Jacquelin Magnay in the Oz reckons in the back of everyone’s mind was the inexplicable ski out of hot favourite and last to go skier Jakara Anthony just 24 hours earlier. And Woods had always been the underdog behind the more experienced team veteran Matt Graham. He had never been the top-ranked skier from earlier rounds which brings about that number eight and last finals position.

Camplin describes the moment as Australian team members, family and friends packed the bottom of the run. Woods (right) had his brothers, parents, cousins, uncles and aunties and extended snow friends all holding their breath and crossing fingers.

It was really hard because we had each of the boys (Jackson Harvey, who was eighth and Matt Graham who was fifth). And you watch it in sections, Camplin said.

“You watch them get to the top jump on the video. You turn your eyes. You watch them land. Cooper did a great landing. He’s coming through. He’s looking powerful. He’s looking in command.

“And then you're like, finish the run. Finish the run. And he comes into the bottom area.

“You don't know if it’s going to be a perfect landing. And he tweaked out his grab like he did to get big points in the earlier qualifying. He just really wrenched it.

And he just nailed the landing. And it was just like, oh, my God. I'm so excited.

Everyone then turned to the scoreboard to watch the judges' decision. There is nothing anyone can do as his excellent run was replayed on the big screen.

Said Camplin: And it was Cooper at his best. When number one came up (next to his name), I think there was just this, 'oooh'.

On the snow a shocked Cooper was going crazy. He ran to the middle of the snowy field and pumped both arms high in the air with his skis, alternating behind getting down on his haunches and shaking his head.

Camplin, a gold and bronze Olympic medallist herself knows the pressure of performing repeatedly in make or break situations.

She said:This is a massive 24 hours for this team, right? Everyone’s just trying to pull it all together. But it was magic.Breathtaking. I shed tears with him.
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Fears of AI disruption have roiled Wall Street this month, slamming sectors including software, legal services and wealth management, with transport being the latest casualty.

The broader narrative within the market is what sectors and industries can increase productivity from AI investments, and on the flip side, what industries are going to be disrupted by AI, said Jack Herr, primary investment analyst at GuideStone Funds.

We see this as a 'prove it' year for AI. We need to start seeing some return on investments.

Software and brokerage stocks fell sharply, with the S&P 500 software index down 2.7%, giving up almost all its gains since bouncing back from last week’s drubbing.

Atlassian and Adobe were down more than 2% each. Intuit, Crowdstrike and Datadog fell between 1% and 3%.

The Dow Jones Transport Average lost 5.4%, with CH Robinson falling 12%. Old Dominion and J.B. Hunt Transport lost 4.3% and 8.6%, respectively.

The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index was down 1.7%, with Intel and Advanced Micro Devices slipping around 2.5% each. Marvell, and Oracle lost between 2.5% and 4%.

All Magnificent 7 stocks posted declines, with Apple and Amazon falling 3.7% and 3%, respectively.

Recent Big Tech results have revived investor worries about ambitious capex this year, with Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft collectively expected to spend around $650 billion in the race for AI dominance.

At 11:45 a.m. the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 520.09 points, or 1.04%, to 49,601.31, the S&P 500 lost 72.75 points, or 1.05%, to 6,870.44, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 357.35 points, or 1.55%, to 22,709.12.

Corporate results stayed front and center. shares fell 18% after its fourth-quarter results. The marketing platform has lost nearly a third of its value in the first six weeks of the year due to intense competition.

Equinix jumped 11% after the largest data-center operator forecast annual revenue above estimates on Wednesday, betting on strong AI-linked demand. It boosted the S&P 500 real estate index 1.1%.

Cisco slumped 11% after the networking equipment provider posted quarterly adjusted gross margin below estimates.

Personal-computer makers fell after China’s Lenovo warned of shipment pressure due to a memory-chip shortage. HP and Dell Technologies lost 6.4% and 9.2%, respectively.

Data released on Thursday showed weekly jobless claims decreased less than expected last week, another sign of a stable labor market. The crucial Consumer Price Index inflation report for January is due on Friday.

At least one rate cut is still expected in June, but chances of the U.S. Federal Reserve holding borrowing costs steady have risen to almost 40%, from 24.8% earlier, after Wednesday’s jobs data, according to CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.84-to-1 ratio on the NYSE, and by a 2.96-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P 500 posted 97 new 52-week highs and 26 new lows, while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 105 new highs and 221 new lows.

Mr Baillieu, a partner at financial services giant Rothschild - and part of the prominent Baillieu political family - launched his battle against the Independent Planning Commission and ACEN Australia, the company behind the Valley of the Winds renewable energy project, in July last year, after the IPC granted approval for the $1.7bn build.

