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Randa Abdel-Fattah to appear at Sydney writers’ festival
Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah will appear in two sessions at this year’s Sydney writers’ festival, part of a program of about 200 events.
Brooke Webb, the chief executive officer of the festival, and Ann Mossop, its artistic director, said in a joint statement Abdel-Fattah is a “significant Sydney writer with a new book that speaks to the here and now”.
Sydney is a highly diverse city, and the Festival aims to reflect the many and varied communities of writers and readers in its program. That commitment to breadth and representation sits alongside national and international voices across fiction and non-fiction.
A festival like ours, which holds freedom of expression as a core value, is not in the business of cancelling or censoring writers. We think a writers festival provides a rare and welcome opportunity for readers and writers to come together for nuanced conversations about complex and sometimes difficult topics.
Readers can make up their own minds about what they would like to attend. Without writers, there is no festival.
Webb and Mossop added that they respected some may hold different views, saying the festival is “always” in conversation with major stakeholders, including government.
The 2026 event will release its full program on 10 March.
Abdel-Fattah was disinvited from Adelaide writers’ week earlier this year, prompting resignations and the event’s cancellation. A replacement board apologised to Abdel-Fattah and invited her to participate in the 2027 writers’ week.
Key events
Benita Kolovos
Byelection date set for Sam Groth’s seat in Victoria
A date has been set for the byelection sparked by the resignation of the former deputy Victorian Liberal leader Sam Groth.
The speaker, Maree Edwards, has confirmed writs have been issued for a 2 May byelection in the Mornington Peninsula seat of Nepean. Writs will be issued on 13 March, the electoral roll will close on 20 March and the final day for candidates to nominate is 10 April, Edwards said in a statement last night.
Groth, a former professional tennis player, had planned to quit politics at the November election amid party infighting, but brought his resignation forward to last week, triggering the byelection.
Nepean is considered a safe Liberal seat with a 6.4% margin, but challengers are circling: One Nation has confirmed it will field a candidate, and the Independents for Mornington Peninsula group is searching for a contender.
The Liberal’s state executive (formerly known as the administrative committee) will bypass a vote of the local branch to choose its candidate, citing a lack of time.
As we revealed on Monday, most of the executive is set to back the Mornington Peninsula mayor, Anthony Marsh, as Groth’s successor in a vote planned for 24 February, much to the anger of local branch members.
We’ve already heard from members of the branch this morning who want the executive to reconsider a local vote given a May byelection.
You can read more here:
Pauline Hanson says people ‘warming to our policies’ amid frustrations with two major parties
The One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, was just interviewed on the ABC after a surge in popularity in recent polls.
Hanson said she believes the newfound support comes as people “don’t feel major political parties are really listening to them, so they’re looking for change”:
I think people are looking at our policies, what we want to do for the country and for people … People are warming to our policies and I am pleased to see that they want to vote for One Nation now because they don’t trust the two major political parties.
She said Barnaby Joyce, who recently defected to One Nation from the Nationals, has “enhanced” the party.
You don’t have a former deputy prime minister to come across to a party, with his credentials, and it doesn’t enhance the party.
People are drawn to Barnaby. He is just an average bloke out there fighting for the Australian people and he is so pleased to be on board with One Nation now.
Shadow defence minister questions allowing Australians in Syria to return
James Paterson, the shadow defence minister, said the government has a duty to protect Australians at home amid discussion about 34 women and children stuck in Syria who are the wives and children of dead of jailed Islamic State fighters.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said yesterday the country would not facilitate or assist in repatriating the group, who were held for years without charge and were recently forced to return to a detention camp after being released by Kurdish forces.
Paterson told RN he had sympathy for children who were taken against their will. But he said Australia had to take the case of adults who may have joined Islamic State willingly “very seriously … even if they now regret their decision”:
The truth is, allowing people to return to Australia who left our country to join a reprehensible, violent terrorist organisation like Isis does pose a risk to Australians.
As the Guardian has reported, humanitarian groups and security analysts have argued against leaving IS-affiliated women and children in the Syrian camps.
Randa Abdel-Fattah to appear at Sydney writers’ festival
Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah will appear in two sessions at this year’s Sydney writers’ festival, part of a program of about 200 events.
Brooke Webb, the chief executive officer of the festival, and Ann Mossop, its artistic director, said in a joint statement Abdel-Fattah is a “significant Sydney writer with a new book that speaks to the here and now”.
Sydney is a highly diverse city, and the Festival aims to reflect the many and varied communities of writers and readers in its program. That commitment to breadth and representation sits alongside national and international voices across fiction and non-fiction.
A festival like ours, which holds freedom of expression as a core value, is not in the business of cancelling or censoring writers. We think a writers festival provides a rare and welcome opportunity for readers and writers to come together for nuanced conversations about complex and sometimes difficult topics.
Readers can make up their own minds about what they would like to attend. Without writers, there is no festival.
Webb and Mossop added that they respected some may hold different views, saying the festival is “always” in conversation with major stakeholders, including government.
The 2026 event will release its full program on 10 March.
