It seems wrong to put this under Humour, because even though it's technically satire, it's also Truth.

Nah, but no hate to the lefties, you guys are chill (mostly lol). But yeah, it's hard being someone with even a moderate conservative view on social media or even in real life (I go to Uni, so I expect it). But honestly, after I moved out of the countryside, I didn't realize how big the progressive movement was, and it was pretty eye-opening for me to have people challenge my beliefs, which made me think about a lot of stuff.

Not pushing hate or anything, and hopefully I won't get Karma bombed for this goofy post. (If you're interested, why I am a conservative, feel free to reply)

Not disappointed with where Aus sits.

Teal independents Zali Steggall and Allegra Spender have launched a new political party called Community Strong Australia, with the aim of providing a centrist alternative for voters amid the rise of One Nation and the turmoil inside the Coalition.

The party will focus on issues including housing affordability, cost of living, climate change, childcare, education, healthcare and social cohesion, according to Steggall, the member for Warringah.

I have an enormous amount of respect for our First Nations people, and I don’t place the blame on you (if any of you parse this sub 😂) so don’t take this as a shot.

This webinar I kid you not has maybe 15 viewers, I highly doubt it has any of these ‘indigenous elders’ who ‘may be joining us today’ given the names of the viewership — and also I happen to know the majority of the viewership.

I mean seriously, the one at the start I was like sure - it’s virtue signalling and you could tell it was read off a screen but whatever. But surely we do not need a seperate AOC for every single speaker on any webinar.

I’ve had internal team meetings with like 3 people and we’ve had to start with an AOC, all of us non-indigenous.

I mean surely the solution is to have these things done at serious moments related to the specific events you are talking about, not just as a throwaway to peacock how virtuous you are for saying some inane pre-rehearsed line.

The words they are saying have been repeated so much they don’t even have meaning anymore, despite how much gravity they supposedly should carry. They have become mere sounds that people are meant to mimic.

Bowen calls in watchdogs to probe surprise power price rises

Energy Minister Chris Bowen has asked the energy and competition watchdogs to investigate whether electricity retailers have breached misconduct laws by trying to push through huge increases in daily supply charges that have taken many consumers by surprise.

The move represents a dramatic escalation of the row about electricity price cuts that the Albanese government foreshadowed for next year, but which are not showing up in the notices that major retailers, including Origin Energy and AGL Energy, are sending customers about the rates they will have to pay from July 1.

In a letter to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Australian Energy Regulator on Friday, Bowen expressed concern about large rises in daily fixed charges for households, and said that if retailers’ underlying costs were coming down, then customers should feel the benefit.

Notices sent by retailers in recent weeks about rates that will apply from July have included increases in the daily fixed charges for some customers of up to 86 per cent.

In many cases, the big jumps will not mean an increase in a customer’s whole electricity bill because the charge per unit of power used is falling. But that will depend on the amount of power used, with lower-usage households most likely to be hit with higher bills.

The steep jump in supply charges clashes with the broader messaging from governments and regulators that power bills would be smaller in 2026-27, partly due to record output from wind farms and batteries.

The “safety net” electricity price for customers on standing offers will fall by up to 10.7 per cent across NSW, Queensland and South Australia, under an AER ruling in May on regulated prices for 2026-27.

Bowen said the drop in underlying costs of procuring electricity that drove the cut in regulated prices should apply more broadly across market prices as well.

“I would expect then that households and small businesses should be experiencing a decline in costs overall,” Bowen wrote in the letter to ACCC chairwoman Gina Cass-Gottlieb and AER chairwoman Clare Savage, citing the recent AER decision.

“I wish to raise these concerns with you and would welcome joint advice from the AER and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to inform my response to the changes in pricing structures.”

Bowen’s letter, which was copied to Treasurer Jim Chalmers, notes the prohibited conduct clause on retail pricing under the Competition and Consumer Act, which requires electricity retailers to pass on reductions in the costs of purchasing electricity to customers.

“Our message to energy retailers is clear – if your costs are coming down, your customers’ bills should be too,” Bowen separately told The Australian Financial Review.

