Oil and gas giant Woodside's $12,100 donation to WA Labor last week is part of a $1.2 million torrent of corporate cash flowing in since May as the party fights to see off One Nation in the formerly safe seat of Secret Harbour.

Many big names in corporate WA feature among the top donors, but a company few have heard of leads the pack.

WA Labor has used its status as the governing party at both state and Federal levels, and its massive number of elected members on the public payroll, to capture 78 per cent of all WA political contributions since May 1, according to disclosures published by the WA Electoral Commission.

The August 29 by-election follows the resignation of Navy and SAS veteran Paul Papalia, announced on July 6, after almost two decades in Parliament.
In his place Labor has offered Georgia Tree, a long-term Labor Party apparatchik living more than 60 km from the electorate, who recently left the office of gas exporter-friendly Federal Resources Minister Madeleine King to join Woodside.

The Government has secretly inserted Palantir into its automated decision system inside the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) exposing Australia’s most vulnerable. Claudia Weisenberger reports.

If the NDIS Amendment Bill passes this week — and it will — a computer program will have the authority to cut a disabled person’s funding. If the program gets it wrong, section 59E(3) of the Bill provides that the decision stands anyway.

>

What nobody has been told — and what nobody in Parliament has asked — is who built the computer, whose data it uses, and what it does with what it learns about 800,000 disabled Australians.

The answers, buried in Freedom of Information refusals and AusTender records, point toward one of the most controversial technology companies in the world.

A company whose software has helped deport immigrants in the United States, was given access to NHS patient records in the United Kingdom — a decision now being reversed — and which there are reasonable grounds to believe helped automate military targeting in Gaza.

Its CEO describes the company’s purpose as helping the West scare enemies and, on occasion, kill them.

“I assumed it was part of the same application. I misread it as a ‘Women’s Smelter’, which, I’ll be honest sounded pretty niche,” the Prime Minister said. “But given it seemed to be mining related I really had no choice but to approve the package and increase the funding from $2,500 to $2.5 billion”.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers confirmed that it will be asking for the funds to be returned. “As much as we’d love to fund women’s shelters and other domestic violence services, in the current environment we need to be fiscally disciplined,” he said. He confirmed that the funding for the Rio Tinto smelter would go ahead. “If you’re a billion-dollar mining company with an enormous electricity bill, obviously we need to be pragmatic”.

"A Woolworths spokesperson did not address the ABC's questions on how facial recognition technology was tested or if it would be used in Australia. 

"Keeping our team and customers safe is the most important thing we do and we've put significant investment towards this," the spokesperson said. 

"While our current safety initiatives are making a difference, we are still seeing a concerning amount of aggression and conflict incidents in our stores on a daily basis, including weapons being presented."

More than 130,000 faces have already been scanned under WA Police's landmark facial recognition trial. The privacy watchdog, experts and Aboriginal advocates are raising concerns about who could be caught in its net.

Facial recognition technology has been subject to debate over privacy concerns and misidentification with particular demographic groups. 

Bunnings wins fight to use AI facial recognition

In February, Australian hardware giant Bunnings won a legal battle to monitor its customers with AI. 

Bunnings had breached privacy laws by scanning hundreds of thousands of customers' faces without their proper consent, the privacy commissioner found in 2024. "

Yindjibarndi traditional owners will appeal a landmark $150.3m compensation penalty to Andrew Forrest's Fortescue.

The Federal Court handed down the penalty in May, finding Fortescue had built and operated four mines without the required agreement and compensation.

Fortescue's massive Solomon Hub has generated an estimated $80 billion in revenue since breaking ground in 2013.

Justice Stephen Burley noted at the time of his judgement that 240 sacred sites had been made inaccessible by mining operations, while at least 124 were destroyed.

The damage to traditional country was, he said, "like the death of a child" in the grief it caused Yindjibarndi people.

YNAC had initially sought $1.8 billion from the Federal Court, largely basing the figure on existing industry royalty rates.

