Brisbane Hustle · Oct 01, 2026
Trivia ❓
What is the name of the iconic artificial beach located in the heart of Brisbane's South Bank Parklands?
Answer at the bottom
Australia's online safety watchdog has put some of the world's biggest gaming companies on notice, demanding stronger protections for children on their platforms.
The eSafety Commission identified significant gaps in how major platforms — including Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft and Steam — handle serious harms such as grooming, child exploitation and violent extremist content. After reviewing submissions from those companies, the watchdog found notable differences in their approaches and called on the industry to lift its standards.
The commission's review highlighted three specific problem areas across some platforms:
- Harmful content detection
- Repeat-offender prevention
- Information-sharing initiatives
Child Safety in Focus
The gaming industry findings were among several child safety issues raised in federal politics on Friday. Shadow Indigenous Australians Minister Julian Leeser separately called on the Prime Minister and the federal Indigenous Australians minister to visit South Hedland in Western Australia, where up to 15 Aboriginal children — some as young as five — were reportedly living unsupervised in a state-owned home. Leeser told ABC Radio National Breakfast that services across state and federal government had failed to coordinate, and urged federal agencies to be included in a coordination committee the WA state government has established in response.
Elsewhere, Deputy Liberal Leader Jane Hume urged the government to reverse the Australian Taxation Office's decision to stop accepting credit card payments from November 30, a move linked to a new ban on businesses adding surcharges for card payments on networks including eftpos, Mastercard and Visa. Hume said the change imposed unnecessary costs on small businesses, while Wentworth MP Allegra Spender indicated she would write to the ATO seeking a reversal. The Productivity Commission also weighed in on the nation's economic outlook, with commissioner Angela Jackson saying cutting the company tax rate remained one of the clearest pathways to lifting business investment and addressing Australia's productivity challenge.
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Armed with shovels, rakes and chainsaws, a growing team of citizen searchers is combing a stretch of dense bushland in southern Western Australia, hoping to find any trace of four people who vanished nearly two decades ago.
Chantelle McDougall, her daughter Leela, Simon Kadwill and Tony Popic disappeared from the outskirts of the small town of Nannup in 2007. The group left a letter pinned to their rented farmhouse door claiming they had moved to Brazil, sold their cars, given away possessions and rehomed their dogs — but they never travelled on their passports and their bank accounts were left untouched. A 2017 coronial inquest could not determine whether the four were alive or dead.
Who Is Searching — and Why
The search is now focused on Northcliffe, roughly 100 kilometres south of Nannup, an area flagged as a place of interest after two separate leads: in the days before the disappearance, either Tony Popic or Simon Kadwill purchased two bus tickets to Northcliffe; and in the months that followed, prisoners carrying out track clearing nearby reported finding items of women's clothing and detecting a smell of death in the area. WA Police did search the region at the time but later admitted they had been in the wrong location.
Leading the current effort is Matt Strickland, vice-president of Tasmanian missing persons search group Find Our Lost Loved Ones. Each morning he briefs the team around a campfire at the local holiday park, maps spread out as the group plans the day's grid. Volunteers include geologists, former detectives, prospectors and family members. Among them is mental health nurse Teili Rafferty, who travelled nearly 200 kilometres from her home in Bunbury, spending time away from her two young daughters to join the search. "If you were lost in the bush and you've been there for a really long time, you would want someone to come and try and help find you," she said. Also on site since day one are 24-year-old hospitality worker Ethan Watsham and his older brother Jordan, who joined after the case was covered in the ABC podcast Expanse: The Nannup Four.
The team has been battling rain and humidity to clear overgrown tracks, making way for cadaver dogs to comb the area for human remains. The volunteers — strangers when they arrived nine days ago — say the shared mission has forged unlikely bonds as the search continues.
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A critical arterial road on Tasmania's east coast could require up to $2.7 billion in works, according to a new assessment by Building Tasmania that examined seven options for improving the notorious St Marys Pass.
The pass — a 6-kilometre stretch of narrow hinterland road built by convicts nearly 200 years ago — connects the Tasman Highway and Esk Highway, linking east coast communities to both Hobart and Launceston. It gained national attention in late 2022 when a major landslip forced its closure for three months, cutting off emergency service access, the delivery of essential goods, and tourism during peak season.
