger and distrust ultimately filled this knowledge vacuum, to the point where people became afraid to talk openly about the project for fear of offending one another.
In November, state government agency VicGrid assumed responsibility for planning transmission and renewable energy zones.
VicGrid chief executive Alistair Parker at a 2023 energy summit. Dion Georgopoulos / The Australian Financial Review
VicGrid chief executive Alistair Parker says the government established the agency after recognising national arrangements for renewable infrastructure had not served communities well.
VicGrid has introduced new guidelines, which Parker says will ensure communities in renewable energy zones are treated respectfully.
Some nondisclosure agreements for landholders hosting renewable infrastructure will be scrapped. Previously, these contracts banned property owners from discussing their financial payouts with neighbours.
Parker says 40 per cent of the 220 property owners along the VNI easement have allowed VicGrid access to their land under voluntary agreement.
He expects compulsory easement acquisition will only be necessary for 2 per cent or 3 per cent of property owners once the process concludes, based on experience elsewhere.
A COVID testing clinic on Phillip Island in 2021. There are still frustrations in regional Victoria about the hangover from the pandemic.Wayne Taylor
“So it doesn’t take the land off people, it just creates an easement across the land,” Parker says.
He insists VicGrid now has better decommissioning processes in place when renewable infrastructure reaches its end of life. And he says VicGrid is also trying to better share information about renewable projects with communities.
“We’ll come and talk to anybody about any aspect of this whenever it suits them,” he says.
But Hide remains pessimistic about VicGrid’s attempts to make amends. “I think the damage has been done,” she says.
The most recent community reference group meeting was abandoned after dozens of anti-transmission line protesters gatecrashed with signs and chants. In one video of the confrontation, a man can be heard saying: “You could have done this five years ago, and you didn’t bother.”
A generally negative sentiment bubbling in regional Victoria has emerged clearly in opinion polls.
The Age’s Resolve Political Monitor, which surveyed 1652 Victorians in April, May and June, found 46 per cent of regional and rural Victorians expect their personal outlook to worsen, compared with 32 per cent of respondents in Melbourne.
Similarly, 51 per cent of rural and regional Victorians expect the state outlook to worsen, whereas 38 per cent of Melburnians responded the same way.
Resolve founder Jim Reed says cost of living is the most pressing concern uniting Melburnians and regional Victorians. But now rising anger in the regions is flowing through to increased support for One Nation: according to polling, Hanson’s party has a primary vote of 31 per cent in the regions, compared with 19 per cent in Melbourne.
Reed says voters are drawn to the One Nation leader’s unvarnished image and plain speaking style. Hanson’s decision to accept a plane from billionaire Gina Rinehart seemingly mattered little to her supporters.
“They are willing to forgive her quite a great deal in terms of her candidates’ behaviour and getting airplanes because she seems to stand for them,” Reed says.
Reed says critics once dismissed One Nation’s supporters as grumpy, old white men. But One Nation is increasingly drawing supporters from every demographic group. That includes, crucially, women aged between 30 and 50.
“Once you’ve won that group you tend to get a snowball effect,” the pollster says.
Natasha Miller is in that group. The fifth-generation Mildura resident already had something in common with Hanson, as the owner of a fast-food shop. But after years of watching transport and health issues in her community persist largely unabated, she’s now considering voting for One Nation.
And Miller knows she’s not alone.
“I have customers who have told me they will be voting One Nation,” she says, even though the party is yet to announce its candidates for November’s election.
“I think government needs a shake-up, and if One Nation can at least do that – get some different ideas and different people in there – then that’s what I’m hoping for.”
Miller’s experiences speak to the growing resentment for the extent to which decisions made in Melbourne affect regional Victorians’ lives.
COVID and the associated lockdowns were a turning point for her. Miller spent hours navigating government bureaucracy so she and her staff could keep working, while watching jealously as, just over the border, regional NSW lived in relative normality.
Natasha Miller is considering a vote for One Nation for the first time. Ian McKenzie
Four years on, Miller is serving one-third of the customer base she had before the lockdowns.
