Australia's migration agent watchdog has vowed to remove "fake agents" from the profession following multiple cases of unlawful immigration assistance.

The Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority (OMARA) has sanctioned three registered migration agents in what the government described as an "ongoing crackdown".

Julian Hill, the assistant minister for citizenship, customs and multicultural affairs, said the government is strengthening immigration oversight.

"When people pay a migration agent they rightly expect a qualified person will do the work, not an untrained, unregistered fake agent," he said in a government statement on Tuesday.

"No one would put up with people borrowing registration numbers from doctors, lawyers or financial planners and neither should they when hiring a registered migration agent."

OMARA's monitoring team was established in October and "proactively monitored" 85 registered migration agents during 2025-26, identifying 43 instances of non-compliance and addressing them through education, engagement and regulatory action, according to the government statement.

"Alongside the Investigations team, which examines allegations of serious misconduct, OMARA sanctioned 28 registered migration agents in 2025-26," it added.

In three separate cases, registered migration agents permitted unregistered individuals to provide migration assistance under the agents' Migration Agent Registration Numbers (MARNs), a practice commonly referred to as "front agent" activity.

In the first case, an agent’s registration was cancelled after OMARA determined that hundreds of visa applications submitted through three business ImmiAccounts involved either undisclosed immigration assistance or assistance provided by staff who were not registered migration agents.

ImmiAccount is the Department of Home Affairs' online portal for lodging and managing visa and citizenship applications.

In the second case, an agent was suspended after acknowledging that his son, who was not a registered migration agent, had provided immigration assistance on the business's behalf.

The investigation also uncovered allegations that clients had received falsified departmental correspondence intended to give the impression that visa applications had been lodged when they had not.

OMARA said in the release that bad actors will be identified and "removed from the profession".

"While the vast majority of RMAs [registered migration agent] act with integrity and professionalism, there is a small cohort who intentionally seek to undermine the migration program for personal gain," it said.

"These actors bring the migration advice profession into disrepute and tarnish the reputation of those RMAs who do the right thing in the best interests of their clients."

Only registered migration agents, Australian legal practitioners and exempt persons can lawfully provide immigration assistance in Australia.

Consumers can check whether an agent is registered through the migration agents register.

In the third matter, an agent was suspended after knowingly permitting another business director to lodge visa applications using the agent’s MARN while the director worked towards becoming a registered migration agent.

The government said it has strengthened OMARA's regulatory capability, with the regulator now using both investigations and proactive monitoring to improve compliance and professional standards.

The woman at the centre of the Leongatha mushroom murders is set to appeal her convictions as prosecutors separately push for her to be given no chance at parole.

Erin Patterson, 51, was handed a life sentence with a minimum term of 33 years in September last year after a jury found her guilty of murdering her husband’s parents and aunt, and the attempted murder of his uncle, with a poisoned lunch.

The convicted triple-murderer invited her estranged husband Simon Patterson and in-laws; Don and Gail Patterson and Ian and Heather Wilkinson, to lunch at her Leongatha home on July 29, 2023.

Simon pulled out days prior, fearing she had tried to kill him with poisoned meals on four previous occasions, with Patterson serving up a beef wellington dish containing death cap mushrooms to her four guests.

Each fell critically ill following the meal — Don, Gail and Heather died in early August while Ian slowly recovered after spending more than a month in hospital.

Convicted killer cook Erin Patterson told police she hosted the lunch because she wanted to maintain her relationships with her in-laws.

At trial, Patterson claimed the incident was a deadly accident and that she loved her in-laws, while prosecutors argued the only reasonable explanation was that the mother-of-two deliberately sought out and served the fungi intending to kill or seriously injure her guests.

Patterson maintains her innocence, with a two day appeal expected to begin in the Court of Appeal on Wednesday morning hoping to overturn the findings of guilt.It’s understood she will not appear in person, choosing to observe the proceedings by videolink from her prison.

The hearing will also be livestreamed for the public online.

In appeal documents released by the court, Patterson raised six “substantial” miscarriages of justice during her trial and one “fundamental irregularity” with the jury.

When the jury were sequestered to decide the verdicts, jurors were unknowingly housed into the same hotel as the lead police investigator and members of the prosecution team, with Patterson arguing this “fatally undermined the integrity of the verdicts”.

She took issue with several pieces of evidence she believes should not have been allowed in the trial, including records of her phone’s cell tower connections, death cap sightings posted to citizen science website iNaturalist, photos and videos of mushrooms on a SD card and evidence from members of a Facebook true crime group she was involved with.

Patterson also argued conduct by prosecutors had impacted her trial, including “unfair and oppressive” cross-examination during her time in the witness box and Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC’s closing address.

