The Briefing

Wednesday Headlines:
Students to stage school walkout over Pauline Hanson
One dead and more than 200 rescued after Bali ferry fire
News bargaining incentive hits parliament today
Victorian authorities prepare for mass vaccine event of little penguins
Tooth decay cases soar across Australia as people put off expensive dentist work
Deep Dive: When Bension Siebert's role was made redundant here at The Briefing, the award-winning journalist found himself staring down a shrinking media industry that no longer seemed willing to invest in the investigations he'd spent his career chasing.
A week later, he was walking out of a stranger's apartment with $600 in his pocket, having just taken his first paid in-person sex work booking.
In this episode of The Briefing, Chris Spyrou and Sacha Barbour Gatt welcome their former colleague and co-host back to the mic to unpack an unlikely career move - and the essay about it that's turned his life upside down in a matter of days.

Bension explains how five hours of sex work can out-earn a week of journalism, why he sees it less as a last resort than a kind of liberation, and how a media landscape squeezed by redundancies and legal risk pushed him toward telling the stories he says newsrooms won't.

Bension’s essay on Cheek Media: How sex work saved my investigative journalism career
Bension’s Instagram: bensionfindsout
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Wednesday Headlines:
Coalition to back One Nation’s foreign fighters bill
PM refuses to apologise over melons comment
Colombia quake death toll climbs above 200
RBA leaves door open to hikes after leaving rates on hold
Donald Trump signs executive order to reduce the number of childhood vaccines
New canine study reveals they're skilled in responding to human emotion
Deep Dive: Harry Potter fans this week had a major win. They managed to have critical infrastructure worth almost a billion dollars moved to protect a memorial for Dobby the house elf.

That critical infrastructure was a single undersea cable.

These cables rest in the ocean and are responsible for 95% of all internet and data traffic. Cat videos, financial transactions, email – all of it would disappear if these thin cables were cut.
In this episode of The Briefing, we’re joined by Dean Veverka, the Chair of the International Cable Protection Committee, to learn who built this critical infrastructure, and who’s protecting the world’s undersea cables from threats and sabotage.
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Tuesday Headlines:
Hanson to introduce foreign fighters bill as PM and Taylor hammer out gambling, NDIS and widow tax deal
More than 80 people dead after Colombia earthquake
South Australia announce royal commission into AI
Aussies being urged to challenge their car insurers over price hikes
It's Census night
Deep Dive: How do you escape from a cult? That was one of the questions a Victorian parliamentary inquiry has been trying to answer, ever since a LiSTNR podcast exposed an abusive cult in Geelong and sparked a firestorm of advocacy from cult survivors.
Last month, that inquiry handed down its report, “Coercion and harm in high control groups”. There are 39 recommendations in the report, with a focus on protecting children and better support for those exiting a coercive group.
One of the advocates behind that inquiry was Laura McConnell, a survivor of the Two By Twos fundamentalist cult who speaks to Sacha Barbour Gatt in this episode of The Briefing.
You can listen to Pray Harder – Episode 1 – Noel's War here.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Monday Headlines:
Parliament returns, support for Labor slumps to decade low
Two airport workers stood down after another near miss at Sydney airport
Netanyahu rejects US peace proposal for Gaza
Ukraine says 50,000 North Korean soldiers will be deployed to fight for Russia
90,000 take part in world’s biggest fun run in Sydney
Deep Dive: Tomorrow is census night, and this year the form looks a little different.

For the first time, Australians are being asked directly about their sexual orientation and gender - and for the first time, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) says artificial intelligence is helping process the millions of responses that pour in.
In this episode of The Briefing, Chris Spyrou goes behind the questionnaire with someone who's helped shape it for the best part of thirty years. How does the ABS land on which categories make the cut? Where do your name and address actually end up? Can the online system survive the night after its infamous 2016 collapse? And in an era of shaky faith in government, does the ABS really expect all of us to tell the truth?
Chris is joined by Jenny Telford, General Manager of the Census and Population Division at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
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Fresh data shows nearly 1,500 homes purchased under the federal government's 5% deposit scheme have been flipped into investment properties.
It’s a bit of a plot twist for an initiative built on a very specific promise: helping everyday Aussies get onto the property ladder as owner-occupiers with just a fraction of the usual deposit and zero lenders mortgage insurance.
In this episode of The Briefing we revisit Helen Smith's chat with David Koch from last year about the scheme to get you across how it all works and what you need to know about it.
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TikTok: @thebriefingpod
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.