New opposition leader puts focus on crime crackdown – and not on all-male leadership team
The Victorian Liberal leader, Brad Battin, has praised John Pesutto – the man he toppled for the top job – as he seeks to unite the fractured party.
“John is an important part of our team,” Battin told reporters in Melbourne on Saturday.
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Continue reading...Victorian temperatures to rise from Monday, with fire warnings also in place in NSW and Western Australia
Milder conditions across the weekend will bring temporary relief to firefighters who continue to battle an out-of-control bushfire in Victoria’s Grampians.
But the forecast rain was not expected to extinguish the fires and hot weather was expected to ramp up again from Monday.
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Continue reading...As leadership spill speculation grew, Battin was widely touted as the top candidate for the embattled opposition leader’s job
For Victorian Liberal MP Brad Battin, the third time proved to be the charm.
After falling short in a 2021 leadership spill against former opposition leader Michael O’Brien, and losing by a single vote to John Pesutto following the Liberals’ 2022 state election defeat, Battin on Friday had the numbers to snatch the leadership.
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Continue reading...Fires burning in Grampians national park, Bullengarook, Creswick and at the Gurdies after residents of Bornes Hill, Moyston and Pomonal ordered to leave. Follow the latest updates live
Authorities in Victoria have issued an emergency warning for a bushfire at Mafeking in the state’s west.
Locals have been told to take shelter immediately.
Continue reading...Homicide squad detectives investigating after 59-year-old found dead at Wood Duck Court in Langwarrin
Police have arrested a 63-year-old man in relation to the death of a woman in Langwarrin in Melbourne’s south-east.
The 59-year-old woman was found about 6:30am on Boxing Day, after emergency services responded to reports that a woman had been stabbed at an address at Wood Duck Court.
Continue reading...Perry Kouroumblis was extradited from Italy and charged over the 1977 deaths of Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett
An accused double murderer has faced a Melbourne court close to five decades after police allege he stabbed two women to death in a frenzied attack.
Perry Kouroumblis, 65, appeared bleary-eyed as he sat in the dock of the Melbourne magistrates court on Wednesday after arriving on Australian soil on Tuesday night.
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More on the new Malaysia-based maritime institute:
The government is contributing $1.78m over four years to support the institute, which will train regional government officials on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, broader maritime law and ocean governance, awareness of maritime domains and environmental protection.
We don’t want to see any unilateral changes to the status quo across the Taiwan straits, and our focus is on doing everything we can in terms of exercising our international voice around promoting stability and peace in and around the Taiwan straits, in and around Taiwan.
Rules and norms are vital for our shared maritime region and the countries of our region make an ongoing contribution to maintaining and promoting them.
The institute will deliver training to officials from across the region on complex maritime legal and policy topics. It will nurture leaders and help further our collective contribution to a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific region.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Yorta Yorta woman targeted in campaign by Barmah Brumby Preservation Group that included posters with racist slogans, Vcat finds
A pro-brumby activist organisation racially vilified the then head of an Indigenous group in Victoria through posters and social media posts showing her face and racist slogans, the state’s civil and administrative tribunal has found.
The Barmah Brumby Preservation Group displayed public posters showing the face of Monica Morgan, a Yorta Yorta woman, and racist slogans. Morgan argued at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (Vcat) the posters, along with social media posts and comments between 2020 and 2023, incited hatred of her and Yorta Yorta people on the basis of race.
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Continue reading...The Victorian premier has defended the state’s business credentials saying there’s key data missing from the Business Council of Australia’s report. Follow today’s news headlines live
Weather check shows mixed conditions forecast across Australian cities
It’s a mixed, if warm, bag in capital cities today, with the Bureau of Meteorology forecasting storms in Melbourne, sunny skies in Brisbane and Adelaide and showers across all other major cities.
Continue reading...Aemo says it does not want to ‘directly control people’s rooftop solar’ but it may be necessary to reduce or cut off power gleaned from the sun
The power grid in eastern Australia could experience “outage conditions” as soon as next spring unless states speed up actions to cope with surplus generation from solar panels on sunny days, the Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) has warned.
In a report released on Monday, Aemo called for an “emergency backstop” mechanism to ensure grid stability when households and other solar photovoltaic (PV) owners export excess electricity.
Continue reading...Latest disclosures include clubs who claim millions spent on their own golf and racecourses as donations to broader community
Poker machine venues in Victoria have significantly increased the amount of gambling revenue they are spending on themselves, while justifying it as a “community benefit” to get a tax cut.
Victoria’s community benefit scheme provides a tax cut to clubs that reinvest 8.33% of gambling revenue back into the community. But these clubs are able to list upgrades to their own golf courses, renovations and operating costs – which help keep gambling rooms open – as community benefits.
