Category Archives: New South Wales

‘Deplorable’: nurse slammed therapy doll dementia patient believed was real baby on table, NSW tribunal hears

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Sudiksha Ahuja found guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct and her nursing registration cancelled

An aged care nurse who slammed a dementia patient’s therapy doll on a table and laughed at the distressed patient who believed it was a real baby has been found to have been “callous and deplorable”.

Sudiksha Ahuja was found guilty in August of unsatisfactory professional conduct after being prosecuted by the Health Care Complaints Commission before the New South Wales civil and administrative tribunal, the commission said in a statement on Tuesday. On Monday, the commission cancelled Ahuja’s registration as an enrolled nurse.

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Drilling for Sydney to Newcastle high-speed rail begins but Labor accused of uncosted ‘fantasy project’

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Two drill rigs, installed on barges, have started work on the Hawkesbury River at Brooklyn and at Brisbane Water near Gosford

Drill rigs have started boring into rocks and riverbeds to determine the best route for the tunnelling megaproject needed for a high-speed rail line between Sydney and Newcastle, but the fast train’s future is far from certain amid questions about its cost.

Almost three years after Labor came to power on a promise to build the fast train, two drill rigs have begun geotechnical examinations on the Central Coast of New South Wales, the Albanese government announced on Tuesday, as its newly formed High-Speed Rail Association (HSRA) works on a business case for the project’s first stage.

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Australia politics live: Albanese tells caucus Labor will campaign on ‘risk’ of Dutton; Miles returns as Queensland Labor leader

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‘We need to extend the average time people stay in our defence force,’ says Matt Keough

The defence personnel minister, Matt Keough, has also been talking about that retention and renumeration package for defence.

We need to extend the average time people stay in our defence force.

That does mean it had a vulnerability. We’re looking at moving to more of a mesh-type arrangement of satellites, which provides greater resilience, with a more up-to-date technology, and we’ll be able to deliver the technology faster as well.

We are very much confident that we can meet these targets and that’s because we have properly funded them and we have a plan to get there, which is about really improving the terms of service for those who work in our defence forces.

We’re increasing and expanding the bonuses for continuing on in the defence force. We’re continuing the original retention bonus after your initial service obligation for three years and beyond that. There will be another bonus for people who stay in the defence force after that. And that’s really targeting those who are in their seventh, eighth, ninth years of service, which gets to the middle ranks where we’ve got an issue. And we’re also going to grow the active reserves so there are more opportunities for people in the reserve to do full-time or part-time work in the defence force.

This original plan goes back seven or eight years and it was about having two or three satellites above Australia to deliver that capability. Since then, we have seen technologies develop which can shoot satellites out of the sky but we have also seen technologies develop where you have thousands of micro satellites in a more distributed way providing the same effect and we are seeing that with Starlink above Ukraine.

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William Tyrrell inquest: foster mother abused outside court after police allege she may have buried toddler

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Counsel assisting warns ‘fairness is deserved by all’ after inquest hears foster mother may have disposed of three-year-old’s body following accidental death in 2014

The coroner overseeing the inquest into William Tyrrell’s disappearance in 2014 has issued a warning after the toddler’s foster mother was abused outside court.

Counsel assisting Gerard Craddock SC told the deputy state coroner Harriet Grahame that someone had yelled at the foster mother at Lidcombe coroners court on Monday as the inquest resumed for two further weeks of evidence.

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More than 500 new poker machines installed in NSW despite Chris Minns promising to slash numbers

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Total number of machines in state increased from 87,094 in March last year to 87,644 in October

More than 500 new poker machines have been installed since Labor won office in New South Wales last year, despite a campaign pledge to cut their numbers in pubs and clubs.

In January 2023, two months before the state election, the now premier, Chris Minns, declared a Labor government would “reduce the number of poker machines” in NSW.

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Search for boy, 11, swept out to sea on NSW Central Coast to resume on Tuesday

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Strong current took child trying to cross The Entrance channel with father and three younger brothers

A search for an 11-year-old boy swept out to sea by a strong current on the New South Wales Central Coast will resume on Tuesday.

A 43-year-old man had been crossing the channel between an estuary and the ocean from the northern side of a location known as The Entrance, with his four boys, aged 11, nine, seven and three. The eldest child was swept into the ocean.

