Scale of environmental damage attributed to huge number of dogs globally as well as ‘lax or uninformed behaviour of dog owners’
Dogs have “extensive and multifarious” environmental impacts, disturbing wildlife, polluting waterways and contributing to carbon emissions, new research has found.
An Australian review of existing studies has argued that “the environmental impact of owned dogs is far greater, more insidious, and more concerning than is generally recognised”.
Continue reading...Opposition and Labor offer opposing pitches for economy in treasurers’ debate hosted by Sky News
Jim Chalmers has laid into “Peter Dutton’s coalition of cuts and chaos” in a heated televised debate with Angus Taylor, who took aim at a Labor party he claimed had overseen the “biggest collapse in our living standards in history”.
The treasurer and his counterpart went head-to-head in a debate hosted by Sky News on Wednesday night, answering questions on US tariffs, the cost-of-living crisis, energy and housing.
Continue reading...Man praised for ‘towering courage’ in paving way for survivors to challenge past settlements that effectively protected church institutions
Lawyers for an abuse survivor say a high court ruling on Wednesday will pave the way for more survivors to challenge past settlements that “served only to protect the church institutions” from paying out genuine compensation.
The survivor, known as DZY, was confronted with insurmountable legal barriers to his planned civil action against the Christian Brothers in 2012 over abuse at the hands of two Catholic brothers, brothers Robert Best and Gerald Fitzgerald, in the 1960s.
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Continue reading...Homeless residents given an hour to move belongings as City of Moreton Bay brings excavator to Eddie Hyland Park in Lawnton
Homeless residents of one of Moreton Bay’s largest encampments watched on as council rangers and an excavator began tearing down their tents on Wednesday.
A dozen police and council officers arrived at Eddie Hyland Park in Lawnton on Wednesday morning. The large park, next to the Pine Rivers Showgrounds, has been home to a dozen or more people, with about 15 tents standing when authorities arrived on Wednesday morning.
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Health minister grilled on Labor’s $1bn mental health package
The health minister, Mark Butler, says Labor will not technically be building new mental health centres under its $1bn mental health promise.
We’re not building them. This is to fund the operations of these centres. Generally, they will rent existing premises.
They won’t be brand-new buildings. What we will do, say, in a particular area of say, north Brisbane or regional Queensland – we say we want to establish - let’s use the word establish other than build.
Head to Health – no one knew what it was, okay?
We did research. We basically, looked at how the existing services, which had started under the former government, were performing.
Continue reading...Stock markets down from Australia to Japan and Taiwan as Trump presses ahead with plans to hit China with huge retaliatory tariffs
Today’s tariffs follow Trump’s 10% tariff on all imports from many countries, including Australia, which came into effect at the weekend.
US customs agents began collecting the unilateral tariff at US seaports, airports and customs warehouses on Saturday. Today’s measures are higher levies on goods from 57 larger trading partners.
Continue reading...Surangel Whipps Jr says he would be ‘deeply disappointed’ if attempt were abandoned under Coalition
The president of Palau has delivered a pointed barb at Peter Dutton while strongly backing an Australian bid to host a UN climate conference on behalf of the Pacific, arguing that it would boost regional solidarity and he would be “deeply disappointed” if the attempt was abandoned under the Coalition.
Speaking at a renewable energy conference in Sydney on Wednesday, Surangel Whipps Jr described seeing two-thirds of an island in his archipelago country disappear under water in his lifetime. “For those of us in the Pacific who have lived through storm surges, rising ocean levels and increasingly high tides, the phrase ‘water lapping at our door’ is not a metaphor or a punchline. It’s our fear and reality,” he said.
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Continue reading...Rodney Cherry was found guilty of killing his wife and stepdaughter but argued no body, no parole became law after he was sentenced
A double murderer has failed in a high court bid to overturn Queensland’s “no body, no parole” laws, in a case which also involved almost every other state and territory government.
Rodney Michael Cherry, 65, was found guilty in 2002 of killing his 35-year-old wife, Annette Cherry, and 18-year-old stepdaughter, Kira Guise, at Roma in central Queensland and sentenced to life in prison.
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Continue reading...Exclusive: Spending came after the Albanese government paused ads for a week amid reports ads were appearing next to inappropriate content
The Australian government spent nearly $3m of taxpayer dollars advertising on Twitter/X in the first year after the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, took over the platform, despite warnings of brand reputation damage that caused the government to initially pause ads.
Data obtained by Guardian Australia, after a protracted freedom of information battle with the federal finance department, revealed $2.7m was spent between November 2022 and November 2023. Musk finalised his purchase of the platform on 28 October 2022.
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Continue reading...US president says he will shortly announce the new tariff on pharmaceuticals but does not give any details
Donald Trump says the US will soon introduce “a major tariff on pharmaceuticals” designed to force more manufacturing giants to relocate to America, a move that could further strain relations with Australia.
His comments come hours after his trade representative, Jamieson Greer, said the US should be “running up the score” with Australia and using money generated by tariffs to address a broader $1.2tn trade deficit with the rest of the world. The US maintains a trade surplus with Australia.
