Randa Abdel-Fattah threatens legal action over ‘defamatory’ comments from SA premier
Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah has said she may take legal action against the South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, after claiming he made “defamatory” remarks against her following her disinvitation from Adelaide writers’ week.
Abdel-Fattah released a statement on Instagram, saying she had never met Malinauskas or spoken with him amid the firestorm surrounding the festival. She said his comments on her grew more serious yesterday, prompting her to issue a concerns notice under the Defamation Act against the premier:
For the past week since I was cancelled by the Adelaide Festival Board, the South Premier Peter Malinauskas has made many public statements about me and my character. We have never met and he has never attempted to contact me …
Enough is enough. I am a human being, not a punching bag. My lawyers have today issued a concerns notice under the Defamation Act on Premier Malinauskas. This is his opportunity to undo some of the harm he has inflicted, and stop punching down.
Malinauskas is expected to speak in the coming hour.
Key events
Two arrested after series of alleged ATM ram raids across Victoria
Victoria police have arrested two people after a series of alleged ATM ram raids across the state over the last two months, which they claim caused more than $1m in combined damage.
Detectives allege the pair are linked to nine burglaries and attempted burglaries at a variety of the businesses, which took place between November and January of this year. They will allege the events took place using stolen two trucks that were used to force entry into the businesses, including those with ATMs affixed to walls outside.
In total, four ATMs were stolen.
The men, 34 and 31, faces charges of burglary, theft of a motor vehicle and criminal damage, among others. Both have been remanded to appear before court.
South Korean superstars BTS coming to Australia in 2027 in first tour after military service
BTS, the South Korean supergroup, is heading to Australia in 2027 as part of a massive world tour, their first since a nearly four-year hiatus.
The seven members of the band had been finalising their compulsory military service, but will return to the music scene on 20 March. The tour will comprise more than 70 dates across Asia, North America, South America, Australia and Europe and be the first since the 2021-22 Permission to Dance tour.
Kpop fans will be able to see the septet in Melbourne and Sydney in February 2027.
Read more here:
Damian Carrington
Doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body
High-profile studies reporting the presence of microplastics throughout the human body have been thrown into doubt by scientists who say the discoveries are probably the result of contamination and false positives.
One chemist called the concerns “a bombshell”.
Studies claiming to have revealed micro and nanoplastics in the brain, testes, placentas, arteries and elsewhere were reported by media across the world, including the Guardian. There is no doubt that plastic pollution of the natural world is ubiquitous, and present in the food and drink we consume and the air we breathe. But the health damage potentially caused by microplastics and the chemicals they contain is unclear, and an explosion of research has taken off in this area in recent years.
However, micro and nanoplastic particles are tiny and at the limit of today’s analytical techniques, especially in human tissue. There is no suggestion of malpractice, but researchers told the Guardian of their concern that the race to publish results, in some cases by groups with limited analytical expertise, has led to rushed results and routine scientific checks sometimes being overlooked.
The Guardian has identified seven studies that have been challenged by researchers publishing criticism in the respective journals, while a recent analysis listed 18 studies that it said had not considered that some human tissue can produce measurements easily confused with the signal given by common plastics.
Read more here:
Al Madina Dawah prayer hall says it has permanently closed
Penry Buckley
An Islamic prayer hall associated with the controversial cleric Wisam Haddad, which had come under scrutiny since the Bondi massacre, has announced it has permanently closed after the local council moved to shut it.
In a post to Facebook this morning, the Al Madina Dawah centre wrote that it was “permanently closed”.
It comes after – in a move supported by the New South Wales premier, Chris Minns – the City of Canterbury Bankstown council said it has issued a “cease use” directive on Haddad, after surveilling the Al Madina centre on Kitchener Parade in Bankstown.
Following the move, the centre announced it would be “temporarily pausing operations until the matter is fully rectified”.
A spokesperson for the council confirmed the centre was moving to close, but said they had no further comment to make beyond their original statement.
Penry Buckley
Neo-Nazi applies for bail for third time over alleged threatening message targeting Allegra Spender
A member of an Australian neo-Nazi group has applied for bail for a third time, after he was charged over an alleged threatening message targeting independent federal MP, Allegra Spender.
Joel Davis, 30, was taken into custody in Bondi on 20 November by Australian federal police (AFP) and accused of sending a “menacing message” about Spender, after she condemned a protest by neo-Nazi group National Socialist Network (NSN) at NSW parliament on 8 November, which Davis had attended as an NSN member.
He was initially refused bail due to risks he could commit a “serious offence”, despite his legal aid lawyer raising the imminent birth of his child. He was refused bail again last month, with the magistrate saying the factors raised by the defence did not meet “the high benchmark” set for a further release application.
At a local court hearing in Sydney this morning, Davis’s barrister, Sebastian de Brennan, said his client had filed a new application for bail yesterday, saying there were “fresh circumstances”, including a delay in the full provision of the prosecution’s brief. Davis has been charged with one count of using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend.
De Brennan said:
That is the only charge before this court, it’s now a situation where it’s close to two months since he’s been in custody.
De Brennan said his client would argue that “what he said on social media was in fact a philosophical term of art”, and would provide “some literature which goes some way in explaining that”. At his last bail hearing, Davis’s defence argued that one of the phrases – “rhetorical rape” – allegedly deployed in the message Davis is accused of sending “is used in heated, spirited political discourse”.
The prosecutor, Margaret Hegna, said the AFP would serve some of the evidentiary brief today, including mobile phone analysis reports.
Magistrate Greg Grogin said Davis’s bail application would be heard in the local court tomorrow, due to the high volume of matters before the court today. Davis is expected to appear via video link.
