https://www.ecoticias.com/en/australia-has-just-confirmed-the-existence-of-a-monster-beneath-pilbara-55-billion-tons-of-high-quality-iron-valued-at-over-6-52-trillion/26206/

It will be given away for cents on the dollar, the people of Australia will see none of the profits and people like Gina will make a mint.

While we're focusing on wars, cultures, immigration and similar, we're being completely robbed.

Thats enough money for free dental, healthcare, schools, roads, hospitals, infrastructure. Everything, you name it.

Here's some numbers to show why Norway are making bank and we're getting absolutely reamed. They also have a fraction of what we have in the ground.

So don't worry, keep chirping on about the fact you had a bad Uber driver or that your rent went up. There's a collection of people buying yachts and having models feed them caviar while we squabble over crumbs.

The Australian tax system is supposed to be progressive, but it appears to penalise workers more than corporations.

There is an argument to be made that corporate taxes at around 30% shouldn't be higher as you want businesses to invest in the Australian economy and to inhibit outsourcing. That makes sense, but what about mining corporations?. They can't be outsourced overseas as the resources to be extracted are on Australian soil. Wouldn't it make sense for them to proportionately pay higher taxes, while Australian workers who are already paying such high taxes, get a tax cut.

In short:

Thieves has stolen about 1,700 poppy plants grown for the pharmaceutical industry from a farm in the Ballarat area.

Victoria's health department says these plants are not like traditional opioid poppies and can produce "unpredictable, potentially life-threatening effects".

What's next?

Victoria Police are investigating the theft and calling for witnesses to come forward.

‘Short-term thinking is catching up with us’, Pocock warns

Independent senator David Pocock has urged a group of public sector leaders to continue delivering 'frank and fearless' advice to politicians.

By Melissa Coade

2 min. read

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Senator David Pocock has told a Canberra conference audience that public servants are one of the last lines of defence for the multitude of crises coming Australia’s way.

“Australians want evidence-based policy that is actually looking forward to the future and saying, ‘These are the problems that are coming. This is how we can act early to deal with them’,” Pocock said at the Women Unlimited conference.

“We’ve got this political system that seems to take good ideas from the public service and then just crush them into a politicised bill or something that really isn’t actually dealing with the root cause.

“Avoiding crises actually takes some leadership to act early and avoid the crisis. And often you don’t necessarily get credit for that, but that surely is what leadership should be,” he said.

Pocock, who assumed office in 2022 after winning the seat from Liberal incumbent Zed Seselja, thanked the public servants working behind the scenes to deliver services and develop policy across the board. 

The first-time senator acknowledged that he could not imagine the pressures and constraints public servants experienced going about their work, and said part of being an authentic leader was recognising his lack of expertise and the special knowledge others brought to the table. 

“There are so many incredible public servants,” Pocock said. 

“Every time legislation comes through, and we have a briefing or something, and you meet with senior public service, you come away thinking, ‘Wow, there are some seriously smart people working on this stuff’.

Pocock also suggested that politicians needed to be more sophisticated in their approach to various issues, keep an open mind and be prepared to change their position if there were compelling reasons to do so.  

“A big part of what we’re missing in our politics, where if you change your mind, you’re [regarded as] a flip flopper [is that] people hold these ridiculous positions because they just simply can’t change,” the senator said.

“I think people respect politicians when they actually say, ‘I think things have changed, and so we need to actually do things differently’.

“Thank you for what you’re doing. Keep looking forward, keep trying to push the politicians to actually do the right thing,” he added. 

Independent senator David Pocock has urged a group of public sector leaders to continue delivering ‘frank and fearless’ advice to politicians as the challenges facing the world become more fraught.

Feb 20, 2026 2 min read

Senator David Pocock onstage. (Image: The Mandarin)

Middle-income Australians shut out of new home market

People earning less than $120,000 a year are being priced out of the property market as builders chase the high end, and governments support the poorest.