Abdel-Fattah was disinvited from Adelaide writers’ week earlier this year, prompting resignations and the event’s cancellation. A replacement board apologised to Abdel-Fattah and invited her to participate in the 2027 writers’ week.
Man charged with murder after three stabbed in Sydney’s west, one fatally
A man has been charged with murder after a person died and two others were critically injured in Sydney’s west on Tuesday.
NSW police said emergency services were called to the suburb of Merrylands around 10am yesterday, where they were told a man had allegedly stabbed multiple people before leaving the area on foot. Upon arrival, paramedics treated a man, 38, who died at the scene.
Two others, a 47-year-old woman and a 21-year-old man, were taken to hospital, where they remain in critical condition.
Police later arrested a man, 25, and allegedly recovered a knife nearby. The man was taken to Granville police station and charged with murder and two counts of causing grievous bodily harm, with the intent to murder.
He was refused bail and will appear before court later today.
Could Tony Abbott be about to return to federal politics?
As the Liberals turns rightward under Angus Taylor’s leadership, the party is gripped by speculation that Tony Abbott is positioning himself to become its new federal president. Some even hope he could contest the Farrer byelection and return to parliament.
Either way, the former PM is “itching” to return to the fray, writes Dan Jervis-Bardy, and it seems his influence will only grow after the coup by his protege Taylor.
Read Dan’s analysis here about a possible comeback by one of the most polarising figures in Australian politics:
Good morning
Nick Visser here to take over the blog. Let’s dive in and see what Wednesday holds.
Indonesian men convicted of illegally fishing in Australian waters acted out of ‘desperation’, lawyer says
An Indonesian boat crew caught illegally fishing in Australian waters have been handed suspended jail sentences after a trial in which lawyer argued they acted out of desperation to support their families, Australian Associated Press reports.
Six crew members arrested by border force officers in mangroves on the Australian mainland on 29 January pleaded guilty to illegal fishing when they appeared in the Darwin local court on Tuesday.
Indonesians Kasman, Syamsudin, Ramli, Adisianadna, Anton and Hasba, the oldest aged 60, were all charged with using a foreign boat to fish in the territorial seas of Australia.
Kasman, the master of the unseaworthy boat, which has been destroyed, was charged with an extra count of being in charge of a boat equipped for fishing within the Australian fishing zone.
The men’s lawyer, Lyma Nguyen, told judge David Woodroffe her clients were from poor island villages, many of their families deep in debt just to survive and their fishing venture was “born out of desperation”.
They also faced the prospect of having to reimburse the boat’s owner for the equivalent of $20,000 for the loss of the vessel, she said.
Wage growth expected to remain on hold
Wage growth is expected to remain on hold, despite large pockets of the workforce receiving a pay bump, Australian Associated Press reports.
Data for the December quarter will be released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, with annual growth set to be steady at 3.4%.
Annual growth has been at 3.4% since the March quarter, despite a rise in quarterly figures.
Should the forecasts hold true, wages would be trending below inflation, which ticked up to 3.8% in the year to December.
The December quarter will take in a pay rise for aged care workers across Australia, which came into effect from October.
The increase in salary was the final stage of wage rises for the sector following a case lodged by the Health Services Union to the Fair Work Commission at the end of 2022.
Last quarter of 2025 saw record-breaking renewable energy added to grid
Petra Stock
Record-breaking amounts of new wind, solar and storage were added to Australia’s electricity grid in the final quarter of 2025, enough new renewables to power Brisbane 1.5 times over.
After a slower start, the year culminated in a rush, with nine wind and solar farms – 2.1GW in all – brought online in the final three months. The result outperformed all previous quarters, breaking the previous record of 1.3GW added in the third quarter of 2021, according to the Clean Energy Council’s latest quarterly investment report.
Four new utility-scale batteries were deployed in Q4 – totalling 1GW/2.3GWh – tripling the record set in the previous quarter (Q3 2025). The largest was Victoria’s Melbourne renewable energy hub with a size of 600MW/ 1,600MWh.
The CEC chief executive, Jackie Trad, described the result as an “Aussie first” that coincided with renewable energy supplying more than half of grid electricity for the first time.
The final quarter of last year saw many new renewables records broken. Sixty-three per cent of total renewable generation capacity that was switched on in 2025 was delivered in Q4.
The seasonal rush to close out on projects before years’ end, together with more political stability in the second half of 2025, ended the year on a stronger note than where it started. However, there is still much work to be done to accelerate future investment in large-scale generation.
Overall the year ended on a high, with 3.3GW of renewable energy brought online. That made 2025 the second largest year for new projects commissioned after 2021. More battery storage was added in 2025, than the previous eight years combined.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories before Nick Visser steps up.
Record-breaking amounts of new wind, solar and storage were added to Australia’s electricity grid in the final quarter of 2025, enough new renewables to power Brisbane 1.5 times over. We’ll have more details in a moment.
Wage growth is expected to remain on hold at about 3.4% when the ABS releases figures for the December quarter later this morning. That means wage growth is running behind inflation – or to put it another way, real wages are falling. More to come.
