Category Archives: Queensland

Wong urged to raise human rights concerns on Beijing trip – as it happened

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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.

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Single-parent families falling $200 a week short of meeting living expenses in Queensland

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Queensland Council of Social Services report reveals rental costs, inflation and inadequate welfare payments squeezing household budgets

Thousands of low-income families in Queensland don’t have enough money to meet basic living or dietary standards due to surging rental costs and inadequate welfare payments, according to a report.

Queensland Council of Social Services modelling shows unemployed single parents and families where only one parent is able to work are the most vulnerable to financial shocks, emergencies or unplanned expenses.

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Child in Queensland hospital after ‘terrifying’ dingo attack near camping ground on K’gari

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Father able to stop the attack on the five-year-old boy, who was bitten multiple times while playing on a beach

A young boy who is in hospital after being attacked by a dingo in Queensland is stable and “doing well”, a spokesperson from Hervey Bay hospital has said.

The child, aged five, was bitten on the head, arm, and buttocks at the remote Ocean Lake camping area in K’gari (Fraser Island) on Sunday afternoon.

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‘Likely a nightshade’: Australians urged not to seek out spinach products for recreational high

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Warning comes as more than 130 people who ate range of contaminated fresh food items suffer symptoms including hallucinations and delirium

Australians are being urged not to seek out contaminated baby spinach products for a recreational high after more than 130 people who ate a range of fresh food items suffered symptoms including hallucinations and delirium.

Authorities were on Sunday night testing the weed believed to be responsible for the widespread recall of products containing spinach thought to have come from a farm in Victoria.

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Riviera Fresh – Riviera Farms Baby​ Spinach

Fresh Salad Co – Fresh and Fast Stir Fry

Woolworths – Chicken Cobb Salad and Chickpea Falafel Salad

​Coles – Spinach, Chef Blend Tender Leaf, Baby Leaf Blend, Kitchen Green Goddess Salad, Kitchen Chicken BLT Salad Bowl, Kitchen Roast Pumpkin, Fetta & Walnut Salad, Kitchen Smokey Mexican Salad, Kitchen Egg and Spinach Pots

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Victoria police to prosecute pitch invaders; more contaminated spinach cases in Queensland – as it happened

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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.

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US religious conspiracist linked to Queensland police killers Gareth and Stacey Train

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Australian couple behind Wieambilla attack were in regular contact with man with a similar fundamentalist theology

In the hours after Gareth Train and his wife, Stacey, murdered two police officers and wounded a third during a chilling, premeditated attack on their remote Queensland property this week, they posted a haunting video to YouTube.

“They came to kill us, and we killed them,” Gareth says, his face partly obscured in darkness.

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Wieambilla shooting: Stacey Train had limited contact with family after entering ‘controlling’ relationship with brother-in-law

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Family member remembers quiet girl whose life went ‘downhill’ after marrying

Every year, Stacey Train’s mother would call the mobile of her estranged daughter and leave a message on her birthday.

But, according to another family member, if her son-in-law, Gareth, picked up she would quickly hang up.

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‘Foreign actors’ may have fanned rightwing extremism during Covid to sway election, Liberal MP says

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Exclusive: Andrew Wallace urges colleagues to be ‘mindful’ of possibility but says he has no hard evidence

The deputy chair of parliament’s intelligence committee has suggested “foreign state actors” may have stoked anti-vaxxer and rightwing extremism sentiment in Australia during the Covid-19 pandemic in a bid to influence the outcome of the May federal election.

“I’m very mindful of the increase in the fanning of rightwing extremism in the lead-up to the last federal election,” the Coalition MP Andrew Wallace told Guardian Australia.

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God and guns: the strict religious upbringing of the Wieambilla shooters

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Self-described ‘free evangelical’ Ronald Train, who created his own church based on literal reading of scripture, says sons ‘lost their way’ before Queensland shooting

People who knew Ronald Train during his days living in Toowoomba joked that “no church would accept him, so he had to make his own”.

Train believed – and would later write in a book – that Freemasons “give their allegiance to Lucifer” and were “a cancer”. The constitution of his Christian Independent Fellowship (started after his physical church in Toowoomba closed and he moved interstate) says appointing women to leadership positions “will never be entertained”.

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Man who fired gun inside Canberra airport was on parole for attempted murder – as it happened

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Butler defends decision to cut Medicare-funded psychology sessions

The federal health minister, Mark Butler, is speaking to ABC Radio following his decision Monday to cut the number of Medicare psychologist sessions. He’s come under serious heat for the move which experts say is “appalling.”

This program has been around for a number of years, and it has for many years had a limit of 10 sessions for people to access over that long period the average person has used 4 - 5 of those sessions.

This is a good program, I’ve been familiar with it for many, many years, but its problem has always been one of equity.

The evaluation found that the lowest-income communities have more than twice the levels of mental distress as the highest-income communities, but they get the lowest level of support and, under this program, that inequality was substantially worsened by these additional 10 sessions.

People like Prof Ian Hickey said at the time that those additional sessions in a sector with a limit workforce, was going to have the effect of cutting out other people, meaning other people couldn’t get any support whatsoever.

And the evaluation I .. released on Monday showed exactly that, that it had the impact of cutting more people out of the system. Most of those people were in some of the poorest communities, where the evaluation said there is the highest need.

