Analyst, who is about to turn 65, said the upcoming federal election would be the last he covers on air
The ABC’s election analyst, Antony Green, has just announced that the upcoming federal election will be his last on-air with the ABC.
Green said on Wednesday morning it was “time to retire”.
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Continue reading...Singer of viral hit Mrs Hollywood hopes his milkshakes bring everyone on board at Basel this year when he sings Milkshake Man, an ode to self-confidence
TikTok star Go-Jo will represent Australia at Eurovision in May, the 10th musical act to head represent his country since Australia joined the annual European song contest a decade ago.
Marty Zambotto, a 29-year-old Sydney-based singer-songwriter, went viral in 2023 after he uploaded a clip to TikTok of himself performing his song Mrs Hollywood while busking around Sydney. To date, the song has racked up more than 60m digital streams and 1bn views across all platforms.
The 2025 Eurovision song contest runs 13 -17 May and will be broadcast on SBS in Australia
Continue reading...Adrian Collette admits decision to drop Khaled Sabsabi risks having nothing on show but he and chair won’t quit
Creative Australia has conceded the Australian Pavilion at next year’s Venice Biennale may remain empty following its decision to rescind the contracts of the artist and curator it chose to represent the country at the prestigious event.
“We will be doing everything we can…to think about how we use what is a public pavilion to mount something of that is worthy in terms of its representation of Australia,” Creative Australia’s chief executive, Adrian Collette, told a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday night.
Continue reading...Hubert Igbinoba, who is suing the Australian government, says he is singled out because he is black – a claim the government denies
An Australian citizen detained 32 times at Sydney airport – without allegation or charge – has told the federal circuit court he is stopped and searched almost every time he enters the country because he is black.
Okungbowa Hubert Igbinoba also told a directions hearing on Tuesday that an $80,000 settlement offer from the government was an attempt to silence him.
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Continue reading...Australia’s largest oil and gas producer has doubled its profits to $5.6bn. Follow today’s news live
Senate estimates will be back under way today, and AAP has flagged a little of what we can expect:
Creative Australia bosses, including the chief executive, Adrian Collette, will front an estimates hearing and it’s expected they’ll be questioned about the selection body’s shock decision to ditch the Venice Biennale team.
Continue reading...PM tells Q&A that US relationship is ‘rock solid’ as he fields questions on cost of living, housing and antisemitism
Anthony Albanese says he is confident that the US would defend Australia if it were to come under attack, despite the change in leadership in the US, but that Australia needed to look after its own security and would make its own decisions on foreign policy, including on support for Ukraine.
The comments came on a special edition of the ABC’s Q&A on Monday night, in which the prime minister took questions from members of the public on foreign affairs, the cost of living crisis, housing and social cohesion, in a bid to win over voters ahead of the election being called.
Continue reading...A witness describes how she saw three men arm themselves before seeing a 15-year-old boy covered in blood
An Indigenous teenager was spotted holding his bloody head after being chased into bushland by two men with metal poles, a murder trial has been told.
Cassius Turvey, a 15-year-old Noongar Yamatji boy, died in hospital 10 days after prosecutors say he was chased, knocked to the ground and “deliberately struck to the head” in Perth’s eastern suburbs on 13 October 2022.
Continue reading...The final state housing targets have seen a reduction in numbers, but the overall goal of refocusing growth to Melbourne’s inner core remains
Reading the headlines, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Victorian government has capitulated again – this time on its bold housing targets.
But for the well-heeled residents of Brighton and Boorondara – some of whom who had sought to quash any changes amid cries of “shame, premier, shame” – it’s full steam ahead, at least in their suburbs.
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Continue reading...Opposition leader claims plan to reduce workforce by nearly all jobs added under Labor would save $6bn annually
Peter Dutton claims the Coalition would pay for a $8.5bn boost to Medicare by cutting thousands of public servant jobs, providing yet another different answer on the Coalition’s as-yet-undefined plans for the public service.
After weeks of contradictory statements from senior shadow ministers about how many positions the Coalition would cull if it wins government, Dutton has now stipulated his plan could save $6bn annually – potentially representing nearly all of the new positions created under Labor.
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Continue reading...New Zealand defence minister Judith Collins says department has ‘never seen a task group of this capability undertaking this sort of work’
New Zealand’s defence minister has warned that Chinese warships located off the east coast of Australia are armed with “extremely capable” weapons that could reach Australia.
The three vessels, known as Taskgroup 107, undertook two live-fire exercises in the seas between Australia and New Zealand last week, causing commercial flights to be diverted in the skies above.
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Continue reading...Allan warns councils that fail to pull weight towards goal of building 2.24m new homes by 2051 that she intends to ‘shake things up’. Follow today’s news live
How will the bulk-billing increase be paid for?
There’s been criticism of the opposition that their support of the $8.5bn package hasn’t come with a plan to pay for it.
We’ve been very clear about the things that we don’t think that the federal government should be investing in. I mean, we’ve done things like, you know, we don’t believe [in] the federal government’s rewiring the nation, as an example, the national reconstruction fund, all of these things we’ve voted against, you know, we believe that public servants in Canberra are not what we need. We actually need frontline services, service workers, like doctors, like nurses which this policy addresses.
We are going to have to expect, unfortunately, a scare campaign. I mean, yesterday, at the launch, the prime minister and [Mark] Butler spent more time talking about Peter Dutton and the Liberal party than they did about themselves. So I think we can expect a scare campaign. But the facts don’t lie. The truth of all of this is quite clear in the statistics – under their watch, the health system in Australia has been significantly diminished.
Continue reading...People on board the boat said a shark was involved in the man being lost overboard, but another fisher disputed the account
A multi-agency search resumed on Monday for a man reported to have been taken by a shark after falling off a boat near Newcastle.
However another game fisherman has denied a shark was involved and said the man was dragged overboard in a freak accident while fishing.
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Continue reading...Asio believed the man, anonymised as HWMW, was at risk of being exploited by the Mossad
An officer in the Australian army has been stripped of his security clearance because Asio believes he is more loyal to Israel than Australia, and at risk of being exploited by the Mossad.
The man told Asio interviewers he did not view Israel as a foreign government and that he would share classified information with the Israel Defense Forces if they asked for it.
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Continue reading...Exclusive: Home Affairs tells the Guardian consular assistance is ‘severely limited’ in Syria, where Mustafa Hajj-Obeid remains in custody
The Australian government should repatriate, monitor and investigate any crimes committed by a member of Islamic State who was wounded in the extremist group’s final battle, according to multiple security and international law experts.
Last week, the Guardian revealed an Australian man whose fate was not publicly known was alive and in custody in a prison in north-eastern Syria, run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
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Continue reading...Exclusive: Court documents obtained by Guardian Australia show appeal argues judge was wrong to decide penalty was needed to ‘provoke’ leadership attention
Energy giant AGL is disputing a “manifestly excessive” $25m fine for using the Centrepay debit system to wrongly take welfare money from hundreds of vulnerable Australians. It argues that a judge should not have used the massive financial penalty to try to “provoke some attention” from the company’s board and executive leadership.
Late last year, the federal court imposed the hefty fine and excoriated AGL for wrongly taking money from 483 welfare recipients via Centrepay, the scandal-plagued, government-run system that allows automatic diversion of social security payments to essential services, like electricity bills and rent.
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Continue reading...Telegram took 160 days to provide information, with the delay obstructing online safety scrutineer from doing its job, commissioner says
Encrypted messaging app Telegram has been fined nearly $1m by Australia’s online safety regulator for failing to respond on time to questions about what the company does to tackle terrorism and child abuse material on its platform.
The notice was issued to Telegram, among other companies, in May last year, with a deadline to report back in October on steps taken to address terrorist and violent extremism material, as well as child exploitation material on its platform.
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Continue reading...Victim is in a stable condition at a Brisbane hospital with abdominal and leg injuries, authorities say
A man is recovering in a Brisbane hospital after being bitten by a shark and airlifted for treatment from a Moreton Bay island.
The man, who is reported to be 29, was mauled in the waters off the bay side of Moreton Island near the Wrecks Walking Track shortly after 3pm on Saturday.
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Continue reading...Super Members Council says summit may sway US president on tariffs on Australian industry after seeing scale of investment in US
Australia’s $2.8tn superannuation industry will bolster the Albanese government’s bid to secure an exemption from the Trump administration’s 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium imports this week.
A delegation of Australia’s largest funds will meet with US government officials from Monday, as part of a four-day summit designed to improve awareness of the industry’s long-term contributions to the US economy and its plans to more than double investment.
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Continue reading...Less than half of Australians were always bulk billed when they saw a GP in 2023-24, government data says
The Coalition says it will match “dollar for dollar” Labor’s landmark $8.5bn proposal to dramatically increase Medicare bulk-billing rates for GP visits, pledging to meet Anthony Albanese’s commitment to make nearly all doctors’ appointments free.
Doctor’s groups have welcomed Labor’s pledge to fund 18m extra bulk-billed GP visits annually, but have warned some patients will still miss out because government rebates are sometimes still too low to cover the cost of all appointments. The health minister, Mark Butler, says nine out of 10 GP visits will be covered by 2030 under Labor’s plan, and has accused the Coalition of “cooking the books” on bulk-billing statistics during their time in office.
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Continue reading...‘Horrendous’ eight-year long project has ended with final fact check, leaving a legacy ‘nobody can argue’ with, says researcher
The final findings of the “horrendous” eight-year long “massacre map”, tracing the violent history of the Australian colonial frontier have been released.
The Colonial Frontier Massacres Digital Map Project, spearheaded by the late emerita professor of history at the University of Newcastle, Dr Lyndall Ryan, officially concluded in 2022.
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At least 10,657 people were killed in at least 438 colonial frontier massacres.
10,374 of them were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people killed by colonists.
Only 160 of those killed were non-Indigenous colonists.
There were 13 massacres of colonists by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people.
The most intense period of massacres was from the late 1830s into 1840s, with a pivotal point being the Myall Creek massacre in 1838 – the first time any perpetrators had been punished.
After the Myall Creek convictions, the government could no longer involve the military and new “police” forces were created, which set a pattern for the rest of the conflict.
About half of all massacres of Aboriginal people were carried out by police and other government agents. Many others were perpetrated by settlers acting with tacit approval of the state.
Some perpetrators were involved in many massacres.
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