Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The PM needs to decide whether to let the attorney general’s defence be the last word on the case or to represent all the interests involved, including the alleged victim’s
If Christian Porter was somehow unaware that survivors of sexual assault in the #MeToo era have had enough of being silenced, the Australian of the year, Grace Tame, appeared at the National Press Club on Wednesday to remind him.
Only an hour or so before the attorney general confirmed the worst-kept secret on the internet – that he was the unnamed cabinet minister at the centre of a rape allegation from 1988 – Tame stood before reporters in Canberra and delivered a speech of piercing moral clarity.
Christian Porter reveals he is figure at centre of accusation dating back to 1988 and says the alleged incident ‘simply did not happen’
Australia’s attorney general, Christian Porter, has dismissed a historical rape accusation against him as “entirely untrue” after outing himself as the subject of claims made by a woman who took her own life last year.
Fronting the media for an at-times tearful news conference, Porter also resisted calls to stand aside as the country’s first law officer amid growing criticism of how the conservative government has handled accusations of rape and sexual assault.
Labor’s assistant shadow treasurer, Andrew Leigh, has been on Sydney radio contrasting the government’s attitude towards companies that got jobkeeper and welfare recipients it pursued in its unlawful and botched robodebt scheme.
At Leigh’s request, auditor-general Grant Hehir is investigating the administration of the $100bn job subsidy scheme, and yesterday Leigh asked for the probe to be extended to touch on stevedore Qube, which got $30m in jobkeeper.
But the bulk of Australian firms haven’t handed it back, and they haven’t received the pressure to do so because the Treasurer hasn’t come out and been clear about how the JobKeeper scheme operated...
In terms of the government, we gave Josh Frydenberg extraordinary latitude to tweak JobKeeper where it wasn’t working as intended. But he hasn’t used that at all to prevent money flowing to shareholders and executives. He’s been as silent on this as the government was noisy about RoboDebt, clawing money out of the hands of social security recipients in an illegal approach.
Attention at the Albanese press conference has now turned to the historic rape allegation levelled against a (currently unnamed) cabinet minister in the Liberal government.
Albanese has been asked if he thinks the minister should stand down:
Quite clearly, this woman told multiple people, including people in public life, but also her friends that she wanted an investigation of this. It is very clear [the government] are pretending that this will go away, it will not ...
It is very clear that, in my mind, that this will require further leadership and action ... and I await the statement by the minister involved, the presumption of innocence is a critical part of our legal system but now that the existing legal processes have been unable to proceed, certainly in terms of NSW police, I think people will be looking for further responses beyond any statement that might be made today by the minister.
I was very disappointed by Scott Morrison’s statement yesterday where he said that he hadn’t read the documentation that was forwarded to him by the woman who was at the centre of the allegation who then took her own life by her friends.
He then also said, essentially, that he had spoken to the minister and that he believed the minister. That stands in stark contrast to what Scott Morrison said in May of 2019. About the need to believe people. Who come forward.
Family suggests case of mistaken identity after Dr Osama AlHasani, 42, detained in Tangier
An Australian citizen facing potential extradition from Morocco to Saudi Arabia was detained just hours after meeting his newborn child, his wife says.
The wife of Dr Osama AlHasani – a dual Australian and Saudi citizen – has also raised fears about his welfare and says the family is confused about the precise nature of the accusations against him.
Police discontinue the investigation day after prime minister Scott Morrison said he would leave the matter to police
New South Wales police have confirmed they will not be investigating an historical rape allegation made against a sitting cabinet minister, citing “insufficient admissible evidence”, with police now considering the matter “closed”.
Independent Rex Patrick moves after similar parliamentary motions passed in Canada and the Netherlands
An Australian senator will seek support from fellow upper house members to recognise China’s treatment of the Uighur Muslim minority as genocide, after similar parliamentary motions passed in Canada and the Netherlands.
The proposed motion – placed on the Senate’s notice paper for 15 March – looms as a test for the major parties at a time when Australia should join the international community in taking a stand, according to the South Australian independent senator Rex Patrick.
Jeremy Samuel says the incident ‘was a very, very heavy weight on her. I’m incredibly sad for her on so many levels’
Jeremy Samuel says he met the woman who has alleged she was raped by a cabinet minister in January 1988 during that same year.
“I was her friend,” Samuel told Guardian Australia on Monday. “I just want to say that my friend was an incredibly smart, witty, talented and capable person.”
Researcher Shiro Armstrong says decline most likely due to Australia’s changed foreign investment settings amid Covid
Chinese investment in Australia has collapsed, falling 61% in 2020, according to new data from researchers at the Australian National University.
The university’s Chinese Investment in Australia database recorded just more than $1bn of investment in Australia in 2020, down from $2.6bn in 2019 and well short of the peak of $16.5bn in 2016. The drop follows a 47% decrease in 2019.
Residents in some postcodes of South Gloucestershire are being asked to take a coronavirus test after a variant first detected in Brazil was found in the area.
