Jacinta Allan to quit politics
Victoria’s recently deposed Labor premier, Jacinta Allan, has announced she will leave politics at the next election.
In a statement today – posted to her social media pages along with a picture of her at 25 years old – Allan announced she would not recontest the seat of Bendigo in November.
Allan said:
In my first speech to Parliament, I said I wanted to be a representative who cared about people and listened to them … I finished that speech with a promise:
‘I intend to make a difference.’
Today, almost 27 years later, I have announced that I will not recontest the seat of Bendigo East at November’s election.
But I look around the place I have called home my entire life and know that, together, we did make a difference.
Allan listed what she saw as her achievements during her time in politics, and said:
Politics has changed a lot since this photo was taken.
So have I …
And when I leave Parliament, I’ll leave the same way I arrived.
A daughter of Bendigo. A daughter of workers. A proud Labor woman.
Still believing in equality. Still believing in public education and public health. Still believing in the dignity of work.
Still believing government can – and must – make people’s lives better.
And still believing politics, at its best, is very simple:
Care about people. Listen to people. Speak up for people. Make a difference.
Twenty-seven years ago, I promised I would.
And I am proud that I have.
Thank you, Bendigo.
You gave me the honour of my life.
Key events
Amanda Meade
Back to the Alan Jones trial
Alan Jones’s alleged victim became emotional in the witness box as he recounted how his boss allegedly kissed him in the lift for the first time after a drive from work to his harbourside apartment.
Complainant C told Downing Centre local court that when the lift doors from the parking garage under the apartment shut, “Alan came towards me and I thought he’s trying to kiss me here”.
“I remember dropping my head, making it inaccessible to kiss me and you’re trying to stop someone … I didn’t know what to do,” C told the indecent assault trial in Sydney.
Jones has pleaded not guilty to 20 indecent assault charges and two sexual touching charges in relation to six men.
Complainant C told the court today he dropped his head and moved it from side to side to avoid Jones’s kiss.
“It was a pretty tight space, he turned and faced me and advanced towards me,” C said.
C was crying and hung his head as he detailed how Jones allegedly kissed him for the first time.
“I didn’t want him to kiss me,” he told the court.
Judge Glenn Walsh asked C if he wanted a break but C said he was OK.
Jones walked out of the lift into his apartment after kissing C, the court heard.
The witness said Jones would often hold his face in a romantic way when he kissed him, but C never kissed the broadcaster back.
Asked if he consented to Jones kissing him on the lips and touching him on the face and the arm, he said no.
KPMG paid $500,000 to second whistleblower as more step forward, inquiry hears
Luca Ittimani
More whistleblowers have come forward to raise concerns about KPMG, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.
The inquiry started after a whistleblower flagged audit team leaks.
Senator Barbara Pocock has asked about another case of KPMG “silencing a whistleblower in an attempt to deal with allegations of wrongdoing by the firm,” this time in its tax division, as first reported by the Australian Financial Review.
KPMG’s former chair, Martin Sheppard, told the inquiry the claim was settled in late 2024, likely with a payment of about $500,000. He said there would have been a confidential deed of settlement, likely with non-disparagement provisions, but with no restrictions on further lawsuits or claims against other parties.
KPMG’s former chief executive, Andrew Yates, said the allegations mostly dated back 25 years. He said the whistleblower “was reluctant to provide information directly to the firm” so they shared information with law firm Allens instead. Yates said:
We did try and investigate but the passage of time had been so long that we were just unable to find information.
Pocock asked the firm to detail any other settlement agreements of this nature over the last decade, and explain why they were made and how much the firm paid out to settle issues.
Senator Deborah O’Neill later added:
There are many many more who are contacting us and they are talking about a repeat of the same behaviour.
Patrick Commins
New home loans fall in June quarter: ABS
New lending to property investors fell sharply in the three months to June, according to ABS figures, which also showed a retreat in loans to first home buyers.
The major banks over recent days have all reported a slump in mortgage applications during the June quarter, in the wake of three RBA rate hikes and the budget’s investor tax changes that together have weighed on property prices.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics data show the number of total new home loans dropped by 5.4% over the three-month period.
Mish Tan, the ABS’s head of finance statistics, said “lending fell across all borrower types this quarter and returned to similar levels to this time last year”.
Investor loans led the decline, falling by 8.6% in the June quarter after a 4.7% drop in the previous period. The number of investor loans was 2.8% higher than a year earlier.
But in an early vindication of the government’s budget carve-out for investor lending to build new homes, loans in this category rose 4.4% in the quarter.
However, the number of loans to first home buyers dropped by 2.9% over the three-month period, to be flat over the year.
