Category Archives: Australia news

Queensland Labor turning green at the prospect of losing city stronghold

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Analysis: Implications of Greens wins could be decades-long – for both Labor and the LNP

A few days before the 2019 federal election, a group of regional Queensland state MPs held crisis talks with the premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, and her then deputy, Jackie Trad.

They brought advance news of the thrashing that Labor was about to receive in the state’s regional areas. Some had copped abuse from voters at polling stations. They said delays approving the Adani Carmichael coalmine would ultimately cost them their seats.

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Rewilding the red centre: bilbies released into NT predator-free sanctuary in bid to save threatened species

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The animals are a crucial part of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy’s Newhaven scheme to reintroduce 11 vulnerable native mammals

In the red centre of Australia, a ring-fenced refuge for threatened native mammals is slowly but surely expanding its population.

Earlier this week, 32 threatened greater bilbies moved in and 65 burrowing bettongs will join them before the weekend is out.

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José Ramos-Horta accuses Alexander Downer of ‘distorting’ issues around 2004 Timor-Leste bugging

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Exclusive: President of south-east Asian nation says Australia used cover of ‘supposedly altruistic foreign aid program’ to spy on behalf of oil companies

The president of Timor-Leste, José Ramos-Horta, has accused former foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer of “avoiding and distorting” the issues around the 2004 bugging scandal, saying recent comments ignored the fact that Australia had spied “on behalf of oil companies and using the cover of Australia’s supposedly altruistic foreign aid program”.

On Thursday, Downer appeared on the ABC’s Q&A program and was questioned about the 2004 Australian Secret Intelligence Service mission to bug Timor-Leste’s government during sensitive talks to carve up oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea.

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Penny Wong urges Pacific nations to weigh up ‘consequences’ of China security offers

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Australia wants to show region it is a reliable partner, says foreign minister, and to make up for a ‘lost decade on climate action’

Australia’s foreign affairs minister has used a visit to Fiji to urge Pacific countries to weigh up the “consequences” of accepting security offers from Beijing, saying the region should determine its own security.

Speaking on the second day of her trip, Penny Wong said Australia wanted to show it was a reliable and trustworthy partner, and was also “determined to make up for” what she described as “a lost decade on climate action”.

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Bangarra’s Stephen Page and artist Destiny Deacon win $50,000 lifetime achievement awards

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Page and Deacon both won the Red Ochre prizes at the 2022 First Nations Arts awards on Friday night for their life work

Last year, choreographer, dancer and director Stephen Page announced that he was stepping down as artistic director of Bangarra Dance Theatre, after 31 years in the job. On Friday night, Page was named the recipient of a $50,000 lifetime achievement award, at the Australia Council’s First Nations Arts awards – and it could not have come at a more opportune moment.

The descendant of the Nunukul people and the Mununjali clan of the Yugambeh nation in south-east Queensland, Page has created more than two dozen works for Bangarra over the past three decades and won many accolades, including being named an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO). Now, it is time to take a break.

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Horizontal Falls accident: 12 seriously injured after boat capsizes at Western Australia beauty spot

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Tourist boat is believed to have capsized at Talbot Bay, about 250km north-east of Broome

Investigators are probing what caused a serious jet boat incident in one of Western Australia’s most remote locations as rescuers worked into the late afternoon to winch injured tourists off a pontoon at Horizontal Falls.

The boat Falls Express was carrying 26 passengers and two crew when it ran into trouble at the tourist hotspot in the Kimberley region of WA at 7.15am on Friday.

Horizontal Falls is touted as one of the greatest natural wonders of the world with huge nine-metre tides that surge through narrow cliffs cut into two gorges in the McLarty Ranges. Jet boats ride the “horizontal” rivers created by the fast-moving tides.

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Timor-Leste hit by 6.4-magnitude earthquake that was felt in Darwin

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Quake struck to east of Timor-Leste, with residents in Northern Territory capital reporting strong shaking

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.4 struck off the coast of Timor-Leste and was so strong it was felt in Darwin, Australia.

