Category: Australia

Facebook will crack down on foreign-bought political ads in an effort to protect Australia’s upcoming election from interference, but security and media experts question whether it goes far enough.

Election meddling and the intentional spread of misinformation, supported by access to free, large and easy-to-use social media platforms, has been of growing concern globally.

“I don’t think anyone can guarantee in a world where you have nation states that are trying to interfere in elections, there’s no single thing we can do and say OK we’ve now solved the issue,” the company’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told Irish broadcaster RTE this week.

Mia Garlick, Facebook’s local policy director, said in a statement the company would temporarily ban electoral ads from being bought outside Australia.

From the day after the election is called, foreign groups will not be allowed to buy ads that “contain references to politicians, parties or election suppression … political slogans and party logos.”

Facebook uses different signals, including currency, to determine where an ad was purchased.

In the United States, however, the company has previously announced stricter standards. There, those wishing to run electoral ads as well as “issue ads” must typically confirm their identity and location via the postal service.

Fergus Hanson, head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre, questioned whether the company’s ad ban went far enough.

Local front groups or proxies, he pointed out, could circumvent this measure for overseas groups seeking to meddle in Australia’s election.

“The challenge is that just the mere fact of having been bought from overseas isn’t necessarily going to capture or stop foreign agents from targeting ads,” he said.

Under Australian electoral rules, “electoral communications” that seek to influence who someone votes for must indicate who authorised them, no matter when they occur.

ABC News previously reported on a stoush between Facebook and the Australian Electoral Commission, as the latter sought to identify the users behind potentially illegal political ads.

It’s unclear how or if Facebook will require such information to be displayed on election-related posts, especially those sponsored by issues group or entities other than a clearly identifiable political party page.

“We comply with local law pertaining to the Electoral Act and require advertisers on Facebook to also comply with political advertising rules under the Act,” a spokesperson said.

Having political ads stamped with a clear authorisation would support transparency, Mr Hanson said.

“[It] is a really useful check on the system, at least to signal for people ‘this is an ad’ and people are trying to sell you a message,” he said.

In addition to the ad rules, Ms Garlick announced Facebook would launch a fact-checking partnership with the news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) as part of its Australian election effort.

If AFP rates a news story as “false”, it will be displayed lower in the news feed.

Facebook was asked how many fact checkers would be dedicated to covering the Australian election, and how many would be based in Australia.

The company said the speed at which a fact check would take place depends on “the complexity of the issues in the article or the volume of information available”.

“The challenge of course is once a fake news story is out, no amount of fact checking is going to wind back the impact it’s had on the people who have seen it,” Mr Hanson commented.

Facebook also now offers its ad library platform in Australia — a public page that displays active ads, as well as information about the people managing them.

Dr James Meese, media law and policy researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, described the greater transparency around ad targeting as “long overdue”.

Yet at the time of writing, the ad library for Australian political ads shows much less granular detail than the equivalent page in the UK, for example.

Labour Party ads in the UK display information about how much was spent on an ad as well as the demographics of those who saw it. Similarly, inactive ads from British political parties remain online.

Facebook recently announced that additional transparency features, like an expanded ad library, would be rolled out globally by the end of June.

Ultimately, the larger issue for Australia as well as social media companies, is that political manipulation is not restricted to the election cycle, Dr Meese said.

Political institutions and those that seek to influence Australians, supported by the internet amplification engine, are after outcomes that go far beyond a six-week campaign.

ABC News, for example, recently discovered a group of Facebook pages popular with Australian audiences were operated from Kosovo, Albania and the Republic of Northern Macedonia.

The pages, which discussed topics such as Islam, refugees and political correctness, appeared to be related to bogus news sites that made money off such content. The pages were subsequently removed by Facebook.

Likewise, the Russian use of social media during the 2016 US presidential election focused on divisive social issues rather than explicit support for a party.

Facebook regularly announces new measures to protect its services, but while it has more than 30,000 people working on safety and security, none are based in Australia.

“The ground work for foreign influence operations is done a long way in advance,” Mr Hanson suggested.

“The Russian playbook, at least in the US, is not about who wins a particular election … what they care about is disrupting Western democracy and the alliance system.”

 

A panel of three judges who heard the case of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militant Neil Christopher Prakash in Turkey handed down a reduced sentence for the Australian recruiter and facilitator for ISIL, setting his release for 2021.