The number of new owner-occupier loans in total fell 3.3% in the June quarter and were 1.6% down on a year earlier – the first annual fall since September 2023, the ABS said.
Nick Miller
Where is Australia’s Count Binface?
We’re all waiting eagerly for the result in the UK’s Clacton byelection, where Reform leader Nigel Farage faces a record field of challengers (including an alien dressed as a bin and two Australians).
As the votes are counted veteran psephologist Antony Green found himself wondering: “why are there no Count Binfaces in Australia?”.
In a blog post this morning, he explains:
It sort of used to occur, but the law was tightened after several protest candidates representing the Abolish Child Support/Family Court Party adopted vvvveeerrrryyyy lloonngg names to contest the 1998 Federal election.
This included a candidate who appeared on the ballot paper as “Prime Minister John Piss The Family Court and Legal Aid” in John Howard’s seat of Bennelong.
Now candidates must use their names, or shortened versions, that appear on the electoral roll – much to the disappointment of “Brisbane performer Tamara Tonite [who was] complaining that her electoral enrolment change form had been rejected under her known-as drag name,” Green wrote.
One did slip through, though:
Ahead of the 2007 Federal election, some junior clerk doing enrolments allowed a Mr “Of The Above None” to register, allowing him to appear on the ballot paper in the seat of Gilmore at the 2007 election as “NONE, Of The Above”.
Amanda Meade
Complainant tells court about first time Alan Jones allegedly touched him on the penis
Back in court, the judge has been told that the first time Alan Jones allegedly touched complainant C on the penis, C was driving the broadcaster from 2GB to his Circular Quay home and he felt “violated”.
“I’ve never had a man touch me on the penis before,” he said. “I am not gay.”
Sometimes Jones would touch it and sometimes he would rub it, C told the court, “moving up and down on the outside of my penis”.
After two weeks of reaching across and touching his leg in the car while he was driving, Jones progressed to regularly touching his penis, C said in court.
“It was not dissimilar to when he was touching my leg, it was any day he wasn’t on the phone or asleep, but if he was awake and alert it was more than likely he was going to touch me.”
The prosecutor Georgina Wright asked: “Why didn’t you say anything?”
C told the court: “I was scared. My boss’s hand was on my penis. If I told him stop, I don’t know what would have happened. You had to cop it.”
Complainant C became visibly emotional as he was giving his evidence. The trial continues.
Luca Ittimani
Sacked KPMG partner tells inquiry she doesn’t recall printing confidential info
The KPMG partner who was sacked for her role in the leaks scandal is asking the firm why it expelled her, saying she does not remember printing confidential documents.
Eileen Hoggett has been fined by KPMG, barred from practice by the accountants peak body and is being investigated by the regulator. She has told a parliamentary committee she did not recall printing or storing Lendlease’s confidential documents, a key allegation, adding:
I’m not here to defend or minimise the fact that the documents were printed and put in my locker but I am not aware that the documents were distributed widely or used to win new work.
Hoggett’s passive phrasing that they “were printed” drew further questioning, where she admitted she was the only person with access to her locker other than her personal assistant. She said her PA would only let others access her locker with her authority.
Senator Barbara Pocock read out a May 2023 email Hoggett sent to her personal assistant:
I think we confidentially allow him to look at the printed version in my locker when he’s back in Sydney. He needs to do it sensitively without letting too many people know.
Hoggett said the person mentioned is the director of the Lendlease document. KPMG has said this email was the reason Hoggett was expelled when it came to light in July.
Hoggett said the new chief executive, John Sams, rang her while she was out walking one morning, giving her “no opportunity to be heard or to have any discussion” about the expulsion. She said she didn’t understand why:
I did expect a different process … that’s why I’m trying to ascertain from the firm the basis of my expulsion and to also understand my rights as a former partner.
Amanda Meade
Complainant tells court Alan Jones started ‘love bombing’ him with texts
In the Alan Jones trial, his former driver has told the court the broadcaster became very friendly and eventually started “love bombing him” with early-morning text messages such as: “Good morning darling … I hope you have a beautiful day, big hugs.”
“I would feel the need to respond in kind,” complainant C said.
C told the court that Jones started to talk about his penis in text messages, after C had said his own nickname should be “Donkey”.
“The messages were far more sexually explicit. It was like being bombarded, live love bombing,” he said.
C said one day Jones put his hand on his knee and squeezed it, and C gently tapped it away. It made him feel “uncomfortable”, the court heard.
Jones has denied 22 charges of indecent assault and sexual touching in relation to six alleged victims. The trial before judge Glenn Walsh continues.
