This blog is now closed Get our new political email , free app or daily news podcast Sports precinct funding report reveals a ‘pattern of behaviour’, Wilson says Tim Wilson says there are questions for Labor to answer over an ABC report which says health minister Mark Butler’s office asked an Adelaide council to put forward a $6m sports precinct upgrade for federal funding before any detailed costings or formal planning had been done. I think what we’re now seeing is a pattern of behaviour. The prime minister gave a grant to a golf course in his electorate just around the corner from his home, of which he was a member, which he failed to declare. Now we have the health minister, the next wannabe prime minister, doing exactly the same thing. That’s a difficult thing to do. However, I think one way to do it is to ensure that Muslim leaders are at the centre of any such discussion and guide that discussion in a way that Australian Muslims as a whole do not feel targeted. Because there is a real risk when you have a discussion about extremist Islam, you have a real risk that Muslims as a whole feel under pressure. Equally, if you don’t have that discussion, you play into the hands of extremists at the other end of the spectrum. Continue reading...

Home affairs minister Tony Burke will detail long-awaited changes as support for One Nation surges amid immigration debate Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our new political email , free app or daily news podcast Foreign students will face tough restrictions on the ability to bring family members into Australia, as the federal government shifts sections of the country’s immigration system away from demand-driven settings. Long-awaited changes will be revealed by the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, on Thursday, and are expected to include efforts to stop visa overstays and limit lengthy appeals processes for applicants. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s Politics, really newsletter here Continue reading...

Premier Ben Carroll adopts Coalition’s stance on Jack’s Law, which gives police and PSOs power to randomly search people for knives with metal detectors Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast The Victorian premier has made another policy backflip, announcing a re-elected Labor government would give police and protective services officers the power to stop and search people for knives using handheld metal detectors – despite experts warning of a lack of evidence that the measure reduces violent crime. Ben Carroll on Wednesday announced he would match a commitment made by the Coalition opposition last year to introduce Queensland’s Jack’s Law , named after 17-year-old Jack Beasley, who was fatally stabbed in Surfers Paradise in 2019. Continue reading...

Omar Yassine was arrested and charged with stalking and intimidation after allegedly hurling insults at year 8 student wearing a hijab Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast A middle-aged man accused of a “disgusting” Islamophobic attack on a 13-year-old girl has berated a judge after he was denied bail Omar Yassine made an eventful court appearance on Wednesday after being held by police overnight for allegedly verbally abusing the Muslim schoolgirl on a Sydney bus. Continue reading...

Premier describes deal as ‘major win’ that will deliver more jobs for the state and put more energy into its grid Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Anthropic, the AI company behind the large language model Claude , has done a deal to lease the site of its first Australian datacentre in western Queensland. The $31.9bn datacentre will be the largest of its kind in Australia, according to planning documents. Continue reading...

Supporters from around Australia back the Black Wreath, a volunteer-run centre far off the beaten touring track Alice Springs has a population of 34,000 and exactly one dedicated live music space: a heavy metal venue called the Black Wreath. It has hosted hundreds of bands from around the country over the past decade – despite being 1,500km from the nearest city. For musicians in central Australia, the Black Wreath is a one-of-a-kind resource. So when its operators were informed last year of the owners’ plans to sell, they negotiated a stay of execution and began devising a fundraiser that could save the desert venue. A month-long crowdfunding campaign, which called for donations that would let the team behind the Black Wreath buy the venue and place it in a trust, hit its $1m target on Friday. Continue reading...

Police say personal items thought to belong to Whear recovered from waterlogged vehicle Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast A car belonging to missing woman Yvonne Whear has been found in northern New South Wales, about seven months since the 73-year-old was last seen. Police divers found the car in the Rous River in Dulguigan on Saturday 12 September – a short distance from Whear’s home. Continue reading...

As minister says process needs to be ‘streamlined’, Greens and Lock the Gate say the legislation is ‘corrupt’ and tears up environmental protections Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Queenslanders’ right to object to mining projects – including coal – would be “gutted” by new legislation that would ban opponents from being heard in court without the minister’s approval and then only if they owned a property within a 125km radius of the project. The Greens have called the move “corrupt” and community action group Lock the Gate Alliance said the state’s LNP government was “tearing up democratic and environmental protections just to make life easier for mining companies”. Continue reading...

Compromise revealed as senior personnel from OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, meets Albanese ministers Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our new political email , free app or daily news podcast The Albanese government is considering giving AI companies access to Australian creatives’ works by default as it pursues a compromise with US tech giants. The proposals were revealed as senior personnel from OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, met with Labor ministers and warned that Australia’s copyright laws were preventing the company from training models locally. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s Politics, really newsletter here Continue reading...

Vibrant fields light up the landscape as an ideal growing season means crops are flowering earlier than usual in the south-west slopes and Riverina regions of New South Wales Blankets of colour: Western Australia’s wildflower season bursts into life – in pictures Continue reading...

