Weekly Roundup - Top Articles and Commentary from Week 31 of 2026

  

Here are links to some selected articles of interest and our posts from this week.

• The Anti-Israel Industry

• Tony Abbotts Warning on Multiculturalism
• Hamas Destroys the Genocide Narrative
• Traitors have no right of return
• Customer Service Has Left The Building

Cartoon of the Day

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Customer Service Has Left the Building

There was a time when "customer service" meant exactly what the words implied. You had a problem, you phoned the company, a human being answered, listened to your issue, and tried to solve it. It wasn't perfect, but at least everyone involved understood the purpose of the exercise.

Today, customer service has evolved.

Unfortunately, it has evolved in the same direction as the dodo.

Recently I had to contact the service centre of a large telecommunications company because my internet service wasn't behaving itself. I approached the task with the same enthusiasm I reserve for dental appointments. Experience has taught me that dealing with large organisations can be a test of patience, endurance and occasionally blood pressure.

The phone rang.

A cheerful robotic voice welcomed me warmly.

"Your call is important to us."

Excellent, I thought. That's encouraging.

Then came the conditions.

Before speaking to anyone, I was reminded that I must treat the company's staff with courtesy and respect, and that abusive behaviour would result in my call being terminated.

Fair enough. Nobody should abuse customer service staff.

But it struck me that the relationship seemed a little one-sided.

They could keep me waiting for an hour, but heaven help me if I sighed too loudly.

Next came the reassuring announcement that my call would be recorded for training purposes.

Given some of my previous experiences, I couldn't help wondering exactly who was being trained.

Then the helpful robot explained that, to connect me to the right person more quickly, it would ask why I was calling.

I explained.

It repeated my explanation.

I confirmed that, yes, that was indeed why I was calling.

Progress!

Next it requested my customer number.

Then my account details.

Then my telephone password.

Then it asked me to finish by pressing the hash key.

Surely now I was about to reach the promised land...

No.

"Your call is important to us..."

...followed immediately by...

"Have you considered visiting our website where many common questions can be answered online?"

An interesting suggestion.

If my internet service had been working properly, I probably wouldn't have been calling about my internet service.

Back to the queue.

Every minute or so I received another comforting reminder that my call was extremely important.

This message gradually lost its emotional impact after hearing it for the fifteenth time.

Apparently my call was very important indeed...

...just not important enough for anyone to answer it.

Eventually I became convinced that modern customer service departments have redefined the word service.

Their primary objective no longer seems to be helping customers.

Instead, it appears to be preventing customers from ever reaching anyone capable of helping them.

The irony is that these systems are invariably introduced in the name of efficiency.

Efficient for whom?

Certainly not for the customer who has already spent forty minutes talking to a robot, listening to recorded messages, and hearing smooth jazz loop endlessly while contemplating life's poor decisions.

In my case, the problem eventually became serious enough that I wrote directly to the company's Managing Director.

Something remarkable happened.

A real human being telephoned me.

He introduced himself.

He gave me his direct telephone number.

He told me he would personally manage the case until it was resolved.

And do you know what?

He did.

The issue wasn't fixed in five minutes. It required several conversations and a number of technical investigations.

But every time I called, I spoke to the same person.

He knew the history.

He knew what had already been tried.

I didn't have to explain everything from the beginning.

It was almost like stepping into a time machine and discovering customer service as it used to exist.

The experience confirmed something many of us have suspected for years.

Technology is wonderful.

Automation is useful.

Artificial intelligence has enormous potential.

But none of them should replace the simple act of one human taking responsibility for helping another.

Somewhere along the way, companies convinced themselves that customers wanted fewer humans and more menus.

I don't believe they ever asked the customers.

Real service isn't measured by how effectively you can keep people away from your staff.

It's measured by how effectively your staff solve people's problems.

Perhaps the greatest innovation awaiting corporate Australia isn't another chatbot, another automated menu, or another AI assistant.

Perhaps it's the revolutionary idea of answering the phone.

Now that would be a genuine customer service breakthrough.

Traitors Have No Right of Return

There was a time when the word "traitor" carried enormous weight. It described someone who had knowingly turned their back on their country and sided with its enemies. Throughout history, traitors were among the most despised of criminals because they did more than simply break the law—they betrayed the very society that had given them citizenship, protection and freedom.

Yet today, we are expected to treat such people as unfortunate victims deserving compassion and rehabilitation.

