r/OpenAussie

Commentary around the Sydney Swans case has made it painfully clear that women’s safety is not valued as highly as the sporting success of its male stars. It has been hard to stomach watching allegations of sexual assault that may be linked to some Sydney Swans players being framed as an “unmitigated disaster” for the club’s finals chances....

Finally, someone has articulated the same sense of outrage I have been feeling for the women at the center of the Sydney Swans allegations.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has cleared its personnel of any criminal wrongdoing in a 2024 strike on a humanitarian convoy which killed an Australian woman.

The IDF said there were serious failures that led soldiers to falsely identify a Hamas fighter was travelling in the convoy.

However, it was concluded the IDF commanders' decisions "did not raise reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct".

Educating schoolchildren on genocide may seem smart, even necessary given the current state of the world, particularly when such programs are offered freely to schools.

But recent experiences in Melbourne schools have left some parents “feeling like the wool was being pulled over our eyes”.

Courage to Care is a registered charity that offers Victorian schools a free “Upstander Program” to educate children on the dangers of, according to its website, “racism, antisemitism and all forms of discrimination”.

The program is “delivered in person … and feature powerful personal testimonies from Holocaust Survivor Speakers, or custodians of their stories”. Courage to Care says it has reached more than 200,000 Victorian students, and is “proudly apolitical and non-advocacy in nature, focused on education”.

But a little digging into Courage to Care, and who funds it, paints a different picture.

Don’t ask ‘inappropriate questions’

Mark* recently encountered the program when it was presented at his daughter’s Catholic school in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.

“The night before, my daughter said that a Holocaust survivor was coming to talk to her class the next day. It seemed good for my daughter,” he told Deepcut.

His daughter told him of a question she had in mind to ask.

“I think that a good question to ask would be how they feel about the genocide going on now.” He agreed.

But when the day came, Mark’s daughter never got to ask the question.

“The next day, I went to pick up my daughter from school and I asked her, ‘How was it?’ She said it was fine, ‘but I didn’t get a chance to ask that question. I put my hand up and the teacher came over and asked me what I wanted to ask. I whispered it to her, but then she told me that it wasn’t an appropriate question. So I didn’t get to ask it’.’’

Mark was furious and arranged a meeting with the principal.

“I did some research on the program’s funders,” he said. “The first thing you see is that they are advocates for the state of Israel.”

Pro-Israel funders

Courage to Care’s Upstander Program began in the early 1990s as an initiative of the Jewish mutual aid organisation, B’nai B’rith Victoria, in conjunction with the Jewish Museum of Australia and the Jewish Holocaust Centre. Since 2015, the program has attracted sufficient support from philanthropists for it to be offered to primary and secondary schools as a free incursion. A version of the program has also been made available in workplaces since 2018.

In Victoria, Courage to Care’s principal partner is the Gandel Foundation, which is also funding a new rehabilitation centre for “war-wounded patients” including “injured [Israeli] soldiers” at Mount Scopus Hospital in Jerusalem. Despite these links with an army accused of carrying out war crimes (including the deliberate targeting of children), the Gandel Foundation enjoys the continued support of Australia’s political and cultural elite. Large public atriums, for example, in the National Museum of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria now bear the Gandel name.

Courage to Care also receives support from two major partners, the Victorian Department of Education and the ERDI Foundation. Like the Gandel Foundation, the ERDI Foundation has a strong record of funding projects in Israel, which receive a third of its money. These include projects for the “mental health and wellbeing of former soldiers and victims of terror”.

Its remaining funds are used to finance projects in the Jewish and general community in Australia.

No further details about the recipients of ERDI funding are publicly available because its trustee – a registered charity with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) – appears to have been granted an exemption from publishing its reports on the ACNC website.

Neither the Gandel Foundation nor the ERDI Foundation responded to requests for further information.

According to new shipping records leaked to Declassified Australia, the first F-35 fighter jet part flown out of Sydney on the new airline and the new route was described obscurely as a ‘Clamp’.

It was however clearly labelled as being for the ‘JSF’, the Joint Strike Fighter, and was marked as having been sent to Israel from ‘2314 Williamtown’, which is the unique postcode address of RAAF Base Williamtown, home of Australia’s fleet of F-35A Joint Strike Fighters. Williamtown is also home to BAE Systems’ Regional Sustainment Depot, which provides repairs and maintenance for the F-35s...

