Man charged over stolen car used in Melbourne synagogue arson attack
Authorities have charged a man over his alleged involvement in the theft of a vehicle used in the arson attack at the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne last December.
Previously described as a “communal crime car” by police, officials say the vehicle was also used in an arson attack at the Lux nightclub in Melbourne’s South Yarra in November as well as a shooting in Bundoora the same night as the synagogue fire.
Investigators arrested a 20-year-old man in Williamstown on Wednesday. They have charged him with theft of a motor vehicle and failing to comply with an order under the Crimes Act to provide access to applications on his mobile phone. He has been granted conditional bail and will appear in court on 3 October.
Police will allege the man stole the blue VW Golf sedan in late November.
The nightclub fire and shooting are being investigated by Victoria police and are not considered politically motivated. The synagogue arson attack is also still under investigation by many agencies; Victoria’s joint counter-terrorism team have said the arson was likely politically motivated.
Key events
Rescuers searching for small plane missing in NSW’s Snowy Mountains
Rescue officials are searching for a small plane missing in New South Wales’ Snowy Mountains.
Emergency services were first notified on Tuesday that the small aircraft, with one person on board, was overdue arriving at the Moruya airport. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (Amsa) said a search is ongoing this morning near Khancoban involving rescue helicopters and an agency Challenger jet. Amsa said weather conditions “are challenging with low cloud and restricted visibility”.
The ABC reports the plane was flying from Wangaratta in Victoria. NSW police says it is possible the plane crashed near Dargals Trail in the Snowy Valleys, the broadcaster reports.
NSW police, NSW SES, the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and Snowy Hydro are all contributing to the ground and aerial search.
Victorian childcare centre confirms Joshua Dale Brown fired in 2021, though not due to action towards children
A childcare centre in Victoria confirmed it fired Joshua Dale Brown in 2021 after describing his work on an incident report as “unsatisfactory”, although the company said his dismissal was not related to any behaviour towards a child.
Nido Early School said Brown worked at its facility in Werribee across 18 individual days. A spokesperson for the company said his termination at the centre, within his probationary period, “related specifically to unsatisfactory attention by the individual to an incident report concerning a child’s behaviour towards another child”. The spokesperson added:
The action did not relate to any behaviour by the individual towards a child.
We have zero tolerance for the non-compliance to our internal policies, no matter how trivial they sound to external parties. We supervise all staff closely, with additional attention given to new starters. In this case the breach of internal policy led to termination.
Nido has fully cooperated with Police and other departments.
Brown was charged earlier this month with more than 70 offences related to eight alleged victims during his work at two dozen childcare centres in Victoria.
Man charged over stolen car used in Melbourne synagogue arson attack
Authorities have charged a man over his alleged involvement in the theft of a vehicle used in the arson attack at the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne last December.
Previously described as a “communal crime car” by police, officials say the vehicle was also used in an arson attack at the Lux nightclub in Melbourne’s South Yarra in November as well as a shooting in Bundoora the same night as the synagogue fire.
Investigators arrested a 20-year-old man in Williamstown on Wednesday. They have charged him with theft of a motor vehicle and failing to comply with an order under the Crimes Act to provide access to applications on his mobile phone. He has been granted conditional bail and will appear in court on 3 October.
Police will allege the man stole the blue VW Golf sedan in late November.
The nightclub fire and shooting are being investigated by Victoria police and are not considered politically motivated. The synagogue arson attack is also still under investigation by many agencies; Victoria’s joint counter-terrorism team have said the arson was likely politically motivated.
Elective surgeries paused at major Queensland hospitals amid flu, Covid-19 surge
Elective surgeries have been paused for 48 hours at several major Queensland hospitals overwhelmed by a surge in flu and Covid cases, the state’s health minister said yesterday.
Metro North Health said emergency departments were seeing a crush of presentations, prompting category 2 and 3 elective surgeries at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, the Prince Charles, Redcliffe and Caboolture hospitals to be put on hold. The pause is meant to create bed capacity for emissions in EDs. A Metro North Health spokesperson said the system had long-established plans in place to deal with winter surges in hospitalisations, noting:
No patient requiring life-saving clinical care will ever be affected by elective surgery cancellations. Emergency surgeries and category 1 elective surgeries will continue at these hospitals, as well as all categories of elective surgery at the Surgical, Treatment and Rehabilitation Service (STARS).
Patients who are affected will be contacted directly.
