Category Archives: Victoria

Japanese encephalitis may have infected one in 30 people in parts of northern Victoria

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Health department has expanded vaccine eligibility after a survey indicated the virus was more widespread than previously reported

Japanese encephalitis has infected as many as one in 30 people in parts of northern Victoria, the state’s health department has said, as it opened vaccine eligibility to more local government areas.

The department estimated the number in affected northern Victorian council areas, which was higher than previously thought, after a serosurvey indicated a greater number of cases than the 13 reported during last year’s mosquito season.

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Indigenous prisoner spent less than an hour in medical unit after emergency, Victorian coroner told

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Inquest hears Michael Suckling struggled with drug addiction, back pain, mobility issues and significant weight gain in prison

A First Nations man who died in a Melbourne prison was the subject of a “code black” medical emergency two days earlier, but spent less than an hour in a healthcare unit before being returned to his cell, an inquest has heard.

Michael Suckling, 41, died on 7 March 2021 at Ravenhall Correctional Centre in Melbourne’s west from an enlarged heart.

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Murray-Darling Basin plan in chaos as Victoria and NSW oppose further water buybacks

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Both states are behind on their commitments and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young says South Australia is being left ‘high and dry’

A meeting of water ministers has descended into acrimony over the final stage of the $13bn Murray-Darling Basin plan, with Victoria and New South Wales joining forces to oppose further buybacks of water and demanding two more years to deliver.

The fiery meeting in Sydney ended with little progress.

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Energy infrastructure payments of $200K deemed ‘slap in face’ to Victorian farmers

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State government defends payments for projects designed to help guarantee energy stability across Australia’s east coast

A move to pay landowners $200,000 per sq km for energy infrastructure imposed on their properties has been labelled a slap in the face by a Victorian farmer.

Residents living in the path of several transmission projects in regional Victoria have previously protested against high-voltage power lines and towers more than 80m high and are calling for infrastructure to be placed underground instead.

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Australia’s high-speed rail should be rolled out in small stages with Sydney to Canberra first, experts say

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Exclusive: Progressive upgrades of existing sections will pave the way for a proper link between major cities, lobby group says

Labor should pursue its high-speed rail ambition by progressively upgrading sections of the existing train corridor, starting between Sydney and Canberra as the cheapest and quickest way to deliver fast trains by the end of the decade, transport planning veterans argue.

Committing to an inaugural section of track that is relatively straightforward to build – as opposed to the tunnelling megaproject required for the Sydney to Newcastle corridor earmarked as a priority by the Albanese government – will prove high-speed rail as a concept in Australia after decades of inertia, according to advocacy group Fastrack Australia.

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‘Changing the justice system’: Victorian Liberal Brad Battin goes from tough on crime to keeping people out of jail

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Exclusive: former police officer says those who commit low-level crimes should not be in prisons

After years of tough-on-crime policies being pushed by the Victorian Coalition, Liberal MP Brad Battin is pursuing a different goal: using money currently spent locking people up to keep them out of prison.

After his appointment as the opposition’s criminal justice reform spokesperson, Battin – who worked in prisons and later became a police officer before entering politics – said it was possible to prioritise community safety while also finding alternative punishments for people who should not be in jail.

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Victorian child protection cases to consider past Aboriginal mistreatment under reform of landmark bill

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Exclusive: Amendment will ‘stop the cycle of higher rates of Aboriginal child removal’ says Aboriginal child care agency chief

Victorian judges and child protection workers will have to consider the past mistreatment of Aboriginal families when dealing with cases involving Indigenous children, under an Australian-first bill to be introduced to parliament.

The children and health legislation amendment (statement of recognition, Aboriginal self-determination and other matters) bill will be introduced to parliament on Tuesday after it lapsed last year due to the state election.

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Australia at risk of electricity supply shortages as renewable projects lag behind coal plant closures

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Successive La Niñas have eased demand but with many renewable and storage projects now delayed, the energy market operator has revised its projections

Australia’s main electricity grid will probably avoid major supply shortages next summer, but risks escalate in later years as ageing coal plants exit potentially faster than new renewables and storage projects come on line.

The projections are contained in the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (Aemo) updated Electricity Statement of Opportunities (Esoo) report, released on Tuesday.

