Category Archives: Australia news

Bruce Lehrmann drops defamation case and settles with News Corp over Brittany Higgins reports

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The two parties reportedly settled with News Corp saying it had not paid any damages and the articles in dispute would remain online

Bruce Lehrmann has discontinued defamation proceedings against News Corp over its initial reporting of Brittany Higgins’ allegations after he settled with the media company.

News.com.au said in a statement that the settlement involved the payment of a portion of Lehrmann’s legal costs only.

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‘Elevated’ lead levels detected in water at far-north Queensland hospital

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Atherton hospital staff were offered blood tests but the state’s chief health officer says he would be ‘very surprised’ if they showed high levels of lead

Lead contamination has been discovered in the water at a new hospital building and at an Aboriginal health clinic in far-north Queensland.

The Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service (CHHHS) announced that a number of water samples taken at the new clinical services building at Atherton hospital and at a health facility in nearby Yarrabah contained lead at levels that exceeded the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) recommended guidelines for safe drinking water.

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NSW politicians and public service executives hit with wage freeze to fund payrise for frontline workers

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Legislation will be introduced to state parliament on Tuesday freezing the salaries of MPs and executives from July

Promised pay rises for New South Wales frontline workers will be funded by a two-year freeze on the wages of state politicians and public service senior executives.

Legislation will be introduced to state parliament on Tuesday freezing the salaries of MPs and executives from July and redirecting the millions of dollars in savings to nurses, paramedics, teachers and other frontline workers.

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Proportion of Aboriginal inmates in NSW hit a record 29.7% in February

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Exclusive: State Aboriginal Legal Service calls for end to ‘over-policing’ of Indigenous people

The proportion of Aboriginal people in prisons across New South Wales has reached an all-time high, prompting an urgent call from key groups for governments to end the “over-policing” of Indigenous communities.

The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (Bocsar) figures revealed Aboriginal people accounted for a record 29.7% of the state’s adult prison population in February, dipping slightly to 29.5% in March.

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Aukus ‘expensive’ and not ‘easy to replicate’, Australian officials told foreign diplomats

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Exclusive: Documents obtained by Guardian Australia show Australia attempted to reassure countries amid nuclear proliferation concerns

Australian officials have told foreign diplomats that the Aukus submarine plan is “expensive” and not “easy to replicate”, as part of an effort to play down concerns about the risks of other countries racing to do the same, a newly released tranche of documents reveals.

Officials also urged diplomats to be on guard for disinformation about the nuclear-powered submarine plan, the documents show.

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Australian banks lending billions to fossil fuel projects despite supporting emissions reductions, analysis suggest

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Big four have pledged to align business practices with Paris agreement but loophole allows them to fund sector, activist group says

Australia’s big banks have loaned more than $13bn for fossil fuel projects over the past two years even as they publicly advocate for emissions reductions, a new report suggests.

Analysis by environmental activist group Market Forces has found that while Australia’s major banks largely avoid providing direct project finance to new coal, oil and gas projects, they do fund corporate entities that develop them.

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Research suggests that more than half of Australia’s dingoes are genetically pure, not hybrids

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Finding has implications for the ways that Australia’s native canid – including the extent to which they are culled – are managed

Most dingoes in Australia are pure dingoes rather than hybrids, new research suggests.

New genetic analysis shows that a significantly greater proportion of wild dingo populations are purer than previously thought, with less dog lineage than scientists once estimated.

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Guardian Essential poll: majority of Australians support rent freezes, migration cap amid housing crisis

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Poll finds respondents support policies of the Greens and Coalition, posing a potential risk to the Albanese government

A majority of voters support severe measures to tackle the housing crisis including freezing rents, capping migration and using superannuation for housing, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll.

The poll of 1,138 people, released on Tuesday, finds support for a range of signature policies of the Greens and Coalition, demonstrating the risk posed to the Albanese government if it is not seen to be doing enough to fight rising rents and property prices.

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57% supporting preventing wealthy families using family trusts to minimise tax, and just 15% opposed

49% supporting only allowing negative gearing on one investment property, and just 17% opposed

47% wanting to tax deceased estates worth more than $5m to fund affordable rentals, and 23% opposed; and

36% supporting removing all negative gearing tax concessions on investment properties and 25% opposed.

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Mark McGowan: why the only way was down for Western Australia’s political rock star

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After being lauded for his tough Covid response and winning the most one-sided election in Australian history, Labor premier goes out at the top


It is telling that, at the age of 55, Western Australia’s premier, Mark McGowan, cited exhaustion, rather than the fulfilment of political ambition, as the main reason for his sudden resignation.

McGowan strode into the state’s highest office in 2017, but it was his Covid response that propelled him into unprecedented power in 2021, with his party wining the most one-sided election result in Australia’s history – taking 53 of 59 seats in the lower house.

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Australia news live: 3.8 magnitude earthquake largest to hit Melbourne in over a century

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Thousands of people contacted Geoscience Australia to report they felt shaking, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or serious damage. Follow the latest updates

Paterson says the Indigenous voice to parliament’s differentiation on the basis of characteristics people have no control over is “offensive to liberal principles.”

