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The NSW government has signalled that it will appeal against a landmark decision on the lawfulness of police strip searches at music festivals.

Raya Meredith became the lead plaintiff in 2022 in a 3000-member class action in the NSW Supreme Court after she was subjected to an invasive strip-search at the Splendour in the Grass music festival in 2018. No drugs were found on the then 27-year-old.

In a surprise development this year, the state of NSW radically changed course and admitted the strip-search of Meredith was unlawful, while denying broader allegations of unlawful conduct.

In a landmark decision last month that paved the way for the state to pay millions of dollars for unlawful strip-searches, Justice Dina Yehia awarded Meredith $93,000 in damages plus interest.

This included $43,000 in compensatory damages for assault, battery and false imprisonment, and $50,000 in aggravated damages.

Yehia said Meredith was also entitled to exemplary damages, a form of punitive damages, but this figure has not yet been quantified.

But the state of NSW has now indicated it intends to appeal against the decision.

The class action was led by Redfern Legal Centre and Slater and Gordon Lawyers.

Slater and Gordon senior associate in class actions, William Zerno, said an appeal “will only delay justice being served for thousands of festival goers” and would “ultimately cost the State more if it does not resolve its liability now”.

“There were thousands of others who were searched in similar circumstances to Raya,” he said.

“It is a matter for the State to explain why it is arguing that searches undertaken on the same basis as Raya’s were lawful when it admitted the unlawfulness of Raya’s search.”

The police minister has been contacted for comment.

Independent senator Lidia Thorpe has called for an inquiry into an attack on an Indigenous camp orchestrated by neo-Nazis.

Speaking to ABC’s News Breakfast this morning, Thorpe said, “It’s caused fear in our community. I know that children didn’t want to go to school after that attack because of … the ripple effect, that that has through families and communities. We know that racism is real in this country, and the racist neo-Nazi attack was a good example of how bad it can be against our people.

“Those actions were premeditated. That was a sophisticated, organised attack on a sacred site, a site of peace and a site where we gather to bring people together to have a yarn … it’s a known sacred site that that was desecrated.”

The senator is demanding the government back federal police to investigate the August 31 attack – when dozens of neo-Nazis charged Camp Sovereignty, a sacred Aboriginal burial site in Kings Domain and the location of a permanent vigil since January 2024 – as a hate crime.

“It needs to be called for what it is, and that is a hate crime. These perpetrators, these neo-Nazis, are given lenient charges that will mean not much at all. We need to send a clear message to the rest of this country that this is a hate crime and neo-Nazi attacks are not tolerated. The prime minister needs to come out also and back the federal police to investigate this as a hate crime, to charge these neo-Nazis for hate crimes.” Thorpe said.

Thorpe’s call for an inquiry follows the news earlier this week that calls to 13YARN, the 24/7 crisis support and suicide prevention service, had risen to an average of 91 every day this year. Daily calls averaged 65 last year.

Lifeline said the surge in calls coincided with the attack on the camp and the March for Australia rallies held in major cities around the country in recent months.

Sudanese paramilitary forces killed hundreds of people at a hospital, including patients, after they seized the provincial capital of North Darfur in Sudan last weekend, according to the United Nations, displaced residents and aid workers, who described harrowing details of atrocities.

Some 460 people were reportedly killed on Tuesday at the Saudi Hospital by fighters from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the city of el-Fasher, World Health Organisation director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

The Sudan Doctors Network, a medical group tracking the war, said RSF fighters “cold-bloodedly killed everyone they found inside [the hospital], including patients, their companions, and anyone else present in the wards,” describing it as a “human slaughterhouse”.

As part of their assault on the city, the RSF also went from house to house, beating and shooting at people, including women and children, witnesses told the Associated Press.

Many died of gunshot wounds in the streets, some while trying to flee to safety, witnesses said.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the WHO was “appalled and deeply shocked” by the latest developments and said “all attacks on health care must stop immediately and unconditionally”.

World leaders called for renewed talks to halt the war in Sudan. UN Secretary-General António Guterres is “deeply alarmed” by the continued flow of weapons and fighters into Sudan, his spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said, and while the United Arab Emirates, accused of backing the RSF – an allegation it denies – is facing renewed calls to disengage as fighting intensifies.

Both the RSF and the Sudanese military have been accused of war crimes and have faced sanctions imposed by the United States and other Western powers.

The US in January said the RSF have committed genocide during the country’s ongoing civil war, which the UN has described as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”.

AP, Bloomberg

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has reiterated that her party does not support the government’s environmental law reforms, to be introduced today, as she argues that the legislation is too soft on business and doesn’t do enough to protect the environment.

