Heading out to watch the new year fireworks? Plan ahead, pack light and check the drinking regulations
It’s the first New Year’s Eve in three years with no Covid-19 restrictions anywhere in Australia – and it’s about to go off with a bang.
Revellers heading to watch the fireworks in each city are being warned to plan ahead, pack light and expect an Uber surcharge.
Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads
Continue reading...One man believed to have been involved in the clash left Australia shortly after the match, Victoria police say
The number of people charged after an A-League pitch invasion has grown to 32 and police are searching for 11 others they believe to be responsible for serious offences.
About 150 spectators stormed the AAMI Park derby between Melbourne Victory and Melbourne City earlier in December, injuring the goalkeeper Tom Glover, referee Alex King, a TV cameraman and two security guards.
Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads
Continue reading...World men’s tennis No 5 says return proves he is ready to move on from his deportation and begin quest for 10th Australian Open title
Novak Djokovic says there are no hard feelings on his return to Australia, but can’t guarantee he will ever completely move past the saga that torpedoed his 2022 Australian Open hopes and thrust him into the centre of a media frenzy.
Djokovic was deported from Australia almost 12 months ago after arriving unvaccinated against Covid at a time when the country was still subject to strict biosecurity regulations. Such regulations have now been lifted and in November the Australian government overturned the three-year ban that came with Djokovic’s deportation and granted him a visa to return for the summer of tennis.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed
Two teenagers are dead and a man has been hospitalised after a crash in South Australia’s mid-north.
Emergency services were called to the Augusta Highway at Lochiel at 7.30pm on Tuesday after a northbound car left the road and crashed into a tree.
Continue reading...Three Victorians and a South Australian woman die, while two young girls rescued in near-drowning at St Kilda beach in Melbourne
Three Victorians and a South Australian woman have drowned on Australian waterways in a deadly long weekend.
A 17-year-old Pakenham boy died near Mordialloc, south of Melbourne, on Monday afternoon.
Continue reading...Trio were surfing at Cumberland River beach just south of Lorne on Victoria’s Surf Coast on Sunday evening when one ran into trouble
A teenager has drowned and two other men taken to hospital after running into trouble surfing.
The trio were surfing at Cumberland River beach, just south of Lorne on Victoria’s Surf Coast, when one got into difficulty just before 6pm on Sunday night.
Continue reading...Victoria police have charged a Melbourne woman with theft after the dog was allegedly taken from outside a supermarket
Police have reunited a Melbourne woman with her therapy dog after it was allegedly stolen on Christmas Eve, in what its owner described as the best Christmas present she had ever received.
Kyron the dog was returned to its owner in the early hours of Christmas morning, hours after it went missing from a supermarket in the Melbourne suburb of Essendon.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed
It’s officially a week before Christmas, which means the forecasters at the Bureau of Meteorology are fairly confident they can tell us what whether we can set up for an al fresco Christmas lunch or not.
For some parts of the country, there is a chance of showers:
Particularly in the south, we can get some volatile weather but all the patterns really starting to change as we move into later part of this week.
So we’ll see a weather system move through southern parts of the country, Thursday and Friday. Then a big high-pressure system behind it will quickly move into the Tasman Sea and then kind of sit there over the Christmas weekend into early the following week and normally that drives a lot of warm weather across much of southern parts of the country and our guidance is showing a similar pattern with that as well.
Continue reading...Sport governing body says ‘such behaviour has no place in Australian football’. This blog is now closed
‘We will look at the facts’
James Johnson is asked whether Melbourne Victory has any outstanding sanctions for past incidents. He says he is not aware of any but past events may be considered as an “aggravating factor” as an investigation into the incident unfolds:
There is no other suspended disciplinary action that I’m aware of, but what I will say is that we will be working through that today. We have already started working on the show cause process as of late last night, and we will be moving forward as quickly and swiftly as possible to finalise it, because it is important we get ahead of this issue as a sport.
What I can say is that we will look at the facts, we’ll look at it objectively and we will take a decision that we believe is in the overall best interest of the game but I prefer not to comment on the specifics of the outcome because we have to go through that process first.
What happened during the game last night and what happens with the result;
A “show cause letter” to Melbourne Victory;
An attempt to identify individuals involved in the pitch invasion.
This is an element that … infiltrates our game and tries to ruin it for the people who love us was in. We’ll be looking to weed out those people from the sport.
Continue reading...Australian football has reacted with a mixture of shock, anger, sadness and disbelief to the chaotic and violent scenes that resulted in the abandonment of the A-League men’s Melbourne derby on Saturday night.
City’s goalkeeper, Thomas Glover, was left bloodied after he was hit by a metal bucket allegedly thrown by a Victory fan as supporters stormed the pitch midway through the first half of the match at Aami Park.
