Free Republic

A new Victorian State Government trial will force drivers to pass a breathalyser test before leaving licensed venues. The 'alco-gates' will see breath tests linked to the boom gates at car parks via sensors, and were announced as part of the State Government’s Towards Zero 2016-2020 road strategy. If drivers fail the breath test, the boom gate will prevent them from leaving and they will be made to wait until they are sober or take a taxi home. The trial will begin at a small number of pubs and clubs initially, before being rolled out further if successful. Those affected...

DECADES after the Vietnam War ended, the remains of 22 fallen Australian servicemen have finally arrived back in Australia for burial on home soil. Under full military honours their coffins were unloaded from two RAAF C17 Globemaster jets at Richmond RAAF base in Western Sydney, with hundreds of emotional family members, friends and Vietnam veterans watching on. Also arriving home were the remains of three servicemen killed on deployment in Malaysia, and eight dependants — partners and children of servicemen who died overseas and were interred in a Malaysian cemetery. Service personnel from all three arms of the Australian Defence...

A woman who was cycling in Australia reported to authorities she was attacked by a kangaroo with a jump-kick that hit her so hard it burst her breast implants. Sharon Heinrich said that she and a friend were biking along a public trail in Clare Valley in South Australia when the kangaroo began to chase them. The 45-year-old cyclist said as the two began to ride past the beast, it gave chase then leapt at them first using its powerful legs to slam into her and then springing off to hit her companion, Helen Salter, 47. Both were knocked off...

THERE’S many green activists who can see all the way to the African rainforests, but can’t see the bawling baby in front of them. It’s what Charles Dickens called “telescopic philanthropy”, and you can see it in the latest green propaganda clip to go viral. It stars Henry Marr, a six-year-old from Washington, bawling from the fear of the green doom preached by his parents and teachers. Filmed by his proud mother, Henry is shown strapped in his car seat, tears streaming down his face. When he finally can speak, he explains what has so terrified him. ..... Indeed, scaring...

One reason I have huge respect for Adam Giles is that he rejects the new racism pushed by the ABC, in which we are divided into racial types and not judged as complex individuals: TONY JONES:... You’re the first Indigenous head of any Australian government. Has any of the political instability up there got anything at all to do with racism? ADAM GILES: Oh, look, I just correct you on one point there. I’m not an Indigenous head of government. I’m a person who’s head of government who has Indigenous heritage and I’ll always make sure that I compete on...

"Changing the definition of marriage to entrench motherless and fatherlessness in public policy and teaching our kids their gender is fluid should be opposed...The cowardice and weakness of Australia's 'gatekeepers' is causing unthinkable things to happen, just as unthinkable things happened in Germany in the 1930s." Mr Shelton began the post by declaring he loved to read obituaries in The Economist, specifically one published last week on the late German-born historian Fritz Stern. According to the obituary, Stern argued the rise of Adolf Hitler owed less to the Fuhrer's personality cult and more to the failure of Germany's 'gatekeepers' to...

Police in Australia have used pepper spray to separate more than 300 angry protesters as anti-Islam and anti-racism groups clashed in the streets of Melbourne, the country's second biggest city. Seven men were arrested in Coburg, a northern suburb of Melbourne on Saturday after anti-Islam protesters, some of whom were draped in the Australian flag, began fighting with their rivals.

A butcher's sign that said eating his bacon reduced the chance of someone being a suicide bomber has raised a few eyebrows. A photo posted on social media showed a sign up in the window of Jeff Rapley's butchery, Rapley's Midtown Quality Meats, in Narooma on the NSW South Coast. 'Eating two strips of Rapley's award-winning bacon for breakfast reduces your chance of being a suicide bomber by 100 per cent,' the sign read.

Canada once again backed Israel at the UN this week when it voted against the World Health Organization’s (WHO) resolution singling out only Israel for “mental, physical and environmental health” rights abuse. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government joined the Israel, the United States, Australia, Paraguay, Guatemala, Micronesia and Papua New Guinea as the only countries to vote against the resolution, which was co-sponsored by the Arab Group of States and the Palestinian delegation. …

It was the smallest of sounds, too soft for human ears but deemed loud enough to potentially doom an Australian submarine. Two weeks ago, behind closed doors in a shipyard in the German port of Kiel, the secrets behind Australia’s $150 billion submarine decision were finally revealed. It was a moment that left the Germans stunned. They were told for the first time that they had lost the bid because their proposed Aust­ralian submarine had an “un­acceptable’’ level of “radiated noise’’. In the world of submarines, noise equals potential detection and death, but when the Germans pressed the Australian officials...

