Category Archives: Australia news

Australia’s science agency sent questions from Trump administration asking if it aligns with US government interests

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Questions include whether science organisation receives funding from China, and whether it is a climate or ‘environmental justice’ project

The Australian government’s scientific agency joins more than a dozen universities that have been sent a questionnaire from the Trump administration asking to confirm if they align with US government interests.

On Tuesday, the CSIRO revealed it had received the correspondence from the US. A spokesperson at the CSIRO said it was aware of a “small number” of researchers who had received the questionnaire in recent weeks and was “determining an appropriate response”.

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Murder charge for man arrested at Brisbane airport after 79-year-old woman found dead

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Body discovered with fatal stab wound at home in Brisbane’s north-west

A man will remain in custody after he was arrested at Brisbane airport and charged with murdering a 79-year-old woman whose body was found at a suburban home.

Emergency services were called to a residence on Chestnut Place about 4.20pm on Monday at The Gap in Brisbane’s north-west, Queensland police said.

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Queensland plans to build 2032 Olympics stadium on significant Indigenous site

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Despite premier David Crisafulli ruling it out during election, the government is expected to announce plans for stadium at Victoria Park

The Queensland government is expected to announce that a significant preserved site of Indigenous heritage in central Brisbane, a massacre site on a songline, will host the main stadium of the 2032 Olympics.

Premier David Crisafulli repeatedly promised not to build a new stadium to host the athletics during last year’s election, and also specifically ruled out building one in Victoria Park.

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‘Impressive, ingenious and affecting’ poem about missing an absent son wins National Poetry Competition

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Fiona Larkin’s poem uses Finnish grammar to explore her feelings about her son’s move from the UK to Brisbane

A poem inspired by the writer’s experience missing her son after he moved from the UK to Australia has won this year’s £5,000 National Poetry Competition.

Fiona Larkin’s poem, Absence has a grammar, was picked from nearly 22,000 entries.

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Brisbane Olympics 2032: why these Games could turn out nothing like we had planned

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The IOC – which gave us 11 years to plan – must be nervous about the state of affairs

The 2032 Olympic Games loom for Brisbane residents with equal parts promise and fear.

On one hand, there is the opportunity to write Brisbane’s name alongside some of the world’s great cities.

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Weather tracker: Severe thunderstorms threaten flooding in northern Australia

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A broad trough has dragged in warm, moist air and offers perfect ingredients for heavy rainfall and even supercells

Northern parts of Australia have been under a flood warning this weekend, with further flooding set to bring havoc to south-eastern parts of the Northern Territory and western Queensland early this week. A broad trough – an area of locally lower pressure – has been moving across northern Australia, dragging in warm, moist air from the Gulf of Carpentaria and providing the perfect ingredients for the formation of severe thunderstorms, and even supercells.

More than 70mm (2.75in) of rain fell in an hour under the slow-moving storms over the weekend in what is usually an arid, low rainfall zone with a desert/grassland climate classification. Some parts of the region have sparse observation data, but some local stations have been able to record more than 100mm within 24 hours, with 132mm of rain at Marion Downs, Queensland.

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Fire ant sting hospitalisations surge post-Cyclone Alfred as reports of first pet death also emerge

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Twenty-three people hospitalised with fire ant stings amid an increase in reports of the highly invasive pest in south-east Queensland

Twenty-three people have been hospitalised with serious fire ant stings amid a surge in reports of the invasive pest in the aftermath of Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred and a new $24m package targeting suppression of the insect.

The National Fire Ant Eradication Program has received notifications of 60 serious red imported fire ant (Rifa) stings in south-east Queensland since 1 March, with 23 serious enough to warrant hospital care. Separately, a puppy stung to death 15 months ago was reportedly the first pet killed in Queensland by the ants.

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Sydney woman charged after reports novel contained child abuse material

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Police seize copies of novel to be forensically examined as 33-year-old charged with producing child abuse material

A Sydney woman has been charged with producing child abuse material in relation to a novel.

New South Wales police said they began investigations in March “following reports of a fiction novel containing child abuse material”.

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ALP under fire for ‘repurposing racist meme’ with ‘we love Medicare’ T-shirt

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Labor admits it ‘missed the mark’ with social media posts sharing T-shirt that states ‘This is Australia, we eat meat, we drink beer and we love Medicare!’

An Australian Labor party social media post has left followers scratching their heads, with its apparent send-up of white nationalist messaging triggering the question: “Have you been hacked?”

The Instagram post – which was uploaded on Sunday and then deleted on Monday – features a white man wearing a T-shirt with a flag-themed map of Australia and the words: “THIS IS AUSTRALIA / WE EAT MEAT / WE DRINK BEER AND WE LOVE MEDICARE!”. The Instagram caption stated: “CALLING ALL AUSSIE PATRIOTS NOW IS THE TIME TO PROTECT OUR MEDICARE.”

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‘Apoplectic’ environment groups halt Coalition attack ads to take aim at Albanese over species’ ‘death warrant’

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Exclusive: Australia’s top green organisations suspend anti-nuclear power ads to fund campaign against Labor’s move to protect salmon industry

Australia’s leading environment organisations have abruptly suspended advertising campaigns attacking the Coalition’s plan to introduce nuclear power and are instead funding ads accusing Anthony Albanese of signing “the death warrant” of an endangered species.

The shift from criticising the Coalition to Labor on the cusp of an election campaign was agreed by the bosses of green groups – including the Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace, the WWF Australia and the Climate Council – at what campaigners described as an emergency meeting on Saturday.

