Aerial footage captured a 'firenado' forming on Saturday in the Bundamba suburb of Ipswich, Queensland, as a huge fire rapidly advanced across dry grassland, threatening homes. Queensland state authorities have issued an emergency warning as the east coast of Australia works to tackle more than 100 bushfires
RFS says Gospers Mountain blaze, which has merged with neighbouring fires, will take many weeks to put out
A shipping container full of fireworks? Really?
This is from AAP:
A shipping container loaded with fireworks has exploded and residents have been warned to flee as an unpredictable fire closes in on homes in south-east Queensland.
The fast-moving blaze is burning in bushland at Bundamba, west of Brisbane, and travelling in a northerly direction from White Street towards the Warrego highway.
This, I fear, will be the trend for the afternoon. Across the east coast of Australia, fires worsening with strengthening winds, no respite in temperatures.
Watch & Act - Blue Gum Road (Tenterfield LGA)
Fire is burning SW of Urbenville. Spot fires are starting ahead of the main fire front. If you are in the Wallaby Creek area, seek shelter as the fire approaches. Protect yourself from the heat of the fire. #nswrfs #nswfires pic.twitter.com/Fw0wlqMgOE
Gospers Mountain, Paddock Run and Little L Complex, Three Mile and Thompson Creek fires overlap, and there are now seven emergency warnings in NSW as fire conditions worsen along Australia’s New South Wales and Queensland coasts. This blog is now closed
We are going to wrap the live blog up here. As of almost 7.30pm AEDT there are still seven fires at emergency warning level across NSW.
They are:
Related: Australia fires: five blazes merge north of Sydney as conditions forecast to worsen
Some more photos from photographer Matthew Abbott out at Kulnura:
Continue reading...More than 100 bushfires were burning in New South Wales on Friday, more than half of them out of control
Five fires burning to the north of Sydney joined up into one huge conflagration on Friday, with out-of-control blazes threatening homes and lives.
On a day that brought choking smog to Sydney, the premier of New South Wales said the entire coastline of the state was on fire.
Continue reading...Rushan Abbas says countries doing business with China are enabling its mass detention of 3 million people, including her sister
A leading Uighur activist, Rushan Abbas, has urged Australian MPs to take a stronger stance against the Chinese regime, while backing controversial comparisons between the state’s authoritarianism and Nazi Germany.
Abbas, who met with MPs in Canberra on Thursday and held a roundtable at the US Embassy on the plight of the Uighur Muslim minority in western China’s Xinjiang province, said that “modern day” concentration camps holding as many as 3 million Uighurs were a case of “history repeating itself”.
Continue reading...Sydney’s pedestrian bottlenecks, Brisbane’s barren streetscapes and Perth’s freeway fiascos: cities across the country are making classic mistakes
In every city there are places where the road should be just a bit wider, where the bus stop would be better a few metres down or, perhaps, a multi-lane highway simply should not exist.
Bad urban design is a barrier to what should be the smooth flow of life in cities. It ruins commutes and can make daily life unnecessarily difficult for the disabled or elderly.
Continue reading...Scott Morrison announces cut in number of government departments as part of public service overhaul. All the day’s political news, live
Labor is moving a motion saying the government’s attempts to push the union-busting bill through without debate was “anti-democratic”.
Better still is this bit of the motion:
This is a prime ministerial tantrum, with the prime minister of Australia behaving like a juvenile schoolyard bully just because he didn’t get his way last week.
We’re now moving through the votes for the government’s union-busting bill.
A side note - this is the 100th division to take place in the House for this sitting fortnight.
Continue reading...Algae piles up thigh-deep in places – and could keep water murky for weeks
A woman running on a Gold Coast beach has been rescued after becoming stuck in masses of cornflake seaweed that has piled up thigh-deep in places.
A seaweed expert, Pia Winberg, said the bloom of Colpomenia – also known as sea potatoes, oyster thief or cornflake seaweed – was not unusual for this time of year.
Continue reading...Sydney lord mayor approached by police investigating accusations the emissions reduction minister relied on a falsified document to attack her. Follow all the day’s political news live
That’s where we’ll leave the live blog for the day. Thanks for following along.
It’s been another messy day. Many say the medevac repeal has made it one of parliament’s darkest.
Another development on the Angus Taylor front.
The City of Sydney’s lord mayor, Clover Moore, has been approached by police to provide a statement for their investigation into accusations Taylor relied on a falsified document to attack her travel-related emissions. The council said in a statement:
Continue reading...Two officers named as part of the search have refuted the teenager’s account at an inquiry in Sydney
A police officer involved in searching a boy at an underage music festival in Sydney says he has “no memory” of the teenager being asked to “show me your gooch”, and that it “didn’t happen”.
The 15-year-old claims he “froze” when he was asked to drop his pants during a strip-search at Sydney Olympic Park in February.
Continue reading...Multiple global news organisations call for release of men, who fled their country only to become embroiled in Australia’s detention system
The Senate has passed a motion calling on the government to recognise the increased risk it has placed on two gay Saudi journalists by keeping them in detention after they claimed asylum last month.
