Category Archives: Australia news

Australia fires live: tourists near NSW and Victoria bushfires told to leave – latest

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At least nine people have died since Christmas Day, and the RFS is urging people to evacuate the New South Wales South Coast before dangerous conditions on the weekend. Follow the live news and latest updates today

Yesterday, residents in the isolated community of Cann River were expressing concern about food shortages and other supply issues. Some told media they felt they were being forgotten.

The town is along the Princes Highway between Orbost and Mallacoota and has been cut off due to the fires.

But Constance adds, “once this (the fires) all goes, please come back”.

Tourism is crucial to communities on the south coast, which rely on the extra business during the holiday period.

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Australia bushfires: PM’s climate stance criticised as thousands flee blazes

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Scott Morrison’s government under pressure as fires feared to have killed 17 people

Navy ships and army aircraft have been dispatched to help fight devastating bushfires on Australia’s south-east coast that are feared to have killed at least 17 people, amid a spiralling debate over the government’s stance on the climate emergency.

Thousands of people have fled apocalyptic scenes, abandoning their homes and huddling on beaches to escape raging columns of flame and smoke that have plunged whole towns into darkness and destroyed more than 4m hectares of land.

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Three more deaths confirmed in Australia bushfires and hundreds of homes destroyed – as it happened

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East Gippsland fires claim homes in Buchan, Sarsfield and Mallacoota, and 176 properties lost on New South Wales south coast. Follow live news and latest updates
• Are you affected by the bushfires?
• How big are the fires burning in eastern Australia? Interactive map

We are ending this blog for today.

While fires continued to burn today they were not as catastrophic as Tuesday. Instead, we learned a lot about the absolute devastation wrought along the NSW south coast and Victoria’s East Gippsland region.

Related: Australia fires: nine dead and hundreds of properties destroyed, with worse to come

Yep - locals on the ground told @abccanberra Drive this evening that about 50 of 60 homes in North Rosedale are gone. About a third of the homes in South Rosedale. Unconfirmed, but solid local sources. One of the prettiest, loveliest places on earth. So very, very horrible. https://t.co/fL5qn0dKFV

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Cabinet papers 1998-99: Coalition’s campaign to unleash the GST laid bare

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Tax reform dominated debate, as ministers discussed East Timor and the 2000 Olympics – and resisted climate action

On 1 July Australia’s goods and services tax will have been in place for 20 years. It is uncontroversial in concept, with no major party advocating its abolition. Every so often there are calls for it to be increased from 10% or expanded – calls that are usually rebuffed.

But just how fraught the GST was to introduce is one of the key insights from the release of cabinet papers by the National Archives of Australia, covering the years 1998 and 1999. There were other concerns: East Timor’s independence, the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the failed republican referendum, and familiar resistance to doing anything but the minimum on climate change.

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Australia fires live: two dead in Cobargo as NSW and Victoria face bushfires threat – latest updates

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Conditions worsen with more than 4,000 on the beach at Mallacoota in Victoria after a devastating day yesterday and the death of a firefighter in New South Wales. Follow live news and latest updates

The federal government has agreed to supply military vessels to Victoria for evacuations in coastal communities where people are trapped.

I’ve spoken with @ScottMorrisonMP & authorised #ADF to deploy extra assets to the Victorian fires: 3 helicopters & 1 aircraft will fly to East Sale; HMAS Choules & MV Sycamore will sail to East Gippsland. A Joint Task Force has been stood up with Army personnel & Liason Officers

#BREAKING: Naval vessels, military helicopters and fixed wing aircraft are being prepared for bushfire evacuations in Victoria, at the request of the State Government #auspol

“We’ve got fires burning from the Queensland border all the way down to the Victorian border, across the great dividing range,” says Fitzsimmons.

There have ben multiple challenges, he says, noting that today conditions didn’t allow for the flying of some aerial support craft.

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Australia fires: one firefighter killed as bushfires rip through four states

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There are fears that many houses may have been lost on a horrific day in Victoria and Tasmania, with more extreme weather forecast for New Year’s Eve

One firefighter has died and multiple properties are feared lost after terrifying bushfires driven by extreme weather conditions swept across four Australian states on Monday.

