Category Archives: Australia news

Labor under fire from crossbench over $1.5bn stake in Middle Arm industrial precinct

Posted on by

Zali Steggall and David Pocock take aim at government over support of development on Darwin habour which will benefit gas industry

The Albanese government has come under pressure from the crossbench over its $1.5bn stake in a “sustainable” development precinct on Darwin harbour after documents revealed the project would benefit the gas industry.

In question time on Thursday, the independent MP for Warringah, Zali Steggall, asked the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, why his government had “backflipped” and blocked a Senate inquiry into the Middle Arm industrial precinct.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Labor under pressure to freeze rents as Greens and Coalition back inquiry into housing crisis

Posted on by

Greens urged to back government’s fund as advocates say housing is needed now and politicians need to ‘start taking action’

The Senate has set up an inquiry into the rental crisis, a process designed by the Greens to pressure the Albanese government to agree to freeze or cap rising rents.

On Monday the Greens voted with the Coalition to delay consideration of Labor’s $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund (Haff) until 16 October, despite pressure from housing groups to pass the bill after the government pledged $2bn of direct funding for social and affordable housing.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Australian Ballet dancers to take first industrial action in more than four decades

Posted on by

Dancers will ‘hold the curtain’ at a Melbourne performance on Friday after negotiations to ensure appropriate pay rises failed

Dancers of the Australian Ballet will take industrial action for the first time in more than four decades, after negotiations with management over a new workplace agreement reached an impasse on Monday.

Dancers will “hold the curtain” at this Friday’s performance in Melbourne, meaning the show Identity, a program of two original works, will be delayed by 15 minutes.

Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning

Continue reading...

Greens and Coalition unite to refer bill to its own inquiry

Posted on by

This blog is now closed.

Albanese takes swipes at the Greens

The Midwinter Ball was held overnight. It seems to have been a fairly staid affair but I am still ferreting out info.

Consulting firm PwC engaged in a “calculated” breach of trust by using confidential information to help its clients avoid tax and engaged in a “deliberate cover-up” over many years, a Senate committee has found.

PwC should be “open and honest” by promptly publishing the names and details of its partners and staff involved, the finance and public administration committee has recommended.

Continue reading...

Australia’s eSafety umpire issues legal warning to Twitter amid rise in online hate

Posted on by

Julie Inman Grant says platform has ‘dropped the ball’ on tackling ‘peddlers of outrage’

Australia’s eSafety commissioner says Twitter has “dropped the ball” on tackling online hate and has issued a legal notice to the social media giant demanding an explanation about what it is doing about the scourge.

The commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said there have been more complaints about online hate on Twitter in the past year than any other platform, and complaints have spiked since Elon Musk’s takeover of the company in October.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Indigenous advocates and families say tallying Australian deaths in custody does not address fundamental causes

Posted on by

‘I want to see the day when deaths in custody stop,’ says nephew of David Dungay Jr, who died in police custody in 2015

Indigenous deaths in custody must stop rather than just be counted, families and advocates say as the government announced a real-time database to collect all custodial deaths as they happen.

The federal government revealed the new deaths in custody reporting system on Wednesday, with states and territories agreeing to provide more up-to-date figures on people dying in state and territory watch-houses, police stations, prisons and detention centres.

Continue reading...

Transparency concerns as vast backlog of Australian MP expense claims unlikely to be cleared until mid-2024

Posted on by

Botched system upgrade has created a vast backlog of MP expense claims that will not be cleared for at least 12 months, documents reveal

A botched system upgrade has created a vast backlog of MP expense claims that will not be cleared until at least mid-2024, leaving details of travel expenses and office and employee costs unscrutinised, documents reveal.

Problems upgrading a crucial reporting system have left MP travel expenses unchecked for almost a year and this is likely to continue until mid-2024, the documents reveal.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

House prices will keep rising into next year, says Domain, as immigration boosts demand

Posted on by

Sydney to lead recovery with 6%-9% increase by next June while Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane will surpass or come close to record highs

The recovery of real estate prices will extend across Australia and well into 2024 as a swelling population overwhelms the headwinds of higher interest rates and reduced borrowing limits for some prospective buyers, according to data group Domain.

Sydney, which led the fall in home prices last year as the Reserve Bank began lifting its cash rate, will also power the rebound. By the end of June next year, the city’s houses are forecast to be 6% to 9% higher than at the end of last month, lifting the median price to a record of just over $1.6m.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Politicians dress up for Canberra’s night of nights – as it happened

Posted on by

This blog is now closed.

Lambie agrees with calls to have Iraq invasion decision referred to ICC

Jacqui Lambie says she also agrees with calls to have the leaders of the “coalition of the willing” – the leaders of the UK, the US and Australia when the decision was made to invade Iraq – also referred to the international criminal court. Beyond that, she says Australia has never really examined its role in that decision.

I absolutely agree with and when you go in to Iraq, and you say you have a reason to do that … when you work out three years later that the reason that they were using was not there at all, then we have a massive problem here and you continue to stay in a war that you probably should never have been involved in the first place because you didn’t have that information correct.

Then you have a problem. And quite frankly, politicians when they send us into war, they should be accountable as well.

If Australia – and both governments we’ve seen it from the Liberal party and now from the Labor party – if they’re not prepared to go in and look at senior command … I’m going to force them to.

Because you are not going to chuck all these diggers under the bus and not [front] up.

Continue reading...

