Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Suzanne Harris and Tom McAtee may not agree on politics – but the pair’s pragmatism and ability to talk things out has kept them together for over three decades
Names: Suzanne Harris and Tom McAtee Years together: 34 Occupations: social worker and HR consultant
When the going gets tough, Suzanne and Tom get into the garden. “In the times where we’ve not had much money, or there’ve been difficulties with work or jobs changing, we’ve gardened,” Suzanne says. “It’s a good way of releasing tension, of working together, planning and being creative.” Tom nods: “Gardening allowed us to be together, to be able to share that tense period together in a joint physical activity.”
In this book extract, Amanda Laugesen says it’s hard to argue that Australians swear more than others, but we do our best, and we try to be inventive in the process
Linguist Geoffrey Hughes writes that “people swear by what is most potent to them”.
What is considered to be “most potent” changes across time, although taboo has often focused on the religious (hell), the sexual (fuck), and the excretory (shit). More recently racial, sexist and other discriminatory epithets have become our most taboo and controversial terms.
Victoria has only one active Covid-19 case but authorities are concerned about traces of the virus unexpectedly found at a Melbourne wastewater facility.
Victoria has gone 22 days with no new coronavirus cases while on Saturday New South Wales recorded 10 new cases in hotel quarantine. Queensland announced two new coronavirus cases and Western Australia one – all of which were in hotel quarantine.
The Coalition is likely to scrap any further increases to the compulsory superannuation contribution
It’s more than 600 pages and doesn’t make any recommendations. Yet, the retirement income review will inform future government policy decisions, provide cover for the government to ditch the superannuation guarantee increase and sets out what retirement could look like for today’s workforce. So what do you need to know?
Three food delivery riders recently died on the job, and their families are left with uncertain futures, and many questions
Chow Khai Shien died three days before the Melbourne lockdown lifted, holding someone else’s food.
He had been in Australia for five years, having arrived from Malaysia at the age of 31. First he was a student, then a chef, working part-time in a restaurant inside a casino. When the pandemic descended, like many other people around the world, he turned to food delivery – ferrying burgers and chips, burritos, and pizzas, across the city on a small motorised scooter. The car hit him on the corner of King and La Trobe streets at 7pm on a Saturday night.
Exclusive: Beijing ministers won’t speak to counterparts until Canberra discards ‘cold war mentality’, embassy says
Chinese government ministers won’t start answering phone calls from their Australian counterparts unless Canberra stops treating Beijing as a strategic threat, a senior embassy official has warned.
China is urging the Morrison government to make a clear decision on whether it sees Beijing as a “threat” or an “opportunity”, setting this up as a key precondition for resuming ministerial-level talks, which have been frozen since early this year.
When Steven Marshall fronted a press conference on Friday to give an update on day two of the state’s hard lockdown, his tone was grim. Someone had lied to a contact tracer, he said, which meant the state’s strict lockdown had been unnecessary.
South Australia reports three new cases in quarantine and lifts many lockdown restrictions. No new locally acquired coronavirus cases in NSW or Victoria. Follow live
If you’re still confused about what happened in South Australia, Josh Taylor has stepped it out in this report. He writes:
The state’s premier, Steven Marshall, made the admission after contact tracers further investigated a male with Covid-19 who claimed to have only picked up a pizza from the Woodville Pizza Bar.
A security guard who tested positive from the Peppers medi-hotel for returned travellers had a second job at the restaurant, and because the person claimed to have just been a customer, health authorities feared a wide range of people may have been exposed to Covid-19 through casual transmission at the pizza bar.
To Tasmania now, where a Hobart man in possession of enough fake luxury watches to keep Australia Post in bonuses for decades has been arrested by the Australian federal police.
More from AAP:
More than a thousand fake luxury watches and pieces of jewellery, a deceptive passport and 4000 steroid tablets have been seized by police from a man’s house in Hobart.
The 49-year-old is facing a string of criminal charges, including making false travel statements, after the Australian Federal Police raid this week.
