Residents of Wooroloo told they could return to normal activity following earlier lockdown but urged to ‘remain vigilant’
A Western Australian community has spent several hours in lockdown and a man has been taken into custody after an alleged shooting on the outer fringes of Perth.
On Saturday morning, WA Police said officers responded to a “firearm incident” in the township of Wooroloo, about 45km from Perth.
Continue reading...Rainfall is expected to fall on Saturday either side of the border after a torrid week of fires claimed more than 60 homes
Communities across Australia’s east coast are hoping a wet weekend will bring a reprieve to firefighters as rainfall starts to set in across New South Wales and Queensland.
But the bushfire threat has arisen in the west as parts of Western Australia experience extreme fire risk with threats to properties south of Perth.
Continue reading...Yuggera, Warangoo and Wiradjuri doctor Kristopher Rallah-Baker says it’s important others ‘see they won’t be brought down if they complain about racism’
A GP has been banned from registering as a doctor for a year in Australia because of discriminatory behaviour toward an Indigenous doctor he accused of being a “fake Aboriginal” akin to “like a watered down bottle of Grange”.
The medical board described the decision as a “landmark outcome” as it is the first case to make reference to changes in the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) national law introduced last year to include a definition of cultural safety for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Continue reading...Chinese state media have previously viewed Australia’s actions as blindly following the US. Does a resumption of dialogue signal a change?
It’s a busy time in Beijing – this autumn has already hosted a major Belt and Road forum, international dignitaries, and a security summit. But an upcoming visit by the Australian prime minister has also prompted a flurry of preparations and discussion.
Anthony Albanese’s three-day tour of Shanghai and Beijing, the first prime ministerial visit to the country in seven years, is being warmly welcomed. He is expected to meet with the premier, Li Qiang – the host of the official visit – and the president, Xi Jinping, with whom Canberra has said Albanese will raise tough issues.
Continue reading...Exclusive: NSW poisons information centre received more than 120 calls related to the diabetes drug in a year, 83% of them about medication errors
Patients have been referred to hospital emergency departments after unintentionally taking a higher dose of Ozempic than prescribed, data obtained by Guardian Australia has revealed.
The drug semaglutide, sold under the brand name Ozempic in Australia, is subsidised under the pharmaceutical benefits scheme for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.
Continue reading...Environment minister hammers opposition leader’s record, as Labor and Liberal road test lines of attack for next federal election
Senior government minister Tanya Plibersek has accused Peter Dutton of seeking to “kick the underdog when they’re down” and “killing people’s faith in government”, as Labor targets the opposition leader ahead of the next election.
Plibersek will use a speech at Labor’s state conference in Western Australia on Saturday to criticise Dutton, calling his politics “the poisonous politics of no”.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Richard Colbeck urged counterparts to seek document used to clear firm’s partners of wrongdoing
Powerful parliamentary oversight committees in the US and the UK have been urged to pressure consultancy firm PwC to publish a report used to clear its international partners of wrongdoing.
In response to a scandal involving the misuse of confidential Australian Treasury information about proposed multinational tax avoidance laws, PwC global commissioned the law firm Linklaters to investigate the conduct of its international partners.
Continue reading...Divers captured the spawning of soft corals on Moore Reef with researchers to analyse next generation
Annual coral spawning has begun on the outer Great Barrier Reef, with researchers set to analyse the next generation of corals.
Divers captured the spawning of soft corals on Moore Reef, 47km east of Cairns, on Thursday night.
Continue reading...Shouts of ‘shame on you’ after shareholder Chris Maxworthy’s microphone cut off
Qantas’s annual general meeting erupted with shareholders shouting “shame on you” at the board’s chairman, Richard Goyder, as investors overwhelmingly rejected the embattled company’s executive pay deal.
That result, which marked one of Australia’s largest ever protest votes against executive pay, came after Goyder and the airline’s chief executive, Vanessa Hudson, apologised to investors for a year of sagas that had seen the company’s share price plummet.
Continue reading...Concern around fake Taylor Swift ticket scams comes as bank reveals $220,000 worth of transactions abandoned daily
National Australia Bank has warned punters to be on the lookout for scams on social media sites claiming to have tickets to high-profile sold-out concerts such as Taylor Swift in the coming months.
The bank said on Thursday that after alert prompts were introduced into its banking app and online banking site in March warning customers they might be scammed, about $220,000 worth of transactions were abandoned a day. These alerts have since been expanded to cover ticket and marketplace scams.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed
Husic was on the show to discuss the results of the AI Safety Summit held in the UK this week, where Australia and 27 other countries signed a major artificial intelligence agreement.
The Bletchley Declaration affirms that AI should be developed, designed and deployed in a human-centric and safe manner.
It has been very clear from a number of countries, not the least of which the US, which brought in a big executive order this week to improve AI safety and security, that there will be more safety testing and also evaluating those AI models, and holding companies much more accountable for the way that they do that development work.
