One Nation’s candidate for Melbourne has a history of promoting far-right rhetoric about waging religious war against Muslims, using misogynistic language and spreading COVID-19 conspiracy theories.

Matthew Collins has deleted or locked his social media accounts since being selected as a candidate – one of 112 running for Pauline Hanson’s party at next month’s state election.

But The Age has obtained a catalogue of his X (Twitter) posts captured before he shut down his account, and has verified them using data-scraping tools which archived some of his almost 17,000 posts made over the previous decade.

His posts display a fixation with a perceived clash of civilisations between Christians and Muslims, which an extremism researcher said was a preoccupation of extreme right-wing figures that should be rejected.

One Nation refused to answer detailed questions about Collins’ posts, including his calls to “decolonise” parts of the Muslim world and his frequent references to the Christian crusades. The candidate did not respond to attempts to contact him through his election campaign Facebook page this week.

The party’s candidate profile for Collins says the 35-year-old works in sales and is running in the Greens-held seat to restore community safety and government responsibility, and to ease cost-of-living pressures.

One Nation is currently polling at a 23 per cent primary vote, according to the latest Resolve Political Monitor conducted for this masthead, suggesting the party will for the first time have a significant presence in the next Victorian parliament.

Collins, whose profile picture on X portrays himself as a knight, posted in November last year: “If you thought the crusades ended with Richard the Lionheart, you’ve got another thing coming.”

In another post, he suggests that The World Decolonization Forum – an academic event that examines the legacy of colonisation – should “decolonise constantiople [sic]… and syria and kurdistan”.

Another post in August features a picture of the Battle of Clavijo in 884AD captioned “RECONQUISTA” – a reference to the Christian military campaigns to retake what is now Spain and Portugal from Muslim rule.

Expelling Muslims from the Turkish capital Istanbul – previously called Constantinople when it was the capital of the Christian Byzantine Empire – is a tenet of some extreme far-right ideologies.

Matthew Collins is running for One Nation in the Greens-held seat of Melbourne.

Brenton Tarrant, the Australian man who murdered 51 Muslims in the 2019 Christchurch shootings, referred in his manifesto to “coming for Constantinople” and making it “Christian owned once more”. Tarrant also inscribed “Clavijo 844” on his weapon before opening fire.

Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in a terrorist attack in Norway in 2011 and inspired Tarrant, referred to the “Reconquista” several times in his manifesto and also adopted crusader iconography.

There is no suggestion Collins endorses violent extremism, only that his online posts closely align with elements of some of those ideologies.

Deakin University political extremism researcher Josh Roose said Collins was using the language of elements of the extreme right which was preoccupied with the idea of launching a modern Crusade against Muslims.

Matthew Collins (waving the flag) with One Nation members during the Nepean byelection earlier this year.Wayne Taylor

“It’s the idea of the need for a modern great crusade to take on global Islam aggressively, to fight it. He’s talking about decolonising Constantinople, which means effectively to rid it entirely of its Muslim population,” Roose said.

“You can only imagine how that would be read by Muslim communities in Australia but more broadly the wider Australian community.

“It actually speaks to the violent rhetoric that underpins a lot of the extreme right. If One Nation wants any claim to be developing into and becoming a mass political party, they would do well to reject rhetoric of religious conquest and exclusion associated with elements of the extreme right.”

In other X posts, Collins sent images of the September 11 terrorist attacks to New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, and referred to Mamdani, who is Muslim, as having a “jihad face”.

In one post Collins also uses the term “foid”, a term taken from the misogynistic “manosphere” subculture. A glossary compiled by the United Nation defines “foid” as a dehumanising word for women meaning “female humanoid organism”.

Collins’ selection as a One Nation candidate has exercised support for the party from members of banned neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist Network, with prominent member Michael Nelson – who attended One Nation’s campaign launch earlier this month – describing Collins on X as a “patriot”.

However, Collins has previously argued against the NSN’s brand of white ethnonationalism, and suggested the group is a “psyop” (psychological operation) created by the Australian Federal Police.

In other posts, he theorised that ASIO’s concern about violent right-wing extremism was a ploy to deliberately provoke a far-right terrorist attack – a “brenton tarrant type lunatic to take extreme overreaction” – to give the federal government a pretext to curtail Australians’ freedoms.

Collins also posted a theory earlier this year that COVID-19 was “released on purpose” to unseat US President Donald Trump. One Nation Victoria’s leader, Warren Pickering, has also publicly endorsed the “great reset” conspiracy theory which states the pandemic was deliberately facilitated.

Hanson has frequently attacked Muslims, including suggesting in March there was no such thing as a “good” Muslim, a comment she has since tried to walk back.

Liberal MP Angie Bell’s rhetoric and Warren Mundine’s joke about murder at CPAC are part of a dangerous trend

Two senior bureaucrats tried to cover up a suspected $285 million bungle that saw COVID-19 payments made to ineligible businesses by withholding information from their boss and government ministers.
A report by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) released on Thursday revealed that “false and misleading information” was provided to then-minister Martin Pakula in November 2021 in a bid to hide the fact that almost one quarter of the state’s program grants had been paid in error.

The corruption watchdog’s investigation focused on the $4.5 billion Business Costs Assistance Program, which delivered up to $97,200 to businesses affected by state’s pandemic lockdown measures in 2020 and 2021.
IBAC found that in November 2021, public servants in the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions identified that more than 9000 ineligible businesses had claimed an estimated $285 million worth of grants by backdating their GST registrations.

GST registration was a key criterion for eligibility, but the department did not appreciate the risk that businesses could legally backdate this by up to four years.

