Category Archives: Australia news

Australian War Memorial seeks new funding from Lockheed Martin despite veterans’ criticism

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Hundreds of Australians wrote letters saying sponsorship deals with arms manufacturers are ‘degrading to the memory of our war dead’

The Australian War Memorial is pursuing a new sponsorship deal from arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin despite being inundated with letters from veterans, historians and retired staff saying such arrangements are “degrading to the memory of our war dead”.

More than 300 Australians wrote to the memorial urging it not to renew its deal with Lockheed Martin, due to the company’s involvement in nuclear weapons and surging share price following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Australia’s coal export boom forecast to end abruptly amid big drop in demand from China

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Study finds Chinese consumption will fall within two to three years as Australian coalmining communities warned to reduce dependence on industry

Australia’s coal export boom will come to an abrupt end because of an “imminent and substantial” drop in purchases by China, and local coal mining communities should brace for the change, the lead author of a new study says.

The peer-reviewed paper, published on Thursday in the journal Joule, forecasts China’s thermal coal imports will contract at least a quarter from 2019 levels of 210m tonnes by 2025, mostly as improved transport links will give local suppliers an edge.

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Australian politics live: NSW and Victoria to ease Covid isolation rules; Morrison says Solomon Islands-China pact exposes ‘very real risk’

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Penny Wong says Morrison government’s handling of Solomon Islands the ‘worst Australian foreign policy blunder in the Pacific since the end of world war two’; NSW and Victoria to ease Covid restrictions from Friday night; undecided voters will put questions to the rivals at a Brisbane forum tonight in first leaders’ debate of 2022 election campaign; NSW reports 15 new Covid deaths and Victoria 14. Follow all the day’s news

For followers of South Australian politics, the good burghers of Bragg in Adelaide’s east are headed back to the polls, with Vickie Chapman announcing she will quit politics at the end of the month, triggering a by-election.

Chapman is a moderate Liberal and the new SA Liberal leader, David Speirs is ... not in the same faction.

Labor appears to have lost ground in the opening week of the federal election campaign according to the latest Guardian Essential poll, but a majority of respondents still think Anthony Albanese will be Australia’s next prime minister.

The latest survey of 1,020 respondents shows Labor’s standing in the two-party preferred “plus” measure is down three points in a fortnight, and there has been a two point increase in the number of undecided voters. But 55% of respondents believe Labor will win on 21 May.

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Perth Glory CEO admits Daniel Sturridge move has failed

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  • ‘We had high hopes… It hasn’t worked,’ says Tony Pignata
  • Striker unlikely to be offered new contract at end of season

Perth Glory’s gamble on Daniel Sturridge has been labelled a failure by chief executive Tony Pignata, who admits it is unlikely the English striker will be offered a new deal with the A-League Men club.

Sturridge, a former Liverpool forward with 26 England caps, was the highest-profile signing heading into the 2021-22 ALM season but has featured for just 93 minutes across five substitute appearances – failing to find the net.

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Solomon Islands-China pact is worst policy failure in Pacific since 1945, Labor says

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Penny Wong accuses Coalition of mishandling situation, raising concerns of a potential Chinese military presence in South Pacific

Labor has lashed the Coalition in the wake of the newly signed security agreement between China and Solomon Islands, branding it “the worst Australian foreign policy blunder in the Pacific” in decades.

The Coalition government sounded the alarm over the deal, arguing the pact has been negotiated in secret and could “undermine stability in our region”. The foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, and the minister for the Pacific, Zed Seselja, said they were “deeply disappointed” by the deal, and would “seek further clarity on the terms of the agreement, and its consequences for the Pacific region”.

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National teacher’s union ‘concerned’ by lack of detail in Labor’s public school funding policy

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AEU president backed funding announcement but criticised lack of timeline, while noting Coalition had offered ‘nothing at all’

The teacher’s union has criticised Labor’s education policy for a “concerning” lack of detail about when public schools will get extra funding.

Australian Education Union president, Correna Haythorpe, welcomed the policy to put public schools on a “pathway” to full funding but said the lack of a timeline “is of concern to us”.

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Labor to rethink Coalition’s ‘bewildering’ decision to scrap armed drones if it wins election

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Shadow defence minister Brendan O’Connor says cancellation of $1.3bn SkyGuardian program demands explanation

Labor will consider reinstating a $1.3bn program for Australia to acquire armed drones if it wins the election, vowing to review the Coalition’s “bewildering” decision to scrap it “as a matter of urgency”.

The shadow defence minister, Brendan O’Connor, said he was concerned there was a “very significant capability gap in the immediate future”, and he would seek detailed advice after the election.

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Australia’s Covid death toll in 2022 more than double that of previous two years

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Federal health data shows 4,547 people have died of Covid-19 this year to date, compared with 2,239 over 2020 and 2021

The number of deaths from Covid-19 in Australia this year to date has reached more than double the deaths from 2020 and 2021 combined.

According to federal health department data as of 18 April, 6,786 people have died of Covid-19 in Australia since the beginning of the pandemic. Of these deaths, 4,547 occurred in 2022 – more than double the 2,239 deaths recorded over the first two years of the pandemic.

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Guardian Essential poll: Labor loses ground in first week of campaign but remains ahead of Coalition

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Albanese’s disapproval rate rose by five points but over half of all respondents still believe Labor will win the next election

Labor appears to have lost ground in the opening week of the federal election campaign according to the latest Guardian Essential poll, but a majority of respondents still think Anthony Albanese will be Australia’s next prime minister.

The latest survey of 1,020 respondents shows Labor’s standing in the two-party preferred “plus” measure is down three points in a fortnight, and there has been a two point increase in the number of undecided voters. But 55% of respondents believe Labor will win on 21 May.

