Category Archives: Australia news

Are Australian Research Council reports being written by Chat GPT?

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Multiple accounts from researchers suggest that feedback for Discovery Project grant funding was written by artificial intelligence

The Australian Research Council has faced allegations that some of its peer reviewers may have used ChatGPT to assess research proposals, prompting a warning from the education minister and concerns about possible academic misconduct.

Several researchers have reported that some assessor feedback provided as part of the latest Discovery Projects round of grant funding included generic wording suggesting they may have been written by artificial intelligence.

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Sailor rescued from rough seas in Great Australian Bight during solo circumnavigation attempt

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Xavier Doerr was winched to safety after spending the night battling giant waves and severe winds west of Kangaroo Island

A solo sailor has been rescued having spent the night battling giant waves and severe winds in the Great Australian Bight after running into trouble hundreds of kilometres from help.

Xavier Doerr, 22, was winched to safety late on Saturday after he was forced to trigger an emergency beacon shortly before 5pm the previous day while attempting to complete a nonstop and unassisted circumnavigation of Australia.

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Chris O’Connell is last Australian standing at Wimbledon after De Minaur and Kuber go out

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  • Sydneysider now faces American Chris Eubanks
  • Australian No 1 blown away by Italy’s Matteo Berrettini

Chris O’Connell is Australia’s last player standing at Wimbledon after he reached the third round of an overseas grand slam for the first time.

O’Connell, who also battled through to the third round of his home Open in Melbourne last year, was in inspired mood on his fourth successive day on court as he defeated dangerous Czech left-hander Jiri Vesely 6-3 7-5 6-4.

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How the Coalition collaborated with ‘friendly media’ to silence robodebt victims

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Alan Tudge’s office planned to use sympathetic outlets such as News Corp to counter reporting on scheme, royal commission report reveals

When Alan Tudge needed to promote what became known as robodebt in December 2016, he found willing media outlets in the Australian newspaper, 2GB and A Current Affair.

“Welfare debt squad hunts for $4bn,” the Australian dutifully reported at the time. The then-human services minister next went on 2GB, where then-host Chris Smith said in the introduction: “Are all those people with their hands in the taxpayer pocket in genuine need?”

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‘Not in the spirit of our friendship’: Penny Wong concedes past Australian wrongs in Timor-Leste

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Foreign minister says previous governments have treated the country in ‘disappointing’ ways during visit to Dili

The Australian foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has attempted to improve Australia’s ties with Timor-Leste by conceding that “disappointing” actions by past governments were “not in the spirit of our friendship”.

Wong did not mention the scandal surrounding Australia’s bugging of the nation’s cabinet room in 2004, but acknowledged Timor-Leste’s sovereign right to make its own choices “without having them encroached by others”.

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WA family demand answers over the unexpected death of one-year-old daughter

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The toddler died at Perth Children’s hospital less than 24 hours after being sent home by a GP, according to the family and advocates

A Western Australia family is demanding answers after the death of a one-year-old baby a day after she was sent home by a GP, before being rushed to a Perth hospital emergency room.

The family’s spokesperson, Desmond Blurton, said his niece, Charmain Blurton, and her partner, Cody Yappo, took their daughter to their local doctor when she began feeling unwell.

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Scott Morrison rejects robodebt royal commission findings but won’t say if he was referred for prosecution

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Anthony Albanese highlights commission’s ‘extraordinary’ conclusion that former PM’s evidence was ‘untrue’

Scott Morrison has rejected the robodebt royal commission’s findings but not said whether he has been referred for further civil or criminal actions, in contrast to claims from former Coalition ministers Christian Porter, Alan Tudge and Stuart Robert ruling themselves out.

In a statement on Friday, the former prime minister said he “completely” rejects adverse findings, claiming they were “wrong, unsubstantiated and contradicted by clear documentary evidence presented to the commission”.

