Australian released from Iraqi prison after more than four years behind bars

The federal government is welcoming the release of an Australian engineer from a jail in Iraq.
Robert Pether has been granted bail, emerging from a prison in Iraq after spending more than four years behind bars.
Mr Pether was arrested in April 2021 alongside his Egyptian colleague, charged with deception, however, he has always maintained his innocence.

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Donald Trump ‘snubs' Anthony Albanese at the G7

Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell discusses US President Donald Trump's decision to leave the G7 early to address the escalating conflict in the Middle East. 'Now, since that snub, the President has reached out to two other leaders who he also cancelled G7 meetings with,' Mr Clennell said. 'Despite the failure of Mr Trump to hang around to meet Mr Albanese, the Australian government's view is that Donald Trump has agreed to a meeting. It really is just a question of when it occurs.'

Sky News AU

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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to attend string of high-level summits around the world amid global uncertainty and international conflicts

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is preparing to attend more than half a dozen overseas trips or conferences by the end of 2025, Sky News Australia can reveal. Mr Albanese will attend the APEC forum in Korea, ASEAN summit in Malaysia, COP climate conference in Brazil, and the G20 summit in South Africa. He is also expected to visit China at the invitation of President Xi Jinping, speak at the UN General Assembly in New York, and attend the Pacific Islands Forum in the Solomon Islands. Mr Albanese sees the trips as essential at a time when there is so much upheaval in the world, with a war in the Middle East and another in Ukraine. The busy schedule comes after Mr Albanese earned the moniker 'Airbus Albo' in his first term of government, just as former prime minister Kevin Rudd was branded 'Kevin 747'. The Australian government originally helped set up APEC, and the G20 is a forum every Australian prime minister always attends. The COP summit in Brazil is necessary, given Australia bidding to host a future UN climate conference. That trip will likely be paired with the G20. Mr Albanese is also expected to use the UN General Assembly in New York as the best opportunity to secure a rescheduled face-to-face meeting with US President Donald Trump. The two leaders' planned first meeting at the G7 in Kananaskis, Canada was abruptly cancelled last week, prompting criticism of Mr Albanese's lack of engagement with President Trump. Mr Albanese considered attending the NATO summit in The Hague to revive the meeting, but it has been confirmed that Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles will attend instead. The Albanese government's view is that President Trump has agreed to a meeting, and it will take place at an appropriate time. The visit to China is also seen as an important step, given the size of the trading relationship between the two countries. On his first trip to China in the last term of parliament, the Prime Minister ensured he visited the United States beforehand where he met with then-president Joe Biden. That was another reason the highly anticipated meeting with President Trump had been so important for the Albanese government. Since being re-elected in May, Mr Albanese has already travelled to Indonesia to meet President Prabowo Subianto and to Rome for the Mass swearing in the new Pope Leo. He also visited Nadi, Fiji to meet Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka; Seattle, USA to meet Amazon Web Service CEO Matt Garman; and Kanaskis, Canada for the G7 Summit. In the absence of Mr Trump, Mr Albanese instead held two short meetings on the sidelines of the G7 with key members of the Trump administration. He also met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

The Age

4 hours ago

• The Age

Anglican Church can't grow if it fails to accept gay reality

The other day a friend showed me photos of her friends' same-sex wedding. Such joyful scenes as family and friends celebrated with the happy couple. It wasn't a church wedding, and certainly not an Anglican wedding – not even a wedding blessing. While the Anglican Church's highest court has said it is not against the church's constitution to bless same-sex weddings, only a handful of Australian dioceses have permitted that. And now Melbourne Diocese – once the progressive capital of the Australian church – has elected an archbishop firmly opposed to same-sex weddings. There will be no wedding blessings here. He is quoted in last Sunday's Age as saying that church must welcome people in same-sex relationships. But that rings hollow. How can you welcome people while damning their relationships as sinful? The newly elected archbishop, Ric Thorpe, a bishop from London, is first and foremost a church planter. That is why his Melbourne supporters have chosen him. The church is in decline in Melbourne, with numbers of worshippers dropping and many small parishes struggling for survival. His supporters want to see significant growth in the church, and think that means planting lots of new congregations. But will those brave new plants be attractive to Australians in the 21st century, when presumably they will be preaching against same-sex marriage, given the core group of Melbourne Anglicans who campaigned for his election hold the same view? When more than 60 per cent of Australians voted in favour of same-sex marriage in the 2017 plebiscite? Bishop Thorpe claims the Scriptures are clear that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that cannot be set aside. Many significant scripture scholars read the Bible differently. They say the very few Bible verses that are claimed to prohibit same-sex relationships actually prohibit only promiscuous, predatory relationships. But conservatives have latched on to same-sex prohibition as their line in the sand. Some would argue they took up the cause when they lost the debate in the 1990s about ordaining women. It has given them a stick to knock progressive Anglicans into the ground. The election of Bishop Thorpe shows they are winning. The debate has echoes of the nasty debate that raged in the Anglican Church over divorce last century. Divorced people could not remarry in church, and often were made distinctly unwelcome in congregations. It was Melbourne Diocese in the 1970s that overturned that, and pushed the national church to change. And in 1972, Melbourne Diocese called for homosexuality to be decriminalised, eight years before the state government agreed. How sad that Melbourne has now joined the conservatives. Bishop Thorpe is quoted as saying that the same-sex debate is 'a distraction' from the message of the church. No, it is harming the church's message. The church's message is that God is love, and loves all people unconditionally – and that includes gay people, their spouses and their families.