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Australian politics live: PM says Coalition ‘won’t be doing any deals’ with independents; green energy ‘first mover advantage’ lost, says Albanese

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Record number of Australians enrol to vote; Morrison says he won’t allow embattled Warringah candidate to be ‘silenced’; Australia losing green energy opportunities due to Coalition inaction, Albanese says; Shorten launches Labor’s NDIS policy; nation records 18 Covid deaths. Follow all the latest news

These two are debating each other on Sky News tonight

Former South Australian senator Nick Xenophon, who is making another tilt at the Senate, wants a royal commission into housing affordability in Australia.

With house prices rising in Adelaide, and around the country by almost a quarter in just a year, the issue of young Australians being able to afford to buy their own home is becoming more and more vexed, and there are policy failures all round at a local, state and federal government level.

Only a royal commission can tackle this issue head-on by looking at a range of solutions that will get us back on track to make the dream of home ownership attainable once again.”

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Refugees resettled in New Zealand from Australia to be permanently banned from returning

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Government says refugees will be stopped at border, even if they have become New Zealand citizens

Refugees resettled in New Zealand from Australia will be unable to return even if they’ve become New Zealand citizens, the Morrison government has announced.

The home affairs minister, Karen Andrews, revealed on Tuesday that Australia will prevent the resettlement deal for 450 refugees from becoming a “back door” by stopping would-be travellers at the border.

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Australia has ‘moral duty’ to take 20,000 more Afghan refugees, Catholic bishops say

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Election statement also calls for a special intake of Ukrainians and a wider reassessment of refugee policies

Australia’s Catholic bishops have called for a special intake of 20,000 refugees from Afghanistan, saying the country has a “moral duty” to do more.

As part of its election statement, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference said the country had an obligation to take more refugees from Afghanistan because of the support shown to Australian military forces.

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Cashless welfare: Labor vows to end compulsory use of basics card

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Opposition last year committed to scrapping the cashless debit card and says continued use of basics card will be voluntary

Labor has given a clear signal it will end the basics card as a compulsory scheme, allowing more than 20,000 welfare recipients in the Northern Territory to exit the program.

Anthony Albanese last year committed to scrapping the cashless debit card, which operates in trial sites in Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia and until recently was run solely by the private banking provider Indue.

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Heavy rain and wild weather set to end Easter sunshine in NSW and Queensland

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Possible thunderstorms forecast for parts of Australia’s east over the coming days, as conditions gradually clear in Victoria

The east coast Easter sunshine is set to come to an end as heavy rain and possible severe thunderstorms are forecast for parts of New South Wales and northern Queensland this week.

The Bureau of Meteorology on Tuesday said residents in parts of NSW should be on alert as “sunny conditions haven’t been enough to dry out the soils and surfaces” after recent flooding.

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Katherine Deves claims key role in controversial bill to ban trans women from women’s sport

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Embattled Liberal candidate for Warringah says she worked with Tasmanian senator Claire Chandler on ‘Save Women’s Sport’ legislation

The Liberal party’s controversial candidate for the seat of Warringah, Katherine Deves, claimed a key role in developing legislation to exclude trans women from women’s sport that has been slammed by equality advocates as “divisive and unnecessary”.

Speaking at an event organised by a group called the Coalition for Biological Reality on the issue of “gender identity in law” in Hobart in February, Deves claimed she had worked with the Tasmanian senator Claire Chandler on developing the controversial “Save Women’s Sport” bill.

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US calls on Australia to increase 2030 emission reduction pledge to help prevent ‘greater destruction’

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Senior official says US ‘determined that everyone raise ambition’ in tackling climate crisis and stresses need to keep heating below 1.5C

The US will urge Australia to increase its 2030 emission reduction pledge this year, with a senior official declaring it was “a long time ago” when the Abbott government set the target the Morrison government says is “fixed”.

The assistant US secretary of state for environmental affairs, Monica Medina, said the US was “determined that everyone raise ambition” in tackling the climate crisis in a bid to avoid “greater destruction”.

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NSW accused of politicising history scheme as Labor seats miss out on first round of blue plaques

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None of 17 markers on buildings where historical figures lived or worked, or where major events occurred, are in Labor-held seats

The New South Wales government has been accused of politicising history after announcing the first 17 successful public applications for the state’s new blue plaque scheme.

The $5m program – announced last June – has been modelled on a similar scheme in use across the UK for more than a century to remember notable people and places.

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Queensland government acknowledges subsidence caused by CSG could affect farmland

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Farmers in the Darling Downs say even minuscule changes to the flat black soil plains could disrupt soil drainage and farming methods

A Queensland government technical study has acknowledged for the first time that subsidence caused by coal seam gas drilling could have potential consequences for farmers in the fertile Darling Downs.

Relationships between some farmers and CSG companies have become strained in the past few years, amid claims that one company, Arrow Energy, drilled diagonally beneath farmland without notifying landholders.

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Australian wholesale power costs soaring despite Morrison government’s budget claims

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Spike in prices in part caused by coal-fired power plants cutting output, says analyst

Australia’s wholesale power costs are soaring, with prices for most of the national electricity market running at double the rate promoted by the Morrison government in last month’s budget.

April prices are forecast at $175 per megawatt-hour in Queensland, the most among the major east coast states, ASX futures data shows. New South Wales isn’t far behind at $173/MWh, while South Australia at $150 and Victoria just above $100.

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Identity scam scuppered when country postie ‘smelled a rat’

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Living in a small town can have its advantages when it comes to the rising problem of identity fraud

Knowing everybody by name is a matter of course in small country towns, and at a time when rural residents are more prone than city dwellers to scams it is proving useful in preventing identity fraud.

Last month, in the western New South Wales town of Gilgandra – population 4,200 – local post office licensee Stuart Border “smelled a rat”.

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