Category Archives: Australia news

Green zone: Australian city of Shepparton to grow a huge pear

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The three-storey fibreglass fruit is estimated to cost at least $1.3m but historian says regional city in the running to be the ‘capital of big things in Australia’

Not content with building the world’s largest Murray cod, the city of Shepparton is now planning the construction of the biggest pear on Earth.

The proposal for a three-storey fruit in the heart of the Goulburn Valley has generated headlines in recent weeks after the return of a business case that estimated construction of the fibreglass fruit alone at just over $1.3m.

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Kanye West barred from entering Australia over Hitler song, Tony Burke says

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Home affairs minister says decision to revoke rapper’s visa came after widely condemned track released in May

The US rapper and artist Kanye West has been barred from travelling to Australia after the release of his widely condemned song Heil Hitler, which has been banned on Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube.

The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, disclosed on Wednesday that the government had revoked the rapper’s visa after his song referencing the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was released independently in May.

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Man in critical condition with lyssavirus after bat bite – as it happened

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NSW wild weather: ‘Conditions can become dangerous quickly’

Wild weather has brought down trees, damaged properties and flooded roads on the NSW coast, NSW SES says.

These incidents are a timely reminder that roads are slippery, and conditions can become dangerous quickly.

Please, never drive, walk or play in flood waters. If you do come across a flooded road, turn around and find an alternative route.

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Judge orders Queensland council to pause planned demolition of homeless camps

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Moreton Bay council agrees to supreme court injunction against evicting residents who had previously been evicted from another park

Moreton Bay city council has been ordered not to clear a homeless encampment after a hearing in the Queensland supreme court on Wednesday.

Numerous homeless residents of Eddie Hyland Park in Lawnton were evicted by council rangers in April, with their tents cleared by heavy machinery. Just two were granted public housing. Most have set up a new camp in a different park in Kallangur.

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Australia’s life expectancy gap narrows but men in disadvantaged areas dying almost seven years earlier

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Major causes of death contributing to inequality are lung cancer, respiratory illness and heart disease, ANU researchers say

Australia has made progress in reducing socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy but men living in disadvantaged areas are still dying almost seven years earlier, a new report from the Australian National University has found.

The study’s lead author and ANU demographer, Sergey Timonin, said the gaps in life expectancy between the most advantaged and disadvantaged areas stopped widening just before the Covid pandemic began and did not significantly worsen during the lockdown years.

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Tracking sea ice is ‘early warning system’ for global heating – but US halt to data sharing will make it harder, scientists warn

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News comes as research finds record lows of Antarctic sea ice had seen more icebergs splintering off ice shelves

Scientists analysing the cascading impacts of record low levels of Antarctic sea ice fear a loss of critical US government satellite data will make it harder to track the rapid changes taking place at both poles.

Researchers around the globe were told last week the US Department of Defence will stop processing and providing the data, used in studies on the state of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, at the end of this month.

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Coroner may call for prison unit where WA teenager Cleveland Dodd died to be closed

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Philip Urquhart tells the inquest into the 16-year-old’s fatal self-harming that the state justice department failed in its duty of care

Everything must be done to ensure no more children die in youth detention, a coroner has told an inquest into the death of an Indigenous teenager, including closing down the controversial prison unit where he fatally self-harmed.

Cleveland Dodd was found unresponsive inside a cell in Unit 18, a youth wing of the high-security adult facility Casuarina prison in Perth, in the early hours of 12 October 2023.

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Australia news live: some Central Coast residents told ‘evacuate now’ amid coastal erosion threat; children’s commissioner says child safety ‘not a priority in this country’

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NSW braces for damaging winds and heavy rain from coastal low. Follow the latest updates live

Gas market review will ‘drive efficiencies in the system’, King says

The resources minister, Madeleine King, says a review into gas market regulations will drive efficiencies into the system.

Our existing policy has made sure that that gas is available. So that’s that combination of existing policies brings in that extra 600 petajoules. So indeed, that work is already happening.

What we’re trying to do and will endeavour to do, and the industry is very supportive of, is to make that more coherent, and how we can make sure we learn from the whole system, reduce duplication in some of the regulation, some of the reporting factors, simply how we can make it work better for consumers, for industrial users, and for the Gas industry itself. And that drives efficiencies in the system, which we expect will help with pricing.

We were honest with the public from day one: the toll situation would get worse before it got better. That’s the reality of the infrastructure pipeline locked in by our predecessors.

And now, the most recent NSW Budget reflects that – with toll revenue projected to rise from $180m to $283m in the 2028–29 financial year.

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Women and babies could die due to midwife cuts at Sydney’s RPA hospital, staff warn

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Midwives’ union president warns women giving birth at one of the city’s largest hospitals will not receive a level of care considered safe

Midwives at one of Sydney’s largest hospitals have warned women and babies could die in light of cuts to the number of midwives staff deployed across the birth and delivery unit.

Hospital staff say 20 full-time equivalent roles have been removed from across the women and babies service at Royal Prince Alfred (RPA) hospital in Camperdown, including five from the midwifery group practice (MGP), effective from Tuesday.

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‘Shock to creative ecology’: NSW regional art galleries face funding crisis after state pulls financial support

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Peak arts bodies urge review of decision that jeopardises institutions which are the ‘lifeblood’ of regional Australian cultural life

Three out of four regional public art galleries in New South Wales are facing a funding crisis after the state government pulled its financial support as a result of a massive restructure of its cultural funding arm, Create NSW.

Wagga Wagga, Orange, Armidale, Broken Hill and Tamworth are among 18 regional centres in NSW with major public art galleries that will no longer receive four-year funding from the state government, worth between about $70,000 and $200,000 a year.

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Federal court orders Sydney Muslim cleric to remove ‘racist and antisemitic’ lectures from social media

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Wissam Haddad was sued by two members of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry over lectures in 2023 recorded in Bankstown

A Sydney Muslim cleric has been ordered by the federal court to take down a series of “fundamentally racist and antisemitic” speeches posted online, and instructed by a judge not to make similar addresses again.

But Justice Angus Stewart ruled other criticisms of the state of Israel and its military did not breach the Racial Discrimination Act, finding it is not inherently antisemitic to criticise Israel.

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NSW weather: Sydney and south coast residents warned to ‘stay indoors’ as vigorous coastal low batters state

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Emergency services minister says ‘it may seem pretty bad [now] but the situation is going to worsen’ overnight with damaging rain and winds

Destructive winds and heavy rain are hitting large swathes of the New South Wales coast with authorities warning the situation will deteriorate over the next 24 hours.

Some areas received a month’s worth of rain in one day while others recorded winds above 100km/h as a vigorous coastal low continued to intensify on Tuesday afternoon.

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Prison treatment of Indigenous teenager Cleveland Dodd was cruel, lawyer tells inquest

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The 16-year-old was subject to ‘institutional abuse’ by WA justice department staff, coroner in Perth hears

An Indigenous teenager who fatally self-harmed in detention was subjected to “cruel and inhumane” treatment, a lawyer for his family said after the inquest into his death resumed.

Cleveland Dodd was found unresponsive inside a cell in Unit 18, a youth wing of the high-security Casuarina prison facility for adults in Perth, in the early hours of 12 October 2023.

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Lawyers investigate whether Hannah Thomas could sue police over alleged excessive use of force at Sydney protest

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Critical incident investigation declared into arrest of former Greens candidate who says she could lose sight in right eye

Lawyers are investigating whether protesters could sue New South Wales police over alleged excessive use of force during a pro-Palestine protest in Sydney, after which the former Greens candidate Hannah Thomas said she could lose sight in her right eye.

Thomas, 35, who ran against the prime minister at the federal election, was arrested at the Belmore protest which was attended by about 60 people on Friday. She was subsequently taken to hospital and underwent surgery.

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Australia news live: east coast braces for wild weather; former Greens candidate charged after she was injured during arrest

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Australia’s eastern states are in for another lashing of rain as a powerful low pressure system develops off the coast. Follow the latest news updates live

Australia’s eastern states are in for another lashing of rain as a powerful low pressure system develops off the coast with flood-weary regions a possible target.

“Tuesday and Wednesday are the two biggest days in regards to rainfall and weather impacts,” the Bureau of Meteorology’s Angus Hines said.

I do. I think this review that’s going on in the United States at present is fairly unremarkable. I mean … the other governments, the British and Australian governments … when they changed, had a review – so it’s not unreasonable the Americans do that.

I think, at the end of the day, a decision to have a nuclear powered submarine is a good one.

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Chinese authority scams fleece international students in Australia of $5m in five months

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National Anti-Scam Centre warns that fraudsters posing as Mandarin-speaking law enforcement officers are becoming more threatening

Scammers pretending to be Chinese authorities are increasingly targeting international students in Australia, threatening “serious trouble” and 24-hour surveillance and fleecing them of more than $5m in just five months.

The scammers claim to be Chinese law enforcement officers who demand that personal information or money be transferred to them.

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‘It’s not Chinese assistance’: Australia accuses China of taking undue credit for aid projects in the Pacific

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Minister Pat Conroy says Chinese ‘branding’ of multilateral development projects to bolster its influence in the region is a consistent frustration

China is bolstering its geopolitical influence in the Pacific by “branding” Asian Development Bank projects – funded in significant part by Australian taxpayer dollars – as Chinese projects, the Australian government says.

On the island of Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea to Australia’s north, the state-owned China Railway Construction Corporation has begun work to strengthen the runway at Kieta-Aropa, on the outskirts of the largest city.

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Australian influencers warned after several accounts inadvertently promote illegal offshore bookmakers

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Exclusive: Leon Australia calls itself ‘Australia’s #1 Interactive Gaming and Sportsbook since 2008’ but is licensed in a tiny island off Africa

Social media influencers have been inadvertently promoting a gambling company that poses as an Australian outfit but is instead licensed and regulated from a tiny island off the east coast of Africa.

The influencers, including someone claiming to be “Australia’s #1 biological male” and a duo called DegenerateAngelss, have also shared financial inducements from the bookmaker that encourage Australians into opening accounts with it.

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Greens call for investigation into NSW police arrest that injured former candidate

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Sue Higginson demands critical incident be declared after Hannah Thomas taken for surgery, but acting police minister says matter does not ‘meet the threshold’

A Greens MP has called for an independent investigation into New South Wales police arrests at a protest that resulted in a former Greens candidate being taken to hospital with serious facial injuries.

Sue Higginson says a critical incident should be declared after Hannah Thomas, who ran against Anthony Albanese in the Sydney electorate of Grayndler, sustained facial injuries during arrest at a protest on Friday. The protest was outside a business in Belmore accused of “supplying electroplating and surface coating services for a variety of applications including aerospace and defence technology” to Israel.

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David Crisafulli found to be ‘careless’ in not declaring $200,000 in payments related to company he ran

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But Queensland premier is not in contempt of parliament over the payments, ethics committee finds

The Queensland premier, David Crisafulli, was “careless” in not declaring $200,000 in payments he made after a company he had run became insolvent, the state’s parliamentary ethics committee has found.

Crisafulli became sole director and chief executive of Southern Edge Training Solutions after losing his north Queensland seat at the 2015 election.

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