There will be safety institutes set up in the US and the UK to help with that testing and it will involve researchers in that work and a state of the science report that will look at the developments particularly around what they call frontier AI, generative AI and Australia will have a voice there with the CSIRO’s chief scientist, Dr Bronwyn Fox, who will represent our country in the development of that research work to give governments and regulators a heads up on how the technology is evolving too.
I have been concerned for weeks about where things would head. I was concerned that innocent Palestinian families would bear the brunt and the heaviest burden, in terms of the type of action that was being foreshadowed.
I think the world, the international community, is watching very closely. I have said previously there has to be a much more strategic, precise way to hold Hamas to account. Israel’s actions do matter, in terms of the way in which they conduct these military operations, and I think a lot of us are deeply concerned about the impact, not only on innocent Palestinians but particularly kids.
Continue reading...Patterson, 49, was charged with three counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder after family lunch in rural Australian town of Leongatha
The woman at the centre of a mushroom lunch that allegedly killed three people and left a fourth fighting for his life is also accused of attempting to murder her former partner four times over the past two years, according to Australian court documents.
Erin Patterson, 49, has been charged with murdering Gail and Don Patterson, both 70, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, after a lunch in her home in the rural Australian town of Leongatha on 29 July.
Continue reading...Opposition says there’s ‘no excuse’ for further delays on the government reviving the ACCC flight monitoring regime
More than two weeks after announcing it was reviving an airline industry monitoring program, the Albanese government is yet to formally direct the competition watchdog to conduct the investigation.
After months of scrutiny into Qantas’s influence in the government’s decision to block rival Qatar Airways’ push to boost its flights to Australia, the Greens and independent senator David Pocock in October knocked back a proposal to extend a Senate inquiry on the topic.
Continue reading...NSW police have issued criminal infringement notices after footage emerged of men attempting to take down posters of Israeli hostages held by Hamas
Two men have been issued fines for offensive behaviour over the vandalism of a memorial at Bondi Beach for Israeli hostages taken by Hamas.
The installation of 230 beach towels and pairs of thongs beside posters of those kidnapped on 7 October had run more than 100 metres along the concourse.
Continue reading...Case studies created by Google Bard AI as part of submission to parliamentary inquiry proven to be factually incorrect
A group of academics has offered an unreserved apology to the big four consultancy firms after admitting they used artificial intelligence to make false allegations of serious wrongdoing in a submission to a parliamentary inquiry.
The accusations have been met with scorn by the firms, concerned that inaccurate information has been given parliamentary privilege to unfairly tarnish the reputation of its staff.
Continue reading...Boosted rebate for concession card holders and children under 16 is in effect but GPs’ peak body says other patients won’t benefit
Many Australian patients won’t see their doctors return to bulk billing despite incentives introduced by the Albanese government, GPs have warned, while experts say more measures are needed to help disadvantaged, chronically ill people.
Patients who are bulk billed do not pay anything for their consult, with GPs billing the government directly through Medicare instead.
Continue reading...Ahead of trip signalling emergence from diplomatic deep freeze, Albanese also calls on Beijing to again allow Australian journalists to report from mainland
Anthony Albanese will raise human rights, trade and Australia’s concerns about the militarisation of the South China Sea when he meets Xi Jinping in Beijing on Monday during the first visit to China by an Australian prime minister since 2016.
Albanese has signalled he intends to raise the plight of the Australian writer Yang Hengjun, who has been detained for more than four years in China. Ahead of his departure, the prime minister also called on the Chinese government to issue visas to Australian journalists, allowing them to report once again from the mainland.
Continue reading...Damning report finds state’s blue card screening system creates unnecessary barriers to placing children with their families
Queensland’s family and child commissioner has called for blue card requirements to be scrapped for First Nations kinship carers after a report found the system relies on “irrelevant information, overpolicing and subjective assessments”.
Since 2001, Queenslanders who work around children have needed to obtain a blue card, with offences including drug trafficking, murder and child abuse disqualifying a person from obtaining one. But a report by the Queensland Family & Child Commission (QFCC) found blue cards create additional barriers to placing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children with their families.
Continue reading...PM says he hopes there’s a retreat from ‘rhetorical positions’ on social issues, adding family violence is not ‘confined to one section of the population’
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, says the government will “push back” on Coalition calls to promote assimilation of Indigenous communities in the wake of the voice referendum, saying the vote’s defeat is not an endorsement of such policies.
Albanese also appeared to take a swipe at the Coalition’s calls for inquiries into social issues in Indigenous communities, saying family violence is not “confined to one section of the population”.
Continue reading...Proposed changes such as plain packaging for vapes and individual cigarette warnings come under microscope at Senate hearing
In three days of hearings about wide-ranging law reforms aimed at discouraging smoking and addressing the health risks posed by vaping, one issue dominated the questioning of health experts by senators.
Will the changes actually fuel the tobacco and vape black market?
Continue reading...