Pro-Palestine protest could be tested in the supreme court
Jordyn Beazley
The Palestine Action Group is deciding whether to go before the supreme court once again about a planned protest after the police opposed a march to the Sydney Opera House.
Assistant commissioner Peter McKenna addressed reporters a short time ago to say police had decided to oppose the planned route outlined in the group’s ‘Form 1’ protest permit because of safety concerns linked to limited exit points from the Opera House forecourt.
He said police would lodge an objection to the protest in the NSW supreme court, but were still discussing altenative routes with the action group.
Mckenna said:
They have indicated to us that they will give us a response later about whether they themselves will test this matter in the supreme court, or whether they will consider the alternative routes that we may be able to negotiate.
We understand that this is a significant anniversary
We’re not anti-protest. We facilitate thousands of protests, and in fact, in this particular group, we’ve been facilitating protests and public assemblies for the last two years. So it’s not a matter of us not wanting them to have a public assembly.
It’s not even a matter about it being at the Opera House itself. It’s about public safety.
Mckenna said organisers had estimated in their Form 1 that 10,000 people would attend. However, he said he was skeptical of the estimate, given how the number of people that marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in August vastly exceeded what organisers expected.
Key events
Penry Buckley
South-west Sydney operation concludes after massive police response
Returning to the police operation in south-west Sydney this morning, NSW police have now confirmed it has concluded.
In a statement, a spokesperson said police were called to a house on Wollongbar Avenue in Panania just before 8am today, following reports four men, one of whom was believed to be armed with a firearm, were seen entering the property.
The incident drew a massive police response, with officers form Bankstown area command assisted by the tactical operations unit, dog unit, traffic and highway patrol, police negotiators, a PolAir helicopter and the Raptor Squad, which focuses on organised crime, including bikie gangs.
The operation concluded about 11.30am. Police have been told a male occupant was assaulted by the men, but did not require treatment.
Police have established a crime scene at the property, and say the occupants of the house are assisting with their inquiries.
Telstra ordered to pay $18m penalty for misleading Belong customers over NBN speeds
Telstra was ordered to pay an $18m penalty for breaching Australian consumer law after it moved nearly 9,000 customers on its Belong service to a lower speed plan without telling them.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said between October and November 2020, Telstra moved those customers on Belong brand NBN plans from a plan with maximum upload speeds of 40 Mbps to service that provided just 20 Mbps in upload speeds. Download speeds were unaffected.
Telstra did not tell the customers of the change at the time.
Anna Brakey, the commissioner of the ACCC, said:
The $18m penalty sends a strong message to all businesses that they cannot mislead consumers by making changes to key aspects of a service without informing customers of those changes.
Telstra will also remediate customers with a credit or payment of $15 for each month the customer had been on the lower speed plan. The total value of that remediation could be more than $2.3m.
War crimes trial for former SAS soldier could take years to go to court
The nation’s first war crime murder trial involving an Australian defence force soldier won’t happen until at least 2027, giving defence minister Richard Marles time to suppress certain matters, AAP reports.
Both the prosecution and defence in the case of former SAS soldier Oliver Jordan Schulz say they are yet to see all the evidence because a decision about what can be released hasn’t yet been made.
Schulz pleaded not guilty in the NSW supreme court on Friday to allegations he committed a war crime in the murder of a young man in Afghanistan. He is accused of killing Afghan man Dad Mohammad during a mission in May 2012.
A trial date was not set because national security concerns had delayed both sides from seeing much of the evidence against Schulz.
Schulz is the first serving or former ADF member to face a war crime charge of murder under domestic law.
Josh Taylor
SA Ambulance received no alerts from service meant to notify authorities during Optus triple zero outage
South Australia’s ambulance service was signed up to a new system that is supposed to send notifications when Optus has a triple zero outage, but says it was not notified during the outage last month.
