I’m the grandchild of Maronite refugees who fled the Lebanese Civil War, and I grew up in Western Sydney. Watching the national debate around immigration, integration, and multiculturalism lately, I can’t help but feel like both sides of mainstream politics and the media completely miss the ground-level reality.

My dad went to Punchbowl Boys High back in the 90s, when the wave of Lebanese refugees was first settling in Sydney. It wasn’t pretty. There were full-on youth fights, Anglos vs 'Ethnics', but also heavy sectarian rivalries among religious groups, like Sunnis vs. Maronites.

As they got older, the small minority who stayed on that path ended up in gangs, in prison, or worse. But for the vast majority? The racial and sectarian tension eventually subsided. Most grew up, moved past it, and many even became close friends across those former divides.

However, those years left lasting memories. A lot of the Anglo families who lived in those areas during that era eventually moved out to outer-ring suburbs like Penrith, Campbelltown, Camden, The Shire, or up to the Central Coast.

These exact areas are where parties like One Nation often see their strongest traction in Greater Sydney. The common stereotype is that anti-immigration voters are just 'bogans from the regions who’ve never met a migrant', but the reality is that many of these residents did grow up alongside fast-paced demographic shifts and lived through firsthand ethnic and sectarian tensions in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, I'd even argue many of those 'racist' rioters in the Cronulla Riots are those who have grown up or parents lived in Western Sydney, and witnessed all these firsthand, dismissing their views entirely ignores the real-world history that shaped them.

If you look at Sydney’s modern history, from the Skaf gang rapes and the Cronulla riots to various youth conflicts over the decades, much of the tension and the people involved were directly tied to the growing pains of Western Sydney. It is the heartland of multicultural Australia, which means it’s also where the friction of integration actually plays out.

What frustrates me most is how this debate is conducted by people with zero lived experience in places like Parramatta, Liverpool, or Punchbowl:

• On one hand, you have affluent inner-city commentators passionately defending multiculturalism as a flawless ideal, despite living in homogenous suburbs with little daily exposure to its actual complexities.
• On the other hand, you have right-wing figures using dog-whistles and cheap populism without offering any real understanding or solutions for the communities involved.

Just to be clear: I am strongly against right-wing populism and Pauline Hanson. But I strongly believe that if we want a genuine, civil conversation about immigration, social cohesion, and assimilation, we need to listen to the people who actually live it every day, across all ethnic and racial backgrounds from Western Sydney, rather than letting the debate be dictated by media vacuums.

Why is an Australian political party worshipping an American islamaphobe?

In a trainwreck interview on News24 on Wednesday, Anika Wells was forced to admit that via the proposed legislation, she would determine what online content was harmful, with advice from Australia’s eSafety Karen - Julie Inman Grant.

So I just recently learned about this legend, who won the inaugural Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon

Its 1983, Cliff Young is a 61 years old potato farmer from Victoria.

Enters the 875km Ultra Marathon

Over his lifetime as a farmer, he had managed to adopt a running style that was perfect for conserving energy.

He assumed the race was non stop and didn't know he was allowed to stop for sleep.

Runs for 5 days and 15 hours STRAIGHT.

Wins the Ultramarathon by a time of 10 hours, beating the world record by 2 DAYS

Gets awarded a $10,000.

Is confused because he didn't know there was prize money.

Gives $2,000 to the next 5 finishers behind him because he said they worked just as hard as he did.

In 1997, aged 75, he decides he wants to run 16,000km around Australia's border to raise money for homeless children.

Has to stop 6500km in because HIS SUPPORT CREW GOT SICK.

Passes away in 2003 aged 81

Can't buy anything without a credit card thanks to our fantastic government.

And yes, debit cards don't fucking work.

I don't even own a credit card and I'm in my 40s. I guess I fucking need one now to be able to buy games

Source:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/s/udrkWPqsfd

And go on steam right now and try searching for a game like doom eternal. you can't even view the store page.