Asked about whether he agrees with his leader Peter Dutton, when he talks about the voice re-racialising Australia, Patterson says:

What proponents of the yes campaign are trying to do is to treat Australians differently. …what we are doing is putting into our constitutional something which treats people differently because of a characteristic over which they have control. And I think that is offensive to liberal principles. And we are all human beings and we’re all Australian, and we should be all treated equally before the law before the Constitution as well.

It is in Australia’s national interest that Ukraine prevail. We have to do everything in our power to ensure they do.

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Victoria earthquake: Melbourne residents feel shake of 3.8 magnitude quake in city’s north-west

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Earthquake detected in Sunbury before midnight on Sunday reportedly largest earthquake in over 100 years in the Melbourne metropolitan area

Parts of Melbourne were shaken by a 3.8 magnitude earthquake that hit near Sunbury in the city’s north-west late on Sunday night.

Geoscience Australia confirmed the quake occurred at 11.41pm. Thousands of people contacted the agency to report they had felt the shaking, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or serious damage.

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Melbourne public transport card readers won’t accept credit cards or iPhones until 2025

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Exclusive: upgraded Myki ticketing system could have been in place sooner, according to alternate proposals tendered

Using credit cards and iPhones to tap on to Melbourne public transport won’t be a network-wide reality until at least 2025, but the Victorian government has defended its new ticketing contract amid claims other bidders could have implemented the compatibility faster.

Upgrades to existing card readers on trams, buses and trains – as well as more ambitious schedules for the installation of new readers – were detailed in two proposals to overhaul the Myki system that would have seen credit card and iPhone payments accepted across the network before 2025, Guardian Australia understands.

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Australia’s rental affordability drops to worst levels in nearly a decade

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New report shows average households are spending a third of income on rent while lower income families pay more than half their earnings

Australian rental affordability has dropped to its worst levels in nearly a decade, with the average household spending a third of its income on rent, as the impacts of the Covid pandemic continue to be felt on the market.

Lower income households pay even more, with more than half of their income going towards their rent, according to new research from ANZ and CoreLogic.

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Albanese urges all citizens to discuss Indigenous voice to ensure successful referendum

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Success ‘will depend on millions of conversations between Australians of all backgrounds and faiths and beliefs’, PM says in speech

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has urged citizens to discuss the Indigenous voice to parliament with friends and family to ensure the referendum’s success. He also claims the no campaign has radically underestimated Australians, who would not succumb to fear campaigns about the constitutional change.

Albanese will use a major speech in Adelaide on Monday to counter claims the government has rushed into the referendum, saying the voice and calls for Indigenous constitutional recognition have developed over decades.

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Woman found dead in Sydney after police failed to locate source of alleged domestic dispute

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Man charged with domestic violence offences including stalking and contravention of an AVO

A man has been charged with domestic violence offences after police found a woman’s body inside a western Sydney apartment, after earlier failing to locate the source of a domestic dispute.

Police received an anonymous phone call about an alleged domestic dispute at a Liverpool apartment block about 11.45pm on Friday.

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Lidia Thorpe to lodge racism claim against Greens party with Human Rights Commission

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Independent senator also foreshadowed abstaining from Senate vote on Indigenous voice referendum in interview with ABC

Senator Lidia Thorpe says she will lodge a complaint to the Human Rights Commission against her former party, the Australian Greens, claiming she experienced racism during her time in the organisation.

But the party said it is not aware of the complaint and is committed to stamping out racism at work and in parliament.

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Australia news live: Lidia Thorpe to lodge human rights complaint alleging racist treatment from the Greens

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Sydney man arrested for alleged major heroin smuggling operation after deportation

A Sydney man has been charged for allegedly orchestrating one of the biggest heroin imports in recent history after being deported from Türkiye, the Australian Federal Police has said.

Police will allege the man has been based in a number of countries since March 2020 and is responsible for organising the importation of 347.9kg of heroin into Sydney in December 2020, while he was based in Thailand. It will also be alleged this man has extensive links to transnational organised crime groups, which helped facilitate this importation.

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Teenager fights for life after car crash kills four people in Victoria’s west

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Police investigating cause of single-vehicle accident after car lost control and hit tree

A teenage girl is fighting for life as police probe a single-vehicle crash that killed four others in regional Victoria.

Police remained at the scene of the crash on Wannon-Nigretta Falls Road, Bochara on Saturday evening after the car with five people on board lost control and hit a tree.

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Two men charged after police find $60m worth of cocaine in shipping container in Sydney

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Police were called to a container logistics company in Port Botany after reports of a break and enter on Thursday night

Two Greek nationals have been charged with numerous offences after police allegedly found $60m worth of cocaine in the walls of a shipping container in Sydney.

Police were called to a Port Botany container logistics company after reports of a break and enter about 11pm on Thursday.

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Only 12 of 35 dementia units promised by 2023 Australia-wide are operational, health department says

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Exclusive: spokesperson says six units more will open by the end of 2024 but declines questions about cause of delay

Just 12 of a promised 35 specialist dementia units the government committed to have running by 2023 are operational, a health department spokesman has said.

To respond to a growing number of people with dementia and suffering from severe behavioural and psychological symptoms, the federal government in 2016 announced the Specialist Dementia Care Program [SDCP].

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