Alan Jones sexual abuse court case gets a starting date
A sexual abuse hearing against broadcaster Alan Jones is locked in as the 84-year-old faces 25 charges of indecent assault and two of sexual touching against nine alleged victims, AAP reports.
The case will have 139 prosecution witnesses, with efforts to reduce these numbers stalled because Jones would not say which senior counsel he had briefed.
Defence solicitor Bryan Wrench said his client would also call his own witnesses, saying “we believe there is an iceberg of exculpatory material”.
The radio host, who denies the charges and has pleaded not guilty, was charged after an investigation by Sydney Morning Herald journalist Kate McClymont in 2023.
The hearing will start on 3 August 2026 and could run until that December. The case will return to court later this month for further management.
Jones was arrested in November 2024 after an eight-month police investigation.
Key events
Penry Buckley
Minns government again moves to limit protests outside places of worship
The NSW government will outline fresh laws restricting protests outside places of worship, just a month after the supreme court struck down legislation that had given police expanded powers to move on protesters as unconstitutional.
In question time today, the NSW premier, Chris Minns, said the laws were being considered in response to Saturday’s neo-Nazi rally outside parliament, and would this time limit people “harassing, blocking, intimidating people from entering a place of worship”. The government is already considering expanding a ban on Nazi symbols to include chants and slogans.
Last month, Justice Anna Mitchelmore ruled that the police powers to move on protesters “in or near” places of worship impermissibly burdened the freedom of political communication implied in Australia’s constitution, following a challenge by the Palestine Action Group.
The Minns government passed the laws in February after a wave of antisemitic attacks over the summer, which included a caravan being found laden with explosives in Dural, on the outskirts of Sydney.
As he announced the laws today, Minns challenged the belief of the Australian Federal Police that the Dural caravan incident was “a hoax” by organised crime. He said:
We also need to address directly the assertion that antisemitism is a hoax, that the Dural caravan plot, the so-called Dural caravan plot, was a hoax. Mr. Speaker, it emboldens extremists, and they used that rhetoric to justify their appalling, obnoxious behaviour on Macquarie Street.
Ella Creamer
Looking for a summer read? The new Booker prize winner has been announced
Hungarian-British author David Szalay has won the 2025 Booker prize for his novel Flesh.
Szalay’s sixth work of fiction traces the life of one man, István, from his youth to midlife. The judges “had never read anything quite like it”, said the panel chair, Roddy Doyle, who won the prize in 1993. “It is, in many ways, a dark book, but it is a joy to read.”
Flesh opens with a shocking incident that unfolds while teenage István is living in an apartment complex with his mother in Hungary. Szalay then follows the protagonist as he spends time in the military before moving to London, where he begins working for the uber-rich. Written in spare prose, the novel explores masculinity, class, migration, trauma, sex and power.
Szalay was announced as the winner of the £50,000 (A$100,000) award at a ceremony held in Old Billingsgate in London on Monday evening. He was previously shortlisted for the prize in 2016, for his novel All That Man Is.
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Luca Ittimani
Houses eligible for 5% deposit scheme see prices surge
Homes eligible for the government’s 5% deposit scheme saw faster price growth than those above the new price caps in October, new data shows.
The Albanese government on 1 October lifted the price caps below which Australians could apply to buy a home with a government-backed guarantee on small deposits. Caps lifted by at least $150,000 in the big cities, with metropolitan New South Wales rising by $600,000.
Properties with values within the new caps saw prices rise 1.2% in the month of October, while those outside the price caps rose 1%, according to data firm Cotality. That gap represents thousands of dollars’ difference, given the national median home price rose nearly $10,000 in the month, to $872,538.
It may not all have come from the expanded deposit scheme, but it did coincide with a rapid uptick in applications – which doubled at Westpac in October 2025 compared with October 2024 – and approvals under the scheme, with purchases 50% higher in October 2025 than October 2024, according to government data.
Treasury advised the government as recently as July the scheme would support about 70,000 home purchases a year and boost house prices by 0.6% over six years, officials told Senate estimates last week.
Alan Jones sexual abuse court case gets a starting date
A sexual abuse hearing against broadcaster Alan Jones is locked in as the 84-year-old faces 25 charges of indecent assault and two of sexual touching against nine alleged victims, AAP reports.
The case will have 139 prosecution witnesses, with efforts to reduce these numbers stalled because Jones would not say which senior counsel he had briefed.
Defence solicitor Bryan Wrench said his client would also call his own witnesses, saying “we believe there is an iceberg of exculpatory material”.
The radio host, who denies the charges and has pleaded not guilty, was charged after an investigation by Sydney Morning Herald journalist Kate McClymont in 2023.
The hearing will start on 3 August 2026 and could run until that December. The case will return to court later this month for further management.
Jones was arrested in November 2024 after an eight-month police investigation.
Prosecutors drop rape charges against AFL player and his friend
Prosecutors have dropped all charges against Geelong AFL player Tanner Bruhn and his co-accused after alleging they raped a woman in a car, AAP reports.
Bruhn and his friend, Patrick Sinnott, faced Geelong magistrates court on Tuesday, where the rape and intentional sexual touching charges were formally withdrawn.
Bruhn’s identity was previously suppressed, but his barrister asked for the order to be lifted after the prosecution’s application. Both men have always maintained their innocence.
Bruhn’s barrister, Dermot Dann, told the court the woman had since admitted she lied and the case was clearly a “horrible stain on the criminal justice system”.
“(Bruhn) should be regarded now and forever as someone who was 100 per cent innocent,” Dann said on Tuesday.
