Category Archives: Australia news

Environment officials sensitive about Angus Taylor grasslands meeting, emails show

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Before the meeting an official asked about the Taylor company being investigated for alleged illegal land clearing

Department of the environment officials were acutely sensitive about meeting Angus Taylor over critically endangered grasslands while his family’s company was being investigated for alleged illegal land clearing in New South Wales, according to internal emails.

The information is revealed in correspondence that had previously been partially redacted from documents obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws in June this year.

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Labor labels Coalition’s drug-testing plan ‘demeaning’ – politics live

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Scott Morrison accused of trying to force jobseekers to pee in a cup because he wants to pick fights with the opposition. All the day’s news, live

George Brandis has been spotted in the building.

We are not sure why our man in London is here, but no doubt it is all very terribly important.

Pauline Hanson is speaking to Sky News about a speech she is giving on family law reform, where she is calling for 50/50 joint custody of children, from the moment of separation.

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Peregian homes destroyed after ferocious bushfire rips through Sunshine Coast community

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Firefighters fear significant property losses, with scores of blazes still burning in Queensland and NSW

• Mass evacuations as bushfires threaten more homes – live updates

Hundreds of people are holed up in evacuation centres on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast as crews wait to see how many homes have been lost to a ferocious fire, while firefighters in New South Wales are still battling out-of-control fires near the border.

There are fears of significant property losses, with a destructive blaze still burning out of control at Peregian Beach and Peregian Breeze Estate, south of Noosa.

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Scott Morrison says he is ‘puzzled’ by opposition to welfare drug testing

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PM defends drug testing proposal, which is struggling to attract support in parliament

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, says he is “puzzled” by the widespread opposition to the idea of drug testing welfare recipients, as the government struggles to win over Senate support for the plan.

Saying he believed that drug testing those on Newstart and Youth Allowance could help people address substance abuse problems and get into the workforce, Morrison emphasised the proposal was a trial.

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Australia launches emergency relocation of fish as largest river system faces collapse

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There are doubts the Noah’s Ark plan for the Lower Darling will be enough to prevent more mass fish kills

Faced with a looming ferocious summer with little rain forecast, the New South Wales government has embarked on a Noah’s Ark type operation to move native fish from the Lower Darling – part of Australia’s most significant river system – to safe havens before high temperatures return to the already stressed river basin.

Researchers have warned of other alarming ecological signs that the Lower Darling River – part of the giant Murray-Darling Basin – is in a dire state, following last summer’s mass fish kills.

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Why do Dubai’s princesses keep trying to run away? – podcast

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Ola Salem discusses the divorce case of Princess Haya, who fled to London. Why do royal women keep trying to escape the emirate? Plus John Marsden on the growing trend of toxic parenting

Over the summer, Princess Haya, the estranged wife of the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, asked an English court for a forced marriage protection order relating to their children and a non-molestation order after the breakdown of their marriage.

The Guardian reporter Haroon Siddique describes the court scene to Rachel Humphreys, while the journalist Ola Salem discusses previous attempts by two other princesses to flee the Dubai royal family, and looks at why this case is so significant for women in the emirate.

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Crossbench senator pushes to fix ‘shameful’ historic wrong against Timor-Leste

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Centre Alliance’s Rex Patrick wants to overturn the decisions that limit Australia’s exposure to international courts

The crossbench senator Rex Patrick will push to fix a historic wrong stemming from the “shameful” treatment of Timor-Leste during oil and gas negotiations by overturning decisions that limit Australia’s exposure to international courts.

In 2002, the then Howard government decided to limit Australia’s acceptance of the compulsory jurisdiction of the international court of justice and international tribunal for the law of the sea.

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‘Show some spine’: Jacqui Lambie returns to parliament with John Setka ultimatum

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The Senate powerbroker warns if the union boss does not resign, the Coalition’s ‘ensuring integrity’ bill will pass

The Senate powerbroker Jacqui Lambie has returned to Canberra following the parliamentary break with one message.

Either union boss John Setka resigns, or the government’s controversial ‘ensuring integrity’ bill will pass, with her vote.

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Crews still fighting huge fires threatening Queensland and NSW towns

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About 50 fires still burning around Queensland and 60 across NSW, 21 of them uncontained

Queensland and New South Wales fire crews are still battling difficult conditions.

There are 57 fires burning around Queensland on Sunday but one at the border towns of Applethorpe and Stanthorpe and another in the Gold Coast hinterland are causing the most concern.

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Home affairs data ‘gives lie’ to Coalition’s refusal to let Biloela Tamil family stay

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Fifty-two refugees and asylum seekers in offshore detention have received temporary protection visas or safe haven enterprise visas

Some 52 refugees and asylum seekers in offshore detention have received temporary protection visas or safe haven enterprise visas, according to new statistics that fly in the face of the Morrison government’s refusal to allow the Biloela Tamil family to stay.