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Alcohol safety ads to target young Australian travellers amid push for answers over methanol deaths

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Penny Wong says families of Laos poisoning victims Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles ‘foremost in mind’ as Smarttraveller campaign announced

The Australian government will launch a new alcohol safety campaign targeting young travellers as the families of Melbourne teenagers Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles, who died after drinking alcohol tainted with methanol while on holiday in Laos, continue to push for answers.

The friends, both 19, died in November last year while on holiday in Laos, in a suspected mass methanol poisoning that resulted in the deaths of six foreign tourists.

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What a $5,000 ticket will and won’t get you at one of Canberra’s budget night fundraising soirees

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As you decipher how the budget may alter your life on Tuesday night, your politicians will be raking in the cash by wining and dining donors and lobbyists

As you decipher how the federal budget may alter your life on Tuesday night, your politicians will be raking in the cash by wining and dining donors and lobbyists in Canberra.

This year’s budget night fundraisers – often concealed from the general public – could be something of a final hoorah. New laws capping campaign spending will soon make these budget night soirees less important, at least financially.

Tickets will have to be publicly disclosed as gifts, meaning there will be a record of those who sipped champagne with politicians and filled the party coffers. But these changes won’t apply until 2026. For now, the show goes on.

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Labor vows to support working from home as Coalition touts public servants cuts – as it happened

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Angus Taylor calls Labor’s energy bill rebate ‘Band-Aid on a bullet wound’

The shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, also says the Coalition will not “get in the way” of the government’s $150 energy rebate, announced last night.

We’re not going to get in the way of it. The starting point here though is very clear which is Labor’s failed on delivering its promise of a $275 power price reduction.

We’re not going to stand in the way of Labor cleaning up their own mess. This is putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. The solution here is to get a structural outcome which is a reduction in underlying electricity prices, which has not been achieved, of course. It’s gone the other way.

They are both supplied by the US with little to no sovereign input, are expensive and outdated. Like Aukus, this equipment is much more about signalling our loyalty to the US than defending Australia.

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Proposed nuclear power plants in Queensland could not access enough water to prevent a meltdown, research finds

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About 1,000 times the combined capacity of Wivenhoe and Boondooma dams was required to cool Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactors in 2011

Proposed nuclear power plants in Queensland would not have access to enough water to stop a nuclear meltdown and could strain capacity on drinking water and irrigation supplies even under normal operations, research has found.

Analysis by the Queensland Conservation Council (QCC) has found that one of the two nuclear reactors proposed for the sunshine state under the energy plan that the Coalition will take to the upcoming federal election would require double the water currently used by the existing Callide coal-fired power station. The other, Tarong, would use 55% more water than its existing coal station.

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Ningaloo and Great Barrier Reef hit by ‘profoundly distressing’ simultaneous coral bleaching events

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Scientists say widespread damage to both world heritage-listed reefs is ‘heartbreaking’ as WA reef accumulates highest amount of heat stress on record

Australia’s two world heritage-listed reefs – Ningaloo on the west coast and the Great Barrier Reef on the east – have been hit simultaneously by coral bleaching that reef experts have called “heartbreaking” and “a profoundly distressing moment”.

Teams of scientists on both coasts have been monitoring and tracking the heat stress and bleaching extending across thousands of kilometres of marine habitat, which is likely to have been driven by global heating.

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Changes in Help to Buy housing scheme will make ‘most first home buyers’ eligible, Labor says

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Minister announces increase in both income and property price caps as part of 2025 budget

Labor will increase the income and price caps for its signature Help to Buy scheme as part of next week’s budget, which it has promised will deliver cost-of-living relief.

Under the shared equity scheme, the commonwealth provides first home buyers with 30% of the purchase price of an existing home, or 40% for a new home.

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Bob Brown urges Greens to punish Labor at election if Albanese amends law to protect salmon farming

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PM’s pledge to protect Tasmanian industry will weaken laws already failing to protect natural sites and at-risk species, environmentalists say

Former Greens leader Bob Brown has urged the minor party not to preference Labor ahead of the Liberal party in Tasmanian seats at the upcoming election if the Albanese government legislates to effectively exempt salmon farming from national environment laws.

Conservationists have sharply criticised Anthony Albanese’s pledge that he will rush through legislation next week to protect the salmon industry in Macquarie Harbour, on the state’s west coast, from the potential results of a long-running legal review.

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Melbourne teenager charged with murder after machete attack

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Police allege victim, 24, was ambushed by up to 10 men and stabbed to death near Marriott Waters shopping centre on 14 March

An 18-year-old has been charged with murder following the fatal stabbing of a man by an alleged machete-wielding group amid plans to ban the weapon.

Timothy Leek was stabbed to death near the Marriott Waters shopping centre in Melbourne’s south-east on the night of 14 March.

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Suzanne drives eight hours to get ADHD medicine from a specialist. Australian GPs say they need more prescribing powers

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Exclusive: Royal Australasian College of General Practitioners urges Albanese government to increase range of medicines they can prescribe

Every three months, Suzanne Grobke makes an eight-hour round-trip to access the ADHD medicine her 12-year-old daughter depends on.

“My daughter was diagnosed with ADHD when she was three and we see a paediatrician in Sydney because it was up to a two-year wait to see someone regionally,” she said.

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Victorian Labor’s tough-on-crime turn could mark the beginning of the end for Jacinta Allan

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Victorian Labor has faced a ‘crime crisis’ before – but no matter how tough the premier talks on law and order, the Coalition is always willing to go tougher

It was meant to be the week Jacinta Allan took a firm stance on the “crime crisis”, but it could instead mark the beginning of the end for her government.

It began on Monday with the Victorian premier announcing a new police taskforce, Operation Hawk, which appeared, on the surface, a decisive move to combat corruption on government construction sites.

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