Category Archives: Australia news

The Coalition denies emissions will rise if it wins the election. What do the facts say?

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We break down the major parties’ climate claims, counter-claims and policies – and find out what the experts say

The Coalition has disputed claims that greenhouse gas emissions would be higher if it won the election than under a returned Labor government. It points to its record between 2013 and 2022 compared with what has happened under Labor over the past three years.

Speaking to the ABC’s RN Breakfast on Monday, the Coalition climate change and energy spokesperson, Ted O’Brien, said “under the former Coalition government you saw emissions fall” – from 12% to 29% less than 2005 levels. And that in Labor’s three years in office emissions “have flatlined”, showing the ALP has “failed”.

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Guardian Essential poll: Labor leads Coalition in final pre-election poll as Dutton’s approval rating slips further

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Poll also finds most Australians voting based on who will leave them better off in three years – rather than comparing situation to three years ago

Anthony Albanese holds an election-winning lead with just days left of the campaign, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll, with Labor leading the Coalition 52% to 48% on a two-party basis.

Albanese’s approval ratings have ticked up slightly since the last poll two weeks ago, but Peter Dutton’s has slipped for the fourth poll in a row, with the Liberal leader’s public standing dropping as the campaign has progressed. The Essential poll shows more people have switched their support to Labor because of the campaign over recent weeks, and that two-thirds of Australians say they’re voting based on who will leave them better off in three years – rather than comparing their situation to where it was three years ago.

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Labor says the CSIRO put a $600bn price tag on Coalition’s nuclear dreams. It’s not quite right

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Number comes from the Smart Energy Council (SEC), a renewable energy industry group, almost six months before Coalition modelling

Labor’s campaign spokesperson, frontbencher Jason Clare, claimed on Monday that CSIRO had put a $600bn price tag on the Coalition’s plans to build taxpayer-funded nuclear reactors at seven sites.

“Have a look at the work that the CSIRO has done that proves that this will cost $600bn. It won’t turn a light on for 20 years. It’ll only produce about 4% of the energy that Australia is going to need,” Clare told ABC Radio National.

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Sole CCTV operator using bathroom when Bondi Junction attack began, Sydney court hears

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Coronial inquest into 2024 incident also told killer had ‘preoccupation with death and murder’ before fatally stabbing six people

The man who fatally stabbed six people in a Sydney shopping centre last April had a “preoccupation with death and murder” and made online searches for serial killers and the Columbine school shooters in the days before his attack, a court has heard.

It also heard that at the moment the attack began, the sole CCTV security room operator had been using the bathroom and re-entered the CCTV room less than two minutes later, towards the end of the man’s stabbing rampage.

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Dutton claims majority of veterans don’t want welcome to country at Anzac Day ceremonies

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Opposition leader says opening of parliament is an appropriate time for ceremonies but that acknowledgment on planes is ‘over the top’

Peter Dutton has confirmed he does not believe welcome to country ceremonies are necessary at Anzac Day dawn services and on commercial flights, continuing to stoke a culture war in the final week of the election campaign.

It comes days after a neo-Nazi booed and heckled a welcome to country ceremony at a dawn service in Melbourne.

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Synthetic opioids linked to spate of overdose deaths found in wastewater across Australia

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Detection of powerful nitazenes in samples from 60 sites a ‘red flag’ amid surging use to lace street drugs

Synthetic opioids a thousand times stronger than morphine and an animal sedative used to lace street drugs have been detected in Australia’s wastewater.

The discovery has been described as a “red flag” and comes as the deadly class of synthetic opioids – nitazines – claims dozens of lives in Australia.

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Nasal spray similar to ketamine to be added to PBS for treatment-resistant depression

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Spravato, derived from a popular club drug and also known as esketamine, offers hope to tens of thousands of Australians living with chronic mental illness

A medication chemically similar to ketamine will be made cheaper to improve the lives of Australians suffering from treatment-resistant depression.

The drug, which comes in the form of a nasal spray, is a chemical cousin of ketamine, used for decades as a powerful anaesthetic before it was adopted as a party drug in underground rave culture.

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Pro-gas group with link to Liberal party referred to ACCC over alleged misleading claims

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Integrity organisation claims Australians for Natural Gas overstates role of gas in economy and failed to disclose directors’ links to industry on website

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has been asked to investigate allegedly misleading claims made by Australians for Natural Gas, a pro-gas group with directors who include a gas industry executive and a Liberal candidate running in the federal election.

Lawyers acting for Climate Integrity, a not-for-profit focused on corporate accountability, have filed a complaint with the ACCC. They argue the website and advertising materials of Australians for Natural Gas have failed to disclose its directors’ links to the gas industry and Liberal party, and overinflated the role of gas in the economy and energy transition.

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Leaders’ debate live updates: Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton meet in final election debate

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Mark Riley asked each leader what the Australian dream looks like for an average Australian in the property market today?

Peter Dutton said it “looks like a nightmare” and blamed the matter on migration:

When you bring a million people in they want a house for their kids and their family, fair enough, but what we’ve seen is Australians being displaced from home ownership, and our young Australians now, saving harder than ever, paying more rent than ever. They’re locked out of the market.

We are concentrating on supply, not just demand, because we know that’s the key going forward.

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Australia election 2025 live updates: Coalition won’t cut working holiday visas, McKenzie says; Labor promises 24/7 free telehealth

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Nationals senator says working holiday visa, which supplies labour to regional areas, will not be part of Coalition’s planned migration cuts. Follow updates live

Peter Dutton is due to arrive any moment at a campaign rally in the Labor-held seat of Hawke in Melbourne’s west.