The quake hit at 11.36am local time (12.06pm Darwin time), according to Geosciences Australia, and prompted some people in the capital of Dili to flee buildings, though a tsunami was ruled out.

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Father Bob Maguire adds to criticism of NSW government’s voluntary assisted dying laws

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Catholic Weekly called on to apologise over editorial comparing new rights to the Holocaust

The maverick Catholic figure Father Bob Maguire has criticised New South Wales’ premier and the state’s parliament for passing voluntary assisted dying laws, after a scathing editorial on the legislation was published in the Catholic Weekly.

On Friday Jewish groups put pressure on the newspaper, funded by the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, to apologise and amend the piece, which compared the new laws with the Holocaust and criticised Dominic Perrottet’s leadership.

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Murugappan family to return to Biloela on bridging visas

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Tamil family can return to Queensland town while their immigration status is resolved, Labor’s Jim Chalmers says

The Murugappan family is set to return home, to the rural Queensland town of Biloela.

The interim home affairs minister, Jim Chalmers, said on Friday afternoon that he had exercised his powers under the Migration Act to give them bridging visas, fulfilling a pre-election promise to let them go home.

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Scott Morrison’s staff urged border force to publicise Sri Lankan boat interception on election day

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ABF officials made it clear publication of the interception could only proceed on the authority of the home affairs minister, Guardian Australia understands

Scott Morrison’s staff conveyed a clear message to border force officials through Karen Andrews’ office on election day that they wanted the department to publicise the interception of a boat from Sri Lanka, Guardian Australia understands.

While an investigation into the politically charged incident is ongoing, people familiar with the events last Saturday have confirmed that on current information, staff working for Andrews made it clear to officials that Morrison wanted the boat interception publicised. They also conveyed that they wanted the opposition briefed about the incident, given the caretaker convention was in force.

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NSW paramedics take industrial action; interest rate rises predicted – as it happened

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NSW paramedics take industrial action; election vote count ‘progressing well’; interest rate rises on horizon; Penny Wong speaks at Fiji press conference; Anthony Albanese signs Fair Work Commission submission on increasing minimum wage; decision on Biloela family due; at least 39 Covid deaths recorded. This blog is now closed

Peter Dutton was on the Today show this morning, maintaining his charm offensive from yesterday, and distancing himself from former prime minister Scott Morrison.

Dutton emphasised his “work ethic” and his connection with John Howard and Peter Costello (very interesting in light of the election result):

I have a lot of respect for Scott and all of my former leaders, but I grew up under John Howard and I was assistant treasurer to Peter Costello.

I have, I think, an incredible work ethic and I have a desire to do what is right by our country. I’ve had tough jobs in immigration, border protection and in defence ...

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Lincoln Crowley appointed Australia’s first Indigenous supreme court justice

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Highly regarded Queensland barrister was told as a boy he would likely end up in jail because his family is Aboriginal

Barrister Lincoln Crowley QC will become the first Indigenous judge to preside over an Australian superior court, after he was appointed to the supreme court of Queensland.

Colleagues said Crowley, a well-regarded barrister and former crown prosecutor who was made Queen’s Counsel in 2018, had broken a significant barrier for First Nations people.

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Sydney CBD health warning issued over Legionnaires’ disease outbreak

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Visitors to the city in the past 10 days advised to look out for symptoms after five people admitted to hospital

People who have visited the Sydney CBD in the past 10 days are being warned to watch out for symptoms of Legionnaires’ disease after five people were admitted to hospital with related cases of pneumonia.

The five people – two women and three men, ranging in age from their 40s to 70s – visited locations in the CBD including Museum station, York St, Park St and Martin Place in the 10 days before their symptoms appeared.

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‘Highly implausible’ that new Galilee Basin coalmines would be profitable, study finds

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Report says Adani’s Carmichael mine in central Queensland seems ‘rather a political decision, not an economically driven one’

Any new coalmines in Australia’s Galilee Basin, including Adani’s Carmichael mine, will not be economically viable in the long run under even the most generous assumptions about the future of the fossil fuel, according to an analysis by German academics.

