— With AAP.
1. “I wish I had have rung.” AFL legends Garry Lyon and Jason Dunstall pay tribute to Danny Frawley.
AFL legends Garry Lyon and Jason Dunstall choked up as they remembered their friend Danny Frawley during a heart-wrenching interview on Fox Footy’s AFL360.
Frawley, a Saint Kilda legend and former Richmond coach died at the scene of a one-vehicle car crash on Monday, one day after his 56th birthday.
On Thursday night’s AFL360, Lyon explained he was “not doing great”, but the focus was on supporting Frawley’s wife Anita and three daughters.
Lyon said Frawley "wanted to be loved" and wished his friend had heard how much love and affection AFL fans, players and colleagues had for him.
Dunstall said that there were a lot of questions following Frawley's death that are no longer able to be answered.
"It’s hard to get your head around. It’s an illness I’ll never ever understand. I hate its guts but I can’t get a handle on it. It just seems so senseless and you’re just left with this giant void. It doesn’t matter how devastated we are, there are family members who are 1000 times worse off and I can’t comprehend that," he said.
"It’s funny, he had some time off I don’t know how many years ago now, and that blindsided me, because I worked with the guy every week and we had so much fun together and I wasn’t aware of anything, I didn’t see any of the signs,” Dunstall said.
"I’d make a point of asking him every now and then ‘how’re you going’ until you get to the stage of feeling like you’re bugging him so you stop asking. Then you think, 'Shit, if I had have been more attentive, should I have seen something, should I have noticed something, should I have said more - what can you do?"
After hearing the news on Monday, Dunstall said he went numb.
"I basically had no feeling for hours, and it wasn’t until I saw a replay of 360 doing a tribute and that’s when I lost it and burst into tears and couldn’t stop crying but I hadn’t cried until then because I wasn’t accepting what had happened."
Lyon was asleep when he was bombarded with text messages sharing condolences over Frawley's death.
He recalled how, after he too found his mental health suffering, Frawley - who he described as like his "brother" - was the first one to reach out.
"Every time I saw him for the rest of that time he would say, ‘How are you going?’ and ring me," Lyon said. "And I wish I had have rung if that was what he was going through. You can’t know, that’s the hard thing."
When asked how they'll remember him, his friends described him as "impossible not to love".
"He was a fun magnet, it didn’t matter what was going on, it didn’t matter what you were doing, how serious or how... he just had a nose for fun. If it got too serious, he’d lose focus and find fun in it. That’s how I’ll remember him," Lyon said.
During a tribute to Frawley on Monday night's AFL360 episode, Lyon and Dunstell were noticeably absent, with host Gerard Whateley explaining the pain was too raw for the legend's two close friends.
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2. Woman accused of murdering her newborn baby in 1995 granted bail.
A woman who was a teenager when she allegedly murdered her newborn baby, whose body was found in a West Australian caravan park toilet more than 20 years ago, has been granted bail so she can return to Victoria.
The 38-year-old woman cannot be named because she was just 14 when she allegedly killed the boy in Kambalda, in WA's Goldfields region, in July 1995.
Cold Case Homicide Squad detectives travelled to Victoria to charge the woman with wilful murder and she was extradited to WA to face Perth Children's Court on Thursday.
Flanked by two security guards, the woman cried during proceedings and spoke little.
The court heard the baby did not have a name, but others have referred to him as Rijul, meaning "innocent" in Hindi.
The woman now lives at a rented home in regional Victoria with her 17-year-old son and has shared custody of an eight-year-old child.
She also has some contact with her other children, who live in Tasmania with their father, the court heard.
The woman previously worked as a cleaner but is currently unemployed and receives Centrelink payments.
Judge Gillian Braddock described it as a "traumatic and tragic" case, saying the woman was also a victim of crime, as she was 13 when the baby was conceived and her pregnancy should have raised "great concerns" for any responsible adult.
She said no one knew about her "condition" and she was "totally alone".
Judge Braddock said the case was unlike anything she had come across before in this jurisdiction.
She noted the woman had no relevant criminal history and had cooperated with police.
"I am satisfied that these are exceptional circumstances," Judge Braddock said.
Under the woman's bail conditions, she is required to report to police three times per week, must stay away from airports unless she is returning to Perth for a court appearance and cannot apply for a passport.
She must also provide a $100 personal undertaking.
Defence counsel Claire Rossi said Crisis Care would cover the cost of the woman's travel back to Victoria.
Prosecutors did not oppose the bail application.