What's next?

A court date for the appeal is yet to be set.

New South Wales Greens politician Abigail Boyd used parliamentary powers to force the production of thousands of documents from the NSW Food Authority, revealing what she says are serious weaknesses and a lack of transparency in the system. 

"There were metal shavings found in bread products … products that were supposed to be dairy-free, that were not dairy-free, [which] were only caught by accident because somebody happened to put it together after their child or they themselves got sick, not because the company had worked it out."

"We all walk around thinking that in modern Australia, we have food safety standards and enforcement to back that trust up," Ms Boyd said.

"And what we're seeing now is that trust is probably misplaced.

"You could be eating a minced horse when you think you're eating your mince … that's pretty shocking for the average person." 

In short:

Questions are being asked after a runaway train rolled downhill through the Hunter Valley for several kilometres with no-one on board.

The ABC understands the train reached speeds in excess of 60 kilometres per hour.

What's next?

The Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator is investigating what caused the incident. 

Legends, welcome back.
Righto - for the newbies:
THE SPIEL:
What is Cheaper Buy Miles aka CBM?
It's a bunch of inner city melbs stores that sell best by or use by goods at heftily discounted prices.
Article from Kidspot about similar in Sydney, including the kinds of bargains to look out for:
https://www.kidspot.com.au/lifestyle/home/i-found-a-littleknown-supermarket-to-score-ultracheap-groceries/news-story/bf60f99d8db160e8844057ecc47e0446
Best by = usually can be ignored, because it's goods that don't perish eg: best by dates on dry goods such as rice.
No, we cannot tell you when whatever it is that you want is coming back in store, because your guess is as good as ours. We have no idea. It's the luck of the draw whenever you walk in. If you see something you *really want* + can afford that makes your brain go FUCK YES!!! - get it. For some people, that's a $1 packet of chips. For others, it's 3 wheels of cheese for $60 that would be closer to $600 at ColesWorth. You do you.

Use by = that's one I don't mess with. The sniff test is the winner, so I've been told. Smells weird? Time to chuck.
Best by, particularly with dry goods, is usually safe to go past, particularly if it's something that keeps forever like rice. Be aware though, that some things, like pasta - you wouldn't think a dry good could get weird, but I've got some supermarket angel hair that needs chucking.

Check 'em out for locations [footscray, flemington, brunswick, fitzroy], see their socials for what's in store: https://www.cheaperbuymiles.com

Why we love them: no automatic checkouts, lots of boxes to take your stuff away in, great deals. If you see something you want to try, there's no harm in deciding to buy the thing regardless, and testing it out on the spot. Folks have generously offered me a sample of goodness whilst in queue, only for me to go and track down my own piece of flavor town. If there's something good you want the world to know about, please do this if you can.

Someone *really* hates competition to the duopoly. Do mess with the haters, upvote comments and the thread, and give the middle finger to rich strangleholds on Australian society. The less you shop at colesworth, the better. We don't need Palantir, Wesfarmers, excess packaging, fucked over workers, and screwed over farmers in our lives. News article re: Palintir + Coles:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-09/coles-just-hired-us-defence-contractor-palantir/103443504
fyi Palantir is the company helping out ICE in the USA, just so you know what you're avoiding.

Props to CBM who are all prepared for this diesel fandango with inner city stores that are all so convenient to get to via PT. If you're in the burbs and wondering which one might be best, my money is on Footscray. With the new trains from the city, you can whip out there in no time, and it's a ruvly ride to read a book/knit/listen to choons/whatevs.
It's a large store, you also get a great bulk nuts/weird shit/deli store across the road that's been there around 20 years, and there's a huge KFL aka asian grocer, along with the footscray markets + the indian store. THEN, there's also the recommendations of where chefs eat in footscray (https://www.reddit.com/r/Footscray/comments/1rt96jt/melbournes_most_underrated_food_suburb_where/), so you can down a coffee/bahn mi/whatevs from the locals, AND the op shop isn't half bad either - scored a few things there. Make a culinary/cultural day of it, perhaps making cbm your last stop with a large backpack or trolley or somesuch.

