Latest news with #Yarralumla
ABC News
26-05-2025
- General
- ABC News
Graham Williams
Graham is a born and bred Canberran, who was brought up in Yarralumla (but back when it was a working class suburb!). It was a small house on a big block; his dad chose to have the whole back yard under cultivation, growing enough veggies for the whole community. That's where Graham's green-thumb grew. He always had a connection with the outdoors. According to his poor mother, when he was a baby he would cry at the back door till she let him out - even when it was minus six degrees and frosty - and he would crawl around happily on the ice-hard ground. Throughout his schooling, Graham's interests lay firmly in studies concerning biology and the environment - all other 'lesser' subjects were virtually ignored in their favour. After leaving school Graham worked on farms picking fruit and travelling, returning to Canberra in winter only to pursue his other love, skiing. Getting back to nature, Graham took up in a tee pee up in the Snowy Mountains while working at a ski resort. That's dedication, all right! When he finally settled down, Graham first graced the greenhouses of Yarralumla Nursery were he stayed for several years, working in plant production and floriculture while also studying horticulture at Weston. In 1989 he moved on to Lanyon Homestead were he worked while studying Arborculture (also at Weston). Graham's love of and interest in gardening will always be his primary passion, and he loves learning something new every day through other gardeners and mother nature herself. Since his debut on 666, Graham has taken to radio like a duck to water and relishes chatting with listeners about their gardening joys and woes. Shortly he'll embark of a series of online vodcasts (video web casts) to help listeners hone their own green thumbs.
ABC News
21-05-2025
- ABC News
Canberra man found not guilty of raping woman he met via dating app Bumble
A Canberra man accused of sexually assaulting a woman on a Bumble date has been found not guilty by an ACT Supreme Court jury. Hakan Eren, aged in his mid thirties, was charged with seven offences including rape, and acts of indecency. The jury found him not guilty on each charge. The incident was alleged to have happened in the woman's car at Lennox Gardens in Yarralumla after the pair met for a drink at the Kingston Hotel in September 2022. The woman told the court she did consent to some activities, but when she asked to stop he continued, sexually assaulting her several times. Mr Eren maintained there was no sex, only kissing, and that he stopped when the woman asked him to. The court heard after the incident the woman said she had pulled on her clothes and driven Mr Eren to a bus stop in the city before calling a friend for help. The prosecution urged the jury to believe the woman's account saying she had been honest, that she had consented to some acts, but had set a boundary at the outset. The prosecution told the court the woman had remarked she felt "really disgusting…really dirty" after the incident, which indicated "the real life and palpable reactions from a woman who had been sexually assaulted". Prosecutors told the jury in light of the alleged victim's account Mr Eren had lied to police, suggesting a consciousness of guilt. But his lawyer, James Sabharwal, told the jury he was genuinely confused when police turned up to his workplace where he was first interviewed, and took a long while to understand why they were there. "We kiss … we do not have sex," Mr Eren said to police. He also denied removing his pants in the car, with Mr Sabharwal telling the jury "his pants never came off him". The victim said he had removed his pants before the assaults. The prosecution also raised evidence about DNA found inside the woman which corresponded with Mr Eren. Mr Sabharwal urged the jury not to be "seduced" by the evidence, suggesting there was no indication about where the material came from, when the pair had engaged in some sexual activity by consent. During the trial two other women who had met Mr Eren online and dated him gave character evidence to support him. Mr Sabharwal told the jury "he may have a different approach to dating than you" and that he may be "a bit of a man about town" but he urged the jury not to judge him for that.