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Marrickville shooting: two men shot at hairdresser in Sydney in ‘brazen’ daytime attack

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NSW police say shots were fired at a business on the busy main street of inner-west suburb on Friday afternoon

Witnesses to a brazen shooting at a hairdresser in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville at lunchtime on Friday have described seeing the two victims talking after they had been shot and residents fleeing for safety.

Police said the shooting at a salon on Marrickville Road, the inner-west suburb’s bustling main strip, at 1.50pm, was “obviously a targeted attack” and were exploring whether it was linked to another daylight shooting in Bondi Junction last month. The victim in that shooting was Sydney drug kingpin Alen Moradian.

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‘Crude and cruel’ scheme: robodebt royal commission report recommends civil and criminal prosecutions

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Recommendation of referrals included in ‘sealed chapter’ of 1,000-page report with findings handed to federal government and released publicly

The “crude and cruel” robodebt scheme has resulted in a recommendation that unnamed individuals be referred for civil and criminal prosecutions, the royal commission has revealed.

The commissioner, Catherine Holmes, submitted her report to the government on Friday and revealed it contained a “sealed chapter” that recommended referrals of individuals for what it labelled a “costly failure of public administration”. The report said robodebt was “neither fair nor legal”.

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The robodebt royal commission revealed the worst of ‘welfare cop’ politics. But what happens next is up to us all

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Catherine Holmes’ report is damning for the Coalition and the public service, yet the reckoning she advocates will take more than policy change

Robodebt royal commissioner Catherine Holmes’ report is damning for the Coalition and former ministers, including Scott Morrison, Alan Tudge and Stuart Robert.

And it is disastrous for the public service – certain individuals within it and the entity as a whole; or what some might call the bureaucracy’s soul, if such a thing can exist.

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Robodebt royal commission report handed down – as it happened

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Bill Shorten: robodebt commission report will be a ‘vindication’ for victims and their families

The NDIS minister, Bill Shorten, says today “is a vindication” for victims of the robodebt scandal with the royal commission report being handed down. He told ABC’s RN this morning:

The heart of this story today is the fact that real people unlawfully had debt notices … raised against them by the most powerful institution in Australia, the commonwealth government.

Two of these people, after receiving robodebt notices, subsequently took their own lives that I’m aware of.

Today is not the day [their mothers] want. What they really want is their sons to be alive.

One of the challenges we’re seeing across the country is great teacher shortages … COVID brought that timetable forward.

Classrooms are more complex, there is a great diversity of needs across the classroom, and as society changes a lot of teachers and education ministers are testifying about the impact of technology in classrooms.

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Political future of renegade senator Gerard Rennick to be determined at LNP conference

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The Liberal senator is vying for a winnable spot on the party’s federal ticket at Friday’s preselection

The political future of the renegade Queensland Liberal senator Gerard Rennick will be determined on Friday amid a push to remove him from a winnable spot on the party’s Senate ticket.

Rennick is vying for a third spot on the ticket in Queensland, with hundreds of state councillors to determine preselections at the Liberal National party’s state conference in Brisbane.

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Peter Dutton ramps up nuclear power push and claims Labor down ‘renewable rabbit hole’

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Opposition leader to tell Institute of Public Affairs that domestic reactors are natural next step from Aukus pact

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has ramped up calls for nuclear power in Australia, casting the move as a way to avoid dependence on wind and solar technology from China and a natural next step from the Aukus pact.

Dutton will make the comments on Friday at an event organised by the Institute of Public Affairs, a Liberal-aligned thinktank that has publicly opposed curbs on coal-fired power and has lobbied against the net zero by 2050 policy.

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Carmakers double spending on ads in Australia for SUVs and utes

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Exclusive: Data shows huge jump in promotion and an 80% increase in sales of larger and more polluting vehicles, leading to calls for ban on ads

Carmakers have doubled how much they spend advertising SUVs and utes to Australians over the past decade, which has coincided with surging uptake of larger cars, triggering calls for a ban on advertising the highest polluting vehicles.