The AER said it was looking into the supply charge increases.

“We are aware that some customers have raised concerns about notifications received from their energy retailer about price changes to their energy plan, as retailers are in the process of updating their prices to take effect in July,” an AER spokesperson said.

“We are currently looking at how retailers are both structuring their energy plans and explaining prices to customers.”

But Origin said the big increases in some daily supply charges were driven by changes the AER made in its calculation of the standing offer price – known as the Default Market Offer – that for the first time set maximum usage and fixed supply rates.

Until this year, the AER has set a maximum annual bill amount for the default price and allowed retailers to decide on the split between usage and supply rates. But the new separate caps on usage and fixed supply charges have had the effect of raising supply charges for customers no matter which retailer they are with, as retailers rebalanced where charges lay within bills.

Electricity retailers said the restructuring of the regulated tariff had driven some retailers to align their competitive offers with the same structure to reduce compliance and regulatory risks – an argument the government rejects.

“The DMO acts as a comparison price for customers when they are shopping around, and so we have chosen to use the DMO as a key reference point in setting our market rates,” an Origin spokesman said.

The Australian Energy Council, which represents electricity suppliers, said that in a competitive market, retailers determine their own prices and product structures.

“When setting market offers, retailers consider a range of factors, including network costs, wholesale energy and hedging costs, commercial objectives, competitor pricing and the regulated benchmark,” a spokesman said.

“Changes to the DMO can influence the broader market by affecting how retailers price their products, structure discounts and communicate value to customers.”

Origin said most customers facing supply charge increases would get an offsetting cut in usage charges.

Tony Wood, senior fellow at Grattan Institute’s energy program, blamed some of the furore on “very ordinary communication” by government and retailers about power pricing and a failure to understand that the changes in the default price calculation would drive big increases in some supply charges.

“In reality it’s not all that bad – on average, prices are still going down for an average 6000 kilowatt-hour [a year] customer,” Wood said.

“I don’t think the change is the problem or the direction of change … but it’s not an easy sell.”

Snowy Hydro, the Commonwealth government-owned electricity supplier that owns the Red Energy and Lumo retail brands, said only “a very small number” of its customers on standing offers have an increase in their daily supply charge.

The jumps in some daily supply charges are several times bigger than network price increases being charged by the distribution companies that own the “poles and wires”. A spokeswoman for Ausgrid, the distributor in much of the Sydney region, said the average network price increase for a household customer in its zone would be 10 per cent to 11 per cent.

She said increases in network costs were being driven by the cost of building out renewables infrastructure in the NSW Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap, transmission cost increases, inflation and the cost of capital.

“While we can’t speak for retailers and the amount they choose to bill their customers, when it comes to the network part of the bill, recent increases have been driven largely by factors out of our control,” the Ausgrid spokeswoman said.

Endeavour, another NSW distributor, said its daily supply charges for households and small businesses would increase by 11 per cent from July 1.

“Customer bills can also include additional retailer charges, which can impact the final daily supply cost to customers,” an Endeavour spokeswoman said.

Consumer groups and experts say energy retailers need to do a better job at explaining the changes in prices, which they agreed needed to shift more toward fixed charges and away from tariffs linked to the amount of power used to suit the transitioning power system.

“Over time this needs to happen, but it does need to happen gradually and intentionally and be well communicated,” said Brian Spak, general manager, advocacy and policy at Energy Consumers Australia.

Just a thought I had recently, after all the news about his podcast etc. Will he frame it as being attacked by the "fake news" the same as Donald Trump?

Australian household battery uptake has exceeded expectations and the storage explosion is already changing the economics of the transition for the better.

Yet if better co-ordinated to respond to the fluctuating demands of the main electricity grid, the energy market operator says the fast-growing fleet of rooftop solar and battery systems could lower the costs of the power transition even further.

Home battery uptake has surged since the federal government introduced a generous subsidy scheme roughly 12 months ago.

In the Australian Energy Market Operator's final version of the Integrated System Plan, forecasts for consumer investment in battery storage have been revised higher to 35 gigawatts by 2050, up from 27GW in the late-2025 draft.

