Category Archives: Victoria

East coast weather: rain, thunderstorm and flood warnings for NSW, Queensland and Victoria

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Flood rescues launched in NSW as Bureau of Meteorology warns of thunderstorm risk for ‘most of the east coast’ on Wednesday

Multiple people have been rescued from flood waters in New South Wales as rain falls across large parts of Australia, with thunderstorms expected along most of the east coast on Wednesday.

The NSW State Emergency Service (SES) conducted two flood rescues on Wednesday morning, rescuing two people from their car at South Nowra and another group from a home at St Georges Basin, near Jervis Bay.

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Victorian government strikes deal with Greens to pass vacant homes tax reforms

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Legislation to expand taxes on vacant Victorian homes and undeveloped land set to pass parliament

A deal to strengthen taxes on empty homes has been struck between the Victorian government and the Greens.

An upper house vote on changes to Victoria’s vacant residential land tax was put on ice earlier this month when the Greens and the Coalition refused to back the legislation.

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Police told sister of missing transgender woman to call fire brigade, Victorian coronial inquest hears

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Angela Pucci Love says she believes police failed to understand ‘the level of risk’ her sister, 28-year-old Bridget Flack, faced

One of Victoria’s top police officers says he is concerned to hear the sister of a missing transgender woman was told to call the fire brigade to search her apartment, saying it is not “proper process”.

Angela Pucci Love, the sister of 28-year-old Bridget Flack who died in 2020, gave evidence on Monday at a coronial inquiry investigating the deaths of five transgender and gender-diverse young people who died of suspected suicide between 2020 and 2021.

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NSW police accused of ‘killing’ music festivals by charging excessive fees

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Greens MP and Australian Festival Association say NSW force charging much more than other states to patrol equivalent events

New South Wales police have been accused of “price gouging” and operating a “rort” that threatens the viability of music festivals, by charging tens of thousands of dollars more than their counterparts in other states to patrol the events.

The Greens MP Cate Faehrmann told NSW parliament this week that a recent festival that played across three states paid $107,852 for policing for 16,000 people in NSW, but just $45,000 for 14,000 people in both Victoria and Queensland.

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Killing kangaroos could be banned in metro Melbourne in plan hailed as ‘step in the right direction’

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Reduced kangaroo populations and urban sprawl prompt proposal to end commercial culling in 10 council areas

Hunters would be banned from killing kangaroos in all Melbourne metropolitan areas from 2025, under a proposed overhaul of Victoria’s commercial culling program.

A plan by the state’s Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action for kangaroo harvesting between 2024 and 2028 proposes excluding 10 council areas across the urban ring of Melbourne due to reduced kangaroo populations and urban sprawl. The proposal was first reported by the Herald Sun.

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Australia news live: Bruce Lehrmann back in the witness box as defamation case kicks off third day

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Former Liberal staffer’s defamation trial against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson continues in the federal court. Follow the day’s news live

The minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, has said the government is yet to decide how to best consult with First Nations people after the loss of the Indigenous voice referendum.

Burney was on RN Breakfast earlier and said today’s Closing the Gap meeting, the first since the referendum, would focus on the silver linings from the loss.

What we have seen is a group of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people get involved in the political process.

We had 6 million Australians say yes. And the thing that really excited me about the outcome in places like the Tiwi Islands, where … Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people wanted this change. And those votes are really important.

Education is the most powerful cause for good in this world, that is where you learn.

If you want to protest, do it on the weekend. School is on, we expect them to be there.

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Boy’s death after falling from Cha Cha carnival ride ‘preventable’, Victorian coroner finds

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Restraints weren’t up to standard at time Eugene Mahauariki, 6, fell from ride at the 2017 Rye Easter Carnival

Eugene Mahauariki’s death after falling from his favourite ride at an Easter carnival six years ago was preventable and the restraints did not meet Australian standards, a coroner has found.

The six-year-old boy died in hospital four days after falling from his seat on the Cha Cha at Rye Easter Carnival in Victoria on 17 April 2017.

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Melbourne school students defy education minister and strike in support of Palestine

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Hundreds rally in CBD to call for an end to the war in Gaza and for Australia to stop military aid to Israel

Amid chants of “free, free Palestine”, hundreds of Victoria school students have walked out of classrooms to call for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and for Australia to stop military aid to Israel.

Students gathered at the steps of Flinders Street station in the Melbourne CBD on Thursday afternoon, rallying for Palestine. The crowd spilled out on to the road, bringing traffic to a standstill at the busy Flinders and Swanston Street intersection.

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Victorian government told emissions targets at risk under plan to increase taxes on renewable energy providers

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Industry experts say renewable energy providers could pay up to 20 times more tax if bill passes

Victoria’s ambitious emissions targets could be imperilled if the state government’s plan to slug renewable energy providers millions more in taxes each year goes ahead, the sector has warned.

Renewable energy providers could pay up to 20 times more tax if a bill currently being debated in Victorian parliament passes, according to industry experts.

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Police investigating whether driver’s diabetes a factor in Daylesford pub crash that killed five

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Detective tells coronial hearing that investigation still in its ‘infancy’ and no charges have been laid

Victoria police are investigating whether a driver’s diabetes was a factor in the fatal Daylesford pub crash that left five people dead, the coroner’s court has heard.

The driver of a white BMW SUV crashed through a busy beer garden in the regional town of Daylesford on 5 November, striking 10 people from three Melbourne families.

