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Good morning!
It’s been such a big week of news that I’ve only just realised that Summer is over.
Enjoy the first weekend of Autumn!
I’ve got 10 seconds
The quote: “I regularly hear from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that they are facing increasing hate and racism, especially online.”
Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy in a statement announcing an inquiry into racism, hate and violence against First Nations people after an attempted alleged terror attack in Perth at an Invasion Day rally.
The stat: $402.1 million. The profit made across Australia’s four largest airport car parks, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, in 2023-24.
The big question:
Are you a loyal customer to a local coffee shop?
Yesterday’s results: 55% of you said you have 0-10 unread emails. [2,937 votes].
I’ve got 30 seconds
Some headlines from this morning:
The U.S-Iran war has further escalated after an American submarine sank an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka, killing at least 80 people. It is the first time an enemy vessel has been sunk by an American torpedo since World War II. U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a press conference after the incident: "This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they're down. We can sustain this fight easily for as long as we need to." Meantime, at a White House event, President Donald Trump said the U.S. is "doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly", and that on a scale of 10 he thought the U.S. was doing "about a 15".
Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered an address to Australia’s Federal Parliament on Thursday and urged the two countries to boost their cooperation on a number of fronts. Carney described Canada and Australia as strategic cousins, saying the relationship between the two countries has been built up by choice, not by geography, over centuries. It comes after Carney said the current conflict between the U.S. and Iran is “another example of the failure of the international order” at an address at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Wednesday. He also claimed that “the U.S. and Israel have acted without engaging the UN or consulting with allies including Canada”.
Together with AAP.
Recommendation of the day
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I’ve got 1 minute
The Federal Government has canned a bill to change the way freedom of information (FOI) requests are processed.
If passed, the bill would have introduced fees for some FOIs and restrict the reasons someone can make a request. The bill faced criticism both inside and outside Parliament, and had no support from other parties.
Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher said the bill would be revised and reintroduced.
FOI requests
FOI requests are a way to ask for access to government documents and records. They are governed by the Freedom of Information Act.
Journalists typically use FOIs to access data, or find out how the Government made a particular decision.
The majority (72% in 2023/24) are from individuals seeking their own personal information from Government agencies.
Information from intelligence agencies and Cabinet documents (meetings of senior ministers) aren’t accessible.
Government data shows Australians submitted an average of 38,000 FOI requests each year from 2015 to 2021.
According to a 2022 report from The Centre for Public Integrity, the proportion of claims granted in full fell by more than 30% from 2011/12 to 2022, while the number of claims refused in full increased by 50%.
The Government has since amended how staff report their response to claims, allowing more FOIs to be listed as completed in part.
Bill
The Government introduced the bill in September 2025 to “strengthen” the FOI system, arguing the current framework is “stuck in the 1980s,” before emails and smartphones.
Changes included:
Fees for requests, excluding those for personal information
Expanding what documents are covered by ‘cabinet confidentiality’
Banning anonymous requests
Allowing government departments to refuse requests that would take longer than 40 hours to process.
The Government said its employees spent more than a million hours processing FOI requests in 2024, partly because “modern technology has made it possible to create large volumes of vague, anonymous, vexatious or frivolous requests.”
The bill also addresses what Attorney-General Michelle Rowland described as FOIs by “anonymous or nefarious offshore actors”.
When asked in October 2025 for evidence of foreign actors exploiting the system, Rowland’s office didn’t cite specific examples.
Motion
Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher moved a motion in the Senate on Thursday to pull the bill.
She said the Government was “taking this step because we understand that it does not have the support of the Senate”.
The Government has a majority in the House of Representatives, but needs the support of other parties to pass bills in the Senate.
Gallagher said she would “negotiate” to “progress” the bill.
Opposition Senate Leader Michaelia Cash called the scrapping of the bill a “victory,” describing it in a post to X as “a blatant bid to price Australians out of transparency”.
Greens Senator David Shoebridge also wrote on X that the Government had “finally admitted defeat and scrapped its toxic Freedom of Information bill after massive community backlash and almost unanimous opposition”.