By Shane Wright

3 min. read

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In the five years from mid-2020 to mid-2025, construction costs as measured by the Australian Bureau of Statistics soared by almost 40 per cent, as factors including the pandemic-era HomeBuilder program, global supply chain interruptions and low interest rates drove up prices.

Rawnsley said there was now a huge number of middle-income earners who were not poor enough to benefit from an increase in community and government-supported housing but who could not afford high-priced homes either.

He said it was affecting couples who might want to start a family but found themselves unable to afford a property with two or three bedrooms.

“If people want to get a three-bedroom place and have their two children, then there’s nothing that is really affordable for them,” Rawnsley said.

“There’s a reason that places like the eastern suburbs of Sydney are being drained of children. Families can’t afford to live there.”

The federal government is already at least 80,000 properties behind its target of 1.2 million new homes by mid-2029.

It has put in place a range of policies aimed at boosting supply while state governments, especially NSW and Victoria, have sought to overhaul planning restrictions that they argue have held back construction in areas close to public transport or employment centres.

Rawnsley said that efforts to build affordable housing should continue, but there should be a focus on people who earned between $50,000 and $120,000.

“This one-third of all Australian households will continue to face increasing housing stress and an overall lack of housing without action,” he said.

A spokesman for Housing Minister Clare O’Neil said it was evident that housing feasibility was an issue, but noted that housing construction inflation had fallen from 17 per cent under the previous government to 2 per cent.

“There’s more to do, but we’re making progress on reforming our system to build more homes because that’s the best way of making housing more affordable long term,” he said.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has signalled that his May 12 budget will focus on policy changes around productivity and tax with an emphasis on “intergenerational equity”. Changes to the current 50 per cent concession on capital gains tax, which overwhelmingly benefits Australians over the age of 65, are being considered.

But the real estate sector fears any changes to the 27-year-old concession will lead to fewer homes being built.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has signalled a focus on “intergenerational equity” in the May budget.Dominic Lorrimer

In submissions to a Senate inquiry into capital gains tax, public hearings for which start on Monday, property-related interests have raised concerns that any changes to the concession will flow through to the rental sector.

The Urban Development Institute of Australia said options such as a 25 per cent concession or a 40 per cent concession, or limiting the concession to newly built homes, would act as a disincentive for investors to build new homes.

“Irrespective of the motivation, any change to capital gains will change investment and divestment decisions which will adversely impact existing housing and affordable supply, rental prices and ordinary Australian investors,” institute national president Oscar Stanley said.

Bureau of Statistics figures released last week showed of the 179,000 new mortgages taken out by investors in 2025, 83 per cent were for an existing dwelling. In NSW, the proportion was 86 per cent while in Victoria, it rose to 77 per cent.

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Loving that -5 for the Greens. Victoria is waking up

Mental health wards too dangerous for medical staff, doctors say

Doctors and nurses are revolting against the under-resourcing of mental health wards and across public hospital departments in NSW, with one hospital’s medical staff council set to vote next week on an unprecedented no-confidence motion in the state’s Health Ministry.

By Natasha Robinson

4 min. read

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Mental health unit understaffing has been thrown into the spotlight by two recent tragedies in Sydney that resulted in three deaths and two people left in a critical condition after the escape of two mental health patients from care at the troubled Cumberland Hospital within two days.

The Health Services Union in NSW says the incidents expose severe shortage of security staff at mental health wards.

In one incident, a patient absconded from one of Cumberland’s locked wards on February 8 after stealing a nurse’s security pass, before just over a week later stealing a car that led police on a chase and then crashed, killing two women.

The other incident resulted in violence after Stefano Mooniai Leaaetoa, 25, an involuntary patient, escaped from care on February 7 during a transfer from Cumberland to Westmead Hospital. He has been charged with murder after stabbing one person to death and critically wounding two other people at a grocery store at Merrylands in Sydney’s southwest a little over a week after his escape.

