CSIRO says dramatic climate events are compounding the effects of underlying global heating
Extreme climate events such as heatwaves, floods and drought damaged 45% of the marine ecosystems along Australia’s coast in a seven-year period, CSIRO research shows.
More than 8,000km of Australia’s coast was affected by extreme climate events from 2011 to 2017, and in some cases they caused irreversible changes to marine habitats.
Continue reading...Anthony Harvey murdered his wife, Mara Lee, their three children and his mother-in-law in their Perth home
A man who admitted using knives to murder his wife, three young children and mother-in-law has become the first person in Western Australia ordered by a judge never to be released from prison.
Anthony Robert Harvey, 25, killed two-year-old twins Alice and Beatrix, three-year-old Charlotte and their mother, Mara Lee Harvey, 41, at their Bedford home on 3 September 2018.
Continue reading...Ambitious export plan could generate billions and make Australia the centre of low-cost energy in a future zero-carbon world
The desert outside Tennant Creek, deep in the Northern Territory, is not the most obvious place to build and transmit Singapore’s future electricity supply. Though few in the southern states are yet to take notice, a group of Australian developers are betting that will change.
If they are right, it could have far-reaching consequences for Australia’s energy industry and what the country sells to the world.
Continue reading...Crystal-lee Wightley dies at her family’s home three days after getting sick
A Melbourne family say they are heartbroken after a 13-year-old girl died from the flu late last week, as the national death toll nears 300.
Crystal-lee Wightley had the flu for three days before she died at her family’s home.
Continue reading...Indigenous community welcomes plan but warns against prioritising symbolism over action
Western Australia will become the first state in Australia to permanently fly the Aboriginal flag outside every police station as part of an attempt to address long-standing divisions between police and Indigenous communities.
The proposal forms part of WA police’s first ever reconciliation action plan, released on Tuesday, which also includes a promise to increase Indigenous staffing levels in the organisation, develop protocols for delivering a Welcome to Country at police events, and “look into the feasibility of offering Aboriginal language lessons to staff”.
Continue reading...Perth’s Timothy Costelloe says forcing revelations will interfere with the ‘free practice of the Catholic faith’
Perth’s Catholic archbishop, Timothy Costelloe, says forcing religious leaders in Western Australia to reveal knowledge of child sex abuse risks “interfering with the free practice of the Catholic faith” and will be ineffective – a stance that advocates say is “ignorant and pig-headed”.
The state government plans to expand mandatory reporting laws to include religious leaders such as priests, ministers, imams, rabbis, pastors and Salvation Army officers.
Continue reading...Scott Morrison also defends deal as Coalition attacks Labor’s childcare plan as ‘communist’. All the day’s events, live
Both campaigns are now in debate prep mode, so we are going to power down for the moment.
But it’s just a break, not goodbye. We’ll be back just before 7pm eastern time to bring you the blow-by-blow of the first leaders’ debate.
On what he would do in terms of climate policies (given his history on the subject with the Gillard government):
It was Tony Windsor and I who forced the changes. Both sides have the ability to get on with embedding climate change into the processes of government. At the time we did have world-leading legislation.
I concede we lost control of the politics and that Tony Abbott, as the alternate prime minister, came in on a wave of, you know, that carbon tax message, which even his chief of staff, you know, after the event, has admitted was more about the politics than anything to do with policy.
Continue reading...Cameco did not have to show if WA mine would lead to extinction of tiny fauna before its approval on 10 April
A multinational uranium miner persuaded the federal government to drop a requirement forcing it to show that a mine in outback Western Australia would not make any species extinct before it could go ahead.
Canadian-based Cameco argued in November 2017 the condition proposed by the government for the Yeelirrie uranium mine, in goldfields north of Kalgoorlie, would be too difficult to meet.
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...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...As the Northern Territory begins its big mop-up after Cyclone Trevor, local authorities have hosed down racism claims concerning evacuation efforts.