The turbines butt up directly against Mr Baillieu’s Tongy Station and the contest, now before the Land and Environment Court, serves as a test case for the ability of private landowners to impede Australia’s energy transition.

In court documents seen by News Corp, Mr Baillieu draws up his battlelines and argues that planning agencies should take into account the impact of shadow flicker from turbines on agricultural workers and not just nearby properties.

The assessment of shadow flicker should also include land where workers are regularly engaged for agricultural operations or otherwise, and roads within the shadow curtilage of the wind turbines, his statement of facts document reads.

The first respondent (IPC) has failed to propose mitigation measures to minimise shadow flicker in areas used for farming operations or on roads.

He also claims the IPC failed to consider the impact on West House", a structure located within 2.2km of a turbine.

Without an assessment of the noise and vibration impacts, it is not possible to determine whether those impacts are acceptable for 'West House', the statement reads.

The house burned down in the 2017 Sir Ivan Fire, but Mr Baillieu said he planned to rebuild it.

West House is a dwelling on Tongy Station, owned by the Applicant, that was burned down prior to the Sir Ivan Fire and since 2015 has been designated to be re-established, the statement reads.

(Mr Baillieu’s) intention to re-establish the dwelling predates (his) knowledge of the Development Application and the West House is in the process of being re-established.

Mr Baillieu is the son of former Liberal MP Ian Marshall Baillieu, who served in parliament during the Malcolm Fraser era from 1975 to 1980 and was also a cousin to former Victorian premier Ted Baillieu.

Further, Mr Baillieu contends the IPC failed to adequately assess bushfire risk from the project’s battery system given the location of the system is only indicative.

The second respondent (ACEN) has only provided an indicative location of the Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) in the Girragulang Road Cluster, within the Substation and Operation and Maintenance area, the statement reads.

The provision of an indicative location means it is not possible to properly assess measures to prevent or mitigate fires from the BESS using aerial assets.

The statement also contends the development would produce a range of unacceptable noise, landscape, visual and biodiversity impacts, including on the Large-eared Pied Bat and the Large Bent-winged Bat.

Mr Baillieu suggests a set of conditions that might resolve his concerns, pushing for more information to allow the impacts of the development application to be assessed.

But the IPC and ACEN, in their own statements lodged with the LEC in November, reiterate the project’s public interest value and dispute the claims put forward by Mr Baillieu, from his West House and firefighting contentions to the noise and visual impact complaints.

West House did not exist when (ACEN) applied for consent and or the (IPC) granted consent, ACEN’s rebuttal states.

West House is a development that needs consent but such a consent has not been obtained or is not in force and ACEN does not admit that there is a dwelling entitlement for West House.

In its statement of reasons for approving the project, the IPC says Valley of the Winds would increase grid stability and energy security as NSW transitions away from coal-fired power.

The project will assist NSW in achieving the emission targets established by the Climate Change (Net Zero Future) Act 2023 and is consistent with the NSW Climate Change Policy Framework objective of achieving net zero emissions by 2050, the planning body said.

Justice Rachel Pepper is overseeing the case, with a hearing between the parties scheduled for Friday.

The Baillieu family descends from Victorian land baron and industry titan William Lawrence Baillieu.

Tongy Station, a 5452 hectare grazing property, has been held within the extended family since the 1920s.
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Almost one-third of people are less likely to buy a round and more than half have changed their drinking habits as cost-of-living pressures mount, according to new data.

The research, conducted by EFTPOS provider Tyro, draws on hundreds of millions of food and drink transactions and a national survey of more than 2000 customers and 500 small business owners.

It shows the average round of drinks sets the buyer back more than $50, with one in five survey respondents saying they had dropped $100 on a single shout.

Punters had hit their spending limits and were paying their own way to cut back on discretionary extras, Tyro chief executive Nigel Lee said.

People are increasingly conscious about what they buy, who they buy for, and the value they get. he said.

Digital tools are helping accelerate the shift away from shouts, with 37% of customers surveyed saying they use QR codes to buy their own drinks and avoid awkward conversations with friends about money.

Mr Lee said the research showed while people were still socialising, they were doing it in different ways. People aren't going out to a bar or pub to drink anymore, he said. “Instead, they link food with drink and additional activities at venues.

Merchants are adapting with better food and dining options that keep customers there in venues.

The shift away from drinking and towards dining was evident, Hotel Ravesis Bondi general manager Tayla Ramirez said.

Rounds are drying up and the long sessions are fading, she said.