The woman will be allowed to make her next court appearance via video link on November 11.
Police said earlier this week that an investigation was ongoing into the circumstances surrounding the conception of the baby.
3. Multiple women arrested over $4 million 'fake' Sydney family day care centre.
A further 22 people accused of being part of an elaborate family day care fraud have been charged in Sydney - including mothers who allegedly provided details of their children to the syndicate.
Detectives initially charged 17 people in May over their links to an allegedly fake business called Red Roses Family Day Care.
It was alleged the illegitimate company raked in about $4 million in rebates in ten months by exploiting the federal government's childcare subsidy scheme.
Seven women and one man were charged on Tuesday.
Another 16 women were arrested in Sydney's southwest on Thursday morning with 14 of them - all mothers - later charged with participating in a criminal group.
Police will allege in court that the women provided the personal details of their children and knowingly participated in activities associated with making fraudulent claims.
NSW Police Minister David Elliott on Thursday said the government would consider changing legislation to close loopholes if the police recommended it.
"There's no lower act than somebody taking money fraudulently from the taxpayers of the state that should have been going towards the education and welfare of our children," Mr Elliott said.
"If you're a parent who has taken some sort of inducement to provide your child's name to assist in this fraudulent activity, assume that police will arrest, charge and convict you."
Acting Assistant Commissioner Stuart Smith said more arrests were expected.
"Our objective is to completely dismantle the business model which we know is being used by at least 100 other syndicates with an estimated potential value of the fraud across Sydney at least $750 million per year," he said in a statement.
Red Roses Family Day Care looked like a legitimate business operating out of multiple sites in Sydney and Wollongong.
It said it provided "safe, nurturing and loving" care to more than 450 children but police allege there were no real children, just photographs of them.
"Every part of it from the bottom to the top was a falsehood," Mr Smith told reporters on Thursday.
Police in May revealed some 150 parents who claimed they had between three and seven children in care claimed rebates.
4. Man accused of murdering his wife 'taunted her about not having a baby'.
A Sydney man accused of burning his wife to death would taunt her because she couldn't have a baby, her sister has told his murder trial.
Gurvinder Kaur said when her sister visited the family in India she had a bruise on her thigh and her stomach and revealed that her husband had kicked her in the belly.
Kulwinder Singh, 41, has pleaded not guilty in the NSW Supreme Court to murdering his wife Parwinder Kaur, 32, in December 2013.
She sustained burns to 90 per cent of her body in the petrol-fuelled blaze at their Rouse Hill home.
The Crown alleges Singh was responsible for her death, but he told police "she did it to herself" while he was upstairs.
Under cross-examination on Thursday, Ms Kaur denied making up her evidence that she had seen bruises on her sister, that they were caused by her husband and that he also swore at her.
"I suggest she never told you she was taunted by this man's family or Kulwinder Singh about not having a baby," his barrister, Margaret Cunneen SC, said.
"My sister was always taunted in that house, in both houses," Ms Kaur replied, speaking through a Punjabi interpreter.
The sisters' father, Jagat Singh, told the jury he and his wife visited their daughter Parwinder and her husband in Sydney in October 2013.
On their departure date, he saw Singh "holding her arm and pulling it and swearing".
She did not go to the airport to see them off.
"She wanted to come but wasn't let by Kulwinder," he said, speaking through a Punjabi interpreter.
Ms Cunneen showed Mr Singh a 2013 photo which she said showed the "pleasantness" between him and his son-in-law, but Mr Singh denied that the photo depicted his son-in-law.
She also presented a document which she said showed Singh had sent money to his father-in-law in India.
"I don't need money. I have enough money," he replied.
The trial is continuing.
5. Jack de Belin's rape trial brought forward a month.
The rape trial of sidelined St George Illawarra star Jack de Belin has been brought forward a month and will now begin in February.
The 28-year-old and his co-accused Callan Sinclair have pleaded not guilty to five charges of aggravated sexual assault in company of a 19-year-old woman at a Wollongong unit in December.
Their Wollongong District Court trial had been set down for March 2, before the start of the NRL season that month.
But on Wednesday, the start date of the trial - which is expected to last two weeks - was changed to February 3 with a mention listed for December 17 to confirm the date.
In August, de Belin abandoned his Federal Court appeal over the NRL's contentious stand-down policy, while still maintaining the rule was unlawful.
His barrister said given the timing and the likelihood that the appeal decision would not be finalised until after the 2019 season, there was no utility in the matter proceeding at that stage.