Trevor forced mass evacuations before it made landfall on Saturday morning as a category four system, with destructive winds gusting up to 250km/h.
Continue reading...Residents of Port Hedland and Karratha in Western Australia prepare for Cyclone Veronica, due to hit on Sunday morning
Cyclone Trevor has struck the Northern Territory as a category four system, hammering remote communities with destructive 250 km/h winds and torrential rain.
Continue reading...Western Australian government to compulsorily acquire properties in deadly Pilbara site, where there are fears for tourists who still visit the area
Landowners who refuse to move from the most contaminated site in the southern hemisphere will have their properties compulsorily acquired by the Western Australian government.
A bill to finalise the closure of the former asbestos mining town Wittenoom in the Pilbara, which was de-gazetted in 2007, was due to be introduced to state parliament on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Former university vice-chancellor was backed by prominent conservatives including Mathias Cormann
Celia Hammond has been named the Liberal party’s candidate for Curtin, the safest blue-ribbon seat in Western Australia held by the former foreign minister Julie Bishop.
The former University of Notre Dame vice-chancellor, who was backed by prominent conservatives including the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, was preselected at a meeting on Sunday as the candidate for Curtin to fill the seat Bishop has held for two decades.
Continue reading...EPA chief says new regulations are needed to meet Paris targets, putting future LNG projects under threat
Western Australia’s environmental protection authority has announced tough new measures aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions from large projects.
The EPA, which works independently and makes recommendations to the WA government about whether new developments should be granted environmental approval, said on Thursday it was setting a “higher bar” for how it would assess the impact of major projects on the climate.
Continue reading...Severe weather conditions forecast to bring maximum temperatures 8C to 16C above average, as three towns record overnight minimums of 33C
Coping with extreme heat: share your photos
Port Augusta in South Australia has reached 48.9C on Tuesday, as a heatwave sets in across much of Australia threatening more record hot days.
All-time highest minimum temperatures have also been broken in three places. Meekatharra in Western Australia and Fowlers Gap and White Cliffs in New South Wales all registered an overnight minimum of 33C on Monday.
Continue reading...Much of Australia will bake this week with meteorologists forecasting the hot conditions will last for days in some parts
Every state and territory will bake through a heatwave on Monday with meteorologists saying soaring temperatures will last for days in some parts.
The Bureau of Meteorology said hot days were expected in January but multiple days in a row of temperatures above 40C were unusual.
Continue reading...Western Australian timber town joins Australia’s list of big things thanks to the tenacity of Kevin Bird and his 6m clock
It rains a lot in Nannup. The small timber town in south-western Western Australia, population of just over 1,300, receives almost a metre of rainfall a year. For a builder like Kevin Bird, that means a lot of days when it’s too wet to work.
It could be an opportunity to catch up on the accounts, or even leave off work for the day and read a book. Instead, Bird used his wet-weather days to build the largest wooden pendulum clock in the world.
Continue reading...Human reactions to shark attacks have fascinated Fiona Adolph for more than a decade. Here she examines a global hotspot, Western Australia
On a whisper-still January dawn, the most terrifying day of Allan Oppert’s life began unremarkably and with a feeling of deep calm.
Like most Sundays, he woke to a knock on the door from his friends Dan and Dave. At Allan’s neat house in the small seaside town of Binningup, in the south-west corner of Western Australia, the three men drank strong coffee before towing Allan’s boat to a nearby ramp where three friends were launching another vessel. The two groups were heading out on the ocean together, a familiar arrangement aimed at ensuring safety.
Continue reading...Western Australian government makes act of grace payment over catastrophic brain injury from shock on public housing property
The family of a girl who suffered a catastrophic brain injury after a severe electric shock at a public housing property has been offered a $1m act of grace payment from the West Australian government.
Denishar Woods, then aged 11, was shocked with up to 230 volts when she touched a garden tap at a Beldon property in March.
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