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Australia
Maani Truu is a Sydney-based journalist with diverse experience in print and digital reporting, production and editing.
She is currently working as a digital journalist at SBS News, focusing on social affairs. Her past bylines include The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Daily Life (Fairfax Media), Ciao Magazine, Honi Soit and The South Sydney Herald.
For work enquiries, you can get in touch at [email protected].
SBS News
The federal government originally denied the disability royal commission's urgent request for a 17 month extension before backflipping on its decision a month later, letters obtained by SBS News reveal. Correspondence between the Attorney-General's office and commission chair Ronald Sackville, released under freedom of information laws, also reveal the government will not provide any additional funding to support the extension of the $527.9 million inquiry.
Australians who are unable to leave home because of illness or disability fear they will never be able to get a COVID-19 vaccine, despite the high risk of health complications linked to the infection.
Friday will mark three years since a Tamil family of four were taken from their home in Biloela, Queensland, at dawn. The girls are the only two children left in Australian immigration detention and still have no pathway to freedom.
Former Manus Island detainee Behrouz Boochani says the Australian government should urgently accept an offer from New Zealand to resettle 150 offshore refugees, many of who have spent eight years in immigration detention.
New migrants will be forced to wait four years before accessing most government welfare payments under a significant cost-cutting measure included in Tuesday's federal budget. The government will save $671 million over five years by applying the four-year Newly Arrived Resident's Waiting Period to anyone granted permanent residency in Australia from 1 January next year.
There are fresh hopes a Tamil asylum seeker family could soon be released into community detention on Christmas Island after new Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews hinted at their possible release. Priya and Nades Murugappan and their two Australian-born daughters, Kopika, five, and Tharunicaa, three, have been the only family detained on Christmas Island since August 2019 after an urgent court injunction blocked their deportation to Sri Lanka.
The peak national body for disability service providers is calling for coronavirus vaccines to be made mandatory for frontline workers, warning that many staff members are hesitant about getting the jab when it is available.
Frontline disability support workers have aired their exasperation at the slow coronavirus vaccine rollout in a letter to federal government ministers, detailing their "whole life being taken over" by the pandemic.
An Australian professor who was detained and allegedly tortured in Qatar has separately been named by a Sri Lankan government probe into the deadly Easter Sunday terror bombings. Australian citizens Lukman Thalib, 58, and his son Ismail Talib, 24, were arrested at their home in Qatar on 27 July and imprisoned for almost six months without charge before being released without warning in January this year.
The government has unveiled its much-anticipated reforms to strengthen privacy safeguards for witnesses at the disability royal commission, almost 18 months after the inquiry commenced. Advocates have been calling for the changes to the Royal Commission Act for more than a year, warning that a loophole that allows the identity of witnesses to be released after the conclusion of the commission will stop potential whistleblowers from coming forward.