Daughter of Bondi terror victim tells royal commission about public antisemitic abuse
The daughter of a Bondi terror attack victim has recounted her experience of being abused for being Jewish while in a shopping centre with her baby, AAP reports.
Sheina Gutnick’s 62-year-old father, Reuven Morrison, was killed after hurling a brick at one of the gunmen involved in the 14 December attack that left 15 people dead.
She appeared as the first witness in a series of public hearings for the Royal Commission on AntiSemitism and Social Cohesion, which began today.
Gutnick said in December 2024 – a year before the deadliest shooting since the Port Arthur massacre – she was walking through Westfield Bondi Junction with her baby when a man pointed at her Star of David necklace and called her a “fucking terrorist”.
She told the commission:
I felt shocked, exposed and unsafe. There were many people around me, but no one intervened.
As a result of this and other experiences, Ms Gutnick said she lived with a constant fear and awareness which limited her willingness to move around in some public spaces.
Her father fled Australia from Ukraine at the age of 14 and met his wife, another Jewish refugee, at Bondi Beach, the inquiry heard.
Key events
Search in progress for NSW bushwalker missing since Sunday
A multi-agency search is under way to find a missing bushwalker in north-west New South Wales.
According to police, Ruth Donald, 62, contacted emergency services at about 9.30pm on Sunday 3 May after becoming lost while bushwalking.
Officers from New England Police District attended an area 12km west of Drake village, near Tenterfield, and commenced a search. Police and family hold concerns for her welfare due to the rugged terrain in the area.
Ruth is described as being of Caucasian appearance, about 160cm to 165cm tall, of slim build with blonde hair. She was last seen wearing shorts, a T-shirt, a bright blue rain jacket and walking with two terrier dogs.
The search resumed at 9am today involving local police and rescue services, the dog unit, PolAir, NSW Fire and Rescue, Rural Fire Service and State Emergency Service.
Police have urged anyone who might have information on the missing woman’s whereabouts to contact police or Crimestoppers.
Dan Jervis-Bardy
Speaking immediately after Anthony Albanese, Sanae Takaichi said the agreement committed both countries to providing a “secure, reciprocal and stable supply of energy” amid the effective closure of the strait of Hormuz.
Australia is a major exporter of LNG to Japan, while Japan supplies Australia with about 7% of its diesel supplies.
She said:
The closure of the strait of Hormuz has been inflicting enormous impact on the Indo Pacific. We affirm that Japan and Australia will closely communicate with each other in responding with a sense of urgency.
PM announces new agreement with Japan
Dan Jervis-Bardy
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and his Japanese counterpart, Sanae Takaichi, have announced a new agreement to elevate the “special strategic partnership” between the two countries following talks in Parliament House in Canberra.
The high-level agreement, which comes 50 years after the two countries signed a treaty on friendship and cooperation, includes statements on economic security, energy trade, critical minerals and defence and security.
Albanese said:
While geography places our countries on the far north and the far south of the Indo-Pacific, it is thanks to the determination of our countries that we have been closer. That closeness has led to a series of new agreements reached today. These agreements are to the benefit of both of our people.
For Australians, it will mean we are less vulnerable to global shocks like we are seeing right now because of conflict in the Middle East, it will mean more security for farmers when they are planning their crop and more certainty for commuters filling up their car today.
Ben Doherty
The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has broken for lunch in its first day of public hearings.
Stephanie Schwartz, the president of the board of Mount Sinai College, has been giving evidence about the extraordinary security measures required by the school to keep students safe.
She will return to give further testimony after lunch.
Earlier, a witness known as AAM said the Bondi attack had convinced her she could no longer live safely in Australia.
AAM said:
We never expected Jews to be hunted on Bondi Beach.
She said Australia had once been one of the safest place in the world for Jews, but now, Jewish people were constantly worried about “what could possibly come next”:
My family and I no longer want to live in Australia. We don’t feel safe here. We don’t feel welcome.
We will move to Israel at the end of the year. For my family, we’ve had enough. It is not OK.
Anthony Albanese and Japan’s prime minister Sanae Takaichi have been speaking to the media in the wake of their meetings this morning. Our Canberra bureau will bring you the details of the new agreements and joint statements both nations have signed shortly.
Catie McLeod
$1m reward offered for information relating to NSW woman’s 1997 disappearance
The New South Wales government and the state’s police force have announced a $1m reward for information relating to the disappearance of Marion Barter.
Barter, then aged 51, was last seen at a bus depot on Scarborough Street, near Railway Street, at Southport in Queensland on Sunday 22 June 1997, police said in a statement released earlier today.
Detectives say they believe Marion took the bus to the airport, where she left Australia for the United Kingdom, under the name Florabella Natalia Marion Remakel, which she had officially changed the month before leaving.
Police are treating Barter’s disappearance as suspicious, and say they believe she may have re-entered Australia on 2 August 1997, under the name of Florabella Remakel with an incoming passenger card stating she was married and resided in Luxembourg.
Police said that, following her disappearance, an unknown person appears to have accessed a bank account belonging to Barter.
