Category Archives: Australia news

Dutton’s position on international student caps ‘utterly reckless’, Giles says – as it happened

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Oxfam reacts to Australia’s Cop29 pledge

Oxfam Australia has welcomed the government’s Cop29 pledge of $50m towards a global loss and damage fund to help the world’s most vulnerable people to repair the damage from climate breakdown.

If climate change losses and damages are not included in the new global climate finance goal, the new fund for responding to loss and damage risks becoming an empty vessel.

The danger is that developed country governments will prioritise meeting the new and ambitious climate finance goal, and will not prioritise a fund that doesn’t count towards it.

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Australian women to get home self tests for chlamydia and gonorrhoea – but experts urge caution

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People with genital or pelvic symptoms may feel a sense of false reassurance with a negative result, sexual health expert warns

With rates of some sexually transmitted infections in Australia on the rise, women will soon be able to test themselves for chlamydia and gonorrhoea at home – but sexual health experts have urged caution.

Australia’s drugs regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), has approved the rapid home test for sale, and it is expected to be available in pharmacies from 13 December, with a recommended retail price of $24. The test involves taking a vaginal swab, which is then placed in a container with testing solution.

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‘Every parent’s nightmare’: family of Melbourne teen fighting for life after feared methanol poisoning hopes for answers

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Parents ‘want to ensure no other family’ feels same anguish as Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles remain in Thai hospitals

The family of one of two teenagers fighting for life in hospital after a suspected methanol poisoning incident in Laos hope authorities work out exactly what happened “as soon as possible”.

Melbourne friends Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles, both aged 19, had been staying at a hostel in Vang Vieng, north of the Laos capital Vientiane, when they fell critically ill last week.

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Heatwave forecast for south-eastern Australia triggers energy supply and fire danger warnings

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Coming hot weather prompts Australian Energy Market Operator to predict shortfall in electricity supplies for NSW and Queensland

South-eastern Australia will endure its first big heatwave of the season in the coming days, elevating fire risks and potentially straining the power grid in some states.

Dean Narramore, a senior Bureau of Meteorology forecaster, said day and night temperatures would be as much as 8-14C hotter than usual for this time of year.

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Paris agreement is working, Australian minister tells Cop29, but much deeper cuts needed by 2035

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Chris Bowen also pledges A$50m to a fund to help the world’s most vulnerable people to repair the damage from climate breakdown

The Australian climate change minister, Chris Bowen, has declared the landmark Paris agreement “is working” as it had brought the world back from “the brink of catastrophic 4C warming”, but argued countries must set the most ambitious emissions targets possible for 2035 to limit worsening global heating.

Giving Australia’s national statement on the conference floor at the Cop29 summit in Azerbaijan, he also pledged A$50m (US$32.5m) towards a global loss and damage fund to help the world’s most vulnerable people to repair the damage from climate breakdown. The funding was welcomed by climate campaigners, who said it was “the right thing to do”.

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Thousands complain over way super funds handle and pay out death and disability claims

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Data from the financial watchdog strongly supports Asic’s claim ‘there is a systemic issue’ across the superannuation sector, advocate says

More than 5,000 people have lodged complaints with a financial watchdog about how the 10 largest superannuation funds have handled death and group insurance claims over four years.

Complaints to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (Afca) about the entitlements – a lump sum provided to a member’s family when they die – have increased each year since 2020/21. They rose from 921 to 1,048, then 1,459 and 1,611.

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‘Quishing’, ‘vishing’ and AI scams – the new cybercriminal techniques duping Australians

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Australian Signals Directorate sounds alarm on ‘shifting tactics’ by state-sponsored hackers and cybercriminals, and targeting of critical infrastructure

Cybercriminals are using fake QR codes or sophisticated artificial intelligence scams to trick Australians into giving up their private details or downloading dangerous files, the nation’s signals intelligence agency has warned, as fraudsters take advantage of the technology’s popularity.

