What we learned, Thursday 5 February
We’ll wrap things up here. Thanks for reading, and have a great night. Until tomorrow, here are the day’s top stories:
West Australian police charged a 31-year-old man with a terrorism offence over the alleged attempted bombing of an Invasion Day protest in Perth, claiming the actions were motivated by “hate and racism”.
In South Australia, police declared the disappearance of Gus Lamont a major crime and said a suspect had been identified.
The foreign minister, Penny Wong, said she understood the “depth of feeling in the community” about Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, but defended his trip.
The New South Wales state coroner, Teresa O’Sullivan, handed down her findings from an inquest into the 2024 Bondi Westfield shopping centre stabbing in a 837-page report. The coroner found it was a “major failing” for Joel Cauchi’s former psychiatrist not to recognise he had relapsed in the lead-up to the attack.
The Greens senator Nick McKim criticised Pauline Hanson for receiving free flights on Gina Rinehart’s private jet, after Guardian Australia revealed that Hanson flew on Rinehart’s jet on a flight from Melbourne to Sydney in October last year, but had not declared the gift.
Sticking with Hanson, she said having One Nation join the Liberals and Nationals in a Coalition would be “the only way to move forward” to form a future government, after weeks of infighting between the two larger conservative parties.
In more federal politics news, the Liberals teamed up with Labor against the Greens and Nationals to block a Senate inquiry into gambling ads.
Updated
Childcare centre forced to shut after breaking ban on personal device use
A Sydney childcare centre has been forced to close immediately and two others will shut down in a month after posing an “unacceptable risk” to children, the regulator has said.
One centre, Fairytales Preschool and Long Day Care Centre, was suspended this week after investigators found it had not complied with the state’s ban on educators using personal devices for images or videos of children in their care.
Fairytales also used CCTV to conduct sleep and rest checks on children and failed to follow policies or make mandatory reports, the New South Wales Early Learning Commission said in a statement. The centre did not respond to request for comment.
Another centre, run by Lycee Condorcet Sydney on the grounds of its International French School in Maroubra, will be forced to close on 6 March. It had been issued seven compliance actions and breached national law 42 times since 2024 and was found to have never met national childcare standards.
Great Western Family Day Care, where small groups of children are supervised by individual educators in their own homes, was found to have “poor overall management and governance” by the ELC. It had breached national law 411 times across all its educators since 2018 and faced 11 compliance actions and will also shut on 6 March.
The ELC said it had contacted families explaining the closures. Its relieving commissioner, Kristian Holz, said:
These are services that have consistently failed to meet National Quality Standards and have repeatedly breached the National Law – I make no apologies for taking this strong action.
Updated