The volunteer firefighter from the New South Wales Rural Fire Service died when a truck rolled near Jingellic, about 70km east of Albury, on the border with Victoria. The RFS said two trucks, including the one in which the firefighter died, had been overturned by high winds. Two others suffered burns in the crash.

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Zac Efron falls ill while filming reality show Killing Zac Efron

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US actor hit by suspected typhoid while filming survival TV series in Papua New Guinea

The American actor Zac Efron has confirmed he recently fell ill while filming a survival reality TV show in Papua New Guinea.

Australian media had reported that Efron, 32, was flown by helicopter for treatment in Australia after contracting a bacterial infection, possibly typhoid, while shooting the Killing Zac Efron series.

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‘Sad day for women’: Queensland LNP leader under fire for ‘Princess Palaszczuk’ comments

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Deb Frecklington said she had ‘no choice but to remain grounded’ because she had children, and said the premier’s fashion choices were ‘too much’

Federal and state Labor MPs have rounded on the Queensland LNP leader, Deb Frecklington, after she criticised Annastacia Palaszczuk for her fashion choices and said she had “no choice but to remain grounded” because she had children.

In an interview with the Sunday Mail, Frecklington said Palaszczuk had “deliberately changed her image – the whole ‘Princess Palaszczuk’ is pretty obvious – but I haven’t changed mine”.

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Victoria bushfires: thousands told to evacuate vast East Gippsland fire threat zone

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Visitors and residents told to ‘get out of’ an area half the size of Belgium immediately, in the face of historic fire threat day on Monday

Victorian authorities have told thousands of visitors and residents in East Gippsland – an area half the size of Belgium – to leave immediately in the face of a looming bushfire threat.

Emergency management commissioner Andrew Crisp issued the order on Sunday ahead of what the Bureau of Meteorology has called one of the “significant fire weather days in Victoria’s history”.

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Iran says jailed Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert must serve out her sentence

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Tehran’s foreign ministry says it will not submit to ‘political games and propaganda’

An Australian academic jailed in Iran for espionage must serve out her sentence, Tehran’s foreign ministry said on Saturday, stressing it would not submit to “propaganda”.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert reportedly began a hunger strike in Tehran’s Evin prison on Tuesday after losing an appeal against a 10-year jail sentence.

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What happened? The policies Scott Morrison’s government appears to have abandoned

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Action to protect LGBT students, a payday lending crackdown and an integrity commission are among the Coalition’s lost causes

Governments should be judged not just on what they do with their time in office but also on what they don’t do.

There are only so many hours in a day, and so many parliamentary sitting weeks in a year (there were just 10 since the May election). Nevertheless it’s important to know not just what the top priorities are but also what’s been pushed to the backburner.

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Coalition minister breaks ranks with government to call for volunteer firefighters to be paid

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Darren Chester says he believes there should be payment for ‘one-off’ events or fire levy

The call to pay volunteer firefighters facing extreme, prolonged events such as the current bushfire emergency is getting louder, with a Morrison government minister breaking ranks to call for changes.

The veterans’ affairs minister, Darren Chester, said he had been talking to his Victorian electorate about a payment model for “one-off” events, floating the idea of a fire levy, with evidence continuing to point to longer and worse bushfire seasons as a new normal.

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Australia’s environment minister says up to 30% of koalas killed in NSW mid-north coast fires

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Sussan Ley’s estimate suggests up to 8,400 koalas may have perished in the bushfires

Australia’s environment minister has said up to 30% of koalas on the New South Wales mid-north coast may have been killed in the country’s ongoing bushfire crisis.

Nationally, more than 5m hectares have been burned in an unprecedented bushfire season that has also killed nine people. Some 3.4m hectares have been burnt in NSW alone.

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Australia fires: rain offers little respite as out-of-control bushfires continue to burn

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Firefighters are bracing for extreme conditions with high temperatures forecast for next few days

Rainfall over parts of eastern Australia during the Christmas break did little to extinguish some of the country’s major bushfires, ahead of worsening conditions and a heatwave due to arrive in the coming days.

