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News.com.au
10 hours ago
- Politics
- News.com.au
Scott Morrison, Baz Luhrmann given top accolades in King's Birthday Honours 2025
Former Covid prime minister Scott Morrison has been given the top King's Birthday honour of an Companion of the Order of Australia for his work Mr Morrison was given the honour in recognition of his 'eminent service' to the people and Australian parliament, noting his contributions to his 'leadership of the national Covid-19 response,' his economic initiatives and his work on national security, 'especially through leadership of Australia's contribution to AUKUS'. Reflecting on the challenges during his term as Australia's 30th prime minister from 2018 to 2022, he said Australians responded with 'trademark courage and a care for their country and one another'. He also highlighted China's increasingly aggressive defence posture during this period, during this period, which included the encroachment of Chinese jet fighters on the Taiwan Strait's median line in March 2019. 'During this time Australia faced challenges and threats not experienced since the Second World War,' he said in a statement. 'These ranged from unrelenting natural disasters and a once in a century global pandemic and the recession it caused, to coercion and intimidation designed to threaten our support for a free and open Indo-Pacific, a world order that favours freedom and our strong bond with allies and partners.' His statement also paid tribute to his parliamentary colleagues, state premiers, chief territory ministers, as well as Josh Frydenberg and Michael McCormack who respectively served as treasurer and Nationals leader during his term. While at times divisive, Mr Morrison's prime ministership was marred in controversy after it was revealed he secretly awarded himself the portfolios for health, finance, home affairs, treasury, and industry, science, energy and resources. His unpopularity as prime minister also resulted in what was then the 'most serious' election loss for the Liberal Party, with the party losing six of its inner metropolitan seats to teal independents. Baz Luhrmann – Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) One of Australia's most beloved Hollywood exports, Baz Luhrmann's prodigious film and theatre career is well-documented. His repertoire spans the Oscar-winning 2001 film Moulin Rouge! the third of his highly-aclaimed Red Curtain Triology which also includes Romeo + Juliet and Strictly Ballroom. His latest major work was the 2022 film Elvis which explored Elvis Presley's relationship with his manager Colonel Tom Parker and starred Austin Butler and Tom Hanks. His partner, Catherine Martin – a famed production designer – was also award a AC. Hailing from Herons Creek, a tiny town on NSW's North Coast about 291km from Sydney, Luhrmann paid tribute to his humble beginnings, and the arts community at large. 'My personal journey from a small, rural town to the world stage would not have been possible but for those who came before having the vision to support the arts, allowing us to reflect our stories back to ourselves and participate in global culture as Australians,' he said. 'Catherine Martin and I feel this honour recognises not just us, but those who have made access to the arts possible for every Australian.' Catherine Martin – Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) Hailing from Lindfield in Sydney's upper north shore, renowned costume designer, production designer and set designer Catherine Martin is behind her husbands box-office hits. She currently holds the record for the most Academy Awards held by any Australia (four), winning both best costume design and best production design for her work on The Great Gatsby (2013), and Moulin Rouge! (2001). Speaking about her latest accolade, which sits alongside four Academy Awards, a host of Baftas and a Tony, Martin said she was humbled by her AC in eminent service to the arts, to costume, production and set design, and to fostering emerging artistic talent. 'I am so honoured to be joining the ranks of so many illustrious Australians, whom I have admired and been inspired by,' she said. 'Being recognised in your home country is especially meaningful.' Outside of film, she's held executive producer and costume and production design credits on television series Faraway Downs and The Get Down. Martin also dipped her toe into filmmaking, recently launching her collaboration with Italian fashion powerhouse Miu Miu. The project showcased the brand's Upcycled capsule collection which reworks vintage dresses from the brand. Roger Byard – Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) While South Australian forensic pathologist Roger Byard has shared his expertise on headline-grabbing events like the Bali bombings, the Boxing Day tsunami and the Snowtown murders, he says the biggest impact of his profession can happen outside the mortuary. Currently a senior specialist forensic pathologist with Forensic Science SA, a role he's held since 2006, and the Emeritus Professor of Pathology at the School of Biomedicine, Prof Byard said he wants to use the knowledge found in the mortuary into public education and health and social policy. 'To do good forensic pathology, you have to have curiosity, but I think it has to be the foundation has to be compassion, so that you can actually do something with this information,' he said. 