Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Former PM warns electricity prices will be higher because the Coalition dumped the national energy guarantee
The former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has returned to the fray to warn dumping the national energy guarantee – a decision taken by Scott Morrison – will drive up power prices.
Turnbull took exception to a column at the weekend characterising the national energy guarantee as “Malcolm Turnbull’s Neg”, pointing out the policy had strong support within the cabinet, “including and especially the current PM and treasurer”.
Sarah Hanson-Young demands a royal commission as Bill Shorten urges prime minister to produce all documents
The Coalition is facing calls for an inquiry into the Murray-Darling Basin plan water contracts signed off by the former agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce.
As the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young called for a royal commission on Saturday, Bill Shorten also weighed in, saying there were now “question marks about the probity” of the “nation’s biggest water purchase”.
Gusts of up to 91km/h recorded, leaving thousands of properties without power
A severe weather warning for Perth and Western Australia’s Goldfields-Midlands region has been cancelled but remained in place on Friday afternoon for the state’s south, where the first significant cold front of the year could bring snow.
Strong winds in the early hours of Friday ripped the roof off a house on Shorehaven Boulevard in Alkimos on the city’s northern fringe. The owners were not at home.
Supporters of both Tony Abbott and Zali Steggall accuse the other side of underhand tactics
Residents in the federal seat of Warringah are complaining about telephone push polling, unwanted copies of the Daily Telegraph arriving on their lawns and election posters being defaced.
The most mysterious event in the Sydney seat, where the former prime minister Tony Abbott is fighting a challenge from the independent Zali Steggall, is the arrival of unsolicited copies of the Telegraph, which began in late March.
Father pulls son from dingo’s jaws in the middle of the night after hearing boy’s cries getting further away from campervan
A toddler has escaped with cuts to his neck and head after his father snatched him from a dingo’s jaws on Queensland’s Fraser Island.
Paramedic Ben Du Toit said the family was camping in a remote area of the island in the state’s south-east on Thursday night when a dingo entered their campervan and bit the toddler’s neck.
High-quality international offsets should be part of any credible policy, industry says
Business groups are defying the Morrison government’s political assault on the use of international permits, arguing a credible climate policy should include access to high-quality international offsets, because they are a key mechanism to help Australia meet its Paris target.
With climate change persisting as a significant campaign flashpoint, the chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, James Pearson, told Guardian Australia international permits were part of the toolkit for mitigating climate change in a cost-effective way.
Nicholas Bentley, 41, remanded in custody after appearing in central local court
An alleged bank robber is behind bars after presenting himself to police in relation to the murder of an anti-drug “champion” at an inner-Sydney heroin hotspot in the 1990s.
Robert McPherson and an associate were walking back from a bottle shop along a Redfern alley in January 1998 when they were attacked by a group of men armed with baseball bats, a chain, a stick and a knife, New South Wales detectives said.
Unofficial ‘quick count’ results show incumbent president nearly nine points ahead
Joko Widodo looks likely to have secured a comfortable win over his rival in Indonesian elections, according to unofficial “quick counts”.
The counts, conducted by several credible polling agencies, show the incumbent president ahead of his political rival, the former special forces commander Prabowo Subianto, by almost 9 percentage points.
Nicholas Petrovski used his skills to manufacture weapons that in the wrong hands could have caused havoc, court told
A fitter and turner who pleaded guilty to making submachine guns that presented a “catastrophic degree of dangerousness” to the public will spend the next eight months behind bars.
Nicholas Petrovski, 36, pleaded guilty in the Southport District Court on Wednesday to possessing four submachine guns, three silencers and manufacturing weapons.
Photographer Brendan Beirne visited massacre sites across Australia. Using infrared technology he has created a series of images which take you to the unquiet places where Indigenous people were slaughtered
Analysis from Grattan Institute says government ‘probably’ on right trajectory for next year but deficit likely later. All the day’s events, live
Does Scott Morrison think he is popular in Victoria, given he has spent two days campaigning there?