For those wanting to follow our live updates on the Iran protests, you can find out rolling coverage here:
Canavan says proposed hate speech laws ‘undemocratic, unconstitutional and so vague’
Tom McIlroy
Nationals senator, Matt Canavan, says the Albanese government’s proposed hate speech laws are “undemocratic, unconstitutional and so vague that they could easily be used to unjustly silence legitimate criticism of government policy.”
Parliament will return on Monday to debate the laws, set to be rushed through in the wake of the Bondi Beach shootings. There is pressure on the Coalition and the Greens to support the plan.
Canavan says he won’t support the bill when it gets to the Senate on Tuesday, as he wrote in a lengthy post on social media.
We do not need new laws like this to defeat the radical Islamist extremism that have killed Australians. We already have laws against inciting violence. They should be enforced.
These proposed laws were only released today and the government plans to force them through parliament in just a week. Labor is giving people just three days to comment on the laws. It is a mockery of our democratic process.
The government’s laws provide unprecedented powers to the government to control the speech and communication of the Australian people. The laws define a “hate crime”. A hate crime can be anything that causes, or would cause, “serious harm to a person” based on conduct that targeted a person’s “race or national or ethnic origin”.
We already have laws that make it illegal to promote violence. They should be enforced instead of passing new laws that restrict the free speech of all Australians and not tackle the division that we have unnecessarily imported into Australia.
SXSW festival ends run in Sydney and will not return in 2026
The South by Southwest Sydney festival will not return in 2026 after a three-year run on Australian shores.
The SXSW Sydney team issued a farewell message, saying “with a heavy heart” the event had reached its closing chapter:
It’s bittersweet to be saying goodbye while the momentum is so high. We’re still celebrating the success of this past year … You didn’t just attend an event; you came together to help us build a vibrant, global community that transformed the heart of our city every October.
While this chapter ends here, the connections made and the ideas sparked on our stages will continue to resonate. Thank you for making these past three years unforgettable.
The festival first came to Australia in 2023, showcasing Australian music, technology, film and more.
Benita Kolovos
Industrial action ‘unfortunate necessity’ unless premier comes to the table with better pay deal
The HWU lead organiser, Jake McGuinness, says:
This industrial action is an unfortunate necessity because of the Victorian government’s consistent and callous disregard for essential workers’ needs. These bans are targeted and carefully designed to protect emergency and critical services, but they will cause widespread disruption.
The union says it will run until 1 February, unless the premier, Jacinta Allan, comes to the table with a better pay deal for workers.
In December, the government offered workers a 3.75% average pay rise over two years, which the union described as an insult when compared to the 7% annual raise for nurses and midwives over four years.
The union has stressed the action doesn’t apply to emergency care and that children and pregnant women are exempt from the surgery bans.
Benita Kolovos
Victoria healthcare workers escalate industrial action
Victorian healthcare workers will stop supporting elective surgery procedures, close hospital beds, cease cleaning and suspend the training of new staff, in an escalation of their protracted pay dispute with the state government.
Members of the Health Workers Union, which includes cooks and cleaners, orderlies and security guards, ward clerks, allied health assistants, theatre technicians and phlebotomists, will today escalate their industrial action.
Under the protected action, health workers will stop supporting category 2 and 3 elective surgeries, close one in four hospital beds, cease cleaning of non-clinical areas including offices, staff rooms and cafeterias and suspend the training and onboarding of new staff.
These actions are alongside existing bans on administrative activities, such as processing of private health insurance claims and Medicare reimbursements for hospitals.
Randa Abdel-Fattah threatens legal action over ‘defamatory’ comments from SA premier
Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah has said she may take legal action against the South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, after claiming he made “defamatory” remarks against her following her disinvitation from Adelaide writers’ week.
Abdel-Fattah released a statement on Instagram, saying she had never met Malinauskas or spoken with him amid the firestorm surrounding the festival. She said his comments on her grew more serious yesterday, prompting her to issue a concerns notice under the Defamation Act against the premier:
For the past week since I was cancelled by the Adelaide Festival Board, the South Premier Peter Malinauskas has made many public statements about me and my character. We have never met and he has never attempted to contact me …
Enough is enough. I am a human being, not a punching bag. My lawyers have today issued a concerns notice under the Defamation Act on Premier Malinauskas. This is his opportunity to undo some of the harm he has inflicted, and stop punching down.
Malinauskas is expected to speak in the coming hour.
Trump official says Australia’s proposed hate speech bill could be ‘deeply perverse’
Sarah Rogers, the US undersecretary of state for pubic diplomacy, said a proposed bill targeting hate speech after the Bondi terror attack could be “deeply perverse”.
Rogers, a Trump appointee, made the comments on X while responding to screenshots of the proposed legislation that note an exemption for people who quote directly from religious texts. She wrote:
A statute that imprisons you for calling to deport jihadist extremists – but provides safe harbor if you *are* a jihadist extremist – would be deeply perverse. Let’s hope this isn’t what Australia intends.
This could be a clumsy effort to avoid the disgraces seen in Europe+UK, where citizens are jailed for quoting the Bible or even praying silently.
But the problem with “hate speech” laws – one problem of many – is that they’re enforced by the kinds of people who coddle actual violent zealots, so long as they seem subaltern.
This could be a clumsy effort to avoid the disgraces seen in Europe+UK, where citizens are jailed for quoting the Bible or even praying silently.
But the problem with “hate speech” laws — one problem of many — is that they’re enforced by the kinds of people who coddle actual…
— Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers (@UnderSecPD) January 13, 2026
She went on to say religious freedom was a “core value” of the Trump administration, while warning that protecting speech “*only* if it’s religious, while arresting people for secular rejoinders, may distort the public sphere in ways that even progressive censorship enthusiasts dislike”.
Read more on the proposal here:
