Category Archives: Australia news

Spy boss says terrorism threat lower – as it happened

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The conversation moves on to Stan Grant and whether Richard Marles agrees with some of the comments ABC news boss Justin Stevens has made about the criticism Grant experienced by organisations like News Corp and its “relentless campaign”.

Marles is asked whether he has read some of the comments under articles about ABC staff which appear in newspapers like the Australian.

Should those newspapers be dealing with the consequences and the commentary? I’ve read some of them I’ve read some of them about myself, too. They’re revolting.

Look, I mean, they are revolting. It’s it’s an area in an age of social media where – where there are comments that are posted, well – anyone who engages in social media, I think we all need to do much better.

And the answer the question about why I haven’t read all them is precisely because of the impact which one has when you do read them all.

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Sydney dementia patient ‘didn’t sleep for months’ after police called to subdue her, family say

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Calls for reform grow with daughter of patient saying families should be notified when police are deployed to aged care homes

A family who say they were not told when police were deployed to help control their 79-year-old mother in a Sydney dementia unit are calling for a change to make it mandatory for family to be notified about the use of law enforcement.

On 4 June 2020, paramedics attempted to subdue an agitated Norma Robertson, who had only been in the care of the dementia unit at HammondCare in a Sydney suburb for about four weeks.

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Nearly half of those seeking Australian homelessness charity’s help have jobs but can’t pay soaring rents

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Mission Australia report finds demand for its services has jumped as CEO says government needs far more than ‘Band-Aid crisis solutions’

Four in 10 people who sought help from a major homelessness charity in the past three years were employed but could not meet skyrocketing rents, according to a report by Mission Australia.

The report comes as the demand for the organisation’s homelessness services, mainly based in New South Wales, jumped by 26% to 7,378 people between January 2020 to December last year.

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Australian jobseekers told to use ChatGPT to apply for jobs and shown irrelevant videos

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Exclusive: A taxpayer-funded online employability course that included videos on body language contained ‘not curriculum-endorsed materials’

A taxpayer-funded employability course is under fire after jobseekers complained that much of the compulsory training involved being shown irrelevant, inappropriate and, at-times, bizarre YouTube videos.

Under contracts signed by the Coalition last year, the federal government will pay private providers about $300m over five years to run Employability Skills Training (EST) courses as part of the commonwealth’s $7bn Workforce Australia program.

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Affordable rental properties in Australian capital cities at ‘record low’

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Just 16.2% of all rentals listed for $400 or less in April 2023, down from 30.2% in 2022

The number of properties listed for under $400 per week has halved in the last year, new data from PropTrack shows.

The report, which analysed data from listings on realestate.com, found the rental crisis had worsened in the past 12 months. In 2022, it said, 30.2% of all rental listings were under $400 a week. That number has now dropped to 16.2%.

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NT government knew it could not reduce climate risk when it greenlit ‘carbon bomb’ gas production in Beetaloo Basin

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Exclusive: New documents also reveal federal government admitted Australia did not have policies to ensure project would meet key recommendation in full

New documents reveal the Northern Territory government knew it could not meet a key recommendation to reduce the climate risk of its planned massive expansion of gas production, and asked the Albanese government for help.

Federal climate change officials in turn admitted Australia did not have any existing policies that would meet the recommendation in full.

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Weather tracker: Guam and Philippines brace for Typhoon Mawar

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Typhoon projected to affect US territory of Guam as early as Tuesday. Elsewhere, Europe is heating up

Over the weekend, a rapidly intensifying region of thunderstorms in the western Pacific culminated in the formation of Typhoon Mawar.

The movement of this storm is projected to affect the Mariana Islands, including the US territory of Guam, as early as Tuesday. There is a risk of wind speeds above 75mph, with torrential rain.

