Category Archives: Australia news

Michael McCormack’s movie nights cost taxpayers $2,500 a ticket – and his scene was cut

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Exclusive: regional movie events in 2019, attended by just 137 people, were set to feature then deputy prime minister spruiking infrastructure spending

They’re the “problematic” videos that the finance department didn’t want to see the light of day.

Created for an “objective” infrastructure campaign, the videos featured a cheery Michael McCormack spruiking federal government spending. They were to be played before free movies in a taxpayer-funded roadshow through regional cities to promote the Building our Future package in 2019, ahead of the May election.

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Music improves wellbeing and quality of life, research suggests

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A review of 26 studies finds benefits of music on mental health are similar to those of exercise and weight loss

“Music,” wrote the late neurologist Oliver Sacks, “has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.”

A new analysis has empirically confirmed something that rings true for many music lovers – that singing, playing or listening to music can improve wellbeing and quality of life.

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Push to protect sexual assault victims’ communications with doctors enters Victorian parliament

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Confidential communications often obtained by defence lawyers to undermine victims’ credibility

Victorian alleged sexual assault victims will have the right to defend their confidential communications being aired in court under new amendments to be introduced to state parliament by Justice party MP Stuart Grimley.

The amendments to the justice legislation amendment bill 2022, to be debated in the upper house on Thursday, were recommended in two separate inquiries by the Victorian Law Reform Commission in 2016 and 2021.

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Australia news live update: NSW government seeks to suspend MP facing charges; nation records 26 Covid deaths

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NSW government seeks to suspend Gareth Ward; Craig Foster lashes treatment of asylum seekers in National Press Club address; new research suggests long-lasting Covid immune response from vaccine-induced T-cells; at least 26 Covid deaths recorded; Atagi expected to green light fourth booster shots for some Australians. Follow all the day’s news live

David Koch:

Have you spoken to the “mean girls” – Kristina Keneally, Penny Wong – in the last week or so since Kimberly Kitching’s death about the allegations of bullying?

I think that term is really unfortunate.

She used it, it is not just us.

There is a lot of people speaking on other people’s behalf at the moment. I think that in politics, there are a range of people who are involved in party politics who play it pretty hard. One of those was Kimberly Kitching. She was somebody who engaged in politics and was passionate about her belief and from time to time that could produce some conflict. But it needs to be done in a way that is respectful, in a way that is understanding, and attempts to reach consensus.

It is rather bizarre ... I am always available and indeed I lobby regularly to be on the Sunrise program. I am always happy to discuss things with the media, but I won’t be taking lectures from a prime minister who visited Lismore and had strict streets shut off so victims of floods could not get near him.

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Climate change spat splits Lismore council in flood aftermath

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Motion thanking community should not be ‘political’ and reference to climate change was ‘piss poor’, councillor says

The Lismore council was gripped by in-fighting on Tuesday night over whether it should make references to “climate change” following the flood disaster and an eleventh-hour decision to pause its work on flood mitigation, despite warnings the “optics” of doing so were “not good”.

The disaster-ravaged town is still in the early stages of recovering from an unprecedented 14.37-metre flood, which wiped out thousands of homes and businesses and brought Lismore to its knees.

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Aged care workers struggle to cover basics as low wages and rising living costs take toll

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Full-time income of a single parent worker not enough for essential expenses, Australian Aged Care Collaboration report reveals

Aged care workers are being priced out of their communities, with low wages and rising living costs leaving a worker in a typical two-parent household with $34 of disposable income each week, and a single parent full-time worker unable to cover basic expenses.

The findings come from a report published on Wednesday by the Australian Aged Care Collaboration (AACC), a group of six aged care peak bodies. The report compared average wages for workers in the residential and home care sectors against key cost of living indicators including average rents, childcare expenses, grocery costs, and petrol.

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Hillsong’s Brian Houston resigns from megachurch

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Resignation comes after internal investigations found Houston engaged in inappropriate conduct ‘of serious concern’

Hillsong’s founding pastor, Brian Houston, has resigned from the megachurch he founded in Sydney two decades ago after internal investigations found he had engaged in inappropriate conduct of “serious concern” with two women.

