The Australian reports the latest Newspoll has One Nation widening a primary vote lead by holding steady on 30% while Labor falls two to 27%, and the Coalition and the Greens remain unchanged at 19% and 13% respectively. Anthony Albanese is down two on approval to 35% and up three on disapproval to 62%. The one indication Pauline Hanson has been harmed by recent bad press is her personal ratings, with approval down three to 44% and disapproval up three to 51%. Of Angus Taylor we are told only that his net rating has improved from minus 17 to minus 15 (UPDATE: Up two on approval to 35% and steady on disapproval at 50%), but he has almost closed the gap on head-to-head preferred prime minister, on which Albanese’s lead has narrowed from to 44-35 to 42-41. The three-way measure has Albanese down two to 44%, Hanson up one to 32% and Taylor up one to 24%. The poll was conducted Monday to Thursday from a sample of 1244.
-SMH
While there is a protection of lawful interests exception to making a covert recording, you just can’t assume that. And the lawful interest exception must be De Kauwe’s, not Maheswaran’s. On that basis, it seems that he could be in a spot of bother, though there are far bigger fish to fry than De Kauwe, who failed to even make a rudimentary check that Elliott was still living in the house he intended to surveil. “Keystone Cops”?
Following the Lachie Neale tribunal evidence, surely the suspension stands.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-22/lachie-neale-afl-tribunal-live-blog/107181572
Gasp!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/22/labor-mp-josh-wilson-covers-woodside-energy-logo-fremantle-jumper-afl-grand-final
The US polling needs to stay within the margin of Trumps overconfidence.
Fremantle would certainly love Lachie Neale to be suspended, but frankly they are guessing at the severity of the contact and whether it was a push or a shove, if the victim isn’t giving evidence then they are watching really poor footage and guessing.
I don’t think there is an outcome here that doesn’t make the AFL look like idiots and they’ve, again, done it all to themselves.
EDIT: And AFL is getting worse than soccer they throw themselves around and feign all sorts of fictions every minute of the match, makes some games unwatchable, the idea that a player would never throw themselves to the ground in the hope they might get a free kick from one of the 500 umpires running around is the stupidest thing I’ve heard in sometime, but that is exactly what the AFL argued.
Mavis, the SMH is doing an excellent job of reporting ICAC – vastly better than anything the national broadcaster can manage.
Barnaby Joyce has revealed that discussions have occurred between Pauline Hanson’s party and the Coalition on a supply and confidence agreement if One Nation wins government at the next election.
On Tuesday night, Mr Joyce told News24 Political Editor Andrew Clennell that One Nation would offer conditional supply and confidence to the Coalition. “Obviously on the premise of solid policy outcomes that we would want for that to happen,” Mr Joyce said. “We would want there to be clear acknowledgement that they are our policy outcomes and we’d have a regimen then of looking at legislation that came forward and we would expect the same deal if we had greater numbers than the Coalition.”
https://www.news24.com.au/politics/australian-politics/barnaby-joyce-reveals-talks-with-very-very-senior-liberals-about-supply-and-confidence-agreement-if-one-nation-wins-election/news-story/c3d471cf9c263223598083d756668ab4
– SMH
The prosecution in Jones’s trial is attempting to prove that he had a tendency to touch young men inappropriately. Tendency evidence is permitted if its probative value substantially outweighs its prejudicial effect. This must be approved by the court, the trial judge having allowed it in a pre-trial application in July. Thus a touch on the bum per se is not really a big deal, but when combined with the evidence of the other four complainants, it can be telling. The defence is attempting to show that the evidence does not reach the high bar of the criminal onus of proof.
Luigi Smith:
Tuesday, September 22, 2026 at 7:13 pm
Agree. I find Kate McClymont’s vignettes particularly good reading.
Then again, we have seen a well respected Iowa poll get it horribly wrong before – only 2 years ago. So maybe take the Marist poll with a large pinch of all the others.
They are selling themselves short. Deliberately? On current polling they might be seeking confidence and supply from the Coalition.
Katich ™ @ #811 Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026 – 7:35 pm
At the time Nate Silver said it was about time they got it wrong, that pretty much 1 in every 20 polls would be completely wrong, and it was getting likely they were due a miss
I wonder whether the gutless king hit from behind will be rewarded with a good behaviour badge? What a hero.
Joyce is counting his chickens… I trust he won’t get an egg on his face.
MI. She quit after that. Took her bat and ball and went home.
All glory then no guts.
She was targeted by the orange Turnip
Boerwar:
Tuesday, September 22, 2026 at 7:45 pm
I saw it tonight for the first time and thought it was gutless too. I hope he gets banned for at least 5 matches.
M
It was a round arm punch to the guts.
In the circumstances one match is enough punishment, IMO.
Did the Houthis bribe the enemy commanders to get their big initial breakthrough?
If they did, why not, I ask myself. All is fair in love and genocide.
I’m a bit confused about what’s going on in France.
Last I heard, Marine Le Pen was banned from contesting elections, but that seems to be somehow annulled and she’s in the contest, and furthermore winning in the polls.
What’s going on there?
To run pending the outcome of an appeal…
They have taken over an hour to deliberate the case… and counting. They must be talking themselves into a frazzle about how to cheat the system.
@Boerwar
I see. I bet Trump will do that in 2028.
I used to think he would not last this term but then I looked at how they packaged Mitch and now I believe anything is possible.
