Category Archives: Australia news

War crimes: former minister reveals why Canada disbanded its special forces after scandal

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The drastic step was judged the best way to fix systemic problems after an affair similar to allegations against Australian forces in Afghanistan

A former Canadian defence minister who disbanded his nation’s special forces regiment in the wake of a war crimes scandal similar to that now facing Australia says the drastic step was the only way to fix systemic cultural problems and repair reputational damage.

The parallels between Canada’s so-called Somalia affair and the allegations against Australian troops in Afghanistan are striking.

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Australian politics live: economy grows 3.3% in September quarter, national accounts reveal

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OECD warns Australia over China exports; agriculture and trade ministers to meet wine producers – follow the latest updates

Philip Lowe is accompanied at today’s hearing by Guy Debelle, a deputy RBA governor. Debelle has just shown Lowe the growth number in the national accounts.

The governor is pleased. It’s very good, he says. (Lowe was hoping for more than 2% in today’s numbers. The growth number is 3.3%).

Jim Chalmers has responded:

Today’s headline number is cold comfort for millions of Australians looking for work, or more work. For many people what looks like a recovery on paper will still feel like a recession. #auspol

What really matters is not one quarterly GDP number on a page but how Australians are actually faring and whether they can provide for their loved ones. #auspol

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Could China replace Australian iron ore with metal from Africa?

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Analysis: Amid rising trade tensions, Chinese interests are keen to develop a high-quality deposit in Guinea. Analysts warn any restrictions on Australian sales to China would ‘send shockwaves through the market’

Across China and around the clock, furnaces fuelled by Australian iron ore pump out the steel the country needs to build its way out of the coronavirus downturn.

But as China’s trade war with Australia has become louder, working its way from unofficial stoppages to swingeing tariffs on barley and wine, so too have rumblings that the country may slow or end its use of Australian ore.

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Fears for Melbourne’s homeless forced out of Covid hotel accommodation

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Rough sleepers worry they will end up back on the streets as funding for Victoria’s Home for Homeless scheme runs out

When Painter arrived at the Birches serviced apartments in East Melbourne, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’ve always said I just needed one person to treat me with a little bit of respect and I’ll flourish, and that’s what I’ve done here at Birches,” she said.

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Australian politics live: Chinese embassy accuses Canberra of overreacting to tweet on Afghan killings

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Embassy official dismisses ‘rage and roar’ over tweet; new WA border rules not requiring quarantine to start on 8 December; Paul Fletcher complains to ABC chair about Four Corners program. Follow latest updates

And that’s where we’ll leave the blog for today. Thanks as always for reading, we’ll be back tomorrow, with Amy Remeikis at the helm in the morning.

Here’s what happened today:

And in further weather news, severe thunderstorms are set to hit Sydney in a few minutes. The Bureau of Meteorology has warned of damaging winds and large hailstones.

⚡Detailed Severe Thunderstorm Warning⚡
for DAMAGING WINDS and LARGE HAILSTONES. Forecast to affect Hornsby, Parramatta and Richmond by 7:05 pm and Sydney City, Sydney Olympic Park, Mona Vale and waters off Bondi Beach by 7:35 pm.
⚠️Warnings: https://t.co/qF3XejM6Tv pic.twitter.com/qnSGNfqZND

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France and New Zealand join Australia’s criticism of Chinese government tweet

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Former diplomat urges more countries to stand against ‘coercion’ from Beijing, as Chinese state media says Australia is ‘treating China’s goodwill with evil’

France and New Zealand have joined Australia in criticising the Chinese government for its inflammatory tweet about Australian soldiers, as a former senior diplomat called for more countries to take a stand against Beijing’s “coercion”.

The tensions between China and Australia showed no sign of abating on Tuesday, with the Chinese embassy in Canberra accusing the Morrison government of overreacting to the social media post and of stoking the issue for domestic political purposes.

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Australian lamb industry hit as Qatar cancels subsidy on $300m-a-year trade

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Deal supporting third biggest export market ended abruptly. In October, Australia heavily criticised Qatari officials over incident at Doha airport

The Qatari government has moved to cancel a subsidy for the Australian lamb industry, even as Australia’s agriculture and meat sector continues to reel from Chinese import bans.

Australia’s $300m-a-year lamb trade with Qatar has been underpinned by a subsidy program in place since 2015. It was due to finish in 2023, but the Qatari government made the sudden move to cancel the deal as of 31 December.

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Photo reveals Australian soldier drinking beer out of dead Taliban fighter’s prosthetic leg

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Exclusive: Image obtained by Guardian Australia shows limb being used to down drinks in a special forces bar in Afghanistan

Senior Australian special forces soldiers drank beer out of the prosthetic leg of a dead Taliban soldier at an unauthorised bar in Afghanistan – with a photograph of the act being revealed for the first time by Guardian Australia.

A number of photographs obtained by the Guardian show one senior soldier – who is still serving – sculling from the leg in an unofficial bar known as the Fat Lady’s Arms, which was set up inside Australia’s special forces base in Tarin Kowt, the capital of Uruzgan province, in 2009.

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‘Catastrophic’ bushfire burns half of Queensland’s Fraser Island and threatens ecological disaster

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The fire on the world’s largest sand island, also known as K’gari, has been burning for six weeks and is encroaching on areas with 1,000-year-old trees

A bushfire has burned across half the World Heritage-listed K’gari/Fraser Island – the world’s biggest sand island, off Australia’s Queensland coast – with potentially catastrophic consequences for its habitats and wildlife.

The blaze, which has been alight for more than six weeks, is threatening major tourism and rainforest areas after burning much of the island’s north.