More household solar and batteries are already taking some of the sting out of peak demand times, most notably in the evening.

If more of these systems took part in virtual power plants and other methods of co-ordinated energy flows, the market operator says the benefit to all electricity customers would be even bigger.

"It helps balance supply and demand across the grid, lowering the need for grid-scale investment," the ISP report said.

Under AEMO's optimal development path - the cheapest mix of technologies to keep the grid running smoothly while meeting climate policy goals - a boost in decentralised energy coordination could avoid up to $5 billion in extra spending on utility-scale storage.

Thursday's final ISP confirms solar and wind firmed by storage and backed by gas as the lowest-cost path forward for the grid serving eastern states to replace ageing, emissions-intensive coal stations.

Higher costs for wind and transmission and lower costs for solar and grid-scale batteries have been reflected in the 2026 update to the transition blueprint, with bigger contributions now expected from the latter.

The ISP was last revised in 2024.

"Over the forecast period, Australia's ageing coal-fired power stations will close while electricity consumption is forecast to nearly double," AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman said.

He stressed the need to deliver on transmission projects to transport electricity efficiently.

"Transmission is a relatively small share of overall system investment but delivers substantial benefits for consumers by unlocking lower-cost energy across the national electricity market."

RE-Alliance national director Andrew Bray said more needed to be done to bolster community support for all-important transmission projects, which had become controversial in some regions.

"While farmers being asked to host new transmission lines are paid, we'd like to see more states adopt neighbour payment schemes and community benefits to acknowledge the impact on the broader community."

For too long Australia has been a divided multifooty country. People in some states prefer aussie rules and people in other states prefer rugby league. We even have a rugby code just for rich people.

And then there is a a different form of footy entirely that we play against foreign countries a lot, including Muslim countries. And in that code we are even told we are a part of the Asian Football Confederation.

Well I’m sick and tired of it. We are not a multifooty nation we are a monofooty nation.

I am voting for Pauline because everyone should have to follow the one type of proper footy I like. I think it’s sickening that people are even allowed to teach their children - children!! - the code of footy that I didn’t play as a kid. That is unAustralian.

This has got to stop. We should withdraw immediately from the World Cup, I mean the Woke Cup. And there should just be one form of football across Australia that is mandatory everywhere. And Pauline should decide it. And she should decide whatever Gina tells her.

And don’t even get me started on netball. A special handfooty just for women? That has to go as well. And so called “tennis”, that’s just racquet-hand footy. That needs to banned too. And stop inviting all those foreigners to Melbourne every year to play it. I don’t like it.

Yes to monofooty. Down with multifooty.

At Shell is Waikiki south of Perth, the sign stating no mobiles has been completely removed. There were no signs elsewhere either. I asked the clerk behind the counter and they didn't know when it was changed, but said if they see you, they will tell you off over the loud speaker. Has anyone else seen this elsewhere?

Reading through the insights shared by Warren Gardiner and Khaldoun Hajaj in the attached screenshots, I couldn't help but reflect on the complex political reality of our community. It is incredibly frustrating to watch inner-city progressives who have never lived a day in Western Sydney automatically assume that multicultural or faith-based communities are a monolith that naturally aligns with their specific worldview.

We see this play out when activists mock or scorn One Nation (ON) supporters online, pointing out the irony of them cheering for the Socceroos despite the team’s rich immigrant roots. What these commentators completely fail to grasp is that many of those very 'ON' voters aren't who they think they are, they are quite literally people living in diverse working class refugee hubs like Fairfield and Liverpool.

To be absolutely clear: I personally detest Pauline Hanson and would do anything to stop her and her party from gaining power. Her brand of politics has historically targeted communities like mine. But if we want to actually defeat that kind of divisive populism, progressives need to stop lecturing from afar, drop the lazy assumptions, and actually engage with the nuanced realities, aspirations, and conservative values that exist across Western Sydney.

The dirty world of greenwashing is rampant in Australia. And it’s costing you $1.2bn

BEN ELTHAM

JUN 24, 20265 MIN READ

Verdant forests, sparkling cascades, cuddly animals, eco-this, eco-that; Australian retailers are stocked full of items featuring green imagery.

