The Australian Government’s 2026–27 Federal Budget, announced on 12 May 2026, includes a major reform for the building and construction industry, with $42.7 million committed over four years to make mandatory Australian Standards free to access.

This initiative is expected to significantly benefit builders, building consultants, tradespeople, apprentices, project managers, and property owners across Australia. For industries heavily reliant on compliance documentation — particularly construction, occupational health and safety (OHS), and product safety — the announcement represents one of the most important regulatory accessibility changes in years.

Everyone gets so tied up and focused on things like race, house prices, 'the economy' and similar topics as the only possible reason people can be against high immigration, but what about simply preferring there to be fewer people here?

Case in point, each morning now when I go to get on the train to commute into the city (Sydney) it is pretty much sardine-can level cramming in, barely able to fit into the carriage and having people rub up against you just in order to fit on.

In just a small matter of years ago, this was nowhere near the case and it was even possible to get a seat. There obviously has not been proportionally enough additional services put on in order to cater to the population growth.

Same deal with just walking through the city, you basically have to keep walking at all times as there will always be someone walking behind you, or trying to get a spot at the beach, or in carparks of shopping centres, or any other numerous cases that don't have anything to do with the 'bigger issues'. You know, actual lived daily quality of life stuff.

Is it 'evil' or does it make you a 'bad person' to simply prefer things to be less crowded, or especially at least slowing down the pace at which things are becoming more crowded?

Especially given there's been no real efforts made to encourage regional development, and basically force everyone to cram into the capitals for employment purposes?

>A Pacific island nation on the front line of the climate change threat is building land to try to hold back rising sea levels.

>But as the majority of Tuvalu’s population applies to relocate to Australia, a haunting question is being confronted: what happens to a country if the people have to leave?

ABC, SBS reject federal government, special envoy’s definition of antisemitism

The ABC warned that examples associated with the definition could “risk conflating legitimate political and policy critique with antisemitism”.

By Calum Jaspan

3 min. read

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That would “establish a clear national understanding of antisemitism across all areas of state and federal government responsibility,” she wrote. “Consolidating a uniform national definition of antisemitism is a critical first step toward co-ordinated action.”

Antisemitism has been on the rise in Australia in recent years amid Israel’s war in Gaza. In December, the Bondi Beach terror attack on a Hanukkah celebration claimed the lives of 15 people and led to the royal commission.

Progressive, Islamic and pro-Palestinian groups have opposed the definition, saying it stifles free speech and legitimate criticism of Israel.

A spokesman for Segal was contacted for comment. Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said it was ludicrous that people were still debating definitions of antisemitism when it was such a serious threat to Australian life.

“The IHRA definition is being used by the royal commission as well as governments around the world, including our own,” Ryvchin said.

On the first day of the royal commission in February, commissioner Virginia Bell admitted the definition was “not free of controversy”. The definition itself was not controversial, she said, but two examples of the definition in use were controversial because they had led to suggestions that criticising the Israeli government could be wrongly branded antisemitic.

One of the 11 provided examples suggests it could be antisemitic to claim Israel’s existence is a “racist endeavour”.

The ABC pointed to the definitions in its statement, saying that some of the “illustrative examples have become increasingly contentious and are widely regarded as ambiguous”.

“These examples have been the subject of highly politicised debate internationally and have, in some contexts, been applied in ways that risk conflating legitimate political and policy critique with antisemitism,” the ABC spokeswoman said.

“The ABC notes that the IHRA’s core definition – ‘antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews’ – is not inconsistent with the ABC’s understanding or practical application of antisemitism.”

Bell told the hearing in February that her view was that concerns about the examples pay insufficient attention to a requirement that they be interpreted in context, and to the terms of the definition itself.

Text surrounding the core definition produced by IHRA notes that: “Criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”

The divergence in definitions of antisemitism is consequential in part because Segal last year recommended she monitor the media to ensure “accurate, fair and responsible reporting” on the issue.

Segal’s report said that funding for institutions such as the ABC and SBS should be withheld if they are found to have promoted division or spread false or distorted narratives.

“Funding agreements or enabling legislation should be drafted to ensure that public funding can be readily terminated where organisations or individuals engage in or facilitate antisemitism,” the report reads.

According to the FOI documents, SBS met with Segal in April last year and acknowledged the report she produced. SBS agreed that all media organisations should engage in fair, accurate and responsible reporting, but said it was monitored by its audiences every day and was accountable to its own code of practice and independent ombudsman.

In a statement, an SBS spokesperson said the broadcaster was independent, focused on social cohesion and took great care with its language and terminology.

“SBS acknowledges there are diverse definitions of antisemitism and does not adopt or endorse any one organisation’s definition,” the spokesperson said. “SBS’s role is to report on these issues in a balanced and impartial way.”

The recent federal budget included an additional $3 million over three years to extend production of SBS Examines, a podcast which focuses on “dispelling misinformation and disinformation impacting Australia’s social cohesion, especially in multicultural and multilingual communities”.

SBS has reported extensively on the impacts of antisemitism on the Jewish community, it said, and as the multicultural and multilingual broadcaster, it plays a vital role in fostering social cohesion and “giving a choice to underrepresented groups”.