Judges at Turkey’s Kilis High Criminal Court ruled for a six-year sentence for the US and UN-designated terrorist, also known as Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, deciding on a near minimum for membership in a terrorist organization, then increasing it to nine years before slashing it by one-sixth and settling on seven years, six months. The judges stated that a long sentence could have a negative impact on his future and used their discretion in reducing his sentence.

The judges’ decision to reduce his sentence was based on Article 62 of the Turkish Penal Code, also known as Law No. 5237, which was passed by the legislature in 2004. The provision includes grounds for discretionary mitigation in sentencing, listed as “background, social relations, the behavior of the offender after the commission of the crime and during the trial, and the potential effects of the penalty on the future of the offender.”

Twenty-seven-year-old Prakash faced between seven-and-a-half and 15 years. His lawyer Reşat Devran had been stating throughout the trial that he expected his client to get the minimum if a jail sentence were to be imposed, although he said he was trying to get an acquittal on all charges.

 

 

What is more, Prakash was not sentenced for any terrorist act while he was with ISIL in Syria and Iraq, nor was he convicted for being a lead figure in the organization, which would have qualified him for a heavier sentence on other violations of the Turkish Penal Code. He pleaded guilty to the membership charges but denied involvement in any terrorism act during a hearing held on February 20, 2018. It appears this dangerous terrorist benefitted from the permissive political environment in Turkey, where the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been helping ISIL, al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups to topple the Bashar al-Assad regime.

Given the probation rules in the Turkish criminal justice system, he is eligible for early release in two-and-a-half years, meaning that he will be a free man in 2021. This stands in sharp contrast to heavy sentences including life in prison handed down to Turkey’s leading journalists who were jailed by the Erdoğan government over their comments, tweets and op-eds. In the criminal justice system, most radical terrorists including al-Qaeda and ISIL militants have been let go, either with no charges or reduced sentences thanks to the current Islamist government in Turkey.

Small wonder Prakash asked for his trial to be conducted in Turkey and did not want to be extradited to Australia to face charges. The Turkish court rejected the Australian government’s extradition request in July 2018. Prakash was believed to be a key figure in inspiring terrorist plots in Australia and has been linked by the FBI to a failed plot to attack the Statue of Liberty in New York.

In his testimony to the court at a September 2018 hearing, Prakash admitted that he originally joined the jihadist Ahrar al-Sham, which was openly backed by Turkey for years, and said he later switched to ISIL. He crossed into Syria from Turkey’s border town of Reyhanlı in October 2013.

He claimed he had never used a gun, went to Syria to educate himself on religious teachings and was involved with humanitarian work for three years in Syria. He also stated that he was not paid for his work and ran media operations for ISIL. Asked about his photos in army fatigues with guns that were on his phone, Prakash explained he was told that he needed such photos to be accepted into ISIL. He operated in Idlib, Raqqa and Mosul, cities that were under ISIL control at the time.

He was detained by border guards near the village of İnanlı in the border province of Kilis while trying to cross into Turkey from Syria on October 24, 2016 with a fake identity. The area on the Syrian side across from Turkish village was controlled by ISIL at the time. He was formally arrested at his arraignment and sent to the Gaziantep H type Prison. Two women identified as Rumana Bibi and Fadxiya Ahmed were making the journey with Prakash when they were detained. Both women were released. During a hearing on December 20, 2018, Prakash testified in broken Turkish that he knew the husbands of the women, and the court tried to locate them to testify as witnesses after their release. Expressing regret in the courtroom, Prakash claimed he had defected from ISIL, repented for his sins and did not understand why he was put in pre-trial detention.

In December 2018 the Australian government announced that Prakash had been stripped of his citizenship on terrorism charges and stated that he was a dual Australian-Fijian national. However Fiji rejected the claim he was a citizen. Prakash was born in Melbourne to a Fijian father and a Cambodian mother. At a February 20, 2019 hearing in Turkey the judges told him that his Australian citizenship had been revoked and asked whether he had any knowledge of that. Prakesh responded in Turkish and said he was aware of it.

Australia’s Senate censured an independent right-wing lawmaker on Wednesday for his comments that New Zealand’s mosques shooting massacre which left 50 people dead was a result of letting “Muslim fanatics” migrate to the country.

Senator Fraser Anning has been widely condemned for his comments made shortly after a lone gunman attacked two mosques in Christchurch on March 15.

“There is no room for racism in Australia. Sadly, what Senator Anning said after the Christchurch massacre, however shocking isn’t out of character,” Australian Muslim Senator Mehreen Faruqi told the Senate.