People come with a plan: a cocktail, then wine with dinner. They're here for the meal or the music, not to stay late and sink beers.

About 80% of the venue’s orders are for just one drink.

If there were two, Ms Ramirez said, they were usually for a couple.

Even our older gents who have been coming in and sharing rounds every day for years buy their own now, she said.

The video titled why I resigned was uploaded on Wednesday night in the hours after he announced he was quitting the frontbench but not calling a leadership spill - yet.

But in a bizarre decision that left MPs scratching their heads, he promptly deleted the video leaving behind a note stating this page isn't available right now".

The video was described by one Sussan Ley supporter as 'a hostage video' and the decision to delete it ridiculed as an example of him not being able to organise himself out of a paper bag.

I want to take this opportunity to tell you why I've decided to step down from Shadow Cabinet. Let’s not mince words, Mr Taylor says in the now deleted video.

“The Liberal Party is in the worst position since it was formed. This is a confronting reality but one we can't ignore.

“We failed to hold this Labor government to account for the mismanagement of this country.

“The reality for most Australians is their lives keep getting harder. We've abandoned the politics of conviction for the politics of convenience.

“We need strong leadership, clear direction, while courageously fighting for our values.

“This is not a decision I've taken lightly. I remain absolutely committed to the Liberal Party, which has provided me the honor and privilege of serving the Australian people.

I'm determined to renew our party so that it can q be what Australians expect and deserve because Australia is worth fighting for.

While the video appears largely unremarkable, it’s the decision to upload it and delete it that transfixed the Sussan Ley’s camp.

They claim the numbers are tight but that Mr Taylor does not yet have a majority, a factor they claim reflects his delaying tactic of not calling for a spill.

It follows critics' claims this is a TACO spill — a reference to the acronym Taylor Always Chickens Out.

At one level, the next leader of the Liberal Party has an impossible job: to unite a fractured party, maintain a disparate Coalition, articulate strong alternative policies, revitalise a moribund organisation, win back disgruntled former supporters and withstand vicious abuse from the green-left establishment plus a politically dominant Labor Party.

At another level a sullen electorate, buffeted by falling living standards, fracturing social cohesion and a sense that the world is dangerously awry, could readily turn on a deeply underwhelming Prime Minister and an arrogant and incompetent government.

The Prime Minister, after all, is hardly untouchable: his divisive Indigenous voice was resoundingly rejected and his treatment of antisemitism as a political problem to be managed rather than a moral evil to be expunged created the environment for our worst terrorist attack.

All it should take to put this government under serious pressure is a reasonably articulate, energetic, clear and consistent critic of a poor government who has a vision for Australia where people can get ahead and buy a home, where immigration is brought under control, where our abundant natural resources are fairly developed, and where Australians are encouraged to take pride in the best country on Earth.

If the next leader of the Liberal Party were to tell Australians we are a great people let down by a bad government, millions would cheer — provided they are confident the alternative prime minister knows what he’s doing and means what he says.

Superficially, a 27% poll result for One Nation is a catastrophe for the Coalition. But if Pauline Hanson’s party can be just six percentage points shy of the Labor government, as well as nine percentage points ahead of the Liberal-National opposition, that tells me that it’s the poor state of our polity that has disillusioned voters; and that someone who’s no less sincere but much more credible than Hanson could quite quickly establish an ascendancy.

As for the view that the Liberals should become teal-lite, the post-election move of 20% of voters to One Nation and the move of 14% away from the Coalition, confirms that it’s moderate control that risks giving the party of Menzies its last rites.

To win from opposition, the Liberals must be led by a conservative with a conservative platform, as John Howard did in 1996 with a 47% primary and Tony Abbott in 2013 on 46%.

Peter Dutton’s problem was that a conservative man was not a conservative leader; nor was there any real attempt at a broad policy agenda, let alone a conservative one. And Ley’s the same: nine months in and, other than moving against net zero, there’s nothing on the table.

Contrast that with Abbott who, eight months after winning the leadership by one vote, put out a full policy manifesto and, through relentless campaigning, achieved a hung parliament in 2010.

Right now, the Liberals have no rudder, no engine and a weak skipper. But a new face at the helm is only part of the fix. So, if that is Angus Taylor, does he have what it takes? In private, Taylor is warm, clear and persuasive. His challenge will be to jettison consultant-speak and to radiate the clarity, strength and intellectual grunt lately absent from public life.

In 2009, the Liberals had suffered their third leadership change in under three years, so those who say rebuilding a fractious and demoralised parliamentary party is an impossible task don't know their history. If I had some experience from that time for Team Taylor, this would be it. First, what not to do.

