Category Archives: Australia news

Australians are yet to see the benefits of AI and datacentres – and US midterms show they could be political kryptonite

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Albanese should tread carefully as he struggles to make case for how the new technology will benefit ordinary voters

When will Australia see the benefits of the AI and datacentre boom? So far, all we’ve seen is the possibility of changes to copyright that would hurt Australian creatives, special rules about power and water use, and the threat of mass displacement or replacement of workers, with the trade-off being a mere 10% chance of human extinction.

Now add the Reserve Bank’s assessment this week that datacentres were part of growing “inflationary pressures” when lifting interest rates to an 18-year high.

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‘Bring it on’: Pauline Hanson to appeal Mehreen Faruqi racial discrimination ruling in high court

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One Nation leader granted special leave to appeal after full federal court earlier this year agreed Hanson portrayed Faruqi as a ‘second-class citizen’

Australia’s high court has agreed to hear Pauline Hanson’s appeal against a ruling that she engaged in racial discrimination against Mehreen Faruqi when she told the Greens senator to “pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan”.

The One Nation leader was granted special leave to appeal on Thursday after the full federal court earlier this year unanimously upheld a 2024 decision.

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Albanese government warned it’s ‘sleepwalking into another robodebt scenario’ over use of algorithms and AI

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Centre for Public Integrity report says mandatory audit and public register of all automated decision-making needed

The federal government is “sleepwalking its way into another robodebt” scandal amid a lack of transparency and legislation around use of algorithms and artificial intelligence in decisions, the chief executive of independent thinktank the Centre for Public Integrity said.

Dr Catherine Williams launched the centre’s “Computer Says No” report on Thursday, which examines the use of automated decision-making (ADM) tools by the government and calls for urgent reform.

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Choice Shonky awards 2026: From ticket sellers and Virgin flight credits to a 25-hour laundry cycle

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Australia’s worst products and services for the year have been named by consumer advocacy group Choice

Concert tickets that surge to $1,650, an airline pocketing $75m of unused flight credits and a washer/dryer cycle that takes 25 hours have all made the dishonour roll in consumer advocacy group Choice’s annual Shonky awards.

Now in their 21st year, the Shonkys spotlight Australia’s worst products and services as decided by Choice.

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Two Australians confirmed dead in Spain’s high-speed train crash

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Legal body handling identification says three latest victims include two Australians and a Japanese citizen

Two Australians are among 69 people who died in last week’s high-speed train collision after Spanish authorities confirmed the identities of three more victims.

A legal body set up to handle the identification work, made up of police and forensics experts, announced in a statement late on Monday the three latest confirmed victims – two Australians and a Japanese citizen. They have not been named.

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Public service union refuses to back Labor at Victorian election, condemning job cuts and $1.2bn consultant spend

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Exclusive: Community and Public Sector Union denounces ‘privatisation by stealth’, joining growing number of unions turning on Carroll government

Victoria’s public servants union says it will not support Labor at this month’s state election, condemning the government for cutting public service jobs while spending $1.2bn on consultants.

The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) will announce the decision on Wednesday, joining several other unions that have refused to back Labor or are actively campaigning against the government ahead of the 28 November poll.

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Craig Silvey pens 9,000-word apology for child exploitation material offences

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The children’s author claims he experienced trauma in childhood as he begins seven-month sentence for possessing depraved material

The disgraced best-selling author Craig Silvey has claimed he experienced trauma as a child in a 9,000-word apology published after he was jailed for child exploitation offences.

The young adult novelist was sentenced on Monday to seven months’ imprisonment, after being charged in January and subsequently pleading guilty to distributing and possessing depraved child exploitation material.

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Political leaders condemn ‘vicious’ alleged baseball bat attack on One Nation volunteer at his Victorian home

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Police confirm arrest of 37-year-old and 14-year-old boy over alleged assault in Torquay on Sunday night

Leaders from across the political spectrum have condemned the alleged assault of a One Nation volunteer with a baseball bat outside his home on Victoria’s Surf Coast.

Police on Tuesday confirmed they arrested a 37-year-old Hampton Park man and a 14-year-old boy over the incident, which occurred at a Torquay home on Sunday night.

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Guardian Essential poll: record number of Australians are turning their backs on the Melbourne Cup

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Growing disdain for gambling and animal cruelty concerns drive sliding interest in race that once ‘stopped the nation’

A record number of Australians are turning their backs on the Melbourne Cup, with more than two-thirds surveyed saying they have low or zero interest in the annual horse race.

Support for the Melbourne Cup has been sliding consistently for a number of years, but the Guardian Essential poll found just 9% of Australians said they had high interest in the race now – nearly half the proportion in 2025.

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NSW council refuses to show world-renowned Gaza artwork over ‘unacceptable’ safety risk

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Exclusive: Shoalhaven council says Wall of Tears installation by Phil Buehler posed risk to staff, visitors and tenants

A New South Wales local council has refused to show a world-renowned artwork about children killed in Gaza after asking organisers to investigate hiring “armed guards” to counter the risk of “community conflict” over the mural.

The group, Shoalhaven Friends of Palestine, was aiming to show the Wall of Tears installation by American artist Phil Buehler at the Shoalhaven Regional Gallery in Nowra on Tuesday, following the work being exhibited around Australia, including on the front lawns of Parliament House in Canberra in September.