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Heatwave to turn parts of Australia into ‘one of the hottest places in the world’ this week

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Some of the east coast and the north will bake in a furnace of potentially life-threatening heat, the Bureau of Meteorology forecasts

A heatwave is due to strike Australia’s east coast, with temperatures expected above 40C, making the country’s north “one of the hottest places in the world” this week, the Bureau of Meteorology has forecast.

Residents in northern New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory are being warned to brace for unsettled weather through the week, starting on Monday, as a mass of heat moves eastward from central Australia.

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NSW pokies club promoted rewards scheme on first day of gambling harm awareness week, emails show

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Members urged to ‘use your mobile phone to quickly tap and connect to a gaming machine’, potentially at odds with gambling ad ban

On day one of a gambling harm awareness week, one of the biggest pokies clubs in Australia reminded members they could earn rewards by using their machines.

GambleAware week is an annual campaign run by the New South Wales government to raise awareness of gambling harm. It urges people to set limits, to stay sober while gambling, to balance gambling with other interests and not to chase losses.

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Australia news live: PwC reveals it sacked eight staff over data breaches; Perth man dies after being taken to police watch house

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Court to rule in Pauline Hanson-Mehreen Faruqi case

A federal court judge is ready to rule on whether Pauline Hanson made a racial slur when she told Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi to go back to Pakistan.

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NSW police dogs died in car’s special cooling ‘pod’ when engine switched off, force says

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Investigation under way into whether mechanical failure resulted in deaths of German shepherds Xtra and Soldier in Sydney

New South Wales police are investigating whether engine failure led to a police car’s air conditioning failing and the subsequent death of two police dogs inside a special “dog pod”.

The German shepherds Xtra and Soldier were found dead inside the police vehicle by their handler on Thursday at about 12.30pm.

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NSW Labor accused of ‘pretty deliberate attempt’ to minimise impact of long-promised drug summit

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Once-in-a-generation summit set to commence in Griffith on 1 November amid concern over transparency and questions over commitment to meaningful change

New South Wales Labor has been accused of trying to minimise the impact of a once-in-a-generation drug reform summit amid last-minute changes and concern from experts over transparency.

The long-promised NSW drug summit begins on Friday in the regional city of Griffith before hearings in Lismore and Sydney.

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Victoria to cut more than 130 bushfire forest service jobs – As it happened

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Young man dies in multi-vehicle crash in Queensland’s Bundaberg Region

A fatal multi-vehicle traffic crash last night at Elliot in Queensland’s Bundaberg Region last night is being investigated by the police forensic crash Unit.

All travel has been appropriately declared and is a matter of public record.

The only people that need to look at the rules are [shadow transport minister] Bridget McKenzie and Peter Dutton. They’ve got some serious explaining to do.

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Attorney general considering releasing full robodebt report – As it happened

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Mark Butler flags importance of an Australian CDC in future pandemic responses

The federal health minister, Mark Butler, spoke to ABC News Breakfast this morning, after the Covid inquiry report was released yesterday.

Currently, we’re the only developed country that doesn’t have that single authoritative body that can provide to governments and communities about an evidence-based approach to pandemic response and to other communicable diseases. So that is the foundation on which we build a system to respond to the next pandemic - because there will be a next one – much more effectively than we did to Covid.

We all remember just how incredibly difficult and challenging it was, how it affected every aspect of our lives. And in terms of how the government worked during that period of time – we worked with those public health experts and advisers. Our focus was very much on the health and wellbeing of our community, particularly the vulnerable members of our community who were most at risk.

This was a deadly disease. We saw, particularly overseas, it killed so many people. So we were focused on a public health response – a public health response that was focused on supporting the health of our community, and also too understanding the significant additional supports that we needed to provide to small businesses to support them during this incredibly difficult time.

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Broken Hill customers to get bill reprieve as power outages continue

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Origin and EnergyAustralia agree to defer bills after brownouts cripple region for better part of a week

Customers who have suffered through Broken Hill’s mass outages are set for a temporary reprieve on their bills as locals continue to be hit with night-time power cuts in sweltering conditions.

Two power companies – Origin and EnergyAustralia – have agreed to defer bills to those who have been affected by the outages that crippled the region for the better part of a week.

