Category Archives: Australia news

Former NSW asbestos investigator calls for more controls on waste disposal

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As chief scientist says state should drop ‘zero tolerance’, former EPA official says many problems could be solved during demolition process

A former senior New South Wales environment watchdog officer says more needs to be done to stop asbestos from being mixed into waste materials as the state government considers overhauling the regime for dealing with the toxic contaminant.

Jason Scarborough, who led an Environment Protection Authority (EPA) investigation that found potentially contaminated soil fill could have been applied to land across the state, said many of these issues could be solved at the time of demolition.

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Cyclone Alfred live updates: BoM tracking map forecast shows category 2 storm hitting Brisbane and south-east Qld; landfall in Queensland and NSW delayed as storm slows – latest news

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BoM path track map predicts TC Alfred will cross coast on Friday near Brisbane, the first storm of its size to do so in decades. Follow the latest updates today

Speaking of preparations, adjunct senior lecturer at the Centre for Disaster Studies at James Cook University Yetta Gurtner gives advice here:

Chalmers confident insurance companies ‘know their responsibilities’

I’m confident they know their responsibilities and obligations to people.

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Australia news live: Victoria to tighten bail laws; man shot dead by police in Queensland

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The Victorian premier said she would be introducing legislation to' ‘bring about that change … very soon’. Follow today’s news live

Chalmers defends Australian defence spending as Trump administration says nation should spend more

Jim Chalmers has defended Australia’s defence spending as having already gone up “considerably”, amid suggestions from the Donald Trump administration that Australia should spend more.

That is a very, very substantial pick-up in defend spending and one of the reasons we’re doing that is to be able to work more effectively with our allies and partners like the United States … We do pay our own way on defence. We are substantially increasing defence spending.

We have got a good relationship with the Americans, particularly that economic relationship which is of mutual benefit, and these are the sorts of things that we have been talking about with our American counterparts as they finalise some of the policies on things like tariffs.

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Cyclone Alfred update: NSW and Queensland prepare for flooding as authorities urge ‘do not underestimate this storm’

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BoM warns of hazards from ‘erratic’ storm and forecasts show it slowed again and downgraded to a category one storm when it makes landfall between Friday and Saturday morning

Millions of people in Queensland have hunkered down while residents in parts of northern New South Wales have been ordered to evacuate as Australia’s east coast prepares for wild weather brought by Tropical Cyclone Alfred.

The slow-moving storm is now expected to make landfall in Queensland late on Friday or on Saturday morning, later than was forecast earlier in the week, after the category two system “spun around on itself” and briefly stalled overnight on Wednesday.

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Voice referendum normalised racism towards Indigenous Australians, report finds

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Complaints detailing distressing incidents of racism reveal 2023 referendum one of Australia’s ‘darker moments’, author says

Warning: this article contains distressing descriptions of racism

A report examining racism towards Indigenous Australians found one fifth of all complaints contained reference to the failed voice to parliament referendum, in what authors say was one of the nation’s “darker moments”.

The report, titled If You Don’t Think Racism Exists Come Take a Walk With Us, was released on Thursday. Undertaken by the University of Technology Sydney’s Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research and the National Justice Project, it is the second annual report about racism targeting First Nations people and is based on 453 validated reports of racism made to the Call it Out register in the 12 months to 20 March 2024.

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‘Paradigm shift’: Australian researchers discover key to treatment of bacterial vaginosis

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Study shows that male partners can help in limiting recurrence of the condition afflicting almost one in three women

Like almost one in three women, Hanae has developed bacterial vaginosis (BV) – a condition when the normal healthy bacteria in the vagina are replaced by an overgrowth of other mixed bacteria.

When she got it for first time in 2021, she took the standard treatment of antibiotics, only for the condition to come back weeks later. “It came back time and time again, no matter how many times I got antibiotic treatment,” said Hanae, who lives in Melbourne.