Progressive Jewish lobby group, the Jewish Council of Australia, challenged the use of the IHRA definition in the ongoing royal commission last week, arguing that it blurred the line between hate speech and political speech. Several other Jewish groups of much longer standing are solidly in favour of the definition, arguing it is a vital tool to help root out overt and coded antisemitism.

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>in brief

>Calls for action have been made after the alleged killing of two children and a woman in Sydney.

>Anthony Albanese has said "we know what's required here".

Nine shareholders have today unanimously voted in favour of selling off their regional TV assets to WIN Television, including Nine (NTD-8) Darwin. The competition watchdog ACCC had already approved the deal.

It means for Darwin viewers, there will almost certainly soon be changes coming to Nine Darwin. The arrival of WIN Television into the NT will see the end of the currently Newcastle-produced 9News Darwin mini-bulletins, to likely be replaced with short, generic, WIN News noodle updates. As for a full bulletin, if it were to return, it would have the WIN News branding, and would serve the entire NT, from Darwin to Alice Springs.

Keating defends Chalmers and Albanese amid CGT backlash, as Minns blasts feds on income tax

Minns’ intervention on the need to let workers keep more of what they earn came on top of his refusal to endorse Chalmers’ changes to the CGT discount.

By Paul Sakkal, Shane Wright

4 min. read

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“Yet when Jim Chalmers announces a policy principle to restore the equity of taxing capital profits on a basis of equality with the taxation of income – we hear the howls for continuing preference.”

In response to investors’ claims that money would shift to places like Singapore and New Zealand which don’t have a capital gains tax, Keating said: “Punters with a big idea won’t be put off by some marginal change to the tax rate.

“The rush of entrepreneurial blood to the brain always dominates.”

Keating’s defence of Chalmers came a week after the treasurer, who wrote his PhD on Keating’s pro-market reforms, restored the CGT discount to a model similar to the one Keating created before Howard’s changes.

Critics say it was correct to scrap negative gearing and the CGT discount on housing. But they worry that by extending the changes to all assets, young entrepreneurs taking big risks would lose out and older people who invest in blue-chip shares would win.

Another talking point out of last week’s federal budget, billed as Labor’s most ambitious, was the government’s decision to offer a permanent $250 tax offset known as the Working Australian’s Tax Offset. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor followed up by pledging a structural change to income tax that would index the thresholds to inflation, permanently handing back bracket creep. Chalmers rejected indexation, and suggested Labor would continue to use the offset to provide relief.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.Dominic Lorrimer

Minns lent weight to the campaign for indexing proposed by Taylor. Keating and his union ally, Labor doyen Bill Kelty, have previously called for the top marginal rate of 47 per cent to be cut because, as Keating has said, the internationally high rate was “confiscatory”. So has independent MP Allegra Spender.

Minns told reporters: “The top marginal rate is 47 per cent. As I said in parliament last week, you work Monday, Tuesday, and half Wednesday for yourself and then Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for the government, that’s a tough burden.”

“I know budgets are under pressure but, in a general sense, whether it’s now or in the future, we do need to make sure we’re taking urgent action when it comes to personal income taxes.”

Taylor seized on Minns’ comments on the tax contest, which has created an ideological tussle over aspiration that is set to dominate political debate before the next election.

“Even state premiers can see what Anthony Albanese will not admit,” he said.

The Victorian labor government did not buy in, saying only in a statement: “We are currently assessing the implications for businesses in Victoria.”

In Melbourne, Chalmers pushed back against Minns by noting that marginal tax rates did not operate in the way Minns had suggested.

“One of the problems with our tax system right now is it’s out of whack. It doesn’t reward work sufficiently, which is why we’re cutting taxes five times in three different ways,” he said.

“We’re taking some difficult decisions to fix that.”

Chalmers signalled some CGT changes for the start-up sector. These changes are unlikely to satisfy a growing host of critics including independent MP Allegra Spender and former Labor adviser Lachlan Harris who worry the new inflation-measured discount will chill investment and hurt many business people, not just startup founders.

Keating introduced the CGT in 1985 as part of a broad tax package that included deep cuts to personal and company tax cuts plus the creation of the fringe benefits tax. The Coalition then, led by John Howard, vowed to axe the tax at the 1987 election.

In 1999, then-Liberal treasurer Peter Costello overhauled the CGT, replacing the inflation-indexation system with a flat 50 per cent discount on all nominal capital gains. It was expected to boost investment into the share market, but critics argue that it instead drove a near 25-year surge in house prices.

Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson used a National Press Club speech to hail what he called a “truly organic” social media campaign which has poked fun at Labor’s CGT changes. He described Albanese as “the guy in that group assignment that does none of the work, but still wants the grade”.

“Where we should have got unity, we had the prime minister stoking fights around kitchen tables of the nation, pitting children against their parents, grandchildren against their grandparents,” Wilson said.

“It is a budget so absent of ambition for our nation that its failure is shown up in its own numbers.”

Chalmers blasted Wilson, describing his speech as “the least coherent, least credible shadow treasurer hit-out after a budget that anyone can remember.

“Tim Wilson’s misinformation and his lies didn’t last 30 minutes of scrutiny,” Chalmers said. “First of all, their policy is for bigger deficits and more debt and more inflation”.
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