A male swimmer in his sixties died when he was mauled and repeatedly dragged beneath the water by a shark metres from a popular beach in Perth. Police used boats and helicopters to search the ocean off Sorrento Beach, in the city’s northern suburbs, but did not confirm whether the body had been found. Aerial […]

Olympic rowers will compete in a river inhabited by hundreds of saltwater crocodiles after the International Olympic Committee approved it as a venue for the 2032 Brisbane Games. David Crisafulli, the premier of Queensland, told the state’s parliament: “The Fitzroy River has passed with flying colours. It’s official, signed, sealed and delivered.” British, New Zealand […]

British backpackers will escape the worst of a sweeping Australian immigration crackdown that will make it easier to expel foreign offenders and extremists and detain people who overstay their visas. Under reforms announced by the Australian government, the number of working holidaymakers allowed to remain for a second or third year will be slashed and […]

Ashort war has devastated the northern hemisphere, poisoned the atmosphere and killed billions. Australians are among the last people alive as a radioactive cloud drifts closer. This is the premise of Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel On the Beach, but almost 70 years later, renewed fear of Armageddon has prompted the super-rich and the anxious to […]

When Australia’s prime minister walked into a Brisbane hotel lobby last year for a press conference, a far-right influencer was already lying in wait. Anthony Albanese would later recall how Laurence McIntyre, who has been linked to known neo-Nazis, pushed past the assembled journalists, “yelling out all sorts of aggressive” statements about immigration. At first it appeared […]

It is many home workers’ dream: replace yourself with an artificial intelligence avatar on calls and take the rest of the day off. However, when one Australian university lecturer tried this he was surprised to find that many of his students not only failed to notice the swap but, when it was revealed, preferred the […]

Australia’s most incendiary right-wing politician has once again been accused of racism after describing Indigenous people as the “most primitive race on Earth”. In a podcast recorded last year that resurfaced on Monday, Pauline Hanson, senator for the state of Queensland, was asked about the teaching of Indigenous Australian history in schools. She said: “What […]

As many as eight in ten Australians under the age of 16 are still using social media, according to a government-commissioned report. The proportion of children aged 10 to 15 holding a social media account fell from 52 per cent to 42 per cent in the first three months after the ban took effect, according to […]

There was a time when ministers spent most of their days telling rock stars to clean up their act. The bands railed against squares and the squares railed against the moral corruption of the bands. And, for a while, that was that. These days, however, the dividing lines between pop and politics are less well […]