Australia’s biggest battery project hits a snag during testing
The Waratah Super Battery, the biggest battery on Australia’s energy grid and one of the largest battery energy storage system in the world, has had a temporary loss in capacity due to a recent transformer outage.
The energy project is run by Akaysha Energy and sits on the former site of the Munmorah coal-fired power station on NSW’s Central Coast. When completed, it’s expected to have a full capacity of 850MW, enough to power nearly 1m homes for one hour.
Akaysha said two of three transformers on the site were found to have issues during testing to bring the battery fully online. The two transformers are undergoing detailed engineering inspections to figure out how to move forward.
A spokesperson for the energy company said:
The Waratah Super Battery is still operating at 350MW capacity and actively bolstering energy security for NSW’s grid.
The Waratah Super Battery continues to meet its System Integrity Protection Scheme (SIPS) service requirements of 350MW, which is the interim commercial operating capacity.
The battery’s remaining capacity is expected to come online during 2026.
Household optimism defies expectations and turns positive
Patrick Commins
Australian households have turned positive for the first time in nearly four years, in an “extraordinary” result that defies the recent bad news on inflation and interest rates.
Analysts had expected Westpac’s latest monthly sentiment survey to show deepening gloom among consumers.
Instead, the report revealed optimists outnumbered pessimists for the first time since early 2022, underpinned by a jump in confidence about the prospects for the economy and households’ finances.
In positive news for retailers ahead of Christmas, there was a big lift in buyer sentiment, somewhat offset by a “patchy” mood about households’ current financial position.
Matthew Hassan, a senior economist at Westpac, said overall the lift in consumer confidence was “an extraordinary and somewhat surprising result”, in the context of the rebound in inflation.
That said, “sentiment overall is still only marginally positive rather than strongly optimistic,” Hassan said.
In contrast, those respondents with mortgages were more pessimistic in November than in October, as hopes for further rate cuts dwindled.
Three die following collision in Stoneleigh, Victoria
An adult and two children have died in Stoneleigh, western Victoria, after a collision between a truck and a car shortly after 9.30am, Victoria police have said.
The major collision investigation unit detectives are heading to the scene of the triple fatality which occurred at the intersection of Erambeen-Streatham and Mount William roads.
The car appears to have rolled and was crushed, police said. The adult and two children died at the scene.
Another adult who was trapped in the car has life-threatening injuries and is expected to be airlifted to hospital. The driver of the truck has minor injuries.
The area has been cordoned off and the surrounding roads are blocked while police and emergency service personnel respond to the scene. Police will hold a press conference in Stoneleigh at 3pm today.
Penry Buckley
NSW shop landlords could be jailed for allowing tenants to sell illicit tobacco and vapes under new laws
Landlords who knowingly allow their tenants to sell illicit tobacco and illegal vapes could be fined up to $165,000, sentenced to up to a year in prison or both, under legislation planned by the New South Wales government.
The changes, expected to be introduced to state parliament this week, would create an offence for commercial landlords who do not notify authorities or take steps to evict a tenant running illicit tobacco and vaping businesses from their premises.
They follow the first stores being shut down in Sydney last week under state laws cracking down on a spiralling black market for cigarettes and vapes, amid a $3.3bn hole in the federal government’s finances from the declining legal tobacco excise.
The NSW health minister, Ryan Park, said the proposed penalties were the result of a consultation with landlords, retailers and health advocates, and struck “a fair and reasonable balance”.
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Flight crews were unaware Melbourne runway was shortened in 2023 near-miss, report says
Stephanie Convery
Two passenger planes only narrowly avoided colliding with construction vehicles and workers during take-off at Melbourne airport in 2023 because the flight crews were unaware the runway had been shortened by nearly 1,600 metres, an Australian safety investigation has found.
On Tuesday, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau released its final report into the two incidents, which took place in September 2023 while a Melbourne airport runway was temporarily shortened for resurfacing works.
In the first incident on 7 September that year, a Malaysia Airlines Airbus A330-300 with 247 people on board overran the runway while taking off for a flight to Kuala Lumpur, passing less than 7 metres above workers and construction vehicles. Eleven days later, a Bamboo Airways Boeing 787-9 also lifted off beyond the temporary end of the runway, narrowly missing workers by 4.5 metres.
No physical injuries were recorded and the planes continued with their planned flights.
ATSB’s investigation found that flight crew expectations, workload and time pressure meant that critical information relating to the runway length was received but not absorbed or factored into their take-off calculations.
The ATSB’s chief commissioner, Angus Mitchell, said the incidents were very serious and “it was by luck in this case that we didn’t have an impact”:
Thankfully, no workers were physically injured as the jet blasts impacted the works area, but this was a terrifying event for those on the ground …
The risk controls in place at the time to prevent occurrences such as this were procedural in nature. Whilst it is a fundamental part of responsibility to review and correctly understand all relevant information when preparing for a flight, these and previous incidents show that this process is susceptible to human error, considering the potentially catastrophic consequences of a loaded and fully fuelled aircraft impacting a work site on takeoff.
The incidents have prompted changes to domestic and international practices on notifying flight crews about critical information to reduce the capacity for human error in take-off procedures.
Catie McLeod
Coles ‘comforted by the science’ in continuing to sell Tasmanian-farmed salmon
In response to local teenager and Coles shareholder, who asked if Coles wanted to be associated with the potential extinction of the endangered, endemic Maugean skate, Peter Allen said:
As a parent, I do care for the future generation.
I think as far as where Coles is concerned … no, we don’t want to be associated with the extinction of the Maugean skate.
Allen said the company had “substantially reduced” the amount of salmon they had taken out of Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour since 2019.
He said the company was “comforted by the science” but was open to making further changes in the future.
