Grandsons aged six and seven found dead at NSW property in case police are treating as double murder
A woman whose two grandsons died in a regional town in New South Wales is in a mental health facility after what police are treating as a “confronting” alleged double murder.
The boys, aged six and seven, were found dead by police after officers forced entry to a property at Coonabarabran, in the state’s north-west, during a welfare check about 2pm on Monday.
Continue reading...Horsham local Glenn Coffey says he witnessed large numbers of sick birds falling out of trees and drowning in Wimmera river
Victoria’s conservation regulator has launched an investigation into the suspected fatal poisoning of 300 little corellas in Horsham, in the state’s north-west.
The incident, which began on Tuesday last week, has killed hundreds of protected birds in a popular park near the Wimmera river, just south of the city centre.
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Continue reading...Queensland mental health specialist reveals she couldn’t find someone to cover her role while giving evidence at Sydney inquest this week
A Queensland police officer has told a coronial inquest that a lack of resources explains why her colleague overlooked an email requesting mental health support for Joel Cauchi a year before he stabbed six people to death in Sydney’s Bondi Junction.
The inquest on Monday heard from her colleague, Sen Const Peter McDiarmid, who was acting as the police force’s only mental health officer for a district serving 220,000 residents when he received an email from another officer asking him to follow up with the Cauchi family. But the court heard he did not make contact.
Continue reading...Community convincingly chooses Labor in Melbourne and Sydney seats, despite opposition efforts to engage after 2022 review
Suburbs with significant Chinese Australian populations in key marginal seats recorded huge swings to Labor of up to 30%, and strategists and analysts warn the Liberal party has failed to rebuild trust with the community.
The Liberal party’s review of the 2022 federal election found hawkish rhetoric on China cost it votes in several seats with high numbers of Chinese Australians. It called for greater community outreach and to rebuild trust before the 2025 poll.
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Continue reading...State government offered to backdate wages for nurses and midwives on condition they do not undertake protected industrial action in May
The Queensland union movement has warned the state’s conservative government it will be in for a “hell of a bloody fight” if it pursues threats to strip nurses and midwives of backpay should they enact their legal right to strike.
A pay dispute between the LNP government and the Queensland Nurses and Midwives’ Union (QNMU) is ongoing after their previous enterprise agreement expired on 31 March.
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Continue reading...Police attending a home in Coonabarabran found a 66-year-old woman and two children – aged six and seven – who were both dead
A woman has been placed in custody over the death of two young children in regional New South Wales.
Just after 2pm on Monday, police attended a home in Coonabarabran in the state’s north-west following the reports about concerns for the children’s welfare.
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Continue reading...Graeme Davidson lived in Thailand for a ‘number of years’ and was arrested and charged with murder, fraud and attempted fraud while visiting Brisbane
Years after his wife died while kayaking, a man has been accused of murder and trying to claim more than $1m in life insurance.
Graeme Davidson, 55, who now lives in Thailand, was charged over the death of his wife, Jacqueline.
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Continue reading...Australian woman has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and attempted murder relating to a beef wellington lunch she served at her Leongatha home in 2023. Follow live updates
Our justice and courts reporter, Nino Bucci, was in the court room in Morwell last week for the first week of Erin Patterson’s murder trial.
Catch up on his report on the first week of the trial:
Continue reading...Inquest into deaths of six victims in April 2024 told Joel Cauchi’s father and mother worried about weapons ‘especially if he’s going to lose contact with reality’
Joel Cauchi called the police to his parents’ home more than a year before he stabbed and killed six people at Bondi Junction, to complain that his father had taken away his knives due to concerns about his mental health, an inquest has been told.
Body-worn camera footage played at the coronial inquest in Sydney on Monday showed an officer telling her colleague, after speaking to Cauchi’s mother, that “Mum just wants him to get help”.
Continue reading...US researchers link BHP, Rio Tinto, Santos, Whitehaven Coal and Woodside Energy to specific climate harms over three decades
Five of Australia’s biggest fossil fuel producers could be on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars in damages after a US research team developed a method to link individual companies to specific climate harms and put a dollar figure to the impact.
This is the result of a new peer-review study published in the journal Nature that sought to establish a method that would allow courts to quantify the economic loss caused by fossil fuel producers for one kind of climate impact – extreme heat.
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Continue reading...Despite relentless commentary about the premier’s unpopularity, the state swung even harder to Labor than in 2022, while the Liberal party blame game has begun
If anyone is as happy as Anthony Albanese right now, it’s Jacinta Allan.
As the federal election results rolled in on Saturday night, one of the biggest surprises came in Victoria – where Labor defied months of grim predictions to strengthen its grip on the state.
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Continue reading...Naydene Robinson says she hopes to reach an ‘amicable’ settlement that recognises her mother as Lang Hancock’s child
An Aboriginal woman who believes she is Gina Rinehart’s niece is calling on Australia’s richest person to take a DNA test to prove their family connection.
