Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Christian Porter is suing the ABC for defamation over an article reporting that an anonymous senior cabinet minister had been accused of rape in 1988. Porter later identified himself as the minister in question and strenuously denied the allegation. Paul Karp explores how this case could play out, and whether Porter can continue to do his job while fighting to clear his name
The crisis support and suicide prevention service Lifeline can contacted on 13 11 14. Support for sexual assault is available at 1800RESPECT.
School closures as more rain, flooding expected on mid-north coast; major flooding expected along the Hawkesbury River in western Sydney, as well as the Macleay River at Kempsey and Smithtown, and the Hastings River. Follow the latest news
Morrison warned the damage from the floods could be significant.
This is an ongoing situation that is evolving and is extremely dangerous. And we are meeting regularly to be updated on the events and to direct our response. We are grateful at this point that no lives have been lost so far.
But weakened foundations for buildings, of roads and trees, they all create risk as do downed power lines and rising water levels. So we ask all Australians in these affected areas to please use caution. Check and on your neighbours and those who you know that are alone.
As is appropriate this time, many members supporting their communities are not here in this place. Another deputy premised and the Minister for government services and other ministers are also reaching out and working closely with the mayors and other communities ensuring they receive every support. This will be a very difficult week for hundreds of thousands of Australians if not more as we face the immediacy of the floods, and there will be many difficult months ahead as the cleanup and recovery from this natural disaster gets under way.
We have very competent agencies and our state governments stopping they are very good at dealing with these types of emergencies. They are doing a tremendous job right now and theAustralian government is standing together with them in ensuring they can be delivering on this most urgent of times. But above all, we rely on Australians themselves. They have shown, as we came together, we can get through these things when we work together, and that is what we will do in the hours, days, weeks and months ahead, responding to this disaster like those before and then rebuilding and recovering afterwards.
Prime minister Scott Morrison is addressing parliament about the floods.
Mr Speaker, Australia is being tested once again. The east coast of Australia, predominantly New South Wales but also in south-east Queensland, has experienced an extraordinary deluge over recent days. Rains are expected for at least the next 24 and 48 hours.
In south-east Queensland, there has been intense rainfall with more than 300 SES requests for assistance, over the 24 hours until this morning with crews working through the night.
I want to acknowledge and pay tribute and say thank you on behalf of all of us here in this place Mr Speaker for the extraordinary efforts of our volunteers and the emergency services and responding to this terrible event. And there is a serious risk still ahead. Heavy rainfall is likely to continue up much of the eastern half of New South Wales and into southern Queensland today and tomorrow. Heavy falls will also develop over northern and central inland parts of New South Wales tomorrow, bringing the risk of flash and significant river flooding to several additional catchments. A different low pressure system is also expected to form off the southern New South Wales coast, bringing rainfall they are also.
Thankfully, the current forecast has conditions easing statewide from early Wednesday but we will watch and see. Mr Speaker, I want to assure residents and all storm and flood affected areas that all parts of government are working closely together.
We understand that this is likely to be for recovery support and cleanup operations including personnel, vehicles and machinery stopping the premier and they were discussing that over the weekend. We have also been just advised now in discussions on the potential for heavy lift aerial support but this is also still to be scoped.
Sydney Theatre Company is the latest to launch this year’s season, as Broadway and the West End look to Australia as the pandemic pioneer
“Australia has become a test case for the rest of the performing arts world,” the Washington Post proclaimed last month, as theatres across the country prepared to move to full capacity, while throughout most of Europe and the US they remain dark.
So yeah, no pressure there, says Sydney Theatre Company’s artistic director Kip Williams, two days out from launching the company’s complete 2021 season – the largest season the STC has seen since 2017.
And so we shall leave it there for today, and for the week. Here’s what went down today:
The NSW Government has announced an extension of the disaster recovery assistance, adding 18 LGA’s to the initial 16 LGAs announced yesterday.
In a statement, NSW MP David Elliott said the storms had already done extensive damage, and that with the weather not scheduled to ease until Wednesday, the full extent of the damage is still not known.
Severe winds, relentless rainfall and widespread flooding has damaged roads and properties, businesses and public assets right across New South Wales
Through the DRFA, a range of practical assistance measures are now available to help people get back on their feet and support councils with the clean-up and repairs to infrastructure.
City battered by rain as storms across the state trigger floods, a mini-tornado in Chester Hill and hamper Covid vaccine deliveries
Swathes of suburban Sydney were on alert for dangerous flooding after the city’s main dam spilled over on Saturday, with severe storms across New South Wales also triggering a mini-tornado, evacuations, and hampering coronavirus vaccine delivery.
Warragamba Dam spilled over at about 3pm on Saturday and daily rainfall records for parts of the mid north coast for March were broken by more than 100mm.
Bureau of Meteorology senior climatologist Agata Imielska also announced some rainfall records had been broken in the last day.
She said for the mid north coast and Hunter region, rainfall has broken previous May records by as much as 200mm.
To give you context of the rainfall, we have seen 405mm recorded at Kendall. So that’s a record heaviest rainfall that we’ve seen. Also, 371mm at Red Oak.
And it’s not just the total rainfall amount, it’s also how quickly and intensely that rainfall has actually fallen. So we had 160mm fall in just three hours at Kindie Bridge that resulted in also a record river height at that particular location.”
Sydney’s Warragamba Dam is set to spill over this afternoon and combine with river flows to potentially cause flooding across western Sydney.
The Bureau of Meteorology national flood services manager, Justin Robinson,delivered the warning at a press conference in Sydney just now. I’ll share the updates from that over a few posts here.