Because Abbott won the leadership by just one vote and because an election was due within nine months, he kept the Turnbull shadow ministry entirely intact. When the 2010 election was effectively a draw, almost none of the old Howard ministers retired, meaning that as prime minister Abbott was surrounded by what was still largely Malcolm Turnbull’s team (including Turnbull).

In putting together a new frontbench, there can be only one qualification: not personal friendship or factional solidarity but a relentless determination to fight. Taylor’s team must be 24/7 focused on developing credible policy, taking the fight up to the government and communicating with the public every day.

He can't reward supporters if they're not up it, nor can he afford to kneecap enemies with talent and work ethic as these skills are in short supply. He can't sideline potential rivals like Andrew Hastie and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (on the right) and Ted O'Brien and Tim Wilson (on the left) because to the extent they succeed, so does he.

My instinct is that developing policy will be the least of Taylor’s worries. He’s the most economically literate person in the parliament and understands the housing, energy, immigration, budget, inflation and productivity challenges we face.

The danger will be lapsing into economic jargon and over-analysing issues rather than delivering a hard-hitting exposure of the government’s failings, with a way forward that everyday Australians can understand.

Unlike Scott Morrison, who infamously quipped that he didn't think people cared about woke, Taylor knows that issues like our flag matter; likewise, the government’s weak stand on antisemitism, radical Islam and gender. He can't avoid the culture wars as this is the ground One Nation has taken from the Liberals.

For some time now, the Coalition has lacked energy and hunger. The policy work isn't being done nor is the grassroots campaigning. Relentless activity was the main reason Abbott brought the Coalition back into office in record time.

Hardly a day went by without an event to highlight Labor’s weakness and the Coalition’s strength, backed in with a strategy that pushed content across every channel available.

After a 6am media planning call, Abbott was on the airwaves long before some colleagues were out of bed. Anything less and you might as well give up now.

Policy sessions were held on weekends, wherever shadow ministers were available. As much focus was on getting government out of people’s lives as it was on spending taxpayers' money and every decision was locked in via a joint partyroom process that kept the Coalition together.

Abbott failed by one seat in 2010 largely because state Liberal Party organisations were focused more on factional infighting than winning elections. On top of everything else, Taylor will need to revitalise the organisation to give rank-and-file Liberal members more of a stake and encourage better candidates.

A potential pitfall is question time, where Taylor is thought to be weak. His team will need to understand this excites the press gallery more than the public and is vastly overrated as a vote changer.

An unexpected advantage could be that almost no one thinks the Liberals can win the next election. Low expectations are easily exceeded. Provided the Liberals can stop talking about themselves, the pressure will once more swiftly be on a government that’s clueless about everything except base politics.

Taylor gets one shot at this so should go for broke. After delivering their supporters a decade of disappointment, it’s a few minutes to midnight for the Liberals, but anyone who believes in stable politics in this country should wish him well.

Like many of our current pathologies, its roots lie in the heady days of the 1960s. And if the crisis has proved so hard to contain, it is because the ideas and attitudes forged in that period have continued to command allegiance long after the conditions that gave them plausibility fell away — turning inherited reflexes into instruments of chaos and disorder.

At the heart of the changes that shook Australia towards the close of the Menzies era was the emergence of protest movements incubated within rapidly expanding universities. Although multiple influences were at work, developments overseas were especially important.

That influence was reinforced through several channels. For the first time, youth travel occurred on a mass scale: in the 1960s, cheaper fares and rising incomes lifted overseas departure rates among those aged 20-24 more than six-fold.

Meanwhile, television became a primary source of nightly news, transforming political events ∼ including those overseas ∼ into vivid, broadly shared spectacles. Complementing both developments was the diffusion of a distinct youth culture that celebrated oppositional attitudes.

It is consequently unsurprising that the earliest stirrings echoed the US civil rights movement: the Freedom Rides of early 1965 captured the nascent mood.

But it was, of course, the Vietnam War that transformed scattered nuclei of activism into a national phenomenon.

As in the US, the campaign against the war entrenched a new radicalism within Australian universities, marked by revolutionary rhetoric sharply at odds with the tone and posture of the peace movement of the 1950s.

Dominated by communist fronts, that earlier movement had concentrated on attracting fellow travellers from the unions, the ALP and the churches.

It was therefore shaped by a persistent quest for respectability that ∼ although continually undermined by slavish adherence to the Soviet line ∼ left a clear imprint on its leadership style. Consistent with that orientation, its rhetoric during the Vietnam era focused on securing the withdrawal of Australian troops and a negotiated settlement to the war.

