After water restrictions and emergency infrastructure, the final drought strategy is sheer perseverance
People have started visiting the outback town of Pooncarie just to see a place that’s running dry.
Josh Sheard, the publican at the Pooncarie hotel, says the remote town in far south-west New South Wales needs the attention.
Continue reading...Anthony Albanese and Jodi McKay announce the appointment of the Keating government attorney general
The former attorney general Michael Lavarch will lead a review into New South Wales Labor after the suspension of the general secretary Kaila Murnain over claims the party accepted $100,000 in banned developer donations from Huang Xiangmo.
The New South Wales Labor leader, Jodi McKay, and the federal leader, Anthony Albanese, announced the appointment on Sunday, promising to create structures to prevent a repeat of what McKay called “shocking and appalling” allegations at the anti-corruption watchdog.
Continue reading...About 40 fires have been burning across NSW, destroying homes and killing an elderly couple
At least 52 homes have been destroyed in bushfires which swept across northern New South Wales, killing an elderly couple and leaving locals devastated.
There was much-needed rainfall overnight, with about 16mm falling in some fire-affected areas, but the wet conditions mean the use of heavy machinery by crews has had to be suspended for the day.
Continue reading...Rappville blaze, which destroyed at least 10 homes, described as a ‘bastard act’
Police will investigate a suspicious blaze that destroyed at least 10 homes in a rural hamlet in northern New South Wales.
Authorities believe the fire that ripped through the Rappville this week may have been deliberately lit, in what the NSW emergency services minister, David Elliott, has described as a truly “bastard act”.
Continue reading...New South Wales Labor calls for more planning reforms after Guardian revelations about undisclosed political donations
The New South Wales opposition has warned of a “crisis of confidence” in the state’s planning system following revelations that 13 corporations hid their donations from the state’s planning authorities.
A Guardian investigation on Monday found some of Australia’s biggest companies – including Woolworths, Caltex, Origin Energy and AMP – had failed to declare sizeable donations to planning authorities while seeking to develop or approve property in the state.
Continue reading...The men who died in the northern NSW plane crash are believed to be a Gold Coast father and son
Two men – believed to a Gold Coast father and son – have died after their small plane crashed into steep, forested terrain in northern New South Wales.
Police confirmed the deaths after trekking to the crash site in the Dorrigo national park on Saturday afternoon.
Continue reading...Anna Katzmann said Huang could only use the money to pay debt to ATO or for living or legal expenses
A judge will today reveal her reasons for slapping a $140m asset freezing order on controversial businessman and political donor Huang Xiangmo after an application by the Australian taxation office.
At an urgent hearing in Sydney on Monday, federal court judge Anna Katzmann ordered Huang not to dispose of assets worth up to the $140.9m claimed by the ATO, including more than $6m worth of property in Sydney and an apartment in Hong Kong.
Continue reading...Former PM and deputy PM deploy incendiary language to describe decriminalisation bill being considered by NSW parliament
The former prime minister and deputy prime minister of Australia have claimed at an anti-abortion rally in Sydney that a proposed decriminalisation bill has nothing to do with decriminalisation.
Tony Abbott described the bill as “infanticide on demand”, while Barnaby Joyce described it as “the slavery debate of our time” while also perpetuating a false claim about pro-choice protesters on Saturday.
Continue reading...Guardian Australia reports from three communities hard hit by one of the worst droughts in living memory
Australia is experiencing one of its most severe droughts on record, resulting in desperate water shortages across large parts of New South Wales and southern Queensland. Dams in some parts of western NSW have all but dried up, with rainfall levels through the winter in the lowest 10% of historical records in some areas.
The crisis in the far west of the state became unavoidable after the mass fish kills along the lower Darling River last summer, but now much bigger towns closer to the coast, including Dubbo, are also running out of water.
Continue reading...Firefighters fear significant property losses, with scores of blazes still burning in Queensland and NSW
• Mass evacuations as bushfires threaten more homes – live updates
Hundreds of people are holed up in evacuation centres on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast as crews wait to see how many homes have been lost to a ferocious fire, while firefighters in New South Wales are still battling out-of-control fires near the border.
There are fears of significant property losses, with a destructive blaze still burning out of control at Peregian Beach and Peregian Breeze Estate, south of Noosa.
