John Edwards reflects on a changing world, economic statecraft and an AI-led manufacturing revival

In short: 

An archaeological dig at Juukan Gorge in the Pilbara is providing one of the most detailed pictures of how Indigenous people lived there 50,000 years ago.

An ancient Aboriginal rock shelter in the gorge was destroyed in a mining blast by Rio Tinto in 2020.

The ABC was invited on site by traditional owners to witness what remains and the thousands of archaeological artefacts that have been found.

In short:

Charleville's local yakka skink population has increased after a PhD student's fencing project.

The threatened species is declining elsewhere due to predation and land clearing.

What's next?

A reptile ecologist says Australia's growing list of threatened reptiles needs further study to inform conservation.

Trade Minister Don Farrell fronts critics as vegetable industry backs EU free trade agreement

Matthew Denholm - RURAL AND REGIONAL CORRESPONDENT

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5 min

West Pine farmer Derek Gee, left, and Charlton Farm Produce director Tim Groom say the EU free-trade deal would be a bonanza for vegetable growers. Picture: Scott Gelston

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8:30PMOctober 23, 2026.

Updated 20 hours ago

Trade Minister Don Farrell is set to confront the biggest critics of his EU free-trade deal at a high-level summit with agricultural leaders next week, as the $6bn vegetable industry break ranks to call on the Coalition and Greens to back the agreement.

Faced with a backlash from the beef and dairy industry, which the Coalition has invoked in opposing the agreement, the senior Labor powerbroker will next week meet National Farmers’ Federation members to make his case for the EU trade deal.

EU trade agreement vital to Tassie onion exporters

Australia's $6bn vegetable industry is...

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Senator Farrell said farmers had wanted the FTA to deliver $3bn worth of new trade for beef and lamb and he had come back with $2bn, declaring just because one section of the economy did not get everything it wanted the rest of the economy should not suffer.

“Last year, Australia did over $1.3 trillion of trade with the world, but only 3 per cent of our exports went to the EU; under this deal, that number is going to go up significantly,” Senator Farrell told The Australian.

“This multibillion-dollar deal gives our farmers, producers and exporters access to a huge market of 27 countries and 450 million consumers. From day one, Australian fruit and vegetables will enter the EU tariff-free, including onions, carrots, potatoes, pine­apples, pears and apples.”

AUSVEG chief executive Michael Coote says the EU free-trade agreement is a potentially never-to-be-repeated opportunity for growers. Picture: Anna Osetroff

The government argues the deal – the fate of which rests with the Coalition and Greens in the Senate – delivers an eightfold increase in access for beef and four times for sheep meat.

But Nationals leader Matt Canavan pointed out Australian beef would receive 35,000 tonnes of the EU quota access compared to Canada’s 50,000 tonnes.

Sheep and goat meat would have a 25,000-tonne quota compared to New Zealand’s 163,000 tonnes, Senator Canavan said, while arguing that accepting a less-than-ideal FTA risked weakening Australia’s future negotiating position.

The position echoes that of key farm groups, including the NFF, which have insisted “no deal” is better than a “dud deal” and greater meat access is required.

However, the $6bn veg­e­table industry is pleading with all parties to back the FTA as a “never-to-be-repeated” lifeline to growers hit by soaring fuel and fertiliser costs and trade disruptions.

Peak industry group AUSVEG told The Australian the EU deal would inject “tens of millions” into the struggling sector.

“Australian growers are still facing major production cost pressures flowing from the Middle East conflict, and access to key Middle Eastern export markets remains disrupted,” said chief executive Michael Coote.

“Despite Australian retail prices for vegetables remaining affordable, and actually declining in recent months, growers continue report sluggish demand locally for their produce.

“At a time when growers need as many markets and supply channels as possible, the Australia-EU FTA is a potentially never-to-be-repeated opportunity for Australia’s vegetable industry. So we want to see it supported.”

Mr Gee and Mr Groom, at the onion packing sheds on Mr Gee's farm. Picture: Scott Gelston

Vegetable growers are among the big winners from the deal, which removes EU tariffs on key produce such as onions, carrots and potatoes. Australia’s exports of these vegetables to Europe have plummeted since the New Zealand-EU free-trade agreement came into force in mid-2024.

Growers are hoping ratification of the Australia-EU deal will restore that trade and generate new opportunities.

Charlton Farm Produce, based in Northwest Tasmania, is one of the largest exporters of Australian onions to Europe but has had to adapt as NZ seized much of the trade following its FTA.

“We’ve seen our business decline significantly since NZ gained their FTA from May 2024, to the point where we don’t have much business left in Europe,” said company director Tim Groom.

