Aviation fanatics have seized their chance to be a part of history as the first flight from Australia’s youngest airport takes off.

Western Sydney International Airport, also known as Nancy-Bird Walton Airport, opened for its first commercial flights on Sunday after around eight years of construction and eight decades of planning.

The airport’s inaugural flight, a Jetstar service to the Gold Coast on Sunday morning, sold out in 45 minutes.

Self-described “aviation geek” Jack Coffey was one of the 188 people who secured a seat. 

He left from his home in Newcastle at about 5am to fly to the Gold Coast before returning on the same day.

“I’m so excited. I cannot contain myself,” he told AAP before the plane took off.

“It’s a big part of aviation history today in Australia. I had to be here for the major milestone.”

Hundreds of punters also turned out to watch through the airport windows as the inaugural flight left the tarmac.

The aviation hub, located about 50km from the city centre, is the first major greenfield airport to open in Australia since Melbourne’s Tullamarine was unveiled in 1970.

It will operate without a curfew, unlike Sydney Airport, in the city’s south, which is closed to commercial flights between 11pm and 6am.

Western Sydney resident James Irwin was also making the round trip to the Gold Coast, bringing his parents along for the ride. 

“I wanted to be a part of history,” he said.

“They move airports, they get new terminals, but somewhere with a brand new airport – when’s that going to happen again?”

He welcomed the opportunity to travel from an airport that was easier and cheaper to access from his home in Penrith, about a 25-minute drive from the site.

Pilot Aglaya Papadokokolakis, from Blacktown in western Sydney, said she was honoured to fly the first commercial plane out of an airport in her own backyard.

“This is a very special day,” she said. 

“The whole community is excited.”

Construction on the airport began in 2018 after the Abbott government formally signed off on the Badgerys Creek location in 2014.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese officially opened the airport at a ceremony on Sunday morning.

Liberal prime ministers Scott Morrison and Tony Abbott were in the audience.

“Western Sydney International is our first new major airport for more than five decades and a wonderful new chapter in the life of our nation,” Mr Albanese told the crowd. 

“This is Australia’s best airport, without question, in the way that it will function going forward.”

Many leaders have long believed Australia’s most populous city deserved an around-the-clock, second airport for both cargo and passengers.

The chief executive of WSA Co – established by the federal government to develop and operate the new facility – is confident the airport will deliver on the brief.

“It’s genuinely difficult to fathom the impact Western Sydney International will have on Greater Sydney,” Simon Hickey said at the opening event. 

The airport was expected to host 10 million passengers annually by the 2030s and support up to 8,500 jobs. 

The capacious Nancy-Bird Walton terminal – named for the pioneering Australian aviator – was designed through a selective competition.

Its design also incorporates First Nations references as well as material from the nearby Nepean River.

Seven international and domestic airlines will operate from the airport from the onset, with the first overseas flight touching down on Monday morning.  

Infrastructure Minister Catherine King said around 13,000 people had helped the project come to life.

“What an extraordinary legacy for their families as they come past and come through this airport, being able to say: I’ve built this and I’ve built this for western Sydney,” Ms King said.

US President Donald Trump has been telling voters to view the mid-term elections as if he were on the ballot, and one of his Democratic ‌predecessors has done just that.

Ten days out from the elections that will determine control of the closely divided Congress, Barack Obama took ‌to the campaign trail on Saturday to accuse the Republican president of corruption, deride his strategy for Iran and skewer the gilded ‌aesthetic he has applied to White House renovations.

Obama stumped for Democratic candidates at rallies in Cleveland and Detroit, lampooning the Trump administration. 

Campaigning in Michigan for US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, Obama framed the November 3 vote as a “circuit breaker” to “at least rein in some of the foolishness” of Trump’s presidency.

“We got to flip that circuit breaker, bring some accountability ‌to this government,” Obama ‌said.

Obama remains the Democratic Party’s best motivator nearly a decade after leaving the White House and he’s taking his star power on the road in the final days of the mid-term elections, which will help determine the balance of power in American politics.

They hope that bringing him into the race can fire up their supporters for a tight US Senate race in which El-Sayed faces Republican Mike Rogers, a former US representative.

The former president obliged the Michigan crowd by playing to Democrats’ frequently repeated criticisms of Trump and of Republicans’ willingness to go along with him.

“We have never ⁠seen a president excel in straight-up grifting, on your dime, ‌like this,” ​Obama said. 