Australia is once again debating whether Australians who travelled overseas to join ISIS should be allowed to return home. Some of the so-called "ISIS brides" have already been repatriated amid considerable controversy. Now we are hearing of ISIS fighters imprisoned in Iraq seeking to return to Australia, reportedly with assistance from advocates and a willingness by governments to consider their cases.

Let's stop sanitising what these people actually did.

These were not misguided tourists who made a poor choice while backpacking overseas. They voluntarily abandoned Australia to join one of the most barbaric terrorist organisations in modern history. ISIS enslaved women, executed prisoners, beheaded journalists, murdered civilians and sought to establish a murderous Islamist caliphate through terror and genocide. Those who joined its ranks did so knowingly and willingly.

When an Australian travels overseas to fight alongside ISIS, they are making a profound declaration: they have rejected Australia and everything it stands for. They have chosen the enemy.

In any meaningful sense, they have already renounced their membership of the Australian community.

Citizenship is not merely a piece of paper. It is a social contract. It carries rights, but it also carries obligations. One of the most fundamental obligations is loyalty to your country. If you willingly join an organisation at war with the values and interests of your nation, you have broken that contract.

The question therefore should not be, "How do we bring them home safely?" The question should be, "Why should they have any right to come home at all?"

We are repeatedly told that Australia has legal or international obligations that require us to consider their return. If that is true, then perhaps the problem lies not with public opinion but with the law itself.

Laws are not sacred texts handed down from a mountain. They are created by elected governments and can be changed when they no longer reflect the values or security interests of the nation.

If Australian law is inadequate to permanently exclude citizens who voluntarily join foreign terrorist organisations, then Parliament should amend it.

If citizenship laws are too weak, strengthen them.

If constitutional issues arise, address them.

If international agreements impose unreasonable obligations, reconsider them.

The first responsibility of any government is to protect its own citizens—not to provide a taxpayer-funded pathway home for people who consciously chose to fight for our enemies.

There is also a practical consideration that governments seem reluctant to discuss honestly. Even if such individuals are prosecuted and imprisoned upon their return, many will eventually be released into the Australian community. Some will remain committed extremists. Others may influence vulnerable young Australians. Security agencies may be required to monitor them for years at enormous cost and with no guarantee of success.

Why should Australians bear that burden?

Some argue that these individuals were manipulated or radicalised. That may occasionally be true, particularly in the case of children taken overseas by their parents. Children are victims and deserve protection and rehabilitation. But adults who voluntarily travelled to ISIS-controlled territory and pledged allegiance to a terrorist organisation are something entirely different.

Personal responsibility still matters.

Perhaps the most offensive aspect of this debate is the assumption that citizenship is unconditional—that no matter how grave the betrayal, Australia must always welcome its citizens home with open arms.

That is not compassion. It is moral confusion.

Every nation has the right to decide who belongs within its borders. If citizenship means anything at all, then actively joining an enemy force must surely be one of the clearest acts by which an individual forfeits the privilege of membership in that nation.

The overwhelming majority of Australians are loyal citizens. They obey the law, contribute to society and would never dream of joining a terrorist organisation dedicated to destroying the very freedoms they enjoy. Those Australians are entitled to expect that their government will put their safety and interests first.

Traitors made their choice when they boarded the plane to join ISIS.

Australia should not be required to rescue them from the consequences of that choice.

And if our laws say otherwise, then our laws need to change.

Because some choices should have consequences that are permanent.

Hamas Destroys the Genocide Narrative

For almost three years we have been told that Israel is committing "genocide" in Gaza.

The word has become ubiquitous in mainstream media reporting, on university campuses, at anti-Israel demonstrations and in countless United Nations statements. It is a word chosen deliberately because genocide is not simply a war crime. It is the deliberate attempt to destroy a people because of who they are.

Think Auschwitz. Rwanda. Cambodia.

But what happens when the evidence refuses to cooperate?

In a remarkable development, Hamas's own casualty figures have exposed how misleading much of the media narrative surrounding the Gaza war has been. According to an analysis by HonestReporting, the latest figures released by Hamas directly contradict claims that women and children make up the majority of those killed in the conflict – a statistic endlessly repeated by major media organisations around the world. (HonestReporting)

The uncomfortable truth is that if Israel had genuinely intended to commit genocide against Palestinians, it has been spectacularly incompetent at doing so.

After nearly three years of war:

• Gaza's population has continued to grow.