Amanda Meade
Alan Jones trial continues
In the Alan Jones trial, complainant C has said that when he drove Jones to his Fitzroy Falls farm, the broadcaster was very friendly with him and he felt he was almost flirting with him.
C told the court:
I’ve got Alan joking with me, he’s interested in me [and] we were having a conversation more than we would [ordinarily].
He was far more friendly to me; he was far more engaging, very jokey.
When they arrived at the property and Jones showed him his bedroom, the broadcaster lingered for too long, making C feel uncomfortable, he told the court.
The complainant said:
He took me in, it was a queen-sized bed, it was a big room.
It was a very big guest room, and he sort of pulled the blanket down and said this is where you are mate.
Sharp says ‘multiple lines of defence’ prevented airport incidents escalating
Sharp sought to assure the public that aviation and Sydney airport were still safe and there were multiple “lines of defence” that prevented the three incidents from escalating into catastrophe.
He said:
I can understand concern when you get a run of these incidents and we certainly take it seriously …
I will say in all three instances, there was a layer of defence that kicked in and prevented an escalation. Now, we find in a lot of our investigations, it’s very rarely one single point of failure. For it to progress through to an actual accident, multiple things need to go wrong. In all three cases here, a line of defence prevented an escalation.
That line of of defence was actually multiple lines of defence in that we had aircrews onboard the aircraft identifying the situation and taking action.
But we also had air traffic control – in the case of the two Qantas planes that came in close proximity, it was also recognised by air traffic control, albeit after when it perhaps should have been, but equally in this one, this latest one that was reported to us, air traffic control cancelled the take-off clearance around the same time as the pilot onboard realised there was a potential conflict.
Sydney airport near-miss distance ‘quite substantial’, Airservices CEO says
Airservices Australia’s Rob Sharp said the threshold for reporting the incident wasn’t met, in their view, because the air traffic controllers immediately rescinded the clearance on the plane, the aircraft remained stationary, and a Qantas aircraft was approaching the runway but still 1.3km away and “the distance of 1.3km is quite substantial”.
Sharp said:
So, based on that criteria, it didn’t meet the mandatory reporting requirements from our perspective. However, we’re quite open to reviewing the data that surrounds it; if there’s improvements to be made, we will make them. But that was the review decision at the time.
Airservices CEO on Sydney airport near-miss: ‘we don’t think the threshold for reporting was actually met’
Airservices Australia’s chief executive Rob Sharp has been speaking to media just now about the near-collision between two planes at Sydney airport last Sunday.
He said:
VA555 was approaching to take-off; a qualified, experienced controller advised clearance, but immediately cancelled that clearance.
The controllers were under what’s called an endorsement process, so they weren’t trainees, they were experienced and regular endorsement process.
So there was a qualified controller who was also supervising.
The aircraft remained at the beginning of the threshold for the runway and the commentary that’s been around on reporting in this instance – I just want to flag we do take our reporting requirements very seriously. We work closely with our regulators and very openly. In this particular case, however, we don’t think the threshold for reporting was actually met …
But we will work closely with the ATSB because there are some data points that still need to be resolved and clarified and we look forward to any learnings that emerge from that particular incident.
You can read more about the incident here:
Luca Ittimani
Optus to keep KPMG auditor despite ‘flagrant breach of duty’
Optus will keep KPMG as its auditor even though the firm broke its promises and leaked its documents to its Telstra team, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.
KPMG staff working on Optus’ audit shared confidential documents with colleagues who were pursuing, but eventually did not win, the contract for competitor Telstra.
Stephen Rue, chief executive of Optus, has told the inquiry KPMG promised its data and files would be accessible only by KPMG’s Optus team and that its Telstra team would not include any staff from its Sydney-based Optus team, working separately from Melbourne. He said:
My understanding is those assurances were not followed.
On top of the leaks, KPMG planned to have some of its Sydney-based partners work with Telstra if they had won the bid, Rue said. He said KPMG only told him about the confirmed leaks in “vague” terms in a phone call on 29 May.
Optus’ chair, John Arthur, said the leak was a “flagrant breach of duty” and an “egregious breach of professional responsibilities”. But he said the company decided to stick with KPMG as auditor as its financial year had already begun, on 1 April.
Arthur said Optus had changed the processes and personnel working on its accounts and boosted its focus on culture. He said:
We have what I would now describe as a much more rigorous control environment around our audit, which we will be watching like a hawk.
Jacinta Allan to quit politics
Victoria’s recently deposed Labor premier, Jacinta Allan, has announced she will leave politics at the next election.
In a statement today – posted to her social media pages along with a picture of her at 25 years old – Allan announced she would not recontest the seat of Bendigo in November.