CBM are *very* smart - there's a library close to every store, so for kids of all ages, you can go have a snacking/reading stop to take a break, go to the loo, read a book, peruse the papers, grab a dvd for a rocking catered night at the movies etc etc before going home. Great, huh?

ON WITH THE SHOW...
So, I was so keen today, made it to two stores to get a bunch of goodness, and had a chat with a dad who'd just moved over from Perth on the tram. Of course I was duty bound to tell him about cheaper buy miles, as he was living around coburg, and just about to go to Coles.
The temptation to simply handcuff this guy and drag him down there before doing the rest of his shopping was intense, but one does slowly learn that you've gotta let them. Let them do what they wanna do. Yes, but, it's none of your business, do gooder, so you've told 'em, they know, move on. Anyhoo, he had 3 kids who needed chicken done *their* way - nuggets, schnitzels, and popcorn. Lordy.

So, to get around that, it's worth throwing in some variety...
CBM have organic hash browns - $6 a kg, which given you can't buy organic potatoes for that, is a goddamn steal. These are kinda like the veggie patties that you get in hamburgers - ie it's not like grated potato, and you need a knife and fork or to be all caveman to rip into one to eat it.
Speaking of veggie patties, they had frozen ones of those too, and Footscray recently had the Yumis zucchini/veggie balls in the chill cabinet. All of these would be ace for kids, and a step up from chicken.

In the freezer cabinet - there's large bags of corn kernels + peas, which could be great for making fritters with some chickpea flour (or maybe the tins of chickpeas in store?) and/or soup - corn + chilli + coconut milk + ginger + blend, then fry more corn, add to bowl, then put your soup in. yums.

There's also a metric fuckton of frozen seafood in various forms - I think there's calamari, prawns, tenders that you could pair with the hash browns + onion rings + frozen pickles for a fish + chips basket of goodness. Or there's packets of seasoned frozen veg with a ton of potato in them - they could be a great healthy addition.

If you keep your eyes peeled in the aisles, probably a mayo/sauce of some description to pair it with.
Marinated chicken + frozen duck with the duck pancake kits has also been spotted, which could be fun with kids.
Dinner sorted.

If we're still doing bite sized kid happy goodness, there's also gnocchi - 500g for $2.50. Sure, do it the normal way by boiling until done, or the other option is to open the packet, separate out your gnocchi, and drizzle over some oil, then air fry/oven/pan fry until golden, then add the sauce of yr dreams. There's various tomatoey things at CBM, along with barilla pesto, so yr chances of scoring are extremely high.

In the chill cabinet, there's various small packs of dairy things - it's not my thang, but it's worth checking out if its yours - yoghurts, cheeses, etc etc.

There's ceres organics oaty bars in banana flavour - 100g for $2.00, which would be rather handy to put in where the noise comes out whilst travelling etc etc with kids.

The much loved clif bars are back - I went all out and bought a box of choc chip 68g x 12 for $15.00, various flavours, knock your fine self out. They're a rather delicious dessert/snack when air fried for a few minutes.

There are many small sized cakey things - chocolate/caramel, etc etc. For something vaguely healthier, there's frozen pie filling of chopped apple with berries in the freezer cabinet, along with packet cake mix - you could combine the two for a kid friendly treat, or skip the cake mix, and blend with a banana, oats and nut butter and bake rounds for breakfasts/snacks etc.

Coconut water - as someone who isn't drinking enough who also has a terribly exciting cortisol test which requires delivering 24 hours of urine to be tested - I bought 8x 1.25 litre box for $8.00, which may also be your ticket for drinking more, giving kids something else to drink etc etc.

