‘Alive in our hearts’: grieving family pays tribute to 11-year-old Jack Davey after Melbourne school crash tragedy

‘Beloved son and brother’ mourned, as three children injured in Auburn South primary school car crash remain in hospital with one discharged

Michael and Jayde Davey are clinging to the memories of the positive influence their son Jack had on the community in his 11 years of life after he was killed in a school crash.

Grade 5 student Jack Davey died after a car ploughed through a fence and into a school yard on Tuesday afternoon, hitting a group of Auburn South primary school students sitting at a table.

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Victoria to cut more than 130 bushfire forest service jobs – As it happened

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Young man dies in multi-vehicle crash in Queensland’s Bundaberg Region

A fatal multi-vehicle traffic crash last night at Elliot in Queensland’s Bundaberg Region last night is being investigated by the police forensic crash Unit.

All travel has been appropriately declared and is a matter of public record.

The only people that need to look at the rules are [shadow transport minister] Bridget McKenzie and Peter Dutton. They’ve got some serious explaining to do.

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Attorney general considering releasing full robodebt report – As it happened

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Mark Butler flags importance of an Australian CDC in future pandemic responses

The federal health minister, Mark Butler, spoke to ABC News Breakfast this morning, after the Covid inquiry report was released yesterday.

Currently, we’re the only developed country that doesn’t have that single authoritative body that can provide to governments and communities about an evidence-based approach to pandemic response and to other communicable diseases. So that is the foundation on which we build a system to respond to the next pandemic - because there will be a next one – much more effectively than we did to Covid.

We all remember just how incredibly difficult and challenging it was, how it affected every aspect of our lives. And in terms of how the government worked during that period of time – we worked with those public health experts and advisers. Our focus was very much on the health and wellbeing of our community, particularly the vulnerable members of our community who were most at risk.

This was a deadly disease. We saw, particularly overseas, it killed so many people. So we were focused on a public health response – a public health response that was focused on supporting the health of our community, and also too understanding the significant additional supports that we needed to provide to small businesses to support them during this incredibly difficult time.

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‘Hold your little ones really tight’: how an ordinary Melbourne primary school pick-up turned to tragedy

Auburn South primary school community mourns car crash victim Jack Davey, 11, as four students remain in hospital

It was an afternoon recess on what should have been an ordinary, sunny spring Tuesday at Auburn South primary school.

Within the grounds of the Melbourne school, five primary school students were seated around an outdoor table overlooking a soccer pitch. Moments later, the scene turned to one of horror.

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Shock and grief as boy, 11, dies and four children injured after car crashes through Melbourne school fence

Victorian premier says ‘dark shadow’ has been cast over city after collision at Auburn South primary school in Hawthorn East

A child has died and four others remain in hospital with serious injuries after a car crashed into a school in Melbourne’s inner east.

Emergency services rushed to the collision that occurred just after 2.30pm on Tuesday afternoon at Auburn South primary school in Hawthorn East.

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Man forced wife and children to work on farm with ‘tyranny’ of abuse, Victorian court hears

Accused pleads not guilty to 12 charges including seven of causing another person to enter into and remain in servitude

A father has been described as a tyrannical ruler who forced his wife and six children into working on a farm using physical, verbal and emotional abuse.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, faced the first day of a jury trial at the Victorian supreme court on Monday.

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Australia news live: PM to announce clean energy projects; property market losing heat but prices still going up

Anthony Albanese to launch schemes in NSW and Victoria today; Domain says rate of price increases is cooling. Follow today’s news headlines live

Bowen derides Coalition’s ‘nuclear fantasy’

Chris Bowen, minister for climate change and energy, is speaking on ABC Radio National this morning.

If I was the energy minister of another country, I would consider the opportunities that I had in that country – but a country saying to Australia, with our excellent renewable resources, that we should go down the nuclear road when we have no nuclear industry, no nuclear expertise of the scale that we would need for a nuclear power industry, is like us going to Finland or Scandinavia and saying, ‘Listen, we know [you have] a lot of snow, but you should really try beach surfing.’ It just doesn’t make any sense.

We have to play to our strengths in Australia, and we have the best renewable resources in the world, and the opposition wants to stop us using them, and in turn, keep coal in the system for longer. They’re quite explicit about that while we wait for this nuclear fantasy to come on board. That would be terrible for emissions and fatal for energy reliability.