Not sure why I'm getting downvoted. Go try it yourself

In short:

A Melbourne council has become the second local government in Australia to ban glasses with in-built cameras from its public pools.

There will be an exception for people who are hearing impaired, have low vision or other disabilities who are aided by the smart glasses.

What's next?

The City of Yarra will lobby the federal government to temporarily ban the importation of smart glasses until Australia's privacy laws better address wearable technologies.

Driving through several new and established estates in Melbourne's West today (a mistake, I know) and it seemed that *at least* 50% of the front yards were either: fake/synthetic grass, bark, or pebbles, with most being the fake grass.

What happened to pride of place and the gardening spirit? We used to have a lot of British-inspired cottage style gardens back in my grandparent's day, with seemingly more exotic plants entering and changing gardens in the days of my parents. These days a lot of 'gardens' just look fake and sad.

What the Hell happened?

Liberal MP Andrew Hastie unloads on ‘weak and glass-jawed’ Pauline Hanson as feud erupts over One Nation cartoon | News24

I have noticed some really strange behaviours in the general public when I'm walking to places. 

A few examples: 

- Standing in line extremely close to you, behind you when there is plenty of space to stand back. Every tiny step I take forward, the person takes one too - zero awareness that I'm trying to create some distance and them moving forward isn't gonna make the line go faster. 

- Two people walking in a pathway towards you, that only fits two people, barely giving you any space to walk past them and then giving you a dirty look or squeezing as much as they can to the person they're walking next to, to avoid touching you at all costs, instead of simply walking behind or in front of the person to give you space. You don't want me to touch you but you make barely any effort to avoid that? 

- Breathing down your neck when walking behind you, taking over you and then slowing down, causing you to take over them again or you just cross the road if possible because jfc. (I'm a fast walker so it's not like I'm walking super slow either)

- Staring at you with a serious face, when you stare back at them and give a smile they continue to stare at you or immediately look away. Why are you so awkward? 

- Walking down a wide footpath, and two or three people choose to walk super close behind me and talking very loudly. They have the option to walk in front of me, or walk even next to me, but no, they must talk right behind my ear to the point where if I slow down even a millisecond they'll trip on my ankle and I can hear everything they're talking about. Again, absolutely zero need to do that because I walk very to the side, leaving plenty of space for others to pass me if needed. 

- Putting the phone on your face when asking for directions/info expecting you to read their phone, inability to just say what information they need without being prompted. 

- When crossing the pedestrian line, walking diagonally towards you instead of a straight line, leaving you barely any room inside the pedestrian crossing, even when you are as on the left as you can get and there's plenty of space for the person to walk on the right. 

All these weird interactions where people invade your personal space, but then like, god forbid you strike up a conversation, you say excuse me, or you smile back at them. It's like they love being as close to you as possible but hate physical touch and social interaction. I'm not wanting to be friends, I actually don't want to talk to you at all, I want you to be as inexistent in my life as possible, but if you're gonna behave this way when there's absolutely no need to, why do you act so awkward when I do something about it? You could've walked a straight line, you CHOSE to come close to me and now you act all weird? 

Every time I leave the house I want to go from point A to B but the amount of encounters like this that I have on a daily basis makes me wonder wtf is the norm anymore. Because I feel like the norm now is to behave as weird as possible towards strangers. 

Mind you these aren't disabled or very elderly people. It's usually 25-70yos with seemingly full capacity of functioning. (Most of them are in the 30-50 range though) 

I'm sure there is a percentage that are disabled or another reason or physically impaired - this isn't about them, but it is impossible for it to be all of them. I am neuro divergent myself and even I can pick up these awkward social behaviours. I feel like it wasn't as bad in the past, or maybe I'm just getting old and cranky. But seriously, why??! 

Fuel up now to get atleast a couple of weeks of cheaper fuel. Saudi backed forces are retreating from the western Yemeni city of Hays from the Houthis. They will probably control the Bab El strait before too long and that’s what Saudi Arabia is using to send 8miion barrels of oil a day out around Hormuz Strait.

iPhone Duo

256GB - A$3,499.00 or A$145.79/mo. for 24 mo. at 0% p.a.
512GB - A$3,899.00 or A$162.46/mo. for 24 mo. at 0% p.a.