“Never seen a president so intent on selling favours like this … Now the party seems to stand for corrupt ​government, or ‌inept government, or no government.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll in ​August found that 63 per cent of Americans think the president and his family have inappropriately profited from cryptocurrency since he returned to the White House in 2025 and 69 per cent believe his policy decisions are influenced ​by his ​private business dealings.

Obama also ridiculed the administration’s ​claims of victory against Iran. He argued that the war ‌has given Iran more economic leverage because its threats to attack shipping in the Strait of Hormuz have unsettled oil exporters.

“Iran now has veto power over the Strait of Hormuz, where oil goes through to get to the world,” Obama said.

The former president also accused the Trump administration of emphasising trivial matters, sarcastically calling Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth someone “laser-focused ​on important matters like the jawline and testosterone levels of our troops” and ridiculing White House renovations as tacky.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovation,” Obama quipped. “He should be on HGTV,” he said. 

“There’s gold everywhere. He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”

with AP

Australia’s top federal law enforcement official has drawn a direct link between politicians’ rhetoric and threats and abuse being directed at leaders.

The safety of elected representatives at all levels has been thrown into the spotlight after independent MP Helen Haines was run down outside her Wangaratta electoral office in an allegedly deliberate attack.

She had both legs amputated after the Monday incident, when she was rammed by a four-wheel-drive on the main street of the Victorian town.

Dr Haines remains in a serious but stable condition at the Alfred hospital in Melbourne.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said there was no doubt the threat environment had changed for politicians.

“When I start work every morning, one of the first things I do is read a report … (that) summarises all of the threats that have been reported to the AFP over the last 24 hours,” she told the ABC’s Insiders program.

“Now, some days that report is pages and pages long.”

The commissioner said she wasn’t interested in policing free speech or intervening in political discourse.

“But I would challenge any Australian to read some of these threats and some of the abuse that is reported to us from federal parliamentarians and for anyone to argue that that is free speech or political discourse,” she added.

The move from the sending of physical hate mail to online threats had played a significant role in the increasing volume of worrying material, while also highlighting the influence of inflammatory political imagery and language.

“We do see where there is particular political conflict or discourse occurring … it does have a direct correlation to what we see in terms of threats and abuse, and sometimes it’s very immediate,” Ms Barrett said.

Past One Nation cartoons depicting political figures, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, being hit by cars or buses have resurfaced in the days since the alleged attack on Dr Haines.

The AFP commissioner said there was “a reaction amongst the community” to material such as the cartoons.

The policing agency, which is responsible for protecting federal politicians and office-holders, has held a number of emergency safety briefings with parliamentarians since Monday.

Male and female MPs were targeted equally with threats and abuse, Ms Barrett said, but women were more often singled out individually, often with threats of sexual violence.

“My hope is that this really causes people to pause and have a think about what’s happening in this country and the impact of that,” she said.

“And if this is not the incident, then what is?”

Federal MPs from across the political spectrum have acknowledged the difficulty in balancing their personal security and access to voters.

“As a local MP, I don’t want to stop going to community events,” Liberal frontbencher Ted O’Brien told News24 on Sunday.

“That open access is a cornerstone of democracy. We’re particularly good at it in Australia. We can’t take away grassroots politics.”

Labor minister Catherine King said she has been contending with the deteriorating safety for some time.

“It is when, not if, that something will happen to one of us and we’ve been saying that certainly for the last five years or so,” she said.

“I had a mobile caravan for almost 25 years. I don’t use that now because it doesn’t have a second exit point.

“If someone did kick off and I’m trapped in the van, it’s very hard to deal with that.”

Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock might have to practise her poker face ahead of a crucial inflation print that could prompt traders to double down on bets on a Melbourne Cup day rate hike.

Coincidentally, Ms Bullock and fellow top Reserve Bank officials are scheduled to appear on screen at a Senate estimates hearing on Wednesday as the Australian Bureau of Statistics releases September quarter inflation data.

Rate watchers will be on high alert for any sign of a wince rippling across her features if the data confirms the quarterly trimmed mean – the Reserve Bank’s preferred measure of underlying inflation – was above the board’s forecast.

Citi economists Josh Williamson and Faraz Syed expect the quarterly trimmed mean to print at one per cent, implying annual growth of about 3.6 per cent.

The Reserve Bank’s August forecasts implied a quarterly increase of about 0.8 per cent.

But Mr Williamson and Mr Syed said the data would likely be irrelevant. 

They think the outcome of the November 3-4 board meeting is already a lay-down-misere.

