Facebook and X ordered to remove church stabbing content
Josh Taylor
Facebook’s parent company Meta and X/Twitter have been issued with notices to remove violent and distressing videos posted online of the stabbing of prominent Orthodox Christian leader Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel at his church in Wakeley in Sydney’s west on Monday evening.
The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, told reporters on Tuesday that notices to remove within 24 hours what had been deemed to be class 1 material, that is “material depicting gratuitous or offensive violence with a high degree of impact or detail” to be removed from X and Meta, with the companies facing potential fines if they fail to comply.
The notices relate to Emmanuel’s alleged stabbing by a 16-year-old on Monday evening during Emmanuel’s mass, which was being live-streamed.
Inman Grant said:
While the majority of mainstream social media platforms have engaged with us, I am not satisfied enough is being done to protect Australians from this most extreme and gratuitous violent material circulating online. That is why I am exercising my powers under the Online Safety Act to formally compel them to remove it. I have issued a notice to X requiring them to remove this content. A legal notice will also be sent to Meta this afternoon, and further notices are likely to follow. I will not hesitate to use further graduated powers at my disposal if there is noncompliance.
Comment has been sought from Meta and X. Inman Grant said the quantum of the fines sought could depend on the gravity of the non-compliance. She said more removal notices to other platforms could be issued.
Notices have not been issued in relation to the Bondi Junction Westfield stabbings imagery, which has continued to circulate on social media since Saturday.
National eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, speaks to the media during a press conference. Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP
Search for Australian-Singaporean couple in Taiwan suspended
Helen Davidson
Taiwanese authorities have suspended the search for an Australian-Singaporean couple still missing after a massive earthquake hit the area where they were hiking.
Neo Siew Choo and Sim Hwee Kok are thought to have been walking the popular Shakadang trail inside the Taroko national park in Hualien when a 7.2 magnitude quake hit the county shortly before 8am on 3 April.
Authorities said 17 people were killed, most inside Taroko national park. On Saturday afternoon the body of a truck driver surnamed Hsiao, was found in another part of the park. Hsiao, Neo and Sim were the last three still missing.
Search and rescue teams had been scouring Taroko gorge searching for missing hikers and tourists but on Sunday the Hualien County fire department stopped the search out of safety fears for crews. Almost two weeks after the earthquake, aftershocks have continued and landslides remain a significant danger. The previous day a search crew had narrowly avoided being hit by a landslide, but survived by jumping into the river at the base of the gorge, local media reported.
On Sunday morning family members of Neo and Sim and rescue workers gathered at a bridge near the Shakadang trailhead to hold a soul-calling ritual, to pray for the missing couple to find their way home and rest in peace. Local media said the family had expressed thanks to the crews for their efforts, and hoped the search could resume later when it was safer.
We hope that Hualien can be rebuilt as soon as possible so that more people can experience the beauty of Hualien and feel the warmth of the people in Hualien.
On Tuesday Taiwan’s ministry of interior said early assessments put the cost of rebuilding the park and its infrastructure at NTD$1bn ($47.8m).
Rescuers searching at the Taroko national park after an earthquake in Hualien. Photograph: CNA/AFP/Getty Images
Labor MP says religious, community leaders should bolster efforts of politicians to call for unity
Religious and community leaders must bolster efforts of politicians to call for unity and calm, says an influential Labor MP, in the wake of concerns about social cohesion following the recent Sydney stabbing attacks.
Peter Khalil is chair of the influential Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. Speaking in Canberra today, he said it was “really important that the community leaders, the religious leaders, really emphasise the importance of maintaining peace and social cohesion in our communities, and that we have law enforcement for a reason.”
“It’s not for the public to take the law into their own hands. It’s the job of the police and our security agencies to do that,” he said, following police being targeted outside the Wakeley church last night.
Chair of the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee Peter Khalil. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Khalil, the son of Egyptian migrant parents, said Australia’s multicultural society was a “minor miracle” that should be protected:
Generations of Australians have worked to build up that harmony and that diversity and embrace it. It didn’t happen by magic. It happened because a lot of people with a lot of goodwill built a society in this country where we all have enjoyed the benefits of that.
I think it’s incumbent upon not just political leaders to show leadership in this space, but community leaders, religious leaders, every Australian needs to be really working hard to de-escalate tensions, to reduce tensions and temperature, and I’m one of them.
We don’t want to see the sort of conflicts from overseas playing out in our streets. We accept others, we embrace others and their faith and their differences. But when we start to see violence play out in our streets, I think that’s unacceptable to the vast majority of Australians and I’m one of those and I want to protect the society that has benefited me and my family, over a generation since we came to this country.
McKim on Banducci: ‘He’ll have to live with that in terms of his reputation’
Greens senator Nick McKim held a press conference earlier regarding the supermarket inquiry, which threatened to hold outgoing Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci in contempt for repeatedly refusing to answer questions about the company’s profitability.
McKim told reporters it is “not acceptable for the CEO of a major corporation to insult the Senate, and by extension insult the Australian people, by refusing to answer simple questions”.
[Banducci] had to admit he didn’t know the answer to the question I repeatedly put to him. It’s extraordinary that someone on a multimillion-dollar annual salary, paid over $65m since they became the CEO of Woolworths, doesn’t know what the return on equity of his corporation is. It boggles the mind that someone who is so well paid doesn’t know the answer to such a simple question. However, he’s informed the committee he doesn’t know. And he’ll have to live with that in terms of his reputation.
