Free Republic

RENTAL prices are about to soar even higher in Melbourne, but people are already on the brink and living in dodgy conditions just to be close to the city. People have been so desperate for cheaper rent, they have even resorted to paying about $100 a week for tents set up in backyards and on balconies, that were advertised on Gumtree. Others share a small living space, with a number of curtains strung up so each housemate can have their own space. Renters are also sharing bedrooms, with one ad on Gumtree offering a bed in a room with three...

A state lawmaker from Manhattan wants to make it costly for New Yorkers not to vote. Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, a Democrat, introduced legislation this week that would establish “compulsory voting” in the state and punish those who don’t vote with a $10 fine. “Mandatory voting would drastically increase civic participation and transform the political arena by making politicians more reflective of the constituents that elected them,” Glick wrote in a memo submitted with the bill. Under Glick’s bill, any eligible voter who fails to vote would be hit with the $10 fine unless they have a “valid excuse” why they...

Frightened teachers at a Sydney primary school have revealed students are showing signs of extreme radicalisation at a young age, saying they have been traumatised by threats of beheading and other violent behaviour. Students as young as in Year 5 are making the threats and pressuring peers into reading the Koran at Punchbowl Public School in Sydney's southwest, the Daily Telegraph has reported. Documents given to the newspaper reportedly reveal that at least three staff members have taken stress leave, received counselling and been paid compensation after bullying from Islamic students.

A river in New Zealand has become the first in the world to be granted the same legal rights as a person. The New Zealand parliament passed the bill recognising the Whanganui River, in North Island, as a living entity. Long revered by New Zealand's Maori people, the river's interests will now be represented by two people. The Maori had been fighting for over 160 years to get this recognition for their river, a minister said. "I know the initial inclination of some people will say it's pretty strange to give a natural resource a legal personality," said New Zealand's...

The much-heralded Australian gun confiscation scheme of the late 1990s failed to disarm criminals to such a degree that Australia is going after guns again, beginning in July of this year. In other words, the gun confiscation scheme Hillary Clinton praised on October 16, 2016, as “worth looking at” for gun policy in America actually created an uneven playing field where law-abiding citizens turned in their guns while criminals retained theirs. The NRA-ILA reports: In a tacit admission that criminals and scofflaws have had little trouble circumventing Australia’s National Firearms Agreement (NFA) and the government’s confiscation effort, Australian officials have...

It's one thing to talk about changing allegiance to another country when a new president is elected. It's another thing to go ahead and do it. But that's exactly what seems to be happening, on a small scale, in at least in one distant corner of the world. In New Zealand, the number of Americans who applied for a grant of citizenship rose to 170 in the 12 weeks following the election of President Donald Trump from 100 in the same period a year earlier, immigration records obtained by The Associated Press show.

Instead of coming clean on policy failures, South Australia, the world’s renewable energy crash test dummy, has announced a decision to ditch free markets and assume direct government control of the electricity grid, in an effort to stabilise their self inflicted renewable energy nightmare.

Bill Leak, the great Australian cartoonist and painter and a dear, loyal friend of spiked, died this morning. He was 61. That his death, unexpected, comes just two days after the mirthful Sydney launch of his brilliant new book Trigger Warning: Deplorable Cartoons by Bill Leak makes what would have always been a tragic passing even more so. Bill was justifiably proud and excited about his new book, which is a collection of his best consensus-slaying cartoons. It should stand as a tribute to him now. Bill was the daily editorial cartoonist for the Australian. He was a rare breed...

As part of a deal with the Bible Society, Coopers released 10,000 cartons of commemorative Premium Light beer. Each can has a “Happy 200th birthday” message to the Bible Society printed on the side, while the cartons sport verses from the Bible. No money changed hands in the deal, which the Bible Society described as a “bicentennial gift”. The backlash started when the Bible Society hosted a video debate on marriage equality, featuring federal MPs Tim Wilson (who supports same-sex marriage) and Andrew Hastie (who opposes it). It was advertised as the first in a series of “light discussions on...

High-school students are being pressured to attend daily prayer meetings, lectures on the Koran and even cut their hair by peers badgering them to conform to Islam, according to 'scared' parents at Punchbowl Boys High School. The Punchbowl high school in Western Sydney has been identified as one of 19 New South Wales schools at risk of radicalising Muslim students, according to The Daily Telegraph. The NSW Government listed 19 schools across Western and South-Western Sydney taking part in a counter-extremism program called School Communities Working Together. Punchbowl Boys High School former principal Chris Griffiths initially refused the deradicalisation program,...

