Australia

Bruce Lehrmann has been committed to stand trial on rape charges.

The 29-year-old faces two counts of rape, alleged to have occurred in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, in October 2021.

Magistrate Marc Howden found sufficient grounds to commit the former Liberal Party staffer to trial on Thursday, rejecting his argument that he had “no case to answer”, two-and-a-half weeks after the complainant gave her evidence and was cross-examined in closed court.

“In my view, when considering the evidence as a whole, it is sufficient at this stage for me to reach a conclusion that a reasonable jury, properly instructed, could return a verdict of guilty,” Howden said.

The trial will now be heard at the Toowoomba district court at a date to be set.

Prior to Howden’s decision a packed courtroom heard facts agreed upon by Lehrmann’s barrister, Andrew Hoare KC, and prosecutor Nicole Friedewald, relating to the night and morning following 9 October 2021.

It was agreed Lehrmann and the complainant, who cannot legally be named, met at a strip club after both had been drinking alcohol and the complainant had taken cocaine. The pair went on to take cocaine together and in the early hours of the morning took a taxi to a Toowoomba home where they engaged in consensual sex.

However, the complainant then claims she awoke to find Lehrmann on top of and penetrating her without a condom, despite her having insisted upon contraception during their earlier consensual encounter.

She alleges she pulled her body away and told him to “stop what you are doing” but that he instead climbed back on top of her saying “it’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok”, continuing the unwanted sex before ejaculating inside her.

After messaging her friends about the alleged assault on November 6, the complainant first went to police 20 days later.

Friedewald told the court the complainant, as was “not uncommon” in cases of sexual assault, took some time to “come to terms with what had happened to her”, citing a message to her friend in which she said was “starting to feel really shit” and “hadn’t really processed what had happened” or admitted it to herself.

“I just feel so shameful,” the complainant wrote to her friends. “Who is going to believe me?”

• In short: A Senate committee recommends ASIC be split up, to create a corporations regulator and a financial services regulator.
• Key findings of the report include a "bad culture" at the corporate watchdog, and a sprawling bureaucracy that is unable to prosecute white-collar crime.
• What's next? Committee chair Andrew Bragg says its unlikely the recommendations will be adopted in this term of government.

Related coverage:

• The Conversation: ASIC has comprehensively failed and its role should be split in two, according to long-awaited report

They've run a couple of stories now about small businesses getting ripped off or "duped" in the beauty industry now. I'm not sure I'm meant to feel sorry for them—their entire industry is based on telling women that they don't look good enough.

A bill introduced to federal parliament this week aims to incentivise food businesses to donate surplus produce to charities, instead of dumping it.

• In short: The Northern Territory's annual firework night has seen at least four people injured, including a six-month-old with facial burns and a 37-year-old with burns to the groin region.
• It is legal to set off fireworks in the NT each year on July 1 during a five-hour window.
• What's next? Police have urged people not to continue letting off fireworks after Monday night's 11pm cut-off and have reminded the public doing so could incur a $1,800 fine.

In short:

• Live sheep exports by sea will be phased out over the next four years, after laws banning the trade passed parliament on Monday.
• Earlier in the day, opponents met with the prime minister to request a Senate inquiry into the legislation.

What's next?

• WA Premier Roger Cook says he will continue to negotiate for additional support for farmers affected by the laws.

Sky News and other similar conservative whinge rags are already posting the anti-Labor and anti-Greens headline as a response.

Personally I think its great news. Keep the value add in Australia (processing), and remove the cruelty of long ship travel followed by questionable processing practices in other countries.

Santos going very much against the vibe of the constitution.

Distinguished journalist and publisher Julian Assange is free and finally home, but he spent 13 years in detention, of which over 5 years in a high security prison before being sentenced to time served. The empire's clutches reach far and wide. Australia and the United Kingdom accept the US' jurisdictional overreach. The precedent set by his decade and a half of persecution and torture will have lasting consequences for our right to speak and hear of US government crimes. Julian was coerced to plead guilty to the crime of journalism as criminalised by the Espionage Act (1917) even as he believes it is in contradiction with the First Amendment of the US constitution. Today we celebrate Julian's return home to us. Tomorrow we declare our independence.

Or is it only a Perth thing to do icecream in winter?