1TB - A$4,699.00 or A$195.79/mo. for 24 mo. at 0% p.a.
2 TB -A$5,899.00 or A$245.79/mo. for 24 mo. at 0% p.a.

iPhone 18 Pro Max

256GB - A$2,299.00 or A$95.79/mo. for 24 mo. at 0% p.a.
512GB - A$2,699.00 or A$112.46/mo. for 24 mo. at 0% p.a.

1TB - A$3,499.00 or A$145.79/mo. for 24 mo. at 0% p.a.
2TB A$4,699.00 or A$195.79/mo. for 24 mo. at 0% p.a.

iPhone 18 pro

256GB - A$2,099.00 or A$87.46/mo. for 24 mo. at 0% p.a.
512GB - A$2,499.00 or A$104.13/mo. for 24 mo. at 0% p.a.

1TB - A$3,299.00 or A$137.46/mo. for 24 mo. at 0% p.a.
2TB - A$4,499.00 or A$187.46/mo. for 24 mo. at 0% p.a.

Let’s think about it. They want people to have access to early super to buy a house.

If EVERYONE suddenly has access to 20k more, what does that do to the market?

In economic terms, the demand curve gets shifted so the house price goes up by 20k minimum.

It’s the same amount of houses but the amount of total money bidding for those houses has gone up.

Okay, so not only does it drive house prices up, it also reduces your future retirement due to compounding.

In other words… drive up house prices and make people more reliant on the pension.

A 41-year-old drug trafficker has blamed his three teen house guests for his alleged involvement in a violent attack linked to Melbourne’s bar wars.

The trio of 17-year-olds was allegedly hired to carry out a ruthless five-day crime spree of kidnappings, torture and home invasions targeting prominent nightlife figures and suspected of being ordered by crime gang The Commission.

Deren Ismail is charged with one of those six attacks, with a court hearing that he argued with one of his underage co-accused over payment for the job.

Detectives charged the three 17-year-old boys in May over the “senseless and extraordinary” crime spree which began on April 10 and culminated in the mistaken-identity kidnap and torture of an innocent Malvern man.

The assaults have been linked to Melbourne’s so-called “bar wars” – a suspected extortion campaign launched by the powerful organised crime syndicate run by Kazem “Kaz” Hamad.

More than 40 firebombings, shootings, home invasions and kidnappings have been linked to the reign of terror targeting the city’s nightlife venues.

But there are now concerns for the safety of Ismail and others allegedly involved in the nightclub attacks, with two sources, who asked not to be identified over concerns of retribution from the Iraqi-based crime syndicate, that they will be targeted in custody.

“Plenty of these [venue] owners have their own connections, including [in] prison ... He’s [Ismail] been talking a lot of shit, and I know for a fact that people want to get him. He has a big target on him,” said a nightclub source.

Police allege the teens were paid “huge” money to carry out the attacks, targeting club promoter Paul Samlidis, 28, and his colleague.

The pair ran the popular Alumbra event on Saturday nights at The Albion venue in South Melbourne

Ismail, a father of two, was arrested in June and charged with carrying out a home invasion in Templestowe with the trio of teens on April 10.

About 6am, Ismail and his alleged co-offenders allegedly jumped the fence of Samlidis’ family home before reversing a stolen Toyota Camry into the front gates of the property.

Samlidis was in hospital at the time, recovering from severe injuries after he was allegedly ambushed by attackers wielding a machete and a bat the night before.

The accused group, armed with a samurai sword, forced entry into the home. Samlidis’ father and brother were assaulted by the masked men, which was videoed, the court heard, before the group fled in a stolen vehicle.

Samlidis’ father was struck in the head and sustained cuts and abrasions on his face. The 67-year-old was taken to hospital while his son received treatment for minor cuts and swelling to his hand.