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Brisbane schools and public transport shut as Cyclone Alfred to hit later than expected

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Parts of Queensland and NSW prepare as BoM weather forecast shows Alfred making landfall between Maroochydore and Coolangatta

Schools, airports, public transport and most businesses are beginning to shut down in Brisbane and across south-east Queensland, as authorities advised Tropical Cyclone Alfred will likely arrive later than expected.

Advice to residents is now that Alfred’s track to the coast has slowed, and that it will likely cross the southeast Queensland coast at some point on Friday.

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Australia’s Steve Smith retires from one-day international cricket

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  • Champions Trophy defeat sparks news for cricket great
  • ‘Test cricket remains a priority,’ says the 35-year-old

Australian great Steve Smith has quit one-day international cricket, but says prolonging his stellar Test career is a priority.

Smith told his teammates of his ODI retirement after captaining Australia to a Champions Trophy semi-final loss against India in Dubai. The 35-year-old signalled his intent to continue his Test career until at least the Ashes series against England in the next Australian summer. Smith will also continue to play Twenty20 internationals.

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Crisafulli urges residents to prepare as storm approaches – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. Read the latest Cyclone Alfred news update here

Sandbag queues ‘about an hour’ in Brisbane – Wells

The federal sports minister, Anika Wells, also spoke on the Today Show this morning from Brisbane and said it was the “calm before the storm”.

At the moment that’s the shortest it’s been in 24 hours. It’s a big couple of days ahead for south-east Queensland. We’re more than up to the task, but everybody’s doing their bit.

So everyone’s doing their bit and we thank them for it.

We know that there’s going to be damaging winds, there is going to be powerful surf, coastal erosion, and it will be followed by significant rain that can last a couple of days. So we’re really urging people to be alert, to be prepared, just like the SES is.

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Tropical Cyclone Alfred: Queensland evacuations begin as storm path tracks towards Brisbane

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Up to 20,000 homes could be flooded, with beachside and low-lying suburbs most at risk, city council flood map shows

Queensland authorities are advising some residents to leave coastal properties in the path of Tropical Cyclone Alfred, amid warnings that a storm surge of up to 1 metre higher than typical tides could inundate communities.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said Australian Defence Force assets have been placed on standby to respond to the looming storm, which was tracking towards the heavily populated coastline between the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast.

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WA teenager charged over alleged ‘Christchurch 2.0’ online threat to Sydney mosque

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Sixteen-year-old arrested on Tuesday in south-west Western Australia over alleged Instagram comment

A 16-year-old boy has been charged in Western Australia over an alleged online threat, which police claim alluded to a terrorist massacre, against a recently opened Sydney mosque.

The comment on the place of worship’s Instagram page allegedly threatened to “Christchurch 2.0” the mosque at Edmondson Park in the city’s west, an apparent reference to the New Zealand city where an Australian man killed 51 worshippers in 2019.

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Australians lose more money to gambling in a year than government spends on aged care, report finds

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The $31.5bn lost each year likened to a ‘hidden, unspoken black hole’ that cost-of-living policies have not addressed

Australians are losing more money to gambling each year than the federal government spends on aged care and almost as much as it spends on the national disability insurance scheme, a new report has found.

The report by Equity Economics found that despite the cost-of-living crisis, the amount of money being lost to gambling has significantly increased. Expenditure on gambling has also risen faster than the cost of education, housing and inflation.

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Media, supermarkets and banks: what is the average salary at the big companies and how big is the gender pay gap?

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Radio 2GB Sydney has industry’s worst gender pay gap at 51.1%, while the size of supermarkets helps to narrow their differential

Which Australian radio station pays men twice as much as women? Which bank has a pay gap nearly double the national average? And which large supermarket chain pays the best?*

The answers to these questions – and many more – have been laid bare after the government’s Women’s Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) published its second annual report of company-level gender pay gaps this week.