@Boerwar
Yep, and even if Trump is reduced to being a medicated zombie, his MAGA army will just use AI to campaign for him.
And they’ll probably fall for it again too.
K
Hip pocket nerves are jangling a bit, though. There is a whole lot of gobbling at the diesel pumps ATM.
Need a decision so we can then have an appeal.
@Boerwar
Eh, I’ve seen enough Cleetus Safari videos to guess that there’s a 75% probability of them just voting for Trump again, dead or alive, because they just hate the Democrats that much.
Especially if they run Kamala Harris again, which current polls indicate, although those ones are probably not worth paying attention to until at least mid-2027.
If Neales suspension doesn’t stand, the AFL Integrity Unit needs to look at the Tribunal. No one likes Ginniver but that doesn’t mean a coward punch to the stomach is okay.
That’s assault. It’s not sport.
Just catching up with this blatant interference in Australian domestic law by the USA, our great and powerful friend we have shared values with.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-22/trump-administration-slams-digital-duty-of-care-bill/107182970
Obviously the US IT giants have monetised their algorithms. Australia allowing people to opt out of them will damage their business model. Too bad.
There is a lot of guessing about the nature and the force of the impact which doesn’t make any sense at all in an objective sense. We know there are hard hits on and off the ball of varying degress of legality, we know there are dives on and off the ball for free kicks the video tells us next to nothing about which it was that occured.
Either decision is going to make the AFL look very stupid, and it seems mostly a test of the observer not the low fi footage.
My friends and family that are die hard dockers will expect at least 1 week, and the former Mrs Neale would probably get a laugh out of it too. But AFL is the loser which ever way they go.
If he does go, then they also set the standard every real punch and every dive following a fake punch off the ball that gets caught is some poor grainy footage where you can’t tell what happened must result in a suspension. Which wouldn’t be a bad outcome, but we might lose a few brownlow medal favourites if there is a locked in way to get them rubbed out.
Edit: if it was clear cut and easy they wouldn’t have taken and hour and a half unless the AFL has given them a good bottle of scotch and they are finishing that before delivering the verdict.
But it WAS Ginnivan!
BK
Some of my family members think Ginnivan should have been reported for throwing himself in the path of Neale’s fist and then taking a dive!
Apparently the tribunal can come back with a 2:1 decision, they can still make this worse!
The banality of Barnaby Joyce’s desire to get his grasp on the Deputy Prime Ministership together with its monetary rewards and exposure.
Has there ever been a politician with such outpouring of unbridled insincerity and clamouring to achieve so much for himself with such disregard for propriety?
(Joyce is up there with the best of the them, Abbott, Morrison and Dutton of the Liberal brigade)
You’d think US wavering voters might be considering voting for the Democratic nominee even if the Republicans pull through with their constitution-breaking mission to get Trump to run for a third term.
But when they hear this chilling noise, yeah, I think most of them will vote for Trump.
https://voca.ro/17zLjVcBXbi5
Sequester the panel overnight and resume deliberations in the morning
One Nation has opened up a lead over Labor among Millennials and Generation X as the Prime Minister continues to flail through a turbulent period for the government.
The latest News24.com.au Pulse / YouGov poll put Pauline Hanson’s One Nation on 27 per cent of the primary vote, leading all other political parties.
One Nation slid three points from its previous poll high of 30 per cent, while Labor flatlined on 26 per cent and the Coalition jumped three points to 21 per cent.
The Greens trailed on 14 per cent, while independents attracted six per cent and another five per cent supported other other parties.
Labor led the Coalition 52-48 (unchanged) on a two-party-preferred basis and increased its lead over One Nation by four points to 55-45.
https://www.news24.com.au/politics/australian-politics/one-nation-holds-the-lead-over-labor-as-hanson-captures-millennial-and-gen-x-voters/news-story/40e134f4ad5a17de499da9548ee56209
“The Brisbane Lions star was handed a one-match suspension by the for a gut punch on Hawthorn’s Jack Ginnivan off the ball during the preliminary final.”
Reminded of this Mark Humphries news parody from 2017.
https://youtu.be/70o6xDfGpe8?si=_gcSTvHW4HOfY52R
Should have had a punt on Freo before this.
The Lachie Neale ban stands 🙁
The AFL tribunal are as speedy as they are consistent.
No one brings the game into disrepute better than the AFL itself.
I hate (maybe I shouldn’t say that) Murdoch and his minions at Sky after dark with all the passion I can muster at the moment.
They are deliberately tear/ trying to
tear the fabric of Australian society for their selfish reasons.
Albanese sucking upto Lachlan is pathetic like his minions to important position of government.
No tribunal in my 60 plus years of following football has been consistent.
But when Greg Swann introduced this rule he said a player who punches another in the body will get a week.
He also said if it meant missing a grand final so be it.
Thats the consistency I have longed for.
Brisbane will very likely appeal and if they lose that I’d think they would go to court.
As if the Victorian courts don’t have enough to deal with!
A lawyers picnic.
I think it’s funny how people are so adamant that it was a punch not a push. The footage is as conclusive as some of the AFLs goal reviews. This is just Victorian imperialism, railroading the Queensland team.
My evening commute takes me past AFL House and I was a bit disappointed by the small size of the media scrum waiting outside this time, compared with such occasions in the past. Sometimes previously I’ve even seen supporter vigils.
If in doubt rub them out.