• Israel has facilitated the delivery of millions of tonnes of humanitarian aid despite Hamas routinely stealing and diverting it.

• Israel has issued evacuation warnings unprecedented in modern warfare, including text messages, leaflets, phone calls and designated humanitarian corridors.

• Civilian casualty ratios appear significantly lower than those seen in many recent urban conflicts.

• Hamas deliberately embeds its military infrastructure among civilians, including hospitals, schools and residential buildings. (HonestReporting)

Contrast this with conflicts that received relatively little international outrage:

• Syria's civil war killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

• Iraq's urban battles against ISIS produced enormous civilian casualties.

• Somalia, Sudan and Yemen have experienced humanitarian catastrophes of staggering proportions.

• No worldwide protest movement accused the coalition forces fighting ISIS of genocide.

• No university campuses were occupied demanding sanctions against Syria's Assad regime while he used chemical weapons against his own people.

The selective use of the word genocide tells us more about politics than it does about international law.

War is horrific. Civilians die in war, particularly when terrorists deliberately hide behind them. Every innocent life lost in Gaza is a tragedy. That should never be minimised.

But genocide requires intent.

The intent of Hamas on October 7 could hardly have been clearer. Its leaders openly call for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews worldwide. The Hamas Charter leaves little doubt about its objectives.

Israel's stated objective, on the other hand, has been the destruction of Hamas as a military and governing organisation following the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. One can debate Israeli tactics and individual military decisions. Democracies should do precisely that. But disagreement over military operations is not evidence of genocide.

The media bears considerable responsibility for the casual misuse of language throughout this conflict. Repeating casualty figures without scrutiny and presenting Hamas-controlled statistics as objective fact has fuelled an extraordinary global campaign accusing the world's only Jewish state of perpetrating genocide.

Now Hamas's own numbers are undermining that narrative.

Perhaps it is time for journalists to ask themselves an uncomfortable question.

If the facts do not support the genocide claim, why were they so willing to believe it in the first place?

Words matter. Especially words as serious as genocide. They should be reserved for actual genocides, not weaponised as political slogans.

The truth matters too. Even when it contradicts a fashionable narrative.

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Source: HonestReporting – "What Hamas' Own Casualty Figures Reveal Is Not the War the Media Described." (HonestReporting)

Tony Abbott’s Warning on Multiculturalism

Former prime minister Tony Abbott has entered Australia’s increasingly urgent debate over immigration, multiculturalism and national identity.

His message is confronting but timely: Australia’s traditional immigration model succeeded because newcomers were expected to become part of the Australian community, accept its laws and values, learn English and develop a loyalty to their new country.

Abbott argues that this expectation has gradually been abandoned. In its place, governments have pursued mass migration while promoting cultural difference as an end in itself, often appearing reluctant to insist that Australian values must come first.

The consequences are now becoming difficult to ignore. The Bondi terrorist attack, which police allege was motivated by Islamic State ideology, and the dramatic rise in antisemitism are powerful signs that social cohesion cannot simply be taken for granted.

Abbott’s main arguments

• Immigration once worked through integration. Migrants were welcomed, but they were also expected to join the Australian mainstream and accept the country’s laws, institutions and democratic values.

• Mass migration has weakened that process. When very large numbers arrive over a short period, integration becomes harder and separate cultural communities can become more entrenched.

• Diversity alone is not a national strength. Diversity contributes to Australia only when it exists within a shared culture, common language and commitment to the nation.

• Australian values must be non-negotiable. Freedom of speech, equality before the law, religious tolerance and rejection of political or religious violence cannot be compromised in the name of multicultural sensitivity.

• Social cohesion is already under strain. Terrorism, antisemitism and hostility towards Australia’s institutions are warnings that some newcomers—and some established communities—have not accepted the responsibilities that should accompany Australian citizenship.

Abbott is not arguing against immigration or against Australians retaining pride in their ancestry. He is arguing that a successful immigrant nation must remain confident enough to defend its own culture and require those who settle here to become Australians in more than name.

His critics will inevitably label these arguments divisive. But refusing to discuss the problem will not make it disappear. Australia cannot continue importing people at historically high rates while pretending that integration will happen automatically.

Abbott’s address deserves to be heard in full. Even those who disagree with him should listen before dismissing his warning, because the future of Australia’s social cohesion may depend upon our willingness to have this debate honestly.

Watch Tony Abbott’s full video: