Category Archives: Australia news

More part-time bosses and co-CEOs could keep women in leadership and narrow Australia’s pay gap

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Uneven caring responsibilities combined with a lack of flexible work options have prevented women from staying in senior positions, research suggests

More part-time bosses and “co-CEOs” could keep women in leadership and narrow Australia’s gender pay gap, the federal government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency says.

WGEA warned resistance to gender equality was growing and urged employers to make management more flexible to reduce the gender pay gap, where women earn $0.79 for every $1 a man makes on average.

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Rescued turtles return home after NSW government cut flows to wetland

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Environmental water to the area was halted after a complaint from a private landholder, leading to the deaths of wildlife and sheep

Freshwater turtles rescued from a dried-up water hole in western New South Wales after the state government cut environmental water to the area are being returned home.

Late last month, 10 broad-shelled turtles and three Murray River turtles were released back into the Gingham water hole in the state’s Gwydir region.

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Rent-tech platforms sidestepping credit card surcharge ban with new fees and paid ‘memberships’

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Tenants encouraged to seek free options after online property platforms respond to Reserve Bank’s credit card payment reform

Online property management platforms are charging renters new fees or pushing them on to paid “memberships” to avoid processing costs associated with card payments in the wake of the ban on surcharges.

Tenants have been encouraged to challenge or bypass additional fees charged by so-called rent-tech platforms, including in Victoria, where fees on rent payments are banned.

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Australian democracy campaigner detained in Vietnam on alleged terrorism offences uncontactable, wife says

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Tran Hiep spent his 51st birthday alone in a notorious detention centre in Ho Chi Minh City after his sudden arrest last month

Tran Hiep spent his 51st birthday alone in a notorious detention centre in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City after his sudden arrest last month.

The Melbourne-based Vietnamese-Australian democracy campaigner hasn’t been heard from since mid-September when Vietnamese authorities detained him for alleged terrorism and forging identity documents.

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Julie Inman Grant may be able to limit Australians seeing a livestreamed US execution – but it could start a diplomatic incident

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A history of tech giant legal challenges and US political criticism shows there’s no easy solution for the eSafety commissioner

Australia’s online safety regulator has a few levers to limit the public seeing the US’s planned livestream of an execution, but history suggests it will lead to a very public fight.

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced last week the planned execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan would be livestreamed when the military execution is carried out in early December.

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Lawyers who helped detained Australian Robert Pether leave Iraq criticise Wong for announcing news

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Penny Wong welcomes Iraqi government’s decision to allow engineer to leave Baghdad but Pether’s team criticise timing of media statement

Advisers to Australian Robert Pether have expressed concern about the timing of a statement from the foreign minister announcing his depature from Iraq, saying it was issued at a sensitive period while the engineer was still transiting through Turkey.

Penny Wong’s office issued a statement on Monday announcing that Pether had been allowed to leave Iraq after five years trapped in the country, including a four-year stint in jail that his family feared would kill him.

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Missing Australian hiker Jordan Yap last seen on remote trail found dead in Peru

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Family and friends say Melbourne man should be remembered for ‘immense joy he brought to so many people’s lives’

An Australian trekker who was last seen on a remote South American hiking trail has been found dead, his family have said.

Jordan Yap, 30, last made contact with friends and family on 14 September ahead of a planned 10-day solo trek along Peru’s Huayhuash mountain range, 400km north-east of Lima.

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A Trump impersonator and opera singers: CPAC was a spectacle, but the right still can’t agree how to take down Labor

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Preferences proved the sticking point at the conference as conservatives face the prospect of a third successive election defeat

Many mainstream Australians would feel as if they’d been dropped in a foreign country at the Conservative Political Action Conference, lost amid oblique references to transgender swimmers, blue hair, women’s bathrooms, jokes about falling off stages and Matt Canavan in hi-vis and speed dealer sunnies.

It’s an interesting spectacle. At this year’s conference in Brisbane, rightwing campaigner Monica Smit was deep in conversation with a Donald Trump impersonator, opera singers belted out the national anthem (the first verse, twice, for unknown reasons), senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and her folk singer husband sang the anthem again, and Karl Stefanovic jokingly thanking CPAC for “rudely interrupting my unemployment”.

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Ben Roberts-Smith attends Canberra event honouring Australian troops who served in Afghanistan

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Anthony Albanese speaks at Australian War Memorial event commemorating 25th anniversary of country’s involvement in the conflict

Anthony Albanese has honoured Australian troops who served in Afghanistan, using the 25th anniversary of the country’s involvement in the conflict to describe their heroism as a fight for “who we are as a people”.

The prime minister joined hundreds of veterans, family members and dignitaries at a commemoration of the start of the campaign in Canberra on Sunday, with nation’s most decorated living soldier and accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith among the crowd at the Australian War Memorial.

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Two Carlton players treated in hospital after off-season night out

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Club issues brief statement about Lachie Cowan and Will Hayward, saying latter suffered minor cut to head after a fall

An off-season night out for Carlton football club teammates ended with two players admitted to hospital for treatment on Sunday morning, in what the club says are “separate circumstances”.

The club released a statement on Sunday confirming that AFL players Lachie Cowan, 21, and Will Hayward, 27, had been treated and discharged, after reports in several media outlets about the aftermath of an off-season night out.

Guardian Australia understands both players were both part of a larger group that had been socialising on Saturday evening.

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‘My body is still peaking’: Eliud Kipchoge wins first marathon in three years

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  • Kenyan breaks Melbourne Marathon record by two seconds

  • ‘I’m happy to run with the gen Zs,’ 41-year-old says

Marathon’s greatest competitor, Eliud Kipchoge, has sent a message to the next generation declaring that he’s not done yet.