Reserve Bank deputy governor Andrew Hauser’s hawkish comments at a Citi conference last Wednesday – when he said the inflation outlook appeared “materially worse” – indicated even a result of 0.9 per cent would get the board over the line on a hike, the Citi analysts said.

Market pricing for a November rate rise jumped above 50 per cent following Mr Hauser’s remarks.

Expectations for a rate hike had been scaled back following soft jobs data that showed the other side of the Reserve Bank’s dual mandate – full employment – was also coming under pressure.

Economists at NAB still expect the Reserve Bank to hold the cash rate at 4.6 per cent, despite also predicting the trimmed mean to rise one per cent over the quarter.

There is enough evidence of below-trend growth and gradual easing in the labour market to forecast inflation returning to target as the fuel cost shock fades, NAB senior economist Taylor Nugent said.

Further signs of the Reserve Bank’s thinking on the economic outlook are expected when its chief economist Sarah Hunter appears in a pre-recorded interview on Nine’s 60 Minutes on Sunday night.

Another assistant governor, Brad Jones, will take part in a panel at the AFR Super and Wealth Summit on Monday, but the discussion is more likely to cover the Reserve Bank’s ban on card surcharging than monetary policy.

Wall Street investors are meanwhile looking ‌ahead to a busy slate of corporate earnings and a Federal Reserve interest rate policy meeting.

The Dow Industrials and S&P 500 closed ‌lower on Friday while technology shares steadied to end a turbulent week for the market-driving AI trade.

Australian share futures climbed 43 points, or 0.48 per cent, to 13,854.

The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index finished Friday up two points, or 0.02 per cent, to 8795.2, but was down 0.13 per cent for the week.

Australian workers and industries risk becoming “hostages to the algorithm” without guardrails to deal with the rise of artificial intelligence.

Transport Workers’ Union national secretary Michael Kaine has issued a dire warning to a federal parliamentary inquiry on AI about potential fatalities if motorists take a back seat to driverless vehicles.

“Would you want an oil tanker, which is essentially a mobile bomb, careening up and down our highways?” he said.

“It is frightening beyond belief … and quite frankly scandalous.”

He said technology giants were “fattening up their bottom line” at the expense of road safety.

The union found strong community discontent with driverless vehicles in a poll it commissioned in May.

Seven in 10 of the 1506 people surveyed were opposed to fully automated taxis and trucks on Australian roads.

Mr Kaine said fatigue was also a crippling factor across the road and aviation transport industries, with AI data demanding maximum productivity beyond regulated shift work.

“It is something that could kill people,” he said.

“Workers are panicking because they now have invisible managers … that are surveilling them, that are holding them to account, that are disciplining them and that is a workplace health and safety issue.”

Labor senator Tony Sheldon told the inquiry AI technology users were being “held hostage to the algorithm”.

For National Farmers Federation general manager Michael Pyres, innovation is being encouraged through rapidly evolving tools yet this need not erode the protections of the workers using them.

“We need to put people at the centre,” he told the inquiry on Wednesday.

“AI should not be a substitute for appropriate and accountable management of fair treatment of work.”

Australian software giant Atlassian argues that regulations need to reflect how AI would transform organisations and people operating in an evolving global economy. 

“We believe law and regulation, designed carefully, can be a ‘force multiplier’ for trust … in new industries and technologies, and encouraging their adoption in a way that brings the most benefit to us all,” it said in its submission.

In the knowledge economy, hundreds of academic and administrative staff have been axed in recent years as higher education moves toward automating everything from curriculum design to student enrolments.

The National Tertiary Education Union said it was locked in a dispute with RMIT in Victoria over an AI program that automatically assesses student enrolments and potentially undercuts 40 staff who oversee admissions.

“AI completely takes the human out of the core of the equation,” the union’s Gabe Gooding told the committee on Thursday.

“People’s jobs are radically going to be changed and there is no consultation with them at all,” she said.

The creative arts industry has also been impacted, with several award-winning authors fronting the probe.

In an impassioned plea to the committee, Booker Prize shortlisted author Charlotte Wood said copyright protections had to be embedded to prevent the proliferation of “slop-spewing robots” extracting words from writers.

“If they want our labour, they must pay for it,” she told the inquiry.

“Unregulated AI companies are causing untold human misery across the globe and here in Australia … and we’ve seen this week political violence,” Ms Wood said, referring to the alleged targeted attack on independent MP Helen Haines.