Just looked at JB Hi-Fi’s full-year results and the divisional sales charts are pretty grim.

JB Hi-Fi Australia:

Q1: +6.0% total / +5.0% comps

Q2: +6.5% total / +5.0% comps

Q3: +4.0% total / +2.6% comps

Q4: +0.3% total / -0.8% comps

Full year: +4.4% / +3.2%

That’s a proper cliff from solid mid single digits to negative comps in one quarter.

The Good Guys (appliances):

Held up okay earlier in the year but completely stalled in Q4 — 0.0% total and comps. Full year only +2.7%.

Not a collapse but zero growth in the final quarter is weak.

e&s (premium kitchen/bathroom):

This one’s properly cooked:

Q1: +4.1% total / +0.7% comps

Q2: +1.8% / -1.0%

Q3: -1.4% / -4.8%

Q4: -5.2% total / -8.0% comps

Full year: -0.2% total / -3.2% comps

Straight into negative territory and accelerating downward. That’s the kind of number you see when people stop renovating and stop buying big-ticket discretionary items.

JB Australia slowing hard + Good Guys flatlining + e&s in freefall is a pretty clear signal the Aussie consumer is under real pressure. Discretionary spend is getting cut. This doesn’t look like temporary stock issues or cycling product launches it looks like households are tightening their belts.

Hard to see the RBA finding any justification to hike from here. If anything this kind of broad soft retail data points more toward the next move being a cut once they’re happy inflation is dead.

Anyone else seeing this as the start of a proper consumer recession or still thinking it’s just a soft patch?

Australia’s first and only treaty signed with Indigenous peoples will be ripped up if Opposition Leader Jess Wilson becomes Premier in November, who has made the scrapping a priority. The USA, Canada and New Zealand have treaties with their indigenous people. Polling shows Treaty has clear support in Victoria and Jess Wilson’s pledge is unpopular and One Nation-style.

The Coalition will likely sign a deal with One Nation to form government.

"The international ratings agency Moody’s has reaffirmed Australia’s AAA credit rating.

This is another welcome endorsement of the Government’s responsible economic management."

how will 7.9,10 sky ect frame this as a bad thing?
or will it be completely ignored considering it was the LNP that caused our credit ratting to slip?

and how do you think Jim clammers would do vs whoever Gina the hutt / flip flop Pauline has picked for treasurer?

Author Adam Johnson criticises Waverley council saying ‘reality is often upsetting’ while Palestinian group says libraries should hold ‘challenging’ books

A Sydney library has removed a book critical of Israel called How to Sell a Genocide, following a complaint reportedly from a survivor of the Bondi beach terror attack.

Waverley library at Bondi Junction is in the same council area as Bondi beach.

A Waverley council spokesperson said: “The book has been removed from library shelves for review, and council will further consider processes to ensure closer oversight of book selection.”

“Like most public libraries, Waverley council outsources its book curation, ordering and purchasing, meaning book selection is not undertaken by council officers.”

The Jewish news outlet JWire last week reported it had approached the council after a survivor of December’s antisemitic attack at Bondi, during which 15 people were killed, saw How to Sell a Genocide on the “new release / hot item” shelf and wrote on Facebook that the display was distressing for survivors and bereaved families.

Guardian Australia has been unable to locate the Facebook post.

How to Sell a Genocide critiques what it claims is the US media’s “complicity in the destruction of Gaza”.

The decision to remove the book was criticised by its author, Adam Johnson, who said calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide was not “a fringe or radical position”.

“They seem to be objecting largely based on the title using the word ‘genocide’,” Johnson said.

“But ‘genocide’ is not my word, or my finding. The fact of genocide in Gaza is the overwhelming consensus of the human rights world, and it is a wholly mainstream opinion among those tasked with studying and determining such matters.

“That it makes some people upset is unfortunate, but reality is often upsetting. This particular reality is especially upsetting … to the parents of the over 20,000 children killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023. Do Sydney officials plan on removing pro-Israel books from their libraries because it potentially upsets these community members?”

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies declined to comment.

Bart Shteinman, an executive member of the progressive Jewish Council of Australia, said the decision to remove the book for review was “deeply alarming”.

“Public libraries belong to all of us, and should host a range of views and topics, be they books about queer families or Israel’s widely-condemned war crimes,” he said.