Exclusive: Lee Hanson also appears to be regularly campaigning for party during work hours, social media shows Listen to Guardian Australia’s podcast The Populist here Get our new political email , free app or daily news podcast Pauline Hanson’s daughter, Lee Hanson, has been working in Tasmania as a senior adviser to a New South Wales One Nation senator without the required ministerial approval, Guardian Australia can reveal. Under work base arrangements that apply to the staff of all MPs, a personal adviser such as Hanson can only be allowed to work in a location other than Canberra or the parliamentarian’s home base with approval from the special minister of state. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Correspondence requests state MP Melissa Horne to lobby on NextDC’s behalf – but contains alleged AI-created errors Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast The Victorian jobs minister has accused one of Australia’s largest datacentre companies of using artificial intelligence while requesting she lobby her colleague to approve a massive expansion of its “hyperscale AI factory”. Correspondence between Victorian cabinet minister Melissa Horne and the chief executive of ASX-listed company NextDC, Craig Scroggie, reveals increasing sensitivity to community concerns about datacentres before the state election. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Screening if used alone risks leading people to believe they are inevitably going to develop dementia Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Researchers have warned that social media may be misleading healthy people into taking Alzheimer’s blood tests, causing severe anxiety over biological markers that may never actually cause dementia. Blood-based biomarker tests, including p-tau217 and p-tau181, detect biological signs of changes in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease, which is a progressive brain disorder and the leading cause of dementia. Continue reading...

Councillors say locals have been raising concerns about people secretly filming in change rooms, swimming pools and around schools Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast One of Sydney’s largest councils has joined the City of Brisbane and the City of Yarra to issue a ban on AI smart glasses at public pools as concerns mount over the potential for predators to exploit the new technology. On Tuesday evening, Canterbury-Bankstown voted overwhelmingly in favour of banning the tech at its pools, with its mayor, Bilal El-Hayek, describing them as “pervert glasses” . Continue reading...

Study finds earlier numbers were underestimated, suggesting impact of diseases and massacres were much greater than previously thought Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia before colonisation was dramatically underestimated, according to new research that suggests many more of them were killed. Modelling by a national research group puts the population levels before the 1788 first fleet arrived at 2.2 million, compared with early estimates of 250,000 people. Continue reading...

Today’s blog is closed Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast The South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas , says there is optimism that steel making will continue in his state, after the closure of a major blast furnace at Whyalla was announced yesterday. Speaking to ABC News Breakfast from Whyalla and donned in some hi-vis, Malinauskas says there was disappointment, heartbreak, but also a sense of inevitability when the announcement was made. [Whyalla] has the capacity to be a viable operation but it hasn’t been recapitalised. The blast furnace is over 60 years old. It was first built in 1965 and blast furnaces of this age not to be realigned on a frequent basis. This hasn’t been done in 20 years. The fact it’s still going is a miracle. We need to have the plant recapitalised and that’s exactly the plan we have in conjunction with the federal government … if we lose this capacity behind me, this country doesn’t have structural steel-making capacity and we can’t afford that. If Pauline Hanson wants to take us down the road of Americanising our politics, so people in a family who disagree on political issues can’t speak to each other any longer, this is the pathway to do it … We’ve got lots of challenges facing Australia, but we’re not going to solve them by punching down on things that are brilliant about our country. So I think it’s rotten. I think it’s awful. I think it’s ugly. I just don’t agree with those comments. But I actually do agree with Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price when she says that there are serious issues that do need to be discussed. And these comments shouldn’t be a distraction from them. I mean, why aren’t we closing the gap? Continue reading...

Nassif declares ‘I’m not corrupt’, threatens to pull out of evidence and waves handwritten notes at counsel assisting Peggy Dwyer Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Fugitive property developer Jean Nassif has declared he is “not corrupt”, claimed his daughter was forced to plead guilty to fraud and threatened to take the New South Wales government to The Hague in an explosive appearance at the state’s corruption watchdog. Dialling into the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry from his Beirut bedroom, Nassif, 58, said he would return to Australia when he clears his name. Continue reading...

Witness tells court he sent Jones friendly messages after two alleged assaults because he had been generous to him Listen to the podcast Alan Jones on Trial Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast A prominent athlete who has accused Alan Jones of twice kissing him without consent has told a Sydney court he continued to text the broadcaster after the alleged assaults because Jones was powerful and had been generous to him. The witness, who is appearing for a second day in the seventh week of a lengthy trial, agreed he had sent Jones friendly messages after the two alleged assaults. Continue reading...

NT police say person ‘unlawfully gained access’ to the base in the suburb of Winnellie and is still on the run Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast An intruder remains on the run after allegedly forcing their way on to a Royal Australian Air Force base in Darwin, assaulting a member of the defence forces and fleeing in a stolen car. Defence confirmed in a statement that on Monday afternoon a person “unlawfully gained access” to the base in the suburb of Winnellie. Continue reading...