Category Archives: Australia news

Native forest logging must end in order to reach Labor’s emissions reduction target, expert says

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Murray Watt says ‘it’s not the government’s intention to stop old growth logging’ as Greens and academics press for total halt

The Albanese government is being urged to end old growth logging “at a minimum” in order to meet a 2035 emissions reduction target recommended by the Climate Change Authority.

One of Australia’s most respected forest scientists, Prof David Lindenmayer, of the Australian National University, has also written to the authority questioning why it did not go further in its advice and recommend an end to all native forest logging.

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Abnormally hot days may hit Australia’s south-east after rare sudden warming over Antarctica

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Phenomenon extremely unusual in southern hemisphere and last occurred in 2019 when it contributed to worsening of black summer bushfires

A rare rise in stratospheric temperatures over Antarctica could influence weather into summer, with previous events driving hotter and drier conditions for south-east Australia.

The phenomenon – called sudden stratospheric warming – is extremely unusual in the southern hemisphere.

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Controversial Queensland mayor Troy Thompson resigns after corruption inquiry

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Thompson, accused of misleading voters about his military record, says he will now nominate in the byelection caused by his departure

A controversial north Queensland mayor accused of misleading voters about his army service has resigned.

Troy Thompson was suspended on full pay in November while the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) conducted an investigation.

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‘Blood on these walls’: Mudrat tears into ABC’s Gaza coverage during Triple J live set

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Australian hip-hop artist donned a Palestinian keffiyeh and delivered a blistering critique of the broadcaster and its treatment of Antoinette Lattouf

The hip-hop artist Mudrat used Triple J’s video series Bars of Steel to deliver a blistering critique of the ABC’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and its treatment of Antoinette Lattouf.

The federal court found in June the ABC breached the Fair Work Act when it terminated the casual broadcaster for reasons including that she held a political opinion opposing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.

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News live: Marles ‘confident’ about future of US relationship; Australian doctor joins Gaza flotilla

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Follow the latest updates live

Parents need boost to lift flagging vaccination rate

Parents need practical strategies such as easier access to appointments and bulk-billing to help reverse a concerning decline in childhood vaccination rates, research has found.

The top barriers were mostly around ability to get appointments easily, being able to prioritise their child’s vaccination over all of the other things that they have to get done, the cost of getting their child vaccinated.

We now know that that will be on the 20th of October. The point here is that they had spoken a number of times by phone. The relationship is conducted at many, many levels. It is going well.

We’ve got the lowest tariff rate. Aukus is happening at a pace. And so we’re really confident … about the progress of our relationship with the US.

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More than 300,000 Australians had Centrelink payments cancelled illegally, new analysis shows

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Peak body for community legal centres finds number of payments suspended due to IT glitch higher than department initially identified

Hundreds of thousands of Centrelink payments were illegally cancelled because of a glitch in the automated system that runs the government’s controversial mutual obligations scheme, the peak body for community legal centres has said.

The analysis from Economic Justice Australia shows about 310,000 people had their Centrelink payments unlawfully cancelled between 2020 and 2024 because they were not given enough time to reconnect to a job provider after missing a compulsory activity as part of their mutual obligations.

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China has announced its first target to cut emissions in real terms. What does it mean for Australia?

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With China accounting for nearly a third of the world’s total emissions, any cuts it achieves will make a substantial difference for the world – and for fossil fuel exports

Anything China does on energy and climate change is very big news. Its plans ripple around the world, whether that’s in changing the demand for fossil fuels or affecting the impacts on the planet from global heating.

On Thursday, Australia woke to the news that China’s president, Xi Jinping, had told the United Nations that for the first time his country was setting a target to cut – in absolute terms – its greenhouse gas emissions.

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Grieving mother asks doctors to listen to parents after toddler’s death at Monash

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As coroner finds that Melbourne hospital could have done more, Miranda Jowett recalls her desperation before her three-year-old died from sepsis

A grieving mother has pleaded with doctors to “truly listen to parents” after she recalled watching her toddler die from sepsis as clinicians stuck to their diagnosis that she had a fever.

“I will never forget the desperate attempts to resuscitate her tiny body,” Miranda Jowett said on Thursday after the conclusion in Melbourne of an inquest into her daughter’s death.

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Bali hospital denies allegation of organ theft after body of Australian repatriated without heart

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Australian officials demanded answers after the body of Byron Haddow was returned without his heart

A Bali hospital has denied allegations it was involved in organ theft, after the body of a young Australian who died on the Indonesian resort island was repatriated without his heart.

Queensland man Byron Haddow was found dead in the plunge pool of his Bali villa earlier this year while on holiday.

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Australia’s horrifying climate future in four charts – and how we can avoid the worst

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Maps released by the Australian Climate Service show just how bad things will get for heatwaves, drought and coastal flooding

Australia’s national climate risk assessment report, released last week, revealed a horrifying future if urgent action to address global heating was not taken.

The report looked at 10 “priority hazards” – such as bushfires, flooding and extreme heat – and the risks they presented across Australia’s way of life (you can read about the key takeaways from the report here).

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Horror film digitally altered in China to make gay couple straight

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Viewers outraged after same-sex wedding scene changed in Together, starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie

An Australian horror film featuring a scene with a same-sex wedding was reportedly digitally altered for release in mainland China, transforming the gay couple into a heterosexual one, provoking outrage from viewers who spotted the change.

