News update for Tue 1 July 2025

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

Jul 01, 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 the news and views you need to know today…

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

BREAKING NEWS: The Melbourne childcare sexual abuse charges: what we know so far and what affected families should do - The Guardian

PUBLISHER’S DAYS OFF: This Thursday 3/7 and Friday 4/7 TrueNorth is taking some time out. We’ll be back in your inbox at 5pm on Monday 7/7. TrueNorth is a solo run initiative supporting independent news media and commentary.

UN expert urges criminalising fossil fuel disinformation, banning lobbying - The Guardian

A leading UN expert is calling for criminal penalties against those peddling disinformation about the climate crisis and a total ban on fossil fuel industry lobbying and advertising, as part of a radical shake-up to safeguard human rights and curtail planetary catastrophe.

Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change who presents her damning new report to the general assembly in Geneva on Monday, argues that the US, UK, Canada, Australia and other wealthy fossil fuel nations are legally obliged under international law to fully phase out oil, gas and coal by 2030 – and compensate communities for harms caused.

Fracking, oil sands and gas flaring should be banned, as should fossil fuel exploration, subsidies, investments and false tech solutions that will lock in future generations to polluting and increasingly costly oil, gas and coal.

'A horrifying new pattern': Palestinians killed as they wait for aid - 7am Podcast

Last week, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published testimony from Israeli soldiers who admitted to deliberately shooting unarmed Palestinian civilians while they waited for humanitarian aid – claims the Israeli government denies. According to authorities in Gaza, at least 583 people have been killed in the past month at aid distribution centres in Gaza, and many more people have been injured. The United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres has called the Israeli and US-backed aid centers “inherently unsafe” – saying “the search for food must never be a death sentence”. On today’s episode, we speak with doctors working at the last functioning hospitals in Gaza, about the reality of treating people who have been attacked while trying to get food.

Listen to 7am Podcast

Also >

Bunker busters shook us all - Jack Waterford for Pearls and Irritations
Israel's poisoned chalice as regional bully - Antony Loewenstein
Australians recruited for Israel’s ‘weaponised aid’ project in Gaza - Michael West Media
At least 30 dead in Israeli strike on internet cafe in Gaza popular with journalists - The ABC

Paul Keating: The superannuation system matures at 12% of wages - Pearls and Irritations

Tomorrow, thirty-four years after I nominated a 12% wage equivalent as the appropriate level of compulsory contribution into superannuation, the system finally matures.

This means that every young person joining the workforce this year will begin and remain at 12% of superannuation contributions throughout their entire working life.

The 12% superannuation wage target was nominated in a speech I gave to the Australian Graduate School of Management at the University of New South Wales on 25 July 1991. This is the key policy speech in the development of both the superannuation guarantee, and with it, the 12% wage equivalent, overall target.

Also read > Paul Keating says young Australians are guaranteed to have $3m in super by retirement – but not everyone agrees - The Guardian

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Experts warn of global economic turmoil ahead of Donald Trump's tariff deadline - The ABC

Donald Trump has torn up the rule book in his second presidential term — defying the courts, the congress and the constitution.

But it's his attempt to "make America wealthy again" by imposing tariffs on more than 180 countries and territories that have caused months of chaos, undermined business confidence in the United States, and pushed the world to the brink of a financial crisis.

With a three-month pause on the tariffs just days from expiring, leading experts in economics and international relations have told Four Corners they fear Mr Trump's "unworkable" and "absurd" trade policies will create more instability and plunge the global economy into turmoil.

The Worst Bill in History - Robert Reich

Trump’s giant budget-busting, Medicaid-shattering, shafting-the-poor-and-working-class, making-the-rich-even richer bill is a travesty.

If the bill now being considered by the Senate is enacted, 11.8 million Americans will lose their health insurance, millions will fall into poverty, and the national debt will increase by $3.3 trillion, all to provide a major tax cut mainly to the rich and big corporations. There is no justification for this.

Never before in the history of this nation has such a large redistribution of income been directed upward, for no reason at all. It comes at a time of near-record inequalities of income and wealth.

Finally compensation for victims of Australian atomic bomb testing? - Michael West Media

While our Government ignored America and Israel’s bombing of nuclear facilities in Iran, the British Government may finally succumb to compensating victims of atomic bomb testing in Australia in the 1950s.

Forty years after a group of British nuclear test veterans braved the Official Secrets Act to begin campaigning for recognition of their health problems as possible consequences of working with radioactive substances, UK Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard has made remarkable statements.

After 40 years, he is accepting what successive UK governments have denied with an implacable single-mindedness across Tory and Labour at great expense in various courts and tribunals.

Who will fill the Lambie vacuum? - The Tally Room Podcast

Ben was joined by Tasmanian political observer Mike Lester to look at the state of the campaign and the announcement of candidates for the Tasmanian state election. We particularly look into the Tasmanian Nationals and the shadow-boxing around who takes the blame for the calling of the election and who has the best prospect of forming a majority government.

Listen to The Tally Room Podcast

Also >

Tasmanian election: YouGov poll and election guide - The Poll Bludger
YouGov poll has Labor ahead of Liberals in Tasmania but well short of majority - The ABC
2 polls have Tasmania headed for another hung parliament, but disagree on which - The Conversation

Australia’s university system is ‘battered’ and ‘broken’ – a new book surveys the wreckage and offers some solutions - The Conversation

The Australian university sector has come under considerable pressure in recent years. It is currently in a parlous state.

Controversy swirls around hundreds of millions of dollars in underpayments to casual staff. Obscene salaries are paid to senior executives. Weekly announcements of course cuts and staff redundancies send a clear message that this is a sector in crisis.

For Emeritus Professor Graeme Turner, a highly respected humanities scholar and advisor to various governments and industry bodies, the Australian university sector is “broken”.

Gaza protesters cop a beating while criminals run increasingly rampant: It’s Chris Minns’ NSW - Crikey

In NSW, violent crime and especially crime against women is surging — but the Minns government appears more interested in cracking down on pro-Palestinian protests.

The assault on Hannah Thomas under hardline NSW anti-protest laws at a pro-Palestine protest in Belmore should be seen against the backdrop of growing lawlessness in Sydney under the Minns government.

NSW Police — which was strangely reluctant to investigate its own actions during the protest at Belmore — appears powerless to stop near-routine gangland shootings in Sydney which increasingly harm either innocent bystanders or the wrong targets. According to the ABC, eight innocent people have been killed in gangland killings since 2020.

Let’s face it, our high hopes are NACCered - The Politics

When the National Anti-Corruption Commission was established it carried with it the wishes and dreams of the country. They've gone up in smoke.

Big developments from Australia’s corruption busters with news of the National Anti-Corruption Commission’s first scalp: a government employee has been banged up for breaking the rules to line up a government job for a close family friend.

After two years and hundreds of millions of dollars, the NACC’s first completed investigation, released yesterday, found a senior Department of Home Affairs manager had acted corruptly when she subverted the hiring rules to help her sister and her sister’s fiancé into a plum government job. Don’t laugh. There’s a stern message here: if you steal a pack of post-it notes from work or take home a government notebook, the NACC’s sleuths will hunt you down, find you and prosecute you to the full extent of the law.

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