Category Archives: Australia news

Craig Kelly egged in Melbourne; Ukraine ambassador flags need for more support – as it happened

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Ukraine ambassador flags need for further support from Australia; RBA says potential rate rises to hit borrowers’ repayments; PM says election call ‘won’t be very long from now’; Russia bans 228 Australian officials; NSW records first ‘Deltacron’ cases as nation records at least 30 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed

Australian Border Force officials searched 822 travellers’ mobile phones in 2021, despite admitting it has no power to force arrivals to give them the passcode to their devices.

In January, Sydney software developer James told Guardian Australia that he and his partner were stopped on their return from Fiji by border force officials who asked them to write their phone passcodes on a piece of paper before taking the codes and their phones to another room to examine for half an hour. The phones were then returned and they were allowed to leave.

It will be a big win for the Ukrainian forces in their attempts to stare down the barbaric efforts of the Russian forces.

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Dozens of evacuation orders in place across NSW as rivers expected to reach major flood levels

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Schools closed and residents ordered to leave as torrential rain falls on Sydney and already saturated catchments

Dozens of evacuation orders have been issued for parts of south-west Sydney with the Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers expected to reach major flood levels on Friday.

Water levels at the Upper Nepean River at Wallacia were tipped to exceed last month’s flood peak, while the Hawkesbury at North Richmond was expected to reach 10.5 metres by 10am, and as high as 11.8 metres at noon – just below the level seen in the devastating floods in February 2020.

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Caroline Kennedy praises Australia’s bipartisan foreign policy despite PM’s claims on Labor and China

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Nominee as US ambassador says there’s a lot more to the Aukus deal than just submarines as she faces US Senate foreign relations committee hearing

Caroline Kennedy, the nominee for US ambassador to Australia, has said the Aukus security deal will provide “a lot of deterrence” in the Indo-Pacific even before the nuclear-powered submarines are ready.

With Australia set to enter a federal election campaign within days, Kennedy praised the country for standing firm with “a bipartisan foreign policy” in the face of “Chinese economic coercion”.

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Zachary Rolfe’s ex-fiancee told detectives he spoke of getting paid holiday if he shot someone, court documents show

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Police officer denies making comments, which are alleged in an interview and statement released by Northern Territory supreme court

Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe spoke repeatedly about how he could take a paid holiday if he shot someone while on duty, his former fiancee told detectives, according to a transcript of a police interview and a statement released by the NT supreme court.

In the wide-ranging interview the woman also said Rolfe told her at different times that he was the first to get his gun out on jobs, and did not turn on his body-worn camera as he did not want people at the police station to see what he was doing.

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Former judge’s associate says she was forced out of job after relationship with Tasmanian judge revealed

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Woman’s lawyer says she suffered ‘punitive sanctions without any fair process’ to deal with conflict of interest in court workplace

A former supreme court associate who says she was forced out of her job after it was revealed she was in a sexual relationship with a Tasmanian judge has lodged a complaint with the state’s equal opportunity commission.

Sarah Gregory was photographed embracing her partner, Justice Gregory Geason, in a Hobart nightclub last year.

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Australian Border Force searched 822 phones in 2021 despite having no power to demand passcodes

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Greens digital rights spokesperson says officers should be required to get a warrant before going through travellers’ mobile phones

Australian Border Force officials searched 822 travellers’ mobile phones in 2021, despite admitting it has no power to force arrivals to give them the passcode to their devices.

In January, Sydney software developer James told Guardian Australia that he and his partner were stopped on their return from Fiji by border force officials who asked them to write their phone passcodes on a piece of paper before taking the codes and their phones to another room to examine for half an hour. The phones were then returned and they were allowed to leave.

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Craig Kelly billed taxpayers to fly to Melbourne anti-lockdown rallies

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UAP leader defends the travel expenses, saying his activities at the protests were parliamentary business

Craig Kelly is being investigated for billing taxpayers to fly to anti-vaccine mandate, anti-lockdown rallies in Melbourne, internal records show.