Seven options assessed, no clear fix
Building Tasmania's newly released report assessed options ranging from maintaining the current road through to five alternative alignments. Costs span from $50 million to $2.7 billion. The assessment was frank in its conclusions: "The assessment does not identify a single solution that fully resolves the challenges associated with St Marys Pass," the report states, citing a long history of slope instability including landslides, rockfalls, and tree falls.
Community consultation raised concerns about the future of the town of St Marys — home to fewer than 1,000 residents — if a bypass route were built. Some community members proposed retaining the existing road as a bicycle and walking track should an alternative alignment proceed.
The report outlined two standout options:
- The 'blue route', which would re-route the pass along an existing TasNetworks power line corridor north of the current road, received the most positive public response. Building Tasmania favoured it as the "shortest and straightest route", already cleared of vegetation, and able to be built without closing the existing pass. Its estimated cost is $1 billion.
- The 'purple route' — a program of targeted upgrades to the existing road carried out over 10 years — was found to achieve the "strongest overall outcome" when weighing cost, community support, and deliverability. At approximately $50–70 million, it is the cheapest upgrade option and received the second-highest level of public support.
"The purple route provides the best balance of cost, deliverability, environmental outcomes and community support," the report concluded.
Funding gap remains
The federal government has so far committed $10 million toward scope and development work, but significantly more funding will be required to progress any solution. Break O'Day Mayor Mick Tucker described a long-term fix as urgent, arguing that repeated patch-up jobs over the years represented wasted time and money. "If we were to stop doing all that and put all the money into one project, it'll pay for itself over time," he said. "At what time do you say it's too expensive? Because it's only going to get dearer."
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Darwin's October food calendar is once again dominated by laksa — the spicy South-East Asian noodle broth that, for one month each year, gets folded into everything from pavlovas to cold brew coffee. The Darwin International Laksa Festival, now in its eighth year, has more than 118 venues across the Top End city competing for a $15,000 prize pool split across five categories, including a dedicated award for the best laksa-inspired dish.
Some of this year's more inventive entries are already turning heads. At Pho in the northern suburb of Rapid Creek, owner Linh Do combined two of the restaurant's most popular dishes to produce a laksa bánh mì — and sold out within 45 minutes on the festival's opening day. "We sold out within the first 45 minutes, which we did not expect at all," she said. "It's a fusion of everything. I really like bánh mì. I'm Vietnamese and my partner is from Darwin, so he loves laksa."
Creative entries span the menu
Chef judges will move through all participating venues before a grand finale at the end of the month, where the coveted Golden Bowl trophy is awarded for the best traditional laksa. This year's laksa-inspired field includes:
- A laksa-flavoured iced long black with cold foam and a laksa milkshake, developed by barista Tricia Wong at Besser Brew Bar
- Deep-fried ice cream infused with laksa syrup and laksa powder, entered by Darwin Trailer Boat Club chef Nekka Terce
- A laksa pandan pavlova from Together & Co and a laksa cheesecake from Moorish Cafe
- A spicy laksa vanilla slice from Motor City Pizza
Salted Egg head chef Mark Langat, whose Darwin Waterfront restaurant is among the participants, said the range of entries reflects a growing local understanding of laksa's versatility. "People in Darwin really put so much effort into laksa, they can be so creative on how to fusion the laksa into any type of dish," he said. "Main course, small plate or dessert … laksa is a friendly ingredient for every dish."
Darwin locals and visitors are invited to vote for their favourite laksa and laksa-inspired dishes throughout the month.
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New home owners in Western Sydney are facing a double blow: interest rates have reached a 15-year high this week, while Sydney home values fell 1.4 per cent in September alone — leaving many mortgage holders stretched well beyond their comfort zones.
Rooty Hill resident Chris Shaw, who bought his first home in April with help from his parents, says half of his regular household income now goes toward mortgage repayments. "It is hurting quite a bit. It's a bit tough to make do at the moment," he said, adding that plans to start a family depend partly on a financial safety net provided by his parents. Shaw argued that rising interest rates fall unevenly across the community, benefiting older, mortgage-free savers while punishing recent buyers. "Interest rates, as people say, is quite blunt and it hurts people like me and my wife far more than most people in the economy," he said.
Battening Down the Hatches in Western Sydney
Adam Leto from the Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue said many new home owners in the region were already under mortgage stress before the latest rate rise. "I think a lot of new home owners will be battening down the hatches, hoping they can ride this thing out over the next year or so," he said. "Western Sydney families know how to stretch a dollar but it's getting harder and harder." The Reserve Bank of Australia said economic growth and inflation had come in higher than expected, making rate rises necessary to ease capacity pressures and return inflation to target.
