Category Archives: Australia news

Qld fires: state will ‘continue to burn’ without rain, as dozens of bushfires flare up across Queensland

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Rural firefighters’ chief says Queensland in ‘survival mode’ amid dry weather, with 53 homes destroyed by fire in the Western Downs

Queensland is in “survival mode” as dozens of bushfires burn across the state and there is no rain on the horizon, the head of the volunteer firefighters association has said.

Firefighters have contained a bushfire at Tara, on the Western Downs four hours west of Brisbane, that destroyed 53 homes and claimed two lives. But fires have flared up to the north and south, with emergency warnings in place on Wednesday for a fire between Warwick and Stanthorpe on the Southern Downs.

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Fires in Queensland tropics – as it happened

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This blog is now closed.

The NSW RFS has confirmed that just after 4am this morning one of its firefighting tanks rolled over 10km south of Jennings in the Tenterfield LGA.

A spokesperson said there were four firefighters on board. They were all taken from the truck, with three being taken to hospital for observation.

They’ve said they’ll be returning to bulk billing, or many of them who are considering a change would stick with bulk billing, for those more than 11 million Australians.

That’s about 60% or more of the throughput of the average general practice. So it’s a huge boost in confidence and funding to a sector that I think is probably in its most powerless status been in the 40 year history of Medicare.

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Reform of NSW police response to mental health episodes under way, minister says after string of fatalities

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Rose Jackson says the way authorities respond needs to change, acknowledging system ‘has failed’ in some instances

The New South Wales mental health minister, Rose Jackson, has flagged significant reforms to the way police respond to people in acute distress as she conceded there were instances in which the current system “has failed”.

Jackson said the government and police were doing “a big piece of work about what comes next” and that she wanted mental health consumers and advocates to assist with designing the new system next year.

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Sydney boy, 10, dies after being trapped under lift at school for children with disability

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Police have established a crime scene at St Lucy’s School in Wahroonga on the city’s upper north shore

A 10-year-old boy has died at a school for children with disability on Sydney’s upper north shore after becoming trapped under a lift.

New South Wales police said emergency services were called to St Lucy’s School in Wahroonga about 2pm on Wednesday after reports a child was trapped.

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Victoria’s yearly document ‘dump day’ reveals a mix of good, bad and ugly

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Among the 241 annual reports released all at once are 45 children’s deaths, triple-zero success and a fish ‘misadventure’ at the zoo

Every year, the Victorian parliament partakes in a tradition that has come to be known as “dump day”.

Usually towards the end of the sitting year, the government will release a bewildering number of annual reports at once, presumably so that journalists and other interested parties are rendered physically incapable of taking them all in.

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Victorian government scrambling to prepare for long-planned end of public drunkenness laws

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Sobering-up facility not completed, emergency workers unclear about their role in new scheme – and it begins on Melbourne Cup Day

It’s been almost six years since Tanya Day hopped on a train to Melbourne but never made it to the city.

The 55-year-old Yorta Yorta woman was arrested for being drunk in public on 5 December 2017 after she fell asleep. She was placed in a police cell to sober up, suffered a head injury and later died.

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Record property prices in multiple Australian cities with Sydney up 7.5% in past year

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Economists say limited sales volumes and rising populations have more than made up for the dampening effect of higher interest rates

Australia’s property prices have soared to record levels in several capital cities as limited sales volumes and rising populations more than made up for the dampening effect of higher interest rates, two data groups say.

The new figures show significant growth in Brisbane, Adelaide, and in Perth, where five areas have recorded annual gains of more than 15%, while prices in Sydney are 7.51% higher than a year ago.

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Almost 40% think Australia should dump US alliance if Donald Trump returns as president, poll finds

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Survey finds 47% believe Aukus locks Australia in to supporting the US in an armed conflict, while concern about conflict with China has fallen

A significant minority of Australians think the country should withdraw from the overall Anzus security alliance with the US if Donald Trump returns to the White House, while just under half of the respondents in a new poll believe the Aukus pact locks Australia in to supporting the US in any armed conflict.

The findings, to be released on Wednesday, are part of an opinion survey undertaken annually by the United States Studies Centre. YouGov surveyed 1,019 adults in Australia, 1,055 in the US and 1,015 in Japan about a range of foreign policy and security questions related to the Indo-Pacific.

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Yang Hengjun’s family urges Albanese to negotiate with China for jailed Australian writer’s release

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Democracy activist ‘hasn’t enjoyed any direct sunlight for over four years’ and his children fear their father risks being left to die in a Chinese prison

The children of jailed Australian writer Yang Hengjun, detained for more than four years in China, have pleaded with Anthony Albanese to negotiate his release in Beijing this week, telling the prime minister his situation is critical and their father risks “being left to die”.

The writer and avowed democracy activist was arrested in January 2019 and charged with espionage. Yang has collapsed in prison and been told he has a 10cm cyst growing on his kidney, his sons said in a letter to Albanese, emphasising there was “a narrow window of opportunity” to secure his release.

In a prison, inmates are allowed to go outside to get fresh air and may eat in the canteen. Unlike the detention centre where I eat, drink, defecate and urinate all in a small room.

I haven’t enjoyed any direct sunlight for over four years. At most, some rays of sunlight occasionally come through one or two panes of glass and flicker fitfully.

Don’t forget I have not been convicted yet. According to Chinese law, I am still innocent, yet I have been locked up for more than four years, and I am almost destroyed … I’m talking about physically; mentally, no-one can destroy me.

I just hope I will be able to get out alive.

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Major multinational port operator paid zero tax in Australia while raking in billions

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Exclusive: DP World, part-owned by the Dubai government, may have ‘artificially reduced profits’, a new report claims

DP World, one of Australia’s two largest port operators, has paid no tax in Australia despite generating revenue of more than $4.5bn over eight years.

A new report by the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (Cictar) says that DP World’s top Australian subsidiary may have “artificially reduced profits” to achieve the result.

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Health Star Rating only on about a third of Australian supermarket products that should carry it, report shows

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Researcher says consumers can’t make the ‘best choices’ as rating missing on more than half of products

The government’s flagship initiative to improve Australians’ diets is “working great” as a marketing tool for food manufacturers, but is not helping people make healthier choices, new research has found.

The Health Star Rating system was introduced in 2014 as a government-led front-of-pack nutrition label designed to be a simple way to compare the overall nutritional quality of products on the shelf, as recommended by the World Health Organisation.

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Australia must lobby US for ‘no first use’ of nuclear weapons, says ex-minister Gareth Evans

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Exclusive: Former foreign minister says it is ‘sheer dumb luck’ that arms have not been used in the past 78 years and urges leadership on control measures

The Labor luminary Gareth Evans has urged Australia to lobby the US to promise “no first use” of nuclear weapons, warning that global arms control agreements “are now either dead or on life support”.

The former foreign minister says that in the wake of sealing the Aukus nuclear-powered submarine deal, the Albanese government should give “some comfort to ALP members and voters that we are really serious about nuclear arms control”.

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‘Alarming’ rates of babies with antibiotic-resistant bugs in Asia-Pacific, Australian study finds

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Study urges Australia to research new drugs as it warns rate of mutated infections ‘much worse than anticipated’

“Alarming” rates of babies with infections resistant to common antibiotics in the Asia-Pacific region should prompt urgent investment into new drugs for treating childhood diseases, findings from a new study suggest.

The misuse and overuse of antibiotics is driving bugs to mutate so that common drugs are no longer effective to kill them, known as antimicrobial resistance. Dr Phoebe Williams, an infectious diseases paediatrician and antimicrobial resistance researcher with the University of Sydney, said she regularly travelled to work in hospitals in the south-east Asia and Pacific region where she found “entire wards of babies that have multi-drug resistant infections, and there is nothing left to treat them with”.

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White Island volcano eruption: Whakaari Management found guilty of ‘astonishing’ safety failures

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New Zealand judge Evangelos Thomas criticised failures of safety audits given ‘obvious risks’ that led to 2019 fatal eruption

A New Zealand court has found the owner of White Island/Whakaari, the offshore volcano that erupted in 2019, killing 22 people, guilty on one charge of breaching workplace safety laws.

On Tuesday, Auckland district court ruled Whakaari Management Limited (WML), the holding company of landowners Andrew, James and Peter Buttle, had not met its obligations to visitors to the volcano.

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Australia news live: ‘that’s a question for Keating,’ Albanese says when queried on former PM’s abstention from Israel-Hamas statement

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PM also acknowledged ‘tragic’ Queensland bushfires on Tuesday, warning pf ‘difficult summer’. Follow the day’s news live

Fire at Tara ‘remains uncontained’, QFES acting deputy commissioner says

QFES acting deputy commissioner Joanne Greenfield also spoke to Sunrise this morning, and provided an update on the bushfire at Tara:

The Tara fire is quite large now and still remains uncontained in most of its edges.

Crews have been down there working overnight trying to strengthen the control line and try to bring areas of it into containment.

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Australia’s banks face unprecedented wave of threats, RBA warns

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A rush on withdrawals among the possible dangers as sector likely to see risks with ‘a different complexion’ in coming decade, assistant governor says

Australia’s banking industry faces emerging threats from potential rapid-fire bank runs to climate change and geopolitical tensions that are without historical precedents, a senior Reserve Bank official has warned.

Brad Jones, an assistant RBA governor, told a Sydney conference on Tuesday that “the emerging risks we are likely to confront over the next decade have a different complexion to those of recent decades” and that what passes for resilience today will likely need to evolve over time.

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Murder charge over woman’s death in luxury hotel room at Crown Towers in Perth

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Homicide squad detectives have charged a 42-year-old man with murder after a woman in her 30s was found dead

A man has been charged with murder over the death of a woman whose body was found in a luxury hotel room in Perth’s casino precinct.

Emergency services were called to Crown Towers east of the Perth CBD about 11am on Monday, where the woman in her 30s was found dead.

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Rugby Australia accepts Eddie Jones’s resignation as search for next Wallabies coach begins

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  • Governing body wishes embattled coach well after he quit post
  • RA expected to target Stephen Larkham and Dan McKellar

Eddie Jones’s tenure as Wallabies coach is officially over after Rugby Australia formally accepted his resignation following the team’s disastrous World Cup campaign in France.

RA on Tuesday confirmed the embattled coach’s departure from the national setup and said he would officially leave his post on 25 November.

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PNG to investigate corruption claims in Australia-funded refugee program

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Papua New Guinea’s immigration minister John Rosso says whistleblower’s ‘serious allegations’ revealed by the Guardian have prompted audit

Allegations of widespread corruption and mismanagement within the Australia-funded refugee support program in Papua New Guinea will be formally investigated by the Port Moresby government.

After allegations from a whistleblower inside PNG’s immigration authority that millions of dollars had potentially been misused, PNG’s deputy prime minister, also the minister for immigration, John Rosso, has ordered an audit into where the money has gone.

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Hundreds of millions of Australian identity checks may have been illegally conducted, Senate hears

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Albanese government is rushing through laws to underpin the ID verification service, say experts who have privacy concerns

Hundreds of millions of identity checks under the federal government’s ID verification service may have been illegally conducted, with the Albanese government rushing through legislation to underpin the service.

Identity verification services are used by government departments and businesses – such as credit card providers and power companies – to combat fraud and identity theft.

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