Protesters who marched along Oxford Street in Sydney’s first Mardi Gras parade in 1978 urged hundreds of spectators to join them with the rallying cry: “Out of the bars and onto the streets.”
The route of those marchers, known as the 78ers, who sparked the long-running Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, is going from the streets into the history books in recognition of the parade’s immense historical and cultural significance to Australia.
Today, the federal government will announce it has added the two-kilometre Mardi Gras route through inner Sydney to the National Heritage Register, alongside the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, days before more than 10,000 people march in the 48th annual parade on Saturday.
The listing traces the approximate path of that first march, which was marred by police violence and arrests, as well as the contemporary Mardi Gras parade route from Hyde Park to Moore Park.
Read the full story by Sydney editor Megan Gorrey.
Minister for Trade Don Farrell is in the United States this week and says he plans to negotiate with his counterpart to have American tariffs on Australian goods removed.
“It does seem pretty clear now that the tariff on Australian goods has remained at 10 per cent,” Farrell told Nine’s Today.
“Now that’s not to say that’s where it’s going to stay, but my objective while I’m over here, and in the weeks ahead, I’ve got a number of meetings lined up with my counterpart to prosecute the argument for the removal of all of the tariffs on Australian goods. It doesn’t make any sense and simply pushes up prices in the United States. So we want the removal of all of those tariffs, and that’s the argument I’m going to be prosecuting with my counterpart.”
Just this week, Trump’s new global tariff on imports to America has gone into effect at 10 per cent.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said the government will continue to make its case against tariffs on Australian goods and labelled them as “unfair”.
The bomb threat that forced the evacuation of Anthony Albanese from The Lodge is the latest sign of a political climate growing steadily harsher, where threats are becoming more frequent, more visible and harder to dismiss as isolated incidents.
The prime minister was on Tuesday night whisked awayfrom his official residence on Canberra’s Adelaide Avenue, which was later declared safe after a three-hour search by the Australian Federal Police found nothing suspicious. But the episode has sharpened concern about the broader rise in politically motivated hostility across the country.
According to The Epoch Times, an international news outlet with strong links to the Falun Gong religious movement, the threat appeared in an email sent in Mandarin to performers of a classical Chinese dance and music group banned by Beijing and currently touring Australia.
It warned that “large quantities of nitroglycerine” had been planted around Albanese’s official residence, vowing that “blood will flow” and the building would be “blown into ruins” unless scheduled performances by Shen Yun Performing Arts were scrapped.
While the threats appear designed to sabotage the troupe, police have not yet publicly identified the source of the email.
The AFP investigated 950 politically motivated threats in the 2024-25 financial year – a 63 per cent increase on the combined total of the previous four years – reinforcing intelligence warnings that the risk of political violence is likely to remain elevated.
Good morning and welcome to our national news live blog for Thursday, February 26. My name is Emily Kaine, and I’ll be helming our coverage today. Here’s what is making news.
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The security threat that led to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese being evacuated from his official residence in Canberra on Tuesday night has been linked to Chinese dance group Shen Yun. According to The Epoch Times, an international news outlet with strong links to the Falun Gong religious movement, the threat appeared in an email sent in Mandarin to performers of a classical Chinese dance and music group banned by Beijing and currently touring Australia.
- Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke faces increasing pressure to ban a controversial Israeli journalist from entering Australia over inflammatory remarks, including his assertion that 100,000 Palestinians should have been killed at the start of the war in Gaza. Zvi Yehezkeli is scheduled to visit Melbourne and Sydney for speaking events in March, but Burke is considering denying him a visa to travel to the country.
- Families of Australian diplomats have been directed by the federal government to leave Israel and Lebanon amid heightening tensions in the Middle East. The updated advice for both countries on Smartraveller notes the direction has been made “in response to the deteriorating security situation in the Middle East”.
- In world news, US President Donald Trump delivered the longest State of the Union address in history yesterday, speaking for 108 minutes. Read our analysis of the speech that fact-checks the claims he made during the speech here.
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And Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been ordered to stop riding horses, it has been reported. Royal aides warned the former Duke of York not to be seen on horseback, fearing it would be a “bad look” for him to be enjoying himself while under police investigation, according to The Sun newspaper.
Follow along as we bring you rolling news updates throughout the day.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