There will be two choices after May 18 - there’s myself and Bill Shorten. Both of our parties have changed our rules. Not before time, but we both have. And those rules mean that whoever you elect as prime minister on May 18 - they will be your prime minister for the next three years. So if you vote for Bill Shorten, you’ll get Bill Shorten.
And if you vote for me, and the Liberal and National parties, you will get me to serve you as your prime minister for the next three years, and to pursue the stronger economy that guarantees rely on for essential services.”
On whether Sam Dastyari has any connection to Labor’s pathology announcement:
Well, this would seem to be the suggestion today - that Sam Dastyari was on Bill Shorten’s campaign bus at the last election and the suggestion now is he’s on Bill Shorten’s gravy train when it comes to this latest announcement. Let’s just see what happens there, I suppose. I mean, I have no knowledge of that. But it’s something for Bill Shorten to explain - from the campaign bus to the gravy train - that’s quite a passage for Sam Dastyari. But, you know, if anyone was gonna be able to do it, I suspect it was him.”
Guardian stands by report after the candidate for Chisholm, Gladys Liu, said the report was ‘fake’ and ‘wrong’ and she had been ‘misrepresented’
The audio of an 2016 interview with Gladys Liu, now the Liberal candidate for the Melbourne seat of Chisholm, has been released after she questioned the accuracy of comments she made to the writer of a Guardian article.
Liu ran an anti-Labor campaign on WeChat, the most popular Chinese-language social media network, ahead of the 2016 election and in the July 2016 report claimed credit for helping to get then Liberal MP Julia Banks elected to parliament.
Karen Nettleton finally gets the chance to embrace the orphaned children of Khaled Sharrouf
After more than five years of sleepless nights, Australian grandmother Karen Nettleton has finally had a chance to embrace her orphaned grandchildren – the children of Australia’s most notorious Isis terrorist, Khaled Sharrouf.
The pressing moral issue of poverty sits outside the major parties’ carefully-tested election messages. Guardian Australia believes it’s too important to be sidelined
In their campaign war rooms the major parties are busy devising ways to “control the narrative”, to steer this election debate towards issues where they believe their pitch is strongest.
But there is a group of Australians whose desperate situation neither major party really wants to discuss. This moral issue of pressing national importance sits outside the major parties’ carefully-tested election messages and there is a real risk it might not be raised in the campaign at all.
WikiLeaks founder’s father says Australian government should ‘do something’ after his arrest in London
The father of the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has called on the Australian government to help his son and suggested he could be brought back to his home country.
John Shipton, who lives in Melbourne, urged Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, to step in following Assange’s arrest in London last week.
We are better than our politicians’ dark fears. We are not their hate. We are optimistic about a country built on openness
I have only ever heard Behrouz Boochani’s voice through speakers. One day, he will stand here before us, and we will hear and see him in the flesh. As a free human being. And I am here today to say that day is coming.
Because change is coming. You can feel it, you sense it. It is coming and it will not be denied. But it needs us to fight for it and to keep fighting for it, and we need to fight for it, not only for the refugees of Manus and Nauru, but for our own salvation.
Peter Dutton has apologised for accusing his Labor challenger, Ali France, of “using her disability as an excuse” not to move to the electorate during the campaign.
The apology came a little over an hour after a blistering attack by Labor senator Kristina Keneally, who called Dutton “mean and despicable”, a “thug”, and the “most toxic man in the Liberal party”.
Aid group publishes open letter to political leaders, asking them to act on their words if elected
Save the Children has called on Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten to publicly commit – if they win the election – to bringing home the children of Australian foreign fighters in Syria.
In a letter published on Saturday, the aid organisation demanded that the major parties pledge to “stop the war on children” and repatriate those who were brought to the Syrian conflict or were born there to Australians who chose to fight with Islamic State.
Parke says she did not want to be a distraction during the election campaign, despite her views being ‘well known’
The Labor candidate for the West Australian seat of Curtin, Melissa Parke, has pulled out following reports that she told a public meeting last month that the way Israel treated Palestinians was “worse than the South African system of apartheid”.
Parke, formerly a federal member for Fremantle, said on Friday night that she did not want to be a distraction during the election campaign. The seat of Curtin was previously held by former Liberal party deputy leader Julie Bishop.