About 70 bushfires continue to burn throughout New South Wales, despite modest rainfall in some fire-affected parts of the state, while firefighters continued to battle a large blaze in South Australia on Boxing Day.

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Kylie Minogue tries to lure Brexit-weary Britons in new Tourism Australia ad ‘Matesong’

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Pop star reprises Neighbours character in a song that also includes tennis star Ash Barty, comedian Adam Hills and former cricketer Shane Warne

A new $15m tourism campaign featuring Kylie Minogue is aiming to lure Brexit-weary Britons to Australia with the perennial promise of cute marsupials, white-sand beaches and locals who “speak your language”.

The three-minute musical advertisement aired on televisions in the UK before the Queen’s message on Christmas Day, with Minogue and another well-known Australian export, Adam Hills, addressing the nation from Sandringham – a beachside suburb of Melbourne, Australia.

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The year’s best Full Story podcast episodes – recommended by Guardian staff

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If you’ve missed a few instalments or are not sure where to start, here are some staff favourites

Full Story: Guardian Australia’s tri-weekly podcast was launched in October, featuring the best of Guardian Australia’s reporting – and the stories behind the scoops.

If you’re not sure where to start, or if you’ve missed a few, Guardian staff have picked their favourite episodes for your summer road trips.

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As the long bushfire battle goes on in northern NSW, a brief respite for Christmas lunch

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Two hundred people gather in Wytaliba, where rain has brought relief, but also more concern for the long-term effects of the fires

In the northern New South Wales town of Wytaliba, one of the areas hardest hit by bushfires that have killed nine people, destroyed a thousand homes and burned 5m hectares of Australia in the past three months, a small team has cooked Christmas lunch for 200 people.

Everyone is invited, from the dozens who lost their homes, to the volunteer firefighters, to the Canadian firefighting contingent who have been working to relieve local crews.

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Yes, Australia has always had bushfires: but 2019 is like nothing we’ve seen before

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Record low rainfall has contributed to a continent-scale emergency that has burned through more than 5m hectares and alarmed scientists, doctors and firefighters

As the area burned across Australia this fire season pushes beyond five million hectares, an area larger than many countries, stories of destruction have become depressingly familiar.

At the time of writing, nine people have been killed. Balmoral, in the New South Wales southern highlands, is the latest community affected in a state where up to 1,000 homes have been destroyed. A third of the vineyard area and dozens of homes were razed in the Adelaide Hills. It is too early for a thorough examination of the impact on wildlife, including the many threatened species in the fires’ path.

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‘A difficult year’: Scott Morrison thanks firefighters in Christmas message – video

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Australian prime minister thanks firefighters and volunteers for their work amid drought and the ongoing bushfire crisis in his Christmas message, and pays tribute to two New South Wales rural fire service firefighters who died last week.

In his message, the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, also paid tribute to firefighters, and said that while Christmas was a time to celebrate, it could be a difficult time for some

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New Zealand would be honoured to take Behrouz Boochani. Australia be damned | Morgan Godfery

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The moral case for the former Manus island detainee becoming a citizen is as simple as ‘asylum is a human right’

I wonder if it winds up Peter Dutton to know that Behrouz Boochani, the Kurdish-Iranian journalist, award-winning author and former Manus Island detainee, is a free man in the continent’s orbit. Boochani, the best-known witness, critic and victim of Australia’s offshore “processing centres”, remains in New Zealand after his 30-day visa came to an end. No one quite knows what the No Friend But the Mountains author is planning next, but it seems safe to assume that sooner or later he’ll lodge an application for asylum in New Zealand. A permanent reminder to Dutton, his predecessors and the country’s immigration detention system that they are not as close to vanishing the “boat people” problem as they might have thought.

For their part New Zealand’s policymakers fear as much with headlines suggesting if Boochani’s hypothetical asylum application is successful it could “fuel tensions with Australia”. The problem is Behrouz Boochani, New Zealander, would enjoy free movement between his new home and his old incarcerators, unless Dutton and the gang insert new exceptions in the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement. This is the “back door” the Coalition government in Canberra is so afraid of, and the political problem preventing Scott Morrison from taking up Jacinda Ardern’s invitation to resettle the last remaining detainees on Manus.

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