“We think this has been written to satisfy the big businesses and the mining lobby. They’ve got their fingerprints all over it, and we want to be able to go through this carefully and thoroughly, and there’s seven separate bills that create this package, hundreds and hundreds of pages that are being tabled in the parliament today,” Hanson-Young told Sky News this morning.

“There’s lots of cutting down the process so that projects can be fast tracked, including new coal and gas, but there’s very little guarantees that the environment, in fact, will be protected when it’s meant to be an environment protection package,” Hanson-Young said.

“There’s no protection for our native forests, there’s no protection for the climate. This bill looks pretty shoddy at the moment. We will seek, this morning, to send this package to a Senate inquiry so that we can go through it thoroughly and properly and so that the community can have a say.”

The bill is expected to pass the House of Representatives next week, where the government has a majority, but will need the support of either the Coalition or the Greens in the Senate. The government intends to have the legislation passed by the end of the year.

Websites and services are recovering after infrastructure provider Microsoft Azure suffered a five-hour outage affecting thousands of businesses globally, as well as Microsoft Office and Xbox Live.

Microsoft blamed an inadvertent configuration change to its Azure Front Door service, which it rolled back to restore access. Australians escaped the worst of the outage, which is now resolved.

The disruption follows last week’s massive Amazon Web Services outage that knocked offline Snapchat, Reddit and numerous other platforms. That incident, caused by DNS failures in AWS’s Virginia data centre, affected millions of users for several hours and raised questions about the internet’s vulnerability to cloud infrastructure breakdowns.

Opposition finance spokesman James Paterson has slammed the government for new inflation data released yesterday that showed inflation jumping to its highest level in more than a year.

Paterson warned Australia could be at risk of experiencing ‘stagflation’ – a phenomenon characterised by persistent high inflation, high unemployment and a stagnant economy – if upward trends in inflation and unemployment continue.

“If these trends continue, then the annual rate of inflation will be closer to 4 per cent than 3 per cent and we’ll have a really disastrous situation on our books. Because… we also have increasing unemployment in this country. Unemployment is ticking up and inflation is ticking up now. The last time that happened in a sustained way was in the 1970s, it created a phenomenon called stagflation, and that was utter economic misery for Australians. Now we’re not there yet, and I hope we don’t get there, but I’m not convinced this government has a plan to turn that around,” Paterson told Sky News this morning.

Paterson also hit out at Labor’s spending, blaming it for the jump in inflation.

“Last week, the Reserve Bank Governor Michelle Bullock in a speech, called out Labor’s reckless spending. And lo and behold, a week later, we have a shocking inflation number. If you’re an average mortgage holder already on this government’s watch, you’re paying about $20,000 more a year on an average mortgage than you were than when they came to office.

“And underlining that headline number of a 3.2 per cent increase are some truly shocking statistics, like a 23.6 per cent increase in electricity prices over the last year. Australians are really hurting, and this government has contributed to that with out of control spending.”

The environment minister has met with Coalition, Greens and other stakeholders almost 100 times while attempting to secure the passage of a reform bill in an area that has plagued both sides of government for the past five years.

“I’d love to be a magician, but I’m not quite that,” Murray Watt told ABC Radio National this morning. “We will be introducing the bill to the House of Reps today. And as you would be aware, I’ve undertaken several meetings with each of the Coalition and the Greens. I think I’m approaching 100 meetings with them, stakeholders and others.

“It’s been widely consulted. And look, I think at this stage of the debate, it wouldn’t surprise anyone to hear both the Coalition and the Greens trying to extract concessions. What I’m hearing from the Coalition is that this is too good for the environment. I’m hearing from the Greens, it’s too good for business. It sounds to me like we’ve got the balance right.”

Watt said negotiations with the opposition and crossbench would need to retain the “principles” of the legislation, and ensure delivery of a “bill that genuinely does deliver real improvements for the environment and also for business”.

The government intends to see the legislation passed by year’s end.

“Every day we wait, we see the environment go backwards, and we see houses, renewables and other projects getting held up in delays,” Watt said. “So I think there’s a strong national interest in getting these reforms passed as quickly as possible, and I’ll be doing everything I can to make that happen this year.”

A young Melbourne cricketer who was critically injured in a pre-game accident has died.

Ben Austin, 17, suffered catastrophic injuries when struck by a ball in the neck while warming up in the training nets before a Twenty20 match on Tuesday.

Specialist paramedics treated him at the scene before he was transported by road ambulance to Monash Medical Centre in Clayton in a critical condition, where he was put on life support.

“The Ferntree Gully Cricket Club wishes to advise of the tragic passing of our player, Ben Austin. We are absolutely devastated by the passing of Ben, and the impacts of his death will be felt by all in our cricket community,” the club said in a statement on social media.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with his family – Jace, Tracey, Cooper & Zach, his extended family, his friends and to all of those who knew Ben and the joy that he brought.

“May Ben Rest in Peace.”