News live – The Laos ambassador has been called in by the Australian government after a decision not to pursue the most serious charges against those responsible for the fatal methanol poisoning of two Australian travellers. The foreign minister, Penny Wong, said the news would only add to the pain and grief suffered by the family of Holly Morton-Bowles and Bianca Jones. double quotation markThe Australian Government is deeply frustrated and bitterly disappointed that authorities in Laos are not pursuing the most serious charges in relation to the methanol poisoning deaths of Australian citizens Holly Bowles and Bianca Jones.
What happened to Holly, Bianca and four other foreign nationals should never have happened. The two 19-year-olds were backpacking through Laos in late 2024 when they were fatally poisoned with methanol while drinking at Nana Backpackers Hostel in Vang Vieng. On Friday, Wong revealed the Laos ambassador had also been called in.
The Australian government’s special envoy, Pablo Kang, who was appointed to try assist in the investigation, will travel to Laos on Friday. The foreign minister will also reinforce the government’s position when she meets with her Lao counterpart in Manila next week. ‘Most Australian Jews’ want to see a two-state solution in Israel, royal commission hears Monash University professor David Slucki has told the royal commission into antisemitism that “most Australian Jews” want to see a two-state solution in Israel.
Slucki is director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash and established the Monash Initiative for Rapid Research into Antisemitism (Mira) in 2024, which was tasked with delivering a training program on antisemitism in higher education and a definition of antisemitism. He said even people who identified as Zionists had a “wide range of views about what it means to be attached to that”, and there had been “concern” in recent years about whether Israel held up its promise for liberalism amongst the Jewish community. double quotation markMany people are very conflicted, because they are attached to the state of Israel , but they have a vision of what state to look like.
Most people don’t want violence. They don’t want to see endless conflict, they want to see peace in the region … My sense is most Australian Jews want to see a two-state solution in Israel. Slucki said there was a distinction between criticising the Israeli government and supporting a strong Jewish state, and believing Israel ought not to exist, but it had become “increasingly hard” to say “yes, I criticise Israel.
And I think Israel should exist”. One Nation policy has ‘a bit of cray cray’, Nationals senator says The Nationals senator Ross Cadell has offered his mathematical analysis of Australia’s political parties. double quotation markWith One Nation, you get 60% solid policy and a bit of cray cray thrown in.
With us, you get a bit more moderate-centre stuff that I don’t really like in the Senate, where there’s some Labor-lite stuff that we do. (So) with the Nats, you get a mix of maths: you get 80% good stuff, you get 10% cray cray and 10% Labor-lite. There’s mixes on what you want to trade off with but I just think we need less government in the world, in Australia, telling people what to do.
A man has been charged with murder after his father was found dead outside a burning house in a suburban driveway. Emergency services were called to the western Sydney home in the early hours of Thursday morning, where they found the body of a man, believed to be aged 64, partially on fire.Superintendent Trent King believed an accelerant was used in the fire, which was allegedly started by the man’s 36-year-old son in Glenmore Park. Police arrested the 36-year-old man in a car on Parkes Avenue at Werrington about 6.45am, five hours after the alleged altercation.
The man was treated by paramedics for minor injuries before he was taken to hospital under police guard. King said while the victim is yet to be formally identified, the pair were father and son. double quotation markThere appears to have been an altercation between the two parties there following a break and enter into the premises, the front door was forced.
Hardware and network redundancy not the cause of Telstra outage, company says Telstra’s submission to the triple zero inquiry also states that because there are three Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers, when the Melbourne one disconnected for maintenance, the other two worked as redundancy and backup as expected. double quotation markThe failure mode here was not inherently related to hardware, levels of redundancy, or the architecture of our network. Telstra said the Melbourne server supplied an incorrect date once switched back on.
double quotation markDownstream systems used that date in security, authentication, session and policy-control processes. The issue was therefore not simply the loss of one NTP server or redundancy in the design of the configuration of the three NTP servers, but the propagation and acceptance of erroneous date information by interconnected systems that rely on timing as a trust and ordering reference. Ahead of Telstra chief Vicki Brady‘s appearance in a Senate inquiry hearing on last week’s national mobile outage later today, the telco’s submission to the inquiry revealed the cause of the outage, as the company says a lack of redundancy was not the cause.