“Everybody is talking about how slow business is – tradies tell me they’re waiting for the phone to ring,” she says. “We have not recovered at all, not even close.”
In response to questions about sentiment in the regions, a government spokeswoman lists a raft of commitments. Her response ranges from 68,000 energy jobs across the state to $1.04 billion on roads, including 70 per cent for regional Victoria.
“Only Labor will deliver cheaper power for all Victorians and $18 billion in wages for regional Victorian workers through our renewable energy transition,” the spokesperson says.
>Penshurst resident Ama Cooke
Alex Fein, research and intelligence principal at polling firm Redbridge, says regional Victoria is somewhat more susceptible to anti-establishment and populist sentiment than Melbourne.
She believes social media also allows populist messages to be spread easily throughout the regions, where residents often face greater economic challenges and less access to services than their city counterparts.
The conservative Sky News now broadcasts for free in regional Victoria and its evening hosts often invite Hanson on air for interviews. Meanwhile, television audiences for the ABC, which is required to be politically neutral, are declining.
“Whatever is really difficult everywhere in Australia is doubly so in regional areas,” Fein says.
“They have to drive longer distances and their services are strained. The cracks are wider to begin with.”
A report by the OECD released in January supports the assertion that regional communities confront steep financial hurdles. It found Australians have experienced a marked decline in disposable incomes while inflation surged and mortgages soared.
A series of major shocks have battered the Australian economy: the COVID-19 pandemic, energy and food price spikes due to war in Ukraine, and sharp interest rate rises.
These economic blows hit the regions particularly hard. Furthermore, the OECD report said the concentration of house price gains in capital cities meant the economic disparity between urban and rural areas widened.
Ama Cooke sees these challenges firsthand. She runs a newsletter for her community in Penshurst, just south of the Grampians. Like Miller, she points to myriad reasons why residents of rural Victoria feel let down by the political class.
“I think people are sick of being lied to,” she says.
When pressed to identify the most urgent problems in her community, Cooke nominates the shortage of doctors and the poor state of rural roads.
The paucity of health services in the region means it can take up to three months to secure a doctor’s appointment.
“You can go to the emergency department, but why would you with a sore throat?”
Cooke’s priorities for change are entwined. The lack of health services force residents to drive long distances for medical attention. But deep and numerous potholes pose a daily danger to rural residents who have no option but to drive.
“Why can’t they do decent repairs instead of a quarter-inch layer of tar and pretending that’s OK?” she says.
Harlen Black is regularly called out to stranded drivers whose cars are damaged by potholes. Justin McManus
In Benalla, tow company owner Harlen Black is well acquainted with potholes. His team is regularly called out to motorbikes and cars damaged by the road surface on the Midland Highway and Hume Freeway.
Three weeks ago, his crews were called to a pothole about 70 centimetres long and several inches deep near a bridge on the Hume. It had damaged eight cars.
“Most of them had the wheel or the rim itself destroyed, so it’s a fairly big pothole to do that,” Black says.
He says the potholes are a huge financial and mental burden for the drivers whose vehicles were damaged, especially given many gave up car insurance due to the cost of living, which forced them to cover the entire cost of repairs.
“They’re very, very frustrated,” Black says. “You just want to have good roads, and we don’t at the moment.”
During the week, five cars lost tyres to a metre-wide pothole on the Hume north of Seymour, and Annabelle Cleeland, the Nationals MP representing the area, said her office had received almost 100 reports from people with road-damaged vehicles.
Just another week on regional roads.
For James Knight in Mortlake, the tensions around renewable energy, the government’s attempts to levy volunteer firefighters and the poor state of roads point to a deeper frustration that regional communities are feeling viscerally.
When they’re not being overlooked, they feel looked down upon.
Knight and Mifsud have both raised concerns about the impact of renewables on their community. Jason South
“We are not banjo-playing dimwits,” Knight says. “There are some very educated and smart people out here.”
Should regional voters unite to punish the political establishment in November’s election, the consequences may ripple well beyond the country roads and farms to impact all Victorians. That includes the city dwellers too.