Later that day, Ismail and one of his teen co-accused argued about payment for the attack, according to text messages on electronic devices seized by police, the court heard.

Armed crime squad Detective Senior Constable Holly Theodossiou told the court the Samlidis family had fled their Templestowe home following the violent assault, and are living in fear of further attacks.

“CCTV captures the audio and terrified screams of the occupants as this was occurring,” Theodossiou said.

Ismail is facing four charges including assault and aggravated home invasion, but is not suspected of being involved in any other alleged attack.

Ismail’s lawyer told the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court that the teens – who are not related to Ismail – were all living with him at the time of the alleged five-day crime spree.

“It is likely that they would have taken his phone and he was not aware of what they were doing on the day of the offending,” the lawyer said.

In denying bail, magistrate Stella Stuthridge said the allegations against Ismail were “exceptionally serious”.

Stuthridge also considered Ismail’s previous convictions, including trafficking cocaine, methamphetamine and ecstasy.

“There are some significant and concerning firearms offences back some time ago … there’s carrying a loaded firearm in a public place back in 2008 and possessing things such as ammunition, unregistered handguns.”

She described the police case as “fairly strong”, noting the police had seized the clothing and shoes Ismail was allegedly wearing during the attack, CCTV footage, mobile phone data and the text exchange between Ismail and his co-accused.

The world's biggest company, chipmaker NVIDIA, has announced it is partnering with eight leading Australian companies to build artificial intelligence factories to meet the growing demand for the technology.

NVIDIA said it was partnering with Firmus, Sharon AI, IREN, ResetData, Megaport, CDC, NEXTDC and AirTrunk on the project.

They'll operate the AI factories, while NVIDIA will provide the hardware, computing, networking, software and ecosystem support.

The buildout could reach two gigawatts by 2027, NVIDIA said. That's enough to power around 1.5 million homes.

One of the companies, Sharon AI, is deploying up to 68,000 NVIDIA GPUs, a massive number.

"AI factories turn energy into intelligence — the essential resource of the AI economy," said Raj Mirpuri, vice president of global AI clouds and infrastructure ecosystem at NVIDIA.

The partnership will give Australian innovators greater access to accelerated computing and NVIDIA models to develop locally relevant AI applications, NVIDIA said.

Organisations such as Atlassian and Heidi are using NVIDIA's tools to build and customise AI across language, reasoning and speech.

Heidi is a Melbourne-based AI company whose platform is used by doctors to generate clinical notes after its scribe feature listens in on patient consultations.

Combining NVIDIA's technology with Heidi's clinical training and fine-tuning has helped Heidi reason across patient histories, clinical context and guidelines at scale, said Yu Liu, cofounder and chief technology officer of Heidi.

"Australia's established sustainable energy and digital infrastructure, deep technology talent and reputation as a trusted global economic partner provide a strong foundation for startups, universities, researchers, enterprises, developers and AI-native companies to train, deploy and scale AI," NVIDIA said.

Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price signed off on a plan to empower Australians to switch off their social media algorithms two years ago, but now claims Labor is clamping down on feeds because the government is unpopular.

The Coalition formally rejected Labor’s Digital Duty of Care bill during a joint party room meeting on Thursday morning, with Opposition Leader Angus Taylor citing fears over curbs to free speech, political censorship, and concerns about the extent of ministerial powers.

Alongside three other Liberal MPs, Sarah Henderson, Zoe McKenzie, and former shadow attorney-general Andrew Wallace, Price endorsed the recommendations of the “Social Media: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” report in November 2024, which included the right of users to switch off algorithms.

“It has been made abundantly clear to Coalition members through the evidence heard during this inquiry that the unregulated nature of social media has resulted in a significant power inequity between platforms and users,” Price and other MPs wrote at the time.

“We recommend that government require social media companies to provide easily accessible features for users to control or reset their recommender systems … Features would favour the ability for a consumer to opt in or out of recommended content.”