The submission details for the first time the likely cause of the outage, which confirmed reporting that one of Telstra’s network time protocol (NTP) servers designed to ensure the systems had the correct time had reset back to 2006. Telstra said it has three NTP servers – one in Melbourne, Sydney, and Perth. During maintenance on the Melbourne server, it was required to shut down and restart the server, but the company said because of an “underlying software configuration” the device restarted with the wrong date, back in 2006.
double quotation markOver the next few hours, the incorrect date rippled slowly across the network, causing authentication certificates in other servers to become invalid. Customers were intermittently unable to authenticate onto the network (“no service”), which affected their ability to place voice calls and use data across Telstra’s mobile network. Telstra said it had made an intentional design change to the equipment to fix an earlier fault but this had not been properly documented, meaning maintenance workers were not aware how the device would be reset.
A software update had also not been applied to the device, and if that had been done, the outage may not have occurred, Telstra said. The Laos ambassador has been called in by the Australian government after a decision not to pursue the most serious charges against those responsible for the fatal methanol poisoning of two Australian travellers. The foreign minister, Penny Wong, said the news would only add to the pain and grief suffered by the family of Holly Morton-Bowles and Bianca Jones.
double quotation markThe Australian Government is deeply frustrated and bitterly disappointed that authorities in Laos are not pursuing the most serious charges in relation to the methanol poisoning deaths of Australian citizens Holly Bowles and Bianca Jones. What happened to Holly, Bianca and four other foreign nationals should never have happened. The two 19-year-olds were backpacking through Laos in late 2024 when they were fatally poisoned with methanol while drinking at Nana Backpackers Hostel in Vang Vieng.
On Friday, Wong revealed the Laos ambassador had also been called in. The Australian government’s special envoy, Pablo Kang, who was appointed to try assist in the investigation, will travel to Laos on Friday. The foreign minister will also reinforce the government’s position when she meets with her Lao counterpart in Manila next week.
Scammers using fake celebrity endorsements for ‘pump and dump’ schemes Older Australians urged to exercise caution as online fraudsters use fake celebrity endorsements and financial institutions for scams, AAP reports. The number of so-called ‘‘pump and dump’’ scams being reported to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (Asic) has soared recently, causing it great concern. The scammers use social media and messaging apps to promote dubious money-making ideas by impersonating well-known experts or celebrities and financial institutions.
High-profile economist and markets analyst Tom Piotrowski is just one of those whose names and images have been hijacked to lure potential victims. Piotrowski, who recently joined National Australia Bank’s nabtrade arm from CommSec, has been a television regular, providing viewers with updates on the financial markets and the economy. He told AAP.
double quotation markIt breaks your heart. These fraudsters prey on people who have a passing familiarity with the share market, but they don’t know enough. I can’t tell you how heartbreaking it is to think that hard-working people are having to deal with this; it’s really terrible.
Pauline Hanson says her daughter is the future of One Nation In her interview with far-right activist Tommy Robinson, Pauline Hanson says her daughter, Lee Hanson, is the future of One Nation and had the right background and experience for a career in politics. In news that might be disappointing for Nationals defector Barnaby Joyce, Hanson says Lee had the potential to be a leader one day. Guardian Australia revealed in February that One Nation has employed the Tasmania-based Lee Hanson as a senior adviser to a New South Wales senator, in a taxpayer-funded role worth as much as $180,000 a year.
She has been spearheading the party’s expansion in Tasmania, and is also the party’s national executive manager. Pauline Hanson told Robinson her daughter was “a cluey kid”. double quotation markShe’s quite smart and highly respected.
In the positions that she’s held, wherever she’s worked, they didn’t want to lose her. It’s great to work with her. She’s the future.
She’s got the softer approach. Asked if she could replace her mother as leader, Hanson said it was a position to be earned. double quotation markShe’s got the potential, but I don’t believe in nepotism.
And she has to prove herself. Not only to me, but also to the other members and to the public, and everything like that. That’s something she has to earn.
Queensland Health reaches settlement with controversial former gender clinic doctor Queensland Health has reached a settlement with its former employee Jillian Spencer, a controversial critic of the state’s gender clinic. The psychiatrist was suspended from her role at the clinic in 2023 after making a series of public criticisms of the service. An independent review that investigated her complaints concluded in 2024 that the service was safe and evidence-based, but was under-resourced and that staff struggled as a result of the public debate about gender affirming care, with some fearing for their safety.
The new LNP government unlawfully banned gender affirming care in public hospitals in 2025, reimposing the ban after it was struck down by the state’s supreme court.Spencer was sacked the same year. The Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service, which operates the gender clinic, released a statement on Friday morning making a statement as part of the settlement. Its terms are otherwise confidential and “all disciplinary proceedings against Dr Spencer have been discontinued”, it said.
double quotation markThe CHQ HHS acknowledges that these are matters of legitimate professional and public debate, and that clinicians play an important role in raising concerns about patient safety and clinical practice. Dr Spencer has been a strong advocate for change in Queensland in the model of care for children and adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria. One of the features of the clinical approach that Dr Spencer has sought is the delay in medical interventions for such patients until adulthood, including puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, because they are serious decisions regarding their body and long-term health.