The study, developed in conjunction with Australian experts, found it was “highly implausible” that mines in the central Queensland basin could run profitably and there was a high chance they would end up as stranded assets.

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Lawyers call on NSW premier to urgently review thousands of Covid fines

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Law Society argues many fines issued to vulnerable residents are invalid, unfair and could trap disadvantaged people in debt

The Law Society of New South Wales has called on the premier, Dominic Perrottet, to “urgently” review thousands of Covid fines issued to the state’s most vulnerable, warning many were invalid, unfair, and have caused the disadvantaged to amass “debt they are unable to pay”.

Earlier this year, the Guardian revealed that small towns with high Indigenous populations and western Sydney suburbs home to the city’s most socioeconomically disadvantaged residents bore the brunt of Covid fines during the ramp-up in enforcement in the Delta outbreak.

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‘I will recover loudly so others don’t die quietly’: Queensland MP recounts horrific abuse

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Labor member for Macalister Melissa McMahon tells parliament of abuse she suffered, announces leave of absence

Queensland MP Melissa McMahon has divulged a harrowing childhood of sexual abuse as she announced a leave of absence from parliament.

On Thursday, the Labor member for Macalister, south of Brisbane, told parliament she would take time out to rebalance her life and family.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues in Australia is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732) and the crisis support service Lifeline, 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org

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Penny Wong tells Pacific nations ‘we have heard you’ as Australia and China battle for influence

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Foreign minister uses speech in Fiji to declare ‘this is a different Australian government’ that will act responsibly on climate change

The new foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has promised to treat Pacific island countries with respect, telling an audience in Fiji that Australia is “a partner that doesn’t come with strings attached” and won’t “impose unsustainable financial burdens”.

Wong promised to respect Pacific priorities and institutions as she set out an implicit contrast with China, which is pursuing a sweeping regional economic and security deal with Pacific nations that would dramatically expand Beijing’s influence and reach into those countries.

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‘Time for change’: Darren Chester confirms he will challenge Barnaby Joyce for Nationals leadership

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Former veterans affairs minister says ‘it’s important we listen to the message we received over the weekend from the Australian people’

Nationals MP Darren Chester has confirmed he will run for the party’s leadership in a ballot next week, setting up an explosive showdown with his rival Barnaby Joyce - a man Chester once described as “incoherent”.

The Nine newspapers reported Chester saying it was “time for a change” in the party, and that the Nationals needed to “take some responsibility for the Liberal losses in the city”.

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Liberal party should forgo ‘entitled’ Kooyong voters, says their own state Liberal MP

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Tim Smith, who is retiring in November, says Coalition needs to ‘stop obsessing with the woke causes of inner-urban elites’ and focus on suburbs

The voters of Kooyong in Melbourne’s east have been described as “loud, entitled and privileged” – by their own state Liberal MP.

Victorian Liberal Tim Smith represents the state electorate of Kew, which overlaps the federal seat of Kooyong, where independent Monique Ryan defeated former treasurer Josh Frydenberg in Saturday’s election.

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Labor one seat from claiming majority as Liberals launch review of election defeat – as it happened

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New foreign minister tells Fiji ‘I hope I will be here often’; Jane Hume and Brian Loughnane to review Liberal party’s election campaign; Labor retains Tasmanian seat of Lyons; nation records 71 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed

The PM is asked what he thought of Tanya Plibersek saying Peter Dutton looks like Voldemort, and reiterates that he wants to “change the way politics operates”:

It was a mistake. It shouldn’t have been said. We all make mistakes from time to time.

What we need to do is to move on from them and it is how we respond to them. Tanya Plibersek responded appropriately. I want to change the way that politics operates.

Quite clearly, one of the issues that came up, we might have discussed it in previous weeks on this program, is we couldn’t tell from opposition where all the pots of money had been stored by this government.

They abused the process of the contingency reserve to create funds for use during the election campaign. We will go through those line by line because it is taxpayers’ money, not Liberal party or National party money that was being allocated in the billions, frankly, during this campaign.

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