The Australian Signals Directorate also sounded the alarm on the “shifting tactics” of state-sponsored hackers and cybercriminals, who they said are burrowing into computer systems of businesses and other organisations and then sitting quietly to avoid detection until they choose to strike.

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Gender pay gap data reveals Australia’s female CEOs paid $170,000 less than men on average

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But new data shows 3% increase in men taking primary carer parental leave – the largest annual increase since records began

Female CEOs in Australia are paid an average of $170,000 less than their male counterparts – a gender pay gap of 25% – according to government figures.

The pay gap among CEOs was published as part of the national pay gap scorecard for the first time this year, after legislative changes introduced last year.

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Guardian Australia wins Walkley innovation award for Gaza interactive

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Story showcasing text messages between Palestinian friends at start of Israel-Gaza war claims gong at 69th annual awards

Guardian Australia has claimed an award for innovation at the 69th annual Walkley awards for excellence in journalism.

At the awards evening in Sydney on Tuesday, a team of Rafqa Touma, Ariel Bogle, Mostafa Rachwani, Nick Evershed, Andy Ball, Christelle Basil and Shelley Hepworth claimed the category for digital media innovation for the Leaving Gaza interactive.

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Australia plan Indigenous team for ‘very special game’ against Lions

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  • Tour slot vacant after Melbourne Rebels demise
  • ‘We have some great talent with First Nations heritage’

The British and Irish Lions could face a team with Indigenous and Pacific heritage during their 2025 tour, according to the chief executive of Rugby Australia. Phil Waugh said discussions were under way with the Lions for the match to fill the gap in the tour schedule due to the Melbourne Rebels going into administration.

“We have some great talent with First Nations heritage,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald, saying the team would be made up of players from the remaining Super Rugby teams. “It was a matter of how do we will pull those ideas together to make a very special game in a massive tour?

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Australia politics live: Dutton calls Labor’s international student caps bill ‘a dog’s breakfast’; RBA fuels expectations for February interest rates cut

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First investment announced as part of National Reconstruction Fund

The science and industry minister, Ed Husic, was on ABC News Breakfast to discuss the government’s first investment via the National Reconstruction Fund – $40m to a Toowoomba mineral processing factory.

The difference in terms of what the [NRF] does is it provides loans, equity, and guarantees to firms that are [working across] seven priority areas to expand and grow their operations.

Given the sizes of the investments, it does take more time to be able to go through to shape up what the investment will look like, how big it’ll be, over what term, the rate of return – because the other important thing to stress to viewers is – this is not about handing out grants, and certainly not doing it on the basis of political colour-coded spreadsheets as we saw with the last government.

In fact, the social media users were less likely to have a negative attitude towards Jewish and Muslim people, irrespective of where they were on the political spectrum.

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Marles says Aukus submarines on schedule despite US admiral’s warning of ‘exceptionally fragile’ industry

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Shipyards will not meet goal of 1.5 boats a year by 2025 to be on track to provide Australia with three Virginia-class submarines, program chief says

The admiral who runs America’s submarine building program has confirmed construction is behind schedule and nowhere near the rate required to supply Australia’s Aukus nuclear submarines on schedule.

R Adm Jon Rucker told the Naval Submarine League’s annual symposium in Arlington, Virginia, last week that the US had “an exceptionally fragile” military shipbuilding base and could not meet construction rates for its own vessels this year.

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Melbourne best friends on ‘dream getaway’ before feared methanol poisoning in Laos left them fighting for life

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Teenagers Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles in hospitals in neighbouring Thailand after incident last week

Two Australian teenagers are fighting for their lives in Thailand after a suspected methanol poisoning in neighbouring Laos, with the family of one them saying they were struggling to comprehend what had happened.

Friends Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles from Melbourne had been staying at a hostel in Vang Vieng, north of the Laos capital, Vientiane, when they fell critically ill last week, 3AW reported.

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Police officer who tasered Clare Nowland was ‘fed up’ she would not drop steak knife, jury told

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Kristian White did not consider 95-year-old a threat and fired stun gun because he was ‘impatient’ and ‘not prepared to wait any longer’, manslaughter trial told

A police officer’s cursing just before he tasered an elderly woman who was holding a knife showed the aged-care resident was not a threat but that he was simply fed up with the situation, a jury has heard.