By contrast, beginning with the Sydney University ALP Club in 1966, student activists cast the Vietcong as model revolutionaries and replaced the traditional peace movement’s imagery ∼ designed to elicit sympathy through photographs of napalmed children and burning villages ∼ with stylised portrayals of heroic guerillas. Rejecting calls for negotiation as talk into thin air, they embraced a Manichean worldview in which Australians confronted a stark choice between remaining an outpost of imperialism and supporting the forces of progress — that is, between their own soldiers and those they were fighting.

Nor were these radicals especially committed to nonviolence at home. On the contrary, Maoist factions treated violence as revolutionary, particularly when directed at the police, and even more so at rival radical groups — producing brawls that culminated in 1978, when Maoists hurled an alleged Trotskyite through a plate-glass window.

Yet these groups remained numerically insignificant. In the tussles for control of the 1970 Moratorium, they were readily outplayed by the traditional peace organisations' battle-hardened Communist cadres, whose overriding objective was to garner support within the labour movement and across the electorate.

At a time when the ALP Right remained a formidable force ∼ particularly in the pivotal states of NSW and Victoria ∼ and when institutions, including the police, still commanded broad respect on the left, assembling wide-ranging support required that demonstrations remain orderly.

The prominence of the give peace a chance motif reinforced the insistence on nonviolence. The result was that the extremists were marginalised and restrained ∼ physically so in Brisbane ∼ allowing the massive nationwide demonstrations of May 8, 1970 to proceed almost entirely peacefully. That was less true of the subsequent Vietnam protests and of the highly confrontational attempts to impede the Springboks' tour in 1971. Yet despite those blemishes, the May 1970 marches conferred on mass demonstrations an enduring legitimacy they had never previously possessed.

A momentous consequence of that legitimacy ∼ and of the subsequent rise to power of the baby boomers, whose worldview had been shaped by the Moratorium ∼ was a far-reaching transformation of the legal framework.

Until then, regulations governing street protests had been squarely directed at maintaining public order: statutory offences legislation and municipal by-laws treated permission to occupy public spaces for rallies and marches as a privilege, granted subject to clear duties and constraints.

The report of the South Australian Royal Commission chaired by Justice Charles Hart Bright, and the Public Assemblies Act 1972 (SA) that followed, marked the advent of a different era, in which the authorities had to stringently justify any restrictions.

Entrenching that shift was the High Court’s controversial decision in Brown v Tasmania (2017), which ∼ drawing a very long bow from the already contentious implied freedom of political communication ∼ appeared to elevate even highly disruptive protest into a constitutional entitlement.

However, as the Age of Aquarius gave way to the Age of Rage, the conditions that had once kept mass demonstrations peaceful ebbed away.

Respect for Australian institutions, including the police, curdled into hostility towards a settler colonial state; in an era of political fragmentation and rival echo chambers, the search for a broad base yielded to the imperative of seizing attention; the collapse of the ALP Right and the capture of taxpayer-funded institutions by the far left relaxed the normative and organisational constraints on extremism; and as an apocalyptic mindset ∼ typified by the green left ∼ eclipsed the hopeful, often utopian, spirit of the Vietnam years, violence came to seem not merely permissible but necessary, given the perceived enormity and urgency of the stakes.

As a result, the unrestrained aggressiveness of social media spilled from the screen into the street, its rhetorical assaults readily hardening, once enacted in the public square, into the real thing.

Already evident in Extinction Rebellion’s massively disruptive protests, those currents have, in the recent demonstrations, metastasised.

Supercharging their force ∼ and the threat they pose ∼ is the alliance between the far left and radical Muslims whose virulent antisemitism, contempt for liberal democracy and repudiation of Australian institutions imports a jihadist logic that prizes confrontation over coexistence.

Caught between that reality, a commitment to an ill-defined, entirely ahistorical right to protest, and the High Court’s ever-changing jurisprudence, governments have struggled to respond.

Although circumstances are nowhere near as dire, historian Detlev Peukert’s judgment of the Weimar Republic’s failure to master street violence rings shockingly true: The republic oscillated between impotence and over-reaction: either constitutional scruples paralysed it, or emergency powers hollowed out its legitimacy.

That is precisely where we now stand — for here too, as with the shibboleths of multiculturalism and of Indigenous self-determination, we remain in thrall to the spent inheritance of a vanished age.

In the end, every liberal democracy, if it is to endure, must give its enemies enough rope to hang themselves — but not enough to hang others. Striking that balance demands a cold, hard view of the world as it is. We have adamantly refused to take it. Unless we open our eyes, it is only a matter of time before we are swinging in the wind.