Steven Marshall says state would not have gone into six-day lockdown if it had been known man had worked at Woodville Pizza Bar
South Australia’s six-day lockdown will end three days early at midnight on Saturday after it was revealed a male who tested positive for Covid-19 had lied to contact tracers over working in a pizza bar where another case had worked.
The state’s premier, Steven Marshall, made the admission after contact tracers further investigated a male with Covid-19 who claimed to have only picked up a pizza from the Woodville Pizza Bar.
Foreign ministry rejects calls by western security grouping to reinstate ousted pro-democracy lawmakers
China has rejected criticism by the Five Eyes alliance of its Hong Kong policy, saying it “should face up to the reality” that the former British colony has been returned to China.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian was responding to a statement on Hong Kong issued by the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, which together make up an intelligence partnership known as the Five Eyes.
“I see no other option than to issue you a custodial sentence for a period of two and a half years.” I still hear those words like they were said only yesterday. My stomach sank and my head spun. A million things went through my mind as I started having trouble breathing, and nausea set in.
I had never been to jail. I’d never had a criminal record. As visions of Wentworth episodes ran through my head, I suddenly had to pull myself together because shit was about to get very real. I was going to prison for fraudulent activity that I had committed under the influence of ice.
Retirement income review to emphasise Australians using ‘voluntary savings’, saying a lift in compulsory super rate would hurt wages growth
The Morrison government is laying the groundwork to scrap the already legislated increase to the superannuation guarantee, declaring the retirement income review has found current policy settings are suitable.
A summation of the retirement income review distributed by treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s office ahead of the report’s official release on Friday put greater emphasis on Australians using “voluntary savings”, including equity within their homes, ahead of raising compulsory superannuation contributions.
Australian special forces were allegedly involved in the murder of 39 Afghan civilians, in some cases executing prisoners to “blood” junior soldiers before inventing cover stories and planting weapons on corpses, a major report has found.
For more than four years, the Maj Gen Justice Paul Brereton has investigated allegations that a small group within the elite Special Air Services and commandos regiments killed and brutalised Afghan civilians, in some cases allegedly slitting throats, gloating about their actions, keeping kill counts, and photographing bodies with planted phones and weapons to justify their actions.
Strict six-day lockdown begins today to allow for a ‘contract-tracing blitz’ to contain a coronavirus cluster that has so far infected 22 people. Follow live
I married my husband in my early 20s, had two beautiful children: a girl and a boy. I was the luckiest woman alive. I thought I was blessed.
My son died at age 19. It devastated us. What had been a very close family began to unravel. My husband was diagnosed with cancer soon after and for the next few years we battled. After being told he did not have long, he began to take drugs. I joined him not long after. He passed away in my arms in 2011. My daughter had moved in with her boyfriend and was trying to build a life for herself, so I found myself alone, vulnerable and not coping very well.
Australian ministers urge dialogue to resolve dispute as Beijing says countries may pay ‘corresponding price’
Australia and Japan will “pay a corresponding price” if their new defence pact threatens China’s security, Chinese state media has warned, as Scott Morrison insisted the deal should not cause any concerns to Beijing.
The state-run Global Times newspaper declared the new agreement “accelerates the confrontational atmosphere in the Asia-Pacific region” and was aimed against China.
Insurance companies have lost a crucial test case on whether they have to pay businesses who shut their doors due to the coronavirus pandemic under business interruption policies.
The NSW Court of Appeal says they do, and has thrown out arguments from insurers that coronavirus is excluded from policies.
Meanwhile, a huge chunk of Darwin and surrounds is experiencing a blackout, with the temperature expected to climb to 35C.
Wide spread power outages affecting Darwin and surrounding areas. #DarwinNT Crew responding.
The South Australian government has announced an immediate six-day lockdown followed by a further week of tough restrictions as the state scrambles to avoid a second wave of coronavirus infections.
The lockdown will take effect from midnight on Wednesday after the Parafield cluster, which started from a hotel quarantine breach, grew by two overnight to reach 22 confirmed cases.