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Continue reading...Victoria police say man and woman died with gunshot wounds after reports of altercation at Rye home about 4am
Victoria police are searching for a man after a woman and a man were shot dead on the state’s Mornington Peninsula.
Police were called to an altercation between a group of people at an address on Parson Street in Rye shortly after 4am on Monday. Police arrived to find a man and woman with gunshot wounds.
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The health minister, Mark Butler, is holding a press conference in Adelaide to announce the endometriosis drug Visanne will be added to the pharmaceutical benefits scheme. It’s the first listing of an endo treatment in three decades.
This is a condition that impacts more than 1 million women – one in seven women and teenage girls – and for too long, too many women have been made to suffer in silence.
[They’ve] been told by many healthcare professionals, it has to be said, that this is “normal”. That it is a normal part of period pain or many other explanations for debilitating, crippling pain.
This is all about providing cheaper medicines and cutting-edge treatment to Australian patients generally, but [particularly] in the area of endometriosis, which has attracted such inadequate support for hundreds of thousands of Australian women.
This listing is beyond time.
The major contributor to the record has been the minimum temperatures, which averaged 17.2ºC over the spring season for the site, and were elevated by cloud cover, precipitation, and most notably, humidity.
Continue reading...Woman weaves through traffic at 80km/h before fleeing from snake in car barefoot and attempting to flag down passing motorists
Victoria police have carried out one of the “more bizarre welfare checks” after a deadly tiger snake slithered up a driver’s leg as she was travelling at 80km/h on a major freeway.
Police said they were called to Monash Freeway near the Toorak Rd exit in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs on Saturday morning after receiving reports of a barefoot woman trying to flag down passing traffic.
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Continue reading...Stores in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT affected as industrial action by up to 1,500 employees stretches into second week
Woolworths bears responsibility for the empty shelves seen in supermarkets across parts of Australia by attempting to treat workers like “robots”, the head of the Australian Council of Trade Unions has said, as a strike of warehouse workers extends into a second week.
Up to 1,500 employees began rolling 24-hour strikes on 21 November in warehouses in New South Wales and Victoria, seeking improved wages and safety. One of the major issues is a new framework system employed at the warehouse that tracks workers down to the minute, and logs performance each shift using an algorithm.
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Canavan says under-16 social media ban has caused new generation to become passionate about democracy
Nationals senator Matt Canavan was loudly outspoken against the under-16 social media ban bill and voted against it – but as we know, the bill ultimately passed.
It has been great seeing people learn how the parliament works. And with that in mind, note that the social media bill is not yet law. Tomorrow morning it heads back to the House of Representatives because there were amendments passed in the Senate tonight. It then has to go to the governor general. But both these steps are almost certain to happen.
Thanks again for all of your help and support. We got some amendments on digital ID so it was not for nothing and the fight continues.
As it currently stands, underlying inflation is still too high to be considering lowering the cash rate target in the near term.
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Nuclear costings coming ‘in coming weeks and months ahead of election’: Taylor
The shadow treasurer was also asked when the Coalition would release the costings of its nuclear plan.
We will not be announcing it on your program this morning, as much as you might like me to.
Continue reading...New South Wales to see wild weather and heavy rainfall after ‘unseasonably hot’ temperatures
Severe thunderstorms are forecast to bring lightning, damaging winds and hail to New South Wales on Thursday, following days of intense heat earlier this week.
Sydney, Wollongong, Goulburn, Orange and Gosford are anticipating severe thunderstorm activity, with thunderstorms also forecast for inland Queensland on Thursday.
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Labour market steadying as latest monthly CPI result looms
The consensus for much of the year has been the Reserve Bank’s 13-year high interest rates would squeeze demand in the economy, nudge up unemployment and help bring down inflation. And then it could start cutting its cash rate.
And then more recently, we’re actually starting to see [the labour market] tighten.
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The independent MP Zoe Daniel was on ABC News Breakfast earlier to discuss her alternative to the under-16 social media ban, which she introduced as a private member’s bill yesterday.
Daniel said her bill would implement an overarching statutory duty of care on social media companies “that goes to safety by design – but that in and of itself is not enough”.
What you need to make that work is the companies to assess the risks, mitigate the risks, be transparent about how they’re doing that.
The bill builds in penalties so if the companies do not comply, they could be fined up to 10% of global revenue. Also, their onshore executives could be held accountable for that … and the bill also has a provision to enable users to have control over the algorithm, as exists overseas, particularly in the EU …
[There are] obviously privacy concerns, and given the government’s had to pull their misinformation [and] disinformation – or their censoring the Australian public – bill from the Senate this week, we want to make sure we get strong, robust laws that don’t damage the [right to] privacy and make compulsory Australians having to have digital IDs.
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