News update for Wed 4 June 2025 - Teds Woodworking Review

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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Table of Contents

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:

Nicolette Boele projected to win Bradfield over Liberal candidate after close recount – The Guardian
Tasmanian Liberal premier concedes day ‘might not end well for me’ amid no-confidence motion – The Guardian
Extreme weather weighs on Australian economy as growth slows to 0.2% – The Guardian

The WA Disease – The derivative function of Albanese’s Labor – The Last Place on Earth

Federal Parliament now looks a lot like WA Parliament — a Labor landslide in the lower house giving them total dominion over a rump of Liberal/National seats, while the Greens and other crossbenchers retain balance of power in the upper house. While it remains to be seen how Roger Cook will wield this newly refired weapon for the next four years, it’s pretty clear what Albo plans to do. Last Wednesday, UNESCO announced they were knocking back World Heritage status for Murujuga until the government could show they were serious about protecting the ancient rock art by removing the source of industrial emissions, of which the biggest by far is Woodside’s North West Shelf. Literally hours later, new Environment Minister Murray Watt announced that federal Labor would be extending the North West Shelf until 2070. It came after a roll call of international rock art experts had accused the government of covering up the findings of its flagship research into the impact of industry.

The corruption was so naked that it almost seemed like a flex. And from a government that came to power in 2022 with twin mandates on climate and First Nations justice, it was a striking note to start their second term by approving the biggest fossil fuel project in the country on Australia’s most extensive Aboriginal heritage site.

On the road – Democracy Sausage Podcast with Mark Kenny

Former Attorney-General George Brandis joins Democracy Sausage to discuss the Liberal Party’s “Jack Kerouac political experience” and wider political trends. Is the Liberal Party’s shift to the right a more recent trend or has it been a long time coming? Does the party still need to find itself? And is it finally time for gender quotas? On this episode of Democracy Sausage, Professor George Brandis KC joins Professor Mark Kenny and Dr Marija Taflaga to discuss rediscovering the Liberal Party.

Listen to Democracy Sausage

Saul Eslake: Australia’s widening wealth gap, and what do about it – Inside Story

Growing wealth inequality is setting Australia up for conflict, but solutions aren’t out of reach

With a few exceptions (including Andrew Leigh, Nicki Hutley and Angela Jackson) mainstream Australian economists — including me — haven’t thought, spoken or written as much about the causes and consequences of increasing inequality as perhaps we should have done.

International institutions including the IMF and the OECD — traditionally bastions of pro-market economic policies — have come to recognise that increasing inequality has adverse economic and political consequences. It has undoubtedly been a contributor to some of the uglier political developments over the past decade in the United States and Europe.

Also read > Australia’s lowest paid workers just got a 3.5% wage increase. Their next boost could be even better – The Conversation

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A two-state solution is gaining momentum again. Does it have a chance of success? – The Conversation

As Israel’s devastating war in Gaza has ground on, the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was thought to be “dead”. Now, it is showing signs of life again.

French President Emmanuel Macron is reportedly pressing other European nations to jointly recognise a Palestinian state at a UN conference in mid-June, focused on achieving a two-state solution. Macron called such recognition a “political necessity”.

Countries outside Europe are feeling the pressure, too. Australia has reaffirmed its view that recognition of Palestine should be a “way of building momentum towards a two-state solution”.

Navigating a world of revisionist powers – Pearls and Irritations

For those accustomed to thinking about global order as being centred on great powers, this is the most significant reinvention of that order since the end of the Cold War.

Since its formation, Russia has invaded its neighbours and taken territory and populations by force. Since 1950, the United States and its allies have worried about China’s stated imperative to reunify Taiwan and assertions of its maritime territorial claims. In 2025, the United States, under the second Donald Trump presidency, has announced an agenda to “take” Greenland and annex Canada. Revisionist powers do not play by agreed rules.

A glimpse of hope, then another Aboriginal death in custody: ‘grief-stricken’ campaigners mourn lack of progress – The Guardian

The supermarket is silent except for wails of grief.

A small procession makes a slow pilgrimage down aisle four of the Alice Springs Coles, where their loved one – a 24-year-old Warlpiri man with a disability – lost consciousness after being restrained by police. He later died in hospital.

Outside, the man’s grandfather, Warlpiri elder Ned Hargraves, addressed a crowd of hundreds from his mobility scooter.

“Enough is enough,” he said on Friday. “This cannot keep going.”

Five years after the Black Lives Matter movement promised a reckoning for racial injustice in Australia, the grim reality facing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is eerily familiar.

The Cover-Up Continues: How Corporate Media Protects Gas Cartel’s $ 215 Billion Heist – Punters Politics Podcast

This week we expose how Murray Watt just handed Woodside a $ 215 billion gas bonanza for 45 years with zero royalties, while corporate media like The Project spin archaeology professors as “activists” to distract from the biggest rip-off in Australian history. Plus we reveal how changing public opinion has gas cartels so rattled that our own resource minister is warning them about angry punters.

We also discuss Great Barrier Reef crisis, Victoria’s public electricity return, Trump’s Darwin Port play, Conrad’s $ 86k HECS debt rollercoaster continues, Meg O’Neill blames Gen Z for climate change while making billions and how Roger Cook killed Australia’s EPA to protect gas cartels.

Listen to Punters Politics Podcast

Also > The new Parliament can secure a sustainable future for Australian homes. Here’s how. – Renew Economy

Unfettered gambling advertising means young Australians lose big – The New Daily

If you’re sick of ads for sport betting interrupting the footy – or anything else you watch on TV – you’re probably not alone.

Free-to-air TV shows more than a million gambling ads a year – and this is not to mention the online torrent.

If 85 per cent of 12-17 year olds have seen a gambling ad on TV in the past month, is it any wonder that young people talk about betting odds like they once did player stats?

The $ 244.3 billion in bets made by Australians in in 2022-23 makes us the world’s biggest gamblers, and the saturation level of advertising is probably one reason that since 2019, average gambling losses have increased to almost $ 2500 a year – that’s more than the average home pays for a year’s worth of electricity.

The staggering numbers in defence spending… and who benefits – Crikey

The United States — and a bevy of defence and security commentators and think-tankers — are demanding that Australia massively increase its defence spending to help fight a war with China.

Crikey has taken a look at the key numbers around this vexing issue. How much do we spend on defence? Is it spent well? And who benefits?

Australia’s current defence spending: $ 51.5 billion (2025-26)

Average annual growth forecast over the forward estimates: 4.9%

The Albanese government’s goal for defence spending: 2.33% of GDP by 2034

Taxpayer money handed by Defence to Thales corporation since January 2020: $ 5.67 billion

Taxpayer money handed by Defence to Lockheed corporation since January 2020: $ 2.17 billion

Taxpayer money handed by Defence to Raytheon corporation since January 2020: $ 2.14 billion

Port of Darwin. A pawn in appeasing the China hawks? – Michael West Media

The Albanese government appears to have come good on its election promise to eject Chinese-owned company Landbridge from the Port of Darwin.

While Defence Minister Richard Marles met with his US counterpart, Signal aficionado Pete Hegseth, and both warning of Chinese military buildup, the Chinese-owned Port of Darwin is up for sale. Not by its owners, but by the Australian Government.

Despite no evidence that the current ownership of Darwin Port presents any security risk to Australia, Labor wanted to stay out in front of the LNP opposition on national security during the election. Thus, the bipartisan promise to get rid of the port’s Chinese owner, Landbridge.