Houston stood down last Friday, but following another emergency staff meeting on Wednesday the Sydney-based church issued a brief statement announcing his resignation.

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Woman threatened by stranger with photos of her and Ben Roberts-Smith having sex, court told

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Woman who had affair with former SAS soldier tells defamation trial she was ‘simultaneously in love and afraid of him’

A woman who had an affair with Ben Roberts-Smith has told a court she was confronted by a stranger who showed her photos of her having sex with Roberts-Smith in a hotel room, and threatened to make them public if she didn’t confess the affair to the veteran’s wife.

The woman, anonymised before the court as Person 17, gave evidence about the torrid end of her affair with Roberts-Smith to the federal court Wednesday morning, saying she was “scared” he would “seek payback”.

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Giant of the Australian bush takes top spot in Eucalypt of the Year competition

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Eucalyptus regnans, commonly known as mountain ash, swamp gum and stringy gum, named Australia’s favourite eucalypt

The mountain ash has towered above its competition to be voted Australia’s favourite eucalypt.

Eucalyptus regnans, commonly known as the mountain ash in Victoria, the swamp gum in Tasmania, and the stringy gum, has won a public vote to be named the 2022 Eucalypt of the Year.

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‘I was afraid of what he might do’: woman tells court Ben Roberts-Smith punched her and threatened to burn down her house

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Woman who had affair with former SAS soldier tells defamation trial he refused to take her to hospital for treatment and took naked photos of her while she slept

Ben Roberts-Smith punched a woman he was having an affair with in the face, refused to take her to hospital when she pleaded for medical help, and then took pictures of her naked while she slept, the woman has told the federal court.

In an emotional two hours in the witness box, the woman, who has been anonymised before the court as Person 17, gave evidence about a tempestuous six-month relationship she had with the former SAS soldier, which she alleges was at times threatening and violent.

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Law should change to reflect how Victorian budgets affect gender equality, report says

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Committee says current moves towards ‘gender responsive budgeting’ should go further

Assessing how the state budget affects Victorians based on their gender should become enshrined in law, a parliamentary committee has found.

The state government announced it would establish a “gender responsive budgeting” unit as part of its 2021/22 budget last year, in a push towards equality for women in budget decisions.

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Australia internet outage: 15,000 major news and government websites affected by .au error

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Exact cause of issue which left many users unable to access sites for an hour is under investigation

More than 15,000 Australian websites, including major news sites and government department pages, were taken offline by a major outage on Tuesday.

An error in the Domain Name System, often referred to as the phonebook of the internet, blocked people reaching some .au websites, with the exact cause of the problem under investigation.

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China could ‘take out’ Australian satellites says new head of Defence’s space command

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But experts warn again accelerating ‘an upward spiral towards a less stable and more risky space environment’

The new head of the defence force’s space command says she is “scared” by the activities of China and Russia and concerned by Australia’s current inability to combat those threats.

Air vice-marshal Cath Roberts on Tuesday warned that a Beijing-controlled satellite could, for example, easily “take out” the National Broadband Network for regional Australia.

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NSW Liberal MP criticised after speaking at anti-vaccination rally

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Tanya Davies says her government needs to end vaccine mandates, sparking criticism from Labor

The New South Wales Liberal MP Tanya Davies has hit out at her government over its Covid vaccination mandates for the public sector, claiming she has been working with the premier, Dominic Perrottet, to end them and get people back into jobs.

Speaking at an anti-vaccination rally outside parliament on Tuesday, the former minister said she was “dismayed” when her government introduced the measure and called for a return to “freedom”.

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SA hospitals under ‘extraordinary strain’; Perrottet asks MP to resign after charges – as it happened

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NSW MP Gareth Ward denies historic sexual abuse allegations; South Australian hospital system ‘under extraordinary strain’ new premier says, as at least 23 Covid deaths recorded nationally; Anthony Albanese proposes award in late Victorian senator Kimberley Kitching’s honour. This blog is now closed

Peter Malinauskas has promised to keep his shirt on from now on, after a photo of his muscled torso made quite a stir in the world of Australian politics.