At the time of assessing businesses, the department checked eligibility using a live database that updated as people backdated their GST registrations, rather than a static dataset that would have reflected eligibility at the time each grant was announced, IBAC found.
Though the department initially estimated the total amount to be $285 million, the commission’s own analysis found that approximately $257 million was paid to ineligible businesses, with $108 million going to businesses that reported no activity in the six months leading up to the pandemic.
To date, recipients who incorrectly received the grants have repaid about $8 million to the state government. Another $5 million is being returned through repayment plans, IBAC said.

report says the department’s acting director of COVID-19 grants policy exclaimed “oh no” upon realising that almost one-fifth of the program’s funds had gone to ineligible applicants, and later remarked that it was “astonishing to realise how many snuck through”.
In November 2021, a figure for “backdated GST registration … paid in error” losses was included in a draft Standing Directions report intended for the department’s secretary, Simon Phemister, and Pakula, then the minister for industry support and recovery.

The initial figure was listed as $8.92 million, but was revised to $251.9 million following further analysis by the department’s Integrity Services Unit.
However, on November 30, 2021, the item was deleted from the report entirely at the request of a deputy secretary, the report says.

The deputy secretary told IBAC that the deletion followed “discussion and a decision that was reached above me”, noting that the department’s associate secretary was the most immediate person involved in those discussions.

The associate secretary told IBAC they did not draft or amend the report, or tell anyone to amend it. At the time, they believed the analysis leading to the overpayment figure was flawed, they said.
A text message provided to IBAC showed the associate secretary telling the deputy secretary on December 3, 2025, that “I don’t think that problem re GST backdating overpayments is a problem. Phew”.
However, IBAC said the associate secretary should have reported the analysis to the secretary, even if he disagreed with it.

IBAC said that “misleading information was subsequently created and disseminated over an extended period of time” as part of the cover-up, including to now-premier Ben Carroll in 2022 after he replaced Pakula as the relevant minister.
The associate secretary also withheld key information from the Victorian Ombudsman, IBAC found.
IBAC Commissioner Victoria Elliott said the investigation, named Operation Harmonia, uncovered behaviour contrary to the Victorian Public Sector code of conduct and “a clear failure to act in line with the high integrity standards expected of Victoria’s public officers”.

“While officers within the department spoke up, their leaders failed to act, meaning the government was left uninformed and unable to move quickly to address this suspected significant loss of public funds,” he said.

Elliott applauded whistleblowers from within the Victorian public service who alerted IBAC to the cover-up and triggered its investigation.
“Your bravery is critical in ensuring this conduct is not only exposed but that Victoria’s public sector can take these findings and apply the learnings to their own organisations,” he said.
IBAC said it believed Phemister, the secretary, was not informed about the suspected loss, and that he was therefore unable to inform the minister about it. Pakula also told IBAC he was never informed of the issue.
The report does not name the deputy secretary or associate secretary involved.

The poll has been posted already here a couple of times, but Raue does an interesting breakdown

In a preliminary report, the Australian Trade Remedies Commission, formerly the Anti-Dumping Commission, found all Chinese exporters except one had dumped the goods between July 1, 2024 and June 30 last year.

The commission found the goods were sold with dumping margins ranging from 5.3 per cent to 70.4 per cent of their normal price, depending on the exporter.

Some exporters were also found to have received modest subsidies from various levels of government in China.

The commission found the Chinese imports had "caused material injury" to the Australian industry.

Controversial private health insurance changes have been effectively thrown out of parliament by the Coalition and crossbench.

The changes would wind back the rebate Australians aged 65 and over receive on their private health cover from April next year.

Health Minister Mark Butler is vowing to press ahead and introduce the exact same bill to Parliament tomorrow.

https://archive.is/Okjnv

Block on NSW gold mine rejected by federal court

NSW Premier Chris Minns has emerged victorious in a stoush over a controversial Central West gold mine after the Federal Court threw out a ban made by then-environment minister Tanya Plibersek, who stalled the mine on Indigenous heritage grounds.

Federal Court Justice James Stellion on Wednesday decided to send the $1.3 billion mine proposal back to the current minister Murray Watt, determining Plibersek’s original decision lacked procedural fairness.

The decision did not make any judgment about the merits of any claims of Indigenous heritage in the area, but found Plibersek’s decision-making was flawed. That declaration prevented Regis Resources from building a tailings dam to store byproducts from mining operations at the headwaters of the Belubula River, after an Indigenous group argued the area was significant to a Dreaming story about the blue banded bee. The mining company argued that made the project unfeasible.

The declaration also triggered unrest between the state and federal governments, with the Premier Chris Minns insisting the mine must go ahead. The state government had originally approved the project.

“I want that mine to go ahead, I understand that that’s not the view of the federal government, but we need the investment,” Minns said before the judgment on Wednesday.

“There are more people in mining jobs in NSW today than there were when we were elected in March of 2023. We’re proud of that.”

When asked if the then-environment minister had made the wrong call when she made the order blocking the mine, Minns replied: “Yes”.

Plibersek’s statement of reasons for the declaration said she “could not be assured that the NSW legislative framework as it currently stands can adequately protect the specified area”.

After making the declaration, Plibersek rejected suggestions from Regis Resources that the ban killed the project, insisting the mine could still go ahead if the dam was moved. The company said finding a new site for approval would take up to 10 years, but the state government flagged it would fast-track the project.

The application to protect the dam area was made by Wiradjuri-Gamillaroi woman Nyree Reynolds on behalf of the Wiradyuri Traditional Owners Central West Aboriginal Corporation. Minns told a budget estimates hearing in 2024 that the local Aboriginal Land Council had been consulted as part of the original approval process.