Running parallel to Patterson’s appeal, the Director of Public Prosecutions will also argue her sentence was “manifestly inadequate” and she should not have been given an chance to be released on parole in November 2056.

They argue the sentencing judge erred when he found there was a “substantial chance” Patterson would remain in solitary confinement and that this had “infected” his decision to fix a non-parole period.

Handing down the sentence, Justice Christopher Beale found Patterson’s crimes fell in to the worst category of murder.

“You showed no pity for your victims,” he said.

“Some murders occur for no reason, the motive for some murders may only be known to the offenders,” he said.

“Only you know why you committed the murders, I will not be speculating about that matter.”

An Adelaide woman who spent almost two weeks in hospital battling influenza is urging South Australians not to become complacent as cases surge across the state.

Maddie Ellis, 28, was vaccinated earlier this year — but as a recovering breast cancer patient with a compromised immune system, she says the flu hit her harder than she ever expected.

She was rushed to hospital struggling to breathe and came close to being placed on a ventilator.

“It progressed very quickly and became very serious,” she told 7NEWS.

Ellis relied on high‑flow oxygen for days.

“We were able to slowly taper that down, but the biggest thing was that trouble in breathing,” she said.

SA Health data shows flu infections are now almost doubling each fortnight, with 325 new cases recorded last week and 11 deaths so far this year.

Health Minister Blair Boyer says there is no room for complacency.

“There’s no time for us to be complacent,” he said.

Despite repeated warnings, vaccination rates remain low — including in aged care.

Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier says a significant number of older South Australians remain unprotected.

“A third of older people, 65 and up, haven’t been vaccinated yet and that’s a group that is more vulnerable,” she said.

There has been a modest improvement among children aged six months to five years, with authorities crediting a 5 per cent rise to the needle‑free FluMist option.

“Lots of other vaccine rates have been dropping but this one’s gone up,” Spurrier said.

Ellis says protecting yourself — and others — must be a priority.

“You just never know what someone else is experiencing or how it’ll affect them,” she said.

Fossil fuel subsidies cost Australian governments $16.3 billion in 2025–26, an increase of 9.4% on the previous year.

This is a larger increase than the 7.6% growth of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Growth in fossil fuel subsidies is driven by the federal government’s Fuel Tax Credit Scheme, which cost $10.8 billion in 2025–26.

Growth of this scheme is expected to outstrip spending on a range of social services including disability assistance, child care subsidies and aged care.

Democracy is about more than just voting at an election. A political system that is democratic in nature is characterised first and foremost by a commitment to free and fair debate, and government in a democratic system is responsive to people subject to that system and who participate in that free and fair debate.

The reality is that Australia has an inconsistent commitment to free and fair debate. Fundamentally, Australian politics is not a level playing field.

This research paper examines the extent to which Australian state and federal governments provide funding to non-government organisations that engage in lobbying back to government.

The sample of 100 NGOs across five public policy areas reveals they received $2.2 billion from taxpayers between the 2021 and 2025 financial years to engage in advocacy on progressive or left-leaning policy priorities.

Authorities are “working through” what to do with students who came to Australia via a joint venture between the Australian National University and a top Chinese university, after Foreign Minister Penny Wong axed the partnership on national security grounds last week.

Under ANU’s Joint Science College with Shandong University, Chinese students would study for three years in China before a two-year stint in Canberra.

ANU’s sprawling Canberra campus is a recruitment and training ground for defence and intelligence agencies.

Senator Wong’s move to terminate the university-to-university arrangement, first reported by The Australian, came after the US added Shandong University to a blacklist of foreign institutions “engaging in problematic activities”.

Assistant Minister for International Education Julian Hill confirmed on Monday the Joint Science College was “determined to breach our national interest” and noted the US’s “change in assessment status”.

“It is in Australia’s national interest that we partner with overseas universities in search of knowledge,” Mr Hill told News24.

“There’s lots of knowledge we want to bring back to Australia to help our economy, help agriculture, help health and so on.

“But where we determine that an arrangement breaches our fundamental security interests, then we have the power to act.”

Hundreds of Chinese students have come to Australia through the Joint Science College since it launched in 2022, with the first cohort alone comprising 61 Shandong University students.

Asked if the students still in the country would be able to finish their degrees, Mr Hill said the government was “working through those issues with the institution”.

In a letter to ANU reported by The Australian, Senator Wong said the university “must terminate the foreign arrangement for force majeure to the extent that it is legally binding under Chinese law by 18 January 2027”.

ANU has said it would comply.

Australia faces the prospect of devastating animal mass mortalities despite the rollout of a bird flu vaccine, a peak body warns.

One in five mammal and bird species in Australia are on a bird flu “doom list” published by the federal environment department, Invasive Species Council chief executive Jack Gough said on Tuesday.

