Jewish community leaders have celebrated their vindication after an Islamist preacher was ordered not to repeat “perverse” and racist anti-Semitic tropes.

Sydney-based Al Madina Dawah Centre cleric Wissam Haddad made the comments in a series of fiery sermons from November 2023, which racked up thousands of views online. 

In the speeches, Mr Haddad – who is also known as William Haddad or Abu Ousayd – variously referred to Jewish people as “vile”, “treacherous”, “murderous” and “mischievous”. 

He was sued by Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim and deputy president Robert Goot, who claimed the lectures were offensive and could incite violence towards Jews.

Justice Angus Stewart ruled in their favour on Tuesday, finding the speeches contained disparaging imputations that were likely to offend, insult, harass or intimidate Jewish people. 

He concluded the speeches contained “devastatingly offensive” imputations that were based on the race or ethnicity of the Australian Jewish community.

“The imputations include age-old tropes against Jewish people that are fundamentally racist and anti-Semitic,” Justice Stewart said. 

“They make perverse generalisations against Jewish people as a group.”

He said the racist remarks were intimidating and harassing because of the history of persecution of Jewish people and the heightened sense of insecurity because of the war involving Israel in Gaza.

Outside court, Mr Werheim and Mr Goot said they were vindicated by the legal win that they took as confirmation the days of targeting Jewish people with impunity are “long gone”. 

“No community in this wonderful country should be dehumanised in the way Mr Haddad treated us,” Mr Goot said. 

“Freedom of expression should not be abused by the promotion of hateful anti-Semitism and those who wish to do so should know that conduct shouldn’t be tolerated by us.”

During the landmark case testing the limits of religious expression and hate speech, Mr Haddad’s lawyer argued ruling against the preacher would be tantamount to restricting the free exercise of religious expression. 

But Justice Stewart rejected Mr Haddad’s defence he had been acting in good faith while delivering historical and religious lectures on events from the Koran to contextualise the war in Gaza. 

He said there was no basis for the preacher to believe the remarks were the teachings of Islam and he was not persuaded Mr Haddad had not also made them to stir up controversy. 

The lectures were not religious but instead “little more than bigoted polemic(s)” that had little basis in Islam, the judge said.

“This case was not about freedom of expression or freedom of religion, it was about anti-Semitism and the abuse of those freedoms to promote anti-Semitism,” Mr Wertheim said outside court. 

Mr Haddad, who arrived in Federal Court midway through the delivery of the judge’s decision, remained silent with crossed arms as his lawyer spoke outside court. 

“Mr Haddad maintains the sermons, delivered in the context of religious instruction and based on scriptural references, were never intended to insult any group in Australia on the basis of their ethnic identity,” his lawyer Elias Tabchouri said.

The preacher was ordered to remove the lectures and not to repeat similar racist statements about Jewish people in public. 

He will also have to pay the legal bill for Mr Wertheim and Mr Goot, which is estimated to be six figures. 

A separate interview and sermon didn’t amount to racial vilification because they would be understood as directed towards the Israeli army and Zionists instead of Jewish people generally, Justice Stewart said. 

Mr Haddad’s speeches were delivered after Hamas, designated by Australia as a terror group, attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.

The onslaught sparked Israeli retaliation that has left Gaza in turmoil and tens of thousands of civilians dead.

Australia has been urged to zoom out on its approach to the US relationship, instead of honing in on the nitty-gritty of tariffs.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese faces growing pressure to organise a face-to-face with US President Donald Trump after their scheduled June meeting was scuppered by events in the Middle East.

With Mr Trump’s tariffs continuing to dominate global economic discussions, the prime minister has hinted at ways his government could negotiate a carve-out.

But United States Studies Centre research director Jared Mondschein said Australia should take a more long-term view on the US as trying to predict the Trump administration was “a bit of a fool’s errand”.

“Instead of focusing – in my view – too myopically on the tariff side, I encourage the Australian government to focus instead on the broader conversation,” he told AAP.