A man who posed as Justin Bieber online has been charged with more than 900 child sex-related crimes in Australia. The man, 42, masqueraded as the Canadian singer to gain explicit images from children, Queensland Police said. He was charged with 931 crimes, including three of rape, involving 157 alleged victims across the globe. Detective Inspector Jon Rouse called the allegations "frankly horrendous" and warned young fans of the singer and parents to be vigilant. "The fact that so many children could believe that they were communicating with this particular celebrity highlights the need for a serious rethink about the...

According to a report in The Australian, citing an industry expert, almost 80% of Chinese buyers can’t settle on the Australian apartments they have bought off the plan and wish they could walk away from the contracts. *snip* “Chinese buyers are still active in the established property market, but they would like to extend the settlement periods in their contracts out to as far as 12 months, betting on changes within China that might lead to a loosening of lending policies and of the barriers to taking money out,” he said. *snip* According to data released by the NAB earlier...

The owner of an equestrian centre rejects $1.79 million offer for 4.5 hectare property because the offer came from Muslim businessmen. Gainsborough Equestrian Centre owner John O'Leary, says he rejected the offer from the Islamic group 'on principle '– they had reportedly planned to build a function centre complete with prayer room in the South Australia suburub of Golden Grove. 'We want Australia to remain Australia and not disappear,' Mr O'Leary told Adelaide Now. 'I'm a right-winger of Irish Catholic background.'

In late November of 2016, the leftist Guardian, in the UK, reported that 3D printers were used to make illegal submachine guns in Australia.  Reports of homemade submachine guns in Australia have become fairly common. From theguardian.com: A highly sophisticated weapons production facility using 3D printers and computers to make machine guns has been uncovered in a series of raids across the Gold Coast. Police say they found four homemade automatic submachine guns, silencers, ammunition, a replica handgun, a .45 calibre pistol and equipment used to make weapons at two Nerang businesses, as well as a pill press. The...

Islam means peace. Islam means peace. Islam means ... well, also this: DRAMATIC footage has emerged of a fight outside a Preston mosque. The Sunday Herald Sun understands the dispute was sparked over the banning of Sheik Abdou Eid. The footage showed a large crowd of men pushing and shoving outside the mosque on Friday. ... Vicious infighting threatens to tear apart the congregation of one of Melbourne's largest mosques, amid claims that millions of dollars of donations have disappeared and accusations that a sheikh had behaved inappropriately with women. The conflict came to a head last week when Sheikh...

"Just for what it's worth, by way of some slight humour on this issue, this particular flag you will realise is the flag of the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands that declared war on Australia," he said. The comment created much consternation – but Abetz wasn't making it up. The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands declared itself an independent nation from Australia in 2004, protesting changes to the Marriage Act that enshrined in legislation the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.

THE “diversity” revolution that Lieutenant General David Morrison inflicted on the Australian Army now threatens to diminish our war fighting capability. Five years after the former Army chief and former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Liz Broderick launched a social engineering experiment aimed at stamping out the male “Anglo Saxon” warrior culture, the troops are unimpressed. The top brass might have drunk the feminist Koolaid of “Pathway to Change” and its mutant offshoots, but most of the people they command are sceptical about gender fluidity, appeasement of radical Islam, and promotion by chromosome as payback for 116 years of military patriarchy. “People...

A new bar in Canberra, Australia has created bizarre a rule for men: they are prohibited from approaching women; and if a female comes up to a man, he must speak to her “as he would speak to his mother.” Maple Bar, according to the Daily Mail Australia, opened its doors last Saturday. Entry only comes with adherence to the formal dress code and house rules – especially about men not approaching women. “We have a set of house rules, and the one that people have found most interesting is that gentlemen don’t approach ladies,” bar owner Mike Kadinski told...

SHE spent two years drafting false, baseless threats against her own life, and those of her children and fellow public servants, to score holidays, time off and compensation payments. On Tuesday, Tabitha Lean left the District Court through its front doors, permitted to serve her three-year minimum term at home caring for the very children whose lives she menaced. Her partner, Simon Craig Peisley, was not so fortunate. ...

A Sydney school has adopted a policy allowing Muslim schoolboys to refuse to shake hands with women. At a recent awards ceremony at Hurstville Boys Campus of Georges River College, female presenters were told by one of the two principals that some students would not shake their hands because of their Muslim faith, The Australian reported.