Category Archives: Australia news

Sydney Metro welcomes commuters aboard new underground city section

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The highly anticipated Chatswood to Sydenham extension will drastically cut travel times in Sydney

Tens of thousands of commuters have begun riding on the Sydney Metro’s city section on Monday morning as the first new train line running underneath the city centre in more than four decades opened to the public.

The first metro train service on the new section left Sydenham at 4.54am, travelling the newly opened stretch of the extension under Sydney harbour to reach Chatswood station by 5.16am, where it continued on to Tallawong on the original north-west line that opened in 2019.

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Asic taking down average of 20 scam websites a day

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Crypto scams accounted for 615 takedowns, the regulator says, as total number exceeds 7,300 in 12 months

More than 7,300 websites have been taken down in the first year of operation of the Australian Securities and Investment Commission’s service targeting investment scams, the regulator has revealed.

Since the beginning of the program in July 2023, Asic said it had shut down thousands of scam websites that offer fake investment trading platforms and cryptocurrency investments that are often spread online through social media containing false celebrity endorsements.

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Gambling levy proposed to help wean Australian media companies off betting ad addiction

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Australia Institute says 2% levy on gambling companies’ revenue would compensate for the loss of $240m in advertising spend

A 2% levy on gambling companies’ revenue would help compensate for the $240m in advertising income that media companies would lose if the Albanese government adopted a total ban.

That is the conclusion of the progressive thinktank the Australia Institute, which will lobby along with the Greens for the levy as part of a broader push for a total ad ban, as recommended by the bipartisan Murphy inquiry, instead of Labor’s proposal for caps during general TV programming.

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Logie awards 2024: ‘television’s most axed man’ Larry Emdur takes gold

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Netflix’s Boy Swallows Universe wins big at Australian television’s biggest night, as ceremony broadcaster Seven takes a battering from host Sam Pang

The Morning Show presenter Larry Emdur has reflected on once being “television’s most axed man” after winning the Gold Logie at the Logie awards on Sunday night.

“I’ve never done anything else, and I’ve never wanted to do anything else,” said Emdur, after winning his first Logie in a 40-year career in which he has fronted everything from The Price Is Right to Celebrity Dog School.

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PM thanks Turkish firefighters protecting Anzac Cove graves – as it happened

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This blog is now closed.

Asked about tax cuts for the wealthy, Littleproud says that the tax system needs to tackle “bracket creep” at “some point” or “we will have a tax system that doesn’t reward effort”.

So why wouldn’t we have the courage to say to Australians, “We want you to be aspirational, we want you to go out and have a red-hot go and get ahead in life and be rewarded financially, but not have the tax man sitting over the top of you.”

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Man knocked out by whale tail whack while in small boat off Gold Coast

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Queensland police say the man remained in his tinny after the whale hit him in waters near Coolangatta

A man has suffered serious injuries after being struck by a whale while in a tinny in waters near the border of Queensland and New South Wales.

Jetski riders off the coast of Coolangatta called emergency services just before 9am on Sunday when a whale reportedly collided with the man in his boat.

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NSW Liberals accuse electoral commission of breaking rules after council nomination debacle

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Party threatens legal action against NSW electoral commission after requests for deadline extension rejected

The New South Wales Liberal party has accused the state’s electoral commission of breaching regulations and says it will be left with “no other option” than to take legal action if it isn’t given more time to nominate all its council candidates.

But the acting electoral commissioner, Matthew Phillips, on Sunday rejected the party’s second request for an extension. He said he did not consider it a “realistic possibility” that Liberal HQ could have been unaware of the nomination deadline, and added it would “not be appropriate” to change the election process.

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Volunteer firefighter dies after being hit by police car on Flinders Island

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Man in his 60s killed in incident involving on-duty Tasmania police officer in town of Lady Barron

The death of a volunteer firefighter struck by a police car on Flinders Island will have an impact on the whole community, a senior officer says.

Tasmania police say the man was on foot when he was hit by the police vehicle driven by an on-duty officer on Saturday night.

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Labor pumps $160m into Westpac fund offering lower-interest loans for household energy upgrades

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But the loans are only available to those who already have or are approved for a Westpac home or investment loan of at least $150,000

The Albanese government has pumped $160m into a major bank fund that offers discounted loans to pay for energy efficient upgrades to homes.

The investment was announced on Sunday as part of the household energy upgrades fund in last year’s federal budget.

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Australia’s productivity riddle – and what it might mean for interest rates

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Michele Bullock keeps telling us productivity is flatlining. How it changes may well determine if the Reserve Bank will tolerate wage rises beyond 3%

If the Reserve Bank’s GDP forecasts about the Australian economy are right, we should be close to a nadir with a sustainable upswing on the way – provided we can get more efficient at what we do.

Productivity growth – a concept that quickens the pulse of economists and almost nobody else – has slowed in Australia and most other developed nations for years.

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Eggs and water balloons thrown as protesters face off at Women Will Speak rally in Melbourne

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Victoria police said 20 protesters were outnumbered by 150 from another group, which hurled ‘water balloons at the speakers’

Projectiles were thrown at speakers and one person arrested as protesters and counter-protesters faced off outside Parliament House in Melbourne on Saturday.