Guardian Australia can reveal that multiple news organisations around the world have called for the release of the men, warning the Australian government they are watching the case closely.
Continue reading...Hockridge was one of three people to go missing in the Northern Territory outback two weeks ago, but her companions were both rescued in recent days
Searchers have found a body believed to be Claire Hockridge, who has been missing in the Northern Territory outback for two weeks.
Hockridge was in a group of three people who became stranded in the central Australian outback a fortnight ago, but her partner, Tamra McBeath-Riley, and their friend Phu Tran, were both rescued in the last few days.
Continue reading...Former Wallabies star had sought $14m in compensation saying he was wrongfully dismissed over anti-gay Instagram post
The long-running legal dispute between Rugby Australia and Israel Folau has ended with a settlement reached over the former Wallaby’s sacking in the wake of an anti-gay social media post in April.
RA apologised to Folau in a joint statement issued on Wednesday that draws a line under the bitter affair, although the exact terms of the settlement will remain confidential.
Continue reading...Young Liberal National party leader Barclay McGain filmed laughing after teenager he interviewed says Australia shouldn’t celebrate ‘a culture that couldn’t even invent the bloody wheel’
A Young Liberal National party leader has been suspended from the party after he was filmed laughing at a teenager saying Australia should “stop celebrating a culture that couldn’t even invent the bloody wheel”.
Barclay McGain, chairman of the Gold Coast Young LNP, is under investigation by his own party over what the state’s Labor government has called disturbing, racist comments about Australian Aboriginal culture.
Continue reading...More than 10% of forest in NSW national parks destroyed by fire this season, with the damage to Gondwana rainforest a ‘global tragedy’
More than 10% of the area covered by New South Wales national parks has been burned in this season’s bushfires, including 20% of the Blue Mountains world heritage area, state government data obtained by Guardian Australia has revealed.
The amount of bushland destroyed within NSW national parks dwarfs that of the entire previous fire season, when 80,000 hectares were lost.
Continue reading...The opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, says there have been more than 400 ‘senseless loss of life’ since 2001. Follow all the day’s politics – live
Cormann’s full response to the order to produce the Morrison-Fuller transcript has been tabled. The full text of the letter is below.
Dear President
I refer to the motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator the Hon Penny Wong, and agreed by the Senate on 2 December 2019, requesting documents associated with phone call between the Prime Minister and the Commissioner of the New South Wales Police Force that took place on Tuesday, 26 November 2019.
Labor is furious at the government’s response to an order to produce the transcript of the Morrison-Fuller phone call about the Angus Taylor police investigation.
The Labor leader in the Senate, Penny Wong, read the government’s response to the Senate after it was provided to her at the outset of Senate proceedings by the finance minister, Mathias Cormann. The letter simply referred the Senate to previous answers and said the documents would be subject to a public interest immunity claim because they relate to a police investigation.
This is transparency from the Morrison government. This is the transparency and integrity, or lack thereof from the Morrison government.”
Continue reading...Phu Tran was found by a pastoralist on Tuesday morning south of Alice Springs, police say
A second person who was missing for two weeks in the central Australian outback has been found alive south of Alice Springs.
Phu Tran was found by a pastoralist on Tuesday morning in the area of Palmer Valley, Northern Territory police said. Phu, 40, told the pastoralist he had survived after finding some water.
Continue reading...Inquiry told of invasive searches on teens at Lost City music festival in Sydney, where only five of 30 cases had support person present
A 15-year-old boy was told to “hold your dick and lift your balls up and show me your gooch” and a police officer “ran his hands around” the buttocks of a 17-year-old during two of 25 potentially illegal strip-searches conducted at an underage music festival in Sydney, an inquiry has heard.
On Monday the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC) began public hearings into the strip-search of “several young people” at the Lost City Music festival, an under-18s event held in Sydney in February.
Continue reading...Author says she was not at Oxford with Australia’s energy minister, and his implication she was part of an ‘elite’ attacking Christmas is an ‘antisemitic dogwhistle’
The American author Naomi Wolf has accused Australia’s embattled energy minister, Angus Taylor, of an “antisemitic dogwhistle”, and of falsely claiming they were at Oxford University together.
In his maiden speech to parliament in 2013, Taylor told a story about “political correctness” and a dispute over a Christmas tree at Oxford in 1991, when he was a Rhodes scholar at the university, mentioning that Wolf lived on the same corridor.
Continue reading...Australian teacher thanks those who helped free him and says he formed tight bonds with some of his captors
Freed Taliban hostage Timothy Weeks says he never gave up hope he would be rescued during three “long and tortuous” years in captivity in Afghanistan.
Speaking publicly for the first time since his release as part of a complex prisoner swap almost two weeks ago, the Australian teacher thanked all those who helped secure his freedom, and said he had formed extraordinarily tight bonds with some of his Taliban captors.
Continue reading...