Category Archives: Australia news

Dutton’s nuclear reactor in Collie would have a 10th of the output of renewables, Chris Bowen says – as it happened

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The energy minister has been taking every opportunity to undermine the Coalition’s ‘plan’ on nuclear energy. This blog is now closed

Bragg defends NSW Liberal chief’s position after council elections debacle

Finally, Bragg has also defended Liberal party’s NSW president, Don Harwin, staying in his role after the “catastrophic failure” of the division to nominate candidates for local government elections.

I’m more interested in looking at the core competency of the division rather than getting into personality debates.

I don’t see any case for Don to go. I think he’s done a good job as president. I don’t think that having an election for president now inside the New South Wales division would be in the interests of the party, and at the end of the day, people love talking about these things, but the core competencies are on display – you’ve got candidates in the field and you’re raising money.

It’s been my view for a long time that gender identity and sexual orientation are reasonable questions to ask in a modern society. I think the fact the PM has tied himself in knots on this issue shows a great weakness in his own leadership.

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Questions on gender and sex variations ‘too complex’ for census, social services minister Amanda Rishworth says

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It’s the third explanation government ministers have given since last Sunday, while Coalition senator Andrew Bragg says questions are ‘reasonable’

The social services minister has offered up the latest explanation for why proposed questions on gender and sex variations were dumped from the next census, claiming they were too complicated.

In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, Amanda Rishworth gave a new reason for why new questions had been ditched from the census planning, saying the government had been shown “questions that were very complex in the census”.

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Closing arguments expected to be heard on Monday in Reynolds v Higgins defamation trial

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Linda Reynolds has argued that social media posts by former staffer contained mistruths that damaged her reputation – which Brittany Higgins denies

Closing arguments in a defamation case brought against Brittany Higgins by her former boss the Liberal senator Linda Reynolds are expected to be heard on Monday.

Reynolds is suing Higgins over social media posts made after the former political staffer alleged she had been raped by her colleague Bruce Lehrmann in the then defence minister’s office in Parliament House.

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Dangerous play: how online gaming purchases led an Australian youth into a secret gambling addiction

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Matthew’s* father had no idea his son was even gambling, let alone deep in debt, until he got a terrifying phone call

Vincent* didn’t know his 20-year-old son Matthew* was gambling until he took a phone call from him as he stood on a cliff’s edge after racking up thousands of dollars of debt.

Matthew was crying and revealed a gambling problem which had begun years earlier with online gaming, causing increasing debt. Matthew had opened up to another family member earlier that evening, who made him feel more ashamed, calling him an idiot.

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More August temperature records expected to fall amid warm weather and winds across east coast

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Unseasonably strong winds and record-breaking warm weather has been forecast to continue through the weekend


Winter has ended in Australia with weather records broken across the country – with expectations of August temperature records being broken on the final day of the month.

Amid wild winds in the country’s south, a warm run of weather was expected to continue through the weekend in central and southern Queensland, along with north-eastern New South Wales. Brisbane is expected to see multiple days of over 30C.

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Albanese says ABS, not government, will determine scope of census question on sexuality

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Prime minister defends government’s backflip on census and says single question on sexuality will not limit scope of data

Anthony Albanese says the nature and scope of question on sexuality in the next census will be a matter for the Australian Bureau of Statistics, not the government.

After a week in which his government was heavily criticised for excluding proposed new questions on sexual orientation and gender identity, the prime minister reneged and said the 2026 census would include “one question about sexuality, sexual preference”.

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Alarm as Australia records ‘gobsmacking’ hot August temperatures

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Heat building up in country’s centre and driving south-east is causing ‘really unusual’ heatwave that is breaking winter records

Australia’s winter runs from June to August, but swathes of the country have felt like summer the past week with temperatures topping 40C and records tumbling.

“It doesn’t matter how you slice and dice it,” said Dr Linden Ashcroft, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne. “The temperature records have been gobsmacking.”

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Vision Australia pressed to appoint a blind CEO and open field externally

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Founding chair Graeme Innes launches petition and accuses service provider of hypocrisy over recruitment for top job

Vision Australia is under pressure to appoint its first vision-impaired chief executive from the wider community, after the organisation announced it would limit its search to internal expressions of interest.

The national service provider’s founding chair, former disability discrimination commissioner Graeme Innes, launched a public petition on Monday after he and 33 other representatives of the blind and vision-impaired community wrote to Vision Australia’s board to urge it to prioritise the appointment of a blind chief executive.

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Brendan Nelson suggested censoring chapters in Australia’s official history of Timor-Leste operations, Dfat head claimed

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Exclusive: Documents released under freedom of information show Nelson, the director of the War Memorial in 2019, subsequently opposed cutting the chapters, and they appeared in the published work

The former director of the Australian War Memorial, Brendan Nelson, offered in 2019 to censor nine chapters from the official history of Australia’s operations in Timor-Leste and seal them for 30 years, according to a claim made in correspondence from the then head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Dfat).

But within weeks Nelson decided to actively oppose the move, the documents released under freedom of information laws suggest, and the chapters were included when the volume was eventually published.

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Builders and the Fair Work Commission are delaying CFMEU members’ pay deals, union leader says

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Electrical Trades Union secretary says it’s ‘appalling’ that agreements struck before the CFMEU was placed into administration ‘aren’t getting through’ the FWC

Blue-collar unions have taken aim at builders and the Fair Work Commission for delays approving pay deals struck before allegations of criminal misconduct and bikie links resulted in the construction union being placed into administration.

Troy Gray, the Electrical Trades Union Victorian secretary, said it was “appalling” that administrators have removed three union-appointed directors from the board of industry super fund Cbus and that enterprise agreements “aren’t getting through” the FWC.