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Kylie Moore-Gilbert thanks supporters after Iran prison release: ‘My freedom is your victory’

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British-Australian academic was held on espionage charges for more than 800 days

Freed academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert has paid tribute to her family, friends and colleagues who campaigned for her release while she was held in Iranian prisons for more than two years.

After 804 days in prison on espionage charges widely dismissed as baseless, Moore-Gilbert was released last week in a complex and dramatic prisoner swap for three convicted Iranian bombers in prison in Thailand.

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Head of Queensland LNP Women warns of party’s ‘culture of anger and mistrust’

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Exclusive: In email to fellow officials after election loss, Jenny Goodwin warns disciplinary process leads to ‘accusation of bullying’

The president of the Queensland Liberal National party women’s branch has emailed fellow officials to warn of a “culture of anger and mistrust”, amid an increasingly fraught fallout from the party’s state election loss.

The LNP’s governing state executive met last week to begin the process of a broad strategic review, including attempting to define “what the party stands for”.

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Australian politics live: Scott Morrison says Chinese government should be ashamed of ‘repugnant’ tweet on ADF soldiers

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Prime minister calls on China to apologise and seeks removal of tweet; Victoria revamps hotel quarantine program under single agency with private security banned. Follow all the latest

Twitter hasn’t taken the Tweet down, as demanded by Scott Morrison, but it has censored it.

The image defaults to hidden with the message:

Shocked by murder of Afghan civilians & prisoners by Australian soldiers. We strongly condemn such acts, &call for holding them accountable. pic.twitter.com/GYOaucoL5D

And yet, no one is responsible. Governance in Australia is so, so broken

I don’t support wording of Labor’s motion but someone needs to resign over the #robotdebt fiasco. How is it that only female Ministers like Ley and McKenzie resign? Where is the Westminster Ministerial responsibly? #qt #auspol pic.twitter.com/lfAClWfphp

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Australian PM demands China apologise for ‘repugnant’ tweet with fake image of soldier

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Scott Morrison says China should be ‘totally ashamed’ of digitally altered image depicting Australian soldier posted by foreign ministry

The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has demanded the Chinese government apologise and take down a “repugnant” foreign ministry tweet that depicted an Australian soldier cutting the throat of a civilian in Afghanistan.

As the outrage over the digitally altered image threatened to sink already tense relations between the two countries to a new low, Morrison said on Monday the Chinese government “should be totally ashamed of this post”, which he said diminished Beijing on the world stage.

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Queensland braces for record-breaking heatwave as Sydney enjoys short-lived reprieve

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Towns west of Brisbane to swelter over next three days as western NSW continues to suffer and Sydney’s temperatures forecast to rise again on Tuesday

Queenslanders are in for a record-breaking hot day on Monday as Sydneysiders get a short-lived reprieve from the heat.

Dean Narramore, a senior forecaster with the Bureau of Meteorology, says much of southern Queensland will be experiencing an “extreme” heatwave over next three days.

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South Australians urged to get Covid tests after man with virus goes ‘out and about’ in Adelaide

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Flinders University campus and three other locations considered ‘high risk’ after Covid-19-positive man breaks home quarantine
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South Australian health authorities are urging anyone who visited a Flinders University campus and three other “high-risk” locations to get tested for coronavirus immediately after a Covid-19-positive man broke his required home quarantine and wandered “out and about” in Adelaide.

While there were no new coronavirus cases to announce on Sunday, SA’s chief health officer, Prof Nicola Spurrier, revealed the “concerning turn of events” at a press conference.

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Coronavirus live news: Germany will decide which restrictions to lift in January; UK deaths rise by 215

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UK cases go up by 12,155; Premier of North-Rhine Westphalia urges people to observe rules; Dominic Raab says correct balance needs to be struck on restrictions

Italy registered a further 20,648 coronavirus infections on Sunday, compared to 26,315 the previous day.

There have been 541 coronavirus-related deaths in the past 24 hours, the health ministry reported, down from 686 on Saturday.

There have been a further 12,155 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases in the UK, according to government data. This compares to 15,871 cases registered on Saturday.

A total of 1,617,327 people have tested positive.

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WTO complaint ‘next step’ in tariff dispute between Australia and China, trade minister says

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Trade conflicts threaten global confidence as world economy struggles to recover from pandemic, Simon Birmingham says

The Australian government is continuing its tough talk against Beijing’s trade impositions with the trade minister, Simon Birmingham, giving the strongest indication yet that Canberra will take its complaints to the World Trade Organization.

China first announced it believed Australian wine was being dumped in China in August and last week the Chinese ministry of commerce announced tariffs on Australian wine products that would double or triple prices making export trade “unviable”.

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South Australia and NSW record new Covid-19 cases as Victoria passes elimination benchmark

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Two new South Australian coronavirus cases, both in quarantine, bring Parafield cluster to 33 people

A casual contact of a Covid-19 case is among two people newly diagnosed with coronavirus in South Australia, while New South Wales has announced eight new cases, all in hotel quarantine.

Meanwhile, the ACT has recorded one new case in a returned traveller and Victoria has surpassed the benchmark for eliminating coronavirus, recording a 29th straight day without a single new infection.

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Kylie Moore-Gilbert faces long road back to normality, says fellow former hostage

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Ana Diamond, who was held for more than six months, says the Australian academic was subject to a ‘sophisticated’ hostage-taking operation

Back on Australian soil, and safe in the enforced quiet of Covid quarantine, Kylie Moore-Gilbert faces a long road to recovery, according to another victim of Iran’s practice of seizing foreign nationals as hostages.

Ana Diamond was just 19 when she was seized by the country’s Revolutionary Guards in 2016, held for 200 days in solitary confinement and forced to endure a mock execution over baseless allegations she was a foreign spy.

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