The home affairs department has revealed to a Senate inquiry that of the 3,127 people classified as “illegal maritime arrivals” who have been taken to a regional processing country since 2011, some 52 have received visas and now face legal limbo if banned from permanent settlement in Australia.

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Tanya Day’s family win bid to release CCTV footage to combat ‘invisibility’ of her suffering

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Inquest agrees that family’s advocacy and public interest outweighs concerns about privacy and dignity

The family of Aboriginal woman Tanya Day has persuaded the coroners court to release footage of her final conscious hours, saying that not releasing it would render her suffering – like the suffering of so many Indigenous people – invisible.

Coroner Caitlin English announced on Friday that she would release selected footage of Day’s time in the cells of Castlemaine police station. She said the public interest and the possibility that it could prevent further deaths in custody outweighed her earlier concerns about protecting the 55-year-old’s privacy and dignity.

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Viktor Orbán trumpets Hungary’s ‘procreation, not immigration’ policy

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Hungarian PM invokes far-right ‘great replacement’ theory at Budapest demography summit

Procreate or face extinction: that’s the message from central European leaders to their shrinking populations, as across the region rightwing governments implement so-called “family first” policies to incentivise childbearing.

Hungary’s government is holding an international summit on demography in Budapest this week, being attended by several regional leaders and delegations from dozens of countries in an attempt to trumpet their investment in family policies.

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Michael Guider, who killed schoolgirl Samantha Knight, walks free from prison

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New South Wales government fails in bid to keep the notorious paedophile behind bars

The notorious paedophile Michael Guider, who killed schoolgirl Samantha Knight decades ago, has walked free from a Sydney prison.

Guider was released from Long Bay jail on Thursday after the supreme court rejected a New South Wales government bid to keep him behind bars for another year.

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Former boss visited Icac witness’s home on day he was summonsed to deliver ‘festive greetings’

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Steve Tong says his name was falsely put on donation records by his superiors at Wu International

A key witness to an anti-corruption probe received a night-time home visit from his former boss to deliver “festive greetings” the same day he was summonsed to give evidence, despite the Chinese festival taking place two months earlier, an inquiry has heard.

Steve Tong, an engineer who says he has no interest in politics, has given evidence to the Independent Commission Against Corruption that his name was falsely put on donation records by his superiors at a property development firm, Wu International, which has links to the former state Labor MP Ernest Wong.

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Biloela Tamil family’s deportation blocked until at least Friday

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Federal court in Melbourne extends injunction preventing the removal of the family from Christmas Island to Sri Lanka

Two Tamil asylum seekers and their Australian-born daughters will remain on Christmas Island until at least Friday afternoon after the federal court extended the injunction preventing the Australian government from deporting them back to Sri Lanka.

Priya, Nadesalingam and their two Australian-born children Kopika, 4, and Tharunicaa, 2, were sent to Christmas Island over the weekend after the court granted an injunction until 4pm on Wednesday preventing the government from deporting Tharunicaa until the application had been heard.

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NSW Liberal MPs threaten to move to crossbench over abortion bill

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If followed through, the move would push the Liberal party into minority government just months after the election

Two New South Wales Liberal party MPs have reportedly threatened to move to the crossbench if the premier, Gladys Berejiklian, refuses to cave to their demands for amendments on a bill to decriminalise abortion.

The conservative Liberal MPs Tanya Davies and Kevin Conolly have reportedly told Berejiklian they will no longer sit in the party room if amendments to the bill are not passed.

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Swooping magpie shot by Sydney council after ‘particularly aggressive’ attacks

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Hills Shire council said it had received 40 complaints over three years about the magpie, and several people had been injured

A local council in Sydney’s north west has said a decision to shoot dead a “particularly aggressive magpie” that had allegedly swooped and injured people for years was “not taken lightly”.

The Hills Shire council had received 40 complaints over the past three years, with confirmed injuries, including people sent to hospital as a result of being swooped by the magpie on Old Windsor Road in Bella Vista.

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Eurydice Dixon’s father says he hopes killer ‘gets better’ after receiving life sentence

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Judge sentences Jaymes Todd to a non-parole period of 35 years for crimes described as crimes as ‘sadistic’ and ‘categorically evil’

Eurydice Dixon’s father said he hoped the man who raped and killed his daughter “gets better,” shortly after the killer was sentenced to to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 35 years.

Jaymes Todd stalked Dixon, 22, for more than an hour before attacking her as she walked through Princes Park following a comedy gig ‪on 12 June‬ last year.

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Albanese says NSW Labor in ‘diabolical situation’ after Icac donation revelations

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‘I knew nothing about this,’ opposition leader says as he pledges a comprehensive review of the party’s structures

The federal opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, says Labor in New South Wales is in a “diabolical situation” as he braces for further revelations from the state’s corruption hearings and pledges a “comprehensive” review of the party’s structures.

Saying the work of Icac needed to proceed “unencumbered” over the next six weeks, Albanese said the party would overhaul its procedures in NSW to ensure the “damaging” alleged conduct could not be repeated.

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