“Just a week before I joined this place, he gave a speech calling for a ban on people like me coming to this country.”

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, has been charged with one murder following the attack and was remanded without a plea. He is due back in court on April 5, when police said he was likely to face more charges.

Sitting for the first time since the attack, Australia’s upper house overwhelmingly passed a censure motion against Anning – the first such public rebuke of a lawmaker in four years. A censure motion has no direct legal consequences but acts as an expression of the Senate’s disapproval.

Senator Anning denied he had blamed the victims, insisting the censure was an attack on his civil liberties.

“This censure motion against me is a blatant attack on free speech,” Anning told Reuters via email.

Leaders of the major parties in the Senate condemned Anning’s comments, with opposition Labour Senator Penny Wong rejecting his “free speech” defence.

“There is a difference between freedom of speech and hate speech. The former is a feature of our democracy. The latter is an attack on democracy,” Wong said.

“This motion makes it clear he doesn’t speak for us. He doesn’t speak for the Senate. He doesn’t speak for this nation. He doesn’t represent Australian values.”

Anning’s comments gained international attention after footage of a teenager smashing an egg on the head of the right-wing senator was widely shared on social media. [nL3N21309L]

(Reporting by Alison Bevege; Writing by Colin Packham; Editing by Michael Perry) Sydney (Reuters)

The cacophony of screeches, whistles and tweets heard from outside Lyn John’s home crescendo to a deafening pitch the closer you approach.

Inside the unassuming house in Hammondville in Sydney’s south-west, Ms John is a foster mum to 60 birds.

Her back patio is lined with large enclosures, while two of her rooms have been turned into aviaries and are stacked to the ceiling with cages.

“They’re my alarm birds … they knew a stranger was here,” Ms John said as a way of explaining the noise.

“I am going deaf.

“I have some hearing loss but I am used to it, and when I’m working I’ll tune out the noise.”

Formerly an animal rescue worker, Ms John set up the avian foster service six years ago.

She has 12 volunteer carers around Sydney who also house birds and has in total about 100 birds on her books.

There’s a range of species including a love bird, cockatoos, galahs, lorikeets, eclectus parrots, Indian ring-necks, conures and a couple of rare and sought-after Amazon species.

Lola, a doubled-headed Amazon, which is an endangered species to Mexico and South America, is a bright yellow and green and is accustomed to talking and singing to Ms John throughout the day.

The other, a beautiful blue-fronted Amazon named Marley, has taken some time to recover after being found in a dumpster.

The majority of birds are given to Ms John by vets, while others are handed in after being found injured or because their owners had died and the family was unable to take over its care.

Surprisingly, there are no complaints from Ms John’s neighbours nor the local council.

“I’ve got really good neighbours actually. One neighbour has canaries and quails also,” she said.

“Because [the birds] aren’t permanent, it doesn’t break any laws.”

A full-time job

Ms John rarely has time for herself and said she and her husband hadn’t had a holiday in years.

Her day starts at 5:30am cleaning the cages, refreshing water bowls, and preparing a “gourmet” salad mix that included sweet potato, kale, bok choy, carrot, cauliflower, red cabbage, silverbeet, chia, quinoa flakes, rolled oats, capsicum and squash.

“They also get fruits like passionfruit, pomegranate, apples, apricots,” she said.

“I get up at 4:30am every Saturday to go to Flemington markets and do a weekly shop for them.”

Ms John keeps the birds for at least a year before putting them up for adoption.

Her main goal, however, is to reconnect the birds with their owners.

Recently, she was able to return a galah to its owners, two years after it had gone missing.

“If we can’t find their owners after a year, two years, we put them up for adoption, reluctantly in most cases, because we get very attached to them,” Ms John said.

“I cry when they go. I am a big sook.”

There can be a dark side to the foster care experience.

Some birds, like the Amazons, can fetch up to $5,000, while others like the New Zealand kakariki or ring-necks are worth between $60 and $250.

Ms John said she’d had people enquire about different birds and purported to be their owners with the intention of reselling them.

“Unfortunately it happens a lot,” she said.

“We don’t flick the birds on like the RSPCA who get them in, hold on to them for three or four days, then sell them.

“We try and get them home.

“We’re not in it to make money on the birds — we’re here to look after them, keep them safe until we can find their owners.”abcnews

Two weeks after the terror attacks in Christchurch, a National Remembrance Service will be held in Hagley Park to pay tribute to the 50 people who lost their lives.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the service will be held at 10am, Friday March 29.