It’s a very dynamic and evolving flood situation and we could see some very deep and rapid responding rivers with very high levels.
Warragamba dam is right at spilling point. Good luck to those downstream in Western Sydney. Here's the capacity of the dam over the past month: pic.twitter.com/yn3vtOny2u
Locals who have endured months of mice and rats getting into their houses, stores and cars are praying heavy rain will help wipe them out Warning: graphic images may disturb some readers
Drought, fire, the Covid-19 pestilence and an all-consuming plague of mice. Rural New South Wales has faced just about every biblical challenge nature has to offer in the last few years, but now it is praying for another – an almighty flood to drown the mice in their burrows and cleanse the blighted land of the rodents. Or some very heavy rain, at least.
It seems everyone in the rural towns of north-west NSW and southern Queensland has their own mouse war story. In posts online, they detail waking up to mouse droppings on their pillows or watching the ground move at night as hundreds of thousands of rodents flee from torchlight beams.
The body of Toyah Cordingley, 24, was found in sand dunes north of Cairns in October 2018
Australia has taken the first step towards catching a runaway suspect believed to have murdered Toyah Cordingley on a Queensland beach before fleeing to India.
It has been two-and-a-half years since the body of the 24-year-old was found in the dunes of Wangetti beach, north of Cairns, following what police called “a personal and intimate attack”.
More than 100 federally funded clinics will take bookings for Covid-19 jabs from Friday and will begin administering them from Monday. Follow latest updates
This is Elias Visontay bringing you this morning’s main stories: some Covid vaccine developments, a growing political feud, and misogyny culture in the spotlight across the globe.
Month-long restrictions to come into force as officials warn virus could rip through PNG’s fragile health system ‘like a tornado’
Papua New Guinea will go into a month-long nationwide isolation in an effort to arrest a spiralling Covid-19 outbreak that threatens to rip through the country’s fragile health system “like a tornado”, health officials say, shutting hospitals and leaving wards without sufficient staff.
Hospitals across the country have already been forced to shut wards and departments, overwhelmed by a combination of staff becoming infected with the coronavirus, surging patient demand, and swingeing budget cuts.
Pared-back bill now relates only to casual employment; government faces scrutiny over its botched vaccine booking website. Follow all the latest updates
Two cast members of the Australia and New Zealand edition of the reality TV show have apologised for their past, after racially insensitive images resurfaced online
RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under has already been marred with controversy after two contestants apologised for past racially insensitive behaviour, one having performed in blackface multiple times.
Less than a week after the cast of the hit drag reality competition’s Australia and New Zealand iteration was announced, images emerged of contestant Anthony Price, known for his drag persona, Scarlet Adams, in multiple costumes appearing to imitate other cultures.
Jacinda Ardern has long criticised the policy and now the deportation of a 15-year-old boy has seen calls for Australia to be referred to the UN
They may be close allies, but the latest flare-up in a long-running diplomatic standoff between Australia and New Zealand has seen relations between the two nations hit an all-time low.
The source of the friction is a controversial deportation policy which Australia uses to deport hundreds of New Zealanders every year. Part of the country’s hardline and oft-criticised immigration policies, the dispute resurfaced last week when the Australian home affairs minister Peter Dutton used a television interview to refer to the policy as “taking the trash out”.
Cultured stem cells turn into blastoid ‘balls’, like natural blastocysts after egg fertilisation
Scientists have made clumps of human tissue that behave like early-stage embryos, a feat that promises to transform research into the first tentative steps of human development.
The clumps of cells, named blastoids, are less than a millimetre across and resemble structures called blastocysts, which form within a few days of an egg being fertilised. Typically blastocysts contain about 100 cells, which give rise to every tissue in the body.
Board belonging to big wave surfer Danny Griffiths believed to have made the journey via New Zealand
An Australian surfer has found a surfboard he lost four years ago after it floated at sea for thousands of kilometres, from the bottom of Australia to the top – potentially via New Zealand.
Danny Griffiths, a big wave surfer, lost his favourite board after he crashed off a wave at the very southern tip of Tasmania. It was found, covered in barnacles, by two brothers near Townsville in north Queensland, more than 2,700km away.
Aotearoa has a proud history of protesting human rights abuses on the world stage. Now that means pushing back against our traditional trade partner
Today a 15-year-old waits alone in a New Zealand quarantine facility, facing an uncertain future. Deported from Australia, he is not ordinarily resident here, and government agencies normally engaged for child protection are making plans for his care. Although Australia was his home, he was not Australian enough to be simply sanctioned in that nation for whatever infraction he is deemed to have committed.
This dehumanising treatment is what passes for necessary hard-line immigration policy in Australia. In its very high human cost, failure of binding child rights standards, and international criticism, it is very much in line with Australia’s longstanding approach to migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Australia has been thought of as outside human rights norms and any moral standard of fairness for some time. In fact, our neighbour has been repeatedly found to be enforcing policy that amounts to literal torture on its offshore prison islands.
Too often leaders are out of touch with what is going on in their workplaces. Defining a set of values is the key to progress – and leaders must live by those values
Through the whorls of Canberra’s streets and up the sweep of Commonwealth Avenue, Parliament House sits as a testament to democracy and the rule of law.
It’s a place of many rules, rules about where you can go and when you can speak and how you should speak. The guide to the House of Representatives’ parliamentary procedures runs to more than 100 pages, and points to a further 24 sources of information on the rules. Then there are the standing orders, which run to 164 pages. And that’s not even including the Senate.