CHQ HHS accepts that Dr Spencer’s concerns were grounded in her training and background as an experienced child and adolescent psychiatrist. ‘Don’t go to Laos’: family of fatally poisoned teenager issue warning The parents of an Australian who died by methanol poisoning while drinking at a Lao hostel have urged other young travellers not to venture to the south-east Asian nation. Melbourne travellers Bianca Jones and Holly Morton-Bowles, both 19, were backpacking through in late 2024 when they were fatally poisoned.
Lao authorities are expected to lay charges on Friday, but the families’ experience has led Jones’s mother, Michelle Jones, to issue a warning to other prospective travellers. double quotation markDon’t go to Laos. It was like their lives didn’t even matter.
We’re just really appalled by it all. She also urged travellers to consume bottled or canned drinks. Jones’s father, Mark Jones, also decried the charges that are expected to be laid.
double quotation markIt’s unacceptable that the passing of our daughter, her best friend Holly, and three other beautiful women’s lives come down to the potential maximum outcome of one year in jail and a $1,600 [fine]. Hanson talks up Trump-like ban on Muslim migration in podcast interview Pauline Hanson’s interview with Tommy Robinson covers a lot of ground which will be familiar to followers of Australian politics. She says a One Nation government would ban Islamic headdresses in Australia and stop immigration from locations she considers “radical Islamic countries”.
That plan is similar to US president Donald Trump’s so-called Muslim ban, which targeted migrants to the US from majority Muslim countries. Hanson says she wants to stop Muslim religious leaders “spewing hate speech”. Without evidence, she claims members of the Muslim community in Australia are relying on taxpayer support to have large numbers of children.
double quotation markThey are having children because, you know what, in the Koran, it says Allah will provide. Well the Allah providing is the taxpayer. Well, guess what, I’ve had enough.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s interview with fringe far-right figure Tommy Robinson has been posted online in the past couple of hours. Hanson has been criticised for meeting with the convicted criminal, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, during a visit to the UK. The more than hour-long podcast covers Hanson’s rise through politics, her history of controversial statements about Indigenous Australians and multicultural communities and her plans for One Nation in the Future.
She told Robinson many European migrants who came to Australia after World War II didn’t speak English, but they “assimilated”. But she claimed that changed after the election of Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam in 1972, and the end of the White Australia policy. double quotation markThey opened it up and got rid of the White Australia policy, then they started bringing in the different migrants.
The Holt government started winding back the race based policy in the 1960s. Hanson claimed she warned the Coalition that Islamic sharia law was spreading in Australia and that many migrant groups want to come to Australia to access the NDIS. double quotation markI said, we’ve got sharia law that’s happening in Australia, I said they’re getting married, multiple marriages, and I said then they’re having their kids and we’re supporting them.
One Nation senator defends Pauline Hanson’s overseas travel The One Nation senator Sean Bell has backed his party leader as she continues her trip through Europe ahead of her appearance at a conservative political action conference in London. Bell said: double quotation markShe is standing up for Australian values. Asked about photos of Hanson and billionaire Gina Rinehart at a luxury Italian hotel, Bell maintained she was “working tirelessly for the Australian people”.
Those responsible for the fatal poisoning of two Australians travellers must be held accountable, the government has said, as Lao authorities prepare to lay charges. Melbourne travellers Bianca Jones and Holly Morton-Bowles, both 19, were backpacking through the south-east Asian nation in late 2024 when they were fatally poisoned with methanol while drinking at Nana Backpackers Hostel in Vang Vieng. Earlier, Morton-Bowles father, Shaun Bowles, said he was devastated about news of the charges, with ABC reporting the two offences expected to be laid collectively carry up to one year in jail and a maximum fine of $1,600.
Health minister Mark Butler said the government would be watching closely as Lao authorities prepare to hold a press conference on the matter. double quotation markAll of us can imagine the grief and the sense of loss that those families are going through now. Our hearts are breaking for them all over again.
The Australian government has offered to provide its Lao counterpart with resources to conduct a full investigation, which had been rejected, Butler said. double quotation markThere could not be any doubt about what we expect. We continue to urge them to press for real accountability and introduce some real charges with teeth.