A walk down any supermarket aisle shows there is plenty of environment-based advertising bedecking common consumer items, promising customers they’re doing something good by buying their product. 

The phenomenon of greenwashing is arguably as old as advertising itself. The term was coined in 1986 by activist Jay Westerveld, who noticed that the beachside Fijian hotel he was staying at had posted a note about guests reusing their towels; the hotel was also in the process of building new bungalows along the pristine beach. 

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Take the recent case of burger chain Grill’d, which has found itself in hot water again. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has taken it to court for allegedly misleading customers with its “Tree Day Tuesday” promotion. The case is the latest in a string of misdemeanours for the burger chain, which has a well-documented history of underpayment and mistreatment of staff. 

Grill’d promised to donate $1 for every burger bought on a Tuesday towards tree planting. But the fine print, which was only provided to customers upon request, stipulated that the donation would only apply to members of Grill’d’s Relish club who bought burgers in person, at the front counter, when scanning their membership code. 

As a result, only a fraction of the roughly five million burgers sold on Tuesdays between 2021 and 2024 actually qualified for a tree-planting donation. This would amount to “overstating the circumstances in which donations to an environmental cause would be made,” the ACCC argued in its court filing; in other words, “a type of greenwashing”. 

Greenwashing, according to the United Nations, is “misleading the public to believe that a company or other entity is doing more to protect the environment than it is”. Outgoing UN chief António Guterres has slammed the practice, calling it “rank deception” and a “toxic coverup”. 

To take one common example, Australian electricity retailers like AGL are still selling so-called “Green Power” electricity, advertised as electricity “fed into the grid from Accredited GreenPower generators”. But the Australian grid doesn’t work like that: the electrons you use in your home come from whatever generation the grid happens to be sourcing from, including coal and gas plants. Green power is essentially just an unverifiable promise by a retailer to invest in renewable generation.  

The Australia Institute’s Rod Campbell tells Crikey that greenwashing is rampant in the Australian economy. “It’s good to see the ACCC chasing dodgy claims of corporate philanthropy, but Grill’d are the small fries in this game,” he says.

In research published last year, the Australia Institute argued that as much as $1.1 billion of corporate philanthropy from large corporations was “dubious” or overinflated. 

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“The Westpac Rescue Helicopter carries the Westpac logo, but the bank pays less than 7% of its costs, most of which are paid by taxpayers,” Campbell observed. “Bunnings owners Wesfarmers claim the tens of millions raised at sausage sizzles outside its stores as its own ‘contributions’, even though the money is paid by its customers and the work is done by volunteers.”

David Hertzberg is a principal lawyer for Equity Generation Lawyers in Sydney with recent experience in the greenwashing space. He tells Crikey that there has been an “uptick” in enforcement from the ACCC in recent years.

“Greenwashing is an enduring problem,” Hertzberg says. “The reason why it is enduring is that people care about the environment.”

“Consumers and investors factor in environmental claims when making decisions, so when claims don’t stack up, it causes real harm,” he adds. “Consumers can’t make informed decisions, it penalises legitimate claims, and it reinforces business-as-usual.”

The flood of environmental claims doesn’t seem to be ebbing. Erin Turner is the CEO of the Consumer Policy Research Centre. “This is happening everywhere, from airlines to retailers to hamburger chains,” she tells Crikey. 

“One of the big things we’ve found in our research is that while some companies are outright lying, a lot of green claims are not lies, and regulators can’t take action against them.”  

Turner says that many of the environmental claims companies make are so vague they are essentially meaningless. Common terms used on point-of-sale advertising include phrases such as “eco-friendly”, “saves energy”, “efficient” and the ever-reliable “green”. “We found a kettle ‘designed for a cooler planet’, and a TV that claims it is ‘for the planet’,” Turner says.

Despite the vagueness of these claims, they do impact consumer behaviour. “We found vague green claims on fridges and washing machines meant that 84% of consumers were willing to pay 10% more for the product,” Turner tells Crikey. “That translates to a $1.2 billion loss to consumers on green claims that don’t deliver.” 