It is expected to be attended by thousands, including foreign dignitaries and at least one member of the royal family in the UK.

Ardern said considerations are being given to simultaneously broadcasting the service to events in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin, and providing links for events in other towns and cities.

“The National Remembrance Service provides an opportunity for Cantabrians, New Zealanders and people all around the world to come together as one to honour the victims of the terrorist attack.”

Since the attack on two mosques in Christchurch on March 15, tens of thousands of Kiwis have participated in vigils across the country, and overseas.

The Al Noor mosque, where 42 people were killed by the gunman, is opposite Hagley Park.

It was reopened yesterday.

“In the week since the unprecedented terror attack there has been an outpouring of grief and love in our country,” Ardern said, this afternoon.

“The service will be a chance to once again show that New Zealanders are compassionate, inclusive and diverse and that we will protect those values.”

The service will be a huge security and logistical operation, given the likely huge scale of the event.

Foreign leaders and dignitaries would likely be in attendance, as well as global leaders of the Muslim Community.

The Herald on Sunday has confirmed at least one member of the royal family would attend.

With Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, now heavily pregnant, it was likely Prince William would represent the family.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said foreign dignitaries will indicate if they wish to attend.

Ardern said the Government was anticipating international guests and visitors will want to attend and to “join us in our sorrow and support for the victims and their families”.

New Zealand’s terror alert is still a “very high” – a level it has at been since the attack.

Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel said the service will be a time for everyone, locally, nationally and internationally, to come together in unity.

“I am very proud of the way our city and nation have responded to this terrorist attack.

“What happened on Friday, March 15, 2019 will never define us. It is what has happened since, the love and compassion, that’s what defines us.

She said that coming together on Friday will demonstrate support for all New Zealand’s communities – “no matter where we were born, no matter where and how we choose to express our faith. We do not stand alone, we stand together”.with: nzherald.

 

An experienced Adelaide nurse has been banned from practising for nine months for giving a dangerous drug to the wrong patient and trying to cover it up.

The South Australian Health Practitioners Tribunalhas suspended former Flinders Medical Centre (FMC) emergency department clinical nurse Leanne Newblack for professional misconduct.Ms Newblack admitted to the tribunal that she wrongfully administered intravenous morphine to the wrong patient on September 13, 2015.She also admitted she failed to report the wrongful administration, falsified records, encouraged two other staff members to stay silent and gave a false or misleading explanation to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.

Ms Newblack told the tribunal that she had been dealing with a family crisis and agreed to look after the patients of another nurse, who was going on a tea break.One of her new tasks was to administer morphine to the patient, referred to as “BZ”, in cubicle 33.”(Ms Newblack) went alone into cubicle 36 and not cubicle 33. She did not check the patient’s name to ensure that she was dealing with patient BZ,” the tribunal stated.”This was in breach of the medical administration policy of SA Health as applied by Flinders Medical Centre — the policy requires two qualified nurses to be present at the time of administration.The judgement stated that when the other nurse returned from her tea break, she realised Ms Newblack was in the process of administering the drug to the wrong person.

“She inveigled the registered nurse and the enrolled nurse on duty at the time not to report the incident,” it stated.”Initially, the enrolled nurse agreed to do this but then thought better of it and notified her supervisors which led to the Flinders Medical Centre carrying out their internal investigation.”

The tribunal stated that the patient was never told of the error.In its judgement, the tribunal found Ms Newblack’s conduct was “substantially below the standard reasonably expected of a nurse of her experience, training and qualifications”.”She initially started with an error in not identifying a patient. She then proceeded to give the wrong patient a dangerous drug,” it found.”She compounded that by not reporting the incident to management or the treating doctor, not entering the error in the patient’s records and not telling the patient of the error.Ms Newblack was registered as a nurse in 1995 and started working at SA Health in the Repatriation General Hospital in the acute referral unit before moving to the FMC emergency department as a clinical nurse.She now works at Noarlunga Health Services.The tribunal noted that Ms Newblack had a previous unblemished record, felt “deeply remorseful for the choices she made” and since the incident, had engaged in extensive education.

Smoke from an overheating computer system has caused chaos at Sydney Airport, forcing the evacuation of the air traffic control tower and grounding flights for an hour.

 

Firefighters cleared about 20 staff to return to the tower at Australia’s busiest airport about 12:30pm, about 50 minutes after they were evacuated when a fire alarm sounded.

