Category Archives: Australia news

‘Abhorrent behaviour’: calls for Optus to face stiff penalties after triple-zero outage deaths

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Senior politicians condemn telco, with Coalition urging broader investigation into emergency network ahead of bushfire season

Pressure is mounting on the Albanese government to ensure stiff penalties for Optus over the service outage that has now been linked to at least four deaths, as the federal minister for emergency management blasted the telco as “absolutely disgraceful”.

A botched firewall update at 12.30am on Thursday blocked hundreds of calls to triple zero in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

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NT attorney general criticised after confirming family link to hit-and-run driver

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Marie-Clare Boothby faces questions after revealing she is related to man spared prison over a crash that killed Aboriginal pedestrian

The Northern Territory’s attorney general, Marie-Clare Boothby, has faced criticism after confirming she is related to a man who was spared prison last week over a hit-and-run car crash that killed an Aboriginal man.

Jack Danby, 24, was sentenced to a 12-month community corrections order in relation to the crash in June 2024. Danby hit two Aboriginal pedestrians, killing one, and fled the scene.

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Tony Abbott implores Cpac to give Liberals ‘one last chance’ and condemns party’s ‘factional warlords’

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Former PM, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and conference chair Warren Mundine among right faction heavyweights urging conservative voters to unite

Tony Abbott has urged conservatives to give the Liberals “one last chance” and apologised for the party’s 2025 election drubbing, joining a host of high-profile Coalition figures at a major political conference in imploring voters not to abandon the opposition for right-wing minor parties.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, recently dumped from the shadow frontbench, exhorted the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) in Brisbane to stick with the Liberal party, and encouraged her parliamentary colleagues to dump a net zero climate target, to cheers from attendees.

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Optus confirms fourth death after CEO reveals warnings of failed triple zero calls not escalated

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Emergency calls were offline for nearly 14 hours, during which four people died – including an eight-week-old baby

A fourth person died during Optus’s network outage on Thursday, its CEO has confirmed.

Stephen Rue said in a statement released on Saturday afternoon that the telco was “saddened to learn of a new fatality in Western Australia, which appears to have occurred during the outage period”.

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BHP blames ‘coal tax’ for job layoffs. But there’s obvious reasons coalmines aren’t as profitable anymore

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Rising wages and costs of having to dig deeper for minerals – not royalty payments – are behind job cuts in a sector that appears to be in decline

Australia’s big miners are not averse to a political fight.

Consider the biggest miner of them all: BHP.

Jonathan Barrett is business editor of Guardian Australia

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‘Incompetent’: SA premier slams Optus as eight-week-old baby among three who died when triple zero calls failed

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Peter Malinauskas criticised the telco for its communications after two people in South Australia and one in Western Australia died during the network upgrade

The South Australian premier has said he’s never witnessed “such incompetence” from an Australian communications company after an eight-week-old baby was among three people who died during a botched Optus network upgrade.

Optus chief executive Stephen Rue admitted on Friday that the upgrade, which prevented people from making triple-zero calls the day before, impacted up to 600 households in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

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UN votes to allow Palestinian president to address annual gathering via video link

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Trump had refused to grant visas for Palestinian delegation due to attend conference and UN general assembly

The United Nations general assembly has voted to allow the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to address next week’s annual gathering of world leaders next week in New York via video link after Donald Trump said he would not give him a US visa.

The resolution received 145 votes in favour and five votes against, while six countries abstained.

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Liberal MPs speak up about ‘disturbing’ Advance campaign against ‘mass immigration’

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Several MPs say the activist group’s advertising push is becoming a problem for the party because ‘you cannot win from the margins’

Several Liberal MPs have raised concerns an anti-immigration campaign by the activist group Advance is hurting the party’s brand and alienating migrant communities.

Analysis of Advance’s Meta advertising since May’s federal election shows it has promoted 44 anti-immigration ads, with more than 1.5m impressions.

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Value of Australia’s coal and gas exports will plunge 50% in five years, treasury modelling forecasts

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Figure amounts to a $60bn fall by 2030 under any future scenario of emissions reduction in Australia, modelling predicts

The value of Australia’s coal and gas exports is predicted to plummet by 50% over the next five years as global demand for fossil fuel falls, according to Treasury modelling.

The modelling, released on Thursday as the government announced its emissions reduction target for 2035, found the annual value of fossil fuel exports is predicted to fall by more than $60bn by 2030 under any future scenario of emissions reduction within Australia.

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Ausgrid slashes safety inspectors after report finds cheaper to pay permanent disability injury compensation

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Secret report from CutlerMerz finds yearly cost of inspections – $520,219 – is more than cost of paying compensation – $28,375 a year

Ausgrid cut safety inspector numbers by more than half after receiving a secret report that said it was cheaper for the company to pay compensation for a permanent disability injury than to continue paying for the inspections.

The secret report, conducted by consultancy CutlerMerz and seen by Guardian Australia, recommended Ausgrid slash the inspections it was doing by as much as 55%, saying the cost – $520,219 per year – was “grossly disproportionate to the cost of the consequence being managed”.

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Doctor who called Erin Patterson ‘crazy bitch’ after treating her penalised for speaking about case

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Health regulator places conditions on Dr Christopher Webster’s registration over comments made after mushroom lunch murder trial

An Australian doctor who treated triple murderer Erin Patterson and her victims after the deadly mushroom lunch has been slapped with conditions by the health regulator after speaking out about the case.