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From the time he was a child, James Knight knew his future lay in rural Victoria. Although he grew up in Melbourne, Knight got a taste of life on the land during school holidays at his uncle and aunt’s beef and cropping farm.
From that moment, his mind was made up.
“I got hooked,” he says.
Later, Knight worked in corporate agriculture for four years while living with his wife, Georgie, in Melbourne. And during that time, the land kept calling.
The couple both wanted the farm life and experience of living in a close rural community. So, when the chance came to take over Georgie’s family beef farm in south-west Victoria, they took it.
Knight (left) on his Mortlake farm with fellow farmer Robert Mifsud.Jason South
But when they moved there in 2016, Knight found a community simmering with frustration. There was a proposal at the time for a wind farm with more than 40 turbines.
While some landowners agreed to host turbines, many in the community vehemently opposed them, including Knight’s father-in-law.
It was obvious to Knight that the project consumed the lives of neighbours “and not for the better”. So he sided with his father-in-law, declining to host turbines on their farm.
The renewable energy wind project proceeded anyway with 35 turbines, including one erected 200 metres from Knight’s title boundary and 1.5 kilometres from his house.
Knight understands Victoria needs renewable energy. But he believes many regional communities feel corporate interests have forced renewable projects on them, while compliant governments allowed the benefits to flow to the cities.
Renewables infrastructure has angered some residents of regional Victoria. Jason South
“How about we put 30 or 40 of these across the St Kilda foreshore and see how you go?” Knight says. “Because it’s the same for us out here. We don’t want them.”
Knight says there are also frustrations with turbines and transmission lines hampering aircraft access, which can be required for firefighting and spraying fertiliser on farms.
Anger about the wind farm is emblematic of broader frustrations taking root across regional Victoria.
It’s not just the soaring transmission towers and lines stretching across the landscape throughout much of the state’s south-west. Or the wind turbines rising above farms where there was once uninterrupted sky.
Potholes are among the biggest frustrations in the regions. Justin McManus
It is not only the absence of doctors forcing people to drive long distances on roads pockmarked with festering potholes that pose a daily hazard to cars and lives.
Nor is it just the hangover of pandemic restrictions that damaged faith in government institutions. Or the patchy mobile and internet coverage. Or the fire services levy that enraged volunteer firefighters.
It is these and more grievances compounding into deep-seated resentment, and driven by a perception that state and corporate interventions inflict more harm than solutions to problems.
Many of these issues are specific to regional Victoria. Yet here’s why they matter to everyone else.
Then-premier Jeff Kennett flinging sand at the media at a CityLink event in 1996. In 1999, his government lost an election considered “unlosable”.Simon O’Dwyer
In 1999, rural seats swung hard against the Liberal Party, booting then-premier Jeff Kennett from government in an election he was expected to win easily. The eight regional seats Labor flipped, and three regional independents backing them, were enough to secure Labor minority government.
So began an era of political dominance that continues today.
But the dynamic is shifting drastically. Labor now faces the prospect of losing government in November after accumulating heavy political baggage over three terms.
Unlike previous state elections, Victoria is in uncharted political waters. Multiple polls indicate fed-up voters are warming to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation – a prospect that seemed all but impossible a year ago.
Knight is not a member of any political party, but he understands Hanson’s appeal. When Hanson took aim at renewables in her recent address to the National Press Club in Canberra, Knight said the message cut through.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson last month addressed the National Press Club for the first time.Bloomberg
“Any individual or organisation that’s going to call out renewable energy, you will get regional communities on board because I feel like we’re seeing it firsthand,” Knight says.
In 2024, the Clean Energy Council reported that farmers could earn more than $40,000 a year per turbine on their property and $1500 per hectare annually for solar panels. Farmers are also reimbursed for transmission line easements on their properties.
Justine Hide is also no stranger to state politics seeping into everyday life. The deputy mayor of Northern Grampians Shire spent the past year on a community reference group seeking government answers for landowners worried about the long-term impacts of the renewable energy transition.
The meetings touched on solar, wind and power lines, but tended to be dominated by one particular $7 billion transmission project planned to snake through 235 kilometres of Victorian farmland: VNI West.
