Experts say the federal government must actually use new laws being finalised this summer to crack down on hate speech and so-called “hate preachers” in the wake of the Bondi terror attack. Four days after two gunmen targeted Jewish Australians attending a Chanukah by the Sea event, Anthony Albanese announced Labor would strengthen hate speech laws, acknowledging more could have been …

Who do you call when you’re stuck in a traffic jam? For Emmanuel Macron, the obvious answer was Donald Trump. The French President, who is in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly meeting, found himself trapped behind the US presidential motorcade on Monday night. He got out of his car to speak with a New York Police …

Former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern says we need to radically re-think our ideas about what makes a successful political leader. “I want to bring into question those old assumptions about the character traits we want in politics,” Ms Ardern tells 7.30 in her first Australian TV interview about her new memoir, A Different Kind of Power. “People are …

When Kirsty Clarke sits down at her desk each morning, in the bowels of the Australian Federal Police’s Canberra headquarters, she faces an excruciating dilemma: which child to rescue from horrific sexual exploitation first? The mother-of-two is a member of the AFP’s little-known Victim Identification Team, whose job it is to locate perpetrators and the children they abuse in sexual …

Taxpayers have been urged to check for any lost or unclaimed superannuation, as the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) revealed it is holding $17.8 billion worth of unclaimed funds. The ATO also warned people who have already retired, that they too could be in for a retirement savings boost, with $471 million of that unclaimed super being held on behalf of people aged 65 plus. …

Paris will get back just a fraction of a multi-billion-dollar contract torn up by Canberra Australia has agreed to shell out $589 million (AU$835 million) in compensation to French shipbuilder Naval Group after killing a major submarine deal last year as part of the AUKUS pact with the United States and Britain, in the latest effort to smooth over the …

Prime minister-elect Anthony Albanese is a politician moulded by his humble start to life as the only child of a single mother who raised him on a pension in gritty inner-Sydney suburbia. He is also a hero of multicultural Australia, describing himself as the only candidate with a “non-Anglo-Celtic name” to run for prime minister in the 121 years the …

Scott Morrison and his government enter the new year with a fresh iteration of their “women problem” — the multiple high-profile female independents contesting a number of Liberal seats. It’s not that the next parliament is likely to see a big influx of new lower house crossbenchers. ABC election analyst Antony Green points out that, to win, independents in these seats …

When the premier of Australia’s biggest state warns the country that things are going to get much worse before they get better, we should thank her for her honesty and urge our national political leaders to take note. In many ways Premier Gladys Berejiklian has no alternative but to face the facts of her own lethal misjudgments since June; she …

A Sydney man has allegedly been caught after twice trying to cross the Queensland border with 145kg of cannabis worth $1.2 million. The 48-year-old was trying to drive his van through through a border checkpoint on Griffith St, Coolangatta, about 8.50pm on Thursday when police realised he had already tried to cross over earlier in the day. He told them …