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A youth sits restrained after the police raid in Greenvale. Source: Supplied POLICE swooped and arrested a doctor’s teenage son in Melbourne before bombs were found at his Greenvale home, foiling an “imminent terror plot”. A boy, 14, was also targeted in raids in Sydney. It is believed there was a plot to detonate three bombs in an attack planned in Melbourne on Sunday. Victorian bomb squad officers found improvised explosives at a home in Greenvale in the northern suburbs. Dramatic photos obtained by the Herald Sun showed the arrested teen handcuffed and sitting under police guard. Police ran controlled...

Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s top business adviser on Friday claimed climate change was a ruse encouraged by the United Nations to create a new authoritarian world order under its control. Maurice Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, said the real agenda was “concentrated political authority. Global warming is the hook.” In a column for The Australian newspaper to coincide with a visit by U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, he added that the world had been “subjected to extravagance from climate catastrophists for close to 50 years.” “It’s a well-kept secret, but 95 percent of the climate models...

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s top business advisor on Friday claimed climate change was a ruse encouraged by the United Nations to create a new authoritarian world order under its control. Maurice Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, said the real agenda was “concentrated political authority. Global warming is the hook”. In a column for The Australian newspaper to coincide with a visit by UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, he added that the world had been “subjected to extravagance from climate catastrophists for close to 50 years”. “It’s a well-kept secret, but 95 percent of the climate...

Japan will agree this month to give Australia classified submarine data, an unprecedented step signaling Tokyo’s intent to join competitive bidding to sell Canberra a fleet of stealth subs, said two Japanese officials familiar with the plan. The “competitive assessment” will see Germany’s ThyssenKrupp and France’s state-controlled naval contractor DCNS separately competing with a Japanese government-led bid for such contractors as Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. Japan had been the front-runner in the planned sale of around 12 vessels, for as much as $40 billion, to replace Australia’s ageing Collins class submarines, sources have said, until...

Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson has challenged indigenous Australians to get over their traumatic history in the same way that Jews survived the Holocaust. Mr Pearson yesterday declared that alcohol was damaging indigenous communities far more than the past wrongs inflicted on Aborigines. “I honestly believe people can rise above historic trauma, otherwise we’ll lose agency and we’re defeated by history,” he told the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists annual congress in Brisbane. “I have to push back against too much attribution to past, to people’s present troubles. Whatever the scars and the burdens that people coming out...

IF you believe reporter Peter Hartcher, our Prime Minister decides mid-flight he doesn’t want to be met at the airport by a gay. If you believe Hartcher’s claims in the Sydney Morning Herald and Age on Wednesday, Tony Abbott actually checked who’d be in the greeting party when he landed in Paris on Anzac Day. You also believe Abbott got a staffer to ring ahead and tell the gay guy on the list — the Australian ambassador’s partner — to “sit in the car” instead. Seriously? Abbott has copped plenty of abuse from the media, portraying him as a lying,...

Given Tony Abbott has been dubbed a misogynist, Islamophobe and racist, I suppose the ­occasional allegation of homophobia shouldn’t be a surprise. But having met Abbott through a mutual, and dear, gay friend more than 20 years ago, it has ­always bemused me. Each time it is attempted, the slur is revealed as increasingly absurd and desperate. Christopher Pearson, a former columnist for this newspaper, was my openly gay editor at The Adelaide Review in the 1990s when he developed a friendship with ­Abbott through an organisation that was anathema to me, Australians for Constitutional Monarchy. Pearson, from the start,...

So many disputes in our liberal democratic society hinge on the tension between inequality and fairness: between groups, between sexes, between individuals, and increasingly between families. The power of the family to tilt equality hasn’t gone unnoticed, and academics and public commentators have been blowing the whistle for some time. Now, philosophers Adam Swift and Harry Brighouse have felt compelled to conduct a cool reassessment. Swift in particular has been conflicted for some time over the curious situation that arises when a parent wants to do the best for her child but in the process makes the playing field for...

The author of this piece, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher, also suggested - falsely and disgracefully - on 2GB a few minutes ago that this was on Tony Abbott’s instructions and it was open to “speculation” that this was driven by Abbott’s homophobia: Australia’s ambassador to France offered his resignation after an incident while greeting Tony Abbott as he arrived in Paris on Anzac Day. According to multiple sources, the ambassador, Stephen Brady, was on the airport tarmac with his partner of 32 years, Peter Stephens, waiting to meet the incoming plane around 7pm Paris time. The prime minister’s...

IN January, Tony Abbott seemed finished as Prime Minister. But how things have changed. Now the leader under pressure is Labor’s Bill Shorten. Just ask his smiling deputy, Tanya Plibersek. The mischief began last week, with Shorten away and Plibersek acting leader. First, Plibersek declared Labor should now force its politicians to vote for gay marriage, rather than allow a conscience vote. Many Labor MPs were outraged. MPs — including devout Christians — who would feel morally obliged to vote against party policy could be expelled under Labor’s rules. Labor could split. Shorten, on his return, quickly rejected Plibersek’s bullying...

