Racing Victoria chief says Flemington racetrack wall had ‘unintended’ flood consequences

Andrew Jones says Victoria Racing Club was ‘entitled’ to protect its property from floods

The flood wall built to protect Flemington racetrack from inundation has had “unintended consequences for neighbouring residents”, the chief executive of Racing Victoria has conceded, as homes surrounding the track began the clean-up from devastating floods.

Andrew Jones told Channel Nine the flooding of the suburbs of Maribyrnong and Kensington was “a difficult situation”, and expressed sympathy for those affected.

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Australian deputy prime minister Richard Marles accused of ‘veiled threats’ by Bougainville president

Autonomous Bougainville government president accuses Australia of destabilising its right to self-determination

The president of the Autonomous Bougainville government (ABG) has accused the Australian deputy prime minister and defence minister of “veiled threats” and “intimidation” over comments made during his visit to Papua New Guinea this week.

Richard Marles was asked about Bougainville’s future during a joint press conference with the PNG prime minister, James Marape, at Port Moresby on Thursday.

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Man dies in Victorian town of Rochester and Shepparton told to evacuate – as it happened

More than 500 Victorian homes damaged and 500 others cut off in flooding. This blog is now closed

Jonathan How from the Bureau of Meteorology has spoken to ABC News about the severe weather, saying the heavy rain has cleared in southern Victoria and Tasmania.

Overnight we did see rainfall totals of 5-15 millimetres across parts of southern Victoria and Tasmania, but the good news is that the heavy rain has cleared but we are seeing ongoing flooding for New South Wales and Victoria.

First in Melbourne, flood warnings out for the Maribyrnong and Werribee rivers. Keep following the advice of local police and SES, but at tension is very much through the northern and inland parts of Victoria.

The north and the north-west of Tasmania had the highest level of rainfall. Record-breaking rainfall over the previous few days. That rainfall accumulated at altitude and made its way down the landscape into the riverine.

The last flooding of significance was in 2016, but the rainfall in 2022 we’ve experienced has exceeded a lot of those values and has been far-reaching by comparison to that previous event.

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Woolworths says 2.2 million MyDeal customers’ details exposed in data breach

MyDeal chief executive apologises and says incident is being investigated

Millions of customers’ details have been exposed in a major data breach at an online shopping site owned by the retail giant Woolworths.

The company says a compromised user credential was used to get access to customer information from the MyDeal website.

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Australian fuel prices likely to rise as Opec+ countries cut oil production to ‘squeeze the market’

Cuts by world’s biggest petrol producers will work against other governments’ efforts to tame inflation by releasing fuel stocks

Australian motorists could be hit by higher petrol prices as the world’s largest oil exporting nations cut production, analysts say.

The Australian government reinstated the full fuel excise tax in September after the Morrison Coalition government introduced a temporary, six-month cut to lower the cost of fuel at a time of rising inflation.

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Woodchipper murder accused boasted of killing man in meat grinder, court hears

Peter Koenig said he pushed man into Adelaide abattoir’s meat grinder, fellow murder accused Gregory Lee Roser told Brisbane supreme court

It was while allegedly scoping out the best spot to murder Bruce Saunders that Gregory Lee Roser says Peter Koenig boasted of having killed before.

Koenig thought it was funny, Roser has told the Brisbane supreme court.

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Queensland police discipline failures in ‘clear breach’ of workplace health and safety laws, says lawyer

Commissioner says not all officers have had a safe workplace as critics label complaints procedure a joke

The Queensland Police Service continues to employ frontline officers whose actions resulted in payouts worth millions of dollars to victims of bullying and harassment, Guardian Australia has learned.

The commission of inquiry into Queensland police responses to domestic violence has revealed dozens of instances where officers were found to have engaged in racism, sexism, misogyny and bullying. In many of these cases, officers were repeat offenders and not subject to disciplinary action.

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Brittany Higgins: court hears how a dream job turned into the nightmare of alleged rape

Witnesses describe Higgins as ‘broken’ after the alleged rape in March 2019, to which Bruce Lehrmann has pleaded not guilty

In her final memory before blacking out, Brittany Higgins paused for a moment of reflection, she told those closest to her.

From a window perched high among parliament’s labyrinthine network of office suites and hallways, she looked out over the prime minister’s courtyard, quiet in the early morning darkness of 23 March 2019.

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Labor announces boost in taxpayer-funded paid parental leave to 26 weeks by 2026

Leave is set to increase by two weeks a year from the present scheme of 18 weeks at minimum wage and can be split between partners

Commonwealth-funded paid parental leave will be increased to six months over the next four years with the Albanese government hailing the boost as the biggest change to the program since its inception.

In a pre-budget announcement, Labor said that from 2024 the government would add two weeks of paid parental leave (PPL) to the scheme each year until it reaches 26 weeks by 2026. The six months could be split between the parents of a newborn.

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‘If not now, when?’: PM addresses first meeting of volunteers to educate Australians about voice referendum

Sydney’s Inner West council aims to train 1,000 people for a civic education program that could become a model for other jurisdictions

The prime minister has committed to “throwing everything” at implementing an Indigenous voice to parliament at a surprise appearance in his home suburb of Marrickville.

Speaking at a packed Uluru Statement from the Heart summit on Friday night, Anthony Albanese addressed the first meeting of volunteers who have signed up to educate Australians about the voice.