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Award‑winning Australian children’s author Craig Silvey jailed over child exploitation material

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Jasper Jones writer sent multiple messages about his sexual desire for young boys, Western Australian district court hears

The award‑winning author Craig Silvey sent multiple messages about his sexual desire for young boys and was caught with explicit images of children and adults.

The young adult novelist was jailed on Monday for seven months after pleading guilty to distributing and possessing child exploitation material earlier this year.

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‘I want to slap you around a bit, too’: Victorian magistrate reprimanded over language in court

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Judicial commission finds against Vicky Prapas over a series of comments, including one made when school children were present

A magistrate who told a court user “I want to slap you around a bit too” has come under fire for her offensive and inappropriate language.

The remark was one of several made by Victorian magistrate Vicky Prapas that the state’s judicial watchdog has found to be inappropriate.

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Northern Territory water plan condemned as ‘blatant and shameless’ attack on nature

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Exclusive: Move to scrap legal requirement to set aside water for environment is ‘extreme even for the NT CLP government’, green group says

The Northern Territory government has been accused of making a “blatant and shameless” attack on nature by planning to delete a legal requirement that water must be allocated to the environment.

In what has been described as the latest in a series of attacks on the environment by the NT’s Country Liberal party, the Finocchiaro government plans to change water rules that govern how much ground and surface water industry can take.

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AI is stealing Indigenous Australian art and churning out ‘Temu slop’, artist says

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Chair of National Gallery’s First Nations advisory group says the technology is undermining artists’ agency and the authenticity of their work

AI is taking First Nations art and turning it into “Temu slop”, the Pitjantjatjara artist Sally Scales has said.

Scales, the chair of the National Gallery of Australia’s First Nations advisory group, said the technology is undermining the agency of First Nations artists and the authenticity of their work and represents a “a theft” of cultural knowledge.

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Disquiet grows in Albanese’s back yard as Grayndler artists unite against ‘insane’ AI proposal

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Inner west Sydney seat has long been safely held by the PM – but potential changes to copyright laws are angering its large creative community

The prime minister is facing growing discontent within his own electorate as creatives push back against the federal government’s proposal to allow AI companies to scrape everything Australians create online.

Anthony Albanese’s seat of Grayndler in Sydney’s inner west is home to more than 3,000 cultural and creative businesses, and 10% of its workers are employed in cultural and creative fields – compared with 4.2% nationally.

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Storm warnings for Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane as cold front ‘packs a punch’

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BoM predicts hail, damaging winds and possible flash flooding across Victoria, NSW and parts of Queensland into Sunday

Storm warnings are in place for multiple capital cities across Australia’s east and south-east as a severe weather front sweeps across the country.

Heavy rain, winds and thunderstorms are forecast to hit Melbourne and eastern Victoria throughout Saturday afternoon as a cold front meets warm, humid air.

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Albanese looks for reset on world stage as ‘spot fires burn’ domestically and likely interest rate hike looms

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The prime minister will speak with King Charles and others at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Antigua and Barbuda

As “summit season” begins, reaffirming ties with fellow leaders on the world stage could be a circuit breaker for Anthony Albanese amid domestic and economic woes, analysts have said.

But a likely interest rate hike, triggered by higher-than-expected inflation, while the prime minister is overseas will make his job – and the treasurer’s – even harder.

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A top-secret spy mission, a decades-old scandal – and the Austin Powers-esque saga to lift the lid

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Rex Patrick’s latest transparency fight is over what he calls ‘most open secret in the history of Australian spying’ – maybe even the world

A campaign to uncover any documents relating to whether Australian spies bugged Timor-Leste to gain the upper hand in sensitive oil and gas negotiations will be a little less secret after a critical win by the former senator Rex Patrick.

The politician turned transparency advocate is trying to finally lift the lid on the top-secret mission in 2004 that became a public scandal years later after an ex-spy and a former attorney general attempted to mount a case in The Hague.

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Experts warn AI copyright changes could breach Australian constitution and spark huge compensation rights case

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Scraping copyrighted material from internet could ‘potentially’ amount to acquisition of property by government, Anne Twomey says

Altering copyright law to allow AI companies to scrape music, books and journalism could trigger a constitutional breach, Coalition senators and the recording industry have warned, as they raise new fears it could open Australia to massive legal action and compensation claims from rights holders worldwide.

The attorney general’s department admitted it was “extremely alive” to the issue, and Australia’s leading constitutional expert, Anne Twomey, agreed there was “potentially” a concern – depending how legislation was drafted – that granting AI companies permission to scrape copyrighted material from the internet could amount to an acquisition of property by the government.

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Former Sydney childcare worker Ashley Paul Griffith hit with 202 more abuse charges

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NSW police say charges include child rape and relate to 23 alleged victims aged between one and five at a Sydney childcare centre

One of Australia’s most notorious paedophiles is facing hundreds more child abuse charges, including for the alleged rape of children as young as one.

Days after being extradited from Queensland to New South Wales, Ashley Paul Griffith was hit with 202 charges dating from between 2014 and 2017, with police labelling the allegations “deeply disturbing”.

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