As I feel it is my duty to report on such things: CHEESE.
holy hell there's been some amazing things. It's really hard to say what's there, because often the good stuff moves so fast. I just recommend you visit often if that's your thing, and hope you get lucky. As of writing, there is no daffinois, but who knows? That could change at the drop of a hat. The Fitzroy store seems to be particularly well stocked cheese wise.

There's a lot of...I think it's pecorino? A hard cheese in various flavours - pepper, paprika, lord knows what else. There is much brie.
In the Footscray store, there was this 2kg tower of french cheese that I didn't dare to look closely at, but methinks more of those will be making their way, so best of luck with divine goodness seeking, and let us know what you score. A good rule of thumb is the fancier the packaging, the fancier the cheese. Cheese in wax? Those little wooden/bamboo/whatever round/square things? Get on it, and feel free to brag here about your scores.

What have you found? What goodness have you made with your purchases? What's worth keeping your eyes peeled for? DO TELL!
Update:
On the kid front, there’s also cheap dried peaches/sultanas, which could make for handy additions to kid food - biscuits/porridge/what have you…
Spotted in the chiller were fresh mushrooms - enoki and other long fancy types for around $2 which could make for a great stir fry.

"Gina reportedly had her ‘oh shit’ moment when the party had to resort to sending out Barnaby Joyce of all people to try make the party seem more rational, in an interview where he randomly started barking at his dog.

“There’s always that one thing you forget when you go shopping,” she said, “One Nation has a heap of deranged racist freaks, but I forgot I was meant to buy them a sacrificial lamb. Whoops.”

“Do we have anyone normal to clean up this mess? Who can I gift a jet to that is able to spin this as just people expressing concerns and frustrations?""

"As Australia reaches 37 women killed in just over 6 months (source: Sherele Moody), with three men and a teenage boy charged with the alleged murders of women and girls they knew, the country once again enters into the ‘we need to start a conversation’ stage of combatting gendered violence.

This as we continue the decades long loop of having the media and politicians acknowledge the widespread issue before falling short of fucking doing anything about it.

The Labor government, which could force a national conversation around the issue and lead by example by forcing change will likely respond with some slides made on Canva about how ‘someone’ needs to show leadership and do something about this, despite being in fucking charge."

"Alison Holt had been so busy that she didn’t initially think to ask for more detail when she was first told that she would be handing over her top-performing Year 10 science class to a presenter for an hour the next day. At the time Holt, now retired, was a science teacher with 30-years’ experience who was responsible for two classes of 32-students, high achieving students expected to head to university.

She was teaching at a high school south of Perth, Western Australia, alongside her husband Geoff, the union rep, and it was only a few hours before the third-party educational provider arrived that she learned they were associated with the Australian petroleum industry.

For one hour, three weeks in a row, the presenters would come to run practical demonstrations for her classes. One involved sucking chocolate milk through TimTam and KitCat biscuits to teach these high-achieving students about how different geological formations had different porosity. Others had the students imagine themselves a logistics manager tasked with getting gas extracted from the ground in Australia all the way to Japan.

“The kids didn’t even know what a logistics manager was,” Holt says.

Students who participated actively and performed well on a quiz could be chosen to undertake a free trip to a university careers day and participate in a simulation where a helicopter was plunged into water to replicate what would happen if the aircraft crashed on its way out to a rig.

The only mention of climate change came towards the end, when a presenter, Holt recalls, spoke about how gas is a transition fuel, renewables were unreliable and electric cars were heavy and problematic.

“It’s unethical,” Holt says. “That’s the bottom line. And it’s by stealth, isn’t it? There were no consent forms. They’re not letting parents or the children have a choice about whether they want to be party to this.

“It’s part and parcel of all the aspects of [Western Australia] because it’s coming at you from every single direction. Sport, now education—it’s everywhere, this complete takeover by the oil and gas industry. This is the state capture that we see around us.”

