Category Archives: Australia news

Pheobe Bishop: Queensland police testing human remains found in search for missing teenager

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Police say remains found during search of area near Good Night Scrub national park on Friday afternoon

Queensland police have identified remains found in the search for missing 17-year-old Pheobe Bishop as human, and further testing is being done to formally identify them.

The discovery of remains was made at about 2.30pm on Friday after a search of an area near Good Night Scrub national park, close to Gin Gin, police said. The remains were found one day after her housemates were charged with her murder.

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Australian navy ship accidentally blocks internet and radio across parts of New Zealand

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Incident happened as one of the Royal Australian Navy’s largest ships was on its way to Wellington this week

The Australian defence force (ADF) has conceded that one of its ships inadvertently blocked wireless internet and radio services across swathes of New Zealand’s North and South islands this week.

The incident occurred on Wednesday morning as HMAS Canberra, one of the largest ships in the Royal Australian Navy, was on its way to Wellington, where it ultimately arrived on Thursday.

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Sussan Ley says name spelling change was due to ‘punk phase’ – not numerology

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Opposition leader dismisses numerology comment as a ‘flippant remark’ and ‘actually not the reason’ for extra ‘s’

The opposition leader, Sussan Ley, has walked back claims that an interest in numerology was the reason she added extra “s” in her name, claiming her comment she made to a journalist in 2015 was a “flippant remark” and not correct.

Ley told Melbourne radio station 3AW on Friday that the name change came during her “punk phase” as a teenager, shooting down a long-running story that she had added the extra letter because of a belief it would make her life more exciting.

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Families of children killed in Hillcrest jumping castle incident ‘shattered’ after not guilty verdict

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Rosemary Gamble, owner of Taz-Zorb which set up the equipment in Tasmania, had pleaded not guilty to failing to comply with workplace safety laws

The families of the six children killed in a primary school jumping castle incident are angry after the operator who set up the castle was found not guilty of a workplace safety charge.

Chace Harrison, Jalailah Jayne-Maree Jones, Zane Mellor, Addison Stewart, Jye Sheehan and Peter Dodt died after the incident at Hillcrest primary school in Devonport in December 2021.

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Lidia Thorpe urges Albanese to ‘do his homework’ as PM insists Dorinda Cox allegations have been ‘dealt with’

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Independent senator – who made complaint about Cox – says Labor needs to take bullying allegations in the workplace seriously

Lidia Thorpe has urged Anthony Albanese to “do his homework” on bullying allegations against Greens turned Labor senator Dorinda Cox, claiming the prime minister was “wrong” to publicly declare the matters had been dealt with.

The independent Victorian senator – previously a member of the Greens – revealed on Wednesday she had formally filed a bullying complaint against Cox in March 2023, months after she first notified the then Greens leader, Adam Bandt.

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Brittany Higgins warns of #MeToo backlash and urges Labor to ‘transform’ how Australia handles sexual assault

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Higgins decries pushback against ‘the very idea that sexual violence deserves to be taken seriously’ in first speech since returning to public life

Brittany Higgins has warned of an orchestrated “backlash” to the #MeToo movement in her first speech since returning to public life.

During her keynote address to the fourth Conversations That Matter event in Geelong on Thursday, Higgins also urged the Albanese government to use its election mandate to “transform how sexual assault is handled in Australia”.

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Setback for Minns government as controversial workers’ compensation bill sent to inquiry

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Treasurer Daniel Mookhey, who opposed the inquiry, said NSW’s compensation scheme was running a $5m deficit every day

A controversial bill to curtail workers’ compensation claims for psychological injuries incurred by New South Wales workers will be sent to a parliamentary inquiry, after crossbenchers and the Coalition banded together to force the inquiry.

The independent Mark Latham moved for a relatively swift inquiry, with the date of reporting to be set by the chair of the inquiry, once the scope of evidence is known.

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Marine heatwave found to have engulfed area of ocean five times the size of Australia

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World Meteorological Organization report says record heat in 2024 was driven by climate crisis and intersected with extreme weather events

Almost 40 million sq kilometres of ocean around south-east Asia and the Pacific – an area five times the size of Australia – was engulfed in a marine heatwave in 2024, a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report has revealed.

WMO scientists said the record heat – on land and in the ocean – was mostly driven by the climate crisis and coincided with a string of extreme weather events, from deadly landslides in the Philippines to floods in Australia and rapid glacier loss in Indonesia.

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NSW gamblers losing $24m to poker machines every day, analysis shows

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Wesley Mission says the ‘devastating impact deepens every day’ with one western Sydney area averaging $2m a day lost to pokies

The New South Wales government has failed to prevent serious gambling harm with $2.7bn lost to poker machines in the first 90 days of this year, according to a charity group pushing for tougher regulation.

Analysis of state government data by Wesley Mission has found the amount of money lost to poker machines during the first quarter of 2025 increased by 5.7% when compared with the same period in 2024.

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Queensland’s puberty blockers review panel criticised for lacking gender experts and trans lived experience

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Health department defends panel as chosen based on specialist expertise and says public can contribute via consultation process

Transgender advocates have criticised the panel assembled to conduct the Queensland government’s review of puberty blockers for lacking experts in gender affirming care and people with lived experience of trans healthcare.

The state government opened its independent review of stage 1 and stage 2 hormone therapies in Queensland’s public paediatric gender services to public submissions last week, but kept the panel conducting the review secret.