Senator accuses Woolworth CEO Brad Banducci of dodging profit questions - video
Burgess responds to Dutton comments regarding police response to social cohesion issues
Returning briefly to Anthony Albanese’s earlier press conference – the Asio director general, Mike Burgess, was asked about comments made recently by Peter Dutton about police responses to social cohesion issues, and said that “every single Australian” should be careful in how they respond – renewing his warning to political leaders to curb inflammatory language.
Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, in comments made last week before both of the recent Sydney stabbing attacks, was critical of some police responses to incidents of antisemitism in Australia. Speaking specifically about pro-Palestine protests at the Sydney Opera House days after the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel, Dutton accused police of demonstrating a “supine” response to antisemitism, adding “it would be concerning if – among our top-ranking police officers – there is a reluctance to enforce the law because to do so risks offending certain cultural sensitivities or stoking tension in particular communities”.
The Asio director general, Mike Burgess. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Shortly after the 7 October attack, Burgess urged “all parties consider the implications for social cohesion when making public statements … words matter. Asio has seen direct connections between inflamed language and inflamed community tensions.”
Burgess was asked about his previous comments today, shortly after AFP boss Reece Kershaw had slammed the “un-Australian” attacks on police at the Sydney church. The Asio chief wouldn’t comment directly, but responded that language was important:
My response would be all of us, in terms of the language we use, it applies to every single Australian at moments like this.
Asked if they felt the attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was a terrorist attack, local Assyrians in Wakeley are adamant it wasn’t.
Speaking anonymously, one woman said she didn’t see the point in labelling the attack a terrorist incident, adding that she thought doing so would only make things worse.
How is this terrorism? … How does it help us to call it terrorism?
This should be treated like a hate crime in my opinion, it’s not the same to me as terrorism.
Separately, another man said he believed labelling it a terrorist incident would only inflame tensions further.
The crowd last night reflected the anger and fear in the community, and now calling it terrorism is only going to make people more afraid.
We need to be honest about the tensions between our communities, and we need to have dialogue. Sure we are passionate and outspoken, but wouldn’t you be if your leader was attacked?
Our leaders called for calm, no one called it terrorism.
Australian farmers must continue to adapt to a changing climate or risk seeing their profits halve by 2050, say CSIRO experts.
A new report from Australia’s national science agency has been released after examining what a sustainable future for agriculture looks like. The Ag2050 Scenarios Report found farm profits could drop by half in some areas by 2050 if producers fail to innovate.
Australia will need to accelerate the transformation of its current farming systems.
Rose Roche, who heads up the Ag2050 team that led the study, said farm profits had already dropped 23% for some producers in the past two decades. She told AAP:
The projections have shown that if everything remains the same, then in some areas farm profits could decrease by up to 53%.
The modelling shows businesses won’t be profitable if farmers fail to innovate as temperatures continue to rise. Roche said there is a “real sense of urgency but optimism”.
The report was compiled over six months with input from a broad range of stakeholders across 54 agricultural organisations, from the dairy industry to wool producers, carbon farmers and government.
– AAP
CSIRO Futures’ Agriculture and Food lead, Katherine Wynn, said the report should serve as a call to action for Australian agriculture. Photograph: Aston Brown/The Guardian
ABS reveals how Australian generations spend their leisure time
New data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveals how different generations spend their downtime – with those over 75 spending the most time watching TV, and gen Z spending the most time playing video games.
The data found that across the population (of those aged over 15), people spend roughly 17% of their day on leisure activities. The interwar generation (over 75) spends the most time on leisure (25% of any given day) and millennials the least (13%).
In every generation men spent at least 30 minutes more time on leisure than women, the data found, with gen Z having the largest difference between the sexes. Millennial women spent the least amount of time on leisure of any demographic.
TV habits have well and truly changed between generations – 96% of the interwar generation said they watch television for leisure, compared to 63% of gen Z.
Gen Z and millennial participation in video games was higher than the other generations, but the gender difference is quite large. 17% of millennial men play video games, compared to 6% of millennial women, the data shows.
47% of the interwar generation said they read for leisure, significantly more than baby boomers who are next in line at 30%. Although just 10% of gen Z men say they read for fun, they spend the most time reading, at an average 2h 46m a day.
New data shows Australians leisure patterns across different generations. Photograph: Witthaya Prasongsin/Getty Images
Lebanese Muslim Association hopes stabbing attack won’t undo 20 years of inter-religious progress
The Lebanese Muslim Association held a press conference from the Lakemba mosque earlier, calling for all Australians to remain united.
Secretary Gamel Kheir said the last thing his community – and the wider Australian community – needed following the Bondi Junction mass stabbing was “more senseless violence”.
We condemn it outright. It has no place in religion, it has no place in this society …
These 20 years of inter-religious affiliations should not go to waste. We’ve been working very hard with other denominations and religions to foster an understanding and appreciation for each other’s faiths, and it’d be very sad for this to be destroyed by an isolated event.
Kheir said the group was undertaking its own vetting scenario to “find out why these youths … feel alienated within the Australian community”.
He said the association had reached out to Assyrian leaders yesterday and hopes they will agree to a joint statement together. Kheir also called on the wider public to remain patient as the police conducted their investigations.