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Social media firms criticise ‘irrational’ exemption of YouTube from Australia’s under-16s ban

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Meta, TikTok and Snapchat release statements in campaign protesting Labor’s handling of contested legislation

Meta, TikTok and Snapchat have criticised the Albanese government’s handling of the social media ban for under-16s, launching a campaign against what they have labelled an “irrational” and “shortsighted” decision to exempt YouTube from the contested legislation.

The three tech platforms made submissions to a government consultation process on the ban – rushed through parliament at the end of 2024 with little inquiry – calling for a re-evaluation of Labor’s approach and demanding YouTube be subject to the same restrictions they will be.

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Anthony Albanese condemns ‘abhorrent’ threat made to Sydney mosque as NSW police investigate

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President of Australian Islamic House says he is ‘profoundly concerned by this threat’

Anthony Albanese has condemned a threat made against a mosque in south-west Sydney that referenced the Christchurch terror attack as “abhorrent”, as the New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, confirmed police were conducting a “major investigation”.

NSW police on Tuesday evening confirmed they were investigating after the Australian Islamic House – Masjid Al-Bayt Al-Islami in Edmondson Park reported an online threat made against it on Instagram.

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Communities warned to prepare as weather system takes right turn – as it happened

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This blog is now closed

Why should Australia trust president Donald Trump, given how he’s treated Ukraine’s president at the Oval Office? Richard Marles said the government’s focus was on supporting Ukraine:

That’s where Australia lies. That’s the decision that we have to make. And Ukraine can absolutely rely on Australia’s ongoing support in their defence, and we will work with international partners.

We’ve obviously worked with the United States over the last three years, and we’ll continue to do that, but we’ve worked with the United Kingdom, and we’ll continue to do that as well, and with European partners, and look at the best way in which we can provide support.

We have established a timeline with [the] Ukrainian government about the delivery of those tanks to Ukraine. Now, for operational reasons, won’t go into the detail of that timeline.

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‘Be prepared’: Tropical Cyclone Alfred changes direction and heads towards Queensland coast

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Weather system bears down on south-east Queensland with BoM forecasting landfall between Brisbane and Sunshine Coast

Tropical Cyclone Alfred has made a dramatic right turn, and is now “heading towards the Queensland coast”, the state’s premier has warned.

Alfred had been gradually heading in a generally southerly direction for 12 days, but changed course on Tuesday as expected.

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Guardian Essential poll: RBA rate cut too little too late for many as Albanese’s rating dips again

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As the official start of the election campaign nears, almost one in two Australians don’t know who they will vote for or might change their mind

More than half of Australians believe last month’s cash rate cut was too little too late and a sign the Labor government’s economic plan is not working, but voters think Anthony Albanese is better placed than Peter Dutton to deliver cost-of-living relief and higher wages and safeguard Medicare.

Voters have again marked down Albanese, with his net approval rating dipping to minus eight in the latest Guardian Essential poll. But Australians believe his party would be better – or at least no worse – than the Coalition on some key issues.

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Gambling companies threaten to ramp up betting promotions to counter AFL revenue grab

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Exclusive: Critics say inducements are harmful and urge a ban as recommended by Murphy inquiry

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Gambling companies are preparing to ramp up their use of harmful inducements that encourage people to spend more money, in response to the AFL’s push for a bigger slice of gambling revenue.

Earlier this week, Guardian Australia revealed AFL executives had cited concerns about serious shortcomings in the integrity system to justify a campaign to seize a bigger share of money gambled on its games.

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Mental health crisis ‘means youth is no longer one of happiest times of life’

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UN-commissioned study in UK, US, Ireland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand finds satisfaction rises with age

For more than half a century, the midlife crisis has been a feature of western society. Fast cars, impulsive decisions, and peak misery between the age of 40 and 50. But all that is changing, according to experts.

In a new paper commissioned by the UN, the leading academics Jean Twenge and David Blanchflower warn that a burgeoning youth mental health crisis in six English-speaking countries worldwide is upending the traditional pattern of happiness across our lifetimes.

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