Book publisher Hachette’s Australian head Louise Stark informed the committee its American arm was suing Google in the US for wilfully stealing content from its authors to train its AI model Gemini.

She noted writers and publishers had lodged about 150 lawsuits against Meta and Anthropic.

“The theft was encouraged by these companies, which is why we’re really struggling to trust them on anything that weakens our copyright law,” she said.

Yasmin Wessels remembers the crushing embarrassment of walking through the schoolyard with a big bunch of flowers for her teacher.

The daughter of New Zealand tulip bulb and flower growers, she and her brother would bring homegrown bouquets to school for Mother’s Day or end-of-year presents.

As she got older, Ms Wessels came to understand the deeper meaning of sharing flowers.

“They are nature’s gift to us. They’re so beautiful … and represent the cycle of life,” she told AAP.

“It takes a while to grow and bloom and you appreciate them so much because they only last a week or two.”

Working with her Dutch-born parents at a flower auction in her final year of high school, Ms Wessels was struck by the sheer scale of plastic waste in the industry.

At 20, she founded The Flower Loop, a business that collects plastic bouquet wraps and sends them to be recycled and re-used.

Her vision has earned her the title of an evokeAg Groundbreaker, a mentoring and leadership program for young innovators in the sector.

Now 24, Ms Wessels’ work has diverted more than seven tonnes of plastic – or one million flower sleeves – from landfill.

She hopes to bring the system to Australian flower markets.

“Hopefully it becomes something consumers recognise and … want to support,” Ms Wessels said. 

It was her dad who encouraged her to find a solution to plastic waste, which was initially to use paper to wrap their bouquets instead.

But when Ms Wessels realised paper waste created high levels of methane in a landfill’s oxygen-free environment, she sought guidance from a recycler in her parents’ homeland.

Circular Plastics, a closed-loop operator in the Netherlands, offered her a job, or support to start her own business.

Ms Wessels took the more challenging path of going out on her own.

“It was a perfect storm of being born into a family of flower growers and seeing the issue, but the plastic problem is a worldwide one,” she said.

“With an issue that big, there’s also an opportunity just as big. 

“With so much negativity and anxiety around what’s happening in the world at the moment, there’s always a positive way to look at things.” 

Zoe Carter, another Groundbreaker, has also turned challenges into progress.

Ms Carter, a long-time animal lover, was told by a high school careers adviser not to pursue agriculture because it was “for old men” and there was no money in it.

She nonetheless studied agriculture and worked on a property in NSW, until a serious riding injury forced her to change tack.

Working everywhere from an abattoir boning room to a sheep stud, Ms Carter realised farmers needed to connect with workers passionate about the industry.

She founded Agriculture Jobs Auswide to showcase career paths in the sector.

“There’s so many passionate people out there that just keep getting turned away,” Ms Carter said.

“There’s an incredible amount of opportunity.”

The women will present at evokeAg in February 2027, alongside fellow innovators from NSW, Queensland and SA.

French security forces have fanned out across Paris before protests that authorities fear could turn violent, with Interior Minister Laurent Nunez urging police to be “hyper-reactive” against troublemakers and looters.

Soldiers from an anti-terrorism military unit patrolled the Champs-Elysees avenue ‌on Saturday while police vans circled the Arc de Triomphe, looking to protect some of the capital’s most famous sites from any repeat of the unrest that shook France last week.

Nunez ‌has mobilised 70,000 police nationwide for Saturday’s demonstrations, 10,000 more than on October 17, when a wave of vandalism and looting shocked the country and raised questions about the government’s ability to maintain order.

Anger over living costs and strained public services has drawn students, workers and unions onto the streets in recent weeks, but authorities say radical militants and bands of young looters have exploited the protests to sow chaos.

Speaking to police in Paris, Nunez warned officers that they would face attempts to target shops, public institutions and security forces.

“We ‌have to be ‌ultra, ultra responsive. We ⁠have significant calls for disruption from political groups and quite simply from criminals,” he said.

“It is going to be ​a long day.”

Many shopkeepers in Paris boarded up storefronts, while luxury retailers beefed up security.

Business groups have urged stores to remain closed after thousands of shops and businesses were damaged or looted across France last weekend.

Several of Paris’s best-known cultural institutions, including the Louvre, ⁠the Musee d’Orsay and the Grand Palais, will close for the day to avoid ‌being caught up ​in any turmoil.

More than 20 metro stations were also shut.

The location of Saturday’s main Paris demonstration remained unclear after police sought to move organisers away from the city ​centre towards ‌the southeastern fringes of the capital.