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Unlicensed driver who killed two young brothers walking home from NSW pool jailed for 13 years

Shane and Sheldon Shorey, aged six and seven, died after Jacob Steven Donn crashed a car in Wellington, in central west NSW, while he was drug-affected

A driver who caused the deaths of two young brothers returning home from the local swimming pool in regional New South Wales has been jailed by a judge who said cars were not playthings.

As a mother and four boys walked along a footpath after visiting the pool in Wellington, she saw an out-of-control red Commodore heading straight for them.

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Queensland government moves to legislate coercive control as a form of domestic violence

The bill would amend laws to include a ‘pattern of behaviour’ and update the definition of stalking

The Queensland government will seek to broaden the definition of domestic violence to include coercive control, as it moves towards making it a criminal offence in its own right.

The bill, introduced into parliament on Friday, would amend legislation to include a “pattern of behaviour” and update the definition of stalking to reflect modern technology.

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Steinway, then the highway: national piano competition forced to flee Shepparton floods

Final round of the competition brought forward to Friday so competitors and others involved could escape imminent inundation

It wasn’t quite the doomed band on the Titanic playing on heroically, but the finalists in this year’s Australian national piano award were faced with an unexpected challenge as the flood water rose around the Riverlinks Eastbank theatre in Shepparton, where the event’s semi-final stage was due to finish on Friday.

“That would be a very dramatic way of putting it,” said Anthony Chen, 27, although he said he had never experienced conditions like it in his musical career.

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Covid quarantine centre to reopen for flood evacuees – as it happened

Daniel Andrews says 500 homes have been flooded and another 500 have been isolated. This blog is now closed

An estimated 500 homes are flooded in Victoria with number expected to grow: Daniel Andrews

Victoria’s premier, Daniel Andrews, has been on ABC radio Melbourne this morning, providing listeners with an update on the floods.

Obviously this has been a very, very significant flood event and it’s far from over. There’s a little bit more rainfall but as that weather event passes through, the real challenge is waters continuing to rise and more and more houses being inundated, more and more communities being closed off, becoming isolated, then of course we move to clean up and all of those issues.

We think there’s about 500 homes that are flooded, we think there are another 500 that have been isolated across the state. But I would just say they’re very early estimates and the aerial intelligence gathering choppers are up in the air now ... they’ll be doing all their reports back to the state control centre. So I’d say those numbers are absolutely certain to grow. And indeed, we’re still asking people to leave in some areas. There have been important, important evacuation notices have been issued in a number of communities. So those numbers will go up. That’s why we’ve got nine important relief centres opening and 50 sandbag collection points. There’s an enormous amount of work going on.

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‘Danger period’: Victorians and Tasmanians on high alert as rivers rise rapidly after heavy rain

Evacuation orders in place across Tasmania and Victoria due to flooding, including in parts of suburban Melbourne’s north-west

Flood-hit communities in north and north-west Tasmania are entering a “danger period” as rivers rise, with evacuation orders current for multiple towns and part of Launceston.

Victorian communities also remain on high alert for dangerous flooding, with residents in six towns urged to leave their homes and move to higher ground.

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‘Now is the time’: Richard Marles has met NRL to push for Papua New Guinea team

On visit to Port Moresby, defence minister says ‘it would be so meaningful’ for PNG to become National Rugby League’s 18th team

Australia’s deputy prime minister has held talks with National Rugby League officials to push the case for a Papua New Guinea team, declaring “now is the time” to expand the competition.

Richard Marles, visiting PNG in his capacity as defence minister, said on Thursday that he had “personally spoken with the NRL a number of times about this”.

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Lidia Thorpe wants action on treaty and truth before campaigning for Indigenous voice

Greens senator says she won’t put her energy into ‘yes’ campaign until there is ‘concrete progress’ on other elements of Uluru statement from the heart

Greens senator Lidia Thorpe wants the Albanese government to make “concrete progress” on the other parts of the Uluru statement from the heart before publicly supporting Labor’s voice to parliament.

She has also called for this month’s budget to include $40m funding for treaty and truth.

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More than half of NSW MPs own more than one property

High ownership of multiple residences among state MPs has prompted accusations they are ‘blind’ to the escalating rental crisis

More than half of MPs in the New South Wales lower house own multiple residential properties, prompting concerns the state’s politicians are “blind” to record increases in rental prices.

Amid a fresh push for reform to the rental market, an analysis of MP disclosure records show landlords are disproportionately represented on Macquarie Street.

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Victoria’s 208 LGBTQ+ suicides to be outlined for the first time in new report

Exclusive: Coroner suspects ‘undercount’ as a decade of suicide data is released to the public

More than 200 LGBTQ+ Victorians have died by suicide in the past decade, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by the state’s coroner.

In a report to be released on Friday, the coroner’s court of Victoria identified 208 deaths by suicide – recorded between 2012 and 2021 – of people who are LGBTQ+.

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Aboriginal man laid to rest in moving ceremony 90 years after he was killed by police at Uluru

Family of Yokun call for government apology and compensation as university says sorry for storing remains

The families of an Aboriginal man shot and killed by police at Uluru 90 years ago, have finally laid his remains to rest at the base of the rock in a deeply emotional ceremony, with his descendants calling for an apology and compensation from governments and police.

The partial remains of Pitjantjatjara man Yokun were repatriated to the place where he was shot and killed in 1934 by mounted constable Bill McKinnon.

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