Category Archives: Australia news

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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”.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

Flinders University campus and three other locations considered ‘high risk’ after Covid-19-positive man breaks home quarantine
• Follow the global coronavirus live blog

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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”.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

Three-year-old child found dead in car at Queensland hospital – reports

Posted on by

A woman reportedly arrived at the hospital with the deceased child in the car

A three-year-old child has reportedly been found dead in a car outside a north Queensland hospital with a police investigation under way.

Police were called to the Townsville University hospital about 3.30pm on Friday, a spokesman told Guardian Australia.

Continue reading...

Kylie Moore-Gilbert’s release shows dangers of making deals with Iran

Posted on by

Talks over other dual-national detainees risk encouraging Tehran to see hostage-taking as a winning strategy

The release of Kylie Moore-Gilbert, the British Australian academic, is a bittersweet moment for the relatives across the globe of other Iranian dual nationals still trapped in Iranian jails. Many families celebrated her release, but also asked themselves again whether their own governments are doing all they can to bring their loved ones home.

Sherry Izadi, the wife of a 66-year-old British-Iranian construction engineer, Anoosheh Ashoori, jailed for 10 years, told the Guardian: “It is extraordinary the lengths the Australian government was prepared to go to secure her release. They seem to have persuaded the Thai government to exchange three Iranians accused of terrorism in return for her release.” The three-way negotiations between the governments took six months.

Continue reading...

Dfat reveals 36,875 Australians are stranded overseas, including 8,070 vulnerable people – live news

Posted on by

Scott Morrison says Kylie Moore-Gilbert’s release from Iranian prison a ‘miracle’; Labor and Greens accuse Berejiklian over council grants; an Adelaide high school is closed after Covid case – follow updates

I’ll be passing over the blog to my colleague Michael McGowan, who will take you through the next part of the afternoon.

I’ve been Elias Visontay. Have a great afternoon.

The high court has granted special leave to appeal in a landmark case on casual employment.

In the Workpac v Rosatto decision the federal court found employees described as casuals could be owed further entitlements if they performed regular, permanent work.

Continue reading...

Kylie Moore-Gilbert released from Iran jail in prisoner exchange

Posted on by

British-Australian academic has been imprisoned in Iran since 2018

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, the Australian-British academic detained by Iran on espionage charges, has been released in a prisoner exchange for three Iranians.

In what will be seen as a victory for Iranian state hostage-taking by some and a humanitarian move by others, Moore-Gilbert was released on Wednesday morning. The move also raises hopes for the fate of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, dual UK-Iranian nationals who have been held since 2016 and 2017 respectively.

Continue reading...

Coronavirus live news: Germany reports record daily deaths; Sicily asks Cuba to send doctors and nurses

Posted on by

Germany reports 410 Covid-related deaths in 24 hours; Sicilian hospitals struggling with shortage of medical personnel; global cases near 60m cases

The regional government of Madrid is proposing allowing groups of up to 10 people to gather on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day and the feast of the Epiphany (6 January). The number of different households allowed to mix would be capped at three.

Under the plans, which have been submitted to the central government, the current midnight to 6am curfew would be replaced on those days by one running from 1.30am to 6am.

Authorities in Sicily have asked Cuba’s government to send to the region about 60 health operators, including doctors and nurses, as hospitals are struggling with a shortage of medical personnel during the second wave.

The request was filed this week to the Italian embassy in Cuba and consists of intensive care specialists, nurses, anaesthetists, resuscitators, virologists and pneumologists, the Italian newspaper la Repubblica has reported.

Continue reading...