“(Tariffs are) something unique to this administration, I can’t imagine other administrations doing it similarly.

“There’s a lot of opportunity where Australia has more influence.”

Security, supply chains, space co-operation and critical minerals were all areas in which Australia could bolster ties to the US for years beyond Mr Trump’s second term, Mr Mondschein said.

Washington had shown a particular eagerness to get its hands on critical minerals as China had previously used its hold on rare earths to gain economic leverage.

Mr Mondschein noted Beijing blocked exports to Japan in 2010, but in the 15 years since there had been “more rhetoric than substantive gains in any sort of calibrated response”.

“It’s all the more important for allies and partners to start getting their act together,” he said.

Resources Minister Madeleine King on Tuesday said Australia would continue working with the US to invest in critical minerals to ensure the nation could become a “robust” part of the global supply chain, capitalising on its geological and geographical advantages.

Mr Albanese was expected to meet the US president on the sidelines of the G7 summit in mid-June but Mr Trump left the event the night before their scheduled conversation to deal with escalating tensions between Iran and Israel.

The coalition has continued to pressure the prime minister over the relationship with Australia’s key ally, with opposition defence spokesman Angus Taylor saying the prime minister “has never had any great love for the US alliance”.

While Mr Albanese wasn’t the only world leader to be stood up by the Republican president, the relative insignificance of Australia as a US trading partner has been raised as one obstacle to getting a rescheduled meeting.

But Mr Mondschein did not believe missing a bilateral meeting was an existential challenge as Australia’s relationship with the US had never been so consequential.

The prime minister said Australia was an important ally for the US as it helped deliver peace and security in the Pacific region, and provided goods and services to the world, making it a significant economy.

“Australia always pulls our weight,” he said.

Mr Albanese added he understood the president’s decision to leave the G7, a move that eventually led to a fragile ceasefire between Iran and Israel.

The G20 leaders meeting in November, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in June and the Quad meeting – which will occur some time in the year – all offer a second chance for the two to get together. 

Foreign Minister Penny Wong landed in the US capital Washington on Tuesday, Australian time, as Canberra tries to broker an exemption from America’s 50 per cent tariffs on Australian steel and aluminium imports and 10 per cent levies on other goods.

She is set to attend a meeting of Quad foreign ministers, which includes US Secretary of State Marco Rubio along with ministers from India and Japan.

Japan won’t sacrifice its agricultural sector as part of its tariff talks with the United States, its top negotiator says, after President Donald Trump complained that the key Asian ally isn’t buying American rice.

Trump’s comment, made in a social media post on Monday, comes as Tokyo scrambles to convince the US to scrap a 25 per cent tariff on Japanese cars and a 24 per cent reciprocal tariff on other Japanese imports.

The reciprocal tariff has been paused until July 9, but Japan has yet to secure a trade deal after nearly three months of negotiations.

While the auto sector is Japan’s top employer and exporter, the farm sector has traditionally been an important voting bloc for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party, which faces key upper house elections on July 20.

“I have repeatedly stated that agriculture is the foundation of the nation,” top trade negotiator and Economy Minister Ryosei Akazawa told a press conference on Tuesday.

“In negotiations with the United States, our stance remains unchanged: We will not engage in talks that would sacrifice the agricultural sector,” he said, adding that he would continue to negotiate with his US counterparts to protect Japan’s national interests.

Akazawa, who returned from his seventh trip to Washington a few days ago, declined to say whether rice was part of those discussions.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that Japan’s reluctance to import American-grown rice was a sign that countries have become “spoiled with respect to the United States of America”.

“I have great respect for Japan, they won’t take our RICE, and yet they have a massive rice shortage,” he wrote.

Japan has in fact imported historically high volumes of US rice in recent months as domestically grown rice has skyrocketed in price since last year, hurting consumers.

