Titmus’s time of 3 minutes 56.4 seconds broke the previous record set by American rival Katie Ledecky at the 2016 Olympics
Ariarne Titmus has broken the women’s 400 metres freestyle world record at the Australian championships.
Titmus clocked three minutes 3 minutes 56.40 seconds in Sunday night’s final in Adelaide.
Continue reading...Activists say woman’s death is an example of people with serious mental health problems being detained without adequate care
Advocates and detainees say a woman’s body was found at Villawood detention centre on Sunday morning.
The New Zealand woman was found dead about 10.45am, shortly after a room search had been conducted by Serco officers. She is believed to have killed herself.
Continue reading...PM Scott Morrison has been dumped by electorate fed up with inaction on emissions and eager for change
When Scott Morrison won Australia’s federal election in 2019, it seemed like the country would never emerge from the climate wars that had begun a decade earlier.
Morrison had taken the prime ministership late in 2018 after conservatives in the ruling Liberal-National Coalition deposed Malcolm Turnbull, in part, for his attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Australia’s energy sector.
Continue reading...Anthony Albanese to be sworn in ahead of Quad meeting; Scott Morrison praises ‘great foundation’ of church as speculation over next Liberal leader begins; Labor hopeful of forming majority government; nation records 20 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed
That Paul Karp wields his words real good:
The Liberals flirted with turning the ABC coverage on blast on the big screen, but when Antony Green observed that he couldn’t see the Liberals winning more than 70 seats, suddenly the feed was cut in favour of soft aimless jazz, pervasive elevator music the soundtrack to attenuated disappointment.
Continue reading...After four years in immigration detention, the election would produce an all-or-nothing result for the Tamil asylum seekers
About 11pm on election night in the central Queensland town of Biloela, Angela Fredericks phoned her absent friend.
“Priya, you are coming home,” she said.
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Continue reading...Incoming MP for Fowler Dai Le says decision to parachute Keneally into diverse electorate was a ‘slap in the face’ to locals
The independent candidate who defied a national swing towards Labor by defeating Kristina Keneally in the formerly safe seat of Fowler in Sydney’s south-west says the party was punished for its “arrogance” in parachuting the former NSW premier into the seat.
As vote counting continued on Sunday, the party’s abject showing in Fowler marked a stunning outlier to the national result.
Continue reading...With many supporters still bearing the scars of the 2019 election loss, it was only when the Western Australian results streamed in that they dared to dream
It was only around the time the pyramid of Albo ale cans was built – red cylinders piled four rows high – that Labor supporters started daring to believe they’d gotten home.
Nine years in the wilderness of opposition and three crushing defeats had put up a wall of doubt among Labor faithful that they could pull this off. Three years of what many in the camp called “PTSD” from the 2019 election was taken down, brick by brick as the ABC’s Antony Green called another seat for Labor, or another loss for the Liberals.
Continue reading...If Saturday’s count points to the final result, Anthony Albanese’s government will not face a hostile upper house
While election night coverage was mostly focused on the House of Representatives, there has been a significant shift to the left, potentially setting up a progressive Senate majority, unlike the deadlock experienced by the first Rudd government.
Labor and the Greens hold only 35 seats in the outgoing Senate, meaning they need to win four more for the Greens to hold the sole balance of power. Labor will want to avoid the deadlock experience from 2008 to 2011, when Labor needed the Greens, Nick Xenophon and Family First senator Steve Fielding to pass legislation. This deadlock led the Rudd government to instead work with the opposition on climate legislation, among other issues, and thus opened up the space for Tony Abbott to wreck the government’s agenda.
Continue reading...Large swings in WA meant the Liberals lost Hasluck, Swan, Pearce and Tangney and will have just five seats – down from 10 – after the election
It wasn’t quite the bloodbath the Liberal party suffered in Western Australia’s state election in 2021, but a huge 11% swing to Labor has proved crucial to the Coalition’s federal election defeat.
The “red wave” in the west was the biggest swing nationally and could deliver Labor a parliamentary majority.
Continue reading...Labor leader pledges to implement Uluru statement and to end climate wars, while Scott Morrison says he will stand down as Liberal leader after defeat
Anthony Albanese will be Australia’s next prime minister, leaving the Coalition in disarray after it lost more than a dozen seats to Labor and independents in an election that has transformed the country’s political landscape.
Declaring victory shortly before midnight on Saturday, Albanese thanked voters for the “extraordinary honour” of becoming the nation’s 31st prime minister, and said he would work in government to bring Australians together.
Continue reading...UAP vote increases slightly to around 4.7% but was exceeded by the One Nation vote
Clive Palmer’s mammoth campaign spend of close to $100m has failed to deliver his party results, with its primary vote failing to reach 5% across the country.