“We have a tsunami about to break over them from this H5N1 bird flu," he said.

“We are not going to be able to stop bird flu ripping through our wildlife populations and that’s going to be devastating”.

Mr Gough raised the alarm at Parliament House and said the federal government was not prepared, hours after the agriculture minister announced the rollout of a vaccine to curb the deadly virus.

There will be 1500 vaccine vials - worth about $2 million - rolled out in a bid to stop the further spread of the strain, Julie Collins said.

"Australians should expect to see more spread and larger numbers, particularly of dead birds and mass mortalities around the country from the H5 bird flu," Ms Collins told reporters in Canberra.

"We have been very clear that this will continue to spread across the country.

"We cannot stop the H5 bird flu from spreading amongst wild birds. But we can take action to protect the species most at risk, and the vaccination is now part of that response".

Australia has already reported 231 cases of bird flu since the virus appeared in June.

However, individual counting is set to stop.

“Counting individual confirmed birds no longer gives us the clearest picture of how this disease is spreading,” the minister said.

"So our reporting will evolve to focus on confirmed H5 events ... where the disease is spreading, new locations, or species affected in emerging areas of risk".

Vaccines would not be the silver bullet to stop the spread of the bird flu and its effectiveness in wildlife remained unknown, Chief Veterinary Officer Beth Cookson said.

"It is not a standalone solution. Biosecurity will remain important, the protection of these species," she said.

"We have been working very carefully for the last 18 months as part of our national preparedness to make sure that we have safety and efficacy data available to us."

The federal government's efforts over the past year and a half were insignificant, Mr Gough said.

“The government has acknowledged - if this bird flu gets in, we're looking at an extinction-level event,” he said in relation to five individual species.

“Last week, we had the release of a list that said one in five of our native wildlife, mammals and birds, is directly threatened by this at a high to extreme level.

“And the thing I'm really concerned about is (the government) had this list last year, and yet this budget, this year in 2026, we actually saw funding for on-ground environmental programs go backwards”.

He said it was a wildlife emergency but feared the vaccines would be prioritised in the poultry industry, where the deadly strain was yet to infiltrate.

The vaccine needed to be delivered twice to take effect and Ms Collins said while wild birds would be vaccinated if possible, the priority would be on birds in captivity.

Influenza vaccination expert Mohammed Alsharifi said the rollout of the immunisation would be crucial.

"It's the right approach if we want to keep or conserve those species, because the virus is very lethal and we've seen dead animals around in the news everywhere," the Adelaide University associate professor said.

"We need to remember the virus may mutate. But at least if we have good immunity against the clade (variety) of the virus that's circulating, then it will be the right approach."

States and territories will be responsible for providing the federal government with its shortlist of priority animals requiring vaccination.

A woman has been charged with assisting the alleged killers of Sydney pensioner Chris Baghsarian, who was found dead after being taken from his home in February.

The woman, 51, was arrested at Lethbridge Park just after 10.40am on Tuesday, and has since been charged with accessory after the fact to murder in relation to the 85-year-old’s death.

The woman is one of twelve people who have been arrested in the aftermath of the shocking incident that rocked Sydney in February.

Mr Baghsarian was allegedly kidnapped from his home in North Ryde early on February 13, in what investigators believe was a “case of mistaken identity”.

Twelve days later, Mr Baghsarian’s remains were found dumped near a golf club at Pitt Town, and the first arrests came less than a week later.

Democracies have been quick to condemn Beijing and Moscow’s digital authoritarianism. But what happens when they begin to adopt the very same tools themselves?

The answer is not that they suddenly stop being democracies. Elections are still held, parliaments still sit, and courts still function. Yet authoritarian methods creep into digital spheres: shutdowns, spyware, and platform bans narrow debate and silence critics. Democracies begin to resemble the regimes they claim to oppose. Artificial Intelligence (AI) in particular lowers the cost and raises the appeal of digital controls, making it easier for governments, even well-intentioned ones, to suppress speech in the name of security.

India and Türkiye illustrate the drift towards digital authoritarianism. Each has adopted digital tools once associated largely with authoritarian states. Taken together, they reveal how democracies can hollow themselves out from within, their openness eroded not by coups or crackdowns, but by the quiet spread of authoritarian practices online.

For Australia, there is a clear lesson. Vigilance is required not only against authoritarian regimes that deploy digital tools to interfere in politics, spread disinformation, and weaken democratic institutions, but also against the temptations within democracies themselves.

India is one of the most patent examples. Long praised as the world’s largest democracy, over the past decade India has become the global leader in internet shutdowns, most notoriously in Kashmir. The government justifies these blackouts as necessary for the maintenance of public order and protection of national security.