But Tokyo caps tariff-free imports of staple rice – which is consumed at meals as opposed to rice used for feed or ingredients in other products – at 100,000 metric tonnes a year and imposes a levy of 341 yen ($2.37) per kg for anything beyond that. That amount is a fraction of Japan’s total annual consumption of about seven million tonnes.

While Farm Minister Shinjiro Koizumi has lamented the influx of foreign rice as a threat to Japan’s food security, the government has brought forward a tender usually held in September for this year’s first 30,000 tonnes of tariff-free staple rice imports as part of efforts to lower domestic prices.

with AP

US Senate Republicans are still trying to pass President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax-cut and spending bill, despite divisions within the party about its expected $5 trillion hit to the nation’s debt pile.

Senators were voting in a marathon session on Monday night known as a “vote-a-rama,” featuring a series of amendments by Republicans and the minority Democrats, part of the arcane process Republicans are using to bypass Senate rules that normally require 60 of the chamber’s 100 members to agree on legislation.

But after roughly 12 hours, it was still unclear how long the voting would last. Lawmakers said the process was being held up partly by the need to determine whether amendments complied with special budgetary rules.

Republicans can afford to lose no more than three votes in either chamber to pass a bill the Democrats are united in opposition to.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released its assessment on Sunday of the bill’s hit to the $US36.2 trillion ($A55.1 trillion) US debt pile. 

The Senate version is estimated to cost $US3.3 trillion ($A5.trillion), $US800 billion ($A1.2 trillion) more than the version passed last month in the House of Representatives.

Many Republicans dispute that claim, Democrats, meanwhile, hope the latest, eye-widening figure could stoke enough anxiety among fiscally minded conservatives to get them to buck their party, which controls both chambers of Congress.

“This bill, as we have said for months, steals people’s healthcare, jacks up their electricity bill to pay for tax breaks for billionaires,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a speech to the Senate.

Thune countered that the tax cuts will help families and small businesses, as he defended spending reductions to social safety net programs.

He said Medicaid was growing at an unsustainable rate and there were some improvements and reforms to make it more efficient.

The Senate narrowly advanced the tax-cut, immigration, border and military spending bill in a procedural vote late on Saturday, voting 51-49 to open debate on the 940-page megabill.

Trump wants the bill passed before the July 4 Independence Day holiday.

Many of the amendments are from Democrats proposing limiting cuts to Medicaid and abortion services but those and other Democratic amendments so far were rejected by the Republican majority.

Elon Musk, formerly appointed by Trump to spearhead his government cost-cutting plan before the pair had a public falling-out in June over the budget bill, made a flurry of angry posts on X on Monday, threatening to target Republicans ahead of the 2026 mid-term election.

“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!,” Musk posted on X.

He also reiterated his interest in a new political party and accused lawmakers in both parties of belonging to the “porky pig party,” a dig at government spending levels.

The Republican measure contains a $US5 trillion ($A7.6) trillion debt ceiling increase – $US1 trillion ($A1.5 trillion) more than the House’s bill –  but failure to pass some version would present lawmakers with a serious deadline later this summer, when the Treasury Department could come close to exhausting its borrowing authority and thus risk a devastating default.

The debt limit increase has caused Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky to come out in opposition to the bill, joining fellow Republican Tillis, who decried its cuts to Medicaid and clean energy initiatives.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate bill would result in about 11.8 million additional uninsured people, surpassing estimates for the House’s version.

If the Senate succeeds in passing the bill, it will then go to the House, where members are also divided, with some angry about its cost and others worried about cuts to the Medicaid program.

Parcel deliveries won’t be impacted when Qantas pilots responsible for transporting mail take industrial action over a wage offer they say will leave them at the bottom of the industry.

More than 100 Express Freighters pilots will be eligible to begin low-level action from Friday after over 90 per cent voted in favour of protected action over the company’s “lowball” pay offer.