Reporting by Achol Arok.
Quick hits
🎧 On today’s TDA podcast, we unpack the fallout of the U.S. Government’s disagreement with one of the biggest AI companies in the world over how the technology should be used in wartime.
🌞 Need some good news? You can sign up to TDA’s dedicated Good News newsletter here, and wake up to silver linings in your inbox on Sunday morning.
Good finds
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*Transparency: This is a sponsored part of the newsletter - the best way to keep the newsletter free for you.
I’ve got 2 minutes
On 28 February, the U.S. and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran, killing the regime’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Questions have since grown over who will become the new Supreme Leader, including speculation that it may be Khamenei’s second son Mojtaba.
Initial reports suggested Saturday’s strikes killed him and his father. However, Middle Eastern media is now reporting Mojtaba is the regime’s preferred successor.
Who is Mojtaba Khamenei?
Mojtaba
Since the 1979 Iranian revolution, the Supreme Leader has held almost all decision-making power in Iran. Khamenei became Supreme Leader in 1989.
Mojtaba is Ali Khamenei’s second-eldest son. He has kept relatively out of the public eye.
Middle East Political and Information Network director Dr Eric Mandel told UK-based outlet Iran International the 56-year-old has “operated behind the scenes”.
Mojtaba is known to have served in the the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a military force alongside the Iranian army, in his youth.
On Tuesday, Iran International reported that Mojtaba had been chosen by Iran’s Assembly of Experts, a group of elected officials tasked with choosing and supervising the Supreme Leader.
Neither the Iranian Government nor state media has confirmed his appointment.
Response
The Israeli Government has issued threats towards any new leader appointed by the regime.
Defence Minister Israel Katz said:
“Every leader... will be an unequivocal target for elimination.”
The Guardian reported that Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar issued a warning that Mojtaba will be assassinated.
Iran International has shared video of people in Tehran chanting “Death to Mojtaba”.
Pahlavi
The son of the last Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, has repeatedly vowed to lead Iran if the regime were to fall.
Addressing Khamenei’s death, Pahlavi told the regime’s “remaining officials” to “declare your loyalty to my plan”.
Pahlavi has spoken about a five-part plan to transition Iran to a non-religious democracy, including steps for “the first 180 days” after the regime falls, called the Iran Prosperity Project.
The project identifies Pahlavi as the “Leader of the National Uprising”.
On Wednesday (local time), when asked about Pahlavi leading a post-regime Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump said: “Some people like him. We haven’t been thinking too much about that.”
“It would seem to me that somebody from within maybe would be more appropriate,” he added.
Trump said that “most of the people we had in mind [to lead] are dead.”
Reporting by Emily Donohoe.
A message from Audible
The Wikipedia co-founder’s take on earning trust (properly)
Trust sounds simple – until it’s not. In The Seven Rules of Trust, Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, breaks down what actually builds credibility in the real world: transparency, honesty, and doing what you say you’ll do.
This is the kind of listen that makes you rethink how you show up at work, in group chats, and everywhere in between. It’s easy to fit into your day, and hard to forget once you’ve heard it.
Give me some good news
The 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Paralympics officially begin tomorrow morning.
Australia will send a 14-person team to the 2026 Winter Paralympics in Milan and Cortina, marking one of the nation’s largest squads in the event’s history. The team includes 16-year-old Liana France, who is the youngest female Winter Paralympian the country has ever sent to the Games. At the other end of the spectrum is Australia’s most decorated Winter Paralympian, 52-year-old Michael Milton, who will return for the first time in two decades. The 11-time medallist is set to become Australia’s oldest Winter Paralympian ever.
Reporting by George Finlayson.
TDA titbit
A squirrel has been found responsible for an internet outage in the U.S. state of Ohio.
Medina County authorities initially believed the phone service and internet outage at some government buildings had been caused by tradies.
Officials later discovered a squirrel had made a nest inside cables linked to the buildings and bit through some of the wires.
It was clearly nuts about disrupting the county’s workflow!
TDA asks
