Breaking news, politics, business, economy, and current events from Australia.
Top NRL referee Ashley Klein has confirmed he battled through a gambling addiction after a report suggested he had lost up to $400,000. Klein, who was responding to a report in the SMH, said his gambling was only on horses and greyhounds and that he had never gambled on rugby league. “Many years ago I…
An 11th-hour intervention from US President Donald Trump stopped a planned Israeli assault on Beirut in its tracks — but only for about a week. Despite the US brokering a renewed ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon, without Hezbollah at the table, fighting between the militant group and the Israel Defense Forces continued. It prompted…
The professional and personal lives of Sydney’s self-described Pink Ladies have been examined in forensic detail for all to see. Over the past five weeks, the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has held a public inquiry into misconduct allegations against City of Parramatta former CEO Gail Connolly and other staff. Her friends and senior…
WARNING: This story contains references to suicide and addiction. There was no knock at the door. No uniformed officer. No carefully crafted words of condolence. Instead, the news of Neil Tracey’s death arrived on a scrap of paper. On the morning of May 9, 1989, a man walked into a butcher shop in Lyneham in…
Even six years out from the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, there is a sense of anticipation in the air. Opportunities for places like Brisbane to prove they are “world cities” do not come around every day, and when they do, it is essential to seize the moment. But it’s not the first time…
Archaeologist Adam Brumm usually deals with ancient artefacts — think million-year-old stone tools carefully chipped into shape by a human ancestor, or faded ochre paintings daubed on walls deep inside labyrinthine limestone caves. But his current obsession is a relic forged just a few hundred years ago. It’s a sword about as long as his…
In a theatre dressing room, Reuben Kaye is fumbling with his phone, trying to prop it up against something so we can talk face-to-face, his image shifting rapidly between vertical and horizontal. At one point, he disappears entirely — his phone died — only to re-emerge and begin the process again. This Kaye, the new…
There is a highly secretive and unusual court case playing out behind closed doors in Far North Queensland involving a prominent married man and his alleged affair, a non-publication order we are not allowed to see and an allegation of extortion we cannot tell you much about. The case is the talk of legal, political,…
Warning: This story contains graphic photos of dead sheep. Farmers in Victoria’s north-west say a new dingo exclusion fence will only push the problem of livestock predation onto their neighbours. Two years after banning lethal control of dingoes in the region, the Victorian government is subsidising 70 kilometres of exclusion fencing bordering Big Desert Wilderness…
Australia’s new ambassador in Washington says he will “robustly” push back on the Trump administration’s “extremely disappointing” new tariff proposal and may recruit Australian businesses to help take up the fight. Greg Moriarty also conceded the US’s military shipbuilding program was “not where they want it to be”, but he had been reassured by strong…