This article is more than 5 months old

This article is more than 5 months old

As Australia’s coronavirus outbreak continues, a lot of important news has slipped under the radar.

From some good news for a Tamil asylum seeker family to the much-anticipated preview of Malcolm Turnbull’s memoir, here are the stories you may have missed over the past week.

And here is last week’s list of stories – in case you missed those.

Turnbull on Morrison, Murdoch and the ‘bonk ban’

The release of Malcolm Turnbull’s memoir A Bigger Picture was always going to ruffle some feathers, but it appeared earlier than expected, leaked by the Australian newspaper on Thursday.

Guardian Australia’s political editor Katharine Murphy said the book was a “sweeping account of events from his early childhood in Sydney’s eastern suburbs to being forced out of the prime ministership in 2018”. Her analysis focused on what Turnbull had to say about his relationship with his successor Scott Morrison, who he claims was playing a “double game”.

In the book, Turnbull also fires off broadsides against several of his former colleagues, as well as News Corp. Elsewhere, the former PM wrote about his role in Guardian Australia’s origin story, which editor Lenore Taylor addressed here.

Biloela family to stay in Australia – for now

Tamil asylum seekers Priya and Nades and their Australian-born daughters, Kopika and Tharunicaa, were granted a reprieve on Friday in their fight against deportation.

Known as the Biloela family, after the Queensland town that has campaigned for them to stay, they appealed to the federal court, arguing they had been denied procedural fairness during a visa claim.

On Friday, the court found in their favour on that claim, which meant an injunction preventing their deportation would remain in place until final orders were made.

The family have been detained on Christmas Island while they fight to stay in Australia.

You can read the story here.

High court rules AFP warrant for raid on News Corp journalist’s home was invalid

Annika Smethurst, a News Corp journalist whose home was raided by police seeking the source of leaked classified material, won a partial victory in a high court case challenging the legality of the search warrant.

Smethurst reported on the material in a story outlining a plan to expand powers to spy on Australians. This week, the court quashed the raid warrant but did not order police to destroy the material seized, which may still expose the reporter and her source to prosecution.

The Australian Federal Police commissioner, Reece Kershaw, said the material was “quarantined” while police obtained legal advice. News Corp said Smethurst had never revealed her source, not even to her employer.

You can read the story here.

Pell tells Bolt accuser may have been ‘used’

George Pell gave his first interview following his release from prison to News Corp columnist and Sky News host Andrew Bolt, who has long supported the cardinal’s case against a now quashed child sexual abuse conviction.

In the television appearance, Pell described the complainant who testified against him as a “poor fellow” and suggested he may have been “used” by others. He did not explain what he meant by the claim.

Asked by Bolt why he thinks the complainant made the allegations, Pell said: “I don’t know.”

The cardinal also made claims of corruption in the Vatican and in Victoria. He suggested he was unpopular among some Vatican officials for his efforts to get the institution’s finances in order.

You can read the story here.

Victoria police did not use excessive force against innocent man who had arm broken, watchdog finds

Victoria’s anti-corruption commission has said force used by police in a raid that left an innocent man with a badly broken arm at an LGBTI bookshop was not disproportionate.

Nik Dimopoulos said he was frustrated by the outcome of the one-year investigation into the raid at Hares and Hyenas in May last year, in which officers mistook him for the suspect in a carjacking.

Fearing police were intruders, Dimopoulos fled, and his arm was badly broken when members of the critical incident response team restrained him. Victoria’s Ibac found the force’s actions were not disproportionate, but said Dimopoulos’s human rights were affected when police did not inform him of the reason for his arrest.

You can read the story here.

Jess Hill wins Stella prize for See What You Made Me Do

Journalist Jess Hill claimed the $50,000 Stella prize for Australian women’s writing, for her 2019 investigation into domestic abuse, See What You Made Me Do.

The four-year investigation was described the judging panel’s chair, Louise Swinn, as “incredibly powerful” work that “meticulously dismantle[s] all of the lazy old lies we associate with domestic abuse”.

In the book, Hill turns the lens on perpetrators, asking: why do abusive men make the choices they do, and what systems of power enable them?

The author told the Guardian: “I wanted people to understand what victim-survivors had been through and why they’d made the choices that they’d made.”

You can read the story here.

Melbourne Facebook group shut down after ‘revenge porn’ and misogynist abuse posted

A boys-only Facebook group was shut down after a user allegedly posted “revenge pornography” of an underage girl.

The group amassed at least 6,700 members in about 24 hours, but users who had tried to report it for its offensive content – which also included shocking misogynist abuse – received an automated notification from Facebook saying the page would not be removed.

It was eventually shut down after Guardian Australia approached the company for comment.

You can read the story here.