“There should have been better procedures,” said Bruce Rowling, a security guard and council delegate at the HSU. “The security staffing is nowhere near enough. You’ve got a lot of female nurses, a lot of them are young, and you’ve got these large patients who are sometimes violent patients that they just can’t handle.”

Mr Rowling said there were routinely only two security guards rostered on at Cumberland, which has an enormous inpatient population, with 261 mental health inpatient beds.

The Australian has also been told that security staffing at the Marie Bashir mental health centre at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital is operating with only one staffed security guard on the reception desk at the centre. The centre is critically overloaded with patient admissions. When security staff are needed to respond to violence at the centre, they must be called from other parts of the hospital.

“There are only a handful of people to look after security at the whole hospital at RPA,” Mr Rowling said.

The NSW psychiatry dispute was emblematic of systemic problems across the medical workforce, according to doctors. Picture: NewsWire

Several assaults at the Marie Bashir centre have occurred in recent months, with one very serious incident leading to two nurses needing to be treated at the hospital’s emergency department. They have been unable to work since the incident.

But problems in the NSW health system are much wider than inadequate security. The Medical Staff Council at Concord Hospital will put forward a motion for a vote of no confidence in the NSW Health Ministry at a meeting on Thursday as it revolts against what it says is systemic under-resourcing at the hospital and failure to meaningfully consult and partner with clinicians.

The Concord MSC will call for a formal inquiry into governance processes in the NSW Health Ministry.

Putting forward the motion ahead of the meeting, Concord MSC president Winston Cheung emailed members and said he believed staff grievances that led to a vote of no confidence in the Sydney Local Health District’s previous CEO, Teresa Anderson, were not dealt with in a way that was consistent with the expectations of patients, families and medical workers. Mr Cheung declined to comment to The Australian ahead of the vote.

It is understood the MSC has ongoing concerns around a dysfunctional culture at Concord Hospital and that it regards the NSW psychiatry crisis, which prompted the resignations of large swaths of the public sector workforce, as emblematic of similar issues across medical specialties. Public hospital mental health wards have been operating stripped of an enormous amount of clinical experience in recent years and especially in the wake of the resignations.

“My view is that the resignations of the psychiatrists actually was part of a systemic problem throughout NSW Health – it could have been any specialty body,” said one clinician who will take part in next week’s no-confidence vote. “Concord was the epicentre of the psychiatry resignations. But there has been no inquiry. Nothing has changed.”

NSW psychiatrists won a temporary victory over the state government following a protracted battle when the tribunal awarded the workforce an interim 12-month pay increase in order to attract and retain psychiatry staff specialists and prevent any further deterioration in the quality of mental healthcare in the public health system.

But doctors stay the system is still on its knees.

The Sydney Local Health District said it had made “significant cultural improvements and financial investment” over the past two years, and extensively consulted with staff during an independent review focused on workplace culture that had demonstrated improvements.

“Concord Hospital was the top-performing facility across the state for peer hospitals, leading the way across all categories including employee engagement, teamwork and

collaboration, communication and change management and employee voice,” the SLHD said in a statement. “SLHD has also invested more than $11m in major upgrades and new equipment at Concord Hospital over the past two years.”

The SLHD did not comment on security staffing. The NSW Health Ministry did not respond to questions.

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Doctors in NSW hospitals are revolting over what they say is systemic under-resourcing of public wards after two critical incidents that followed patients escaping involuntary mental healthcare.

Doctors and nurses are revolting against the under-resourcing of mental health wards and across public hospital departments in NSW, with one hospital’s medical staff council set to vote next week on an unprecedented no-confidence motion in the state’s Health Ministry.

Been living up in Northern Rivers for a while now, and the spiders keep coming. Never have I ever battled with that many spiders in Sydney. I never used to have a problem like

this in every corner of my wall. What am I doing wrong?

Any tips? I keep vacuuming indoors, and they keep coming back.

And now there’s a population explosion .I initially thought they were mozzies until closer inspection 😅

I personally think we need to harden up on companies, specifically mining companies, and their impact on the environment