Category Archives: Australia news

Australia Day honours list: Kylie Minogue and Peter Reith among 2019 recipients

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Women account for 37.5% of those honoured – a record but still short of the 40% target promised by Labor

This year’s Australia Day honours list has the highest proportion of women ever – but female recipients still make up just over a third of the list, only a 4.5-percentage-point increase from last year.

Seven former Liberal or National male politicians have been honoured in the 2019 awards, including former Nationals leader Warren Truss, former deputy Liberal leader Peter Reith and former Liberal national director Tony Nutt.

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Man arrested over Gold Coast balcony death of Breeana Robinson in 2013

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Cheerleader was allegedly thrown off 11th-floor balcony of luxury Southport apartment

A man is expected to face court accused of throwing a Gold Coast cheerleader off an 11th-floor balcony six years ago.

Breeana Robinson, 21, died when she plunged from the balcony of a luxury Southport apartment in January 2013.

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Sydney’s desalination plant likely to start up to ease water shortages

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Low dam levels and the drought lead New South Wales government to act

Sydney’s desalination plant was likely to be switched on this weekend because of falling dam levels and the drought, the New South Wales resources minister said.

The plant is turned on when water storages drop below 60%.

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Australian heatwave: Adelaide breaks 80-year-old temperature record – live

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With high temperatures also forecast for Victoria and NSW, there are warnings about potential power outages and blackouts, as well as total fire bans amid worsening weather. Follow developments live

Yes please.

Elite marketing by Royal Park Foodland #adelaideheatwave pic.twitter.com/IMMLZdywLq

Just on the issue of heatwaves and climate change, the ABC Melbourne presenter Rafael Epstein has pointed to recent statements from Victoria’s Bureau of Meteorology (Bom).

Just in case someone says hot weather has nothing to do with climate change

"Australia's climate is increasingly influenced by global warming... has warmed by just over one degree since 1910, with most of the warming occurring since 1950."

From @BOM_Vic this month

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‘Please help me’: refugee footballer Hakeem al-Araibi tells of his Thai jail ordeal

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Exclusive: In an interview with the Guardian he pleads for his release and says he fears torture and jail if extradited to Bahrain

Hakeem al-Araibi, the refugee footballer from Bahrain who was detained in Thailand while on his honeymoon, has said he is “losing hope” and believes he will be tortured again or even killed if he is deported to Bahrain.

Speaking to the Guardian from Bangkok Remand Prison, a visibly distressed Al-Araibi said he was “terrified ” and that his fear was “getting worse every day”. Al-Araibi was given asylum in Australia in 2017 after fleeing his home country where he was persecuted for his beliefs, tortured in prison and convicted on a trumped-up vandalism charge.

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Water crisis: western NSW mayors travel to Sydney to demand help

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Five mayors warn their towns could run out of water within weeks and call for their needs to be prioritised over irrigators

The mayors of several western New South Wales councils have warned their townships face major water crises within weeks and have urged the state government to impose a one-month embargo on irrigators pumping from the upper part of the Darling River system.

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Warren Mundine picked by Scott Morrison to stand in marginal seat of Gilmore

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Indigenous leader and former Labor boss to be parachuted in as a Liberal in the NSW electorate held by retiring MP Ann Sudmalis

Indigenous leader Warren Mundine will be parachuted in to contest the marginal seat of Gilmore under a Scott Morrison-endorsed plan being considered by the New South Wales Liberal party executive.

On Tuesday the state executive voted to block the preselection of real-estate agent Grant Schultz, who had been picked by local members to contest the seat held by the retiring MP Ann Sudmalis.

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Bali bombings: Indonesia reviews Abu Bakar Bashir’s release after Morrison’s request

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PM urges president Joko Widodo to show respect for Australia over the planned early prison release of alleged mastermind

Indonesia’s security minister says the decision to release alleged Bali bombing mastermind Abu Bakar Bashir is being reviewed, hours after Scott Morrison urged president Joko Widodo to show respect for Australia.

The minister, Wiranto, told a hastily called news conference on Monday night that Widodo had asked him to coordinate a review of all aspects of the planned release.

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Man arrested at Sydney airport over baby formula crime syndicate allegations

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Syndicate allegedly handled $1 million of stolen goods in the past year and may have run empire over a number of years

Police in New South Wales allege a Sydney family ran an expansive crime empire that stole and illegally exported thousands of tins of baby formula to China.

Police on Monday said they had arrested six people, including four from the same family, over the alleged coordinated theft of more than 4,000 tins of baby formula, manuka honey and other goods.

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Music festivals will have to be licensed in NSW following drug deaths

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Organisers will have to apply for a specific liquor licence, similar to those for pubs and clubs, in bid to keep young people safe

Music festivals will have to be licensed in New South Wales under new regulations following a string of tragedies.

Five people have now died after attending music festivals, including 23-year-old Joseph Pham and 21-year-old Diana Nguyen, who both died of suspected drug overdoses after attending the Defqon.1 festival in September.

