Category Archives: Australia news

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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Coalition accused of sitting on environment report to avoid delivering ‘more bad news’

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Calls for report to be released before election so voters know ‘official state’ of environment under Morrison government

The Morrison government has been accused of sitting on a major report card on the state of Australia’s environment it received more than three months ago to avoid “more bad news”.

Labor, the Greens, the independent MP Zali Steggall, environment groups and scientists have called on the government to release the Australia State of the Environment report, which is produced by scientists and compiled every five years.

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Life after prison: Victoria expands jobs program for ex-offenders in bid to reduce recidivism

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Inquiry has found unemployment a key compounding factor in people returning to jail

Domestic violence and sexual assault survivor Grace* knows first-hand the discrimination experienced by ex-prisoners while job hunting.

The 27-year-old floated between the criminal justice system and attempts to find work, having been locked up for theft and drug possession.

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Australia’s first-home buyers urged to ‘go in with eyes wide open’ about future rate rises

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The good news is more places on offer in the first home guarantee scheme. The bad news could be higher mortgage repayments

Laura Valencic has never had the luxury of calling the “bank of mum and dad” to help her buy a home.

After the federal government announced more places under the first home guarantee scheme in the budget, Valencic feels like she finally has an in. But she’s wary of a potential pitfall in the future: will she be able to afford the mortgage repayments when interest rates rise?

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NSW principal’s Harvard scholarship paused due to school investigation

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Education department probes complaints about Katoomba high school’s response to claims of harassment among students

The principal of a Blue Mountains high school has had a prestigious Harvard scholarship put on hold while her school is investigated by the New South Wales Department of Education.

The internal departmental investigation comes on top of two court cases involving staff or students at the school.

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Australian federal police demand parties commit to ‘far-reaching anti-corruption body’

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Police say current anti-corruption regime is unequal and holds law enforcement to a higher standard than politicians

Thousands of Australian Federal Police (AFP) members are demanding the next commonwealth government establish a strong anti-corruption commission that equally investigates politicians and law enforcement, saying police are being unfairly blamed for gaps in the nation’s integrity system.

The Australian Federal Police Association, which represents 4,000 AFP members, has placed the establishment of a “far-reaching anti-corruption body” among its highest priorities ahead of the federal election, alongside improved support for officers suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, greater resourcing, and stronger firearms regulations.

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Australia news live updates: MPs respond to Morrison criticism; 20 Covid deaths; major Optus mobile network outage

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Foreign and defence ministers label Putin a ‘war criminal’; major Optus mobile network outage; ministers respond to criticism of Scott Morrison; NSW records 12 Covid deaths and 19,183 new infections; Victoria records eight deaths and 12,007 new infections. Follow all the latest updates live

Another senior Liberal has taken aim at Scott Morrison, accusing him of “self-serving ruthless bullying” and claiming he has “ruined” the Liberal party.

Catherine Cusack, a NSW Liberal who announced two weeks ago she would resign from the Legislative Council over her anger about flood relief, adds her voice to a growing chorus of critics of Morrison from within his own party in an opinion piece for Guardian Australia.

The concerns over the prime minister’s character are now well established, and they’re well established not by the Labor party, but the people who know him best.

I mean his own deputy prime minister called him a liar and a hypocrite*. These people know him best, they’ve served in cabinet with him, in the Liberal party with him over a period of many years ...

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Hosting two Rugby World Cups is an opportunity Australia cannot afford to fumble | Bret Harris

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Tournaments on home soil in 2027 and 2029 present a once-in-a-generation chance to revive the men’s game and grow the women’s

Australian rugby has been given a once-in-a-generation opportunity to revitalise the game in this country with the prospect of hosting back-to-back men’s and women’s World Cups only two years apart. In a tremendous fillip for the game, Australia was on Monday named the preferred candidate to host the women’s World Cup in 2029, along with the men’s tournament in 2027.

The dual World Cups have put Australia in a superb position to capitalise on the enormous global popularity of rugby, with the potential to deliver a much-needed financial boost. But it is an opportunity Australian rugby cannot afford to fumble as poor performances in the home tournaments would be disastrous for the game.

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Blue Mountains landslide: British father and son killed as two other family members in critical condition

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A fifth member of the family, who were holidaying in Australia from the UK, is being treated for shock

Crews have worked into the night to retrieve the bodies of a British man and his son after five members of the same family were caught in a landslip in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.

The nine-year-old boy and his 49-year-old father died at the scene at Wentworth Pass, New South Wales police said.

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