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Elections for Victoria’s upper house could be overhauled under proposals to stamp out ‘preference whispering’

Labor-led inquiry considering six possible options, including adopting Senate system and changing quotas

A Labor-led inquiry is considering a huge overhaul of Victorian parliament’s upper house in an effort to stamp out the practice of “preference whispering” and bring it into line with other Australian jurisdictions.

The electoral matters committee, chaired by the Labor MP Luba Grigorovitch, released a discussion paper on Monday suggesting six possible options for reform, which include adopting the model used for the New South Wales upper house and that of the federal Senate.

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Abandoning Bass Strait oil and gas structures would breach international law, expert warns

Australia must insist on full removal when ExxonMobil decommissions offshore project, Wilderness Society says

An international law expert has warned that abandoning oil and gas infrastructure in Bass Strait would breach Australia’s obligations under international law, if ExxonMobil pursues this plan in decommissioning its Gippsland offshore project.

Prof Donald Rothwell, who specialises in international law at the Australian National University, said Bass Strait was used for international navigation and had special status under the UN convention on the law of the sea and related International Maritime Organisation guidelines.

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Australia news live: Dutton says he ‘respects’ Crisafulli’s rejection of nuclear power but will push for a ‘mature conversation’

Earlier this morning, David Crisafulli said it was still a ‘no’ to any nuclear proposal, and Dutton said he ‘respected’ that. Follow the day’s news live

Employment minister Murray Watt has refused to comment on reports Anthony Albanese used his membership in Qantas’s chairman’s lounge to solicit flight upgrades when he was transport minister and opposition leader.

Watt was on RN Breakfast, where he refused to be drawn on what he called “unsourced claim by a journalist” that Albanese would reach out directly to former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce directly about his travel.

If you have a look at Peter Dutton behaviour, for example, several upgrades from the Qantas and other airlines, he’s had free flights paid for by Gina Rinehart.

I really would wonder whether it’s wise for the opposition to start calling this kind of stuff into question.

We obviously spend an enormous amount of time at airports. I think this week, I’m going to be in about three or four different cities, flying from place to place. And it is helpful from time to time, to be able to have private meetings or private environments, to be able to have teams meetings with your office, which I do every time I fly.

We want Labor to negotiate like we did in the previous housing legislation, where we not only improved and passed Labour’s housing legislation, but we got $3bn to start building public and community housing.

I think this is part of the message that we’re trying to give to the government. We are up for negotiation.

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Police find vapes worth $8m after being called to Melbourne warehouse robbery

About 200,000 e-cigarettes found in Box Hill South after officers were told of reported burglary on Thursday

Victorian police called to an early morning break-in this week found something unexpected: about 200,000 illegal vapes worth $8m.

The vapes were found in a warehouse in Melbourne’s outer east after officers responded to reports of a commercial robbery, police said in a statement on Saturday.

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WiseTech shares surge after CEO stands down – as it happened

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Dutton and Shorten weigh in on Queensland state election

The federal opposition leader, Peter Dutton, and the NDIS minister, Bill Shorten, both spoke with the Today show earlier from Queensland, before the election.

He’s focused on the issues which affect Queenslanders: housing, health, cheaper transport and of course tackling youth crime. So we’ll find out soon enough who’s going to win.

The fact is that it’s time for a change in Queensland and law and order is out of control.

Well, yes, he did. He did three days ago and, despite that, the government’s scare campaign continues.

The scare campaign on a sensitive issue that has been run, quite frankly, crosses the line, and we’re better than that as Queenslanders … There won’t be changes to abortion laws and Queenslanders need to know that.

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Australians must keep up the fight for abortion rights, Jacinta Allan warns

Exclusive: Conservative forces pose ‘genuine threats to the protections women have fought for and won’, Victoria’s premier says

Jacinta Allan is warning that the battle for abortion rights must continue as conservative forces pose “real and genuine threats to the protections women have fought for and won” amid “frightening” debate in South Australia and Queensland.

Victoria’s Labor premier made her strongest comments to date on abortion in an interview with Guardian Australia, just days before Queenslanders go to the polls in an election that has become dominated by the issue.

