Bradley John Murdoch was convicted of 28-year-old’s murder but remains were never found
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Northern Territory Police have opened evidence boxes to uncover several previously unseen photographs from the investigation of the murder of British backpacker Peter Falconio and attempted abduction of his girlfriend Joanne Lees.
Tuesday is the 25th anniversary of the infamous outback disappearance.
Continue reading...Prime minister picked pop singer in game of ‘shag, marry, date’ on comedy podcast
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Anthony Albanese has apologised “unequivocally” for his comments while playing a “shag, marry, date” game on a comedy podcast when he nominated Kylie Minogue for all three categories.
The prime minister issued a statement on Monday morning after receiving criticism at the weekend for his appearance on the Bush Deep podcast with the comedian Nikki Osborne.
Continue reading...Survey shows two-point fall in vote amid concern about Pauline Hanson’s links to Gina Rinehart and ability to run country
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Australians have emphatically rejected some of One Nation’s key policies, including shutting down SBS and ending multiculturalism, with voters raising concerns about Pauline Hanson’s closeness to the billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart and whether the party has the skills needed to run the country, according to a new poll.
But even as the latest Guardian Essential poll finds voters have major reservations about Hanson and her party, more than half of respondents said they were either definitely or at least considering voting for One Nation at the next election.
Continue reading...Melissa McIntosh’s comment comes after Angus Taylor’s claim Morrison government ‘breached trust’
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Liberal frontbencher Melissa McIntosh has said the party might need a “rebrand” to win back voters who continue to desert the opposition, with the Coalition hitting a new historic polling low.
Her comments came after the opposition leader, Angus Taylor, claimed the Morrison government – of which he was a senior minister – had “breached trust” with the electorate during the Covid pandemic by supporting “big government”.
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Big tech not cooperating ‘as much as we’d like them to’: Watt
Federal cabinet minister Murray Watt, says the government knows it’s needed to take more action to ensure social media giants are complying with a ban for under 16s that came into effect in December.
These laws were brand new, never developed anywhere in the world. And what we’ve learned is that the powers that the safety commissioner has do need to be beefed up, also to give her powers across things like age assurance tools. So things that sit outside the social media platforms themselves, but compelling them to provide information so that she can do her job even better.
The pace of change is accelerating, the global and generational pressures are intensifying, and people have got legitimate concerns about where they fit in that, and then we’ve got the anger industry, and parties of the populist right trying to make that worse rather than trying to make that better.
It is a difficult time around the world to be an incumbent government, from our point of view. We are using the power of incumbency to take real action, to deliver cost-of-living help, to deliver real change. The best antidote to anger is action … The Albanese Labour government has chosen to address those concerns rather than dismiss them.
Continue reading...Treasurer says Coalition playing ‘footsie with the monoculture language’ after Liberal leader sidesteps questions at press conference
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Angus Taylor has repeatedly refused to say whether he supports multiculturalism in Australia, sidestepping five questions at a press conference about his views and claiming “there’s all these vague words running around”.
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, accused the opposition leader of “playing footsie” with One Nation and Pauline Hanson’s call for a “monoculture” in Australia, as Labor ministers committed to backing multiculturalism.
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The Senate will deliver its report from the NDIS inquiry on Tuesday. Butler doesn’t directly answer a question about whether or not he is willing to make any significant changes to the legislation the government has put forward.
He says:
Look, the direction of travel I think is an important one for us to follow through. This largely reflects reviews and insights that we’ve gathered over the last three years since the independent review was done of the NDIS in 2023 and endorsed by all governments at national Cabinet later that year.
I’m utterly convinced this is the right plan for the NDIS… I’m not saying there won’t be any change. We heard ideas from the crossbench in the debate in the House of Representatives. I’ve very much heard that people want greater reassurance about what won’t change because of the reforms we’re putting in place.
We have to constrain that growth. Without reforms it would grow to $20 billion by the end of the decade and that’s simply not a sustainable position.
It’s also allowed us, as I said, to protect the core supports people rely upon for that safety that was part of your introduction.
Continue reading...Tasmanian senator says he feels he is ‘letting down the team’ but needs to prioritise family
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Liberal frontbencher Jonno Duniam will quit politics before the end of the year, in another major blow to the struggling Coalition as it experiences its lowest levels of popularity in decades.
The Tasmanian senator, who was elected to parliament in 2016 and is seen as one of the Liberals’ best talents, said it was an “extremely difficult decision to make” but one he had been considering for “quite some time” to spend more time with family.
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Australian borrowing personal loans in record amounts
Australians are borrowing record amounts in personal loans as a long-term buildup in living costs wipes out savings buffers.
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Extra negative gearing limits could hurt market and family budgets, Labor says
Clare O’Neil has rejected calls from the Greens and others to put further limits on negative gearing access, saying the government should not interrupt “immediate arrangements”.
There’s people in the debate who want to see the government go further. I really understand that but I just think we need to step back.
Negative gearing is a very immediate impact on a household and family budget and it’s not something that governments, when they’re making tax changes, should do, to interrupt people’s immediate arrangements.
We need to land this. We’ll do that in the appropriate time given the need … This is not a political timeline. It is a policy timeline … It’s important this gets resolved speedily and that’s what the government is working towards.
I think there’s a range of things that are on the table in those conversations and I won’t speak about them in detail …
The government wants to get the right outcome here and we are not going to be driven by the politics of the moment. It’s really important we reach the right landing point for this and I think I have spoken in previous interviews this week about some of the issues we see.