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Australia news live: landmark report confirms wage theft by universities; treasurer calls for changes to super laws

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Staff underpaid more than $80m in past three years. Follow the day’s news live

Fresh push to ban ‘asbestos of the 2020s’

There’s a fresh push to ban engineered stone commonly used in kitchen benchtops and linked to an incurable lung disease likened to asbestosis, AAP reports.

Instead of planning a family, we’re planning my funeral. I used to install kitchen benches. People liked engineered stone because it was cheap. But the dust got into my lungs causing deadly, incurable silicosis.

That’s too high a price for anyone to pay. Nothing will save my life but if you join the campaign to stop the importation and manufacture of engineered stone, you can help save someone else’s. Please.

Australian workers like Kyle are dying because of engineered stone.

The companies flooding our markets with this cheap and nasty material know that, but to them profits are more important than people’s lives.

It is incredibly distressing … when we hear about these horrific murders and we have to do more to prevent [them from] happening.

I often say we have to start responding to the red flags before more blue police tape surrounds the family home.

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‘It’s worrying’: Victoria’s affordable rental housing to be allocated by ballot rather than need

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Homes Victoria says ballot helps create ‘fair and transparent’ process but advocate fears those most in need may miss out

The Victorian government’s new affordable rental housing will be allocated to tenants by random ballot rather than need, with applications to be processed by a company already under scrutiny for what advocates have called a “troubling” use of renters’ data.

The first tranche of 34 houses from the 2,400 promised in the affordable housing rental scheme – part of the Andrews government’s “big build” construction blitz – were advertised in January.

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Australia news live: back safeguard mechanism to ‘put climate wars behind us’, Labor urges Coalition and Greens – as it happened

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‘The onus is on Labor’ to explain why it needs more coal and gas: Bandt

There’s some discussion about possible alternatives – one suggestion is to pause new developments on gas and coal developments while reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 have been hammered out.

We are up for good-faith discussions and proposals like that are coming from people like the Climate Council, from The Australia Institute. I’ve seen the Australia Conservation Foundation out saying there are serious problems with the government’s proposal.

You can’t put the fire out while pouring petrol on it.

I don’t think the penny has quite dropped with the government how much things are have moved on. 66% of people between 18 and 34 back our position – don’t want new coal and gas mines opened. 57% of the general population. Things have moved on.

I know Labor talks a lot about history, but the students who are marching in the streets at the moment, behind banners saying, “No new coal and gas” were in primary school in 2009. They do not want it, no one can understand why we are coming up to the year anniversary of the floods in Lismore, people cannot understand why Labor says they want to open up new projects.

Why does Labor want to go to the wall to open new coal and gas projects? These are huge climate bombs. They’ve got a very – I think it is an untenable task...

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WA’s Pilbara hits 45C as large swathes of Australia swelter in heatwave

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Extreme conditions in the north of the state with Victoria, NSW and Queensland also experiencing high temperatures

Large swathes of Australia sweltered amid a heatwave on Friday, including in the Pilbara, where temperatures reached 45C.

Sumaoa Bayliss, the manager at the Red Sands Tavern in the northern Western Australian town of Newman – where it reached 44C – said life goes on in the dangerous conditions, albeit under air conditioning.

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Tanya Plibersek urged to intervene to stop stockpiled soft plastics from being dumped

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Environmentalist alliance says plastic waste from failed supermarket-backed recycling scheme can be safely warehoused until it can be recycled

Environment groups are urging federal and state governments to ensure thousands of tonnes of soft plastic that could end up in landfill are safely warehoused by supermarket chains until recycling facilities become available, even if that takes years.

The Boomerang Alliance – a coalition of 55 conservation groups – has accused the packaging industry of using a failed scheme run by REDcycle which led to more than 12,000 tonnes of plastic collected by the public being stockpiled since 2018 as a marketing ploy to mask how little is being done to improve recycling rates.

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Fines against WA climate protester ‘absurdly excessive’, Human Rights Watch says; refund for Myki charges during outage – As it happened

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Activist pleaded guilty on Friday to criminal damage. This blog is now closed

Productivity commission report will be released in March

Chalmers says he has received a five-year review from the productivity commission about how Australia can respond to flagging productivity across the Australian economy.