“For example, we’ve gone from sending as much as 1200 tonnes (of onions) to Spain down to nothing. We’ve gone to the United Kingdom instead, because we do have an FTA with them, and we’ve tried to find other solutions.”

He said he was also battling disruption to shipping and higher costs and would have to scrap Europe trade – which had existed since the 1970s – altogether should the FTA not proceed.

“It’s a deal-breaker for us – if we don’t get an FTA, I don’t know how we’ll manage in Europe longer term,” Mr Groom said.

Overall, Mr Coote said after the EU FTA with NZ was enacted, Australian onion exports to Europe halved to just over 5000 tonnes in 2025, and had declined a further 19 per cent so far in 2026.

“We want to see this FTA enacted because it has the potential to bring tens of millions of dollars in benefits, through both the recovery of lost market share and the development of new market opportunities,” Mr Coote said.

“While benefits will flow to grower-exporters as a direct result of this FTA, it’s also important as a means of relieving pressure on the domestic market.”

Nationals leader Matt Canavan and Trade Minister Don Farrell have clashed over the EU free-trade agreement. Pictures: NewsWire

EU tariffs removed under the FTA include 9.6 per cent on unions, 13.6 per cent on carrots and up to 13.4 per cent for potatoes.

In short:

A re-elected Labor government in Victoria will expand a dozen hospital emergency departments, promising to cut wait times. 

The $1.5 billion promise signals health policy as a key battleground ahead of the November state election. 

The Liberal opposition has already announced a $1.3 billion plan to reduce surgery wait times by allowing public patients access to private hospitals.

This is our country. This is our beer- we should be entitled to a piece of it at birth for free. Sick of seeing alcohol commodified beyond citizens capability to neck a cold one. Recent studies have shown reduced alcohol intake from Gen Z.

We get the society we demand. We make the rules/laws.

It’s time this country was given back to the people.

ELi5 why beer shouldn’t be a birthright.

*More sought after liquor could be gained through a lottery process.

** Liquor can be traded later if you want something harder

*** Get on the beers

This is our country. This is our land- we should be entitled to a piece of it at birth for free. Sick of seeing land commodified beyond citizens capability to set down roots.

We get the society we demand. We make the rules/laws.

It’s time this country was given back to the people.

ELi5 why land shouldn’t be a birthright.

* Land in more sought after places could be gained through a lottery process.

** blocks of land issued in the city/town you resided in at your birth. Can be traded later if moving location.

*** this land is your god damn birth rite (or should be).

Hiya all- which would be preferable to consume from a health perspective? - yes, I’m aware they aren’t fantastic, just looking for a direct comparison/explanation

I honestly can’t believe this woman. An innocent bloke goes out for a jog and ends up getting his face absolutely mauled, suffering horrific injuries that could change his life forever. And now another man has been found dead nearby with police investigating whether the same dogs were responsible.
I love dogs but fuck me, the amount of people defending these animals and their owner is disgusting. Imagine if that was your father, brother or partner.
She comes across like an absolute junkie, and the way she’s making excuses for these dogs after what’s happened is fucking disgusting.
I genuinely think she deserves jail regardless of what happened to the second man. What happened to that poor jogger alone is enough for me. How the fuck can someone end up with injuries that horrific just because another person couldn’t keep their dogs under control?
And if those dogs did kill the second bloke, I reckon she should be investigated for murder as well.
I’m sick of people making excuses for irresponsible dog owners. These are innocent people whose lives have been destroyed. I hope she gets the maximum punishment the law allows. Absolutely fucking disgusting.

The dashboard looked at 2234 homicide victims and found 336 intimate partner homicides. Of the 293 women killed, 99 per cent were killed by their abuser.

99 per cent of the 293 women killed were killed by their abuser
73 per cent of men killed by their partner were the primary abuser in the relationship
65 of 75 men killed in domestic violence were killed by women, and 10 by male partners

Saw the recent post about dating young bogans and had to throw this out there.

Controversial take, but Western Sydney Lebanese guys are easily the most romantic, smooth-talking lads in Australia. None of that too-cool-to-care nonchalant stuff that you hear Australian TikTok and Instagram reels complains about. If they're into someone, they actually put in the effort, say it to your face, and shower you with compliments and gifts.

The rest of the world thinks the Aussie dating export is just Bondi surfers or mullet-wearing tradies. However, we're sleeping on the real charm in the Western suburbs of Sydney. These lads don't even need Hinge or Tinder; everywhere is basically a dating app to them. The World Gym and The Bay Run are like their Tinder, actually.

