On Saturday, a sold-out crowd cheered on as 15 contestants battled it out to claim the championship spurtle – with a pinch of Celtic salt the deciding factor Oatmeal sloshes out of pots and into stovetop flames as contestants frantically fumble with their finishing touches. The timer is ticking down but spectators clap and cheer, their whoops ringing through the rafters of Pearl Beach memorial community hall before a voice cuts through the chaos: “please make way for the porridge carriers”. The five cooks step back, glance at each other’s mess, and hope they’ve done enough. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...

Cancelling the Australian Palestinian author Randa Abdel-Fattah weakens freedom of speech and is the harbinger of a less free nation

Labour hire companies operating on the mid-north coast said to be taking advantage of ‘extremely weak’ state regulation and visa loopholes * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Ian*, a retired farmer, refers to the two Solomon Islanders living on his farm as “emancipated slaves”. He met James* sitting on the veranda of a house near a blueberry farm on the NSW mid-north coast. He stopped to chat, as he does with many of the blueberry workers in the area. James explained that he was in debt to the farmer for repairs on his car. His passport had been taken, his wages docked and he had no money for food. Continue reading...

The Productivity Commission appears to have bought into tech companies’ brazen arguments – and caught the Australian government off-guard * Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Tech companies have devalued the work of creative industries for years. The latest iteration of this is their insistence the AI models they plan to make lots of money from need the labour of all of human creation for free in perpetuity. It’s just surprising that the Productivity Commission appears to have bought into the argument – and caught the Australian government off-guard. The Productivity Commission’s view on AI trained on the copyrighted works of others without compensation, published Wednesday, is that the horse has already bolted for big tech companies – that providing a text and data mining (TDM) exception in copyright law would not change much, but should be worth considering. Continue reading...