Category Archives: Australia news

Gas shortfalls for eastern states worse than predicted just months ago, ACCC warns

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Projections of shortfalls – and calls for more production – come even as the bulk of gas produced in Australia is exported

East coast gas shortfalls could emerge as soon as 2027, a year earlier than was forecast six months ago, unless new sources of supply are made available, the competition watchdog has warned in a report.

Released on Friday, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report does not cover the supply squeeze that prompted the market operator last month to issue a “threat notice” of potential shortfalls of the fuel in southern states, amid production issues and a prolonged cold snap.

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Thousands of patients facing healthcare price hikes after negotiations break down between St Vincent’s and NIB

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Australian Medical Association is urging both parties to reach an agreement for the sake of patients

Thousands of patients could face higher out-of-pocket healthcare costs after negotiations broke down between St Vincent’s private hospital network and the private health fund, NIB, for a new funding agreement.

On Thursday, St Vincent’s Health Australia gave notice to NIB that it will walk away from its contract within the next 65 business days unless a fairer funding agreement is reached.

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Fatima Payman’s decision to quit Labor party will ‘empower opponents on far right’, Wayne Swan says

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Government MPs express disappointment over WA senator’s decision as Greens and crossbench praise move

Fatima Payman says she is “grieving” after deciding to quit Labor to sit as an independent, a move the party’s president, Wayne Swan, claims will “empower Labor’s opponents on the far right”.

Payman said on Thursday she felt she had no choice but to quit Labor after her advocacy for the Australian government to recognise a Palestinian state. She claimed voters were “frustrated” at Labor’s position on the war in Gaza, and that she was displaying “Labor values” in the positions she had taken.

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Teen accused of driving stolen Jeep in fatal Melbourne crash faces court as three males remain on the run

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Boy, 17, charged over driving an allegedly stolen car in a fatal crash that killed a 28-year-old man in Burwood

A teen accused of driving a stolen Jeep that killed another driver was checked on by police hours after the crash and found in bed with a doona pulled up to his chin, police allege.

Police are relying on a pair of white shoes, a phone call and an accusation by a young female co-accused to prove the 17-year-old was behind the wheel during the deadly crash.

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Senator says PM’s office planted seed about crossing floor – as it happened

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This blog is now closed.

Josh Burns says Labor motion to recognise Palestine as part of the peace process is ‘the bare minimum’

Josh Burns finished with:

This motion before the House is the bare minimum. It says that we support the recognition of a Palestinian state as part of a peace process. That peace process is something that I hold onto and that I have held onto my entire life.

That peace process says that we are all people, above all, and that there has to be a way through this. There has to be a way through this conflict. I wish that we could pull a lever here in Australia and it would all end today, but we have seen time and time again that that is not the case.

There are so many intractable parts of this conflict. I have a degree in this conflict, and I still don’t quite know how to fix it.

I know that there are players who are desperate to end the peace process and to try and disturb any efforts towards peace. I know that trees take years and years and years to grow and can be cut down in a second, and that is what the Middle East has demonstrated over and over again.

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Police find human remains believed to be 12-year-old girl missing after suspected NT crocodile attack

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The girl was last seen swimming at Mango Creek, near the remote community of Palumpa, 350km south-west of Darwin

Northern Territory police have located remains believed to be of a missing 12-year-old girl who was the victim of a suspected crocodile attack.

The girl was reported missing on Tuesday after the attack near the remote Northern Territory community of Palumpa. The girl had last been seen swimming at Mango Creek, about 350km south-west of Darwin, and was reported missing about 5.30pm on Tuesday.

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Victoria police make 2,700 arrests in five-month domestic violence blitz in south-east Melbourne

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Police say 7,500 charges laid, including against a man, 42, who allegedly stabbed a woman and assaulted a teenager in front of two younger children

A man who allegedly stabbed a woman and assaulted a teenager in front of two children was among 2,700 arrests by Victoria police during a five-month blitz targeting family violence offenders in Melbourne’s south-east.

Victoria police on Thursday said 7,500 charges had been laid as a result of the blitz, between January and June of this year.

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Pro-Palestine protesters scale roof of Australia’s Parliament House to unfurl banners criticising war in Gaza

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Call for investigation into security breach after parliament partly locked down as activists reveal banner declaring ‘war crimes … enabled here’

Some areas of Australia’s federal parliament were locked down as pro-Palestine protesters climbed on to the roof of the building in Canberra and unfurled a banner declaring “war crimes … enabled here”.

Thursday’s protest focused on the war in Gaza appeared to be coordinated with other actions highlighting the climate crisis and Indigenous rights.

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NSW greyhound racing board could be sacked after minister issues ‘show cause’ notice

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Greyhound Racing NSW allegedly breached licence that stipulates it must immediately disclose anything that brings industry into disrepute

The New South Wales minister responsible for greyhound racing has threatened to sack the industry’s governing board over its alleged failure to properly manage a series of complaints over how it operates and other matters.

Guardian Australia understands the racing minister, David Harris, issued a show cause notice to the Greyhound Racing NSW board on the grounds it had breached the terms of its operating licence, as the sector faces criticism over rising dog injuries and its adoption programs.

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Synthetic opioid detected in bodies of four people found dead in Melbourne home

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Police confirm drug’s presence after deaths of boy, 17, and three adults in Broadmeadows last week

A synthetic opioid has been found in the bodies of four people found dead in a Melbourne home last week, police say.