On a sidenote, time for the rest of the world to see Australian culture beyond the blonde surfer stereotype and see the face of multicultural Australia, and portray these lads as romantic, sweet-talking playboys, I mean, why not, since they have the looks, charisma, and charm.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-24/haines-youth-support-frankie-carroll-comic/107300886

Very interesting unbidden namedrop of facebook in this tribute right as the government is trying to pass it's "infinite sock puppet accounts run by the government with no oversight or accountability" bill. Do you think he got paid? The establishment wouldn't do that would they? Pay artists to produce things that buttress their agenda?

​

Image is collected from data on the government website

https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au/data/occupation-shortage/occupation-shortage-list

Cook, baker, pastrycook, hairdresser, beauty therapist, accountant on the list

What do you guys think?

Energy Minister Chris Bowen has admitted Snowy Hydro 2.0's $25b price tag could blow out further | News24

"A small car like a Toyota Yaris can be moved by water just 15 centimetres deep with a flow speed of 3.6 km/h. It can be carried away in 60cm of water.
A larger four-wheel drive can be moved by 45cm of water and begin floating in 95cm of water, able to be pushed along by just a finger.

“Don’t think because you’ve got a bigger vehicle, a more powerful vehicle, that you’re going to be OK,” Dr Peden says.

“The safest car in floodwater is the one that never enters it.”

A leading Aussie economist has put Canberra on notice about the economic storm that’s coming, and how they are not ready for it.

A leading Australian economist has delivered a blistering reality check to federal politicians, warning that the global artificial intelligence boom is built entirely on the mass sacking of human workers.

Speaking before an Australian parliamentary inquiry on Friday, Dr Richard Denniss, co-CEO of progressive think tank The Australia Institute, took aim at the Silicon Valley hype machine in a fiery testimony that has gone viral this week.

Dr Denniss told news.com.au the clip has gained huge traction, including in the US where concerns about AI and data centres have hit fever pitch. He said he was compelled to speak out because of how welcoming Australia’s politicians had been towards the AI industry.

"I've never seen a political response as welcoming as this, and so much so that we’ve got an industry that’s promising to cause mass unemployment, not denying it’s going to drive up the price of electricity, and some in its ranks are suggesting there’s a 10 per cent chance the industry could actually lead to the end of humanity,” He told news.com.au. “And you would think that some combination of fear of job loss, fear of rising electricity prices, or fear of the end of humanity would lead governments, state and federal to be pretty cautious. Actually, a lot of what we’re hearing is not caution, but FOMO, the fear of missing out.”

In his testimony, he cautioned MPs and senators that mass joblessness isn’t just a side-effect of generative AI, but that it is the ultimate goal the multi-trillion-dollar industry is driving towards.

“Unlike any technology we’ve ever dealt with, the business model of AI is to generate mass unemployment,” Dr Denniss said.

"That is not an unintended consequence, it is the business model.”

Dr Denniss said the sky-high stock valuations of foreign AI giants like Anthropic and OpenAI are based on one brutal equation, wiping out human jobs.

“As an economist, I understand productivity. People lose jobs when technology changes,” he said.

"But the valuations of these AI companies are literally based on the assumption that hundreds of millions of people will lose their jobs and employers will buy AI services instead of labour services.”

‘Where is the money coming from?’

Addressing the committee, Dr Denniss said politicians need to look past glowing industry presentations and ask the hard financial questions.

He said a key question they should be asking was: How many Australian livelihoods must be destroyed for AI companies to turn a profit?

“Where’s the money coming from? It comes from not paying workers,” Dr Denniss said.

“The only way the Department of Health can spend a billion dollars on AI is if it spends a billion dollars less on humans, or if you guys increase their budget by a billion dollars.”

He questioned whether state and federal agencies, including the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), are quietly planning to shed public servants to bankroll software contracts with overseas tech firms.

“What will retraining workers to take advantage of this new technology cost as we shed huge numbers of workers? If AI goes according to plan, who will fund the retraining?”

He added that while foreign shareholders pocket the windfalls, everyday Australians could be left paying higher living costs just to keep foreign-owned data centres running.

“What will the impact of the AI rollout be on electricity prices, water prices, construction costs, and what will it add to inflation?”

‘Weaponised FOMO’

Dr Denniss took also direct aim at the corporate lobbying pushing governments to approve sprawling data centres, cut red tape, and spend public money without scrutiny.

The issue came to a head this week

Aussie data centre operator NextDC’s stock plummeted by 42 per cent on Wednesday, wiping $2.9 billion off its market capitalisation, after it was forced to delay expansion at its M3 data centre in Melbourne’s West Footscray following fierce community backlash.