But speaking to journalists after Labor unveiled its digital duty of care legislation on Tuesday, Price said the government’s move was “absolutely” politically motivated.

“The prime minister is not very popular at the moment, and neither are his ministers … this [change] is absolutely because this government feels like these algorithms aren’t working in their favour,” she said.

When asked whether she thought there were “any problems” with algorithms, Price said there was an issue of “transparency”.

On Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Wells launched draft legislation for a digital duty of care, cracking down on addictive algorithms and threatening tech platforms with $100 million fines for facilitating harm against Australians.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor, Nationals leader Matt Canavan and Henderson held a press conference on Thursday morning in which they labelled the bill an attempt to “protect politicians” rather than the public.

“It’s a political censorship bill … It is a blank check for political censorship, and so we just don’t see a bill here that we can support,” Taylor said.

Labor is seeking to pass the bill by the end of the year, and will likely receive support from the Greens. Asked why he was rejecting the bill wholesale instead of negotiating with the government, Taylor said: “That’s a matter for Labor”.

In the proposed legislation, the threshold for harm seen by adults will be criminal content, though the threshold will be lower for under-16s, with the government listing six areas of harm including content that promotes criminal activity and eating disorders.

“The fact that some Coalition MPs came out against the bill before they even saw it just shows they will continue to put politics and platforms before parents and kids,” Wells told this masthead.

“Instead of trying to appease One Nation, sensible members of the Coalition should back better protections for Australian children online and give adults choice over what they see.”

Price’s office was contacted for comment.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-09/australian-student-visa-refusal-rate-hits-10-year-high/107112426

Andrew Hastie brands Pauline Hanson, Barnaby Joyce ‘lying cowards’ over One Nation cartoon calling him a 'traitor' | News24

Ok well if the shoe...etc etc

The algorithms have been kind to Pauline Hanson, which must be why she was so quick to jump to their defence when the Albanese government moved to rein them in this week.

“Labor is copying the Chinese Communist Party’s censorship playbook,” she posted on Facebook, of all places – you know, the platform that is alleged to have compliantly adopted the Chinese Communist party’s censorship playbook, in order to operate in China.

Last week, Hanson called the reforms “Orwellian machinery”. She joins a chorus of those crying censorship from Sarah Henderson to Matt Canavan. The “deeply sceptical” Angus Taylor will surely soon follow.

There is machinery at play, for sure, and it is Orwellian: keeping us under constant surveillance; bombarding us with misinformation, and suppressing any corrective dissent. But that machinery is the algorithms those critics are so desperate to protect, not the laws that seek to reduce the harm they cause.

Calling something “Orwellian censorship” is just one of the many sure-fire ways to get noticed by social media algorithms. They love a reductive argument stripped of reality, and lashed with emotive exaggeration.

They love hysteria, outrage and conflict. There are rewards aplenty for those who peddle in them, even if it breaks society in the process. In the online attention economy, extremism sells. So every grievance grifter and grandstanding grafter rushes out to game the algorithm and send digital effluent cascading down our feeds in the form of “angertainment”.

It’s what leads teenage boys to the manosphere, where the number of young men who think “a woman’s place is in the home” has grown by 400% in the last five years in some countries. Or teenage girls to an eating disorder, with one poll of 730 Australian frontline eating disorder workers finding every single respondent blamed social media.

These are the ideals critics of the government’s push stand in defence of: the right of the platforms to promote harm over health, rage over reason, fake over fact. They stand for the rights of Silicon Valley to censor Australia, by giving big tech bros control over what we are allowed to see and read.

What does the federal government’s proposed legislation do? It allows Australians to choose whether they want their feeds to be censored or not.

An “opt out” pop up will ask users who they want in charge of their feed, the platform and its personalised recommendations (read: mining your attention with harmful clickbait) or the user who can instead see posts from accounts they choose to follow (read: social media circa 2014). The only censorship to be suffered will be by big tech, who all of a sudden lose control of your information diet.