Allan said:
In my first speech to Parliament, I said I wanted to be a representative who cared about people and listened to them … I finished that speech with a promise:
‘I intend to make a difference.’
Today, almost 27 years later, I have announced that I will not recontest the seat of Bendigo East at November’s election.
But I look around the place I have called home my entire life and know that, together, we did make a difference.
Allan listed what she saw as her achievements during her time in politics, and said:
Politics has changed a lot since this photo was taken.
So have I …
And when I leave Parliament, I’ll leave the same way I arrived.
A daughter of Bendigo. A daughter of workers. A proud Labor woman.
Still believing in equality. Still believing in public education and public health. Still believing in the dignity of work.
Still believing government can – and must – make people’s lives better.
And still believing politics, at its best, is very simple:
Care about people. Listen to people. Speak up for people. Make a difference.
Twenty-seven years ago, I promised I would.
And I am proud that I have.
Thank you, Bendigo.
You gave me the honour of my life.
Luca Ittimani
KPMG’s own documents suggest yet another breach of client trust, inquiry hears
A parliamentary inquiry has heard another KPMG client, Dexus, is worried the firm used its confidential information to win another contract with Dexus.
The real estate and infrastructure company had KPMG running its internal audit in 2023 and 2024, but the firm applied for and won Dexus’ external audit in 2024. A whistleblower alleged KPMG used confidential internal work to achieve that.
KPMG’s lawyers’ investigation in December 2025 found that KPMG staff believed they had told Dexus they were using internal knowledge to pursue the external contract.
Warwick Negus, chair of Dexus, spoke to the inquiry today. He said while KPMG’s own investigation suggested otherwise, KPMG’s leadership had told him that confidential information was not used in the tender process. He said:
It would have been completely inappropriate for the information to go in that direction. …I think our actions made it relatively obvious that this was not on.
He said Eileen Hoggett, the KPMG bidding partner, wanted to join Dexus’ internal audit committee meetings but Dexus rejected that as an “obvious conflict”.
Negus said KPMG’s lawyers did not interview Dexus about the issue. He told the committee:
The initial reaction is why didn’t you come and talk to us? .. Why wouldn’t you ask for our perspective on these things?
Young Talent Time’s Johnny Young has died aged 79
Sian Cain
Johnny Young, the singer-songwriter and producer who created and hosted the popular variety show Young Talent Time, has died aged 79.
Young’s family announced his death in a statement on Friday, saying that Young died “following a brief battle with pancreatic cancer”.
The statement read:
Johnny was the creator, host and producer of the much loved television show Young Talent Time. He wrote and produced many iconic hit songs including The Real Thing and Smily.
Johnny leaves behind his wife Marisha, sister Cornelia, daughters Anna and Fleur, son Craig (dec.), seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
The family respectfully asks for privacy during this difficult time. Details of a memorial service will be announced soon.
Young Talent Time, which originally aired from 1971 until 1988, launched the careers of several Australian singers including Tina Arena, Debra Byrne and Dannii Minogue.
Patrick Commins
Jim Chalmers appoints new RBA board member
Melinda Cilento, the chief executive at the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, has been appointed as a member of the Reserve Bank’s interest rate-setting board.
Jim Chalmers made the announcement this morning, with Cilento taking the spot left vacant by Ian Harper – a longstanding board member and one of the country’s most distinguished economists.
The treasurer in a statement this morning said Cilento “is a highly respected economist with broad and deep expertise and experience”:
This appointment will help ensure the board has the right mix of skills and perspectives.
Cilento has led CEDA, a public policy think tank, since 2017.
She was a commissioner at the Productivity Commission, deputy chair at the Business Council of Australia and is a former Treasury and International Monetary Fund official. She has also held positions in the private sector, including as a non-executive board member at Woodside Petroleum.
Cilento joins a nine-member board, which includes the RBA’s chair and deputy chair, the Treasury secretary and six independents.
Her appointment is for five years.
Alleged victim of Alan Jones was required to iron broadcaster’s underpants, court hears
Amanda Meade
The Alan Jones trial has heard one of Complainant C’s tasks as Jones’s driver was to do household chores at his Macquarie Street apartment after the breakfast show ended at midday.
Complainant C’s tasks included ironing Jones’s underpants and handkerchiefs, collecting wine and cooking, the court was told.
C said he was given instructions by Jones’s butler on how to perform these tasks.
He told the court he was given the smaller items to iron:
If I stuffed it up it wouldn’t have been the end of the world.
The complainant said he was given instructions to deliver flowers to an Olympic diver several times before the diver won a gold medal.