Kelly, the leader of the United Australia party, charged taxpayers for his flights to and from Melbourne for two rallies in November and December last year, which were organised chiefly as protests against Victoria’s pandemic powers and the Victorian premier, Dan Andrews.

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Australia news live updates: NSW flood evacuation orders; asylum seekers to be released from detention; 30 Covid deaths

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Seventeen asylum seekers expected to be released from detention; flood evacuation orders in NSW; Marise Payne meeting Nato members to discuss Ukraine; NSW records 16 Covid deaths and 22,255 new infections; Victoria records four deaths and 12,314 new infections; WA records 7,998 new infections and three deaths over past weeks; Queensland records seven deaths and 10,984 new cases. Follow all the day’s news live

The man seeking a high court challenge against federal intervention in NSW Liberal preselections has been expelled from the party.

In an escalation of the factional stoush, Matthew Camenzuli has asked the high court to prevent Scott Morrison’s hand-picked candidates from receiving Liberal endorsement on ballot papers pending the urgent case.

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More floods evacuation orders issued as Sydney exceeds annual rainfall in just over three months

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Residents in suburbs including Woronora, Bonnet Bay and Chipping Norton, near Liverpool, told to leave as Bureau of Meteorology forecasts more heavy rain

Residents in parts of Sydney’s south have been ordered to evacuate their homes on Thursday with severe storms across the eastern part of New South Wales prompted flood warnings.

State Emergency Services in NSW ordered residents in low-lying parts of Woronora and Bonnet Bay, in Sydney’s south, to evacuate the area by 11:30am on Thursday, in anticipation of worsening rain and flash flooding.

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Victoria’s Oz Lotto changes make it harder to win jackpot and are ‘blatant cash grab’, opposition says

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Allowing two more balls means overall odds of winning something increase but odds of first division win go from one in 45.3m to one in 62.8m

Australians’ chances of winning the Oz Lotto jackpot are set to become slimmer after changes to the game by the Victorian government.

The state government has amended the Public Lottery Licence to introduce two extra balls for Oz Lotto, which currently has participants select seven choices from 45 numbers, with two supplementary numbers drawn.

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Paddy Moriarty and his dog allegedly killed amid feud with neighbours, Northern Territory coroner finds

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Irishman’s death referred to the DPP as inquest rules he was likely killed after a night out at the Larrimah pub in 2017

A coronial inquest has found that Paddy Moriarty, who went missing from the tiny Northern Territory town of Larrimah in 2017, is dead and a feud with his nearest neighbours is likely to be the key to solving the case.

Coroner Greg Cavanagh said the evidence showed that Paddy and his dog Kellie had both died some time on the evening of 16 December 2017, when they were last seen leaving the town pub and driving the short distance home on a quad bike.

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Queensland child protection system failing Indigenous domestic violence victims, report finds

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Victims of family violence in childhood often only given support once recognised as adult perpetrators

Queensland’s child protection system is failing First Nations children exposed to domestic and family violence, with some victims going through their entire childhood without receiving therapy or specialist support despite being in and out of home care, a report has found.

Often it is only when a man is later recognised as a perpetrator of violence himself that he receives help for his experiences as a child, according to the New Ways for Our Families report, released on Thursday.

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Furious pensioner confronts Scott Morrison as Newcastle pub photo op backfires

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PM abused and mocked in Edgeworth pub hours after man interrupts Anthony Albanese’s Perth press conference

Scott Morrison has been berated at length by a man angry about pensions and his government’s failure to legislate a federal integrity commission, during a visit to a pub in regional New South Wales.

The prime minister on Thursday shrugged off the exchange from the night before, saying he was “keen to understand” the man’s issues and that he enjoyed hearing from people in the community.

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Briton who died with son in Australia landslide named as Mehraab Nazir

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Lawyer’s wife still in critical condition while second son stable after rockslide in Blue Mountains near Sydney

Tributes have been paid to a British lawyer and his nine-year-old son killed in a landslide while on holiday in Australia.