Not everyone is alarmed. Jonathon Noujaim, 26, who owns a home in Parramatta, says roughly 30 per cent of his income covers repayments — and he has become more deliberate with his spending as rates have risen. He also welcomes the price correction. "I'm happy that property prices are coming down because it means more young people like me can also get their foot in the market," he said. Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Sydney Andrew Grant urged anyone struggling with repayments to contact their bank early. "You can talk to the bank and hopefully do that early so that you can at least be walked through some of the options you do face," he said, warning that one or two further rate rises could make things "quite difficult for a lot of people out there."
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A $2.2 billion Pacific Highway bypass around Coffs Harbour is set to open before Christmas, completing the final missing link for uninterrupted highway travel between Melbourne and Brisbane — with not a single traffic light to slow the journey.
The project will divert an estimated 35,000 vehicles a day away from the centre of Coffs Harbour, eliminating the city's 12 sets of traffic lights for through-traffic. While the efficiency gains are significant, the bypass will also reroute drivers away from one of the country's most recognisable roadside landmarks.
Big Banana prepares for life off the highway
The Big Banana, built beside the old Pacific Highway in 1964, currently draws an estimated one million visitors a year, according to CEO Michael Lockman. Bank data, he said, shows that around 10 per cent of all people passing through Coffs Harbour spend money at the attraction. In anticipation of losing passing traffic, the business has invested up to $20 million over the past decade to build rides and a water park, and employs 170 staff at peak season.
"Our goal is not to just target people that are coming to Coffs Harbour, but our goal is to make people come to Coffs Harbour," Mr Lockman said. "We want to grow the tourist economy here."
Visitors spoken to by ABC Coffs Coast reflected the mixed mood. Daniel Corke, who stopped with his family to fulfil a promise of a banana milkshake and a photo, said there was "zero" chance of a visit if the highway no longer passed the attraction. "It's a bit of an Aussie tradition," he said. Miranda Seif called it "a rite of passage" and said it would be "horrible" if travellers could no longer see the landmark from the road.
Not everyone sees the bypass as straightforward progress. Jay Bairstow, from Brisbane, said he was "not that big a fan of the bypasses" because of the damage they can do to small towns and the roadside culture that comes with slower travel through regional centres.
More than 50 local business owners have already joined workshops on how to adapt to the reduced traffic flow. Participants have been studying the experience of Geelong, which was bypassed by a ring road 12 years ago, as they look for lessons on how regional economies can adjust when the highway moves on.
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Nearly 30 years after Sarah Sutter stepped onto the court as one of the Adelaide Thunderbirds' inaugural players in 1997, her daughter Jazmin McKay has signed with the same club — becoming the first mother-daughter signing in the Thunderbirds' history.
"It still doesn't feel real, it's just a dream come true," McKay said after confirming the deal.
A legendary name in Australian netball
Sutter is one of the more decorated figures in the sport's history. Alongside Kathryn Harby-Williams, she formed a formidable defensive pairing in the Thunderbirds' early years, helping the club win back-to-back premierships in 1998 and 1999. On the international stage, she claimed gold at the 1995 Netball World Cup and the 1998 Commonwealth Games. Despite growing up hearing about her mother's career, McKay admitted it was only in recent years she fully grasped the scale of what Sutter had achieved. "I didn't realise how much hard work it took to actually get there," she said.
Sutter was present when the Thunderbirds called her daughter with the news — and reportedly screamed so loudly McKay could barely hear what was being said. "Once I see her step on the court, I will shed a tear," Sutter said.
Joining a powerhouse
McKay, 18, joins a Thunderbirds side coming off a third premiership in four years, with world-class Jamaican defenders Shamera Sterling-Humphrey and Latanya Wilson anchoring the circle. McKay had been a training partner with the club during 2026 before earning her signing. She also brings a strong local record, having featured in the state premier league grand final for the past three consecutive years with Contax Netball Club, winning each time. Her goals extend well beyond the domestic competition:
- Signing with the Thunderbirds as a full squad member
- Continuing to develop her defensive game alongside elite teammates
- Eventually earning selection for the Australian Diamonds
"I've ticked one off, and I want to continue growing my netball, and playing for the Thunderbirds and eventually hopefully reach that international stage," McKay said.
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Security is always excessive until it's not enough.
💡 Answer: Streets Beach