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Australia politics live: ABC journalists walk out to stand in solidarity with Stan Grant against ‘awful blight’ of racism

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Greens announce comedian Mandy Nolan as Richmond candidate for 2025 election

We are only a year into the Albanese government, but it’s never too early to be prepared, I suppose. The Greens have announced their candidate for Richmond at the next election – Mandy Nolan.

At the last election people were desperate to kick out the Liberals, but now they’re realising Labor also wants new coal and gas, which makes the climate crisis worse, as well as billions in handouts for property moguls, which pushes up rents and house prices. Labor has no plan whatsoever to help renters and Labor’s housing bill sees the crisis get worse.

Mandy’s already got a team of volunteers ready to hit the streets and talk to Richmond residents about how the Greens are the only party fighting for renters and climate action.

The Finance and Public Administration Committee (which includes department of parliamentary services and prime minister and cabinet).

The Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee, where it will be the Department of Home Affairs show.

The Environment and Communications committee will hear from the climate change and energy department as well as environment and water. (So power prices will dominate this one).

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Photo on The Australian front page ‘risks interfering’ with Lehrmann probe, head of inquiry says

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Walter Sofronoff KC tells inquiry he had written to the editor of the Australian to understand why the paper ran photograph of Shane Drumgold on page one, but conceded it might serve a valid journalistic purpose

The head of the inquiry into the ACT police investigation of rape allegations against Bruce Lehrmann condemned reporting by the Australian as pointless and a risk to “interfering with the course of [the] inquiry”.

In a significantly delayed opening to Monday’s hearings, former Queensland solicitor general Walter Sofronoff KC said the publication of a photo taken of the ACT director of public prosecutions, Shane Drumgold, as he stood in the driveway of his Canberra home appeared entirely unjustified.

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Police did not believe evidence was sufficient to take Bruce Lehrmann to trial, inquiry hears

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AFP’s Scott Moller says he charged Lehrmann on advice of DPP despite investigators not thinking Brittany Higgins’s allegations reached threshold for prosecution

The police officer who investigated an allegation Bruce Lehrmann raped a colleague in Parliament House has told an inquiry he did not believe there was sufficient evidence to take Lehrmann to trial, but charged him on the advice of the director of public prosecutions.

The AFP’s Det Supt Scott Moller oversaw the ACT police’s investigation into Brittany Higgins’s allegation Lehrmann raped her in the Parliament House office of the then Coalition minister Linda Reynolds in 2019.

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Australian climber Jason Kennison dies on Mount Everest while returning from summit

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Forty-year-old, who was raising money for Spinal Cord Injuries Australia, spent years recovering from a spinal injury after being told he might never walk again

An Australian man who climbed Mount Everest after learning to walk again has died on his return from the summit.

Jason Bernard Kennison died on Friday. His family said “he achieved his goal of reaching the peak … he stood on top of this world but sadly didn’t come home.”

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New Zealand loses fight with Australia over mānuka honey trademark

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Intellectual Property Office rules that New Zealand beekeepers’ attempt to stop Australian producers using the name did not meet necessary requirements

New Zealand honey producers have lost their latest battle to trademark mānuka honey, the latest blow in a years-long fight to stop Australian beekeepers using the lucrative name.

The Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand ruled on Monday that New Zealand mānuka beekeepers’ attempt for a trademark did not meet necessary requirements, and the term mānuka was descriptive.

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Young humpbacks ‘full of beans’ as whale-watching season takes off in Sydney

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Up to 50,000 whales expected to pass Australia’s east coast during annual migration from Antartica to Great Barrier Reef

Carrie Davis describes seeing her first adult humpback whale of the season launching out of the water off the coast of Sydney last week as magical.

“It’s just this feeling of awe to see this fat whale of that size get all that body out of the water,” said Davis of Go Whale Watching in Sydney. “No matter how many times you see it, it always takes your breath away.”