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Hakeem al-Araibi: calls grow for inquiry into police role in refugee footballer’s arrest

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Exclusive: Greens and the ACTU say parliament should investigate AFP’s role in the detention of Bahraini refugee in Thailand

A parliamentary inquiry should examine the actions of the Australian Federal Police which led to the arrest of Hakeem al-Araibi in Thailand, Australia’s peak union body and the Greens have said.

Al-Araibi, a 25-year-old Bahraini refugee who has permanent residency in Australia, was arrested on arrival in Bangkok for a holiday, on the basis of an Interpol red notice, which was later lifted.

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‘It’s like hell here’: Australia bakes as record temperatures nudge 50C

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Fears rise for homeless and vulnerable people as communities brace for another week of relentless hot weather

It was 48.9C last Tuesday in Port Augusta, South Australia, an old harbour city that now harvests solar power. Michelle Coles, the owner of the local cinema, took off her shoes at night to test the concrete before letting the dogs out. “People tend to stay at home,” she said. “They don’t walk around when it’s like this.”

It’s easy to see why: in the middle of the day it takes seconds to blister a dog’s paw or child’s foot. In Mildura, in northern Victoria, last week gardeners burned their hands when they picked up their tools, which had been left in the sun at 46C. Fish were dying in the rivers.

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Aiia Maasarwe: 20-year old Melbourne man charged over Bundoora killing

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The Greensborough man has been charged with one count of murder and will appear at the Melbourne magistrates’ court

The Victorian police have charged a 20-year-old man with the murder of Palestinian student Aiia Maasarwe.

Maasarwe, a 21-year-old an Israeli national from the predominantly Arab city of Baqa al-Gharbiyye had been in Melbourne for six months, and was attacked just after midnight on Tuesday, Victorian police believe.

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Great Australian heatwave takes a breather – only to return again soon

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Late monsoon and lack of strong cold fronts cited as main reasons behind back-to-back spells of abnormally hot weather

This week’s record-smashing heatwave is over for now in Australia’s south-east, but the reprieve will be short-lived as temperatures build up again in the coming days.

A perfect storm, or rather the lack of one, is partly to blame for the extreme temperatures, with neither the northern monsoons nor the southern cool fronts making their usual appearances.

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Another Murray cod dead at Menindee as locals brace for another kill

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Murray-Darling commissioner offer to include Menindee fish kill in inquiry rejected by South Australia attorney general

Another 80cm Murray cod has died in the Lower Darling River on Friday afternoon, raising fears among Menindee locals that the predicted drop in temperature overnight will trigger another fish kill incident.

The Guardian saw the large cod, estimated to be about 30 to 40 years old, floating about 1km downstream from where another large cod died on Thursday.

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Bundoora death: Israeli student Aiia Maasarwe on video call with sister when attacked

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The 21-year-old student at Melbourne’s LaTrobe University is believed to have been returning home from a comedy show

A young woman who was killed outside a Bundoora shopping centre was an Israeli student who was on a video call to her younger sister when she was attacked.

Aiia Maasarwe, 21, had been in Australia for about six months on a study abroad program at LaTrobe University.

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Australia to introduce rules about sedating or restraining nursing home residents

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Aged care minister says he was disturbed by footage of elderly men being chemically and physically restrained

On the eve of the royal commission into the aged care sector’s first hearing, the Morrison government has flagged new regulations on the use of chemical and physical restraints in nursing homes.

There are no rules in Australia governing the use of restraints in aged care facilities, unlike the US, Britain and Europe.

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Extreme heatwave: all-time temperature records fall across parts of Australia

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Australia had its warmest ever December on record and temperatures this week nudged 50C in some places

Temperature records have been broken in towns across parts of Australia sweltering through a heatwave, which is currently in its fourth day.

Australia also recorded its hottest December on record the Bureau of Meteorology said on Thursday in a special climate statement on “the unusual extended period of heatwaves” across much of the country.

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Peter Dutton tops GetUp’s ‘hard right’ hit list for federal election

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Tony Abbott in second place as activist group looks to extend list of targets

Peter Dutton is the most unpopular Australian politician among GetUp supporters, with the activist organisation now looking to extend its “hard right” MP target hit list for the upcoming federal election.

The home affairs minister, who is already facing an established GetUp campaign against him in his marginal Queensland seat of Dickson, dominated the activist group’s poll of most loathed politicians, attracting 22,028 first-place votes.

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Victoria police falsified breath tests to meet ‘unachievable’ targets, inquiry finds

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Police ramped up breath testing target from 3.2m to 4.5m but had a ‘perverse’ incentive to limit the number of drunk drivers netted

An independent investigation has branded Victoria police’s widespread practice of falsifying breath tests as an “ethical failure”.

The former police chief commissioner Neil Comrie’s inquiry was unable to determine exactly how many times police had manipulated breath test devices to falsely inflate the number of tests conducted.

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