The existence of this specific program itself is no secret—variations of the long-running program have been delivered in Australian schools since the 90s and have been reported on in news media, but have largely continued on without opposition or oversight.

However, Australia climate campaign group CommsDeclare new report From Cradle to Career has found that these educational efforts are part of a multi-million-dollar effort by fossil fuel producers to deliver marketing material to children and young people. The report sought to quantify the scale of this activity across Australia as part of a collaborative effort with a range of organizations that used publicly available material to track programs targeting children in schools, sports clubs and museums.

The effort identified 282 programs for children aged 0-to-18 associated with oil, gas and coal producers. The bulk of these operated in Western Australia, with Queensland the next-most active state. Western Australia and Queensland are both major gas producers, with the latter also home to a large coal-mining industry.

A spokesperson for the WA Department of Education said it “partners with a range of organizations, particularly in regional Western Australia, to support students and deliver infrastructure upgrades to schools.”

“These organzsations can’t amend or influence school curriculum,” they said. “These partnerships or engagements don’t constitute rights to promote.”

"Ocean protection is both a Minderoo cause and a personal passion for Forrest, who was awarded a PhD in marine ecology from the University of Western Australia in 2019. Minderoo made donations of almost $100 million to UWA, before and after the degree.

The foundation went on to employ three technicians who had worked with Forrest on his doctorate. A Minderoo-funded body provides scholarships to students now working under his PhD supervisor, Jessica Meeuwig, who contributed to chapters of his thesis. For a time, a Forrest company invested in an energy business run by Meeuwig’s partner, the Australian Financial Review reported*.*

“The University of Western Australia’s philanthropic relationship with Dr Andrew Forrest is unrelated to the award of his PhD,” a university spokeswoman said. “Dr Forrest was subjected to the same examination process as any UWA PhD candidate.”

Two examiners considered his oral exam and written thesis to be in the top 5 per cent internationally.

Those external examiners – Professor Callum Roberts from the UK and Professor Douglas McCauley from the US – are now members of Forrest’s Lethal Humidity Global Council. The positions are unpaid. Roberts also serves on Minderoo’s Natural Ecosystems Advisory Board, which pays members $3750 per meeting.

McCauley said Forrest is an ocean science nerd whose career is “not normal by any measure”.

Forrest’s spokeswoman said if every PhD graduate were expected to cut all institutional ties with their supervisors, examiners, technicians or fellow graduates, universities would grind to a halt.

Said Roberts: “Successful business is all about relationships”."

Wealthy households were first for subsidies

We looked at the number of batteries installed between July 2025 and March 2026 across all Australian postcodes.
Compared with a middle socio-economic group, there have been 912 more batteries installed in the richest major city postcodes with high solar installations.

This corresponds with 3.6% more households installing a battery and an additional 36 megawatt-hours of capacity in each of these more wealthy postcodes, compared with the middle socio-economic group.

Those with more solar also had more batteries, especially richest Australians

Our research shows households that could move quickly have been able to secure a higher subsidy before changes to the program came into effect at the start of May 2026. For the period between December 2025 and March 2026, battery installations are estimated to have increased by ten per month in more prosperous postcodes. But this is likely to be an underestimate, with data still to be released and revised by the Clean Energy Regulator.

We found many of these fast movers also locked in a larger subsidy by installing a bigger battery. There had been a 4.5 kilowatt-hour (kWh) to 9.5kWh increase in the average capacity of batteries installed since December 2025.

When announcing the revisions to the Cheaper Home Batteries program, Bowen noted the previous success of rooftop solar across Australia. He said: “We want to match that success with home batteries to cut bills for everyone, for good.”

We are still a long way from an equitable transition, where people from all walks of life have access to rooftop solar and home batteries.

If you are in energy debt

Energy companies have the power to wipe your debt if you cannot afford to pay it. The Antipoverty Centre has created a template letter to help you write to your energy company requesting a debt waiver.

