Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
No new properties have been purchased under the Queensland government program since 2017, a report finds
Cape York Indigenous groups have warned that a successful Queensland government program to return land to traditional owners is on the verge of stalling, potentially leaving large and significant swathes of the peninsula at the mercy of mining speculators.
The Cape York land tenure resolution program has returned more than 4m hectares of land to traditional owner groups since 2007, including about 2m hectares that is designated as national park.
Gladys Berejiklian says a NSW Covid immunisation centre will be capable of administering 30,000 doses a week; EU denies blocking further shipments of AstraZeneca earmarked for Australia. Follow the latest updates, live
Australia needs to manage the increasingly complex relationship with China, even as the government seeks areas to diversify its export markets, according to a new report out this afternoon.
The Asia Taskforce – which includes the Business Council of Australia and Asia Society Australia – calls for a target of boosting Australia’s exports to 35% of GDP by 2030 (up from 29% in 2019).
Popular support for the open economy cannot be taken for granted. Retreating to old familiar relationships in western markets, falling behind in Asia literacy and failing to build connections with new Asian business partners should not be seen as a serious default choice when consumption in Asia will likely fuel future global growth.
The Greens are once again calling for an independent rapid review into the vaccine rollout to identify any issues and restore public confidence.
Senator Rachel Siewert, Greens spokesperson for health, said in a statement:
With targets missed, persistent problems with vaccine supply, and troubles getting the available vaccines to where they’re needed, the rollout of these vital jabs hardly inspires confidence...
We shouldn’t let this devolve into a game of finger pointing and blaming shifting between the federal and state governments. This pointless squabble doesn’t inspire confidence in the rollout, and can only serve to add further delays to the process.
Australia has accused the EU of ‘semantics’ after European Commission said just one shipment of 250,000 AstraZeneca doses has been formally blocked, but Coalition says AZ has not been able to secure an export licence from Europe
Scott Morrison denies his government has presented the public with overly rosy assessments about the state of its Covid-19 vaccine rollout, as he steps up calls for the European Union to allow 3.1m outstanding AstraZeneca doses to be shipped to Australia.
While declaring that vaccine supply issues were a matter of “straightforward maths”, the prime minister also attempted to calm a growing diplomatic dispute between Australia and the EU, insisting he had not made any criticism of Brussels over its handling of the matter.
Prime minister refuses to say how many doses of AstraZeneca vaccine CSL is producing in Melbourne each week
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, has rejected claims Australia’s vaccine rollout has been held up by the batch testing of 2.5m domestically made doses and instead blamed international supply issues.
At a press conference on Tuesday after New Zealand announced a trans-Tasman travel bubble, Morrison said Australia had not received 3.1m AstraZeneca doses from overseas. He said that was to blame for the massive discrepancy between the 855,000 vaccinations administered so far and the missed target of 4m doses by the end of March.
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has announced details of a trans-Tasman travel bubble with Australia, meaning Australians will be able to travel to New Zealand without needing to quarantine. Though most Australian states have allowed quarantine-free visits from New Zealanders for months, New Zealand has continued with enforced isolation for arrivals from its neighbour, citing concern about small Covid-19 outbreaks. The move to allow cross-border travel is one of the first such agreements since the pandemic prompted countries to block foreign arrivals to stop the virus spreading
Australian Antarctic Division says 109 people on board were uninjured, but the incident was ‘potentially traumatic’ for some
An engine room fire that destroyed two vessels on board Australia’s Antarctic resupply ship has left expeditioners shaken as they begin their journey home.
The vessel, the MPV Everest, was in the middle of the Southern Ocean, four days into a two-week journey, when the ship’s portside engine room caught alight around 2pm on Monday.
After nearly a year shut off from the world, New Zealand is cracking open its borders, with a trans-Tasman travel bubble allowing two-way quarantine-free travel with Australia.
The NZ prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, announced on Tuesday the bubble would open from 19 April, allowing quarantine-free travel between the two nations. Travellers from New Zealand have been able to enter selected Australian states without quarantining since October but the arrangements did not apply in the other direction.
New variants of concern have changed the game, spreading worldwide and threatening to derail pandemic control efforts
At the end of 2020, there was a strong hope that high levels of vaccination would see humanity finally gain the upper hand over Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. In an ideal scenario, the virus would then be contained at very low levels without further societal disruption or significant numbers of deaths.
But since then, new “variants of concern” have emerged and spread worldwide, putting current pandemic control efforts, including vaccination, at risk of being derailed.
