What we learned today, Friday 25 April
That’s all for the Anzac Day 2025 live blog. Here is a wrap of the day’s main news:
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, attended the service at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, and said it was important to take time out of the flurry of campaigning to honour Australia’s defence forces. And in opposition leader Peter Dutton’s Anzac message, he said it is “out duty to deter tyranny and prevent catastrophic war”.
The governor general, Sam Mostyn, addressed crowds at the dawn service in Gallipoli, paying tribute to the young men who “encountered the fury and the maelstrom of bullets and shrapnel,” and those who fell, and wouldn’t return home.
A small group of people booed and yelled during the Welcome to Country delivered by Bunurong elder Uncle Mark Brown at Melbourne’s 5:30am servce. The booing was allegedly led by a “known neo-Nazi”, the veterans’ affairs minister, Matt Keogh, said. Others in the crowd shouted “Always was, always will be” and clapped and cheered over the top of the hecklers. Dutton called the booing a disgrace and said the Indigenous acknowledgment “should be respected”.
In Perth, a heckler disrupted a welcome to country at the Kings Park dawn service, shouting obscenities. The Western Australian premier, Roger Cook, condemned the behaviour as “disgusting”.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said hecklers at the Melbourne and Perth services “must face the full force of the law”.
Barnaby Joyce said there will be “no cuts” to the department of veterans’ affairs under the Coalition’s commitment to cut 41,000 public servants from Canberra over the next five years.
And Dutton made a pitstop in the Townsville RSL to drop in on punters playing two-up and drinking a few beers. After a series of tosses, Dutton and his security staff began trying to leave the area but the raucous crowd yelled “shoey”, urging him to drink his XXXX beer from his shoe.
Thanks for joining us. Have a safe night, and see you back on the live blog tomorrow.
Updated
Historians dispute Bayeux tapestry penis tally after lengthy debate
In a historical spat that could be subtitled “1066 with knobs on”, two medieval experts are engaged in a battle over how many male genitalia are embroidered into the Bayeux tapestry.
The Oxford professor George Garnett drew worldwide interest six years ago when he announced he had totted up 93 penises stitched into the embroidered account of the Norman conquest of England.
According to Garnett, 88 of the male appendages are attached to horses and the remainder to human figures.
Now, the historian and Bayeux tapestry scholar Dr Christopher Monk – known as the Medieval Monk – believes he has found a 94th.
A running man, depicted in the tapestry border, has something dangling beneath his tunic. Garnett says it is the scabbard of a sword or dagger. Monk insists it is a male member.
“I am in no doubt that the appendage is a depiction of male genitalia – the missed penis, shall we say. The detail is surprisingly anatomically fulsome,” Monk said.
Updated