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Victorian Liberals question funding unfair dismissal claim defence while refusing to bail out John Pesutto

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Exclusive: Rift comes as Pesutto supporters remain optimistic a deal for the party to loan him money to help pay $2.3m in defamation costs will be struck

Several Victorian Liberals have accused the party of “hypocrisy” after it paid lawyers to represent its administrative wing in an unfair dismissal claim, while so far declining to save former party leader John Pesutto from bankruptcy.

On Monday, lawyers for Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming initiated bankruptcy proceedings against Pesutto after he failed to meet a deadline to pay her $2.3m in legal costs. Pesutto has less than 21 days to pay, enter into a payment agreement or face bankruptcy, which would lead to a byelection in his seat of Hawthorn.

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More Australians can’t afford specialist fees. Experts say it’s ‘not in the spirit of Medicare’

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Exclusive: Report finds rebates not keeping up with specialist fee rises and experts say soaring number of people putting off care is easy to understand

The cost of an initial dermatology appointment is now up to nearly $300 on average, new data shows. It reflects a broader problem: that Medicare rebates are not keeping up with the pace specialist fees are rising.

Online healthcare directory Cleanbill, which has tracked bulk billing rates among GPs, is expanding to provide data on out-of-pocket costs to see other health professionals, starting with dermatology.

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Chris Minns warns of $2bn budget hole if bill curtailing psychological injury claims fails

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Opposition opposes premier’s bill to raise impairment threshold to 30% as Labor forced to woo crossbenchers for support

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, has warned a failure to pass his controversial workers compensation legislation would blow a $2bn hole in the state budget as Labor seeks to woo a coalition of conservative crossbenchers to pass the bill.

In parliament, the premier said if the changes to curtail psychological injury claims did not go through, an additional $2bn would be required from NSW taxpayers to fund the public service portion of the scheme.

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‘Is that how you poisoned my parents?’: Erin Patterson tells mushroom trial husband confronted her over dehydrator

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Triple murder accused, who denies deliberately poisoning anyone, tells court she dumped dehydrator used to dry foraged mushrooms due to feeling ‘scared’ of child protection officers seeing it

Erin Patterson has told a court her estranged husband asked her if she had used a dehydrator to poison his parents, and admitted resetting her phone out of fear police would discover photos she had of foraged mushrooms.

In her third day in the witness box, Patterson also said she thinks there is a “possibility” that foraged mushrooms were unintentionally added to her beef wellington mixture as she tried to improve its “bland” flavour, and lied to her lunch guests about having cancer because she was embarrassed about planned weight-loss surgery.

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E-scooter injury toll revealed in study just ‘tip of the iceberg’ in Australia, doctors warn

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Data shows many children involved in e-scooter accidents speeding, not wearing helmets, and ‘doubling’ their friends

Every three days, a child injured on an e-scooter would come through the emergency department doors at the Sunshine Coast university hospital, according to Dr Matthew Clanfield.

Between 2023 and 2024, 176 children were treated at the Queensland hospital.

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Ticketek warns buyers against using multiple browsers amid complaints over Ashes ticket sales

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Frustrated fans vent at long waits and reported issues in presale queue as Cricket Australia announces record sales for men’s Test series

Ticketek has downplayed reports of widespread problems with its online sales platform from cricket fans trying to buy tickets to the Ashes, saying multiple browsers can trigger bot protection services designed to protect customers.

On Tuesday evening, Cricket Australia announced it had recorded its highest individual day of ticket sales ever. But the hours before saw a chorus of frustrated fans venting at the online queue for the tickets’ presale window, which opened in the afternoon.

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Instagram account dedicated to masturbation suspended after allegedly infringing University of Melbourne’s trademark

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One now-deleted post described the ‘best room to goon in on all of campus’ and received more than 12,000 likes

A social media account dedicated to “gooning” on campus has been suspended by Meta after allegedly infringing the trademark rights of the University of Melbourne (UoM).

The Instagram page, titled the “University of Melbourne Gooning Club” used the handle “unimelbgooning” and posted satirical memes related to the slang term, which colloquially refers to lengthy masturbation.

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Vanuatu criticises Australia for extending gas project while making Cop31 bid

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Climate minister says greenlighting North West Shelf project until 2070 is not the leadership Pacific countries expect as Australia seeks to host summit

Vanuatu’s climate minister has expressed disappointment over Australia’s decision to extend one of the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas projects and said it raises questions over its bid to co-host the Cop31 summit with Pacific nations.

The UN is expected to announce which country will host the major climate summit in the coming weeks, with Australia pushing for the event to be held in Adelaide as part of a “Pacific Cop”.

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Australia mushroom trial live: murder-accused Erin Patterson tells court she has never had a ‘healthy relationship’ with food

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Victorian woman, 50, has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder and one of attempted murder over a fatal 2023 beef wellington lunch. Follow live

Barrister Colin Mandy SC asks his client why at one stage there were three properties in both Erin and Simon Patterson’s name when the couple had been separated for four years.

I always thought we would bring the family back together. That is what I wanted ... It was something tangible to say to Simon, I see a future for us.

I have not.

I’ve never had a needle biopsy anywhere.

I consulted Dr Google.

I alternated that with Don.

We did talk about it sometimes.

The kind of conversations that we had ... they would gently make fun of the fact that I was religious and I would try and evangelise back to them in a sense ... It was sort of all in good humour.

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