The bodies of the 17-year-old boy, two men aged 32 and 37, and a 42-year-old woman were discovered at the property in Broadmeadows, in Melbourne’s north, in the early hours of 25 June.

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Australia to strike new funding deal with Papua New Guinea to manage transferred asylum seekers

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Exclusive: Government regulations reveal Australia will provide ‘further capability support and funding’ to PNG but dollar figure is confidential

The Albanese government will strike a new funding deal with Papua New Guinea (PNG) to support asylum seekers after the country threatened to send them back to Australia unless a fresh agreement was signed.

In December 2021 the Morrison government struck a secret deal for about 75 refugees and asylum seekers to stay in Port Moresby after the regional processing centre at Manus Island was closed.

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Labor branch in Albanese’s electorate passes motion supporting Fatima Payman

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Members in Leichhardt ‘express solidarity’ with the rebel senator and say they share her ‘strong support’ for Palestine

A Labor branch in Anthony Albanese’s own electorate has passed a motion expressing support for the dissident senator Fatima Payman, even as expectations grow she is poised to quit the party.

Labor’s Leichhardt branch – which is within the prime minister’s Sydney electorate of Grayndler – passed the supportive motion at a scheduled meeting on Wednesday night.

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Asic should be split in two after ‘comprehensively’ failing as regulator, parliamentary inquiry finds

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Scathing report says commission’s investigations and decisions are ‘opaque’ and it responded to criticism by managing its own reputation

Australia’s corporate watchdog should be split into two after “comprehensively” failing its role as a regulator, including focusing more on managing its reputation than enforcement action, a parliamentary committee inquiry has found.

The economics committee’s report, released Wednesday, delivers a scathing overview of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (Asic) role in ensuring allegations of corporate misconduct are investigated and punished.

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Australia’s largest online bookseller Booktopia enters voluntary administration

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Insolvency advisers are assessing the business while options for its sale or recapitalisation are explored

Booktopia has entered into voluntary administration, but will continue filling orders and selling to the public under supervision from an insolvency adviser.

Australia’s largest online bookseller announced the move on Wednesday, two weeks after it went into a voluntary suspension of share trading.

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Pippa White would ‘almost certainly’ have survived had she been given antibiotics in time, NSW inquest hears

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Two-year-old’s sepsis death would likely have been prevented if necessary treatment had occurred 12-18 hours earlier, doctor tells coronial inquest

A senior doctor at the regional New South Wales hospital where a two-year-old girl died of septic shock says he would have activated the sepsis treatment pathway six hours earlier had he known her condition was deteriorating, an inquest has heard.

Prof Adam Buckmaster said Pippa Mae White may still have died because she already had “overwhelming sepsis”, although she “almost certainly” would have survived had she been treated with antibiotics 12 or 18 hours earlier.

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Australian universities clash over proposed international student cap

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Regional and smaller universities say they should be exempt from limits on overseas enrolments and elite capital city institutions should be targeted

Australia’s universities have descended into infighting over a proposed international student cap, with some bodies claiming the government is protecting elite institutions.

The draft bill, announced in May, would allow the education minister to limit the enrolment of overseas students by provider, course or location. To enrol more students, institutions would be required to establish additional purpose-built student accommodation.

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Former dissenting Labor MP backs Fatima Payman and says party needs to reconsider rules

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Last time a Labor MP voted against the party position was 2005 when Tasmanian MP Harry Quick opposed anti-terrorism legislation

The last federal Labor MP to vote against his party has urged Fatima Payman to “stick to her guns” as the senator faces intense pressure to toe the line on Palestinian statehood or leave Labor.

Federal Labor MPs and senators on Tuesday unanimously endorsed Payman’s indefinite suspension from the party’s parliamentary caucus after the 29-year-old said she would cross the floor again if faced with a similar Senate motion to last week’s vote.

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Older Australians pressured into paying unfair robotax debts will not be compensated, government says

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Finance minister Katy Gallagher says people who felt intimidated into paying back ATO debts so old they are impossible to verify will not get their money back

Older Australians who felt pressured into paying decades-old debts as part of the troubled “robotax” campaign have hit out at a government decision to deny refunds after describing the tax grab as coercive.

The federal government has disclosed it intends to amend laws that will allow the Australian Taxation Office to keep debts put on hold before 2017 on ice indefinitely, rather than extract them from future tax refunds, as was planned.

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Mass purge of frozen sperm donations ordered as Queensland audit exposes misidentification risk

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Health ombudsman says ‘thousands’ of sperm samples at fertility clinics are at risk of potentially devastating identification mix-ups

Queensland’s health ombudsman has ordered the destruction of thousands of frozen sperm donations, as a new report reveals 42% of all audited samples in the state were of medium or high risk of being misidentified.

The state had more than twice as many potential errors identified in audits as the next worst state, Victoria.

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Photos of Australian children used in dataset to train AI, human rights group says

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Human Rights Watch found links to 190 photos of kids that were scraped off internet without families’ consent

Photos of Australian children have been included in the dataset used by several AI image-generating tools without the knowledge or consent of them or their families, research by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found.

An analysis of less than 0.0001% of the 5.85bn images contained in the Laion-5B dataset, used by services such as Stable Diffusion creator Stability AI and Midjourney, found 190 photos of Australian children scraped from the internet.

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