NSW police removed mention of Taser and knife from first statement about Clare Nowland

Posted on by

The 95-year-old died after she was Tasered during a confrontation with police at a nursing home in Cooma in May

Documents show New South Wales police removed mention of paramedics, a knife and a Taser in their first statement about the Tasering of a 95-year-old grandmother.

Clare Nowland was Tasered during a confrontation with police while walking with a frame and holding a steak knife at the Yallambee Lodge in Cooma on 17 May, according to subsequent police statements.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Icy morning in south-east Australia sees Canberra mercury dip below -7C

Posted on by

Canberra records its coldest June morning since 1986 and Sydney its coldest June morning since 2010, with the record-breaking weather forecast to continue

Many Australians woke up on Wednesday to record-breaking cold temperatures as Sydney and Canberra experienced their coldest June mornings in more than a decade.

Canberra’s minimum temperature of -7.2C was its lowest since 2018 and the lowest for June since 1986, according to Ben Domensino, a meteorologist at Weatherzone.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Golden nuggets: KFC price hikes in Australia outpace McDonald’s with some products up to 25% dearer than a year ago

Posted on by

Higher-than-inflation rises add to pressure on consumers facing steep price increases for food

KFC is pushing up prices at its Australian stores at a faster pace than its rival McDonald’s, with consumers paying up to 25% more for some of the fast food chain’s most popular items, new analysis shows.

The higher-than-inflation hikes add to the mounting pressure on consumers facing steep price rises for food, irrespective of whether it is sold through a drive-through window or supermarket checkout.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Australia’s use of hotels for immigration detention found to have ‘devastating’ health effects

Posted on by

At the time of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s inspections, the longest continuous detention in a hotel was 634 days

The Australian government’s use of city hotels as ad hoc immigration detention centres – including confining people for nearly two years – has “devastating impacts on people’s mental and physical health”, the Australian Human Rights Commission has found.

In a report published on Wednesday morning, the commission argued that the use of hotels to incarcerate people remained a “regularised” part of Australia’s immigration infrastructure, rather than a measure of last resort, even though the number of people detained – and the length of their detention – has steadily decreased.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Real-time reporting to monitor Aboriginal deaths in custody

Posted on by

New data dashboard to provide up-to-date information supplied by states and territories

Governments will be held more accountable for their criminal justice systems with the launch of a new source of information on Indigenous deaths in custody.

Since the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody released its report in 1991 there have been more than 540 First Nations deaths in custody.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Three in four Australians think China will be military threat to country within 20 years, survey finds

Posted on by

Lowy Institute poll shows more than 60% see a US-China conflict over Taiwan as a critical threat but most believe Australia should remain neutral if it occurs

Three-quarters of Australians believe it is likely China will become a military threat to Australia in the next two decades but a majority say Australia should remain neutral in the event of a conflict between China and the United States, a new poll has found.

The 2023 Lowy Institute poll, which surveyed more than 2,000 Australians in March on a range of issues, also found 44% of Australians see China as “more of an economic partner” while 52% see the country as “more of a security threat” – a drop of 11 percentage points on last year.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

South-east Australia hits record June cold, with frosty weather conditions to continue

Posted on by

Sydney’s minimum temperature dropped to 1.8C and Canberra’s to -5.6C as Bureau of Meteorology predicts the cold to linger

South-east Australia is shivering through some of its coldest temperatures in years, with brisk winds pushing the morning chill factor even lower.

Sydney experienced its coldest June morning on record on Monday, with a minimum temperature of 1.8C at Olympic Park, according to Miriam Bradbury, a senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Daniel Andrews refuses to apologise for calling Liberal MP Cindy McLeish a ‘halfwit grub’

Posted on by

Victorian premier says his comment in parliament was in defence of Labor MP Kat Theophanous

The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, is refusing to apologise to Liberal MP Cindy McLeish for calling her a “halfwit grub” in state parliament, arguing he was defending a female colleague at the time.

Andrews made the comment during debate on an opposition bill to adopt the four recommendations of the anti-corruption watchdog’s Operation Clara report, which was handed down earlier this year.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Apple TV+ remake of sci-fi classic Metropolis cancelled due to US writers’ strike

Posted on by

The $188m eight-part series was to be filmed in Melbourne but has been shelved because of ‘push costs and uncertainty’

The $188m Apple TV+ remake of Fritz Lang’s 1927 sci-fi classic Metropolis has been cancelled.

The major project was in pre-production in Melbourne when NBCUniversal’s Universal Studio Group announced the eight-part series would not go ahead.

Continue reading...

NDIS agency scrambles over risk of leaked sensitive client information in HWL Ebsworth hack

Posted on by

National Disability Insurance Agency seeking information after 1.1TB of law firm’s data was posted to dark web this month

The agency responsible for the national disability insurance scheme is scrambling to learn whether sensitive client information related to appeal cases has been caught up in a large cybersecurity hack on the law firm HWL Ebsworth which has represented the agency.

The Russian-linked ALPHV/Blackcat ransomware group said in a post on the dark web in late April that data from the law firm had been hacked. Earlier this month, the group published some of the data it claimed to have stolen – later established to be 3.6TB worth of data, of which 1.1TB has been posted.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Jacqui Lambie asks ICC to investigate Australian military commanders for alleged war crimes

Posted on by

Lambie tells Senate the Brereton report gave senior commanders a ‘free pass’ while soldiers were ‘thrown under the bus’

Senator Jacqui Lambie has told the Senate she has asked the international criminal court (ICC) to investigate senior Australian Defence Force commanders for alleged war crimes.

Lambie said that the Brereton report gave senior commanders a “free pass” while soldiers were “thrown under the bus”.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...