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John Setka: union boss’s estranged wife said she had ‘to kill my children’s father to survive’, court hears

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Emma Walters told police she did not want to kill ex John Setka but was ‘in distress’ and had used ‘florid language’

The union leader John Setka’s estranged wife told a private investigator “I have to kill my children’s father to survive, you’re going to help me work out how I do it”, a court has been told.

The comments were revealed in a secret video played to court on Tuesday, when Emma Walters had a firearm charge against her dismissed.

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‘Silly games’: doomsday prepper jailed for arsenal of guns and weapons stashed on Victorian farm

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Judge jails ex-Australian army soldier for at least 15 months, urges him to leave ‘survivalists to their silly games’

A survivalist caught hiding a serious arsenal of weapons including machine guns should leave the zombie killers to their “silly games” a judge has urged, sentencing him to prison time.

Aleziah Tolkein Spiers was caught illegally storing 16 dangerous weapons, including under the floors of a shearing shed on his former father-in-law’s property in central Victoria where he had run survivalist workshops.

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Jet trip followed guidelines, minister’s office says – as it happened

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This blog is now closed.

Australians increasingly relying on credit cards as cost-of-living pressures rise

A survey from comparison site Finder has found an increasing number of Australians are turning to credit cards amid the rising cost of living.

Mounting pressure on households is seeing Aussies borrowing money to keep afloat.

Used responsibly, credit cards can be a great tool for earning rewards such as frequent flyer points and building your credit history.

But relying too heavily on them could cause you to go into a debt spiral which can be hard to bounce back from.

It symbolises the balance between utility and respect for the environment, mirroring our approach to space exploration.

It’s time for Australian science to take the next leap all the way up into space, like our roos do back home. Naming the new lunar rover ‘Roo-ver’ will reflect the Aussie spirit as we launch into this new endeavour.

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Search for camera operator and pilot resumes after mid-air plane crash over Victoria’s Port Phillip Bay

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James Rose identified as the passenger on board a Viper S-211 Marchetti jet that crashed into the water

Police and air crash investigators have resumed their search for a pilot and a TV camera operator whose aircraft crashed into the water off Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula.

James Rose, 30, and a pilot were on board one of two light Viper S-211 Marchetti planes conducting a formation flight that collided mid-air about 1.45pm on Sunday.

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Moira Deeming says she’ll lodge defamation claim against Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto in court

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First-term MP says mediation with the party leader failed, as she seeks to return to the Liberal party room

Victorian MP Moira Deeming says she will lodge defamation proceedings against the state’s Liberal leader, John Pesutto, declaring mediation has failed.

The first-term MP was expelled from the parliamentary Liberal party after she took part in an anti-transgender rally in March that was gatecrashed by a group of masked men who performed Nazi salutes.

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‘Straight out of Utopia’: healthcare workers denounce $558m expansion of Albury base hospital

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NSW and Victoria government documents show support for push by doctors to combine the Albury and Wodonga hospitals into one new facility – but that’s not what was announced

A $558m redevelopment of Albury Base hospital jointly proposed by the New South Wales and Victorian state governments has outraged healthcare workers and community groups, who claim both governments misled them during a years-long consultation.

“If I was going to design a system to hide the dismal plans they’ve provided us, I’d design it exactly the way they’ve done it,” says Michelle Cowan from local community group Better Border Health. “These are the oldest tricks in the book. It’s the most cynical exercise so they can say they’ve ticked the consultation box.”

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‘Nobody cared’: Victim’s ‘betrayal’ over revelations at Victoria’s school child sexual abuse inquiry

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Victim-survivor shocked by education department’s admission it moved accused paedophile teachers to other state schools

When the dark history of Victoria’s education department was laid bare this week in public hearings, Glen Fearnett sat metres away from bureaucrats as they divulged the state’s failings to protect children.

Fearnett is a victim-survivor of abuse and has been central in pushing for a formal apology for the abuse he and other victim-survivors suffered at Beaumaris primary school, in Melbourne’s south-east.

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Melbourne has waited decades for an airport train. But is a federal funding commitment enough to get it done?

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Unlike governments interstate, Jacinta Allan was uncharacteristically subdued about Canberra’s funding review

Throughout her decades in politics, Jacinta Allan hasn’t been afraid to pick a fight with the federal government – no matter which party was in power.

But on Thursday, when the Albanese government announced it would cut $4.8bn worth of infrastructure funding in Victoria after a months-long review, the premier was uncharacteristically subdued.

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‘Desensitised’: calls for better education after research suggests Victorian boys less likely to stop harassment

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Study of students finds marked drop from Year 7 to Year 9 in proportion of those willing to intervene

Chanel Contos, a sexual consent education advocate, says teenagers may be getting so desensitised to porn that it’s affecting their reaction to sexual harassment, with research suggesting male students become less likely to intervene when a female classmate is targeted as they reach Year 9.

The study of Victorian school students by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (Anrows), released on Wednesday, found that 20.2% of Year 7 boys intended to intervene when sexual harassment was taking place. However, just 12.8% of those in Year 9 shared that attitude.

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Australia has three months to find host city for Commonwealth Games 2026

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Peak body wants Australia to keep the event but talks are under way with other countries and about changing the Games’ format

Australia has three months to find a 2026 Commonwealth Games host city as three other candidates emerge for the event.

Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) hierarchy said on Wednesday that finding an Australian host for the 2026 edition remains the priority while appealing for government support.

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