There’s a message here to politicians from marketers: Grow a spine, stand up for something sensible Martin Daubney on Breitbart describes a new form of internet-era marketing. Companies that put out provocative ads predictably get attacked by the holier-than-thou. But if they stand up to the thought police, they suddenly find themselves in the middle of a social media war and at the winning end. Because they didn’t cave in to the PC, they get thousands of passionate defenders online, lots of new customers, loads of free PR, and the “wave” breaches the social media world and spills into the...

THE nauseating canonisation of executed convicted heroin smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran was well under way before their corpses had been returned to their families. At Castle Hill High, the words “merciless”, “barbaric”, “futile” and “weak” were plastered on the noticeboard on Wednesday by principal Vicki Brewer after students ­expressed horror at the executions of Chan and Sukumaran, and six others in Indonesia. “I think it’s affecting students and staff, they’ve been chilled by it, haunted by it and there’s been certainly a good deal of reflection and discussion about the ethical and moral dilemmas this has caused,” she...

n addition to grassroots repentance services in many communities the first ever “global call for repentance” will take place this Thursday April 30 as part of this year’s National Day of Repentance. The call will be hosted by Australian prayer leaders whose earlier global prayer call for the USA has gone viral. Using media releases and YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=fppeSN1xBn4 they are calling Christians in Australia and other nations to fast and pray for America beginning April 30 for seven days leading up to the National Day of Prayer on May 7. http://www.dayofrepentance1.org/global-support-for-usa-national-day-of-repentance/

In 1989, Edward Bryant climbed a point on the southeast coast of his native Australia with a colleague and found an odd jumble of boulders well above the surf. A big wave, he thought, maybe a tsunami from an earthquake, must have tossed them up there. Over the next few years, however, the University of Wollongong geologist explored hundreds of miles of coast and found more signs of wave action, hundreds of feet above the water--too high for any quake-spawned surge. An astonishing hypothesis of devastation from outer space formed in his mind. It gathered some praise, along with many...

The commanding officer of the USS Carl Vinson says Islamic State extremists began as an invad­ing force and ended as an enemy in retreat during the aircraft carrier’s recent six-month deployment to the Middle East. Speaking 250km off Perth on board the massive American vessel — which carries 55 planes, 20 choppers and more than 5000 crew who went ashore at Fremantle yesterday afternoon — Captain Karl Thomas proclaimed the airstrikes over Syria and Iraq a success. ..... "I think why our sailors love to come to Australia so much is that the countries are so similar,” he said. “We...

A HIGH-profile SBS presenter has come under fire for a vicious public attack on Australian Diggers in which he implied that Anzacs were rapists and terrorists. SBS soccer reporter Scott McIntyre’s rant on social media late on Anzac Day has been drawn outrage from Australian leaders, including Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull who labelled his comments “despicable”. “Difficult to think of more offensive or inappropriate comments,” Mr Turnbull tweeted. “Despicable remarks which deserve to be condemned.”

While the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey prepares to receive more than 10,000 people to it's shores on Anzac Day, around Australia dawn services are being held with proud Aussies paying respects in record numbers on the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing in a sign of unity and honour. Since 1915, Anzac Day has been marked with ceremonies of remembrance to pay tribute to the 50,000 Australians and New Zealanders who fought on the shores of Turkey, and on Saturday special centenary celebrations will mark the sacrifice and valour of these fallen soldiers. Although no WWI soldiers survive, moving dawn...

A major World War I monument in Britain has been vandalised just hours before an Anzac Day service at the site. The Australian flagpole was sawn through at Harefield (St Mary) Churchyard, and the memorial and information panel were peppered with blue spray paint. More than 100 servicemen and one nurse are buried at the site after being treated at the adjacent Harefield hospital, which was a converted mansion donated in 1915 by a wealthy Australian, Charles Billyard-Leake. The annual Anzac Day service was to still go ahead at Harefield on Saturday afternoon local time following immediate intervention from the...

America promotes itself as “the land of the free and the home of the brave’’, but more than 100 US citizens have sought asylum in Australia in the past six years. They have sought asylum in Australia on the basis of unemployment due to the global financial crisis, the impact of ­Obamacare, a high crime rate, claims America is a terrorist ­target, religious persecution and persecution because of sexuality or ­perceived sexuality. ..... This month, the Australian Federal Circuit Court referred the case of an American woman back to the Refugee Review Tribunal for reconsideration. The woman, known as SZUQO,...

IT should surprise no one that Gallipoli is a hard place to get to. AFTER all, that's the reason 10,500 Australians and Kiwis are here: to commemorate a disastrous loss for the Allied forces who tried to invade this stony strip of land a century ago. Any geographic difficulties posed by the Gallipoli peninsula, however, are only amplified by the enormous security machine that squeezed tighter in recent days and now has clamped shut on Anzac Eve. ..... The steel security curtain extends far beyond the national park where the famous Gallipoli cemeteries are: the nearby ferry port towns of...