For three years the shadow of this planned behemoth has loomed large over regional people’s lives, even if they support the project or aren’t farmers themselves.
Victorian farmers at Woosang in 2022 to protest against the VNI West project.Eamon Gallagher
“I can’t go to the supermarket or my kids’ swimming lessons without either seeing affected landowners or people in that community, and they’ll talk about it if they see you,” Hide says.
>THE NEW YORK TIMES: Since resuscitating relations with China from a low point a few years ago, the Australian Government has relied on an oft-repeated mantra to ‘cooperate where we can, disagree where we must’.
>Burkina Faso’s armed forces on Wednesday claimed they repelled coordinated attacks by armed groups on several military positions on June 30, killing more than 400 attackers during counteroffensives supported by airstrikes.
>Separatist rebels say they have shot dead a US pilot and set his plane on fire in Indonesia's Papua region.
>The West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) say they killed Nicholas F Gosselin after he landed in the Highland Papua province on Thursday. The separatists claim civilian pilots have been ferrying Indonesian troops into the region, and said Gosselin's death sent "a message".
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>A UN refugee agency-contracted truck carrying humanitarian relief supplies was struck by a drone near Tendelti in White Nile state on Tuesday, destroying 50 metric tons of aid intended for vulnerable populations in South Kordofan, the UN spokesman’s office said Thursday .
>Speculation has been running wild today in Damascus after a bombing in a cafe in the center of the city killed at least nine people and wounded some 20 others. The site was near the Justice Palace, the city’s main courthouse.
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Vladimir Putin could use an attack on Nato as a bargaining chip for the war in Ukraine, sources told Polish media
By Alex Croft
2 min. read
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The US has warned Warsaw that Russia is planning an armed “provocation” against Poland to test Nato’s resolve, according to reports.
The assault could see Poland’s vital infrastructure targeted by missiles or drones, or even Russian soldiers crossing the border into Nato territory, Washington has said.
Sources close to Polish president Karol Nawrocki told Polish outlet Onet that the aim of Moscow’s possible assault, which could be launched in a matter of months, would be to provoke tensions and pressure Ukraine’s Western allies to suspend their military and financial aid.
The US “systematically informs Poland about ever-new Russian plans for a conventional attack on Nato’s eastern flank, from which Poland is by no means excluded”, a source close to the Polish president said.
Warsaw’s security services have admitted that a conventional attack, such as a small ground incursion, which Moscow may allege is an accident, is possible.
Other possibilities are a drone attack on infrastructure such as power stations or simulated air strikes forcing Poland to activate its air defence systems.
A Polish intelligence source said that a “hybrid attack in the border region” could take place, in the most extreme scenario.
A Russian Tu-160 strategic bomber escorted by fighter jets performs refueling during a Victory Day parade (AFP/Getty)
An armed incursion involving Russian or Belarusian troops could be presented as a mistake, such as straying into Polish territory because of a GPS failure, or a fake rescue mission to retrieve a helicopter suffering from a malfunction, sources said.
Moscow could hope that Poland would be forced by the US to negotiate rather than responding forcefully and opening fire on Russian or Belarusian soldiers, sources told Onet.
Vladimir Putin would see a scenario in which Russians withdraw as a result of negotiations as a win from Moscow’s perspective, the sources said, with an end to Western support for Ukraine a possible condition it could demand in return for withdrawal from Poland.
Several Baltic sources have told The Telegraph that a provocation in one of the Baltic states remains a serious risk. Such an attack could, they said, be staged from Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave north of Poland that hosts nuclear weapons.
Putin could use an attack as bargaining power over the war in Ukraine, sources said (AP)
Moscow has already been appearing to probe Nato’s defences in the past year, with several repeated incursions of drones and fighter jets into Nato territory.
A report published on Thursday by the International Institute of Strategic Studies found that Russia likely used shadow ships to launch drones over Europe that repeatedly disrupted civilian aviation, as it monitored military sites and tested the air defences of Nato nations.
The report plotted 144 suspected drone sightings across Europe, including in Nato members Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, and Denmark, between 2024 and 2026.