September’s triple zero outage was caused by a network firewall upgrade which blocked emergency calls for Optus customers in South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and parts of New South Wales.
The outage has been linked to the deaths of two people in SA and one in WA. A fourth death, of an infant in SA, was found to be likely unrelated.
Read more here:
AEC launches court proceedings over allegations of unauthorised electoral pamphlets
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) launched federal court proceedings against a man who allegedly distributed unauthorised electoral pamphlets during the 2025 federal election.
The AEC said Jarrod Davis allegedly breached the Commonwealth Electoral Act by failing to put his name and address on about 47,000 pamphlets that were distributed in the electorate of Wentworth. The alleged pamphlets contained material opposing the local member, Allegra Spender.
Jeff Pope, the AEC election commissioner, said in a statement the court action demonstrated the agency’s role upholding Australian elections:
Australia’s democracy is rightly regarded as world leading, and central to that integrity is the ability for any voter to know the source of electoral advertising through authorisation messages.
The AEC takes cases involving the complete absence of authorisation information and its widespread dissemination particularly seriously.
Failure to authorise electoral communication can carry a penalty of up to $39,600 per contravention, at the discretion of the court.
Ima Caldwell
When does daylight saving start again in Australia – and how can you adjust your body clock?
Just a reminder before the weekend brain kicks in: Clocks will move forward one hour this Sunday in many parts of Australia as the weather warms up.
Here’s what you need to know about the start of daylight saving time – and how it will affect you.
Read more:
Cait Kelly
Too hard to work out how many people affected by Centrelink’s unlawful debt calculations, government bureaucrat says
Back in the Senate Community Affairs Legislation committee, the department of social services is speaking about the Australians affected by Centrelink’s unlawful debt calculation.
Matt Flavell, the deputy secretary of social security said the department did not know how many people were affected:
The practice of income apportionment, we understand, went back to the early 1990s. It isn’t possible to say with precision how many debts may be affected, because that would require going into each individual debt and seeking to determine exactly whether it was or wasn’t impacted by income apportionment.
Asked if the debts should be waived, he said:
That would mean, effectively, going back and refunding millions and millions of debts going back to the early 1990. The number of hours involved in doing that is significant.
Pro-Palestine protest could be tested in the supreme court
Jordyn Beazley
The Palestine Action Group is deciding whether to go before the supreme court once again about a planned protest after the police opposed a march to the Sydney Opera House.
Assistant commissioner Peter McKenna addressed reporters a short time ago to say police had decided to oppose the planned route outlined in the group’s ‘Form 1’ protest permit because of safety concerns linked to limited exit points from the Opera House forecourt.
He said police would lodge an objection to the protest in the NSW supreme court, but were still discussing altenative routes with the action group.
Mckenna said:
They have indicated to us that they will give us a response later about whether they themselves will test this matter in the supreme court, or whether they will consider the alternative routes that we may be able to negotiate.
We understand that this is a significant anniversary
We’re not anti-protest. We facilitate thousands of protests, and in fact, in this particular group, we’ve been facilitating protests and public assemblies for the last two years. So it’s not a matter of us not wanting them to have a public assembly.
It’s not even a matter about it being at the Opera House itself. It’s about public safety.
Mckenna said organisers had estimated in their Form 1 that 10,000 people would attend. However, he said he was skeptical of the estimate, given how the number of people that marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in August vastly exceeded what organisers expected.
Police officer pleads ‘not guilty’ to double murder charges
Here’s more from that AAP report about Beaumont Lamarre-Condon’s court appearance today, and some background about his upcoming trial.
Last year, Lamarre-Condon became the first serving NSW police officer charged with murder in several decades after he was accused of shooting couple Luke Davies and Jesse Baird, at Baird’s Paddington home in Sydney’s east.
The case has been mired in delays, with the now-sacked senior constable changing lawyers twice and negotiations with prosecutors dragging on for months.