'A lot of people in forensics will just document something. They won't actually act on it and look at prevention. 'In forensic pathology we see cases that bypass the hospital, so we've got information that's extremely useful.' His area of expertise however is in pediatrics and SIDS – sudden infant death syndrome – and determining the risk factors, and causes for the rare but tragic event which affects about 0.3 deaths per 1000 live births. Showing the link between forensic pathology and social issues, he points to his work in amending legislation to create an Australian standard for cots to prevent instances of babies suffocating. 'There was a British pathologist who called said that SIDS is in danger of becoming a diagnostic dustbin if people don't investigate the cases properly, and a lot of unsafe cots where babies were suffocating, those deaths were being called SIDS,' he said. 'People weren't realising how dangerous the cots were.' Nicole Livingstone – Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) From Olympic medallist to presenter and now senior sports administrator, Nicole Livingstone has been honoured for her 'distinguished service to sports development and administration, to the promotion of women in sport, and to community health'. The mum-of-three participated in three Olympic Games including Seoul in 1988, Barcelona 1992, and finally Atlanta 1996, competing in a total of 11 events. She holds a bronze Olympic medal for the 200m backstroke, a bronze medal for the 4 x 200m freestyle relay, and a silver medal by the 4 x 100m silver medal. After retiring from professional swimming in 1996, Livingstone segued into presenting before becoming the general manager for the Women's Football at the AFL in 2017, where she was credited with expanding the game and growing the presence of the AFLW. Speaking to Domain in 2021, Livingstone reflected on the growth of women in sport. 'There's a lot more choice for women in this country now than in the 1990s,' she said. 'But you have to remember that during the 2000 Olympic Games, Friends was knocked off air to put swimming on TV and they had 1 million people watching. It was the time before pay-TV and the nation was glued.' Under her tenure, the AFLW became the largest employers of female athletes in Australia, and expanded the teams from eight to 18. Since 2024, Livingstone has served as the chief executive of the Victorian Institute of Sport. Naguib 'Nick' Kaldas – Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) The former NSW Police Force commissioner was one of the three commissioners behind the Royal Commission in Defence and Veteran Suicide, a role he undertook with James Douglas KC and Peggy Brown. Mr Kaldas has also held roles with the United Nations, including chief of investigations with the UN's probe into the use of chemical weapons in Syria in 2016, and the same role in the organisation's Special Tribunal for Lebanon. He was awarded the AO for his 'distinguished service to international and transnational law enforcement, to counter-terrorism leadership, to multiculturalism, and to veterans.' Sobering findings from the royal commission revealed 1677 serving and former Defence Force members died of suicide between 1997 and 2021, with that figure 20 times more than the number of members who were killed in action or during military exercises. The government has agreed in principle to implementing 104 of the 122 recommendations from the report, and noted an additional 17 for further consideration. Speaking at the ceremonial closing of the royal commission, Mr Kaldas urged the government and the Defence Force to 'recognise and admit' to the 'unacceptable behaviour' unearthed by the probe, which include rampant sexual abuse and inadequate support given to veterans and unfair delays taken to process claims lodged with the Department of Veterans' Affairs. He said systems had 'failed' many veterans over many years, stating 'our nation remains indebted to them and that debt must be now be repaid'. 'Vigilance must be maintained, and no one should take their foot off the pedal in the reform process once the Royal Commission ceases to exist,' he said. 'And so, we call on this government and succeeding governments to finally take the courageous step of overruling bureaucratic inertia and do what is needed, what is necessary and what is right'. Julie-Ann Finney – Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) An instrumental and relentless voice in calling for the Royal Commission in Defence and Veteran Suicide, which was released last year, Julie-Ann Finney's advocacy came from tragedy. The South Australian woman began campaigning for change in the military system after she lost her 38-year-old David to suicide in 2019. Ms Finney paid tribute to her late son and defence families nationwide who have lost a loved one. 'I did wish that he was here to get it. I really don't feel like this is my award,' she said. 'I feel like this award belongs to everybody who served or serves, and all of the voiceless and their families who are fighting for them. 'This has been such a huge fight, and usually if I something happens with me I don't talk about it but I have decided that this one, I'm going to stand on, because we still need so much change.' While she wasn't sure of the logistics, Ms Finney said she had plans of sharing the award with the defence community. 