The Queensland health minister, Tim Nicholls, said yesterday it was in people’s “best interest” to get vaccinated, noting jab rates are lower so far this year than in 2024. He said during a press conference:
We are seeing vaccination rates lower this year than they were the year before. And it’s particularly important for young children under the age of five and for the elderly, those over the age of 65 that they get vaccinated. And we know that 90% of the presentations to our emergency departments and those people in our hospital wards are not vaccinated.
Nicholls wrote on X that the state had seen the highest number of flu cases recorded in a single week “this year to date”. He said that while we are halfway through winter, “it’s not too late to get vaccinated”.
We may be halfway through winter, but it is not too late to get vaccinated against flu.
Vaccination reduces the risk of serious illness and hospitalisation and helps to stop the chain of transmission.
— Tim Nicholls MP (@TimNichollsMP) July 16, 2025
Luca Ittimani
Birthrate falls in Australia’s biggest cities amid cost-of-living crisis, preliminary data shows
Birthrates in Australia’s biggest cities continued their decline in 2024 amid sustained cost-of-living pressures, dragging the national rate to a near-record low.
Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane each saw further declines in the number of children born per woman from 2023 to 2024, according to KPMG’s preliminary analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics population data, barely offset by increases in Perth and in regional Australia.
The analysis also found outer-suburban and regional Australians grew increasingly likely to have higher numbers of children per person than their inner-city neighbours.
Overall the country’s fertility rate, or children born per woman, was 1.51 in 2024, statistically similar to the 1.5 observed in 2023 and well below the rate of 1.8 observed a decade beforehand.
Read more here:
Queensland man charged with indecent treatment of a child over alleged offence at childcare facility
Queensland police have charged a 21-year-old Cleveland man with an indecent treatment offence, linked to an alleged offence involving a four-year-old at a childcare facility in a suburb of Brisbane earlier this month.
The incident allegedly took place on 10 July at a facility in the suburb of Tingalpa. The man has faces one charge of indecent treatment of a child. He has been given conditional bail and will appear in court on 4 August.
Investigations remain ongoing.
Shadow education minister says opposition will work with goverment to fix childcare system that is ‘not working’
Jonno Duniam, the shadow minister for education, said the growing list of childcare centres linked to the worker accused of sexual abuse, Joshua Dale Brown, lays bare a system that is “frankly not working”. Duniam spoke to RN Breakfast this morning:
There are too many gaps in reporting. There are too many gaps in information sharing between jurisdictions and indeed within jurisdictions around the sort of things you’ve just outlined for your listeners and that is incredibly distressing.
I think that the threshold for what is kept on a file and what is transmitted to future employers about potential employees and for the information of parents I think is, as I say, too low. And they’re the sorts of things that we need to see addressed here.
Duniam said the opposition would work with the government to see reforms passed, giving credit to federal education minister Jason Clare and saying both parties needed to step up to up safety in childcare centres. Duniam said:
We’re all bearing responsibility for this, but the reality is we now just have to hurry up and get such measures in place.
Two teens charged with murder after man found dead in Queensland front yard
Queensland police have charged two teenage boys with murder after an investigation into the sudden death of a man found unresponsive in his front yard on Monday.
Emergency services were called to the suburb of Warana at about 7.35pm on Monday amid reports a neighbour found the man, 57, in his front yard. The man was declared dead at the scene. Police allege a disturbance occurred at the address prior to his death, resulting in the man suffering fatal stab wounds.
Detectives have charged a 15-year-old boy and a 17-year-old boy with murder. The pair are due to appear in court later today.
Aldi is trialling grocery delivery in Australia. We put it to the test against other supermarket giants
Aldi is known for its permanently discounted prices and its famously odd products sold in the middle aisle.
Last week, the German-owned supermarket chain took another step into the Australian mainstream, trialling a grocery delivery service with DoorDash in Canberra ahead of a potential expansion around the country.
Aldi has long resisted offering deliveries, given the service would make a basket of groceries more expensive, undercutting its price advantage over Coles and Woolworths.
Guardian Australia tested it out. Take a look:
More on the expected jobs figures due later today
The unemployment rate has stayed at 4.1% for the past three consecutive monthly readings, AAP reports.
The most recent figures in May came despite employment falling by 2,000 people, according to the bureau’s last figures.
The Reserve Bank said in its latest monetary policy decision that labour market conditions remained tight, noting:
Measures of labour under-utilisation are at relatively low rates and business surveys and liaison suggest that availability of labour is still a constraint for a range of employers.
Alternatively, labour market outcomes may prove stronger than expected, given the signal from a range of leading indicators.