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Climate activists say they have blocked two coal ships from entering Newcastle port
Climate activists say they have stopped two coal ships from entering the Port of Newcastle this morning after kayakers and a small boat entered the channel.
I grew up in the best years economically in Australia’s history, and I can’t sleep at night thinking about my 5 great-grandkids trying to live on a dead planet if we keep mining coal. I want to see more people my age standing up for what’s right.
There’s plenty of conversations going on all the time.
I think there’s so many people in politics for the right reasons and, when you’re in there, you want to say, well, how do we actually ensure that people can elect people that are going to come here and really deal with the root causes of the problems that we’re facing, because we haven’t seen that.
How do you be part of changing our country for the better? For me at the moment, that is serving people in the ACT, engaging on each issue, bringing solutions, using whatever power I have in the Senate to actually work on behalf of the people that have sent me there. As to what that looks like in the future, who knows?
Continue reading...Exclusive: Australia faces a ‘pronounced political fault line’, Giridharan Sivaraman tells Brisbane seminar on human rights
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One Nation and the federal opposition are “dehumanising” and “scapegoating” immigrants while drawing on a “deep vein of racism”, Australia’s federal race discrimination commissioner says.
Giridharan Sivaraman made the comments as part of a panel discussion at a Brisbane seminar on human rights, hosted by the state’s human rights commission.
Continue reading...Meanwhile treasurer says next week’s budget will save more than it spends. Follow today’s news live
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Jim Chalmers says next Tuesday’s budget will not extend the 26 cent fuel tax cut beyond June.
But with Australia “hostage” to the wild swings in global oil prices amid the ongoing US-Israel war on Iran, the treasurer said there was “a range of contingencies” prepared to help support households and the economy from any escalating damage as a result of the Middle East conflict.
The budget will be calibrated for the conditions, but it will also still be consistent with our ambitions.
The election began a year of delivery, and the budget will begin a year of more ambitious reform, reform which is made more not less, urgent by global inflation and global economic uncertainty.
Continue reading...Parents of Australian who was detained by IDF call for stronger government response. Follow updates live
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Canavan defends Coalition decision to preference One Nation ahead of independent in Farrer: ‘Socialists and communists always go last’
Matt Canavan said he understood why voters in Farrer, set for a byelection next Saturday, were disillusioned with the federal opposition.
I‘ve been down there for 20 days, 15 nights – and 10 of those I’ve been in a swag – over the past month.
I’m doing everything I can to fight for them. I’d love to fight for that great part of our country again, it’s a wonderful part of our nation where we pioneered the use of irrigation and dams. It still produces 40% of our food, 60% of our fruit.
Under my leadership, [in] my view, socialists and communists always go last.
I think we need to really see how the overseas conflict evolves, how prices evolve for oil. But I think, you know, it is doing what it was intended to do. It’s not a silver bullet, but it is providing material support for people. And as I said, it’s providing support for people who are really doing it tough when they can’t shift away from using petrol.
Continue reading...Albanese defends plan forcing Meta, Google and TikTok to make deals with Australian news publishers through a levy
The Trump administration has described Australia’s moves to make big tech companies pay for news online as “extortion” but Anthony Albanese defended the plan by saying it was about protecting and rewarding media outlets for the work they produce.
Labor’s plan to encourage Meta, Google and TikTok to make deals with Australian news publishers, or face a 2.25% levy, is likely to be supported by the Coalition and Greens in parliament. But a bigger problem may be the ire of Donald Trump, who has strongly opposed extra regulation being imposed on US-based tech companies. A major tech industry lobby group on Wednesday urged the White House to consider retaliatory trade measures.
Continue reading...Jenny Ware says party is ‘at crisis point’ and cannot be competitive at election time unless it selects candidates who better reflect the makeup of Australia
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The former Liberal MP Jenny Ware says her party must implement gender quotas for candidates for office, warning the opposition “cannot get back into government” without putting forward candidates who are more reflective of the broader community.
Ware, who lost her seat of Hughes at the 2025 election, said it was “deeply embarrassing” that the Liberal party executive had not released its own review of the electoral wipeout, and which was then tabled in parliament by Anthony Albanese this week.
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The foreign minister, Penny Wong, says Australia was not told in advance about the bombing of Iran but won’t say whether intelligence facilities here were used.
“We weren’t told advance. You wouldn’t expect us to be but you would see there’s obviously been a lot of discussion,” she said.
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Exclusive: Taxpayers subsidise rising specialist fees as spending on Abbott-era Medicare safety net ‘explodes’
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Welcome to Guardian Australia’s Sunday live blog.
The Jetstar Airbus A320 planes that were recalled yesterday (leading to more than 90 domestic flights being cancelled) have all received the necessary software update and services have resumed as normal this morning.
Continue reading...Opposition claims key diplomatic role at next year’s conference in Turkey would make Bowen a ‘part-time minister’ while Australians face inflated energy prices
Experts have dismissed claims Chris Bowen cannot remain a senior minister while playing a leading role in international climate negotiations, with one describing the argument as evidence of an Australian “culture cringe”.
Australia failed in its long-running bid to co-host the Cop31 climate summit with Pacific nations next year after Turkey refused to withdraw from the consensus process despite limited support.
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Continue reading...As Liberals join Nationals in abandoning a 2050 emissions target, we unpick some of the opposition’s talking points
Are you trying to make sense of some of the big claims made by Liberal and National party MPs for abandoning their support for Australia reaching net zero emissions by 2050?
We’re here to help.
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