Continue reading...There are doubts the Noah’s Ark plan for the Lower Darling will be enough to prevent more mass fish kills
Faced with a looming ferocious summer with little rain forecast, the New South Wales government has embarked on a Noah’s Ark type operation to move native fish from the Lower Darling – part of Australia’s most significant river system – to safe havens before high temperatures return to the already stressed river basin.
Researchers have warned of other alarming ecological signs that the Lower Darling River – part of the giant Murray-Darling Basin – is in a dire state, following last summer’s mass fish kills.
Continue reading...Bell UH1 helicopter dropped off radar near Anna Bay, north of Newcastle
Four men and a woman are feared dead after the wreckage of the helicopter they were in was seen sinking off the coast of New South Wales.
The Bell UH1 helicopter dropped off the radar near Anna Bay, north of Newcastle, about 6.30pm on Friday.
Continue reading...New South Wales government fails in bid to keep the notorious paedophile behind bars
The notorious paedophile Michael Guider, who killed schoolgirl Samantha Knight decades ago, has walked free from a Sydney prison.
Guider was released from Long Bay jail on Thursday after the supreme court rejected a New South Wales government bid to keep him behind bars for another year.
Continue reading...Steve Tong says his name was falsely put on donation records by his superiors at Wu International
A key witness to an anti-corruption probe received a night-time home visit from his former boss to deliver “festive greetings” the same day he was summonsed to give evidence, despite the Chinese festival taking place two months earlier, an inquiry has heard.
Steve Tong, an engineer who says he has no interest in politics, has given evidence to the Independent Commission Against Corruption that his name was falsely put on donation records by his superiors at a property development firm, Wu International, which has links to the former state Labor MP Ernest Wong.
Continue reading...If followed through, the move would push the Liberal party into minority government just months after the election
Two New South Wales Liberal party MPs have reportedly threatened to move to the crossbench if the premier, Gladys Berejiklian, refuses to cave to their demands for amendments on a bill to decriminalise abortion.
The conservative Liberal MPs Tanya Davies and Kevin Conolly have reportedly told Berejiklian they will no longer sit in the party room if amendments to the bill are not passed.
Continue reading...Its general secretary is gone but the question remains: how do you fix a party branch synonymous with sleaze and scandal?
One of Labor’s favourite Chinatown eateries was packed as Kaila Murnain readied herself to speak. It was 2014, the year before the fateful Labor fundraiser at the centre of this week’s explosive anti-corruption hearings.
But the scene was largely the same. The Eight Restaurant in Haymarket was at capacity, the room full of wealthy donors cosying up to some of the most powerful Labor figures in the state.
Continue reading...The Indigenous massacres project produced in collaboration with the University of Newcastle wins digital history prize
Guardian Australia has won the digital history prize in the New South Wales premier’s history awards for its Indigenous massacres project, The Killing Times.
The collaborative series with the University of Newcastle’s colonial massacres research team found there were at least 270 frontier massacres over 140 years as part of a state-sanctioned and organised attempt to eradicate Aboriginal people.
Continue reading...Lower Darling pushed into drought three years early because of sheer volume of water extraction by just a few licence holders
A handful of big irrigators are responsible for 86% of water extracted from the Barwon-Darling river system, pushing the lower Darling into drought three years early, an expert report has found.
The NSW Natural Resources Commission released the report by the Australian Rivers Institute professor Fran Sheldon on Monday night, after it received criticism for the claim that extraction of water by cotton growers had pushed the river system into hydrological drought three years early.
Continue reading...Clover Moore warns NSW planning rules at stake after Berejiklian says suburb is ‘open for business and ready to be taken to the next level’
The lord mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, has warned that “the entire credibility of the planning system” in New South Wales is at stake after the premier intervened to order a speedy review of planning controls in Pyrmont, where her own planning department has blocked the development of a 62-storey tower on top of Star casino.
The rejection of the Star proposal for the 237 metre tower, in the historic area zoned for eight storeys to the west of the CBD, has bitterly divided the state government and led to a ferocious campaign by Star, aided by the Daily Telegraph and radio talkback host Alan Jones.
Continue reading...Matthew James Williams sentenced for ‘horrifying’ attack on pair in Jindabyne
A British ski instructor has been jailed for 10 years for raping a woman and physically assaulting her male friend in Australia.
Matthew James Williams, 29, attacked the pair on a street in Jindabyne, south of Canberra and near the border between New South Wales and Victoria, in July 2018. He had followed the woman and her 25-year-old companion after they left a pub to walk home.
Continue reading...