NSW firefighters upgrade Gospers Mountain blaze to emergency as police launch investigation into fires in regional Victoria
An out-of-control bushfire has burnt through more than 11,000 hectares of land north of Perth with residents urged to leave while they still can.
It comes as New South Wales firefighters upgraded the Gospers Mountain blaze to an emergency on Saturday afternoon, and police launched an investigation into a spate of fires in regional Victoria.
Continue reading...Gospers Mountain, Paddock Run and Little L Complex, Three Mile and Thompson Creek fires overlap, and there are now seven emergency warnings in NSW as fire conditions worsen along Australia’s New South Wales and Queensland coasts. This blog is now closed
We are going to wrap the live blog up here. As of almost 7.30pm AEDT there are still seven fires at emergency warning level across NSW.
They are:
Related: Australia fires: five blazes merge north of Sydney as conditions forecast to worsen
Some more photos from photographer Matthew Abbott out at Kulnura:
Continue reading...Sydney’s pedestrian bottlenecks, Brisbane’s barren streetscapes and Perth’s freeway fiascos: cities across the country are making classic mistakes
In every city there are places where the road should be just a bit wider, where the bus stop would be better a few metres down or, perhaps, a multi-lane highway simply should not exist.
Bad urban design is a barrier to what should be the smooth flow of life in cities. It ruins commutes and can make daily life unnecessarily difficult for the disabled or elderly.
Continue reading...Western Australian police say children’s mother found with self-inflicted wounds at beach near Madeley home
The bodies of two deceased siblings, aged six and 10, have been found at a home in Perth’s northern suburbs.
The children’s mother is under police custody in hospital.
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...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...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...High commission urges early redress for Nauroze Anees, citing his ‘uncomfortably prolonged detention’
Pakistan’s high commission has called for early redress for one of its citizens held in “overstretched and uncomfortably prolonged detention” in Australia’s onshore immigration facilities.
The man, a 32-year-old who arrived in 2007 on a student visa, has been refused ministerial intervention in his case, despite acting as the primary carer for his partner. He is among the growing cohort of people inside detention on section 501 “character test” deportation orders.
Continue reading...Scott Morrison talks of his ancestor’s arrival on the continent, and defends celebration of Australia Day
• Hundreds attend first dawn service to be held on Australia Day
Scott Morrison has said 26 January 1788 was “pretty miserable” for his ancestor, in a speech defending the celebration of Australia Day, while tens of thousands of people joined Invasion Day marches around the country calling for the public holiday to be abolished.
Morrison told a citizenship ceremony in Canberra that his fifth great grandfather, William Roberts, arrived with the first fleet in a group that was “wretched, naked, filthy, dirty, lousy, and many of them utterly unable to stand, or even to stir hand or foot”.
Continue reading...Multiple officers arrive at home to find Perth man with ‘serious fear’ of arachnids ‘trying to kill a spider’
Police in Western Australia have confirmed they sent multiple officers to an emergency call that turned out to be a screaming man with a “serious fear” of spiders.
A concerned passerby was walking outside a house in suburban Perth when they heard a toddler screaming and a man repeatedly shouting “Why don’t you die?”
Continue reading...