News update for Fri 31 Jan 2025

Your trusted guide to the top independent news and views of the day...

Jan 31, 2025

Welcome to your TrueNorth news update where every weekday afternoon we share curated articles from Australia’s independent news media sector.

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Scroll down for today’s news and views…

TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here

BREAKING NEWS: Human Rights Commission considers discrimination complaint against Peter Dutton over Gaza comments - The Guardian

The people importing Trump's anti-trans tactics to Australia - 7am Podcast

Donald Trump returned to the White House with a campaign that routinely attacked trans gender people. On the night he was elected, trans people in the United States were panicking. Online, they shared concerns about access to hormone treatment and surgery, while swapping notes about moving to countries where they might feel safer. In Australia, writer and lawyer Sam Elkin began preparing for what the Trump era will mean for trans people in our country. Now, senior federal politicians have begun voicing their support for Trump’s anti-trans tactics. But will his playbook work in Australia?

Listen to the 7am Podcast

Also read > Can a child legally take puberty blockers? What if their parents disagree? - federal Health Minister Mark Butler announced a review into health care for trans and gender-diverse children and adolescents - The Conversation

Labor Party rigs "donations" laws - The Klaxon

The ALP has rigged Victoria’s electoral fundraising laws in favour of the political duopoly, allowing it and the Coalition to be funnelled limitless “donations” via three obscure shell companies.

Investigations reveal that under the scheme — which experts say hogties independents from entering parliament — the Liberal Party runs its funds through a company registered to a luxury house in Melbourne’s Brighton.

The limitless “donations” to the National Party flow through a shell company called “Pilliwinks Pty Ltd”.

Moderate Liberals losing ground as hard-right faction looms large in Senate battle - The Guardian

The Liberal party’s moderate wing is set to lose more influence in federal parliament with an Alex Antic-backed candidate tipped to take the Senate seat once held by Simon Birmingham.

Birmingham, who was elected in 2007 and resigned on Tuesday, led the federal party’s moderate faction and was one of the few remaining senior Liberals in the faction after losses in the 2022 federal election, including inner city MPs Jason Falinski and Tim Wilson.

Louise Milligan: The true legacy of the rapist George Pell - The Monthly

As the Catholic Church finds a new legal defence against child sexual abuse charges, disgust with the late cardinal George Pell’s glorification has now led some of his own victims to come forward and detail their abuse at his hand

The day politicians, priests and pundits filed into St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney for the pontifical requiem mass venerating Cardinal George Pell as a Catholic hero, a soldier for truth, a prospective saint and an unfortunate scapegoat in a vast woke conspiracy, a mathematics teacher was at home, seething.

Also read > Cardinal George Pell abused two boys in Ballarat, compensation scheme decides - ABC News

Menace to ecology and consumers. No thrill for Barnaby on blueberry hill. - Michael West Media

Poor regulations and bureaucratic corner-cutting threaten ecosystems on the NSW’s Mid-North Coast and are a risk for blueberry consumers across Australia.

Australians face a little-known but very real health hazard thanks to blueberry pesticide regulations green-lit by an agency in the throes of moving to Barnaby Joyce’s backyard. Meanwhile, the region growing those blueberries, once famous for bananas, faces ecological catastrophe from the kind of regulatory regime you’d see in a banana republic.

Today’s cartoon by Matt Golding

TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here

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Labor scrambles to clinch political expenditure reform with Coalition deal - The ABC

Labor is heading for a fresh clash with teal and crossbench independents as the government moves to revive a deal with the Coalition to overhaul political donation and funding rules.

Government sources told the ABC that Special Minister of State Don Farrell "really wants to get done" in the coming two weeks of parliament after falling short of an agreement with the opposition last year by "only a few days".

One person with knowledge of the minister's plans said there had been "ongoing conversations" between the parties over the summer.

Newsroom edition: from Musk’s Doge to Dutton’s Smoge, the Coalition eyes public service cuts - The Full Story Podcast

Peter Dutton wants to slash thousands of government jobs in an Elon Musk-style purge of the public service. But this is not the first time an Australian politician has promised cost cutting ahead of an election and we don’t know much about the potential policy or its consequences. Bridie Jabour talks with editor-in-chief Lenore Taylor and deputy editor Patrick Keneally about the threats to the public service and finding facts during an election campaign

Listen to The Full Story Podcast

Why are white men angry at the world? Blame market economics, not DEI - Crikey

'I think a lot of young males feel disenfranchised and feel ostracised,' Peter Dutton says. The real causes behind this aren't diversity and inclusion.

Privilege is having its political moment. The protection of privilege by those who possess it is currently the driving force of politics in the United States — where inclusion is blamed for everything from climate crisis-induced fires to air disasters — and a core part of the Coalition’s efforts to turn Anthony Albanese into a one-term prime minister here.

“I think a lot of young males feel disenfranchised and feel ostracised,” Peter Dutton says. “I think there’s just a point where people are fed up. They’re pushing back and saying, ‘Well, why am I being overlooked at work for a job, you know, three jobs running when I’ve got, you know, a partner at home, and she’s decided to stay at home with three young kids…”

While one’s heart breaks for the men whose lazy partners won’t work as well as raise three toddlers, why are men being overlooked in this scenario? Because, Dutton says, they are being discriminated against “on the basis of gender or race”.

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What does the world need right now? A big dose of feminist energy - Women’s Agenda

The state of the world is fairly dismal when a convicted felon takes over the world’s leading superpower setting out a radical pathway that takes us backwards on climate, diversity, migrant and trans rights. His sidekicks drawn from the tech oligarchy seem to think Mars is a viable option when the rest of our planetary ecosystems collapse.

And of course, then there’s the Mark Zuckerberg claim that the world needs more masculine energy.

Australia’s social media ban shows how extreme the technology debate has become – there’s a better way - The Conversation

The recent decision by the Australian government to introduce a ban on social media for under-16s has been received with both praise and condemnation.

Those who approve of the proposal tend to consider that children are being exploited by egregious levels of exposure to this technology. Opponents of the ban argue that it is not proportionate to the potential harms of denying young people appropriate access to what have become integral features of everyday existence.

This somewhat adversarial situation falls prey to the twin perils of fatalism and disasterism.

Ronni Salt: 26 thoughts I had watching Gina Rinehart’s National Mining Day conference - The Shot

For those of you not in mining inner circles (and I assume that means anyone outside the Liberal and National parties) some time back in 2013, Peter Dutton’s legally registered owner Gina Rinehart founded – wait for it – National Mining And Related Industries Day. Never heard of it? Don’t worry, I’d never heard of anal warts until a few years ago either.

And because she knows you’ve never heard of it, Queen Gina Of The Iron Ore Deposits And Arch Enemy Of Rose Hancock’s Lawyers, recorded her day of celebrating planet destroying emissions, and then uploaded it to the intertubes so we could all point and laugh at Pauline Hanson on a dance floor with Tina Whatshername and a man in a Crocodile Dundee hat. I’m watching on my laptop at two in the morning which helps the unfolding scene seem more like a nocturnal hallucination that anything that actually happened.

And we’re away: