Australian ski resorts smash July climate records with temperatures 12C above average

Resorts in New South Wales and Victoria face a warm and dry start to the season with only sporadic falls of natural snow in many alpine areas

Alpine ski resorts in New South Wales and Victoria saw climate records shattered at the weekend with maximum temperatures up to 12C above average.

Ski areas of Mount Hotham and Falls Creek set July records for their hottest daytime and night-time temperatures and Thredbo also set a new hottest July day, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

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Man dies after cross-border police pursuit ends in NSW northern rivers

Car chase began in Queensland after report of armed man on Gold Coast late on Saturday, police say

New South Wales police have declared a “critical incident” after a man died following a police pursuit in the northern rivers area, hours after the same man allegedly evaded Queensland police while armed with a gun.

The 25-year-old from Queensland was found unconscious at the wheel of a vehicle, which had driven down an embankment south of Murwillumbah, about 2am on Sunday, NSW police said.

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Police release images of clothes to help identify victims of alleged Sydney childcare paedophile

AFP release images of children’s clothes found on electronic devices seized as part of investigation into Hamish Tait

A tiny dinosaur puffer jacket could lead police to more victims of a former childcare worker and alleged prolific child sex offender.

Federal police have released pictures of clothing from children they want to identify, urging parents and carers who recognise the items to come forward.

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Telstra blames ‘software defect’ for major outage that hit mobiles, trains and triple-zero calls

Telco said outage was not due to a cyber-attack but warned of scammers calling people claiming to be from Telstra

Telstra has blamed a “software defect” that changed the time servers for a major outage in which thousands of mobile customers were unable to make calls or access data on the country’s largest network on Wednesday morning.

The telco, which powers about 25m mobile services nationwide, confirmed the outage on Wednesday, with all services restored by 4pm AEST.

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Child protection services contacted before four-year-old’s alleged murder as police investigate cannibalism claim

Police charge woman with murder after boy’s body was found in a Central Coast home on Saturday

The New South Wales department in charge of child protection received “a number of reports” about a four-year-old child before he was allegedly murdered by his mother, the minister revealed, as she announced a review into how the case was handled.

Kate Washington, the NSW minister for communities and family, announced the independent review into the child’s case on Monday afternoon, two days after police found the preschooler’s body at a home on the Central Coast.

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Woman charged with murder after body of four-year-old boy found in Central Coast home

Police are investigating what happened to a boy who was found with significant arm injuries

A woman has been charged with murder after police found the body of a preschooler at a home on the New South Wales Central Coast.

Police rushed to the home at Wyong after a 32-year-old woman presented to the local police station on Saturday.

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NSW records first suspected case of deadly H5 bird flu as virus reaches Australia’s east coast

Migratory giant petrel discovered near Hawks Nest north of Newcastle infected with H5. Testing under way to determine if it’s highly pathogenic H5N1 strain

New South Wales has its first suspected case of the deadly H5 bird flu in a giant petrel that was found near Hawks Nest, north of Newcastle, on the state’s coast.

If CSIRO testing confirms it is the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain, it would mark the first detection of the deadly disease on the Australian east coast.

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‘Obviously disturbing’ if Christian Brothers’ $1 property sales deprive abuse survivors of pay, government tells court

Concerns Catholic order’s historical transfers of millions in assets were potentially inappropriate, NSW supreme court hears

Lawyers for the federal government say they are concerned at the “disturbing” potential that the Christian Brothers Catholic order may have inappropriately transferred property to another entity years before claiming it was broke and couldn’t afford to pay abuse survivors’ civil claims.

The New South Wales supreme court on Thursday ordered a moratorium on all abuse claims against the Christian Brothers, a Catholic order that played a significant role in the church’s child sexual abuse scandal.

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Josh Burns says partner Georgie Purcell faces antisemitic abuse because he is Jewish, commission hears

The royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion hears how witnesses are subjected to hate speech amplified by misogyny

Vile, threatening abuse is being levelled at witnesses to the antisemitism royal commission, the inquiry has heard, while a Labor MP has said attacks on his partner were heightened because they were stacked with misogyny.

Meanwhile, data analysis has shown how quickly factual reports are transformed into conspiracy theories online, and that while there was a spike in antisemitism after the Bondi terror attack, there was a “huge spike” in anti-Muslim hate.

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Australia news live: auction clearance rates continue to hover under 50% as Chalmers defends tax reform plan

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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.

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Hikers lost in Kosciuszko national park rescued within five hours by AI drone

Fire and Rescue NSW uses thermal imaging and a mobile phone red light to quickly locate men who veered off walking track near Jindabyne

Two hikers who veered off a walking track in Kosciuszko national park have been found within five hours using a drone powered by artificial intelligence, a first-of-its-kind mission, Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) has said.

The two men, aged in their 20s, were reported missing at 7pm on Tuesday evening after they failed to return to a rendezvous point on time.

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Park to protect 12,000 koalas to go ahead via contentious carbon credit deal by Albanese government

Minns government waited on federal approval of carbon credit scheme before proceeding with long-awaited great koala national park

A long-promised New South Wales great koala national park is set to go ahead after the Albanese government greenlit the state to receive hundreds of millions of dollars for protecting native forests previously earmarked for logging.

The assistant climate change minister, Josh Wilson, said the government had approved a regulatory change that allowed state governments to earn carbon credits by storing carbon dioxide in native forests on public land.

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Cult leader William Kamm and wife groomed young girl for a decade, Sydney court told

The 76-year-old allegedly ordered he should have 12 wives to ‘repopulate’ the world. He and his wife deny the charges

The leader of a cult and his wife allegedly groomed a young girl over a decade so she could bear 45 of his children in a post-apocalyptic world.

William Kamm, also known as “Little Pebble”, was the leader of the Order of Saint Charbel, a religious cult run from a property on the New South Wales south coast.

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Almost three tonnes of cocaine found buried under Sydney property in Australia’s biggest ever seizure, police say

Australian federal police arrested and charged two men after allegedly finding $800m worth of cocaine in ‘bunkers’ under shipping containers

Police claim to have made Australia’s biggest ever cocaine bust after finding $800m worth of the drug buried under false flooring on a semi-rural property.

Two men, aged 21 and 25, allegedly tried to run from police and were arrested on Friday after an operation by Australian federal police, alongside investigators in multiple states.

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Death of Indigenous teen found on rail tracks with towel under head ‘suspicious’, NSW coroner says

Police initially ruled Mark Haines’ 1988 death a suicide but coroner says investigation hindered by racism and deeply flawed

The police investigation into the death of Indigenous teenager Mark Haines in northern New South Wales nearly four decades ago was hindered by racism and deeply flawed, a coroner has found.

The body of the Gomeroi teenager was discovered on train tracks outside Tamworth on the morning of 16 January 1988.

A stolen Holden Torana was found crashed nearby.

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Paedophile teacher William ‘Rob’ Gilfillan sentenced for sexual offences against two Victorian schoolgirls in the 1980s

Former PE teacher will serve time for crimes perpetrated at Traralgon high school in Gippsland concurrently with prior 48-year sentence

A former physical education teacher serving Australia’s longest sentence for child sexual abuse offences against his daughter has been sentenced to seven-and-a-half years for “brazen and forcible” sexual crimes against two schoolgirls in his care in the 1980s.

In December, William “Rob” Gilfillan was found guilty of indecent assault of a person under 16 and sexual penetration of a child under 16. The five counts against two victims took place at Traralgon high school in Gippsland, Victoria.

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‘Life-changing’ injuries: family reels from ‘tragic situation’ as Coogee shark attack victim loses arm

The family of Leah Stewart is braced for more bad news and the impact on her 18-month-old daughter

The family of the woman critically injured in Saturday’s horrific shark attack at Coogee beach is still coming to terms with the catastrophic scope of her injuries and the heartbreaking impact on her toddler.

Leah Stewart, a 35-year-old primary school teacher, mother and dedicated ocean swimmer, remained on life support in the intensive care unit at St Vincent’s hospital after being mauled by a suspected 3.5-metre great white shark.

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Father may have thrown daughter into Parramatta River in suspected murder-suicide, police say

NSW police say suicide note and ‘other evidence’ suggest six-year-old’s death was an act of domestic violence

A suicide note has been located after the bodies of a young girl and her father were pulled from the Parramatta River on Saturday.

The six-year-old may have been deliberately thrown in the water by the man from a hired boat in what police believe was a horrific act of domestic violence.

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NSW lifts drone ban over Sydney beach after shark attack – as it happened

This blog is now closed

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.

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‘There was a lot of blood in the water’: paddleboarder rescues woman after ‘shocking’ Coogee shark attack

Charlie Verco managed to grab hold of the woman and bring her back to shore after the Sydney shark attack on Saturday

Elite paddleboarder Charlie Verco has only seen one shark bigger than the one he saw on Saturday at Sydney’s Coogee beach.

The North Bondi athlete was training for July’s world championships in Hawaii on Saturday morning when he heard a swimmer shouting “shark”.

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