After six months of protracted negotiations, unions said the company has refused to improve the offer, which in some cases, would see pilots’ remuneration hovering around the bare legal minimum and would entrench poor work-life balance.

The pilots fly a significant amount of Australia Post’s parcel freight overnight on “back of the clock” flights and spend up to 260 hours away from home each month.

Three unions, the Transport Workers Union (TWU), Australian Federation of Air Pilots (AFAP) and Australian and International Pilots Association, have filed protected action ballots for the first time.

Pilots undertaking the low-level action will stop work on days off and not complete work before a scheduled shift, as the unions set the runway for escalating action if Qantas doesn’t come back with a better offer.

The TWU and AFAP are calling for a pay increase to match industry standards, as well as improvements to roster protections and additional days off to improve work-life balance.

Qantas have put contingency plans in place, with the majority of freight moved in the belly of its passenger planes not affected by this action, and they and don’t expect any impact on operations.

“We’re bargaining in good faith for a new agreement and have put forward a proposal that includes significant pay increases and lifestyle improvements for our freighter pilots,” a spokeswoman said.

“It’s disappointing that the unions have taken this step instead of continuing discussions.”

Workers are struggling with poor rostering, declining conditions, and contracts going to the cheapest bidder across the Qantas supply chain, TWU National Secretary Michael Kaine said.

“Industrial action is always a last resort, but once again we’ve seen Qantas come to the bargaining table seeking to lowball its workers instead of give them a fair offer,” he said.

“We need to stop seeing workers treated as a cost to be lowered rather than an investment.”

AFAP’s executive director Simon Lutton said the pilots had no other choice than to take action.

“When compared to equivalent pilots, the offer made by Qantas to its Express Freighters pilots represents the lowest terms and conditions on virtually every metric,” Mr Lutton said.

In February, Qantas posted $1.39 billion in profits before tax in its half-yearly results.

Governance failures are costing Australian businesses, with the country’s second-largest telco agreeing to pay $100 million for poor conduct.

Optus was recently fined for targeting vulnerable customers, including pressuring Aboriginal people in remote communities not covered by its network to buy mobile phones and other products.

This exposes a serious gap in Australia’s corporate governance, says Rebecca Blurton, the founder and managing director of advisory firm First Nations Affairs.

Telstra faced a $50 million fine in 2020 for similar conduct after the company signed up more than 100 Indigenous customers to mobile phone contracts they could not understand or were unable to afford, Ms Blurton pointed out.

“Optus essentially picked up where Telstra left off,” the Noongar adviser and expert in Indigenous governance told AAP.

Ms Blurton said this conduct seems to be a “regular thing” and there is little accountability for companies to ensure their leadership is diverse and includes First Nations voices.

She said “vague commitments” to Indigenous governance practices and leadership, which are often self-evaluated by companies, mean blind spots will prevail.

“You’re missing the opportunity to highlight the gaps and the problems so you can pivot and do better in future.”

Indigenous people must instead have real decision-making power, Ms Blurton said, to avoid a repeat of these mistakes by the telcos.

This means getting people with the right expertise onto boards and in leadership positions, and building governance frameworks that are diverse and culturally sound.

“By having the right person in the right position many of these governance gaps can be mitigated,” she said.

“The future of governance for big corporate looks different and there’s a real opportunity to embed First Nations leadership.”

Qantas pilots responsible for delivering parcels will take industrial action over the company’s wage offer, which they say will leave them at the bottom of the industry.

More than 100 Express Freighters pilots will be eligible to begin low-level action from Friday after over 90 per cent voted in favour of protected action over the company’s “lowball” offer.

After protracted negotiations over six months, unions said the company has refused to improve the offer, which in some cases, would see pilots’ remuneration hovering around the bare legal minimum of the Air Pilots Award 2020, and would entrench poor work-life balance.

The pilots fly a significant amount of Australia Post’s parcel freight, mostly overnight, “back of the clock” flights and spend up to 260 hours away from home per month.