Air Services Australia (ASA) — the national air navigation service provider — said smoke was detected in the building and all flights were grounded.

Fire and Rescue NSW said the smoke was caused by an overheating computer backup battery system and spread through the air conditioning and that electricians were trying to fix the problem.

ASA said by 12:30pm, aircraft were being allowed to land, “albeit at a slower rate”.

“Firefighters have cleared staff to return to the Tower,” the organisation posted on Twitter.

The captain on one Virgin Australia flight told passengers: “Every aircraft that was not in the air has been told to stay on the ground.

“People are stuck in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, you name it.”

Qantas advised customers to check their flight status online.

“Thankfully, the disruption occurred at a quieter part of the day, however, there may be some delays for customers of up to two hours as all airlines work to get back to their normal schedules,” a spokeswoman said in a statement.

Earlier, one passenger on a flight bound for Los Angeles told the ABC he saw fire trucks from the window of his grounded plane.

“Virgin has decided to refuel to make use of the time and speed things up once we get going — people onboard are mainly bored and restless with kids crying and complaining,” he said.

“My wife and others on the right side are watching the tower out the windows.

“We can see fire trucks from here but no smoke.”

Another man on a flight bound for Bali told the ABC the pilot had told passengers “he had not heard from the control tower” and that no planes were taking off or landing.

Dean Bentick was on a Tiger flight when the crew announced a smoke alarm had gone off.

He said passengers were told all flights were grounded.

“Everyone was calm but annoyed, as we were emailed before our flight to say there are no refreshments on this flight to Coffs Harbour,” he told the ABC.

“They have updated us three times saying 15 [minutes], then 15 then another 20.”

Mr Bentick said passengers were free to move around the cabin during the wait.abcnews

Attracting the votes of migrants in marginal seats is at the heart of Labor’s plan to increase funding.Labor is set to announce an $8 million boost for 700 of Australia’s community language schools, SBS News can reveal. 

Under the plan, not-for-profit language schools would be able to apply for grants of up to $25,000 to upgrade resources, improve teacher training and expand their programs for pre-school age children.

Currently, most schools only run classes for those who have already started mainstream education.

“I think we’re a very proud multicultural nation and it is important to recognise that when we’re forming our policies for government,” Shadow Education Minister Tanya Plibersek told SBS News.

Up to six shadow ministers including Tony Burke and Jason Clare are expected to be on hand when Labor formally makes its announcement in the marginal western Sydney seat of Reid on Saturday.

“The simple fact is, the earlier you start to learn another language the more successful you’ll be,” Ms Plibersek said.

“If we can get in early and ensure that our children are bilingual from an early age that is a gift to them that lasts a lifetime.”

Around 100,000 students attend classes in more than 80 different languages at community language schools across Australia.

“Students should study language starting as early as possible,”  Marisa Li, a teacher at Feng Hua Chinese School in Sydney told SBS News.

“As a second language learner, I know it’s very hard when you start late and the students, if they come to school from four, five years old, they will learn Chinese very easily,” she said.

“The work that is done by community language schools is done really on the smell of an oily rag,” Ms Plibersek said.

“We’ve got so many volunteers giving hours and hours of their time and the community language schools are really scraping together money to pay the air conditioning bills or to buy written resources for their students.”

Mother of two, Jessica Zhou, told SBS News she has enjoyed watching her two sons develop their proficiency in Mandarin after taking classes on weekends.

“They can communicate with their grandparents and us, and also they have made lots of different friends and they feel confident,” she said.

Her son Ethan Neoh agreed: “I can read more words in Chinese so I can read Chinese books without asking my mum and dad to help me.”

“A lot of our relationships with other countries, trade relationships, in particular, benefit when we’ve got Australians who speak a second language,” Ms Plibersek said.

“If we can work with nations in our region and around the world utilising bilingual Australians then we’ve got a head start.”sbs

Will Connolly, immediately dubbed Egg Boy by the world after he smashed an egg on the head of Fraser Anning, has appeared on The Project to talk about that viral incident.

Since egging Senator Anning after his response to the murder of 50 people in the Christchurch terror attacks, Will – as he prefers to be called – has made international headlines, given free lifetime tickets to festivals and concerts, and has inspired remixes, memes, and t-shirts.

“After that tragedy in Christchurch, I thought the world should be supporting those victims … and the senator released a statement which was pretty much a divisive hate speech … and I was just flat out disgusted,” he told The Project’s Hamish McDonald. 