ABC radio host Patricia Karvelas:

During the campaign, you were photographed shirtless in swimming shorts, and it caused a bit of a stir. I have to ask you ... the Australian’s Greg Sheridan said jokingly on [ABC] Insiders that you’re “far too good looking”. Which I thought was quite a statement. What have you made of the reaction to that picture?

Do you have any idea how much grief I’ve copped around the place as a result of that?

Have they told you just to buff to be premier?

They’ve piled it on, let me tell you. I haven’t stopped copping it, and I deserve every bit of it.

We were announcing a big investment at our major aquatics centre here in South Australia and a whole bunch of us jumped in for a swim in our boardies with our kids there. And, yeah, it got a bit more attention than I anticipated, fair to say.

So you’re going to keep your shirt on from now on?

Damn straight!

I think we’re about to see a federal election where a cost of living is a front and centre issue. And I think Australians get the price of petrol, but they can’t control the price of groceries.

The way we address cost of living as a nation is to start having an incomes policy focus on how we improve working in small businesses to improve the productivity of their labour, so they can earn a higher income. And that’s why education, training and skills is so important.

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Ben Roberts-Smith defamation trial: woman who war veteran had affair with to give evidence

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Person 17, who is at the centre of an allegation of domestic violence, which Ben Roberts-Smith denies, will enter the witness box

The woman with whom Ben Roberts-Smith was having an affair - and who is at the centre of an allegation of domestic violence against him - is expected to give evidence in his defamation trial Tuesday afternoon.

The trial has spent weeks focused on Australian SAS missions in Afghanistan, with a series of former comrades giving evidence about actions on operation, but it will shift its focus to Australia as the woman, anonymised in court documents as Person 17, to enter the witness box.

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Over a third of all Australians live in childcare ‘deserts’, research says

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Report also shows women’s participation in workforce lower in areas where children outnumber available places by 3:1 or more

When Nicole Greem decided to return to her job as a nurse after maternity leave, her biggest stumbling block wasn’t whether she could find work, but whether she could access childcare.

Like many places in regional New South Wales, Bourke, where Greem and her family live, had been crying out for healthcare workers. But even those who lived there were struggling to take up the shifts they wanted.

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Labor government would present second 2022 budget to correct ‘decade of rorts and waste’, shadow treasurer says

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Jim Chalmers says if elected, an Albanese government will deliver a ‘proper’ budget before the end of the year to amend ‘damage of the last 10 years’

A Labor government would present a second “proper” budget in 2022 if elected to correct the “decade of rorts and waste” they expect to be bookended by treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s budget next week.

The shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, will tell the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Tuesday an Albanese government would release its own budget by the time of the traditional mid-year fiscal update in December, if not sooner.

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Peter Dutton says space command needed as some countries ‘see space as a territory for their taking’

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Defence minister argues boundary between competition and conflict ‘increasingly blurred’ after Russia destroyed satellite leaving ‘lethal debris’

Space must not become “a new realm for conflict”, Peter Dutton will say as he launches the Australian defence force’s new space command.

The defence minister will on Tuesday accuse some countries – including Russia – of seeing “space as a territory for their taking”. Dutton will tell a conference in Canberra that Australia will work with allies to push for “a safe, stable and secure space domain”.

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Guardian Essential poll: voters mark Morrison government down on flood response

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Separate Australian National University longitudinal survey suggests Coalition primary vote slumps to 32.2% with Labor in election-winning position

Voters are underwhelmed by the Morrison government’s response to recent catastrophic flooding in New South Wales and Queensland, and a majority fear disasters will be worse in the absence of significant action to address climate risks, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll.

The survey of 1,091 voters finds only 26% of respondents characterised the Coalition’s recent flood disaster response as good, while 40% thought poor and 34% said neither good nor poor.

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