For the first time since he was arrested, the words “not guilty” left Lamarre-Condon’s lips in open court today, as he was asked to answer to two counts of domestic violence-related murder.
He also pleaded not guilty to aggravated break and enter.
The 30-year-old appeared on screen from prison, wearing a green polo shirt and sporting facial stubble.
His trial will begin on 21 September 2026.
Police officer accused of Sydney double murder launches tirade during court hearing
Beaumont Lamarre-Condon, the police officer accused of the murder of a TV presenter and his partner, claims he agreed to admit to manslaughter but prosecutors and police denied his offer, AAP reports.
As Lamarre-Condon formally pleaded not guilty to the murders of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies in Sydney this morning, he interrupted the court to launch a tirade at investigators.
The 29-year-old said he opposed any orders for a closed court at his trial because he wanted people to know the truth of his case.
He also accused NSW Police and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions of being corrupt.
“I will not be silenced,” Lamarre-Condon said via video link in the NSW supreme court.
The accused double-murderer claimed he had previously offered to prosecutors to plead guilty to one charge of manslaughter while in a lower court, but this was rejected.
Justice Peter Hamill indicated that if such negotiations had taken place then they would have been recorded in the court file.
Penry Buckley
Police investigating reports of armed man in south-west Sydney
Returning to the operation under way in Panania in south-west Sydney, police have told Guardian Australia officers are investigating reports of a man armed with a gun inside a home on Wollongbar Avenue.
A police spokesperson said it is believed the man has since left the property. Police have advised the public to avoid the area.
They also confirmed police officers at the scene are armed. Aerial footage from the ABC and Nine News shows several armoured vehicles and armed officers on the street.
Cait Kelly
Senate committee discussing decision to offer compensation to those affected by unlawful debt calculations
Today, the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee is discussing the government’s decision to offer about $3m to Australians affected by Centrelink’s unlawful debt calculation method.
People with unlawful debts of between $250 and $2,000 will receive $200, those between $2,000 and $5,000 will receive $400, and debts of more than $5,000 will receive $600.
The government would also raise the threshold for small debts to $250, meaning about 1.2m debts are expected to be waived or not raised this financial year.
Kristin O’Connell, a spokesperson for advocacy group the Antipoverty Centre, said all the debts should be completely waived:
I mentioned someone in my opening statement who’s been criminalised and he’s been incarcerated as a result of one of these debts.
There is no amount of money that can make up for the harm done to that person.
But under this scheme, if he is deemed to be able to get that compensation, it will be $600 and his debt is in the tens of thousands of dollars.
He’s been living with the consequences of criminalisation now since 2018.
At least two people were jailed after Centrelink used unlawful calculations to accuse them of overclaiming welfare benefits, a watchdog has revealed.
Penry Buckley
Police operation under way in south-west Sydney
A police operation is under way in Panania in south-west Sydney.
In a statement, a spokesperson for NSW police said officers attached to Bankstown area command as well as “specialist resources” were on scene on Wollongbar Avenue.
NSW police has not provided further details but the public has been urged to avoid the area.
The ABC has reported that several armed police and armoured vehicles are present on the street. We will bring you more details once they are confirmed.
Man accused of killing Molly Ticehurst closer to entering a plea, court hears
The man accused of the domestic violence murder of Molly Ticehurst appears one step closer to entering a plea, with nearly 18 months of “fragile” legal negotiations almost complete, AAP reports.
Daniel Billings, 30, is charged with murdering Ticehurst at her home in Forbes, central western NSW, in the early hours of 22 April 2024. Ticehurst’s death intensified a national movement against domestic and gendered violence.
During a brief mention in Parkes local court on Friday morning, Billings’ Legal Aid solicitor Diane Elston said negotiations with prosecutors were at an advanced stage. The parties were “90%” towards an agreed statement of facts, deputy senior crown prosecutor Lee Carr SC said via audio-visual link from Sydney.
The case was adjourned to Forbes local court in November.