ABC News
13-05-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
The campaign was derided as dull, but the election aftermath kicks like a shirty mule
The aftermath of the 2025 federal election has very decidedly been a split-screen sort of affair, so it was appropriate that yesterday's swearing-in of the Albanese ministry at Yarralumla was scheduled for exactly the same time as the Liberal Party's swearing-at. Sorry, leadership vote. Live coverage toggled back and forth between the governor-general's gaff, where the twin sons of new Communications Minister Anika Wells conducted their now customary dragging of their mother (this year, a plush football was deployed in a lovely nod to Wells' continuing stewardship of the sports portfolio), and the Liberal party room, which TV cameras captured as leadership candidate Angus Taylor attempted to enter via the wrong door. These distractions aside, both events made history. The new Albanese Cabinet is the first in our Federation's 124-year lifespan to be majority-female. Of the 23 senior ministers sworn in by Governor-General Sam Mostyn yesterday, 12 — or 52 per cent — are women. And over in the blue corner, the Liberal Party yesterday for the first time chose a woman to be its federal leader: Sussan Ley, the Member for Farrer. Susan Penelope Braybrooks (as the Liberal leader was born in Nigeria, later to emigrate at age 13 to Australia after her Dad changed jobs from being a British spy) added an "S" to her first name back in the 1980s, when she became interested in numerology. "I worked out that if you added an 'S', I would have an incredibly exciting, interesting life and nothing would ever be boring," she explained dryly in a newspaper interview in 2015. Disappointingly, the numerology phase — along with Ley's teenage nose piercing and deep commitment to Canberra's punk scene — is a thing of the past. But was she on to something? Since taking on the extra consonant, Ley's worked as a shearer's cook, pilot, farmer, trained as an air traffic controller, had three kids, got an economics degree and two Masters (one in taxation law, one in accounting) and followed all that with a quarter of a century in politics. Like many Australian women of the "sandwich generation", she has juggled work and family at multiple junctures, and indeed yesterday departed Canberra to be with her mother, who is in palliative care in Albury. The last week cannot have been easy, but if Ley was stressed, it didn't show. And that's fortunate, because her life is about to get even more interesting. Ley assumes custody of the Liberal Party at a particularly upsetting time in its 81-year history. Of the seriously depleted Liberal ranks meeting in Room GR-114, yesterday, Ley won 29 votes. Her rival, shadow treasurer Angus Taylor, won 25. It would be way too simplistic to interpret this roughly half-half split as a division between Liberals who think that campaigning on nuclear energy, anti-immigration and culture war issues was a terrible idea, and those who think the problem was they didn't go hard enough. But the closeness of the result absolutely confirms the scale of Ley's reconstruction task. By a broader margin of 38 votes to 16, the party room also backed Ted O'Brien as deputy leader, over fellow Queenslander Phillip Thompson, who took the room by surprise when he nominated "on a whim". There are many "learnings" from this development. And to be fair, for most Aussies the headline news would be the very existence of Thompson in any capacity. (He is a veteran, and the Member for Herbert, and a former Invictus Games competitor and powerlifting coach, so consider yourself introduced) But for Liberalologists, the real surprise was the non-candidacy of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who last week took the electrifying step of defecting to the Liberals from the National party room and announcing her bid to be 2IC of her new crew. Taylor and Price hard-launched their joint ticket on Sunday morning with a split-screen social media video in which both earnestly proclaimed their respect for each other, possibly from separate rooms. Of the 400-odd Instagram comments below the video, a solid majority simply said "Fantastic. Great move. Well done Angus", in tribute to one of the accident-prone Member for Hume's best-loved public misadventures. We cannot now know what Nampijinpa Price's level of support would have been; when Taylor was defeated, she decided not to run after all. And now the deputy leader is Ted O'Brien, who until last Saturday was hoping that his main job for the next few years would involve speed-assembling a series of nuclear reactors from scratch at key points around the continent, but now finds himself taking on a reconstruction challenge far more complex and fissile. Nampijinpa Price's sensational defection — in which former Liberal leader, prime minister and minister for women Tony Abbott is reported to have played a significant role — came in a week of post-election eventfulness so hallucinogenically intense that at times it appeared the nation had slipped into some kind of metaverse where every single thing that anyone had on their election night bingo card, anywhere, was coming true one by one. Peter Dutton loses his seat! Adam Bandt loses his seat! Matt Canavan challenges for the leadership of the National Party! The Deputy Prime Minister Whacks the Attorney General! The Minister for Science Loses His Job And Chews Out The PM On Live TV! Tim Wilson Comeback! For a campaign that was widely derided as dull and uninspiring, the aftermath of Election 2025 has a kick like a seriously shirty mule. Live results: Find out what's happening in your seat as counting continues Viewed in split-screen, these remarkable events are easier to understand. The Liberal Party's ructions are caused by the unexpected scale of its defeat. And the Labor Party's are caused by the unexpected scale of its victory. The landslide result last Saturday is — of course, first and foremost — a breathtaking win for Anthony Albanese. But large victories create large expectations, especially among a large and under-occupied back bench. And a crushing political victory can sometimes turn out to be political risk in very convincing drag. John Howard experienced this after the 2004 election, in which he trounced Labor's Mark Latham and won control of the Senate, a victory that empowered him to introduce the Work Choices industrial reforms that finished him off three years later. It is a horrid truth of politics that the moments at which one feels most invincible are the commonest time codes for overreach and error. Governments with too much power aren't great for democracies, or even for themselves. Of the many vexing problems with which Sussan Ley's plate is piled high from today, the risk of hubris certainly isn't one. Expectations have never been lower. Which technically should give her the freedom to be ambitious. Fortunately, she seems the adventurous type.
