Turkish police said they had arrested a Syrian national who was planning retaliation for New Zealand mosque attack
The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has cast doubt on a possible plot to target Anzac Day commemorations at Gallipoli despite the arrest of a man with suspected links to Islamic State by Turkish police.
The suspect, a Syrian national, was arrested after a police operation in Osmaniye and was among several Isis members detained.
Continue reading...Complaint failed to get Anthony Peter Sampieri off the streets before he allegedly raped a child at a dance studio
A police officer has been charged with neglect of duty after a complaint about a sex offender failed to get him off the streets before he allegedly raped a child at a Sydney dance studio.
Anthony Peter Sampieri, 55, allegedly raped, choked and filmed a seven-year-old girl he held captive in a Kogarah dance studio bathroom in November.
Continue reading...Scott Morrison says spending on wellbeing centres and jobs assistance is ‘about backing veterans and their families’
The Coalition has promised to spend $63m on veterans’ initiatives, including wellbeing centres and employment assistance.
Scott Morrison and the veterans affairs minister, Darren Chester, will announce the funding on Wednesday ahead of a campaign hiatus on Thursday for Anzac Day.
Continue reading...Can Cathy McGowan’s anointed successor keep Indi independent or will the Coalition strike back?
With the retirement of Cathy McGowan, the rural Victorian seat of Indi is once more back in play and the group of campaigners who unseated Sophie Mirabella in 2013 are now fighting to keep the seat in independent hands.
Orange spray-painted chairs adorn the verandahs outside homes across the electorate – a symbol of the battle.
Continue reading...Former agriculture minister says he has ‘no problems whatsoever’ with unredacted documents about transaction being released
Barnaby Joyce has attempted to pin blame for a controversial $80m water buyback on the Queensland Labor government in a belligerent marathon interview.
Speaking to Radio National’s Patricia Karvelas on Monday evening, Joyce brushed off threats of a royal commission into the issue, arguing it would have to examine the previous federal Labor government and the state government, for recommending water buybacks from Eastern Australia Agriculture (EAA).
Continue reading...Perth woman flight says two-month-old girl with her Saudi parents had been restless from take-off
A two-month-old baby has died in the arms of a fellow passenger following a medical emergency onboard an AirAsia flight from Kuala Lumpur to Perth.
The child had been on the AirAsia flight D7236 with her Saudi parents, according to another passenger, Perth woman Nadia Parenzee, who said the baby had died in her arms.
Continue reading...Rescue boat crew were trying to help a tourist wading in dangerous waters at the mouth of the Sherbrook River
A Victorian town is in mourning after losing two of its well-regarded surf lifesaving volunteers, a father and son who died trying to rescue a tourist from treacherous swells.
Dairy farmers Ross Powell, 71, and his son Andy Powell, 32, have been remembered as heroes after their rescue boat flipped in two-metre swell on Sunday morning.
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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 emotionally charged moment when Nettleton was reunited with the children in a Syrian refugee camp was broadcast in an ABC TV Four Corners documentary on Monday night.
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