Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
We bring together all the Covid-19 confirmed cases, data and stats from NSW, Victoria, Queensland, SA, WA, Tasmania, ACT and NT to get a broad picture of the Australian outbreak and track the impact of government response
Due to the difference in reporting times between states, territories and the federal government, it can be difficult to get a current picture of how many confirmed cases of coronavirus there are in Australia.
Here, we’ve brought together all the figures in one place, along with comparisons with other countries.
An over-reliance on China and the emerging pandemic have forced reevaluation of university’s offerings, vice chancellor says
The University of Tasmania will slash hundreds of courses from its curriculum as part of a major overhaul driven in part by an “over-reliance on China” and the impact of the coronavirus.
On Tuesday, the university’s vice chancellor Rufus Black told staff the university was “facing sustained headwinds” to being sustainable, and would cut the number of courses on offer from 514 to fewer than 120 by next year.
WorkSafe Tasmania last week issued a ban on the protesters over ‘unsafe behaviours’ and threatened fines of up to $500,000
Activists from the Bob Brown Foundation have been given the legal all-clear to protest in Tasmanian forests after a ban issued by the state’s workplace safety regulator was lifted.
The sea along the Tasmanian east coast is a global heating hotspot -- temperatures there have risen at nearly four times the global average. One man has watched entire sea forests disappear in his lifetime
There are fears that many houses may have been lost on a horrific day in Victoria and Tasmania, with more extreme weather forecast for New Year’s Eve
One firefighter has died and multiple properties are feared lost after terrifying bushfires driven by extreme weather conditions swept across four Australian states on Monday.
The volunteer firefighter from the New South Wales Rural Fire Service died when a truck rolled near Jingellic, about 70km east of Albury, on the border with Victoria. The RFS said two trucks, including the one in which the firefighter died, had been overturned by high winds. Two others suffered burns in the crash.
Record low rainfall has contributed to a continent-scale emergency that has burned through more than 5m hectares and alarmed scientists, doctors and firefighters
As the area burned across Australia this fire season pushes beyond five million hectares, an area larger than many countries, stories of destruction have become depressingly familiar.
At the time of writing, nine people have been killed. Balmoral, in the New South Wales southern highlands, is the latest community affected in a state where up to 1,000 homes have been destroyed. A third of the vineyard area and dozens of homes were razed in the Adelaide Hills. It is too early for a thorough examination of the impact on wildlife, including the many threatened species in the fires’ path.
Bushfires have burned 4m hectares and left nine people dead, and fire authorities say they ‘haven’t seen a season like it’
More than four million hectares of Australia have burned and nine people have died since September in an “unprecedented” start to the summer fire season.
Guardian Australia spoke to fire authorities in every state about what they expect to happen next.
David Bowman says Australia must retrofit houses to make them heat and smoke-proof
Australia has a “massive adaptive program” ahead to prepare for future protracted bushfires and subsequent air pollution, a professor of pyrogeography and fire science has warned, urging politicians to “tone down the ideology and start solving the problem using the skills Australians have”.
David Bowman, the director of the Fire Centre at the University of Tasmania’s school of natural sciences, said it was too late to call for action to prevent climate change and that people affected by smoke inhalation from fires should demand action to adapt to it, such as retrofitting houses to make them heat and smoke-proof.
Tasmanian man’s body was found in a fire stairwell at Bondi Junction shopping centre three weeks after he disappeared
As Bernard Gore’s wife of 50 years waited to meet him in a Sydney shopping centre, she had no idea her husband was trapped nearby in a fire stairwell where he would later die.
Angela Gore, surrounded by her children, cried silently as an inquest heard how her husband’s body was found kneeling forward – as if he’d fallen off a nearby chair – in the stairwell at Westfield Bondi Junction in early 2017.
Jessica Whelan, the Liberal candidate for Lyons, says comments posted under her name not made by her and were doctored
The major parties are standing by the two latest candidates in hot water for offensive social media posts attributed to them after a flurry of resignations overshadowed the third week of campaigning.
Minister grilled about Lyons candidate Jessica Whelan, who claims her Facebook page was doctored. Meanwhile, the climate policy debate heats up. Follow all the updates, live
Pre-poll is happening in droves.
About 375,000 people have cast a pre-poll vote after three days of early voting, running at approx 125,000 votes per day so far. This compares to a total of 225,000 votes at the same stage of the 2016 federal election. #ausvotes#auspol
Asked about preference deals, and whether the Coalition, being a coalition, had to accept blowback for their partner’s choices, David Littleproud had this to say:
I hardly see it’s disingenuous where we have a democracy, where the Australian people decide. They walk into the ballot box, not me, and they get to determine where they put each number on that ballot paper. And that’s the way it should be. This is merely a way that parties have come to an agreement around where they believe they should go, the least worst possibility, if you don’t want to vote for us. But the reality is, it is and always will be the gift of the Australian people. And it’s something we should always fiercely protect.”
Health district responsible for hospital that employs Dr Christopher Kwan Chen Lee says it takes ‘professional misconduct’ seriously
The health district responsible for the hospital which employs an emergency doctor who said “some women deserve to be raped” has ordered the doctor be stood down while they investigate.
Earlier in April Dr Christopher Kwan Chen Lee was suspended by the Tasmanian health practitioners tribunal for six weeks after he admitted to posting a series of sexist and racist remarks online. While Lee previously worked in Tasmania, in 2018 he began work at Box Hill hospital in Victoria as an emergency doctor, and the suspension bars him from working anywhere in Australia.
Speaking in Hobart on Saturday where he announced that a future Labor government would invest $120m into Tasmanian tourism projects, the opposition leader did not deny that Labor officials had held discussions with Palmer over the course of the campaign, but said they would not risk preference swaps with the potential kingmaker in Queensland.
King Island brown thornbill was ranked the Australian bird most likely to go extinct within 20 years
Researchers say they have discovered one of Australia’s most endangered birds in forest in Tasmania, outside its previously known habitat.
Scientists from the Australian National University say the find is a rare piece of positive news for the King Island brown thornbill, which was last year ranked as the Australian bird most likely to go extinct within 20 years if nothing was done to secure its survival.
Bill Shorten dismisses PM’s comments, saying it’s possible to have strong borders and treat people humanely
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, has sent out a fresh message on border security, saying “people smugglers know they won’t get through me and Peter Dutton” but would “have a crack” if Bill Shorten became prime minister.
Morrison said the government had “increased the strength, resource and capability again of Operation Sovereign Borders” after the asylum seeker medevac legislation passed parliament this week, in spite of the Coalition’s best efforts to block it.
With high temperatures also forecast for Victoria and NSW, there are warnings about potential power outages and blackouts, as well as total fire bans amid worsening weather. Follow developments live
Just on the issue of heatwaves and climate change, the ABC Melbourne presenter Rafael Epstein has pointed to recent statements from Victoria’s Bureau of Meteorology (Bom).
Just in case someone says hot weather has nothing to do with climate change
"Australia's climate is increasingly influenced by global warming... has warmed by just over one degree since 1910, with most of the warming occurring since 1950."