The Briefing

You’ve probably heard of 'nangs', the canisters full of nitrous oxide. The laughing gas can help whip your cream - but used incorrectly, it can also make you high. The substance can be more dangerous than it seems - nangs have contributed to the deaths of 20 people in the last 20 years in Australia, with more potentially not recorded as coronial lab equipment isn’t always up to the task. In this e...

The Australian casino industry has been in strife for years, and the latest iteration is another enquiry into Sydney’s Star. The second Bell review is currently underway and set to finish up in May looking at whether the Star’s license should be revoked. This comes after the Star was fined $100m 18 months ago; was found unsuitable to run a casino; and an external manager was appointed. In this epi...

Royel Maddell and Otis Pavlovic make up the Aussie pop-guitar duo Royel Otis. The pair are living the rock star life on tour, currently being in the middle of a sold-out national tour before they head to North America for a month of shows. In this chat with Tom Tilley, Royel and Otis talk about the process behind their debut album Pratts and Pain, why they initially didn’t want to do live performa...

Rowi Singh is a Sydney-based artist and beauty influencer. She’s a proud Indian-Australian woman, and melds Indian and Western culture in many of the mesmerizing makeup looks she showcases on TikTok and Instagram. In this chat with Antoinette Lattouf, Rowi admits she always wanted to be “some sort of famous”, explains the choice to ditch her nine-to-five job for influencing - and tells us why repr...

Do you remember the early days of Facebook and Instagram? When your feed was filled with content you actually wanted like your friends’ updates and family dog pictures? Have you noticed that now every second post feels like it’s sponsored or an ad? If yes, it's not your imagination - it’s because you’re noticing the cycle social media platforms go through, where they seem to get worse and worse ov...

The crackdown on vaping goes into its next stage today, with the government making it illegal to import any non-therapeutic vapes, that includes rechargable vapes and anything you would buy without a prescription. It’s after disposable vapes were banned from being imported at the beginning of this year. In this episode of The Briefing, Bension Siebert speaks with Jamie Hartmann-Boyce from the Depa...

An elite foreign spy group called 'A-Team' has been targeting Australian students, academics, law enforcement officials, a former politician and even a prime minister’s family members.   That's the assessment of Australia's top intelligence agency, ASIO, which released its annual assessment of the biggest threats to our national security overnight.  On this episode of The Briefing, Bension Siebert...

The NRL will create history this month and launch season 2024 in Las Vegas, USA. Two games will be played in prime time: Sea Eagles v Rabbitohs & Roosters v Broncos, with the league hoping to bring their game to America’s 330 million strong market. In this episode of The Briefing, Bension Siebert sits down with former NRL great, host of the Bye Round & NRL commentator for Fox Sports and Tr...

"Ovarian cancer wasn't even on my radar."  February is ovarian cancer awareness month in Australia. It's a cruel disease, with 70% of patients discovering the cancer in advanced stages, and a shocking 49% five-year survival rate.  In this episode of The Briefing, our producer Simon Beaton sits down to speak with his mum, who was diagnosed less than six months ago, as well as Lisa Finuncane, who ha...

Ovarian cancer is a silent scourge in Australia. Most people know little about it, there aren’t any tests you can do to detect it early, and that means 70% of women and gender diverse people diagnosed with it catch it late. Ovarian cancer has a 49% five year survival rate, whereas breast cancer by contrast has a 92% survival rate. In this episode of The Briefing, producer Simon Beaton speaks with...

Taylor Swift has finished her run of sold-out concerts here in Australia, playing in front of over 600,000 fans throughout the tour. Yet with events of this size comes a price to our environment. Many fans fly interstate or internationally, purely to be at those shows, which also use large amounts of power to amplify sound and for light displays. They also produce copious amounts of waste, includi...

American firm Intuitive Machines made history last Friday when its lunar lander touched down on the Moon. It’s the first private company to land on the Moon, and the first US mission to land on the lunar surface in more than 50 years. It’s up there for a week conducting experiments and preparing for humans to return to the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program. In this episode of the Briefing, we...