The opposition leader is expected to deliver an energetic sermon to the party faithful ahead of the Coalition’s last-week “blitz”.

Over the last three years, when defence comes to us, the independent strategic review identifies capabilities and assets that need to be bought, then we have put that in the budget. The biggest expansion in peacetime since World War II, you see defence spending growing as a share of the economy or GDP over the forward estimates and over the next ten years.

If more needs to be done, of course the prime minister has indicated we’re open to doing that.

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Virginia Giuffre, Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew accuser, dies aged 41

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Giuffre’s family issue statement confirming she killed herself at her farm in Western Australia

Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent victims of the disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein who also alleged she was sexually trafficked to Prince Andrew, has died aged 41.

Her family issued a statement on Saturday confirming she took her own life at her farm in Western Australia, where she had lived for several years.

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Dutton listens to locals sharing crime stories in NT; heavy rain to hit northern NSW – as it happened

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Albanese says climate change is an “economic issue, not just an environmental one”.

He is asked about the rising pressure of home insurance for families. The prime minister responds:

We’ll continue to do what we can there. One of the things that obviously is having an impact is the increased number of extreme weather events. That’s why climate change needs to be considered to be an economic issue, not just an environmental one. Because there are economic costs to it.

Everyone who is here has been through screening … Let’s be clear about the suggestions that have been made on a range of occasions, aimed at promoting division in Australian society and in Australian debate. They’ve been made by the Coalition. They simply just don’t stack up.

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Peter Dutton urges respect for welcome to country but reaffirms stance on ‘one flag’ only

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Opposition leader repeats condemnation of dawn service interruptions but says if he wins election he won’t display Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flags at press conferences

Peter Dutton says he wants welcome to country ceremonies respected even as he reaffirms his push to unite Australians under “one flag”.

Dutton made the comments after disruptions at Anzac Day services and the sudden cancellation of a welcome to country ceremony at a major NRL match in Melbourne.

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Peter Dutton urges respect for welcome to country but reaffirms stance on ‘one flag’ only

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Opposition leader repeats condemnation of dawn service interruptions but says if he wins election he won’t display Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flags at press conferences

Peter Dutton says he wants welcome to country ceremonies respected even as he reaffirms his push to unite Australians under “one flag”.

Dutton made the comments after disruptions at Anzac Day services and the sudden cancellation of a welcome to country ceremony at a major NRL match in Melbourne.

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Sydney woman who sold a cartoon cat T-shirt told to pay US$100,000 in Grumpy Cat copyright case

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Alda Curtis, who earned US$1 for the t-shirt she sold on RedBubble, had US$600 removed from her PayPal account without explanation

Alda Curtis, a 63-year-old counselling student from Sydney, set up a Redbubble store as a hobby, including selling a T-shirt featuring an unhappy cat cartoon.

After years of running the store, a single sale of that T-shirt resulted in a US$100,000 default judgment against her for infringing on the trademark of Grumpy Cat late last year. Then Curtis noticed nearly US$600 had been taken from her PayPal account.

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Valerie the dachshund is found safe and well after 529 days on the run on South Australian island

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Rescuers on Kangaroo Island say they are ‘overjoyed’ after the dog walked into one of their traps

After 529 days on the run, Australia’s favourite fugitive has been caught at last.

Valerie the miniature dachshund, who went missing on Kangaroo Island way back in 2023, has been rescued by conservationists.

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Two people hospitalised and Anzac Day services cancelled after wild weather hits south-east Queensland

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Lightning strikes hit two houses as parts of Sunshine Coast receive up to 240mm of rain overnight

Wild weather in Queensland has seen two people hospitalised after lightning struck their homes, while some Anzac Day services have been cancelled due to rain.

A spokesperson for the Queensland ambulance service said paramedics had been called early on Friday morning to two incidents north of Brisbane.

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Hecklers and booers at Anzac Day welcome to country ‘must face the full force of the law’, PM says

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Anthony Albanese says disruption of ceremonies in Melbourne and Perth was ‘act of low cowardice on a day when we honour courage and sacrifice’

Anthony Albanese has condemned the booing and heckling of welcome to country ceremonies in Melbourne and Perth during Anzac dawn services as “a disgrace” and called for those responsible to “face the full force of the law”.

A small group of people booed and yelled throughout the welcome delivered by Bunurong elder Uncle Mark Brown in Melbourne. An acknowledgment in Perth was also interrupted by a person shouting obscenities.

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Liberal candidate apologises for Anzac Day booklet that contained campaign message and linked to how-to-vote card

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Exclusive: Former navy officer Grange Chung, candidate for the Sydney seat of Reid, uses images of himself in military uniform

The Liberal candidate for Reid, Grange Chung, has apologised for distributing a four-page booklet commemorating Anzac Day that also encouraged people to vote for him and linked to a how-to-vote card.

The Anzac Day booklet, authorised by the NSW Liberal party, contained images of Chung, a former navy officer, dressed in military uniform. The defence department has repeatedly urged veterans to refrain from using pictures of themselves in uniform, to avoid any suggestion the military is politically partisan.

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Gender Queer graphic novel reapproved for sale in Australia after federal court fight to ban book

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Complaints about the book focus on cartoon sex scenes, one of which has been described by critics as ‘pornographic’ and ‘paedophilic’

Gender Queer, a graphic novel on gender identity, has been reapproved for sale in Australia following a conservative campaign against the book forcing the Classification Review Board to reconsider its initial decision.

The federal court last year ordered the board to reassess its decision to give the Maia Kobabe memoir an unrestricted M classification, after rightwing activist Bernard Gaynor challenged the ruling.

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