Israel has repeatedly denied that it has committed genocide in Gaza.

The New South Wales government passed legislation earlier this year which amended the state’s Library Act to better protect the institutions from campaigns to ban books.

Shteinman said “if the council decides to remove this book permanently, both the mayor, Will Nemesh, and the special minister of state, John Graham, must explain how that decision is not in breach of the law”.

The president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, Nasser Mashni, said it was a “library’s duty to provide its community access to a broad range of published works, including those that may challenge or discomfort”.

“Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, maimed and displaced,” he said.

“Gaza’s population is facing engineered famine, and all of its hospitals and universities have been destroyed. The word genocide is not being used to offend anyone. It is being used because it describes the scale and intent of what is happening.”

Mashni said “history has taught us too well what happens when books start getting banned”.

David Shulman, the senior commissioning editor at Pluto Press, which published How to Sell a Genocide, said understanding events in Gaza and related media coverage was “a matter of the greatest public concern”.

“Adam Johnson is one of the sharpest media critics working today, and his analysis is rigorous, meticulous, data-driven and damning,” Shulman said.

“His book should be made as widely available as possible, not least through the public libraries that play such an essential role in a democratic society.”

The Waverley mayor and the special minister of state were contacted for comment.

AFL fans defending all players involved in true cognitive dissonance.

Again.

17 years since the Johns brothers were exposed by 4corners Code of Silence, and protected for their involvement in gang rape. Forums then were no different to today.

When men hate women as systemically as they do, they band together to reinforce violence against women by pushing known myths and appealing to biases.

Shame must switch sides.

A NSW Supreme Court judge has delivered a sweeping rejection of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, labelling it “verbose and imprecise”.

[Justice Desmond Fagan] said the IHRA formulation did not reflect the established Australian meaning of antisemitism and described it as an attempt to “repurpose” the term to encompass both hatred of Jews and criticism of Israel.

He said the definition could not realistically be attributed to the ordinary, reasonably informed Australian, adding that “the IHRA proposal is detached from the reality of the common usage and understanding of antisemitism in this country”.

He said the IHRA formulation “appears to be an attempt to repurpose the term ‘antisemitism’” as an amalgamated concept encompassing hatred towards Jews and criticism of Israel.

Fagan was equally forthcoming with attempts to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

“As an ideology of Jewish nationalism, Zionism is open to political discussion and criticism, notably on grounds concerning the rights of the Palestinians,” the judgement read.

“It may well be correct that ‘most, but not all Jewish Australians’ regard Zionism as ‘a core part of their Jewish identity’,” Fagan’s judgement read. “That does not mean that anti-Zionists are hostile to that majority of Jews on account of their Jewishness; only that they hold a negative view of a political ideology with which the majority of Jews have chosen to identify.”

Edit to add: for all of the "source bad" types, the full finding has been published:

https://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au/decision/1a00e6b4787e30be37fd7ccd#_Ref237950635

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.

What the documents show

In 2023, Samuel Porter, then Deputy CEO and Chief Operating Officer of the NDIA, took a personal meeting with the Australian President of Palantir. The NDIA’s own security architect flagged that Palantir did not hold the required government security clearance. The engagement continued anyway.

Freedom of Information documents, obtained by disability advocate Sam Connor, show it ran from April 2023 to February 2024 — spanning a Proof of Concept, Palantir’s Foundry Cloud Architecture Diagram and Security Whitepaper, multiple documents titled ‘Palantir Technologies — Failed Payments NDIA,’ follow-up sessions on SAP integration, and a Palantir Terms of Service.

In November 2025, Palantir received its Protected-level security clearance — the level at which NDIS participant files sit.

The NDIA declined to release all 22 documents,

citing business information exemptions — protecting Palantir’s commercial interests rather than the public’s right to know.

Whether the engagement proceeded to a contract remains unknown. The NDIA is exempt from Commonwealth Procurement Rules and does not publish its contracts on AusTender — making independent verification impossible.

In response to questions from Michael West Media, a NDIA spokesperson said: “The NDIA has not used Palantir technology and has no plans to do so.”

The statement did not address the Freedom of Information documents showing extended engagement between the NDIA and Palantir from April 2023 to February 2024, including a Proof of Concept, a pitch on failed NDIS payments processing, and a Palantir Terms of Service document. It did not address why 22 documents relating to that engagement were refused in full.