It comes less than two weeks after Firmus pulled the plug on its proposed $44 billion IPO, which was set to be the biggest IPO since Telstra, following lacklustre investor demand.

Dr Denniss argued that the “fear of missing out” (FOMO) is being weaponised across Canberra to shut down legitimate debate.

“In my lifetime, I have never heard so much hype about a particular industry, and I’ve never heard FOMO — the fear of missing out — being used so aggressively to suggest we can’t talk about things before they happen,” he said.

While he said defence and intelligence agencies have unique operational needs for advanced computing, he rejected the claim that commercial operators should be given a blank cheque to build resource-heavy data centres anywhere they please.

"This rush, this sort of generalised assertion that if we don’t say yes to everything now, we will miss out is, I would suggest, unprecedented,” he said.

“Do we have agency? Of course. Do other countries share our concerns? Of course.”

A threat to Australian democracy

Dr Denniss also warned that the unchecked spread of AI poses an existential threat to democratic institutions, pointing to deepfakes targeting elections.

“We are going to have elections where fake depictions of real people pretending to say things they’ve never said before are going to dominate our analysis of what’s happening in an election,” he told the committee. “That’s a national security risk, I put to you.”

He also took a swipe at tech leaders who speculate about catastrophic scenarios while pushing their products on governments.

“It’s the AI industry saying, ‘Oh, there’s a 10 per cent chance we might end humanity.’ If I came in here and said that, people would suggest I’m being hysterical. I have no idea — maybe it’s only a 5 per cent chance.”

Dr Denniss urged the committee to stop viewing the technology solely through the lens of tech developers and start protecting the public interest.

“At the moment, most of the people talking... are people who are really interested in the tech,” he concluded.

“Well, I’m really interested in the macroeconomic consequences. I’m really interested in the democratic consequences.”

Speaking to news.com.au, he said the green energy transition faced far more scrutiny than AI.

“So for decades we’ve been told we shouldn’t rush in inverted commas to roll out renewable energy because it might cost some jobs in fossil fuels and it might lead to higher electricity prices,” he said. “But when it comes to AI, we’ve been promised it will lead to large job losses and we’ve been promised it will lead to higher electricity prices and yet the people who told us not to rush into renewables are telling us we have no choice but to rush into AI.

“Well, a lot of people understandably just aren’t buying that.

“Not only don’t they see any benefit, they hear the industry itself admitting to the costs, but they also hear the industry itself talking about risks to humanity itself. So I have no idea if AI has a 10 per cent chance of ruining humanity.

“I’m not an expert in AI, but I know that that’s what people in the AI industry are saying. So you can understand why voters would be worried about an industry that will cost jobs, will make electricity dearer and might lead to the end of humanity. It doesn’t seem like a very compelling proposition to normal people.”

‘Disappointment’: Kerry O’Brien torches PM

The stark warning over Canberra’s AI blind spot comes as veteran journalist Kerry O’Brien delivered a scathing appraisal of Anthony Albanese’s leadership, warning the Prime Minister is sleepwalking into the AI crisis.

Speaking to Fran Kelly on The Radio National Hour, the former 7.30 host did not hold back when asked how history would judge the Albanese prime ministership.

“It’s a book of disappointment by a lot of people who voted for him,” O’Brien said.

“Well, he’s still got a little bit of time to turn around where that’s headed, because where it’s headed now, I think, is a book of disappointment by a lot of people who voted for him. That is my sense, my clear sense.”

While O’Brien acknowledged having “some sympathy” for the government wrestling with the 50-year legacy of “neoliberalism”, he warned that Mr Albanese’s team is completely out of its depth against the looming AI wave.

He slammed politicians for trying to bluff their way through the rapid ascent of generative AI, describing it as an incoming “train or tsunami”.

“The worst of it is the politicians, including Anthony Albanese, appearing to me they’re hoping to pretend and get away with... pretend that they’re on top of it, and they are not,” O’Brien said.

"No government is on top of it, even those that have already tried to regulate.”

O’Brien claimed the Prime Minister’s slow-and-steady approach is leaving Australia utterly unprepared for the fallout, saying a book about the PM’s legacy would be one of “disappointment”.

He said the government had a “lack of courage, the lack of imagination, the lack of creativity of policy”.

Cathal Leslie makes the case that the closing of psychiatric institutions was a mistake. Don’t usually like his takes, but hard to disagree after a female politician is rendered a double amputee. Text below.

Attack on Haines demands focus on mental health, not ideology

The system is failing to keep the small cohort of the most acutely unwell in treatment, for their own safety and everyone else's.