The Guardian has been hit by a journalism ethics scandal after the newspaper admitted a reporter fabricated interviews and made up quotes in articles. Lee Glendinning, editor of Guardian US and a former Fairfax Media journalist, said reporter Joseph Mayton also falsely claimed to have been present at events he wrote about. The former deputy editor of Guardian Australia apologised to readers and to the “people whose words were misrepresented or falsified”. The newspaper, which was instrumental in campaigning for a British inquiry into press standards, has now removed 13 of contributor Mr Mayton’s articles from its website. Other articles...

When will the Socialist Left government of Victoria realise that the Safe Schools program to coach children into being more ”gender fluid” is part of the Marxist Ward’s work, too?: Safe Schools Coalition co-ordin­ator Roz Ward was forced yesterday to quit her advisory role with the Victorian government and faces a university ­investigation over a Facebook post where she ­labelled the Australian flag “racist” and called for it to be replaced with a socialist red ­ensign. .....Ms Ward posted a photo of the rainbow flag on top of Parliament House on Facebook with the comment: “Now we just need to...

The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority recommends teachers take Year 12 students to a play by a communist apologist mocking Hitler that has now been reworked into an attack on “the current waves of conservative politics spreading across the western world”: The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht Theatre Company Phillip Rouse and Co, presented by Theatre Works… The Resistable [sic] Rise of Arturo Ui is Brecht’s satirical allegory about the rise of Hitler in the lead up to WWII. Written while in exile from Nazi persecution, this play contains all the hallmark aspects of Brecht’s epic theatre....

When Australia's most successful Olympian, Ian Thorpe, came out as gay in an interview with Sir Michael Parkinson in July 2014, he was inundated with messages of support. At the time, some posed the question: does this even count as news? Is homosexuality today not a simple biographical detail rather than a sensational scandal? And yet, it is significant that on the same night that Thorpe came out, Australian Rules Football commentator Brian Taylor used a homophobic slur on air, referring to Geelong player Harry Taylor as a "big poofter." The two events accentuated perfectly why it remains the case,...

Samoa's council of churches has welcomed the prime minister's call to review the religious freedom provisions of the constitution. Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi recently said the country's supreme law may be changed to recognise Christian principles and teachings, not just in the preamble. However the Secretary General of the Samoa Council of Churches, Reverend Ma'auga Motu, said he would go a step further and ban the religion of Islam. He said even though most Samoans are Christian, Islam poses a future threat to the country. "We are not going too far, no," Reverend Motu said. "We are still wanting our own...

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.1, unusually powerful for Australia, has struck outside of Alice Springs. The quake hit at 4:14am, 125 kilometres west of Uluru, at a depth of about 10 kilometres, according to Geoscience Australia. Two aftershocks measuring 3.8 and 3.4 were recorded in the hour afterwards, and senior seismologist Johnathan Bathgate said more were expected. He said there had been activity near the site before, with a 5.6 recorded slightly further west in 1999. Geoscience Australia said the main tremor could have been felt as far as 507 kilometres from its epicentre, although any damage would...

IT’S not the haters who will kill Christianity. It’s the ignorant, who have no clue how we non-Christians will suffer. But, wow, that hatred sure is feral. The latest examples? One: the Greens this week say they want to strip churches of their “right to discriminate” — actually their freedom to insist their employees live the faith. Two: Sydney University’s Student Union threatened to deregister the university’s Evangelical Union unless it stopped insisting members declare their faith in Jesus Christ. Three: Christian lobby group Family Voice Australia this week accused Facebook of deleting one of its pages arguing against same-sex...

<p>Property prices in Auckland have increased by nearly 80% in five years, leaving some families unable to buy or rent ___ Hundreds of families in Auckland are living in cars, garages and even a shipping container as a housing crisis fuelled by rising property prices forces low-income workers out of private rental accommodation.</p>

And the lawyer for the defendant told the victim that she could have avoided the sex assault if she had just adjusted her own behavior. The West is swiftly internalizing the idea that whenever Muslims commit acts of violence, it’s the non-Muslim victim’s fault.

FAMILIES relying on food parcels to survive; pregnant women being whisked away to give birth because the hospital can’t help them, pot holes that just keep getting bigger and a community that can’t afford to look after itself. It sounds like a damned corner of a faraway land. But it’s actually a forgotten fragment of Australia whose handful of residents were given unprecedented power to look after their own affairs. According to some, the experiment in self-rule has failed so miserably it’s end can’t come quickly enough. In just over a month Gai Brodtmann, the Labor member for Canberra, will...