In both regional and metropolitan areas, the United Australia vote increased slightly to about 4.7%, and was strongest in Queensland where it polled close to 6%.
Continue reading...Anthony Albanese arrives for speech; Scott Morrison to step down as leader after conceding defeat; ‘Liberal family suffered a terrible day,’ Peter Dutton says; Labor claims Reid; Zoe Daniel claims victory in Goldstein; Allegra Spender wins Wentworth from Dave Sharma. This blog is now closed
I’m a fairly big footy fan, but not sure how much all these analogies mean to the rest of voters (and I believe kicking into the wind can actually be an advantage in rugby union sometimes?)
On Weekend Today, Scott Morrison managed to turn a question about whether he has BBQ sauce on his democracy sausage into a stump speech about jobkeeper and co-funding the hospital system during the pandemic. We can’t fault him - those are more important issues than what he was asked.
Continue reading...Labor sought urgent injunction to remove misleading campaign material in Higgins, McEwen and Hawke that used Greens colours and read ‘For our future, put Labor last’
The federal court has ordered the removal of anti-Labor campaign material appearing across three electorates in Victoria, including the ultra marginal seat of Higgins.
Labor on Saturday sought an urgent injunction to remove campaign material appearing in Higgins, McEwen and Hawke, which used the Greens’ party colours and read “For our future, put Labor last”.
Continue reading...PM says Australians ‘need to vote Liberal and Nationals’ so he can stop future boats, despite Labor’s identical policy on boat turnbacks
Scott Morrison has breached his own rule against commenting on “on-water matters”, confirming an asylum seeker boat from Sri Lanka has been intercepted.
In a last-ditch pitch to voters on election day, Morrison told Australians they “need to vote Liberal and Nationals” for him to be there to stop future boats, despite Labor having an identical policy to intercept and turn back boats where safe to do so.
Continue reading...Mobile polling in health facilities was stopped amid the pandemic and patients in hospital unexpectedly have no way to cast their ballot
Australians unexpectedly admitted to hospital before the election are struggling to cast their vote due to a decision to abort mobile polling in health facilities due to Covid.
The Australian Electoral Commission announced before the campaign that it would not be sending mobile teams into hospitals to take votes in the lead-up to polling day, in an attempt to balance voting access with the risk of spreading Covid in vulnerable settings.
Continue reading...Documents indicate PM’s changes to foreign policy speech coincided with environment agreement in trade talks
Scott Morrison softened his defiant language on climate action in a foreign policy speech in June 2021, shortly after officials appeared to have finalised the environment-related parts of the Australia-UK free trade agreement, documents obtained under freedom of information laws reveal.
The timing is outlined in government documents obtained by Guardian Australia, alongside draft talking points denying climate policy was causing any delays to the trade negotiations.
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Continue reading...Ariarne Titmus is happy at swimming fast again but annoyed she cannot yet break the longest-standing women’s world record. Titmus won the 200 metres freestyle at the Australian championships on Friday night, swimming faster than when she won Olympic gold in the event last year.
Titmus clocked one minute 53.31 seconds in Adelaide, some 0.19 seconds quicker than when she won the event at the Tokyo Games. The dual Olympic champion was eyeing the world record of 1:52.98 set by Italy’s Federica Pellegrini in 2009 during the super-suit era, the longest-standing benchmark in women’s swimming.
Continue reading...Auditor general says state agencies forked out close to $200m on faulty imported masks and ventilators
The New South Wales government underspent on personal protective equipment and mental health services and forked out close to $200m on faulty imported masks and ventilators as part of the state’s $7.5bn pandemic expenditure, a review has found.
The auditor general released a detailed report on Friday after examining the state’s spending from the first case detected in January 2020 to the middle of 2021.
Continue reading...Woman known as JC told Dawson’s murder trial she felt obliged to move in with him and had wanted to return to her life as a 17-year-old
Chris Dawson’s former student and babysitter has admitted working on a book titled The Schoolgirl, Her Teacher and His Wife, but denied it was because she wanted revenge.
Questioned by defence barrister Pauline David in the NSW supreme court on Friday, the woman known only as JC rejected the suggestion her claims she had been Dawson’s sex slave were a good way to sell her book.
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Continue reading...So far we’ve had a dugong, a crocodile, a turtle, betting agencies and multiple polls try to predict the result of the 2022 election. Now it’s your turn to tell us who will win
With the polls tightening in the final days of the campaign, Saturday’s election is expected to be a close match.
Labor is desperately hoping the widespread anti-Morrison sentiment will be enough to deliver victory and polls suggest they are in front, but the party is still scarred by the experience of 2019, when polling pointed to an ALP win, only for its advantage to evaporate on the day.
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