‘A really dangerous machine’: woodchipper murder trial played audio from night police called to scene

Queensland officers were told Gregory Lee Roser tried to save Bruce Saunders when he discovered friend’s legs dangling out of woodchipper in late 2017

Queensland police were told Gregory Lee Roser tried to save Bruce Saunders when he discovered his friend’s legs dangling out of a woodchipper, a court has been told.

Roser, 63, is on trial for murder after 54-year-old Saunders died while working on a property north of Brisbane in November 2017.

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NSW renames national park over pastoralist Ben Boyd’s links to slavery in Pacific

New name Beowa means orca in Thaua language and comes after consultation with Aboriginal and South Sea Islander communities

A national park in New South Wales that was named after a pastoralist linked to the slave trade has been renamed.

The move to rename Ben Boyd national park was announced last year and new signs were installed at Beowa national park near Eden on Friday.

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Stephen Smith named UK high commissioner as government flags fewer political appointments

Penny Wong defends appointing former Labor minister as a sign of the ‘eminence of Australia’s relationship with the UK’

The former Labor minister Stephen Smith has been named as Australia’s next high commissioner to the UK – but the Albanese government has yet to reveal who it will send to Washington.

The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, defended the political appointment, noting that the London post had long been held by senior former ministers as a sign of the “eminence of Australia’s relationship with the United Kingdom”.

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Australia-New Zealand refugee deal: UN blames mental health toll after just 36 people take up offer

UN refugee agency says many refugees have been traumatised by years in Australian detention camps, hampering uptake of the offer

In nearly six months, just 36 people have taken up New Zealand’s offer to resettle refugees held in Australian detention camps such as Nauru, with UN’s refugee agency saying the brutality of Australia’s immigration regime is partly to blame.

In March 2022, Australia’s government accepted a longstanding offer from New Zealand to resettle up to 450 refugees from Australia’s regional processing centres over the next three years, at a rate of up to 150 per year. But after nearly six months, uptake has been slow – stymied by the dire mental health of prospective applicants.

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Labor says time is coming for republic debate as monarchists claim it’s giving itself a ‘head start’

Albanese government says Indigenous voice is its priority and any move away from monarchy is not going to come quickly

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The Albanese government has told a leading monarchist group that “the time is coming” for Australia to discuss becoming a republic, angering supporters of the British crown who claim Labor is giving itself a head start on a future referendum campaign.

But the government has also conceded that any move away from the monarchy is not going to come quickly, instead inviting monarchist groups to join the current campaign for an Indigenous voice to parliament.

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Could a digital twin of Tuvalu preserve the island nation before it’s lost to the collapsing climate?

With rising seas expected to submerge the nation by 2100, official says ‘we should always be able to remember Tuvalu as it is, before it disappears’

When Tuvalu vanishes beneath rising seas, its diaspora still want somewhere to call home – and that could be a virtual version of the tiny Pacific nation.

Global heating is threatening to submerge Tuvalu by the end of the century, and its 12,000 inhabitants are considering the future.

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Man incorrectly jailed for 58 days in ACT has no right to compensation, court rules

Canberra court recognises South Sudanese refugee wrongly jailed but rules imprisonment not arbitrary nor a violation of Human Rights Act

A South Sudanese refugee who was wrongly jailed due to a “failure of the system” has lost an attempt to sue the Canberra court responsible for the error.

The man, now in his 30s, had fled the war-torn nation of his birth before his brothers were made child soldiers. He lived in a Kenyan refugee camp for 10 years before coming to Australia in 2005, the ACT supreme court heard.

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‘I can never feel settled’: wait time for key Australian work visa more than doubles

Migrants waiting for the 887 skilled regional visa are set to protest across the country, angry at the worsening delays

Processing times for an important skilled worker visa have more than doubled and the number of migrants languishing on bridging visas has increased six-fold, a new report warns.

The Migrant Workers Centre on Friday released a report documenting the deterioration in Australia’s visa processing system, which found processing times for the 887 skilled regional visa has more than doubled since 2018.

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Food waste: Australian households throw out more than $2,000 of shopping a year

One in three households is wasting the equivalent of a shopping bag full of food each week, according to survey

One in three households is wasting the equivalent of a shopping bag full of food each week, a new study has found, despite food waste costing Australians more than $2,000 each year.

Nearly half of Australian households (42%) said they are throwing away as much food or more than they did this time last year, the study from climate action group Wrap and Mayonnaise brand Hellmans has shown.

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Private rental market ‘the epicentre’ of Australia’s housing affordability problem, report finds

Productivity Commission finds rent prices are driving demand for social housing and homelessness services

A $1.6bn agreement to help facilitate affordable housing in Australia has failed to reduce inequity and national reform is now imperative, the Productivity Commission has found.

The commission on Friday released the findings of its review into the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement (NHHA), the key document that governs federal funding to the states for housing services. The sharply worded report urges the government to overhaul commonwealth rent assistance, focus on fixing the rental crisis, and wind back concessions and grants for homebuyers in favour of funding stretched homelessness services.

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Department admits it has ‘little information’ on pesticide residue in Australian food

In a tender advertisement published in May this year, the agriculture department said it did not have enough data on the environmental and health effects of pesticides

Federal authorities have admitted they have “little information” about the extent of pesticide residues in Australian food or their potential environmental damage, a document seen by the Guardian shows.

The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry called for tenders in May this year for a study to identify the gaps in Australia’s data collection on pesticides.