Will said he had actually gone to listen to Anning’s speech in Melbourne to see what else he had to say – if he would apologise but Anning obviously didn’t.

“I actually went in there and listened to him for an hour,” Will said. “I wanted to forgive him then he said more things” which Will did not repeat.

He didn’t expect Anning to react the way he did – slapping him twice. He also didn’t expect his actions to go viral.

“Too much attention has been brought away form the victims,” Will said.

The act itself was just meant to be “a few laughs with the mates” but he does understand that egging Anning was “not the right thing to do.” 

“There’s no reason to physically attack anyone.” 

When asked if he would apologise for egging Anning, Will again said that he understood why some people were upset but believes the positives of his actions outweigh the negative.

“This egg has united people.”

A GoFundMe page has raised almost $80,000 for Will and “every cent” will go to the victims of Christchurch.

Will told Hamish he has no political motivations, no particular leanings or whatnot. He’s just a lad for “humanity”. 

Oh, and his nickname in high school was EGG BOY because he ain’t too many boiled eggs for lunch.

After his interview, Will told his over 600,000 followers on Instagram that he was “so proud to stand for what is right.” 

I encourage everyone to stand up for what you all believe in. I do not condone violence and I do not condone egging someone, and everyone has a right to an opinion, but as I listened to Senator Anning for over an hour, I realised a point had to be made and if no one was going to do anything, then I was.

I’m so humbled to be able to shed more light in response to the Christchurch shootings. My heart goes out to all who are suffering. I’ve had one lady from Christchurch tell me that through this period of darkness in her life, it’s the first time she’s smiled since the shootings, which meant so much to me.

The main focus here has to be the people who are suffering and the issue at hand, and I’m really happy it has united people the way it has.

I will continue to try and make the world a better place and I hope the end of racism is on the horizon. Keep spreading the love.

 

Parts of the Opal Tower were constructed using “lower-strength concrete” with “under-designed” critical support beams bursting under extreme pressure, an investigation into the apartment complex has found.

The Opal Tower final report, made public today after a near two-month investigation, outlines numerous key construction and material deficiencies in the 36-storey apartment complex that was evacuated on Christmas Eve after residents heard a loud cracking noise.

The ABC understands 259 units in the 392-unit apartment complex at Sydney’s Olympic Park are today still empty with hundreds of families still based in temporary accommodation.

Some residents have vowed to never return to the apartments, some of which were originally valued at more than $2 million.

The NSW Government says it supports the “direction” of recommendations contained in the final independent report into Sydney’s cracked Opal Tower but has not said whether it will implement them.The report, written by three of state’s most senior engineers and triggered by the State Government in the days after the cracks emerged, found changes made after the original Opal Tower design were exacerbated by “construction issues”.

However, it stopped short of pinning responsibility on the builder, Icon, which is backed by multi-billion-dollar Japanese firm Kajima Corporation, or the engineers, WSP — one of the world’s biggest firms.

It also did not name Ecove, the Australian-based developer of the multi-million-dollar project, or any of the subcontractors involved.

“We have not sought to indicate who was responsible for any of the causes, but rather to establish their structural basis,” it said.

The report, which comes after an interim report was released last month, looked at security footage of the original incident on level 10 of the building at 2:16pm on Christmas Eve, which showed the crack first appearing and lasting for 8 seconds.

The authors toured the site on multiple occasions, spoke to residents and reviewed the design and construction records.

They also held discussions with WSP, Icon and the floor-slab designer ASP.

The report criticised some of the technical information provided by those companies.

“We have noted that, at times, documentation has been unclear,” the report said.

During the investigation the authors said they found damage on 10 levels of the 36-level building, as well as damage in a basement level.

Three major causes were highlighted:

The ABC contacted Icon, the builder, and the developer Ecove for comment.

At the time of publication both parties had not received a copy of the report and declined to comment on its contents.

A spokeswoman for Icon said 171 units reviewed by Cardno — an engineering services company engaged by the building’s owners corporation — had been deemed “safe to be reoccupied”.

Looking at the building repairs, the report said the “full details” of the remediation measures were yet to be determined.

However they agreed in principle to what was proposed to fix the issues.

The three authors also outlined five recommendations to “avoid future incidents such as the one discussed in this report”:

NSW Minister for Better Regulation Matt Kean said the Government supported the direction of the report’s recommendations.