Social media platforms such as Twitter/X and Meta have been pressed to remove posts critical of government policies, including during the 2020–21 farmers’ protests and the Covid-19 pandemic. There is evidence that Pegasus spyware was deployed by the government against journalists, activists, opposition politicians, and even government officials.

In addition, pro-government supporters have coordinated online harassment of journalists, academics, and opposition figures. Organised trolling campaigns create fear and encourage self-censorship, forcing critical voices to retreat from public debate, and leaving government narratives dominant. The result is a digital environment that is beginning to resemble that of an authoritarian state, and where dissent is often silenced and surveillance pervasive.

Courts as censors

Türkiye shows how democratic institutions can be weaponised to legitimise digital control. In early 2025, Türkiye became the first country to ban AI-generated content. This was only the latest step in a decade-long tightening of online restrictions.

Between 2013 and 2018, more than 20,000 legal cases were launched against citizens for their social media posts, many resulting in prosecutions and arrests. The ruling Justice and Development Party has also cultivated a climate of digital intimidation, with party-affiliated trolls and bots harassing journalists, artists and academics critical of the government. Critics have called this a culture of “digital lynching”.

Opposition politicians are not beyond the reach of Türkiye’s government and judiciary. For example, Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu has faced prosecutions and account suspensions. Regarded as President Erdoğan’s main challenger, İmamoğlu is now unable to communicate with his 9.7 million followers on X inside Türkiye, even though his account remains viewable abroad.

Under Türkiye’s Internet Law, digital platforms that resist takedown requests face crippling fines or throttling, forcing them into compliance. The effect is an online environment where criticism of the government is suppressed, through the steady application of law, bureaucracy, and intimidation.

Authoritarian drift

These cases differ in context but together show democracies adopting tactics once seen as the hallmark of authoritarian states. The justifications vary, but the result in each case is a narrowing of online debate, silencing of dissent, and normalisation of surveillance.

AI accelerates this drift. Once seen as liberating, AI is increasingly harnessed for censorship, monitoring, and manipulation. Algorithms amplify ruling-party narratives, spyware silences critics, and predictive tools track dissent. Democracies do not need to formally abandon elections or institutions to erode openness: they can do so quietly, through the normalisation of digital authoritarian practices.

A warning for Australia

Australia has rightly invested in countering authoritarian states’ digital operations, from Russian disinformation campaigns to Chinese cyber intrusions. But the risk is not only external. In moments of crisis, democracies often find internet shutdowns, platform bans, or enhanced surveillance tempting. Once such measures are used, they are easily repeated and normalised.

Australia has already introduced expansive metadata retention and online safety laws, while debates continue over platform regulation and misinformation. These measures are not inherently authoritarian. But without transparency and oversight, they risk laying the groundwork for more intrusive control.

If Australia is serious about defending democracy abroad, it must also safeguard democratic practice at home. That means ensuring transparency around surveillance powers, protecting online speech, and resisting the urge to over-regulate platforms. Above all, it requires recognising that authoritarian methods can creep in quietly, under the guise of protecting the public or national security.

The line between open and closed societies is no longer defined solely by geography. The threat comes not only from Beijing or Moscow but from the normalisation of authoritarian methods within democracies themselves.

An 82-year-old bike rider who cycled 3,300 miles (5,300km) across Australia to raise money for charity has died a day after completing the challenge.

Bob Montgomery's death was "unexpected" but "peaceful", his family said in a statement on social media, just a day after he had finished what he had dubbed "One Last Ride" from Broome in Western Australia to Bowral, south-west of Sydney.

He and his 18-year-old grandson had raised about A$105,000 ($74,000; £55,000) for a motor neurone disease (MND) charity with the six-week ride.

It was his sixth fundraising ride in support of MND NSW, the statement said, adding that it was "a cause that was deeply personal to him".

His wife of 59 years, Jenny was by his side during his "peaceful passing", his family said, adding that he was "still passionately sharing his message only hours before his passing."

Montgomery and his grandson Tom Malcolm had arrived in Bowral on Sunday to "roaring applause" from his local community, the national broadcaster ABC reported.

He told ABC he had been motivated by meeting people along the way and enjoying a "beer or two" at each stopover.

"There's so many stories and so many people we met along the way who put their hands into their pockets to throw some cash in, which is fantastic," Montgomery was quoted as saying.

He had been inspired to take on the challenge after losing a cousin to MND and had raised almost A$300,000 on his previous rides. "I have seen family and friends suffer. It's heart breaking," he wrote on his fundraising page.

Malcolm had continued onto Sydney on Monday where the family had gathered once again to celebrate.

But shortly after the party, Montgomery suffered a medical episode, MND NSW chief executive Liam O'Meara said.

O'Meara said he was "deeply saddened" by Montgomery's death, calling him a "cherished friend and tireless supporter of MND NSW".