Health News at Your Fingertips

Federal police have arrested and charged a man who allegedly yelled abuse at the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, on a rural highway last week.

News Corp reported that Joyce had been travelling between Tamworth and Armidale on Friday, when he pulled off the road to make a call. A passing car was said to have stopped 40 metres away, with the driver allegedly getting out and yelling at Joyce.

The deputy PM’s federal police detail prevented the man from coming closer, but the man is reported to have directed explicit criticisms at Joyce.

On Monday, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said a man had been arrested over the incident. In a statement, the AFP said:

The 52-year-old man was refused police bail and is expected to appear in Tamworth local court today (Monday, 25 April 2022), after police charged him yesterday with threatening to cause harm to a commonwealth public official and failure to comply with bail conditions,

Police will allege the man verbally threatened an AFP officer and adopted a fighting stance during Friday’s incident.

The arrest was made by operation wilmot, a special AFP taskforce set up to “ensure the security of high-office holders and parliamentarians during the 2022 federal election” in conjunction with the electoral commission.

AFP detective acting superintendent Jeremy Staunton said:

The AFP supports political expression and freedom of speech. However, when it leads to disruption, harassment, intimidation, threatening behaviour and damage to property, it can reach the threshold of a criminal offence.

Politicians, candidates and the people who work with them should be able to do their jobs safely and we will not tolerate criminal behaviour.

The charge of threatening to cause harm to a commonwealth public official carries a maximum penalty of five years’ jail, the AFP said.

In South Australia six people have died with Covid and 3,175 new cases have been recorded in the state’s daily figures reported on Monday.

Josh Taylor

On Friday the Australian Electoral Commission announced it had referred former One Nation and independent senator Rod Culleton to the Australian federal police for allegedly making a false declaration when nominating for the upcoming election.

The AEC said Culleton had ticked the box stating he was not an undischarged bankrupt or insolvent, but he is listed as an undischarged bankrupt on the national personal insolvency index.

It’s the second time such a referral has happened, with the AEC referring Culleton to the AFP for the same issue in 2019.

Guardian Australia has confirmed that there wasn’t enough evidence at the time for the investigation to proceed.

Culleton’s name appeared on the index in 2019, too, so it is unclear whether this new referral will be different to the last one.

Michael McGowan

New South Wales police say they are not aware of any threats made against the Liberal party’s controversial candidate in Warringah, Katherine Deves, after an interview in which she said she had received “death threats” over comments about transgender people that she made online.

After weeks of avoiding media scrutiny, Deves gave an interview to SBS on Sunday night in which she said her family had fled Sydney amid fears for their safety:

I have received death threats, I have had to have the police and the AFP involved. My safety has been threatened. My family are away out of Sydney because I don’t want them to witness what I’m going through nor do I want their safety put at risk.

Deves has become a lightning rod for criticism after her comments about transgender people on her personal website and now-deleted Twitter page resurfaced during the election campaign.

But despite saying she had been forced to involve the police after receiving “death threats”, a spokesperson for the NSW police said in a brief statement that the force had not been made aware of any threats:

The NSW Police Force have not received any reports of threats made.

In a statement, the AFP said it “does not comment on matters that may be the subject of investigation”.

And with that, I will hand the blog over to my esteemed colleague, Elias Visontay. Many thanks for reading.

And here are some photos from Sydney:

ABC reviewing Fauziah Ibrahim’s social media activity

Amanda Meade

The ABC has confirmed Weekend Breakfast co-host Fauziah Ibrahim has taken a break from presenting while her social media activity is under review.

An ABC News spokesperson told Guardian Australia:

The ABC is reviewing recent social media activity by presenter Fauziah Ibrahim, who has taken a break from on-camera duties but remains part of the Weekend Breakfast team.

The contentious issue is Ibrahim’s Twitter lists which included “Labor Trolls” and “Lobotomised Shitheads”. She has deleted the lists and made her Twitter account private.

Last year ABC managing director David Anderson warned staff they face disciplinary action, including the sack, if they breach tough new social media guidelines.

The warning came after two of the ABC’s most experienced journalists, Sally Neighbour and Laura Tingle, fell foul of the rules for Twitter use which prohibit bringing the ABC into disrepute with personal views.

Anderson said journalists on Twitter are required to be “conscious of your responsibility to protect the ABC’s reputation, independence and integrity where your personal use of social media intersects with your professional life”:

Working at the ABC offers tremendous opportunities. It also comes with responsibilities – more than at any other media organisation in Australia.

The ABC’s crackdown follows moves by the BBC to crackdown on social media posts which could indicate a personal political view.

Queensland is reporting 4,639 new cases overnight and two deaths:

Caitlin Cassidy

Green Music Australia and Music Declares Emergency have launched their “No Music on a Dead Planet” campaign in the lead-up to the federal election.

The campaign is calling on musicians and workers in the arts to lobby for greater climate action from the government, by declaring music “at risk of extinction”:

Like plants and animals, music is at risk of extinction if we fail to act and meet the current climate emergency. To highlight the urgency, musicians are declaring songs to be endangered or extinct until we take action as a community.

A number of high-profile musicians and bands have joined the campaign, including Something for Kate, Pinch Points and the Yorta Yorta artist Drmngnow.

“I SAW MY PM ON THE TELLY BUT I DIDN’T HEAR A SOUND,” Melbourne punk band Pinch Points posted on social media:

We wrote this lyric on Virga about Scomo and the liberal government’s piss-poor response to the black summer bushfires, but it could just as easily refer to their action in the recent flood crisis or any environmental issue throughout his time in government.

We’re about to have a federal election here in so-called Australia and we need our leaders to be doing whole lot better on the climate front.