The 41-year-old Kenyan revelled in his Melbourne Marathon debut on Sunday, breaking the race record and delighting thousands of fans at the MCG finish.

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Hanson seems more and more like the de facto opposition leader. At CPAC, Angus Taylor warmed the seat for her

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Cooperation between One Nation and the Liberals ‘up to Angus Taylor’, Pauline Hanson says at conservative conference. How would that work?

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference billed itself as a chance for the leaders of the three main conservative parties – Liberals, Nationals and One Nation – to make their pitch and compete for rightwing voters.

The reception they received in Brisbane on Saturday suggests Pauline Hanson is effectively the preferred opposition leader, with Angus Taylor relegated to leading a minor party.

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Adidas accuses Australian label White Fox of ‘trading off its reputation’ with use of four-stripe branding

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Global sportswear brand is suing online retailer in the federal court for selling clothes featuring ‘deceptively similar’ design

Global sportswear brand Adidas claims Australian label White Fox is trying to trade off its reputation by infringing its distinctive three-stripe trademark.

Adidas is suing the online fast-fashion retailer in the Federal Court for selling clothes with a four-stripe design, which it argues is deceptively similar to its classic design.

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Sydney festival 2027: 11 international dance works to headline ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ program

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Making its southern hemisphere debut, Dance Reflections will feature collaborators of Rosalía, Madonna and Beyoncé – and a high-wire takeover of the Cutaway

A “once-in-a-lifetime” program of dance works of scale will be coming to Sydney in January, including 11 international works from France, Belgium, South Africa and beyond making their Australian premiere.

The program, which triples the scale of the dance offering at the last Sydney festival, will bring 174 performers and crew to Sydney, with the crowning jewel being the acclaimed French choreographer Rachid Ouramdane’s Outsider. The 2024 work features 21 dancers from the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève and four elite athletes, navigating a “cat’s cradle” of high wires and slack lines, to the mesmerising, minimalist music of the avant garde composer Julius Eastman.

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Men accused of shooting Australian surfer brothers and US friend dead in Mexico to learn fate as trial concludes

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Martin and Debra Robinson, the brothers’ parents, will address the court before a Mexican judge hands down the verdict

A Mexican judge is expected to hand down his verdict on Thursday in the high-profile murder trial of three men accused of killing two Australian surfers and their American friend in 2024.

Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson, aged 30 and 33 respectively, and their friend Carter Rhoad, 30, were on a surfing trip to Mexico’s Pacific coast when they were shot dead in Baja California state in an alleged robbery.

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Astronomers detect mysterious burst of energy from a galaxy far, far away

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Intense flash of radio waves is more than 10bn years old and has travelled through ‘approximately 80% of cosmic history’

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a mysterious flash of energy was released into the universe.

Astronomers have now detected that flash – a burst of radio waves which travelled for more than 10bn years before reaching Earth – what they believe to be the most distant fast radio burst (FRB) ever recorded.

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One Nation’s AI video is vile and tired – but the ensloppification of Australian politics doesn’t stop there

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The inflammatory clip shows the wild west of online politicking created by unrestricted access to AI – and why watchdogs need more powers to do something about it

One Nation’s new AI-generated campaign video is a new low – even for them.

The video – reportedly played at the party’s Victorian campaign launch over the weekend – is an AI-generated collection of racist tropes, depicting a man who appears to be African brandishing a machete, an apparently Middle Eastern man with an explosive vest, a south Asian man in a turban talking about “mass migration” and an Indigenous elder talking about people receiving “money … on the basis of need, not identity”.

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Queensland literary awards: ‘stunning’ debut inspired by segregated shantytown wins top prize

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Lenora Thaker wins $30,000 prize for ‘a work of state significance’ for The Pearl of Tagai Town, which draws on her family’s history in Cairns-Malay Town

A “stunning” debut novel described as “unambiguously and distinctively Queensland” has won the $30,000 top prize at the Queensland literary awards (QLAs).

Meriam and Wagedagam author Lenora Thaker won the Queensland premier’s award for a work of state significance for her historical novel The Pearl of Tagai Town, which was inspired by her ancestors’ lives in an unmapped shantytown known as Cairns-Malay Town. The town once housed Indigenous Australians, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Malaysian and Sri Lankan residents who had been segregated from the white population; it existed from the late 1800s until the late 1950s.

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Bachelor star Sam Wood denied bail as police allege he choked wife until she ‘thought she would die’

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Court hears police attended Wood’s Victorian home over a similar allegation about three years ago, but Snezana Wood had not complained then out of ‘fear of retribution’

The wife of former Bachelor star Sam Wood told police she “thought she was going to die” after he allegedly choked and assaulted her, a Queensland court heard on Thursday.

The court also heard that police in Victoria had attended Wood’s home in relation to a similar incident about three years ago, but that his wife, Snezana Wood, had not wanted to make a complaint at that time out of “fear of retribution”.

Sam Wood, a 46-year-old wellness influencer from Melbourne, was denied bail in a Queensland court on Thursday and will be held in custody indefinitely awaiting trial, after police argued his behaviour was “escalating” and that he posed an unacceptable risk.

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‘That is a lie’: alleged Alan Jones victim denies family tried to get money out of broadcaster, court hears

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Youngest complainant in trial alleges Jones put his tongue in his mouth and touched him on the bottom during visit to shock jock’s property

An alleged teenage victim of Alan Jones has denied his family tried to deceive the broadcaster and get as much money out of him as they could during a tense cross-examination in a Sydney court.

Asked whether he was intent on getting as much financial assistance as he could from the former 2GB host, the witness replied: “That is a lie.”

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