Police have charged a New South Wales police officer, Constable Beau Lamarre-Condon, with the murder of former Network Ten presenter, Jesse Baird, and his partner, QANTAS flight attendant Luke Davies.  At the time of recording, police divers have been searching dams in Goulburn, southwest of Sydney, looking for Baird and Davies’ bodies. Often, when we tell these stories, we focus on the criminal a...

It’s been two years since the start of the war in Ukraine, and both Russia and Ukraine appear to be at a stalemate. Russia has been making tiny territorial gains on the ground at an enormous cost both in troops and equipment; while Ukraine is on the backfoot after failing to achieve the objectives of their 2023 counteroffensive, while also sustaining huge casualties. In this episode of The Briefin...

Kumi Taguchi is an Australian journalist, broadcaster and presenter living in Sydney. She’s currently the host of Insight on SBS, which many would consider to be one of the most challenging and stressful hosting gigs in the country. Joining Tom Tilley for the Weekend Briefing, Kumi explains what goes on behind the scenes of the show, growing up “feeling on the outer”, reconnecting with her father...

Josh Szeps wants us all think about having more uncomfortable conversations. The Australian media personality and podcast host, who recently departed the ABC because he was “too spicy” for the public broadcaster, is a big fan of asking the 'why' behind the status quo.  Joining Antoinette Lattouf, Josh speaks on what life is like after the ABC, the non-mystery of the spelling of his name, and expla...

This year, the Australian government have rolled out a national framework guiding the use of AI, including Chat GPT, to be used within school classrooms across the country.  Use of Chat GPT had previously been banned in all public schools (aside from South Australia) amidst plagiarism and privacy concerns. So what changed? And will the use of artificial intelligence in our classrooms aid or limit...

Are we raising a generation of soft kids? Millennial parents are getting blamed for everything that seems to be wrong with Generation Alpha: that they’re lazy, entitled, addicted to their screens, and averse to boredom. Another big criticism is they lack resilience, social skills, and even the ability to read. In this episode of The Briefing we sit down with social researcher Ashley Fell to find o...

March 10th is the deadline Israel has given Hamas to release the remaining hostages before Israel launches a massive, troops-on-the-ground invasion of Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah. In this special afternoon episode of The Briefing, we speak to a 26-year-old woman sheltering in Rafah with her remaining family. Palestinian journalist and translator Aseel Mousa shares her story of survival, and...

More and more Australians are choosing rentvesting as their way into the property market. It’s basically buying in a high rent areas as an investment and then renting in an area you want to live. It means you can break into the property market, purchasing a property in lower-cost areas without giving up the benefits of a city lifestyle. In this episode of The Briefing, we’re joined by property exp...

At 8:30am today, Woolworths announced its CEO Brad Banducci is retiring after eight years in the top job.  Woolworths announced to the stock market that Banducci will be retiring in September, to make way for the company’s head of loyalty, Amanda Bardwell.  It comes after Balducci's disastrous interview on the ABC’s Four Corners on Monday night. So was this change due to Banducci's conduct in the...

Pharmacists are being given more power to give and refill prescriptions. It comes as more and more GPs opt out of bulk billing and a doctor shortage in regional areas mean it’s more difficult to see a doctor. So where are the trials and what types of medications can you get without having to see a GP? We’ll hear frome the Australian Medical Association, someone involved in the NSW/ACT Pharmacy Tri...

Sydney is currently dealing with a widespread asbestos-contaminated mulch investigation, with 45 locations - including potentially six schools - contaminated with bonded asbestos that was mixed in with garden mulch. Since investigation into the mulch began, most identified sites have been found with the much lower risk bonded asbestos, while two have been found to include friable asbestos, which p...

The number of people charged with human trafficking in Australian Federal Police is growing year on year. We’re talking about forced marriage, sexual exploitation, child trafficking, forced labour, domestic servitude and even slavery. In this episode of the Briefing, we’re joined by Justine Nolan is a Professor in the Faculty of Law and Justice at UNSW Sydney and Director of the Australian Human R...

The man many considered Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most powerful critic, Alexie Navalny, is dead.  His death comes after a highly publicised assassination attempt a few years ago, when it's believed Russian secret services tried to kill him by putting the deadly nerve agent Novichok into his underpants.  Incredibly, Navalny survived that assassination attempt. However, instead of remaining...