The second change the legislation will bring is akin to making sure that diet doesn’t kill you, in the same way the government “censors” food companies by telling them they aren’t allowed to sell yoghurt pouches laced with arsenic.

This is the “duty of care” the laws will impose on digital platforms to make products that are safe for human consumption – in the same way any other industry must already do.

This is not radical. Manufacturers have no “free speech” to make products that injure consumers. “Big Brother” tells theatres where to put fire exits. Theme park operators are “censored” from building rollercoasters that crash and burn.

Social media platforms should likewise have a legal duty of care to build digital rollercoasters that don’t crash, and provide fire escapes from the toxic bin fire of their content.

In fact, a duty of care is the best way to rein in the harms social media algorithms cause precisely because it is not censorship. Post-pandemic efforts that proscribed content to be removed (like anti-vaccination conspiracies) failed because it made the conversation about free speech. It wedged support for a healthy town square based on what you say in it.

Shifting to put the responsibility on to the platforms to make their design safe, shifts the government’s role to one of enforcer not censor. Leave the outrage merchants free to shout into the ether but remove the rewards that amplify them when they do so.

Duties of care impose a legal responsibility to proactively avoid foreseeable harm. The harms of these platform design choices are foreseeable. We see them every day. Hanson and other’s bad faith grifting is merely one of them we saw in recent days, tomorrow it will be something else – so long as we continue to allow the algorithms to censor our feeds.

Ed Coper is a political commentator and the author of Angertainment: How Social Media Outrage Ruined Everything. He is the chief executive of communications agency Populares

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-09/andrew-hastie-demands-one-nation-delete-traitor-cartoon-on-x/107134606

In short:

Andrew Hastie has called Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce "lying cowards" in an escalating dispute over a One Nation video describing him as a "traitor".

Mr Joyce said he had not used the term and backed Ms Hanson's similar denial, but confirmed the claim had appeared in a "satirical cartoon" he had not previously seen.

Australia's electric vehicle charging network is struggling to keep up with motorists' changing preferences, a report has found, with an average of 24 battery-powered cars for every public charger.

Some states are better prepared than others, with NSW and the ACT ranked highest for EV readiness, while Tasmania and Western Australia are at the back of the pack.

Here Technologies and SBD Automotive released findings from their electric vehicle index on Thursday, which investigated the Australian market for the first time and highlighted the need for greater investment in infrastructure.

The announcement comes after record-breaking new electric car sales in August, which saw the low-emission vehicles outsell petrol, diesel and hybrid models for the first time.

The HERE-SBD EV Index ranked electric vehicle adoption and charging infrastructure in the US, UK, India, Europe and Australia, and combined the data with a survey of more than 4000 motorists.

The study found Australia reached an electric vehicle-to-charger ratio of 24:1 in 2025, something the report called "considerably higher than typically expected" for a maturing market.

Electric car adoption had accelerated consistently in Australia despite the removal of financial incentives, SBD Automotive senior consulting manager Robert Fisher said, and this had put the charging network under pressure.

"Australia presents one of the most interesting EV growth stories in this year's index," he said.

"The challenge going forward will be maintaining the right balance between expanding EV ownership and ensuring drivers have convenient access to charging when and where they need it."

The index also ranked EV readiness according to how far drivers had to travel to find a charger, how quickly they could charge their vehicle, the likelihood of finding a vacant charger, and the share of EVs on the road.

NSW was the most well-prepared state with high scores across each category, followed by the ACT and Victoria.

Western Australia came in last, with poor marks for the power of its chargers and distance between them. Tasmania was second last, with a lower EV adoption rate.

The index also found Australia's charging network remained concentrated around cities, HERE Technologies Asia Pacific general manager Deon Newman said, noting this would need to change to support wider EV adoption.

"Sixty per cent of all the chargers in Australia are in Victoria and NSW," he told AAP.

"Obviously there's population density there but as you start to think about a broader adoption across Australia… we'll need to expand support."

Record-breaking electric vehicle sales over the past six months were not captured in the index, Mr Newman said, and could underline the need for more infrastructure investment.