Dramatic footage of the incident taken from the nursing home’s CCTV and police bodyworn cameras has been shown at a NSW supreme court manslaughter trial for Sen Const Kristian White.

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Greg Lynn launches appeal over conviction for murdering camper Carol Clay in Victoria’s high country

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Former Jetstar pilot seeks to overturn conviction and sentence over killing of 73-year-old in the Wonnangatta Valley

A former Jetstar pilot who was convicted of murdering an elderly camper in Victoria’s high country has formally lodged an appeal against his conviction and sentence.

Greg Lynn, 58, was last month sentenced to a minimum of 24 years in prison for the 2020 murder of 73-year-old camper Carol Clay in the Wonnangatta Valley.

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Bunnings breached privacy of customers by using facial recognition, watchdog finds

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Hardware chain breached law by scanning faces of everyone entering the store against a database of banned customers

Bunnings breached the privacy of potentially hundreds of thousands of Australians through the use of facial recognition technologies in stores to scan every customer on entry that were aimed at addressing theft or store safety, the Australian privacy commissioner has ruled.

In 2022, it was revealed the hardware chain was one of a number of retailers using facial recognition tech in stores to check the face of every customer entering the store against a database of banned customers.

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The Australian government will force some shops to accept cash. So who still uses it, and why?

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Cash use has declined drastically across all age groups and for all products, but small pockets of resistance to digital-only payments remain

The Australian government has announced it will mandate that businesses selling essential goods and services must accept cash from 2026, and has confirmed that cheques will no longer be accepted as legal tender from 2029.

So how many Australians are still paying with cash?

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Australian goldminer to pay Mali $160m to free detained CEO and executives

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Group were held after a meeting about what mining firm referred to as unsubstantiated claims regarding taxes and levies

An Australian goldmining company has agreed to pay $160m ($A247m, £126m) to Mali’s government after the west African country’s junta detained its chief executive and two other employees.

Resolute Mining’s chief executive, Terence Holohan, and the other two employees were detained on 8 November in Mali’s capital, Bamako, at the end of a meeting with government officials over tax and other state claims that the miner had previously said were “unsubstantiated”.

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Australian authors group give every federal politician five books to encourage nuance in Middle East debate

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Exclusive: Group of more than 90 including writers Tim Winton and Charlotte Wood have paid for every federal senator and MP to receive curated package

Some of Australia’s most prominent authors are among a group of more than 90 writers and literary supporters who have paid for every federal parliamentarian to receive a carefully curated package of books on the Middle East to expand their knowledge of the history of the conflict.

Each of the 227 MPs and senators is being given the same five books – nonfiction, fiction and reference works – as part of the campaign to encourage wider reading on the origins of the Middle East conflict among Australia’s political leaders.

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Backflip on international student caps ‘baffling’, MP says – as it happened

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Three million Australians are at risk of homelessness, a 63% increase since 2016, a new report from Homelessness NSW and Impact Economics has revealed.

By looking at household data including income, support and rental stress, the report found in 2022 there were 3.04m Australians now at risk of homelessness, an increase on the 1.87m reported in 2016.

1 in every five days the frontline services could not assist a family with children because they were so stretched.

Individuals without children were turned away 1 in every 2 days.

Unaccompanied young people and children without accommodation were turned away on 1 in 9 days.

I think more broadly, the government under Anthony Albanese has got an excellent record of managing relationships around the world, making genuine progress, whether it’s with China, whether it’s with American friends or others.

I think when it comes to Peter Dutton, I think he has a kind of a reckless arrogance which doesn’t lend itself to foreign policy and maintaining and managing some of these complex relationships.

I think he would be a risk to our economy, and that’s because that reckless arrogance, which has been a defining feature of his time as a politician over a long period of time now … [it] doesn’t lend itself to managing these relationships, which are so important to us.

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