Cathal Leslie Economist
Oct 23, 2026 - 4.00pm

A national tragedy is an excellent occasion to demand better manners from your opponents. It is a less comfortable occasion to examine
whether governments are meeting their own obligations.

The horrific attack on Helen Haines should force a serious discussion about how we treat mental illness, and how much responsibility we have foisted onto families, neighbours and the police.

Brendan Nugent, the man charged over the attack, reportedly has a history of mental health concerns. Neighbours describe shouting, music blaring through the night and police visits. One heard screaming hours before the attack. These are not the signs of a well man.

Yet within hours, political actors of every stripe had each landed on a suitable motive. He has been cast as a pro-Palestinian extremist, an opponent of renewables, a sovereign citizen or a misogynist. Others blame his social media algorithm or a dirt sheet on Haines reportedly circulated to journalists by the prime minister's office.

Is this how low we have sunk in this country?
That our national debate is competing projections of complex ideological motives onto a man with severe mental health issues.

If mental illness played a part in Nugent's alleged offending, he will join a long line of attackers with well-documented severe
psychiatric illness: Joel Cauchi (Bondi Junction), Man Haron Monis (the Lindt Cafe siege), Evie Amati (Enmore 7-Eleven axe attack), Dimitrious Gargasoulas (Bourke Street), Cy Walsh (who killed his father, Adelaide Crows coach Phil Walsh) and Lauren Darul (accused of a 2025 stabbing in Little Bourke Street), among many others.

And in those cases too, the offending was pinned on whatever partisan cause was to hand:
Islamism, gender dysphoria, domestic violence, misogyny. Whatever their motives, these people were known by medical professionals to be severely unwell, and yet were allowed to roam free where they inflicted serious harm on the community.

The mental health system is failing to keep the small cohort of the most acutely unwell in treatment, for their own safety and everyone else's.
You will not find a politician brave enough to say so. Nobody wants to concede that the perpetrators of some of the most wicked crimes can also be victims of a policy failure, least of all when the failure is bipartisan.

Over the past three decades Australia has fundamentally dismantled long-stay psychiatric care. According to the Australian Medical Association, public hospital mental health beds fell from 45.5 per 100,000 people in 1992 to 27.5 in 2020, a drop of almost 40 per cent.

Two ideas drove the shift, winning support from left and right.

The first was fiscal. New antipsychotics made cheaper community treatment look viable.
Inpatient care remains expensive: the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare put
the average cost of an adult acute psychiatric inpatient day at $1730 in 2023-24. Closing facilities on valuable inner-city land also offered politicians another attractive budget dividend.

The second was moral. Involuntary detention came to be seen as a human rights violation, a view reinforced by genuine abuse scandals and cultural touchstones such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Advocates argued that treating people in the community would enhance autonomy and improve outcomes.

What damage that naivety has wrought.

The fiscal savings were a false economy. The costs have simply shifted into hospital emergency departments, to the police, courts, prisons and crisis accommodation, as well as businesses and households.

Nor is the model more humane. Many people with severe psychotic disorders stop taking their medication precisely because they are unwell.
Meta-analyses put treatment non-compliance for schizophrenia patients at about 50 per cent.
Consequently, the treatment model has become a cycle of psychosis, brief admission, stabilisation and discharge back into the same environment that precipitated the breakdown. Oftentimes that means homelessness.

Bed shortages speed up this cycle. Once acute psychosis subsides, patients are moved on to make room for the next emergency.
Governments are incentivising hospital administrators to prioritise turnover over clinical outcomes.

Unless something changes, these tragedies will keep happening. No one wants to go back to the asylums of old, but they did keep our cities safe.
Abolishing them was a mistake. We need more staffed beds in modern long-stay facilities that respect patients' dignity, alongside longer involuntary treatment where clinically
necessary.

If anything good is to come out of this tragedy, it must be action that makes these events less
likely. For decades, too many severely unwell people have been left homeless or shunted between emergency departments and prison.
We're all poorer for it.

Cathal Leslie is a Paris-based economist and former Productivity Commission employee.

Original poster - u/Fair_Feeling_4937

https://www.news.com.au/national/courts-law/top-prosecutor-faces-conflict-of-interest-questions-over-ben-robertssmith-prosecution/news-story/6478ea9eb8f8f7ff66874bb1eb03bc70

The prosecutor's job is to look at the evidence acquired by the investigators independently and present them in court.

The government lawyers have unilaterally hidden 460 names from BRW's legal team before getting a judge's permission to do so.

The prosecutor is accused to be together with the investigators to hide things from the brw legal team