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Albanese rejects China’s claim that Australia plagued by ‘systemic racism’ – as it happened

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The Rail, Tram and Bus Union of NSW (RTBU) conducted a five-minute work stoppage early this morning, which is leading to delays across the network.

Sydney Trains says this has led to minor delays and “larger than normal gaps in services may be experienced”, according to an alert:

Trains stops and platforms may change at short notice and some trains may be cancelled. Extra travel time may be experienced in some cases and you may need to change to continue your trip.

The action was set to happen in select locations across the network to ensure we could ramp up stoppages whenever needed.

The rail agencies continue to bargain in good faith with the Combined Rail Unions for a new enterprise bargaining agreement. Sydney Trains are working to minimise the disruption to commuters as much as possible.

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No surgical abortion providers in seven out of 10 Victorian local government areas, report finds

‘Service deserts’ affect those in high-disadvantage regional districts most, Women’s Health Victoria study says

Seven out of 10 Victorian local government areas have no surgical abortion provider and one in five have no medical abortion provider, a new report shows.

The Realising Access report released on Thursday by the not-for-profit Women’s Health Victoria also found “service deserts” most profoundly affect women in high-disadvantage regional areas. Women in such areas are 300% more likely to seek abortion services later than nine weeks, meaning they require a surgical abortion for which there are even fewer providers.

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Thorpe rebuffs Indigenous leaders’ criticism of protest – as it happened

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More on news media bargaining code and funding of media publishers

One of the committee’s key recommendations was a digital platform levy on companies like Meta and Google, which some have described as a tech tax to fund public interest journalism.

So in parts of Europe, for example, there’s a 2% digital services tax. You could look at a public interest journalism levy.

The issue that we have fundamentally here is the … offshoring of the digital platform’s profits, where currently they pay very little tax because they argue that they don’t operate in Australia, even though they’re getting this enormous profit yield of the advertising on their platforms. So that’s another thing that has to be resolved within legislation in order to impose a tax.

But simply imposing a tax and feeding [it] into media organisations … won’t fix the issue if Meta continues to deprecate news content – that is, reduce the exposure of news content to its consumers.

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Thousands greet royals at opera house – as it happened

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The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has been speaking with ABC RN about a range of issues – including Lidia Thorpe’s actions at King Charles’ parliamentary reception yesterday.

Dutton argued that “sometimes people make it all about themselves, and I think that’s what yesterday was.” He said it “didn’t advance anyone’s cause” and “add[s] to the self promotion … that she seeks.”

The vast majority of people have been very welcoming the king’s visit, and I think it’s been an opportunity to underscore the stability in our democracy, our rule of law, separation of powers, all of those institutions that we inherited from our British heritage.

That’s part of the success story of our country, and it’s a good reminder during his visit [that] if we change it, I think we want to be very careful about the system we’re changing to and whether or not we would be a safer, more secure, community and environment for decades to come or not.

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Developers to directly fund schools, parks and public transport under Victorian trial

Program that ties new infrastructure to housing projects will start in 2027 in 10 Melbourne ‘activity centres’, premier says

The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, says an overhaul of the state’s infrastructure contribution scheme will ensure communities that build more homes will receive funding for key amenities like schools and parks.

With her government’s third housing policy announcement in as many days, Allan on Tuesday flagged a revamped statewide pilot infrastructure contribution program.

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Jacinta Allan’s pitch to young voters on housing affordability snags Liberal Nimbys ‘hook, line and sinker’

In pitting millennials against boomers, the Victorian premier is setting the stage for a 2026 election fought on housing

It’s no coincidence Jacinta Allan chose Brighton – a bayside suburb of Melbourne with a median property price of $3.3m – to unveil her most significant policy to date.

With a reputation as a wealthy, predominately white enclave, and as the centre of a safe Liberal electorate of the same name, it is unlikely the Labor premier had many fans in the area on Sunday, even before she announced her bold plan to seize planning controls around Middle Brighton and North Brighton train stations.

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Jane Hume defends Dutton over clashes with ABC journalists after testy exchange in WA – as it happened

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The family of stabbing victim Vyleen White has helped the Queensland Liberal National party to launch its election campaign.

The LNP is promising to introduce “adult time for adult crime” amid claims of a youth crime “crisis” in the state.

In our family’s hour of need, both men came to our home. But there was only one who is a true leader.

We as a family will not allow her death to be in vain.

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