'I don't know how this works, but I'm going to hope that when we get the change that we need, that this award can go to the war memorial to say thank you to all who have served this nation, be they here or not, and their families who have supported them.' Deborah Hutton – Medal of the Order of Australi a (OAM) A familiar face on television screens, Deborah Hutton followed a decade-plus career at the Australian Women's Weekly to becoming a fixture on programs like Amazing Homes and Location Location. She's since parlayed her platform to raising awareness for skin cancer prevention s following two significant skin cancer removal surgeries, taking on ambassadorships for Chick Check Champions, The Skin Hospital, The Skin Health Institute and Lions Australia's Skin Cancer Screening and Awareness Program. Photos of Hutton's 'pretty brutal' recovery following the removal of two Basal Cell Carcinomas (BCC) from her face went viral in 2020, however she says the prevenance of the recent tan lines trend was proof of the need for continued advocacy. 'I was like: 'Are you kidding me'? Hutton said, exasperated. 'This is the message that I want these young people to listen to: You are literally investing in having a potentially really dangerous future with your skin. Three out of four Aussies are 100 per cent going to get some form of skin cancer in their lifetime. That's the stat'. Hutton said her message was about having a 'better relationship with the sun'. She also wanted to use her profile to raise more awareness for programs which operate mobile skin check buses and trucks to ensure Aussies in rural and regional areas can access free appointments. 'This is critical because these are areas where they have so little access to get their skin checked,' she said. 'We need more we need more light on these amazing organisations that are doing this, that are putting money behind these mobile units because it's very challenging in some of these areas.'
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Rogue Labor MP reveals why Albo is 'seriously an idiot' after a stunning move that benefits absolutely nobody: PVO
Keep your friends close... Josh Frydenberg's former spinner Kane Silom has been appointed director of communications for the much-diminished federal opposition.
The Guardian
17-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Attacks on Australia's preferential voting system are ludicrous. We can be proud of it
The Coalition's lopsided defeat in the 2025 federal election has been followed by a new round of attacks on preferential voting. No longer do anti-preferencing campaigners have the excuse that Labor 'lost' the primary vote, with Labor currently 2.6% ahead. Nor can they say preferences won Labor the election, with Labor leading the primary vote in 86 of 150 seats. The latest complaint is just the scale of Coalition casualties. The Coalition will win at most 44 seats (29.3%) off a primary vote of about 32%. This will be the first time since 1987 that the Coalition parties' seat share has been substantially below their primary vote. An article in The Australian on Tuesday bemoaned the defeats of past Coalition frontbenchers (including Peter Dutton and Josh Frydenberg) and supposed future frontbenchers (Amelia Hamer and Ro Knox) who had topped the primary vote in their seats but lost after preferences. David Tanner said 15 seats at the 2025 election (including 13 Coalition defeats) 'would have had a different winner had a first-past-the-post voting system been in place'. The Australian Financial Review mounted a similar argument on Wednesday. This, however, assumes voters would have voted the same way and parties made the same campaign decisions if Australia had first-past-the-post. I cannot overstate how unsound this underlying assumption is. In seats where the Greens are uncompetitive, many Greens supporters would vote Labor to ensure their votes helped beat the Coalition. Preferential voting is one of the reasons why the Greens maintain much higher vote shares in Australia than the US, UK and Canada. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email Furthermore, parties would make tactical choices about where to run to avoid losing seats through vote-splitting. An example of this came in the 2024 French elections. The far-right National Rally polled the highest primary vote in the first round of a runoff system. In many seats the leftwing NFP and centrist Ensemble alliances both qualified for the runoff round, but one or the other withdrew to avoid splitting the anti-National Rally vote. In the second round, the National Rally topped the popular vote by 11.2% but won fewer seats than either NFP or Ensemble. Such withdrawal pacts have far greater impacts on results than Australian how to vote cards (which hardly any minor party voters follow anyway), so the idea that scrapping preferences would stop 'backroom deals' between parties is naive. Removing preferences would probably have changed very few seat outcomes at recent elections, at a massive and grossly unfair cost to the ability of those not supporting major parties to effectively say what they are really thinking at the ballot box. There are also some Coalition wins (at this election, Longman) that could be lost under first-past-the-post, because minor right party voters would be less willing to vote strategically than minor left party voters. In recent years I have seen some supporters of minor right parties opposing preferences too, claiming that preferences are a 'uniparty' plot against the little guys. Preferences were actually introduced by the conservative parties in 1918 to stop Labor from scoring undeserved wins in three-cornered contests. In the past 35 years of federal, state and territory elections, preferences have been almost nine times more likely to help non-major-party candidates beat the majors than the other way around. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion In the 2025 election at least five independents and one Greens candidate have beaten major parties from behind, while Adam Bandt is the only non-major-party candidate to lose after leading on primary votes. It is baffling that anyone who opposes major party domination would want a system that renders voting for minor parties pointless. If voters for minor right parties want to see their parties win more seats they should support proportional representation. Anti-preferencers, as I call them, also claim the UK system is the global norm. Actually just a few dozen countries use it alone to elect their lower houses. Most protect minority voting rights in some way – proportional representation, runoff voting, mixed systems or preferences. We should be proud of the way all voters get a say at all stages of our counts and not seek to import failed and primitive methods from countries that have not overcome their roadblocks to electoral reform. Kevin Bonham is an independent electoral and polling analyst and an electoral studies and scientific research consultant
The Australian
11-05-2025
- Politics
- The Australian
Teal MP Monique Ryan defeats Amelia Hamer for Kooyong seat
Teal MP Monique Ryan is on track to retain the seat of Kooyong, with Sky News projecting her narrow victory over Liberal challenger Amelia Hamer after a tense week-long count that has gone down to the wire. Dr Ryan holds 50.3 per cent of the two candidate preferred vote, maintaining a narrow lead of 693 votes over Ms Hamer. With about 5000 ballots left to count and the remaining votes breaking evenly, Sky News has declared it unlikely that Ms Hamer will close the gap. Dr Ryan first claimed the historically blue-ribbon seat in 2022, unseating former treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Before entering politics, she was a paediatric neurologist at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. She was approached for comment on Sunday but did not respond by deadline and did not claim victory. At one point last week, Ms Hamer closed the gap on Dr Ryan to just 366 votes, forcing the Climate 200-backed MP to retract her election night victory claim and warn the seat was now 'too close to call'. Strong postal vote support was powering Ms Hamer's comeback, and while the margin could tighten, Sky News declared there was now enough of a trend to say that Dr Ryan will hold on in a cliffhanger. In terms of first preference votes, latest AEC figures show Ms Hamer secured 43.7 per cent (47,604) of the votes, while Dr Ryan received 34.1 per cent (37,162). Teal MPs will now hold on to five out of six of their existing seats having lost Goldstein. Just days after the election, Ms Hamer admitted she debated conceding defeat not long after the polls closed. 'I actually did speak to the team and I said: 'Look, should I call and concede?'' Ms Hamer told 3AW on May 6. 'The team said to me: 'No, it does look like what's coming out of pre-poll is much more positive. 'I trust my team and so we hung on.' Ms Hamer has been approached for comment. As of 11am on Sunday, the ABC has not yet called the seat in favour of Dr Ryan. Mohammad Alfares Journalist Mohammad Alfares, a journalist and a keen fisherman. Growing up, I would film and edit 'productions' I made with family friends every holiday. Combined with my love of writing and storytelling, being a journalist was the perfect fit! I obtained a Bachelor of Communication at Massey University in New Zealand and was lucky enough to get my first taste of the industry in broadcast journalism. Outside of work, I keep my hunger for adrenaline satisfied by chasing a big fish! I'll also find time to relax too, either with a cup of coffee or enjoying some fresh air and sunshine. Nation Police have seized more than a tonne of cocaine worth over $623 million after intercepting a vessel off the NSW coast, arresting five men in a major sting. Politics Outgoing frontbencher Ed Husic has also suggested he believed his support for Palestine and criticisms of Israel were one of the reasons he lost his spot in the second-term Albanese cabinet.
News.com.au
11-05-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
Monique Ryan holds onto Kooyong with narrow win
Monique Ryan has managed to cling onto the Melbourne seat of Kooyong, winning one of the tightest vote counts of the federal election. With the count grinding on for more than a week, the Teal independent looked to be in trouble. Dr Ryan was forced to take back her election night victory declaration after her lead on Liberal challenger Amelia Harmer fell to just 366 votes, saying it was 'too close to call'. But her fortunes shifted over the weekend as she narrowly extended her lead. As of noon Sunday, Dr Ryan was ahead of Ms Harmer with 693 votes. With 89.41 per cent of ballots counted, Sky News called it for the independent. Dr Ryan, a former pediatric neurologist, won the seat from ex-Coalition minister Josh Frydenberg in 2022.