The critically acclaimed film Together, starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie, was released in selected cinemas in China on 12 September. It follows the journey of a young couple who move to the countryside and encounter mysterious and grotesque changes to their bodies.

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Australia news live: Albanese heads to Trump reception in New York; number of regular gamblers rising

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US president berates Australia and others for recognising Palestine, but agrees to Albanese meeting in October. Follow today’s news live

Albanese to make case for US capital to flow to Australian economy

Anthony Albanese and Australia’s ambassador to Washington, Kevin Rudd, are preparing to attend a major investment event in New York in the next few hours.

American capital and Australian manufacturing are a natural fit. And if we move now, we can make them an unbeatable combination. We can put our investment partnership at the centre of a defining global opportunity.

The world’s shift to clean energy represents the biggest change since the industrial revolution. We are looking at ever-increasing global demand for clean energy and the technology that generates and stores it.

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Teacher takes legal action against Melbourne Catholic school group over refusal of pronouns

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State and federal anti-discrimination laws on collision course as Sacred Heart Girls College in Oakleigh refuses to recognise Myka Sanders’ gender identity

The Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (Macs) has refused to let a non-binary teacher use their preferred pronouns and title, in a case that has put state and federal anti-discrimination laws on a legal collision course.

Two years ago, non-binary teacher Myka Sanders – who uses they/them pronouns and Mx for their title – asked Sacred Heart Girls College in Oakleigh, Melbourne if their gender identity could be recognised at school.

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Months before triple zero failure, Optus claimed that giving live updates on outages would impose ‘huge burden’

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Telco had resisted new rules that will require greater sharing of information with authorities during outages

Optus claimed it would face a “huge burden” in having to provide real-time updates on emergency call outages to emergency services and the government, just five months before four people died during an Optus triple zero outage.

A 12.30am network firewall upgrade on Thursday last week blocked emergency service calls for Optus customers in South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and parts of New South Wales, with more than 600 calls not able to connect in the 13 hours it was offline.

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How DNA on a glass of beer at airport led to capture of Australian serial rapist, the Night Stalker

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Breakthroughs in forensic technology resulted in Glenn Gary Cameron’s arrest more than three decades after he terrorised women in Sydney

More than three decades ago, New South Wales police announced it had formed a special team to catch a man, later dubbed the “Night Stalker” or the “Moore Park rapist”, who terrorised women across Sydney in the early 1990s.

At that time, a poster with a sketched image of the man, based on one of his victim’s recollections, was released. Below the image it said: “Do you know this person? Serial rapist sought over possible seven attacks.”

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Australian health experts warn Trump’s unfounded autism claims about paracetamol may harm pregnant women

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TGA confirms drug is safe for use in pregnancy as doctors worry about effect of White House misinformation

Australia’s peak body for obstetricians and gynaecologists fears pregnant women will not take paracetamol when they need it and suffer harm from unmanaged fever after the Trump administration made unfounded claims linking it to autism.

They encouraged women to talk to their doctor rather than rely on the White House announcement on Tuesday, which they described as “not a no-harm scenario”.

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Government required to create plan to protect greater glider in major legal win for Wilderness Society

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Murray Watt agrees recovery plans for greater glider, ghost bat, lungfish and sandhill dunnart were not made by successive governments

The federal environment minister, Murray Watt, has conceded that successive governments acted unlawfully when they failed to create mandatory recovery plans for native species threatened with extinction in a major legal win for one of Australia’s largest environmental organisations.

The Wilderness Society has been successful in federal court proceedings it launched in March that sought to compel the minister to make recovery plans for species including the greater glider and the ghost bat.

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Police officer charged with assault after Hannah Thomas injured at pro-Palestine protest in Sydney

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Senior constable charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm due to appear in court in mid-November

A New South Wales police officer has been charged with assaulting Hannah Thomas, who sustained a serious eye injury after she was arrested at a protest in June.

Thomas was arrested and charged alongside four others at a pro-Palestine protest in Sydney on 27 June that was attended by about 60 people at SEC Plating.

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The government’s promised triple zero ‘custodian’ not yet staffed more than a year after previous Optus outage

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Consumer advocacy bodies and Greens say Labor failed to act fast enough to prevent last week’s outage linked to multiple deaths

An independent manager of the triple-zero emergency system has not yet been staffed by the federal government, despite it being a key recommendation of the review into Optus’s last emergency outage.

The communications minister, Anika Wells, said she wanted to “fast track” that process and others rising out of the latest debacle from the maligned telco, but consumer advocacy bodies and the Greens are critical the government has not worked quicker. Calls are growing for Optus to face multimillion-dollar fines even higher than the penalties from a similar incident in 2023.

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Sky News Australia admits editorial failure after guest insults Islam while wearing bacon-covered shirt

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Host Freya Leach sat silently while Ryan Williams called Muslims terrorists and explained he ‘wore’ bacon to protect himself from alleged threats of beheading

Sky News Australia has admitted a failure of editorial process allowed a guest to deliver a highly offensive diatribe against Islam while wearing a shirt festooned with raw bacon rashers.

Introducing the UK-based man as a “social media sensation”, Sky News host Freya Leach sat mute while Ryan Williams called Muslims terrorists and explained he “wore” bacon to protect himself from alleged threats of beheading.

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