In July 2019, a formal police review of the case was conducted and the homicide squad’s unsolved homicide unit established Strike Force Jurunga, to re-investigate Barter’s disappearance.
A coronial inquest was held in Sydney and Byron Bay in June 2021. The coroner recommended the NSW police’s unsolved homicide unit continue its regular reviewing and monitoring of the case.
Police today increased the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any person or persons responsible for Barter’s disappearance or death from $500,000 to $1 million.
In a statement, Barter’s daughter, Sally Leydon, thanked police and said she hoped someone knew what had happened to her mother:
This decision shows a willingness to keep pushing for answers, and I welcome that and to those people that do know something, you should know I am not giving up until I find my Mum and justice is served.
Penry Buckley
NSW premier not yet asked to give evidence to royal commission
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, says he has not yet been asked to give evidence to the royal commission into antisemitism.
Speaking at a press conference earlier, Minns said it was “an enormously emotional day” for those giving evidence to the inquiry commissioned following the Bondi terror attack, “to relive and experience what is probably the worst day in many people’s lives”.
Asked if he or other senior government ministers would be asked to give evidence, Minns said:
I haven’t been asked, but of course I would [give evidence] if I was. And I assume NSW agencies will be part of the process, I know that they’ve already been asked to give information to the commissioner, but I’ll just leave it up to the royal commission to determine witness schedules and the timetable.
Daughter of Bondi terror victim tells royal commission about public antisemitic abuse
The daughter of a Bondi terror attack victim has recounted her experience of being abused for being Jewish while in a shopping centre with her baby, AAP reports.
Sheina Gutnick’s 62-year-old father, Reuven Morrison, was killed after hurling a brick at one of the gunmen involved in the 14 December attack that left 15 people dead.
She appeared as the first witness in a series of public hearings for the Royal Commission on AntiSemitism and Social Cohesion, which began today.
Gutnick said in December 2024 – a year before the deadliest shooting since the Port Arthur massacre – she was walking through Westfield Bondi Junction with her baby when a man pointed at her Star of David necklace and called her a “fucking terrorist”.
She told the commission:
I felt shocked, exposed and unsafe. There were many people around me, but no one intervened.
As a result of this and other experiences, Ms Gutnick said she lived with a constant fear and awareness which limited her willingness to move around in some public spaces.
Her father fled Australia from Ukraine at the age of 14 and met his wife, another Jewish refugee, at Bondi Beach, the inquiry heard.
Benita Kolovos
On eve of 2026 budget, Victorian premier says state on track for surplus
At her press conference this morning, the Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, faced questions on the state’s finances ahead of Tuesday’s budget.
She was asked about an analysis released Monday by the independent thinktank the e61 Institute which found the state was struggling to reduce spending to meet its own budget forecasts.
The report also said interest payments on state debt was the state’s fastest-growing spending category, forecast to increase further from $7.7bn this financial year to $10.5bn by 2029.
Allan said the state was on track for a surplus this financial year and the next, which gave the government the “capacity” to make spending commitments including in health, building more schools and providing cost-of-living relief. She went on:
I acknowledge we’ve got to get those percentages of debt down, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.
But I also do acknowledge that there are alternative approaches, which would see those levels of debt cut hard and fast. Well, to do that, you’re cutting into schools, you’re cutting into hospitals, you’re cutting into train services. You also are cutting into households at a time when they need this support more than ever before.
The approach we’re taking, which you’ll see in the budget tomorrow, is recognising that it’s important to drive down debt as a percentage of the economy, to do so through growing the economy, delivering an operating surplus, but also recognising at the same time, now is not the time to make life even harder for working people and families.
Benita Kolovos
Victoria to split cost of $152m metro extension preparations with federal government
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, has announced the state and federal governments will spend $152.7m for design and preparation works for the extension of the Metro rail network to Melton.
The funds, which will be split equally and allocated in the upcoming state and federal budgets, will be spent on site investigations, environmental assessments, planning approvals, detailed design and costings and to secure the power supply needed to electrify the line.
The former premier Daniel Andrews first promised to electrify the Melton and Wyndham Vale lines, which still operate regional V/Line trains, in 2018.
Allan on Monday said government had been taking “progressive” steps to meet the commitment, including duplicating the line between Deer Park and Melton:
You can’t get to this stage to plan for electrification works without having undertaken that important duplication, because that would just have created such a chokepoint when you wanted to come to electrifying the network.
The great thing about duplicating the line, the 17km of track between Deer Park and Melton, it meant that we could run an additional 220 weekly services from Melton as a result of that those works. So we’ve been making progressive steps.
She said the redevelopment of Sunshine station would also create “space” for the Melton trains once electrified.
Roy Morgan urges RBA to keep interest rates stable
Research company Roy Morgan has urged the Reserve Bank not to raise interest rates tomorrow, claiming that business and consumer confidence is already at or near record lows.
In a statement this morning, executives Gary Morgan, Michele Levine and Julian McCrann argued that “key economic indicators” show the Australian economy “is already in a weakened state, and perhaps already in a recession”.