The Guardian
13-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Sussan Ley marks a new beginning – but there's still a long way back for the Liberals
As Liberal MPs trudged into the opposition party room to choose a new leader, Anthony Albanese and his euphoric Labor frontbench were being sworn in to their portfolios at Government House. There's just six kilometres between the corridors of Parliament Houseand the governor general's residence in Yarralumla, but a vast chasm separates the moods of the two parties after the 3 May election. It took just 15 minutes for Liberal MPs to choose Sussan Ley over Angus Taylor, 29 votes to 25, making her the first woman to lead the Liberal party in its 80-year-history. As the WA senator Dean Smith quipped to media assembled outside the party room on Tuesday morning, it is a 'new beginning'. Clear-eyed Liberal MPs view it as just that and only that: the first step in a long, difficult march back to political relevance. Ley and her new deputy, Ted O'Brien, inherit the leadership of a divided and diminished party that has found itself, or allowed itself to become, detached from mainstream Australia. That is the lesson of consecutive election thumpings, where large sections of society – not least women – have deserted the party and, in doing so, rejected its policies in areas such as climate action. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email In that context, Tuesday's leadership ballot was a pivotal juncture. Liberal MPs could have chosen Taylor, a male conservative, and running mate Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, a rightwing firebrand, to lead the rebuild. That would have sent a message. Instead, they chose a woman with moderate Liberal values and a man unaligned with any of the party's factional tribes. That, too, sends a message. But to suggest Ley's views and gender might be enough to win back lost voters would naively undersell the nature and scale of the task before her and O'Brien. The Liberals' biggest problem is in the capital cities, where it has been almost wiped out in the past two elections. Ley hails from regional NSW, while O'Brien represents part of Queensland's Sunshine Coast, two areas geographically distant from the voters the Liberals must win back. Then there's the policies. Voters didn't just reject Peter Dutton and his macho brand of political leadership; they also rejected the Coalition's agenda – including its plans to build nuclear power plants. Asked if the controversial nuclear plan – the brainchild of her new deputy – would remain, Ley insisted there would be no 'captain's calls' and all policies would be reviewed. She offered the same noncommittal answer when pressed on the Liberals' commitment to net zero by 2050, declaring only that 'we need to reduce emissions'. In one regard, it is common for a new leader to avoid immediately locking themselves into policies, even if those positions were evidently unpopular (nuclear) or the entry point for credibility (net zero). Another reading of Ley's responses was that they offer a preview into the delicate balancing act she will need to perform as the leader of a fractured and bruised party room. She might be more moderate but Ley's positions on welcome to country ceremonies and 'uniting' behind the Australian flag, for example, were not so far removed from her rightwing former leader. A once vocal supporter of Palestine statehood, Ley said her views had changed. She launched an unprompted spray at Albanese and Penny Wong for 'letting down Jewish Australians' in the aftermath of Hamas's 7 October attack. Ley said governments were formed in the 'sensible centre', while offering subtle, comforting nods to colleagues on the party's left and right. Which brings us to the questions of mandate and unity. Just as Albanese's clear majority hands him enormous control over the Labor caucus, Ley's slim victory means her leadership begins on shaky foundations. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion The margin of Tuesday's ballot would have been even tighter had the vote been held in July, when two of her supporters – Hollie Hughes and Linda Reynolds – will no longer be in parliament. Ley, Taylor and their senior colleagues were on Tuesday preaching the need for unity. Early decisions will decide if that loose bond quickly fractures. Liberal MPs expect Ley to reward supporters Alex Hawke, Jason Wood and Scott Buchholz with frontbench promotions as she pieces together her shadow cabinet. Julian Leeser, who quit shadow cabinet in 2023 to campaign for the voice to parliament, is expected to be brought back into the fold. Taylor's allies are cautiously optimistic that Ley won't completely sideline those who supported the shadow treasurer. There is a warning if she does. 'If they [Ley] take a winner-takes-all approach … we are all screwed,' one Liberal MP cautioned. What now for Price, who defected from the Nationals to run as Taylor's deputy, only to pull out after he lost the leadership ballot? The 'disappointed' Indigenous senator pledged to work with the new leadership to ensure the Coalition was a 'formidable opposition'. The unity will also be tested by arguably the biggest lesson of the Dutton leadership – the perils of discipline. Senior Liberal MPs privately regret placing so much trust and faith in their former leader, and obediently falling into line rather than vigorously debating ideas. The unity under Dutton was heralded as a virtue but it masked a party in crisis, sleepwalking into political oblivion. Labor had its fights after Bill Shorten's 2019 defeat. There was leaking and blazing rows in shadow cabinet. It was messy. But it was necessary. Six years on, Albanese and his ministry posed for selfies with governor general Sam Mostyn, still basking in the afterglow of an election win that netted 93 seats and the real prospect of at least six years in power. It is a long road back for the Liberals. At least they've taken the first step.