“The declared route poses serious risks of disturbances to public order, notably because of the high concentration of businesses similar to ​those targeted during the weekend of October 17-18,” the Paris police prefecture said.

The last-minute decision angered some on the left.

“Once again, those in power are creating disruption for the marches and impossible deadlines for organisations to reorganise themselves. These methods are multiplying across the entire country,” hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon ​wrote ​on X.

Authorities have sharply restricted demonstrations ​across much of France.

Marseille reversed an earlier ban and authorised a union march, ‌while protests remain restricted in central Lyon.

Union rallies will also go ahead in Strasbourg, but bans remain in force in several other cities including Nancy, Metz, Besancon, Belfort, Rouen, Le Havre, Toulon and Limoges.

The first authorised march began mid-morning in Orleans, about 120km south of Paris, to protest against Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, which is holding a congress in the city this weekend.

Tensions were heightened by a shooting west of Paris on Friday in which ​a gunman suspected of acting out of ⁠Islamophobic hatred killed one person and wounded four others, including a 12-year-old girl.

Passengers travelling to the Gold Coast will be the first to take off from Australia’s youngest airport. 

Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport will open to commercial passengers on Sunday after almost seven years of construction and eight decades of planning.

Many leaders have long believed Australia’s most populous city deserved a round-the-clock, second airport for both cargo and passengers. 

Simon Hickey, chief executive of WSA Co Limited – established by the federal government to develop and operate the new facility – is confident the airport will deliver on the brief. 

“WSI is the most transformational piece of infrastructure our nation has seen since the Sydney Harbour Bridge,” he told AAP. 

“It brings the world closer to western Sydney and opportunity closer to home, creating new meaningful jobs for generations to come. 

“Young people growing up in the west can now look to the sky and see their future is bright and right here, in their own backyard.”

Construction on the airport began in 2018 after the Abbott government formally signed off on the Badgerys Creek site in 2014. 

The capacious Nancy-Bird Walton terminal – named for the pioneering Australian aviator – was designed through a selective competition.

Earth workers moved more than 25 million cubic metres of soil and rock to prepare the site before builders delivered the project on time and on budget in 2025.

Local governance leaders and western Sydney businesses now hope the airport will transform the region into an economic powerhouse.

Liverpool City Council Mayor Ned Mannoun said greater Sydney’s future was “only limited by imagination”.

His Penrith counterpart Todd Carney agreed but said state and federal governments would have to support growth with turbo-charged investment in roads, amenities and critical infrastructure. 

“There’s so much more potential in it if we actually just deliver on the underlying infrastructure that’s actually required,” Mr Carney told AAP.

Those in private business said many were ready to jump on opportunities, but were also waiting for those critical connections. 

Former MP and Business Western Sydney leader David Borger told AAP growth would depend on connectivity. 

Property Council Western Sydney regional director Ross Grove similarly said any economic dividend from the airport would require continued investment. 

“As that first plane takes off today, our focus should turn to what takes off next: the jobs, investment and development that this airport was built to unlock,” Mr Grove said. 

The multi-billion-dollar airport is modular, with space to expand to four terminals and add a second runway. 

Mr Hickey said the airport would continue to grow with the city.

“WSI is here to grow with Sydney for the coming century, expand choice for travellers and airlines, and connect more people with more places and opportunities,” he said. 

Leaders hope Badgerys Creek will scale up to handle more than 80 million passengers annually by the 2060s. 

Paul Fletcher, who served as federal infrastructure minister through much of the 2010s, said Australians would have to watch the master plan “play out over coming decades”. 

“This is a 10, 20, 30, 50, 100-year project,” he told AAP. 

So far, seven passenger carriers have committed to servicing the new airport, with Jetstar the first to ferry passengers to and from Badgerys Creek. 

Bus services are moving passengers between the airport and St Marys.

A rapid-transit line is expected to open along the route in 2027.

The US Justice Department has sued to pre-emptively block Alaska from certifying the results of its US Senate race if the Republican incumbent candidate loses by a narrow margin.

The lawsuit signals the willingness of President Donald Trump’s administration to contest the results of the November 3 midterm elections that will decide control of the US Congress.

Control of the US Senate could come down to Alaska, where incumbent Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan is running a closely contested race against Democrat Mary Peltola.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in Anchorage, takes issue with the presence of a third contender in the race, another Republican named Dan J. Sullivan Jr, alleging he is running “with the intention ‌of misleading supporters of Senator ‌Sullivan into voting for him.”