About 20 people initially attended the planned #WomenWILLSpeak rally that commenced at about 11am, Victoria police said in a statement.

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‘Butchered so barbarically’: heartbreak turns to anger about killing of rays at popular Sydney diving spot

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Divers demand end to fishing of rays after mutilated carcasses discovered at Chowder Bay on Sydney’s north shore

Jayne Jenkins found the sandy floor of Chowder Bay on Sydney Harbour a mess of fishing lines, hooks and ray carcass, last Saturday morning.

Fins had been chopped from two bull rays, the diver told Guardian Australia. One had a big split across its head – Jenkins identified it as Stumpy, a well known ray that had its tail chopped off in previous years.

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NSW Liberal party demands extension after missing council elections deadline in ‘monumental stuff-up’

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State’s electoral commission receives request from NSW Liberal president after party failed to lodge nominations for more than 130 council candidates

The New South Wales Liberal party has demanded a week-long extension to lodge nominations for more than 130 council candidates after the party missed the deadline in a “monumental stuff-up”.

The NSW Liberal party president, Don Harwin, sent a letter to the NSW electoral commission overnight after the party’s head office missed the Wednesday noon deadline to lodge the necessary paperwork to nominate all of its candidates for the local government elections on 14 September.

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Melbourne Symphony Orchestra board promises independent review after musicians revolt over Gaza comments controversy

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Announcement comes after musicians passed vote of no confidence in senior management over cancellation of Jayson Gillham’s performance

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s policies will undergo an independent review after the decision to cancel a performance by acclaimed pianist Jayson Gillham shortly after he made comments on the killing of journalists in Gaza.

It comes after the orchestra’s musicians passed a vote of no confidence in their senior management on Friday over the cancellation of Gillham’s performance, according to a letter sent by staff to the board seen by Guardian Australia.

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NSW councillor Nathan Tilbury all smiles after leaving Liberal party days before nomination fiasco

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Independent now has ‘surprise’ backing of Liberal elder statesman and departing Hornsby mayor Philip Ruddock

While many of his former colleagues were furious this week, local councillor Nathan Tilbury has been feeling pretty happy as a former Liberal.

Two days before the party failed to nominate more than 130 candidates for next month’s New South Wales local government elections, Tilbury handed in his resignation.

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Chair of Nuclear for Australia denies that calling CO2 ‘plant food’ means he is a climate denier

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Dr Adi Paterson’s statements are apparently at odds with the group’s official position, which says nuclear is needed to tackle the climate crisis

The chair of a leading Australian nuclear advocacy group has called concerns that carbon dioxide emissions are driving a climate crisis an “irrational fear of a trace gas which is plant food” and has rejected links between worsening extreme weather and global heating.

Several statements from Dr Adi Paterson, reviewed by the Guardian, appear at odds with statements from the group he chairs, Nuclear for Australia, which is hosting a petition saying nuclear is needed to tackle an “energy and climate crisis”.

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Madness and murder: how the Trains brought terror to Wieambilla

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Inquest reveals how Gareth Train went from ‘keyboard warrior’ to killer, and radicalised his wife and brother

Gareth Train was, by many accounts, a deeply unimpressive and unpleasant person.

He was arrogant, prone to anger and had low self-esteem. He was paranoid, narcissistic and emotionally primitive, the Queensland coroner’s court heard this week. One witness described him as a “keyboard warrior”; he believed in baseless conspiracy theories so strongly they took over his life, the inquest heard.

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Peter Dutton deliberately stirred division with Gaza visa comments, Jim Chalmers says

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Treasurer says Australia must choose ‘high road’ as fallout from opposition leader’s position on visa-holders from Gaza rumbles on

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has accused Peter Dutton of deliberately stirring up division on visa-holders from Gaza, as the opposition rejected an independent MP’s description of him as “racist” and called the label “disgraceful”.

In an interview for the Australian Politics podcast, Chalmers said he remains worried about community division and suggested Dutton’s comments – that all visa-holders from Gaza posed a national security risk – were not designed to improve it.

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Why do whales beach themselves? A vial of parasites in a Tasmanian museum may hold the answer

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Pilot whale that beached itself in 1973 was infested with thousands of parasitic nematodes that may have eaten away at its blowhole

A vial of white parasitic worms left for decades in a Tasmanian museum may help solve a timeless mystery: why do whales strand themselves on beaches?

The worms were collected from the blowhole of a pilot whale that beached itself in 1973 and then stored in Launceston’s Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery.

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Guardian Australia wins award for series exposing economic abuse at Centrepay

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Reporters Christopher Knaus and Lorena Allam win outstanding consumer affairs category at Kennedy Foundation awards for excellence in journalism

Guardian Australia reporters Christopher Knaus and Lorena Allam have won an award for a series of stories that revealed the government-run controversial debit pay system was being used as a vehicle for economic abuse.

The reporters won the outstanding consumer affairs category at this year’s Kennedy Foundation awards for excellence in journalism.

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