Three unions, the Transport Workers Union (TWU), Australian Federation of Air Pilots (AFAP) and Australian and International Pilots Association, have filed protected action ballots for the first time.

Pilots undertaking the low-level action will stop work on days off and not complete work before a scheduled shift, as the unions set the runway for escalating action if Qantas doesn’t come back with a better offer.

The TWU and AFAP are calling for a pay increase to match industry standards, as well as improvements to roster protections and additional days off to improve work-life balance.

Workers were struggling with poor rostering, declining conditions, and contracts going to the cheapest bidder across the Qantas supply chain, TWU National Secretary Michael Kaine said.

“Industrial action is always a last resort, but once again we’ve seen Qantas come to the bargaining table seeking to lowball its workers instead of give them a fair offer,” he said.

“We need to stop seeing workers treated as a cost to be lowered rather than an investment.”

AFAP’s executive director Simon Lutton said the pilots had no other choice.

“When compared to equivalent pilots, the offer made by Qantas to its Express Freighters pilots represents the lowest terms and conditions on virtually every metric,” Mr Lutton said.

In February, Qantas posted $1.39 billion in profits before tax in its half-yearly results.

Australian citizens are beginning to be flown out of Iran but escape options remain limited amid fears of more Israeli attacks.

Five Australians have left Iran on a commercial flight from Mashhad, in the nation’s north-east, for Dubai with Australian government assistance.

In the week since the fragile truce between Israel and Iran began, airports in Iran’s capital Tehran remain closed.

Limited flights out of eastern Iran are opening up, with the Department of Foreign Affairs contacting hundreds of registered travellers to alert them about seats as they become available.

More than 3000 Australians wanting to leave Iran have registered with the department for assistance and family members in Australia are concerned that options to cross the border into Azerbaijan are unfeasible for vulnerable people.

More than 50 Australians have successfully crossed the border and been met by Australian officials, while more than 150 have received border codes for Azerbaijan.

A backlog of Australian requests for Azerbaijan border crossing codes was cleared after representations by Foreign Minister Penny Wong and consular officials.

The department is advising Australians in Iran to leave now, if it’s safe to do so, noting that although the ceasefire is holding for now, the situation remains volatile and can change quickly.

The department’s ability to provide consular assistance is extremely limited, given the environment in Iran is much more challenging than in Israel. 

Australia’s embassy in Tehran has suspended operations and staff were recently evacuated.

Travellers are urged to keep checking the Smartraveller website for updates.

A ceasefire was reached after 12 days of war, which erupted on June 13 when Israel launched missile at Iranian military and nuclear sites.

It came a day after the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in almost 20 years.

The assault triggered waves of retaliatory strikes between Iran and Israel, before the US intervened with a strike aimed at crippling Iran’s nuclear program and forcing a truce between the two nations.

Australia is an important partner to the US, the prime minister has insisted, as he faces growing pressure to lock down an in-person meeting with Donald Trump.

Since Anthony Albanese’s first planned face-to-face with the US president was up-ended last month by events in the Middle East, the prime minister has spent weeks being grilled over their next possible meeting.

Some have speculated that Mr Trump has yet to meet Mr Albanese because Australia is relatively insignificant, globally, compared to other US trading partners.

But the prime minister disagrees.

“Australia always pulls our weight,” he told Sky News on Tuesday.

“We’re significant players in delivering peace and security in our region, we’re also a significant economy, providing goods and services to the world and making a difference.”

“I think viewers, watchers and readers of some of the media would think that Australia is this little country that doesn’t contribute anything to this relationship – we do,” he also told Seven’s Sunrise program

The two leaders were expected to meet on the sidelines of the G7 summit in mid-June but Mr Trump left the event the night before their scheduled chat to deal with escalating tensions between Iran and Israel.

However, the prime minister wasn’t the only world leader to be stood up by the US president.

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum was also due to meet Mr Trump for the first time that same day, while scheduled talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi were also put on ice.

