Category Archives: Australia news

Queensland’s ‘from the river to the sea’ laws likened to Bjelke-Petersen era anti-protest regime

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Health minister Tim Nicholls corrects claim alleged Bondi terror attack gunman Naveed Akram used controversial phrase, as laws roundly criticised

Police arresting pro-Palestinian protesters for using the phrase “from the river to the sea” had “all the hallmarks of an authoritarian police state”, according to a Greens MP, amid widespread backlash against Queensland’s new hate speech laws.

The controversial laws went into effect yesterday after passing a vote in parliament last week.

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SA Liberals dump candidate who said homosexuality ‘opens up demonic realms’ after initially standing by him

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Party leader Ashton Hurn confirms Carston Woodhouse will not run for Liberals in SA’s state election, but says ‘people are entitled to have their views’

A Liberal candidate in South Australia’s upcoming state election has been dumped after his “shocking and extreme” views on abortion, same-sex marriage, gender transitioning and feminism were aired by his Labor rival.

The leader of the SA Liberals, Ashton Hurn, on Wednesday stood by Carston Woodhouse, who had been running for the seat of Wright in Adelaide’s north, after his appearances on the evangelical Christian podcast ElijahFire surfaced.

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SA Liberals dump candidate who said homosexuality ‘opens up demonic realms’ after initially standing by him

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Party leader Ashton Hurn confirms Carston Woodhouse will not run for Liberals in SA’s state election, but says ‘people are entitled to have their views’

A Liberal candidate in South Australia’s upcoming state election has been dumped after his “shocking and extreme” views on abortion, same-sex marriage, gender transitioning and feminism were aired by his Labor rival.

The leader of the SA Liberals, Ashton Hurn, on Wednesday stood by Carston Woodhouse, who had been running for the seat of Wright in Adelaide’s north, after his appearances on the evangelical Christian podcast ElijahFire surfaced.

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Robodebt was the great test of Australia’s accountability mechanisms – and they failed

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The final report into the Centrelink debt recovery process that wreaked havoc on the vulnerable is not the full-stop many wanted. It has not restored the trust that was so fundamentally broken

The whistleblower’s message landed just before Christmas.

It was 2016, now a distant memory.

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‘Naming them is not justice’: robodebt victims feel let down by findings of corruption watchdog

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Nacc report into unlawful scheme found two senior public servants engaged in corrupt conduct but declined to refer them for charges in what victims call a ‘massive letdown’

The mother of a robodebt victim who took his own life says she feels “sheer frustration” at the findings of a report on potential corruption related to the unlawful income averaging scheme.

Wednesday’s release of a 445-page report from the National Anti-Corruption Commission examined the actions of five former public servants and the former prime minister Scott Morrison. The report found two senior public officials to have engaged in corrupt conduct, but they will not be referred for charges.

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Payman, Thorpe and Faruqi demand Labor change parliamentary rules to counter ‘overt’ racism

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Exclusive: independent and Greens senators ask president to set up inquiry and anti-racism training for politicians to prevent bigotry ‘corroding democracy’

Increasingly ugly abuse in federal parliament has prompted a group of independents and the Greens to call for an urgent intervention from Labor to change the rules, warning that allowing racism and bigotry to “fester” is corroding democracy.

Guardian Australia can reveal independents, Fatima Payman and Lidia Thorpe, and the Greens’ Mehreen Faruqi are demanding Senate president Sue Lines take the problem seriously with a new inquiry and mandatory anti-racism training for politicians.

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Australian governments subsidising fossil fuel use by more than $30,000 a minute, analysis finds

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Australia Institute data finds state and federal subsidies for coal, gas and oil products increased 10% in past year, growing at a faster pace than funding to NDIS

Australian federal and state government subsidies that encourage fossil fuel use and help drive the climate crisis will reach $16.3bn this year after leaping by nearly 10%, according to a new analysis.

It found federal and state governments will pay or forgo the equivalent of $31,020 each minute in 2025-26 to subsidise companies producing and using coal, gas and especially oil, mostly in the form of diesel.

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SA Liberals stand by candidate who said homosexuality opens up ‘demonic realms’

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Carston Woodhouse, running for Wright in Adelaide’s north, also claimed gender transitioning is an ‘illusion’

The South Australian Liberal party is standing by an election candidate who said same-sex marriage is not real, homosexuality can open up “demonic realms” and gender transitioning is an “illusion”.

Carston Woodhouse is running for the seat of Wright in Adelaide’s north in the state’s upcoming elections, with early voting beginning on Saturday.

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Rapper Lil’ Kim to headline Melbourne’s 2026 Rising festival

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‘Trailblazer’ rapper returns to Australia for first time in 15 years, with body horror performer and dance biennale also on lineup

The pioneering female rapper Lil’ Kim, the vomit-inducing performance artist Florentina Holzinger, and the first ever Australian Dance Biennale are among the lineup for the 2026 Rising festival, which is staged around Melbourne each winter.

Lil’ Kim, who last played in Australia in 2011, will perform at Melbourne’s Festival Hall to celebrate her landmark multiplatinum records Hard Core – which turns 30 this year – and The Notorious KIM.