Naydene Robinson, the daughter of Sella Robinson, who claimed she was fathered by Lang Hancock at Mulga Downs station in the 1930s, says she wants to meet Rinehart and “resolve any doubts” about her links to the Hancock family. Sella’s mother worked as a musterer and in domestic labour at Mulga Downs.
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Littleproud on Labor: ‘They’re a slick machine’
Finally, David Littleproud is asked about what impact Donald Trump had on the outcome after Labor sought to tie Peter Dutton to the US president throughout the campaign.
What Anthony Albanese and the Labor team were able to was to really tap into these sorts of issues and then paint a bigger picture and destroy his character.
I think there’s a lesson in how they (Labor) did politics. They did it a lot better than us, and you’ve got to acknowledge that they’re a slick machine.
I think it’s part of the contagion of the way in which American politics has infused its way in to Australian politics, but very few people would have seen this coming and would have seen it coming certainly to the extent that it has happened.
My own view is that it’s an awful influence on Australian politics and something that we would do well to repudiate. Notwithstanding, you know the strength and the warmth and the importance of the relationship with the United States, in my opinion, Donald Trump does not have a role in relation to Australian domestic politics and we would do well to make that clear.
Continue reading...The Australian prime minister is the first to be re-elected since John Howard – and becomes one of Labor’s biggest heroes
It might have been the surprise packet of the night, but Labor picked up as early as January that it had a sniff in Dickson.
Early in the evening – hours before Anthony Albanese raised workers’ rights, housing, gender equality, childcare, the NDIS and Indigenous reconciliation as the priorities of his second-term Labor government – the hundreds-strong crowd at his election night party grew round-eyed as results from Dickson started pouring in on the television screens.
Continue reading...Guardian Australia spoke to a range of people all across the country to ask about their lives and perspectives ahead of Saturday’s ballot
Over the past three months, Guardian Australia has been speaking to ordinary people about their everyday lives – their families, work, hobbies, stressors and hopes.
These interviews have formed our Anywhere But Canberra series – a portrait of what different people across the country are dealing with in the lead up to the federal election. We wanted to see how people’s lives and perspectives shaped their votes.
Continue reading...Labor’s confidence going into Saturday’s election is tempered by gnawing anxiety about the underlying polling data
Australia’s major parties are headed for a historically low primary vote, continuing a downward trend of several decades, according to the latest from Guardian Australia’s poll tracker. Labor leads the Coalition 51.5-48.5 on the two-party-preferred measure according to our latest average, although there is still uncertainty in the polling.
The two-party-preferred vote has been trending towards a repeat of the last election, but this masks a more than two-point primary vote drop for both major parties. The votes lost by the major parties have gone “everywhere”, according to pollsters who spoke to Guardian Australia. Our model estimates the support for independents and minor parties is four points higher than at the last election.
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Continue reading...State education department secretary apologises after thousands of students and parents caught in ‘unacceptable’ situation
The New South Wales education department has apologised after riot police were called to manage out-of-control crowds at the state’s selective school exams.
Police were called to Canterbury Park Racecourse, south-west of Sydney’s CBD, at about midday on Friday following reports of traffic and crowd control issues. About 1,300 students had finished exams at the Canterbury site and were trying to leave with their parents, as another 1,300 students plus their parents attempted to enter the facility.
Continue reading...Analysis of online ad data shows parties and affiliated groups spent more than $39m for political ads across Facebook, YouTube and Google search since 28 March
Labor splurged more than $11m across Google and Meta platforms to win votes, far surpassing its opponents – including billionaire Clive Palmer – and outstripping political foes in key seats in the lead-up to polling day.
New data showed the major parties have poured cash into boosting targeted messages to social media users in tightly contested electorates, including marginal seats in Bennelong, Brisbane, Boothby, Blair and Bullwinkel.
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Continue reading...Investigative journalist says ‘legal strategy’ he referred to in secret recording was reference to war veteran allegedly telling his ex-wife to lie to court
Investigative journalist Nick McKenzie has denied in a Sydney court that he saw privileged communications between Ben Roberts-Smith and his lawyers during the proceedings of the war veteran’s failed defamation case against him and Nine.
The court also heard a “secret” recording where McKenzie allegedly told a witness in the defamation proceedings that Roberts-Smith’s ex-wife, Emma Roberts, and her friend Danielle Scott were “actively briefing us on his legal strategy in respect of you”.
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Continue reading...Manufacturer Incat built Hull 096 to run between Buenos Aires and Uruguay, dubbing it the ‘most complex’ project it has ever undertaken
An Australian boatbuilder has launched what it describes as the world’s largest battery-power ship, describing it as a “a giant leap forward in sustainable shipping” and the “most important” project it has ever done.
Incat, a manufacturer based in Tasmania, constructed the ship – called Hull 096 – after being contracted by the South American ferry operator Buquebus to build a vessel to run between the Argentinian capital, Buenos Aires, and Uruguay.
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