The recommendation of the report was we would consider additional sessions for people with complex needs, now this system was not designed to focus on people with complex needs.

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Police in Australia examine conspiracy theories behind shooting deaths of two officers and four others

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Conspiracy theories and any prior planning will be central to an investigation in Wieambilla, Queensland

In a remote patch of Australian scrub, Gareth Train was building his “ark”.

“The name given to me is Gareth,” he wrote, introducing himself to an online forum for conspiracy theorists and survivalists in January 2021.

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Australia news live: Queensland police pay tribute to two officers killed in ‘absolutely devastating’ shooting ambush

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Two police officers and another member of the public were shot dead at a Wieambilla property, then two men and a woman were killed by police late last night. Follow the day’s news live

Police officers who were shot and killed on a regional Queensland property were searching for a New South Wales man last seen by his family almost a year ago, Guardian Australia understands.

On Monday, four officers attended the remote property at Wieambilla in the Western Downs region in connection with the disappearance of Nathaniel Train, 46, from Dubbo in NSW.

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Queensland police were searching for missing school principal Nathaniel Train when Wieambilla shooting occurred

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Six people were killed on Monday night, including two uniformed police officers allegedly ambushed on a remote property

Police officers who were shot and killed on a regional Queensland property were searching for a New South Wales man last seen by his family almost a year ago, Guardian Australia understands.

Three people were shot dead by tactical police late on Monday night, ending a six-hour standoff that followed the apparent ambush-style killings of two uniformed officers and a member of the public on a remote Queensland property.

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Six people killed at Queensland property, including two police officers ambushed by shooters

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Tactical police shoot dead three suspects at Wieambilla property after the ‘ruthless, targeted execution’ of two officers from Tara and a member of the public

Three people were shot dead by tactical police late on Monday night, ending a six-hour standoff that followed the apparent ambush-style killings of two uniformed officers and a member of the public on a remote Queensland property.

Four officers from Tara had been sent to the property, at Wieambilla in the Western Downs region, about 270km west of Brisbane, to inquire about a missing person.

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MPs’ Pacific islands tour to show bipartisan support – As it happened

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Senior politicians from both major parties to travel to Vanuatu, the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and Palau this week. This blog is now closed

The Bureau of Meteorology expects scattered showers expected over South Australia.

Meanwhile the heatwave that has settled across northern Australia is expected to ease.

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NSW ‘almost ready to sign up’ to coal price cap to provide energy price relief

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State’s energy minister, Matt Kean, says ‘It’s not about royalties, it’s all about consumers’, putting pressure on Queensland counterpart

New South Wales is prepared to agree to a price cap on coal without compensation to provide energy price relief to consumers and business, adding pressure on Queensland to follow suit.

Meanwhile, a meeting of energy ministers in Brisbane on Thursday has agreed, as expected, to move ahead with a so-called capacity investment scheme to help accelerate the take up of new storage in the electricity grid.

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‘Trying to text and call’: Australian girl, 10, was at sleepover when family died in US light plane crash

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Queenslanders Christian and Misty Kath and their eldest daughter Lily killed when rented Piper Cherokee crashed off coast of Florida on the weekend

An Australian girl was at a friend’s house in Florida when a light plane crashed into the Gulf of Mexico on the weekend, killing her parents and older sister.

Queensland man Christian Kath, 42, was piloting the rented Piper Cherokee when it crashed on Saturday night with his wife, Misty, 43, and their eldest daughter, Lily, 12, on board.

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Queensland graziers unearth 100m-year-old plesiosaur remains likened to Rosetta Stone

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Amateur fossil hunters find skull connected to body of marine giant elasmosaur for the first time in Australia

A group of female graziers from outback Queensland who hunt fossils in their downtime have uncovered the remains of a 100m-year-old creature that palaeontologists are likening to the Rosetta Stone for its potential to unlock the discovery of several new species of prehistoric marine giant.

One of the “Rock Chicks” – as the amateur palaeontologists call themselves – uncovered the fossilised remains of the long-necked plesiosaur, known as an elasmosaur, while searching her western Queensland cattle station in August.

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Temperatures forecast to reach mid-40s as heatwave hits northern Australia

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North of Western Australia, NT and Queensland to swelter in up to 47C as ‘monsoon break’ allows build-up of intensely hot air mass

Temperatures are expected to soar across northern Australia over the coming days as a heatwave spreads across Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland.

Weatherzone meteorologist Ben Domensino said hot air was building over the north-west of the continent and moving east, driving temperatures in some areas as high as 5C to 6C above average.

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Wrongfully jailed man sues Queensland for $2.1m, alleging police officer acted with malice

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Exclusive: During 220 days in prison, Eamonn Coughlan says he was bashed, stabbed with a syringe and denied prescription drugs

A former British policeman wrongfully jailed for more than 200 days has lodged a $2.1m lawsuit against the state of Queensland and a police officer who – court documents allege – stated he “hated” the man, threatened to beat his wife and unnecessarily searched through her underwear drawers.

Former London Metropolitan police officer Eamonn Charles Coughlan was imprisoned for arson and attempted insurance fraud in 2019, but fully exonerated by the high court the following year.

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