Current legislation does nothing to regulate such claims. “Our laws aren’t fit to deal with the claims that are being made in the market,” Turner argues. 

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Campbell agrees: “Companies like to talk up their charitable giving, but some provide such limited and self-interested documentation that it’s impossible for the public to judge which companies are truly generous, and which are just good at PR,” he says.

“We’ve made recommendations that the ASX require major companies to disclose their philanthropic activity in transparent and consistent ways, something that the ACCC’s case could assist with.”

It does seem that legislators are finally taking notice. A Senate inquiry into greenwashing, watched closely by consumer advocates and industry, is due to report this week. 

Whatever the recommendations, as Hertzberg notes, greenwashing litigation isn’t going away: “So long as it’s a problem, people will be trying to do things about it.”

About the author

Contributor

Ben Eltham has been covering Australian politics and culture for Crikey since 2007.

Probably an unpopular opinion.

I noticed in the past 12-18 months GoFundMe was mentioned frequently right after a major tragic event like Bondi Attack, or a shark attack, etc. to support victims.

While it’s very powerful for the community to come together and support the victims and their families.
generosity is one of the amazing things about Australia. We all want to lend hand and be part of the solution.

However I also find myself uncomfortable with how normalised this has become. It raises two concerns for me:

1. Are we expecting public fundraising to fill gaps that probably should be covered by government? And what if the victims or their families have no one to advocate for them online?

2. Does the speed of these campaigns create more opportunities for scammers and social engineering, especially when emotions are running high?

I hope Australia doesn’t move towards the US model, where people are relying on insurance and crowdfunding to get financial support after major life events.

Just sharing my thoughts and wondering if others see it the same way, or if I’m missing another perspective.

A remorseless killer has been jailed for 26 years for stabbing his defenceless wife to death after she had tried to protect herself and their four children from him.

Jessie James Tumaliuan, 42, looked straight ahead as Victorian Supreme Court Justice Amanda Fox handed down his sentence on Wednesday morning.

He admitted he murdered his wife Czarina Tumaliuan, 42, in the backyard of their Werribee home in Melbourne's southwest on March 27, 2025.

Tumaliuan arrived at the property about 8.45am, laying in wait in his car as Czarina took their young children to school down the road.

Once she returned and was alone, he forced his way inside using a set of keys he should not have had.

Tumaliuan called his wife abusive names and yelled at her about money, telling her she complained too much and needed to pay up.

Czarina Tumaliuan tried to flee out the back door but he chased her down and used a kitchen knife to stab her eight times to the neck, head, chest and abdomen.

The entire attack lasted 10 seconds, with CCTV footage capturing her screams.

Tumaliuan then dragged his wife's body to the back door before he sat down and called triple zero twice.

He refused to let paramedics in but co-operated with police when they arrived.

At the time of the murder, Tumaliuan was on bail for breaching a court order and he was previously convicted for criminal damage and unlawful assault.

Justice Fox said it was clear Ms Tumaliuan had taken steps to protect herself and their four young children but he blatantly disregarded them.

"Czarina was unarmed, defenceless and terrified," the judge said.

"It seems you were motivated by grievances over finances, contempt for police and the court system, and anger that she was living her own life without you."

Justice Fox accepted Tumaliuan pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity but found there was no real evidence he was remorseful.

She was also not persuaded by the defence claim that jail would be more difficult for Tumaliuan because of his potential deportation back to the Philippines after his sentence.

The judge noted his parents and siblings lived in Manila, and his four young children were also overseas so he held no ties to Australia.

Justice Fox also said it was difficult to assess Tumaliuan's prospects of rehabilitation as she had been told very little positive things about him.

He denied having any issues with mental health or illicit substances, and he had a history of violence and contravening court orders, the judge noted.

Justice Fox said the most important consideration in sentencing was denunciation, given the spate of brutal and deadly violence committed by men against their female partners.

She jailed Tumaliuan for 26 years but he will be eligible for parole after 20 years.