Dr Christopher Webster, a GP in the Victorian town of Leongatha, south-east of Melbourne, was a witness in Patterson’s trial earlier this year.

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Sussan Ley says she ‘misspoke’ after comments that Coalition doesn’t believe in setting climate targets

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Liberal leader later clarifies she doesn’t support setting targets while in opposition

The Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, has indicated the Coalition won’t set a 2030 or 2035 climate target unless they return to government, saying her colleagues didn’t back locking in an emissions goal while they remained in opposition.

It came as Ley had to clean up her own error, claiming she “misspoke” after initially saying her party “don’t believe in setting targets at all from opposition or from government”. She later clarified she only meant in opposition, prompting ridicule from Anthony Albanese who claimed the opposition “changes its policies from hour to hour”.

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How vulnerable are Australia’s cities to extreme heat? Explore our maps

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Exclusive: Residents of western Sydney and outer suburbs of Melbourne are at particular risk of high temperatures, data shows

As the federal government warns the climate crisis will increase heat-related deaths, with the impact disproportionately borne by the already vulnerable, data obtained exclusively by Guardian Australia shows the parts of Australia’s major cities that are most vulnerable to heat.

The new measure, called the Heat Vulnerability Index and compiled by researchers at RMIT, combines temperature readings from satellites, with data on populations particularly susceptible to heat (such as older Australians and those with disabilities), the built environment and green space, and socioeconomic factors like income and education.

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Brittany Higgins’ husband David Sharaz to pay $92,000 for tweet that defamed Linda Reynolds, court orders

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Sharaz also liable for former defence minister’s legal costs on an indemnity basis, which is expected to exceed $500,000

David Sharaz has been ordered to pay $92,000 for social media posts the Western Australian supreme court found were defamatory against former defence minister Linda Reynolds.

Sharaz, a former journalist and Higgins’ now-husband, has also been found jointly responsible for another defamatory tweet to which Higgins responded, according to the court’s orders.

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Albanese’s Oprah-style emissions target aims to please almost everyone but risks falling short on climate action

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The prime minister has a stonking majority and a progressive crossbench that wants deeper cuts. So what has happened to lower the goal?

The Australian government has announced an Oprah Winfrey-style emissions target for 2035. It has tried to promise (nearly) everyone a prize.

By choosing a target range of a 62% to 70% cut compared with 2005 levels – based on long-awaited advice from the Climate Change Authority and its chair, Matt Kean – it has opted for a political solution.

Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter

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New details of allegations against broadcaster Alan Jones revealed in court documents

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Former 2GB and Sky News Australia presenter pleads not guilty to 27 charges after number of alleged victims drops from 11 to nine

Court documents have revealed the extent of Alan Jones’s alleged offences, including claims of kissing, stroking, undressing and rubbing the penis of victims in the broadcaster’s home, restaurants and at public events.

In one instance in 2014, the veteran broadcaster allegedly indecently assaulted “complainant G” by rubbing his leg “towards his crotch” during a performance at the Sydney Opera House.

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When Ziggy’s bond was withheld after eviction without cause from his Sydney rental, he challenged it – and won

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Advocates say it should be easier to dispute bond claims, as tenants in Australia’s toughest rental markets are increasingly losing their deposits

Ziggy Tow and his housemates thought they had had enough trouble after their property manager evicted them without grounds and listed their inner-Sydney home for an extra $300 a week.

Then the property manager claimed back all of the $3,400 they paid in bond to cover cleaning and repair fees.

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Labor’s 2035 emissions target a ‘sliding doors’ moment for future generations

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Australia must lead other nations in committing to 1.5C pathway for safety, security, prosperity and the environment, experts say

Leading climate advocates have warned the Australian government’s decision on a 2035 emissions reduction will be a historic “sliding doors moment” for the country, with an international goal to keep global heating to 1.5C now hanging by a thread.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is expected to announce a target range on Thursday after a scheduled morning cabinet meeting before formally submitting it to the UN later this month.

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UTS’s teacher education program set to close as university reveals plan to slash more than 1,000 subjects

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Of the 1,101 subjects to be discontinued, 463 had no student enrolments and weren’t taught in 2024, according to University of Technology Sydney’s proposal

The University of Technology Sydney will close its teacher education program and public health school as part of a sweeping restructure that would remove more than 1,100 subjects to return the institution to surplus.

The proposed cuts, released on Wednesday, are part of the debt-ridden university’s strategy to reduce expenditure by $100m annually, including previously announcing the cutting of about 400 jobs.

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Queensland deputy premier labels BHP ‘unAustralian’ as mining giant blames job cuts on coal royalties scheme

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Jarrod Bleijie defends levy as BHP Mitsubishi Alliance moves to mothball Saraji South mine and slash 750 jobs

Queensland’s deputy premier has labelled BHP “unAustralian” and defended the state’s mining royalties scheme after the mining giant blamed it for its decision to mothball a coalmine and cut hundreds of jobs while also reviewing the future of its training academy.

On Wednesday, BHP Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) announced a decision to suspend operations at its Saraji South coalmine and slash 750 roles across the state, blaming “unsustainable” royalties and market conditions.

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