Continue reading...A shattered Isaac Cooper fought back tears after he was cruelly denied a backstroke world short course swimming gold medal in bizarre circumstances after the final had to be re-run.
Cooper was first home in the 50m final in Melbourne on Friday night but less than half the field completed the race after an alarm sounded due to a “technical error”.
Continue reading...Federal government tight-lipped on whether it will allow ceremonies on other dates as Merri-bek council votes on change
The future of citizenship ceremonies at three Melbourne councils hangs in the balance, as the federal government refuses to reveal whether it will revoke a Coalition-era policy that forces the ceremonies to be held on 26 January.
The Greens-led Merri-bek council, in Melbourne’s north, on Wednesday voted to abandon Australia Day citizenship ceremonies and instead honour the date with a mourning event to recognise the dispossession of Indigenous Australians.
Continue reading...Demand back to normal in emergency department after long wait times for some patients with less urgent illness
The Royal Children’s hospital in Melbourne is back to “normal” levels of demand after a surge on Monday night that led to emergency wait times of up to 12 hours.
Dr Sarah Arachchi, a general paediatrician who works across public and private hospitals in Melbourne, said a lack of bulk-billing doctors, summer viruses including Covid-19, and health anxiety among carers had led to the hospital having to urge people to seek alternative care if their child’s condition was not urgent.
Continue reading...Workload from treating high number of extremely unwell children means patients may face 12-hour wait
Melbourne parents with sick children may face waits of more than 12 hours at the Royal Children’s hospital emergency department as it buckles under demand.
The hospital, in a statement on Monday evening, warned families should seek alternative care where possible given it was dealing with more than 90 patients in its emergency department.
Continue reading...Sydney Water says filtration systems under extreme pressure amid floods, as all Melbourne beaches declared unsuitable for swimming
Just a quarter of Sydney’s largest drinking water catchment, the Warragamba Dam, is safe for consumption, prompting fears residents will need to conserve water.
Ben Blayney, the head of water supply and production at Sydney Water, said the past year’s floods had placed extreme pressure on the city’s water filtration system.
Continue reading...Foreign minister says ‘Australia stands with Ukraine’ following reports a Russian missile landed in Polish territory killing two people. Follow the day’s news
ABC Radio asked Simon Birmingham about reports from this morning that a Russian missile has hit Poland near the Ukraine border: The shadow foreign affairs minister says:
This is deeply, deeply troubling news.
If an accident occurs it can result in a real escalation ... it shows just how dangerous a game Russia is playing.
We can’t expect instant miracles, but the ultimate test of dialogue will be the outcomes that are received if this dialogue is successful, to see breakthroughs in regard to those trade barriers... and also critically the just treatment of Australian’s detained in China.
And then of course challenges in terms of engagement within the region, that we must continue to argue for China to respect international law, international rules and norms
Continue reading...Widespread showers and storms forecast for Sunday could cause rapid river rises and flash flooding in parts of NSW and Victoria
Parts of Victoria and New South Wales could be hit with new flood emergencies as soon as this weekend, with heavy rain forecast to cause rapid river rises and flash flooding while also putting further pressure on already-full catchments.
“Forecast rainfall in coming days will likely push many rivers and creeks back into moderate to major flooding, as well as prolonging existing flood peaks,” the Bureau of Meteorology said in a statement on Friday afternoon.
Continue reading...Victorian education department investigating after teacher accused of playing ‘explicit and blasphemous’ video to class
A Melbourne school has been accused of forcing a Muslim student to watch a cartoon depicting Muhammad in class, prompting an investigation by the state government.
A teacher at the college, in Melbourne’s north, allegedly played an “explicit and blasphemous” cartoon to the class that depicted the prophet Muhammad, according to the student’s father. The Victorian education department is investigating the incident.
Continue reading...Census data shows Sydney’s northern suburbs had highest WFH proportion, with lowest in regional areas such as Maryborough in Victoria and Taree in NSW
Areas with higher incomes in NSW and Victoria were more likely to have a higher percentage of people working from home during the pandemic, according to a Guardian Australia analysis of census data.
The data provides further evidence of how differently people in areas with different socioeconomic backgrounds experienced the pandemic.
Continue reading...Boy, 11, was riding bike when sucked into drain and under road before he managed to grab on to metal grate when his helmet caught
An 11-year-old boy has had an amazing escape after being sucked into a flooded stormwater drain and washed 10 metres under a road in Melbourne.
The boy was riding his bike with a friend in Altona Meadows on Thursday afternoon when he accidentally rode across a submerged drain and was sucked underwater.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter and afternoon email to get your daily news roundup
Continue reading...