What are people's thoughts here? I could understand removing all the lolly flavours and regulating like other tobacco products. I am an ex-smoker but I personally feel like this is govt over-reach. That might be an out-dated mindset of my time & generation (genX), however. So I'm interested to get some insight into how the broader population view this issue, particularly the younger generations, in both an overall opinion, but also in regards to such govt controls of recreational substances vs an individual's right of freedom to choose.

This is incredible news to wake up to! 😀 I cannot wait to see Julian home on Australian soil with his arms around his beautiful family. ❤️

In an age where giving lifts to strangers is mostly advised against, this family sees it as their preferred option to get to India, for environmental and social reasons.

Mr Jones and Ms Ulman do not own a car, have not been overseas in 20 years, and wanted to show their son the world, in the least polluting way possible.

"We've done a lot of travel before on bicycles and hitching and public transport in Australia," Mr Jones said.

• In short: The government has confirmed it will impose a mandatory behaviour code on supermarkets, focusing on how they treat their suppliers.
• As recommended by Dr Craig Emerson, fines of up to $10 million would apply to supermarkets who breach their obligations to act in good faith.
• What's next? The government has asked the ACCC to look into customer prices, but the final report is months away.

tl;dr - fuck "reality" tv

In the reality TV production process, after the casting of villains and the baiting for villainous behaviour, comes the editing.

It's in the post-production suite that a villain edit can truly come to life.

...

The editor says there are a few techniques to achieve these characterisations. The simplest one is being selective in what gets included.

...

The second technique editors use is amplification — finding a moment amongst what the editor calls the "boring crap" that can be boosted into a storyline.

In the show, it's spun as a major conflict.

...

And then, the drama is further enhanced with a technique called "frankenbiting".

Like Frankenstein creating his monster, editors will mix together unrelated elements from the footage to make their own beast.

...

When the show finally goes to air, the final phase of a villain edit begins: controlling the narrative.

Now, program makers try to ensure that no narratives that contradict the edit make it into the media.

"They would remind me in a very threatening way before every single media interview that I had signed a [non-disclosure agreement]," Olivia says.

This becomes a problem for Olivia, because when the show goes to air, the backlash is swift.

Whats on this weekend for you guys? Im just chilling so far

Cheaper electricity, less emissions and ready by 2035 are some of the Coalition’s core promises on nuclear energy, but are they backed by evidence?

tl;dr - no

The Albanese government has formally expressed its displeasure to the Chinese embassy over Chinese officials trying to impede camera shots of journalist Cheng Lei during Premier Li Qiang’s visit to Canberra this week.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the ABC on Tuesday: “When you look at the footage, it was a pretty clumsy attempt […] by a couple of people to stand in between where the cameras were and where Cheng Lei was sitting”.

Albanese said Australian officials had intervened to ask the Chinese officials to move, “and they did so.” Australian officials had “followed up with the Chinese embassy to express our concern,” he said.

At his press conference later on Monday, which Cheng attended, Albanese said he was “not aware” of the incident. The opposition questioned his response.

On Tuesday, he said Cheng, who works for Sky, was “a very professional journalist. And there should be no impediments to Australian journalists going about their job. And we’ve made that clear to the Chinese embassy.”

Opposition leader Peter Dutton welcomed the government raising the issue with the embassy. But he said: “I do want to point out that the prime minister clearly misled the Australian people yesterday when he got up and did a press conference and said that he heard nothing of it […] it’s completely inconceivable”.

Meanwhile, Albanese has indicated he believes there is no impediment to media organisations again posting correspondents to China.

The China correspondent for The Australian Financial Review, Mike Smith, and the ABC’s correspondent, Bill Birtles, were forced out in 2020.

They left after Chinese security officials visited their homes late at night, telling them they needed to be questioned over “a national security case”. Before departing, they spent several days under Australian diplomatic protection, while negotiations between officials of the two countries for their departure took place.

This followed immediately after the Chinese government confirmed Cheng’s detention in Beijing. She was later tried in secret for what she said was breaking an embargo on a story by a few minutes. She was released only last year [after three years in Chinese detention].

Asked on Monday whether he had raised the question of the Australian media getting back into China, Albanese said he’d done so in his China visit late last year.

“The Chinese side say that they are willing to grant that access. And speaking to some media organisations as well, it’s a matter of whether they wish to send people in there. I think that is the point,” he said.

A spokesman for the ABC said, “The ABC remains very interested in basing a correspondent in China”.

The incident on Monday took place when Albanese and Li were together at an agreement-signing event at parliament house in Canberra.