You can also contact the National Debt Helpline for assistance negotiating a debt waiver or repayment plan instalments with your energy company via their website or on 1800 007 007.

Utility relief grant scheme

Relief grants for paying overdue energy or water bills are available to low-income Victorians experiencing unexpected hardship.

What is the grant?

The grant provides help to pay a mains electricity, gas or water bill that is overdue due to a temporary financial crisis.

Who can apply for the grant?

An account holder who has one of the following eligible concession cards:

• Pensioner Concession Card
• Health Care Card
• Veterans’ Affairs Gold Card.

If you don’t have one of these cards but are part of a low-income household, you may also be able to apply. Your retailer will ask you some questions to check if you are eligible before issuing a form.

The grant is available to renters and homeowners.

What are the criteria for the grant?

You must show that you have no way of paying the account without assistance and are at risk of disconnection, and

you must meet one of the following criteria:

• You or someone in your house has experienced family violence.
• You have had a recent decrease in income, for example, lost your job.
• You have had high unexpected costs for essential items.
• The cost of shelter is more than 30% of your household income.

services.dffh.vic.gov.au

We are 10 Australians who have filed a human rights case against the Australian government for failing to protect us from climate pollution by Australia’s coal and gas corporations.
We’ve each been profoundly impacted by fires, floods, rising seas, extreme heat, algal blooms and disruption to First Nations Country and Culture.

These are our stories.

"Coal companies could receive an extra $6.2bn in taxpayer refunds for the diesel they use if the Albanese government greenlights just half the mine developments up for approval.

Treasury last month forecast the scheme would cost the budget $47bn over the next four years, rising from $10.7bn in 2026-27 to $12.8bn in 2029-2030. More than $1bn a year goes to coalmine operators.

Energy & Resource Insights, a consultancy created by the Sunrise Project, a climate advocacy organisation, said another 45 coalmining developments were proposed in New South Wales and Queensland. Of these, 22 had environmental impact statements that outlined expected diesel consumption.

Based on that data, the consultancy estimated coal companies could receive $6.2bn in rebates on 11.6bn litres of diesel used over their operational lives. It found one expansion alone – Glencore and Yancoal’s Hunter Valley operations expansion, the largest coal project ever proposed in NSW – could reap $1.7bn.Lock the Gate’s acting national coordinator, Georgina Woods, said the fuel tax credits scheme was rewarding coal companies with billions of dollars for using diesel, reducing the incentive to shift to clean vehicles to cut emissions. She said it meant companies were “effectively claiming a public subsidy to expand coalmining” and the money would be “much better spent on easing the costs of climate change”. "

A man who within the last 24 hours has both called for an end to all immigration to Australia and chanted ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie’ at a World Cup live site, was said to be in a serious but stable condition after former refugee Nestory Irankunda scored the opening goal in a World Cup game against Türkiye.

Paramedics were called to the scene after the fan suffered what was believed to be a massive episode of cognitive dissonance. “He sort of just froze when the goal was scored, like his brain was buffering,” one witness said. “After a few minutes he started muttering the phrase ‘yeah but he’s one of the good ones’ – it seemed to be some sort of coping mechanism. Not long after that he went into a cardiac arrest”.

Mr Forrest's Fortescue was last month ordered to pay the record-breaking sum to the Yindjibarndi people, finding the miner had destroyed 124 sacred sites while building its Solomon Hub mines without permission.
The Yindjibarndi people are still weighing up whether to appeal against the $150 million ruling which is a fraction of the almost $2 billion they were asking for.

Native title lawyer Marshall McKenna said he was not surprised by Mr Forrest's view but urged him to reconsider.

"The difference between FMG and practically everyone else is the recognition that compensation for interference with native title rights is not considered a handout," Mr McKenna said.

"Giving contracting opportunities is not a bad thing, but it would be a brave person to suggest it should be the only compensation.

"There's a clear conflict of interest in offering contracting opportunities to undertake works that will cause cultural loss."