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Cathay Pacific offers £20,000 Sydney-London flight amid disruption in Gulf

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Hong Kong-based airline has business-class return listed at A$39,577, as travellers seek routes avoiding Middle East

The Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific is selling seats from Sydney to London for more than £20,000 in April, as passengers search for scarce long-haul flights without changing in the Middle East.

The tickets, listed at A$39,577 in business class for returns departing in mid-April, far outstrip the usual fares charged even in the first-class cabin.

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Qantas hikes international air fares citing volatile oil prices from war in Middle East

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Airline reports spike in ticket sales to Europe in March, as passengers with carriers affected by flight chaos rebook

Qantas has announced it is increasing the price of its international air fares amid oil price volatility caused by the war in the Middle East, while the airline also reported higher-than-normal ticket sales for flights to Europe.

While the company hedges against change in jet fuel prices, it was not fully covered for the spike seen in the wake of surging oil prices, a spokesperson said on Tuesday.

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Three Australians jailed for more than a decade over Melbourne man’s shooting death in Bali

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Sentences of 16 and 12 years handed down over 2025 death of 32-year-old Zivan Radmanovic

A court on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali has sentenced three Australian citizens over the fatal shooting of a fellow Australian national, after they claimed to have been paid by a man they will not identify.

Mevlut Coskun, Paea I Middlemore Tupou and Darcy Jenson were convicted of the shooting death of Zivan Radmanovic, a 32-year-old from Melbourne.

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Alleged Bondi terror attack gunman Naveed Akram seeks order suppressing identities of family members

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Lawyer for 24-year-old asks for identifying details of mother and siblings to be kept secret for their ‘mental and physical safety’

Family members of the alleged Bondi attacker have been granted an interim order suppressing their names and home and work addresses to protect their mental and physical safety.

The public defender Richard Wilson SC made the application for a permanent suppression order for Naveed Akram’s mother, brother and sister at Downing Centre local court on Monday.

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Ex-Liberal MP Rory Amon found not guilty of most charges after being accused of raping 13-year-old boy in Sydney

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Amon had testified he held an honest and reasonable belief that the teen was over the age of 16

A former state Liberal MP may face a second child abuse trial after a jury cleared him of some but not all charges related to a 13-year-old boy.

Rory Amon was found not guilty of four counts of child rape, two counts of attempted child rape and two counts of indecent assault of a child on Monday after three days of deliberations.

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Three teenagers charged with murder after man stabbed while trying to intervene in Melbourne train station fight

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Police arrest 16-year-old, 17-year-old and 18-year-old over ‘savage’ attack on 22-year-old man

Three teenagers have been charged with murder after a man who tried to intervene and help a 14-year-old schoolboy was killed in a “savage” stabbing attack.

Emergency crews were called to the Mernda train station in Melbourne’s north-east on Friday evening after reports of a fight among teenagers.

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Jamie Dunn, radio personality and Agro puppeteer, dies aged 76

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Presenter who entertained children with his sharp-witted, furry puppet Agro Vation, remembered for his brash and unapologetic humour

Jamie Dunn, a veteran radio personality who unleashed the puppet Agro on Australia, entertaining children and adults alike for decades, has died aged 76.

Dunn, who was once Australia’s longest-serving breakfast radio host, died on Saturday.

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At Perth’s CPAC conference, Liberal party faithful speak of ‘the lost Australians’ – with no sign of One Nation

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Andrew Hastie, Basil Zempilas and Warren Mundine were among the guests at the conservative convention, which focused on immigration and housing

The rightwing Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) made its foray into Western Australia on Friday evening, with no sign of One Nation on a stage dominated by Liberal politicians.

The event, dubbed Reset the West, was a rallying call for conservatives to work together, but what emerged was a Liberal party attempt to rebuild the centre-right with itself at its core.

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Canadian PM Mark Carney says former prince Andrew should be removed from royal line of succession

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Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s ‘deplorable’ alleged actions warrant his removal from the royal line of succession, Carney says

The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, has said Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor should be removed from the royal line of succession for alleged actions he described as “deplorable”.

Speaking to reporters in Tokyo, Carney said the actions that have caused the former prince to be stripped of his royal titles “necessitate” his removal from the line of succession.

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Ex-Liberal MP says the party must introduce gender quotas to start winning elections

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Jenny Ware says party is ‘at crisis point’ and cannot be competitive at election time unless it selects candidates who better reflect the makeup of Australia

The former Liberal MP Jenny Ware says her party must implement gender quotas for candidates for office, warning the opposition “cannot get back into government” without putting forward candidates who are more reflective of the broader community.

Ware, who lost her seat of Hughes at the 2025 election, said it was “deeply embarrassing” that the Liberal party executive had not released its own review of the electoral wipeout, and which was then tabled in parliament by Anthony Albanese this week.

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Jillian Segal’s office hand-picked candidate to assess controversial university antisemitism report card

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Greg Craven, a former vice-chancellor of Australian Catholic University, chosen after no other bids made for the tender

Australia’s antisemitism envoy hand-picked Greg Craven to lead her controversial university report card process after receiving no response from five firms approached during an open tender process.

Documents released under freedom of information laws showed Jillian Segal’s office initially approached three independent consulting firms and two law firms to potentially conduct the assessment of Australian universities and how well they were dealing with antisemitism on campus, but all of them declined to bid on the tender.

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