If just one in two new Liberal-National MPs are women, it could take until next century, according to the McKell Institute
It could take more than two decades for Australia’s House of Representatives to reach gender parity, even if women win two in every three seats gained by the Coalition in the next few elections, according to new modelling.
The modelling by the McKell Institute, a progressive thinktank, indicates the growing momentum for quotas to increase the Liberal party’s share of female candidates won’t be a silver bullet for equal representation of women and men in the lower house.
The west needs to make a credible case that its opposition to China’s policies is not geopolitical manoeuvring
“Wholly counterproductive”, was how Newcastle academic Joanne Smith Finley described China’s sanctions on her, along with a series of British politicians and lawyers, as punishment for their advocacy for the Uyghurs. That was putting it mildly. But is it the case that western sanctions on China will be, by contrast, productive? Sadly, that seems unlikely.
International outrage at China’s policies of incarceration and social coercion in Xinjiang continues to grow. As someone who has been engaged with the region for two decades, I see that as much needed. But it’s crucial the energy being generated is put to good use. The gloves may be off, but what is the strategy?
Christa Avery and Matthew O’Kane are on their way home home after being released without charge
An Australian couple have been freed from house arrest in Myanmar and allowed to leave the country without charge, one of the two business consultants said on Sunday.
Christa Avery and her husband, Matthew O’Kane, were refused permission to leave Myanmar last month when they were about to board a flight home.
New Zealand may have moved to curb rising prices but could cheap money have permanently rewritten the rules?
It’s hard to disagree with the New Zealand government’s recent assessment that the country’s runaway housing market has moved from mere boom to a bubble that endangers the whole economy. Prices rose a staggering 23% over the past year, putting home ownership way beyond most people not already on the fabled ladder – younger, first-time buyers especially. If it walks like a bubble and talks like a bubble, then it must be a bubble, right?
The only problem is that bubbles might not be what they used to be. House prices are being steadily inflated in many other developed economies such as the US and UK. In Australia, prices rose 2.8% in March, the fastest monthly growth for 33 years. But governments are in no hurry to copy Jacinda Ardern’s canary in the coalmine moment, as the renowned Société Générale economist and market sceptic Albert Edwards has dubbed it, and instruct central banks to make dampening prices part of monetary policy.
The Darwin residents were trapped after their vehicle broke down while attempting to cross a flooded river
Two Darwin residents were forced to spend nine hours on the roof of their car surrounded by crocodile infested waters after their vehicle became stranded in floodwaters.
Rescuers spent all of Saturday night attempting to rescue the pair after their Landcruiser became trapped when it tried to cross the Dingo Station river crossing west of the Northern Territory’s capital.
Australia’s acting chief medical officer says there will be no changes to the national vaccination program for Covid-19 while health authorities continue to investigate whether blood clots developed by a 44-year-old Victorian man are linked to the AstraZeneca jab.
Prof Michael Kidd said the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (Atagi) and the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) had not recommended any change to the rollout of the vaccine following an urgent meeting of health authorities on Saturday.
For the past four months, in the towering Richmond housing estate of Melbourne, community health workers have been hard at work, preparing locals for the arrival of the Covid-19 vaccine.
It’s a difficult but vital task. Many of the roughly 2,000 residents are vulnerable or elderly, use shared services and are densely packed into the estate’s five towers, creating a high-risk Covid-19 environment.
Guardian Australia picks the best and worst of the day’s pranks and puns
Last year was bleak. So this April Fool’s Day everyone from government agencies to brands and even Gina Rinehart jumped at the chance to generate some laughs in 2021.
Many organisations created their own promotional videos or press releases to test the credulity of the Australian public. Guardian Australia sorted through them all to bring you the best – and worst – of this year’s jokes.
The new feature to limit comments comes after an Australian court ruling that found news outlets are liable for comments on their pages
Facebook will allow every user including celebrities, politicians, brands and news outlets to determine who can and can’t comment on their posts.
The social media giant announced on Wednesday that when people post on Facebook, they will be able to control who comments on the post, ranging from everyone who can see the post, to only those who have been tagged by the profile or page in the post. It is similar to a change recently introduced by Twitter to limit who can reply to tweets.
NSW deputy premier says ‘there will be no moratorium on coal in the Upper Hunter or anywhere else in the state’
The New South Wales deputy premier, John Barilaro, has rejected Malcolm Turnbull’s call for a moratorium on new coalmines in the state and demanded the former prime minister “set aside his war on the Coalition”.
Turnbull said on Wednesday he believed coalmine proposals and approvals in the state’s upper Hunter Valley were “out of control”.