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NSW police fight to stop Newcastle port ‘protestival’ in second court challenge to protests in a month

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Rising Tide event would involve thousands of paddling climate activists blocking coal exports

The New South Wales police force is challenging a planned protest through the supreme court for the second time this month – this time an event in Newcastle calling for climate action.

The November protest is organised by Rising Tide and known as the “People’s Blockade of the World’s Largest Coal Port”. It would involve thousands of activists paddling into the Port of Newcastle on kayaks and rafts to stop coal exports from leaving Newcastle for 50 hours.

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Australia news live: PM to announce clean energy projects; property market losing heat but prices still going up

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Anthony Albanese to launch schemes in NSW and Victoria today; Domain says rate of price increases is cooling. Follow today’s news headlines live

Bowen derides Coalition’s ‘nuclear fantasy’

Chris Bowen, minister for climate change and energy, is speaking on ABC Radio National this morning.

If I was the energy minister of another country, I would consider the opportunities that I had in that country – but a country saying to Australia, with our excellent renewable resources, that we should go down the nuclear road when we have no nuclear industry, no nuclear expertise of the scale that we would need for a nuclear power industry, is like us going to Finland or Scandinavia and saying, ‘Listen, we know [you have] a lot of snow, but you should really try beach surfing.’ It just doesn’t make any sense.

We have to play to our strengths in Australia, and we have the best renewable resources in the world, and the opposition wants to stop us using them, and in turn, keep coal in the system for longer. They’re quite explicit about that while we wait for this nuclear fantasy to come on board. That would be terrible for emissions and fatal for energy reliability.

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‘Needle in a haystack’: how a six-day search for a missing woman in rugged Kosciuszko ended in relief

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Lovisa Sjoberg had suffered a snake bite, dehydration and a rolled ankle in the days she spent lost in the Snowy Mountains – and was ‘pretty fortunate’ to be alive

The alarm was raised by a car hire company.

Lovisa Sjoberg, known as Kiki, had hired a grey Mitsubishi Outlander and driven it out to the Kosciuszko national park, where she was known to go hiking and take photographs of brumbies.

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Australia news live: Dutton says he ‘respects’ Crisafulli’s rejection of nuclear power but will push for a ‘mature conversation’

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Earlier this morning, David Crisafulli said it was still a ‘no’ to any nuclear proposal, and Dutton said he ‘respected’ that. Follow the day’s news live

Employment minister Murray Watt has refused to comment on reports Anthony Albanese used his membership in Qantas’s chairman’s lounge to solicit flight upgrades when he was transport minister and opposition leader.

Watt was on RN Breakfast, where he refused to be drawn on what he called “unsourced claim by a journalist” that Albanese would reach out directly to former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce directly about his travel.

If you have a look at Peter Dutton behaviour, for example, several upgrades from the Qantas and other airlines, he’s had free flights paid for by Gina Rinehart.

I really would wonder whether it’s wise for the opposition to start calling this kind of stuff into question.

We obviously spend an enormous amount of time at airports. I think this week, I’m going to be in about three or four different cities, flying from place to place. And it is helpful from time to time, to be able to have private meetings or private environments, to be able to have teams meetings with your office, which I do every time I fly.

We want Labor to negotiate like we did in the previous housing legislation, where we not only improved and passed Labour’s housing legislation, but we got $3bn to start building public and community housing.

I think this is part of the message that we’re trying to give to the government. We are up for negotiation.

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Woman bitten by snake found alive after week-long search in remote Snowy Mountains

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Lovisa Sjoberg hadn’t been seen for almost a fortnight when she was located on Sunday afternoon at Kiandra about 85km south-west of Canberra

A woman missing for more than a week in the Snowy Mountains region has been found alive four days after she was reportedly bitten by a snake.

A search was launched for Lovisa “Kiki” Sjoberg, 48, on Monday 21 October after she was last seen driving a grey SUV in the Kosciuszko national park the previous Tuesday.

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Belimbla Park plane crash: three people killed after mid-air collision in Sydney’s south-west

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NSW police say two crime scenes secured after reports two light planes collided near Oakdale

Three people are dead after two light planes collided in mid-air before crashing in Sydney’s south-west.

NSW police confirmed the fatal crash occurred at about 11.50am on Saturday, at Belimbla Park, near Oakdale.

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