They said:
If the RBA does raise interest rates tomorrow [this] would most likely plunge Australia into a ‘recession we don’t have to have’ – if we aren’t already in one.
They say their latest business confidence index, released in full today, shows it falling 14.2 points in April to a record low of only 76.5 – below the previous record low which was reached at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 of 76.9. Australian consumers are even more pessimistic, they say.
The statement continues:
A further increase to official interest rates, tomorrow, on top of two interest rate increases by the RBA already in February and March – by a total of 0.5% to 4.1% – will increase mortgage stress, real unemployment and underemployment and ensure the damage to the Australian economy is needlessly increased and a likely deep recession guaranteed …
The Reserve Bank SHOULD NOT make a historic mistake tomorrow and raise interest rates again for a third straight month that will force Australia into the ‘recession we don’t have to have.’
Wong plays down suggestions Japan could provide submarines as Aukus risk remain
The foreign minister, Penny Wong, has played down reports defence talks with Japan could turn to a Japanese backup for the $368bn Aukus submarine deal with the US and UK, AAP reports.
Former senior defence official Richard Gray said in a report published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute that risks in the Aukus program could leave the country without a submarine.
He recommended Japan as an “attractive partner” to explore contingencies:
Thanks to its prudent industrial policies and extensive manufacturing capability, [Japan] possesses a young, large, modern, highly capable submarine fleet.
Wong said Australia would continue to focus on Aukus, telling Nine’s Today program on Monday:
We have a clear Aukus plan, that is our focus.
Having said that, we obviously will continue to work very closely with Japan.
Japan is our special strategic partner. Our relationship has grown from strength to strength over the last 50 years.
Canberra chose Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to supply its upgraded Mogami-class frigate for Australia’s navy for $10bn. Wong said the decision on the frigates with Japan indicated close defence ties between the two countries.
Donna Lu
That’s no moon: astronomers discover 27 new potential circumbinary planets
Astronomers have discovered 27 new potential planets that orbit two stars, like the fictional desert planet Tatooine from the Star Wars universe.
To date, only about 18 circumbinary planets – which orbit around two stars – had been identified in the universe. More than 6,000 planets have been discovered that orbit single stars, like Earth does around the sun.
In a timely publication for 4 May, also known as Star Wars Day, scientists have identified nearly 30 more candidate planets, whose distances range from 650 to 18,000 light years away from Earth.
Read more about this discovery here:
Royal commission into antisemitism hearings begin
Ben Doherty
The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has opened its first public hearings in Sydney on Monday morning.
Commissioner Virginia Bell addressed the commission to begin hearings:
The sharp spike in antisemitism that we’ve witnessed in Australia has been mirrored in other western countries, and seems clearly linked to events in the Middle East. It’s important that people understand how quickly those events can prompt ugly displays of hostility towards Jewish Australians simply because they’re Jews. Displays of hostility that are sometimes expressed in images and sentiments that can sometimes be traced back to the Middle Ages if not earlier.
The current fortnightly block of hearings is focused on defining antisemitism, its historical and contemporary manifestations and its current impact on Jewish Australians.
Bell, a former justice of the high court, paid tribute to Holocaust survivor Peter Halasz OAM, who is scheduled to give evidence Monday afternoon.
Teacher strike delayed in Victoria
Benita Kolovos
Rolling teacher strikes planned for this week in Victoria will be delayed, the Australian Education Union has confirmed, as pay negotiations with the government show “strong progress”.
AEU Victoria’s branch president, Justin Mullaly, issued a statement on Monday morning saying the union was close to securing a pay increase that would align Victorian teachers, education support staff and school leaders with other states and territories:
As a result, the AEU Victorian branch executive … has resolved to suspend the commencement of rolling stop-work action of AEU members in Victorian public schools for a 2-week period enabling intensive negotiations to occur to maximise the best chance for an in-principle agreement to be reached.
This means that the actions scheduled for this week and next week will not go ahead as previously advised.
Mullaly said other industrial action under way – including bans on answering Department of Education emails, writing comments in student reports for parents and on school visits by state Labor MPs – will continue.
Krishani Dhanji
Grab your tickets – it’s fundraiser dinner season
They’re dismissed as boring, little more than a “selfie” opportunity for economy nerds – or even labelled a threat to democracy.
But as budget week approaches, the major parties are once again spruiking fundraising dinners and drinks for their most loyal followers – and slugging them for thousands of dollars.
A seat at Labor’s budget night dinner on Tuesday, 12 May, with the prime minister, treasurer and senior ministers, costs $5,500, up from $5,000 last year. The event is being held somewhere in the “Canberra CBD”, according to Labor sources.
The Federal Labor Business Forum (FLBF) – a major fundraising arm for the party – will also host a more casual networking function for $2,000 per ticket. MPs and ministers are expected to attend the event likely to be held at the National Press Club.
A top-tier membership to the FLBF costs more than $100,000 and gives holders about 25% off their tickets. Companies, including Westfarmers and Sportsbet, have reportedly held top-tier memberships.
But privately, some MPs say they resent being “wheeled out” for these ritzy social galas.
Read the full story from me and Sarah Basford Canales here:
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