Advertising spends for SUVs and light commercial vehicles – a category which includes four-wheel drive utes – jumped from about $100m in 2010 to about $197m in 2022, according to analysis of digital, television, outdoor, radio, cinema and print advertising compiled by climate advocacy group Comms Declare.

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Australian energy ministers to consider renaming natural gas to ‘fossil gas’ in law

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Meeting to discuss updating national gas law to reflect fuel’s environmental impact as well as overhauling hydrogen strategy

Australian energy ministers meeting on Friday will discuss an overhaul of the country’s hydrogen strategy, the treatment of emissions from the Beetaloo gas field and whether to change the treatment of “natural gas” in the national gas law.

The ACT energy minister, Shane Rattenbury, will propose the gas law be updated to replace “natural gas” with “fossil gas” or “methane” to more accurately reflect the environmental impact of the fuel.

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Local councils warn Victorian government against seizing control of planning laws

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Municipal peak body also says more town planners are desperately needed to speed up building approvals

Local councils have warned the Victorian government that seizing control of planning laws will not fix the state’s housing crisis, pointing to a shortage of town planners across all levels of government.

As pressure builds on the premier, Daniel Andrews, to release details of the government’s housing package – which he says will include a “substantial rewrite of planning laws” to increase supply, the Municipal Association of Victoria is urging caution.

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Teenager ‘racially assaulted’ by former University of New England vice-chancellor, court told

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Prof Brigid Heywood has pleaded not guilty to assault and offensive behaviour for allegedly wiping her spit on the girl’s face

A teenager who was allegedly subjected to offensive conduct by the former vice-chancellor of the University of New England has told a court she was “racially assaulted”.

Prof Brigid Heywood is alleged to have licked her finger and wiped it twice on the teenager’s face and made comments about her skin colour at an International Women’s Day event in Armidale on 8 March 2022.

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Senator says she has been ‘excluded’ from writing pamphlet – as it happened

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Patricia Karvelas challenges Littleproud’s Covid reasoning behind the Murray-Darling Basin delays on ABC RN this morning.

“This isn’t a new problem … Your government was in power when a 2019 Productivity Commission report warned that there had been limited progress returning the water to the environment,” she says. “Why didn’t you change course?”

This is a very technical piece of legislation … The 450 is additional to the 2,750 gigalitres of water in the plan, the Productivity Commission looked at the 450 gigalitres, there’s only been 2 gigalitres recovered on the 450 …

Because the neutrality test on social and economic impact on rural communities have not been passed to get more water back out of it – that’s a test the Labor government put in place, that we adhere to that the states agreed to.

He [is] going down a path that’s divided the country and meant that the attention has been taken away from managing people’s cost-of-living crisis, and focused on trying to win a referendum in which he has overreached in conflating a voice with constitutional recognition.

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Linda Reynolds says she has ‘had enough’ as she threatens Brittany Higgins with defamation case

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Higgins had called on the senator to ‘stop’ after Reynolds confirmed she intended to refer commonwealth’s settlement with Higgins to anti-corruption watchdog

Brittany Higgins has revealed she has received a defamation threat from her former boss Linda Reynolds over an Instagram post that included a list of complaints against the senator.

Reynolds has responded by accusing Higgins of “defamation of my character”.

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AFR apologises for running voice no campaign ad featuring ‘racist trope’

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Newspaper publisher says ad ‘should not have run’ after federal independent MP Kate Chaney accuses no campaign of stoking ‘fear and hate’

The no campaign has been accused of using a “racist trope” in a newspaper ad which included a cartoon figure of an Indigenous voice campaigner appearing to dance for money.

Matt Kean, a New South Wales Liberal MP, lashed the Advance conservative lobby group for “a throwback to the Jim Crow era of the deep south”, saying the full-page ad in the Australian Financial Review had no place in Australian politics. A spokesperson for Nine, publisher of the AFR, later apologised and said the ad should never have run.

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