The ⁠lawsuit asks a federal judge to block the certification of an outcome “that may be impacted by voter confusion,” so that there can ​be “an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan.”

Trump told reporters he supported the lawsuit, saying “I’m the one that said do it.”

A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement the agency is taking “necessary steps to ensure that this frivolous candidacy does not undermine the integrity of Alaska’s election or the will of its voters.”

Election officials around the US have told Reuters they are preparing for potential federal interference in November’s elections, including legal challenges and disputes over voting that could disrupt certification of the results.

Trump has a long history ⁠of challenging election outcomes and encouraging supporters to contest results he views as unfavourable.

Election law experts said the Justice ‌Department’s lawsuit has no merit ​and seeks relief not allowed under federal law.

“In short, like many Department letters over the last few years, it is designed to win the press release rather than the litigation,” wrote Notre ​Dame law professor ‌Derek Muller in a blog post, adding that “the legal argument is one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen.”

The unelected Sullivan, a former US Forest Service worker and school teacher, filed to run as a candidate on May 29 seeking to unseat Senator Dan ​S. ​Sullivan and “put Alaska first,” according to his campaign website, which advertised “Dan Sullivan Challenges ​Dan Sullivan for US Senate Seat.”

Dan J. Sullivan has denied in interviews with US news outlets ‌that his aim is to cause confusion or divert votes from Dan S. Sullivan.

Injured federal politician Helen Haines’ condition has improved following an alleged attack that has raised disturbing questions over the safety of women in Australian public life.

Dr Haines was now in a “serious but stable” condition, a spokesman for The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne said on Saturday.

She has lost both legs after being struck by a vehicle on Monday.

Brendan Nugent faces multiple charges after allegedly deliberately striking her with his four-wheel drive outside her Victorian electoral office.

The incident has sent shockwaves through the nation, prompting parliamentarians and community leaders, particularly women, to share their experiences of threats of violence.

Former independent MP Kylea Tink made history as the first woman to hold the seat of North Sydney.

But in putting her hand up for office, she was subjected to a flood of hostility.

“The most shocking element of that experience was the amount of vitriol and hate and the physical and death threats directed not only at myself but also at my children,” Ms Tink told AAP.

Some threats took aim at her decision to run for office, while others were more direct.

“I literally received a threat that said, ‘We know where you live, we know where you come and go, we’re going to grab you, rape you, stab you and set you on fire’,” she said.

“And that sort of level of threat makes your heart go into your throat.”

Ms Tink said politicians were encouraged not to talk about threats in public in case they inspired further hostility and the only way to report them was through the Australian Federal Police.

She left politics in 2025 when her seat was abolished but still receives threats online.

“I think there are actually people that are still watching me, kind of going, ‘Is she coming back? We don’t want her to. We will do everything we can to stop her from deciding to run again’.”

For Ms Tink, who now leads Foodbank Australia, the targeted threats have prompted her to increase her personal security.

“It seems to be there is a sense of fair game in terms of trying to direct intimidatory remarks towards a woman in that position of power,” she said.

It’s a sentiment echoed by former ACTU secretary Sally McManus, who stepped down in August.

“Over the 20 years I was in a public leadership position, I had to call the police four times for death and rape threats,” Ms McManus told AAP.

“I had constant abuse online, which is still visible for anyone to see. Abusive and threatening phone calls. I had to change my routine and moved where I was living.

“This is because I was a woman in public life.”

Ms McManus said most of the targeted threats were fuelled by men in leadership with influence, such as media identities, politicians and “unfortunately a small number of male union leaders”.

While reports of death threats were rarer in the corporate sector, women faced hostile environments, according to the latest Chief Executive Women Census released days before Dr Haines’ alleged attack.

It found more women in leadership roles were experiencing increasing hostility and backlash against a global backdrop of heightened misogynistic rhetoric.

“The consequences … are it will mean women are less likely to want to pursue careers that might lead them to have a public profile,” Chief Executive Women head Lisa Annese told AAP.

She said corporate life and politics should reflect diverse communities.

“That is good for the organisation but leadership affects much more than just the individuals who are personally realising their career aspirations … there’s this ripple effect around people that affects how organisations are shaped,” Ms Annese said.

“This is not a fringe issue. This is half the population.”

Australian Femicide Watch, which records the number of Australian women and children killed through murder, manslaughter or neglect, says 56 women and 27 children have lost their lives to violence in 2026.

Across 2025, 80 women and 27 children were killed.