Mehraab Nazir, 49, had been hiking with his family in the Wentworth Pass area of the Blue Mountains, a national park west of Sydney, on Monday when they were caught in the rockslide. His and his son’s bodies were recovered the next morning.

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Paddy Moriarty inquest hears NT police recordings of man allegedly saying he ‘killerated the bastard’

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Moriarty, 70, and his dog went missing from Northern Territory town Larrimah, 430km south of Darwin, in 2017 with police suspecting foul play

Secret police recordings in which a man claims to have killed Paddy Moriarty with a hammer have been heard at an inquest into the Northern Territory man’s disappearance.

Moriarty, 70, and his dog went missing from the town of Larrimah, 430km south of Darwin, on 16 December 2017, with police suspecting foul play.

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Michael Towke claims cabinet minister texted ‘I believe you’ following allegations against Scott Morrison

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Towke claims minister messaged ‘do what you feel you need to do’ after he alleged Morrison in 2007 suggested he couldn’t be trusted because he was Lebanese

Michael Towke, the man who Scott Morrison beat to become the MP for the Sydney seat of Cook 15 years ago, claims a serving federal cabinet minister has encouraged him to speak out about his alleged bad experiences with the now prime minister.

Towke intitially won preselection for Cook in 2007 before it was overturned, paving the way for Morrison’s elevation to parliament.

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PM tight-lipped on election call – as it happened

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Matthew Camenzuli expelled from Liberal party after seeking leave to appeal preselections ruling in high court; Scott Morrison says he has been ‘upfront with Australian people’ about running full term; Albanese calls Berejiklian a ‘straight talker’ after second round of leaked texts; at least 23 Covid deaths recorded. This blog is now closed

New text messages from former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian have emerged, building on former leaks and labelling Scott Morrison “obsessed with petty political pointscoring.”

News.com.au has reported it has received a second screenshot of text messages between Berejiklian and a mystery cabinet minister, in which she says she is “so, so disappointed,” in Morrison:

Thx. I’m just so so disappointed. Lives are at stake today and he is just obsessed with petty political pointscoring. So disappointed and gutted.

We’ve seen unprecedented collaboration with both the local government and state government, with support being delivered in record time … we were able to get $3bn of recovery support out, in just over the first three weeks – that’s a record number of people supported.

The PM has written to Premier Perrottet to say we’re very happy to share in costs of that program ... but the PM has made clear that it’s for the one-in-500-year flood event.

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Mark McGowan condemns ‘morons’ for displaying ads outside his home linking Labor with China

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Trucks with ads showing the Chinese president voting for Labor have been seen across Australia this week

The West Australian premier, Mark McGowan, has slammed the “idiots” and “morons” who parked a truck outside his home with a political ad linking Labor with the Chinese Communist party.

Large trucks with advertisements showing the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, voting for Labor have been seen in cities across Australia this week, depicting the CCP leader voting with a ballot reading “Labor 1” alongside the words “CCP SAYS VOTE Labor”.

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‘Grab and drag’ proposal will bridge gap between assault and sexual offences in Victoria, experts say

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Law reform body says there should be consequences for offenders who make victims fear they will be sexually assaulted

Offenders who grab and drag their victim in a way that makes them fear they will be sexually assaulted could be jailed for up to 10 years under a proposal outlined by Victoria’s peak law reform body.

The Andrews government asked the Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC) to review “grab and drag” offences after a 2018 assault in which Jackson Williams grabbed a 39-year-old woman and dragged her into an alleyway.

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Pregnant women increasingly left out of pocket by Medicare antenatal consultations, doctors say

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Peak GPs body calls for Medicare rebate to be extended to cover growing complexity of care for expectant mothers

Expectant mothers are unable to afford some antenatal consultations, the peak body representing GPs says, as doctors call on the federal government to raise the Medicare rebate.

Dr Karen Price, the president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, says there have been significant advances in antenatal care over the years but Medicare patient rebates had not kept pace with the costs of providing it.

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