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Aung San Suu Kyi and Australian adviser handed three years’ jail after secret trial

Myanmar junta’s sentencing of ousted leader and economic adviser Sean Turnell described as ‘cruel injustice’

Aung San Suu Kyi and the Australian academic Sean Turnell, who served as her adviser, have been sentenced to three years in prison after a closed trial in Myanmar, according to reports.

Turnell, an economist at Sydney’s Macquarie University, was first detained on 6 February last year, a few days after the military ousted Myanmar’s elected government, plunging the country into chaos.

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News live: Australia supports inquiry into Iran death, Wong says; first majority female high court bench

Attorney general Mark Dreyfus has announced the appointment of justice Jayne Jagot to the high court. Follow the day’s news live

Queensland seeking partnerships from the federal government in renewable plan

The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, was asked to clarify how long the state will keep exporting coal for:

There’s still going to be countries that need our coal and, of course, the metallurgical coal [that] is needed for steel production. Let’s be clear about that. Until there’s alternative to manufacturing steel, the world will still need metallurgical coal.

The plan is $62bn. We have a $6bn down payment on that … we’ve already got $11bn worth of private investment coming in.

But there will be even more coming in as well. So roughly, it will be around, over $30bn, between $30bn and $40bn we’re providing, but we’re seeking partnerships from the federal government.

Well, in Europe, of course, there’s a lot of reliance on gas coming in from the Ukraine and parts of Russia, is my understanding.

But what we’re doing here very clearly is [ensuring] that the hydro dams get built. And then, as the hydro dams come online, that’s when you start phasing down the reliance on coal-fired power stations.

We’re building sea walls as we speak. People are having to build their houses on 7-to-12-foot stilts above the ground because of the water coming underneath. Ancestral graves that the ABC has reported on are being washed away. This is happening in Queensland. It’s not just an island on the Pacific ocean. It is happening to Queenslanders. To Australians. And we all have a duty to look after one another.

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Attorney general flags urgent privacy law changes after Optus data breach

Mark Dreyfus indicates potential reforms to laws regarding data breaches including higher penalties, mandatory precautions and customer notifications

Privacy law changes, including tougher penalties for data breaches, could be legislated as early as this year, the attorney general has said in the wake of the Optus breach.

Mark Dreyfus revealed on Thursday that in addition to completing a review of Australia’s privacy laws the Albanese government will look to legislate “even more urgent reforms” late this year or in early 2023.

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NSW on alert after more than a dozen cane toads found an hour north of Sydney

Agriculture minister says size of colony in Mandalong indicates there could be many more of the toxic intruders in the area

New South Wales is on alert after more than a dozen cane toads were found on a private property an hour’s drive north of Sydney.

The state’s Department of Primary Industries (DPI) biosecurity helpline confirmed a report had been made by a member of the public on 19 September after a “number” of cane toads were found at a property in the rural town of Mandalong, west of Lake Macquarie.

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Melissa Caddick’s severed foot could have floated to beach after 93 days under water, expert says

Oceanographer tells inquest it was entirely possible Caddick’s body entered the water when she was last seen in November 2020

An ocean expert says the severed foot of missing alleged fraudster Melissa Caddick could have travelled from Sydney cliffs before washing up on the NSW South Coast months later.

An examination of goose barnacles found on the foot show it was likely floating off the NSW coastline for three to seven days before appearing on Bournda beach – 400km from Caddick’s Dover Heights mansion.

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AGL will close Victoria’s coal-fired power station Loy Yang A a decade early

Energy company accelerates its exit from coal, although timeline for closure of Bayswater in the NSW Hunter Valley remains unchanged

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AGL Energy will shut down Australia’s biggest single carbon polluting power plant a decade earlier than planned, changing the closure date of its coal-fired Loy Yang A power station in Victoria from 2045 to 2035.

The company, Australia’s biggest electricity generator and polluter, is accelerating its exit from coal, according to plan released to the stock exchange on Thursday. . The strategy details its transition to renewable energy after opposition from its largest shareholder, billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, forced it in May to ditch plans to demerge.

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Australian taxpayers paid $110,000 for federal ministers’ legal bills in last financial year

Documents reveal legal assistance was approved for former PM Scott Morrison in relation to a defamation claim made against him on 9 June 2020

Taxpayers have forked out $110,000 for federal ministers’ legal bills in the last financial year, including $4,000 to defend Scott Morrison against a 2020 defamation claim.

Documents tabled in parliament on Tuesday reveal taxpayers are on the hook for a pipeline of potential new cases, including former superannuation minister Jane Hume’s legal bills in a defamation stoush with Simon Holmes à Court.

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Man jailed over involvement in identity theft syndicate that laundered millions of dollars

Detectives found Karthik Pappu’s fingerprints on a book containing information about 305 bank accounts and 68 compromised identities

A man who was part of a syndicate that stole identities before laundering millions of dollars through jewellers and a coffee shop has been sentenced to six years in jail.

Karthik Pappu, who pleaded guilty to one charge of money laundering, was identified by police investigating a cold calling scheme in which victims provided offenders with access to their computers before being tricked out of money, a Brisbane court was told on Wednesday.

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Australia news live: government asks Optus to pay for new passports after data breach; severe thunderstorm warning for Sydney

Prime minister says Labor believes ‘Optus should pay, not taxpayers’ after customer data compromised. Follow the day’s news

Election wash-up

As we reported yesterday, the AEC will be appearing at the electoral matters parliamentary committee hearing this morning.

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