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Continue reading...Peter Dutton says policy would be ‘gamechanger’ despite experts questioning whether it would work
The Coalition’s plan to create a domestic gas reservation for the east coast would drive down household gas bills by 7% and industrial gas bills by 15%, newly-released estimates.
The opposition’s long-awaited modelling by Frontier Economics, released on Tuesday evening, estimated the changes would bring down new domestic gas supplies to $9 or $10 a gigajoule, and came after experts shed doubt on whether the policy could drive down prices through a government market intervention.
Continue reading...Prime minister asks ‘how can you believe what they’ll do after the election’ as opposition leader accuses Labor of having the wrong priorities
Anthony Albanese has accused Peter Dutton of “gaslighting” Australians on key Liberal policies in a spirited first leaders’ debate of the election campaign which focused heavily on energy, health and tax policies.
Neither man made a major misstep in the Sky News forum on Tuesday evening in western Sydney, where Albanese was voted the winner in a poll of 100 undecided voters. Albanese won 44 votes, Dutton won 35 and 21 remained undecided.
Continue reading...Conservation groups condemn the move along with the government’s decision to extend the life of coal power stations
Queensland’s target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2035 could face the scrap heap, with the state energy minister ordering a review of the ambitious legislation.
The Clean Economy Jobs Bill was passed into law last year, with the backing of both Labor and the Liberal National party.
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Continue reading...Michelle de Kretser and journalist Amy McQuire among six authors in contention for $60,000 prize for women and non-binary writers
The Stella prize, Australia’s award for women and non-binary authors, has made history this year with a shortlist featuring only works by women of colour, for the first time since the award was established in 2013.
Announced on Tuesday morning, this year’s shortlist includes Darumbal and South Sea Islander journalist Amy McQuire’s essay collection, Black Witness (winner of the 2025 Victorian premier’s award for Indigenous writing), about the failures of mainstream media and power of Indigenous journalism; two-time Miles Franklin-winner Michelle de Kretser’s Theory & Practice, a reckoning with fiction, memoir and colonialism; and playwright, poet and author Samah Sabawi’s family memoir, Cactus Pear For My Beloved, tracing her roots from British-occupied Palestine through to contemporary Queensland.
Continue reading...Junking a signature policy to focus on his pet areas could help get his rocky campaign back on track
As mid-election mea culpas go, it was a big one.
After campaigning for months on a crackdown on those “entitled” Canberra public servants, those fat-cat bureaucrats supposedly taking hard-working Aussies for a ride with their generous work-from-home conditions, Peter Dutton’s latest policy backdown has seen the Coalition spectacularly concede defeat on plans to “bring our public servants back to work” and apologise for raising it.
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Continue reading...Zoos Victoria wildlife detection dogs uncovered the ‘bloody gorgeous’ reptiles in return for treats and cuddles
Wildlife detection dogs successfully sniffed out 13 critically endangered earless dragons in previously unknown burrows in Melbourne’s west, after a training program launched by Zoos Victoria in 2023.
The Victorian grassland earless dragon – Australia’s most imperilled reptile – had not been seen for 50 years and was thought extinct before its remarkable rediscovery on privately owned grassland in 2023.
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Continue reading...The Coalition would retain Labor’s cap on the private sector but cut an extra 30,000 places at universities
The Coalition has been accused of using the “Donald Trump anti-migration card” with its election policy to slash international students, as the university sector warns it favours the private vocational education and training (VET) sector.
On Sunday, Peter Dutton announced he would reduce the number of international students to 240,000 a year, a reduction of “over 80,000 in annual new overseas student commencements compared with 2023 levels”, he said.
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Continue reading...The value of one Australian dollar dropped to a low of 59.64 US cents, its lowest point since April 2020
Consumers and travellers will face higher prices after the Australian dollar fell to Covid-era lows, as markets reel from Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariff plan.
Fears of a global recession dragged the Australian dollar sharply lower on Monday against the country’s major trade partners and to its lowest point against the Euro, pound and US dollar since 2020.
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Continue reading...Japan’s Nikkei 225 tumbles nearly 9% on Monday as Hong Kong’s Hang Seng down 8% and South Korea trading temporarily halted amid Trump tariff concerns
Hong Kong stocks have plummeted more than 9% at open, while Singapore stocks dropped over 7%, according to reports.
Hong Kong and Chinese stocks dived on Monday as markets around the world crumbled in the face of the widening global trade war and fears it will unleash a deep recession, Reuters says.
Continue reading...Japan’s Nikkei 225 tumbles nearly 9% on Monday as Hong Kong’s Hang Seng down 8% and South Korea trading temporarily halted amid Trump tariff concerns
Hong Kong stocks have plummeted more than 9% at open, while Singapore stocks dropped over 7%, according to reports.
Hong Kong and Chinese stocks dived on Monday as markets around the world crumbled in the face of the widening global trade war and fears it will unleash a deep recession, Reuters says.
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