People over 16 who live or travel in five postcode areas and do not have symptoms of Covid-19 are invited to come forward for testing.
While agreeing that police were best to investigate the complaint of sexual assault, which allegedly occurred in 1988, the Labor leader argued on Sunday that Morrison must separately “assure himself … the current make-up of the cabinet can continue”.
Exclusive: The street artist’s latest work saw 60 people parade through Lake Cawndilla in NSW, holding aloft enormous portraits of local farmers and leaders as they fight to save Australia’s vital river system
The mood around Lake Cawndilla in western New South Wales on Saturday is funereal but defiant, as a procession of around 60 locals parade through scrub and sand around its banks.
They carry between thema series of 30m-long cloth figures: three local citrus farmers and prominent Baakandji artist William Badger Bates.
Simon Birmingham rejects suggestion unnamed minister at centre of allegations should stand aside
As pressure builds on Scott Morrison to investigate allegations of a historical rape levelled against one of his cabinet ministers, a woman who had known the victim for 30 years has come out to say she “absolutely, 100% believes” her friend.
New South Wales police have confirmed the alleged victim reported the incident to them in February 2020, and the allegations have also been forwarded to the Australian federal police.
United Nations calls on all countries to have ‘concrete plans to phase out fossil fuels as fast as possible’
Australia has been accused of “shamefully doing nothing” and weighing down global action after a UN analysis found national pledges to cut greenhouses gas emissions over the next decade have barely begun to do what is necessary to tackle the climate crisis.
The assessment of emissions reduction plans submitted to the UN by the end of last year found if all were fulfilled they would cut global CO2 by only 1% by 2030, compared with 2010 levels.
Usually media-savvy Scott Morrison has been unable to find his footing dealing with the fallout of an alleged assault inside a minister’s office
Scott Morrison, the Australian prime minister, prides himself on his ability to shape media narratives. A former advertising executive, he is used to controlling the message. But over the past two weeks one story has refused to bend to his will and exposed a weak spot: women.
Morrison is struggling to manage growing anger over the handling of a young staffer’s rape allegation, the parliamentary culture at large, and how women working within it are treated.
Billionaire owner Gerry Harvey is resisting pressure to repay the money despite a $462m net profit for the second half of 2020
Billionaire Harvey Norman chairman Gerry Harvey has defied political pressure to pay back an estimated $22m in jobkeeper after the retailer’s profits more than doubled during the pandemic.
The furniture, electrical and whitegoods retailer on Friday reported that first-half sales climbed 25% and contributed to a net profit after tax of $462.03m for the last six months of 2020 – up 116% on the same time period in the previous year.
PNG’s Grand Chief led the country to independence in 1975 and served four terms as prime minister
The man who led Papua New Guinea to independence, the country’s Grand Chief and longest-serving prime minister, Sir Michael Somare, has died in Port Moresby, aged 84.
Known throughout the country as “Papa blo Kantri” – Father of the Nation – Somare served as prime minister for a total of 17 years, over four terms, and was revered as a pivotal figure in the country’s peaceful transformation from colony to independent nation. He is depicted on PNG’s 50 Kina banknote.
When you emerge relatively unscathed in a devastated world, there is a risk of being out of step, of lacking empathy
Most mornings, as soon I wake, I retrieve some voice messages left overnight on WhatsApp. Sent from friends in the Northern hemisphere, they are missives from the pandemic, a granular account of what daily life is like in lockdown over there.
For almost a year now, various friends and I record and send audio messages back and forth that contain the sort of ephemera that seems too slight and unimportant for email but satisfying to listen to in the morning as I have my first coffee.
Andrew Constance confirms he demanded the now-sacked transport department head to fell trees 40 metres either side of highways but was refused
The New South Wales transport minister, Andrew Constance, demanded the now-sacked head of his department create an 80-metre “clearance zone” around highways after the 2020 bushfires, an order Labor says could have resulted in countless trees being felled if followed.
During the state’s budget estimates hearings on Thursday, Constance confirmed he had issued the directive to the former department head, Rodd Staples, following last summer’s bushfire crisis.
A rogue sheep found wandering in rural Victoria has been shorn of his heavily overgrown 35kg fleece. Nicknamed Baarack by his rescuers, the merino ram was taken to Edgar's Mission farm sanctuary, where the fleece was removed to save his life. 'He was in a bit of a bad way,' Kyle Behrend of the sanctuary said. 'He was underweight and, due to all of the wool around his face, he could barely see'
Communications chief defends reversed ban, saying it is unfair to force tech firms to pay for news content
Facebook “erred on the side of over-enforcement” in removing links to hundreds of non-media organisations in Australia, Nick Clegg has admitted, in a blogpost defending the social media company’s short-lived news ban there.
The former UK deputy prime minister, now Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs and communications, said the tech firm had been “forced into [the] position” of blocking content designated as news after the Australian government refused to back down over plans to require it to negotiate with news publishers for payment for content.