I’d like to do that sooner, ideally in May, so that we can have this national debate about our productivity performance and some of the recommendations in there. Now, inevitably, a government won’t pick up and run with every single one of the recommendations from the Productivity Commission, but there may be some that we can run with. There will be some that align with the government’s economic plan and our policy objectives.

No doubt people will want to ask him about that and he can explain it. I think there’s a broader issue here about how the bank communicates the context for its decisions. This is one of the things that I have been discussing with the RBA Review Panel. I actually discussed it with them on Friday in one of the regular meetings that I have with the review panel, how they communicate their decisions and the context behind their decisions is one of the key focuses of that review.

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NSW Labor pledges to improve ageing regional trains after ‘botched’ rollout of new fleet

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Opposition says it will step into vacuum left by NSW government’s lack of interim solutions to improve experience for passengers

Labor has promised to improve the ageing trains that run from Sydney to Melbourne and Brisbane if it wins the New South Wales election, as the Coalition’s delayed replacement fleet leaves passengers in carriages without phone reception for most of this decade.

The pledge follows revelations from an advisory report that the NSW government’s contract for new regional trains is set to blow out by more than $1bn, with the first of the rolling stock that was meant to enter service this January now delayed to as late as December 2025.

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Victorian government must overhaul bail laws to create ‘meaningful’ change, legal groups say

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Advocates concerned after Daniel Andrews suggested looking at offence types rather than scrapping controversial 2018 changes

Changes to Victoria’s bail laws would be nothing more than cosmetic if the government does not scrap the “reverse onus” bail provisions that have led to a near doubling of Aboriginal women in custody, legal groups have warned.

The Victorian government has committed to reforming the Bail Act after a damning coroner’s report into the death in custody of Veronica Nelson found it was “incompatible” with the state’s charter of human rights and discriminatory towards First Nations people.

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Coles and Woolworths ordered to dump more than 5,200 tonnes of soft plastic into landfill – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. Follow our next Australia news live blog here when it launches

The government has been accused of deliberately withholding detail on its push to enshrine an Indigenous voice in the constitution for political reasons.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton and shadow attorney-general Julian Leeser were briefed by the referendum working group after calling for more information on the proposed voice’s make-up and function.

Like all Australians, we want to see a better outcome for the Indigenous people of our country.

We are willing to look at any measure to do that. There are lots of questions around the voice and lots of detail that hasn’t yet been provided.

It’s not the airlines that do the turn backs that you should be worried about. It’s the airlines that keep on going to the destination and don’t make that turn back.

This is what happens with aviation across the world. And it’s an important part of the safety management system. I would rather there be not, but again I encourage our pilots to do this. I applaud them when they do it.

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Australia news live: voice working group says Dutton committed to ‘further talks’; Alice Springs report may not be made public until next week

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Australian batter Usman Khawaja has been cleared to join his teammates in India after his visa issues were sorted, AAP reports.

Pakistan-born Khawaja will fly out of Melbourne today, more than a day later than planned, after an anxious wait for his visa to be approved.

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Summer pause: cold weather forecast for south-east Australia to bring snow across Alps

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Sharp temperature drops expected in SA, Victoria, NSW and Tasmania on Friday while north-east faces heatwave conditions

Break out the winter woolies. Temperatures across Australia’s south-east are set to plummet with some areas expected to experience their coldest February days in two decades on Friday.

A strong cold front is pushing up from southern Australia and is forecast to sweep across South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania on Friday.

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Unsentenced prisoners make up a third of Australia’s prison population as bail refusals boom

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Advocates urge overhaul of strict bail laws in Victoria and elsewhere to ensure people aren’t needlessly funnelled into jail

The number of unsentenced people in Australian jails has risen more than 120% over 10 years, to account for more than a third of the total prison population, as human rights advocates urge reforms to ensure people aren’t needlessly funnelled into the criminal justice system.

More than 15,000 prisoners, or about 35% of the nation’s prison population, were unsentenced – awaiting trial, sentencing or deportation – in 2021. In 2011, when there were 6,723 unsentenced prisoners, that cohort accounted for less than 25% of the prison population.

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