Today's Top Story: High Court decides the fate of the Citizenship Seven.

The High Court ruled that Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce is ineligible to serve in Parliament because of his dual New Zealand citizenship. Barnaby Joyce will face a by-election after the High Court ruled his election invalid because of his New Zealand citizenship. The ABC reports that the ruling will put the Turnbull Government's one seat majority in jeopardy. The court also found that former Greens senators Scott Ludlum and Larissa Waters were not validly elected, along with One Nation's Malcolm Roberts and Senator Fiona Nash.

Michaelia Cash's Department let dumped PaTH Coffee Chain keep the $1000 payment for interns it exploited.

Buzzfeed reports that embattled Employment minister Michaelia Cash's department has admitted a Melbourne coffee franchise that was suspended from her flagship youth internship program wasn't asked to repay the $1000 payment it received from the government for taking interns. Expresso Lane coffee chain in Wollert on Melbourne's northern fringe has been suspended from the PaTH program for making an intern work hours “well beyond the maximum 50 hours per fortnight”, rostering on another job seeker before “the internship had even begun” and offering Visa gift cards as payments. Greg Manning, the assistant secretary in the Department of Employment, told Senate Estimates on Wednesday that Espresso Lane had not been asked to pay back the $1000 upfront payment from the government, despite breaching the PaTH contract. “So it's only the intern that suffers?” commented Labor senator Doug Cameron, to which employment officials didn't respond.

Breaking: The AFP has launched an investigation into how the media was tipped off about the raids at the AWU.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Australian Federal Police have launched an investigation into the leaking of information about the raids on the Australian Workers Union headquarters this week. The office of Employment Minister Michaelia Cash, which is still weathering a political storm over the involvement of one of her staff members in tipping off the media about the raids, has been notified of the leak investigation. Attorney-General George Brandis has said the government and representatives of the Registered Organisations Commission will no longer answer questions on the matter while the police probe is ongoing reports the SMH. Senator Cash's senior media adviser David De Garis quit on Wednesday after admitting he had tipped off members of the media that the raid to AWU offices was imminent, allowing them to be in place when the federal police arrived at AWU offices. His confession came after Senator Cash repeatedly told a committee her that her office was not involved. Labor accused Senator Cash of misleading Parliament, which is potentially a sackable offence.

Indigenous leaders enraged as advisory board referendum is rejected by Malcolm Turnbull.

There is deep anger in the community over the Prime Minister's decision to walk away from the historic Uluru Statement from the Heart. Malcolm Turnbull's statement on the issue was an "egregious" dog whistle, said Cape York leader Noel Pearson, who blamed Tony Abbott for pushing Mr Turnbull "further and further to the right" reports the ABC. The Uluru Statement was the end point of six months of consultations that were commissioned by the Federal Government to determine whether constitutional change was supported by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The ABC reports that hundreds of influential Indigenous Australians attended a three-day summit at Uluru in May, and a majority endorsed a referendum to establish a permanent Indigenous advisory body. In a statement, Prime Minister Turnbull said "the Government does not believe such a radical change to our constitution's representative institutions has any realistic prospect of being supported by a majority of Australians in a majority of states".

Women's superannuation not so super: The $120,000 gender gap.

The latest breakdown of Australia's $2.3 trillion superannuation pie confirms what we have known for a long time reports the ABC. Men do much better out of super than women do.
According to the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA), the average superannuation balance for women last year was $68,000 and for men, it was $112,000. The good news is that women are closing the gap on men, albeit slowly, super balances for women have jumped 53 per cent in the last two years, for men, the increase is 35 per cent. Women who retired in 2016 had an average super balance of $157,000 while men had an average super balance of $271,000. In a nutshell, neither men nor women had nowhere near enough to live on, meaning both men and women have to rely heavily on the age pension to top up their retirement incomes. Women who retired last year still had an average $120,000 less in their super than their male counterparts. And just like discrimination against women in many other walks of life, it is a problem that has been talked about for many years, but the numbers indicate that effectively little is changing.

Brought to you by

Written by

Photocredits
Image 1 abc.net.au
Image 2 thenewdaily.com.au
Image 3 smh.com.au
Image 4 theaustralian.com.au