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Clare Nowland: aged care resident Tasered by police remains in ‘heavy sleep’ amid end-of-life care

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Woman, 95, is surrounded by family and still in critical condition as calls grow for broader investigation of police treatment of dementia sufferers

Clare Nowland, the aged care resident who was Tasered by a police officer in Cooma last week, remains in a “heavy sleep” and is comfortable, surrounded by her family, who held a bedside mass for her on Sunday as she continues to receive end-of-life care.

Calls grew on Monday for a broader independent investigation of police treatment of dementia sufferers after revelations in the Guardian that six officers handcuffed a second nursing home resident, Rachel Grahame, in 2020 after she took a staff member’s lanyard.

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Meteor blazes across north Queensland sky with blast of light and sound

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Footage captured from Cairns on the east coast to Normanton on the Gulf of Carpentaria shows growing fireball exploding with a loud boom

The north Queensland sky was briefly set alight on Saturday night as a meteor blazed through the atmosphere, exploded, and came to earth with a tremendous boom.

Footage captured on smartphones, dashcams and security cameras by businesses and residents from Cairns on the east coast to Normanton on the Gulf of Carpentaria circulated on social media on Sunday, showing a fireball growing rapidly in size as it approached the Earth, followed by a blast of greenish-blue light.

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Property market revival continues; employment minister dismisses wage price spiral fears – as it happened

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Birmingham says cost of Coalition’s jobseeker plan is ‘being worked through’

Asked whether the Coalition would support a lift to the jobseeker payment, Birmingham tells David Speers that Peter Dutton has “proposed an important alternative that would help Australians who are willing to and looking to engage in the workforce”.

We’ve outlined an alternative at this stage, David. We are not at an election and not about to firm government in the next two years.

That clarity should be there before the prime minister entertains a formal state visit to Beijing.

We should expect them to be lifted complete, as we should the tariffs on our wine industry.

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Coalition says Anthony Albanese should not go to China until trade sanctions are lifted

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Simon Birmingham says ‘clarity should be there before the prime minister entertains a formal state visit to Beijing’

The shadow minister for foreign affairs, Simon Birmingham, says Anthony Albanese should not visit Beijing until all trade sanctions have been lifted.

Birmingham, a former trade minister in the Coalition government, said Australia “deserves to have absolute clarity that these sanctions are going to be lifted and that clarity should be there before the prime minister entertains a formal state visit to Beijing”.

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Childcare workers’ union to seek 25% pay rise after Labor budget snub

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Sector already in crisis will lose workers to better paid aged care unless there is ‘significant uplift’ in wages, UWU says

The union representing early childhood educators has condemned the Albanese government’s failure to boost their pay in the federal budget, signalling it will bring a multi-employer bargaining claim within weeks seeking a 25% pay rise.

Helen Gibbons, the director of early childhood education at the United Workers Union, said it was “very likely” it would make an application on behalf of thousands of educators shortly after new industrial laws take effect on 6 June.

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NSW police footage shows officers used two sets of handcuffs on 81-year-old woman with dementia

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Exclusive: footage from body-worn camera shows police restraining confused dementia patient Rachel Grahame in 2020

Six police officers used two sets of handcuffs on a distressed and frail 81-year-old woman with dementia after she took a lanyard from a staff member at her Sydney nursing home.

Body-worn camera footage shows Rachel Grahame, who has advanced dementia and weighs just 45kg, howling in distress as a team of police surround and handcuff her late at night at St Basil’s aged care home in Randwick on 31 October 2020.

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Australia, India, Japan and US take thinly veiled swipe at China

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Beijing clearly target of joint statement by Quad group calling for ‘stability in Indo-Pacific maritime domain’

The leaders of the Quad group – Australia, India, Japan and the United States – delivered a thinly veiled swipe at Beijing’s behaviour on Saturday at a summit in Hiroshima.

The US president, Joe Biden, and his three partners in the group did not mention China by name but the communist superpower was clearly the target of language in a joint statement calling for “peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific maritime domain”.

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