Mr Albanese said he understood the president’s decision to leave, which eventually led to a fragile ceasefire between Iran and Israel, and noted there would be plenty more opportunities to meet as the global summit season looms.

The G20 leaders meeting in November, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in June and the Quad meeting – which will occur some time this year – all offer a second chance for the two to get together. Mr Albanese could also visit the US in September for the United Nations General Assembly.

Some observers also raised concerns that critical comments previously made by US ambassador Kevin Rudd could hurt negotiations as Australia tries to broker an exemption from America’s 50 per cent tariffs on Australian steel and aluminium imports and 10 per cent levies on other goods.

But Mr Albanese noted that US Vice-President JD Vance, who had also previously made strong comments about Mr Trump, was now his second in command.

“We have a former prime minister in Kevin Rudd as our ambassador – that says a lot about the priority we place in the relationship with the United States,” he said.

“I’ve been respectful of the president and I must say that he’s been respectful of me as well.”

Mr Albanese has spoken with the Republican over the phone on at least three occasions, including a call during which Mr Trump congratulated him on his thumping re-election.

US President Donald Trump says Japan will be the recipient of a letter related to trade, following pledges by his administration to send letters to countries outlining tariffs they would need to pay to the United States.

“I have great respect for Japan, they won’t take our RICE, and yet they have a massive rice shortage,” he said in a Truth Social post.

“We’ll just be sending them a letter, and we love having them as a Trading Partner for many years to come.”

Trump did not say what terms would be outlined in the letter.

Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told reporters at the White House that Trump “is going to finalise the frameworks we negotiated with a whole bunch of countries after the weekend”.

Trump has suggested that the US will be sending letters to many countries, informing them of the new tariff rates they will face from the US after a July 9 deadline when the president’s 90-day pause on “reciprocal” tariffs expires.

Hassett said of tariff negotiations with Japan that there will “still be discussions right up to the end”.

Hassett also confirmed on Monday that US-Canada trade negotiations would resume after Canada scrapped plans for a digital services tax targeting US technology firms.

“Absolutely,” Hassett said on Fox News Channel when asked about the talks restarting.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called Trump on Sunday evening to tell him the tax was being dropped, calling it a big victory for US tech companies.

“Very simple. Prime Minister Carney in Canada caved to President Trump and the United States of America,” she said, crediting Trump’s hard-line negotiating style for the shift.

“President Trump knows … that every country on the planet needs to have good trade relationships with the United States, and it was a mistake for Canada to vow to implement that tax that would have hurt our tech companies here in the United States,” she said.

Trump had asked Canada to drop the tax at a G7 meeting in Canada earlier in June, Hassett said.

“It’s something that they’ve studied, now they’ve agreed to, and for sure that means that we can get back to the negotiations.”

Canada’s finance ministry said late on Sunday that Carney and Trump would resume trade negotiations in order to agree on a deal by July 21.

“Thank you Canada for removing your Digital Services Tax which was intended to stifle American innovation and would have been a deal breaker for any trade deal with America,” US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick responded in a post on X.

Stocks hit record highs on Wall Street on Monday morning as sentiment in the markets rose amid optimism about US trade negotiations with key partners including Canada.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also struck an optimistic tone over the potential for “a flurry” of trade deals ahead of a July 9 deadline, after which 10 per cent US tariff rates on imports from many countries are set to snap back to Trump’s April 2 announced rates of 11 per cent to 50 per cent.

But Bessent, speaking on Bloomberg Television, warned that countries may not get extensions from that deadline even if they are negotiating in good faith as he suggested previously.

Any extensions would be up to Trump himself, Bessent said.

Leavitt said Trump was meeting his trade team this week to set tariff rates for those countries that were not negotiating.

“He is going to set the rates for many of these countries if they don’t come to the table to negotiate in good faith, and he is meeting with his trade team this week to do that,” she said.

with AP