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Last-minute Taiwan drama and a policing plan: five things we learned at the Pacific Islands Forum

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China’s representative demanded the scrapping of language about Taiwan in the final communique; Pacific countries will get a new multinational police unit

Pacific leaders gathered in Tonga this week to discuss the most pressing issues in the region. The group backed a Pacific-wide police training and rapid-response plan championed by Australia, and also reached agreement with France to allow a fact-finding mission to travel to New Caledonia to investigate the recent unrest. But the final day of the talks on Friday was overshadowed by a dispute over language about Taiwan.

Here are the key takeaways from the Pacific Islands Forum (Pif) summit, the region’s most important annual political gathering, bringing together Australia, New Zealand and 16 Pacific island countries or territories.

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Labor will have itself to blame if it loses western Sydney over Gaza issue, says Muslim Vote convener

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Wesam Charkawi says Albanese’s party has ‘created this movement through their decisions’ as pro-Palestine communities feel Labor has failed them

A new Muslim political movement backing independent candidates says Labor will have itself to blame if Peter Dutton wins the next election, and that people should not assume the candidates they support will preference Labor.

Sheikh Wesam Charkawi, one of the conveners behind the Muslim Vote movement, said the group would be aiming to support “at least five candidates” in New South Wales and Victoria.

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Emissions from Australian coal-fired power stations rise as wind and hydro dip

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More electricity demand and lower than usual generation from two renewable sources raises questions about climate targets

Greenhouse gas emissions from Australia’s ageing coal-fired power plants rose slightly in the first half of the year, reversing years of declining pollution from the power section and raising questions about the country’s ability to meet its climate targets.

An increase in electricity consumption across the country and lower than usual wind and hydro output led to an increase in coal generation. It pushed up emissions from the electricity grid between January and June.

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Gina Rinehart’s personal message to NGA about her portrait revealed in FOI documents

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Billionaire wrote to the National Gallery weeks before furore erupted, after a ‘concerned friend’ had told her about the now infamous painting

Gina Rinehart wrote to the National Gallery of Australia a month before the furore erupted about a portrait of her in the gallery, saying a “concerned friend” had brought it to her attention.

The email, released to Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws, was sent on behalf of Rinehart to Nick Mitzevich, the director of the NGA and Ryan Stokes, the chair of the gallery, on 15 April.

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Pacific Islands Forum communique taken down after Chinese envoy calls Taiwan reference ‘unacceptable’

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‘Visibly angry’ Qian Bo demands correction of Taiwan’s ‘development partner’ label despite its use for more than three decades

A summit of Pacific leaders has ended in drama after China’s regional envoy demanded the scrapping of language about Taiwan, with the communique later republished without the offending paragraph.

The Pacific Islands Forum (Pif) summit in Tonga this week brought together Australia, New Zealand and 16 Pacific island countries or territories, only three of which still have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

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One driver dead, another in hospital after explosive crash on Bruce Highway in Queensland

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Male truck driver airlifted to hospital from Bororen, 400km north of Brisbane, as ammonium nitrate spill sparks 2.5km exclusion zone

People were ordered to evacuate from the site of a fiery crash after a semi-trailer carrying chemicals and a ute collided on a major highway and the truck exploded.

An emergency alert was issued advising residents in an exclusion zone to “leave immediately” after the Bruce Highway crash at Bororen, 400km north of Brisbane, early on Friday.

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Australia news live: BoM predicts warm spring as Sydney faces high fire danger and four states warned of high winds

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Windy weekend in prospect as BoM forecasts warmer-than-usual spring. Follow the day’s news live

Good morning and welcome to the end-of-week news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the best of the overnight stories to get you up to speed before hosting duties switch to Emily Wind.

Mano Yogalingam was 23 years old and had “his whole life in front of him”. But the stresses and strains of living with the prospect of being deported back to Sri Lanka pushed him over the edge and he took his own life this week. Our top story this morning hears from refugee advocates who say the death of the Tamil asylum seeker has exposed the failings of the fast-track immigration system. “All of these people have been failed by the system. It’s a total cobweb of cruelty,” one said.

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‘Hold them captive’: Australian billionaire boss aims to end staff going out for coffee

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Chris Ellison, of Perth-based mining firm Mineral Resources, has already banned working from home

A billionaire mining boss who has already banned home working has said he does not want staff to step out of the office for coffee either.

Chris Ellison, the managing director of Mineral Resources, said the industry could not afford to continue down the path of flexible working, and that his company was investing in amenities at the firm’s head office in Perth, Western Australia, to keep people from leaving the building.

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There were 99 men for every 100 women in 2023, the Australian Bureau of Statistics says

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Darwin was the youngest city and had the highest disparity between numbers of men and women

Darwin had the youngest population of Australian state and territory capital cities in 2023, while Adelaide had the oldest, according to new population data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday.

The statistics show that cities tend to be younger hubs than the regions, while mining, military bases, universities and prisons heavily influence the demographic picture in some areas.

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Commonwealth Bank CEO labels Greens’ tax policy ‘insidious populism’ after firm’s $9.8bn profit

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Matt Comyn tells parliamentary inquiry that criticism of business profits ‘erodes trust in institutions’

The Commonwealth Bank chief executive, Matt Comyn, has described a proposed excessive profits tax as “insidious populism” and labelled criticism of profitable businesses as “fact-free rhetoric” that is damaging trust in public institutions.

Appearing before a parliamentary inquiry on Thursday, the head of Australia’s biggest bank appeared frustrated by questions about payment surcharges and corporate relationships and abruptly turned his attention to address criticism of big business.

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