Australian politics

The Australian Capital Territory will continue to push for pill-testing nationally after an independent review confirmed a trial in Canberra encouraged buyers of a synthetic ecstasy substitute to ditch unsafe drugs. The Australian…

Malcolm Turnbull has called on Scott Morrison to step up his response to catastrophic bushfires fuelled by climate change, declaring that emergency management in Australia needs to be restructured because the threat is now a “national…

Labor is doubling down on its efforts to woo back the coal communities it lost at the last election, with Anthony Albanese aiming to meet mineworkers as part of his first official tour of Queensland since becoming leader. Albanese is…

I grew up in Sydney but when my plane landed there on Friday I did not recognise it.Unprecedented, out-of-season bushfires have ravaged my home state of New South Wales over the past month. Reports say 20% of bushland has burned.…

The federal government will enshrine religious institutions’ ability to discriminate against staff on the basis of religion but has narrowed a controversial proposal to allow medical practitioners to object to treating patients. On…

Scott Morrison’s spiritual mentor, the Hillsong founder Brian Houston, has “prayed for president Trump” while on an official visit to the White House for a faith briefing with other religious leaders. In a video recorded at the White…

The prime minister has rejected calls for more help for firefighters as the New South Wales bushfire crisis is expected to worsen. There were 85 fires burning across NSW on Tuesday, and 42 were uncontrolled. With predictions of…

As we draw the line under 2019, fires burn out of control along the east coast of Australia fuelling an end-of-days haze that our leaders choose to shrug off. The smoke that obliterates the harbour city’s beauty and stings the back of…

Agriculture ministers have agreed to establish a new drought working group to better coordinate the country’s assistance to farmers, amid criticism that the current system is too confusing. Following a meeting of state and territory…

The Australian Electoral Commission rejected a complaint about fake how-to-vote cards for independent and minor parties that directed preferences to Peter Dutton because they informed voters how to cast their first preference vote…

The Australian Labor party’s national president, Wayne Swan, will issue a call to arms for progressive parties to fight back against misinformation proliferating on digital platforms, declaring nothing can be off the table “including…

A leading Uighur activist, Rushan Abbas, has urged Australian MPs to take a stronger stance against the Chinese regime, while backing controversial comparisons between the state’s authoritarianism and Nazi Germany. Abbas, who met with…

Sometimes, the medical profession and governments are on the same page. Examples are public health initiatives like immunisation programs or bowel cancer and cervical screening programs, when medical expertise informs policy. This week…

Australia’s electoral authorities lack the resources and powers to investigate the opaque funding used to spread political ads on Facebook, an inquiry has heard. The use of paid political advertising on the social network has posed…

It’s in the very nature of the visual arts that they are visible. Visible works. Visible artists. Visible arts workers. Visible galleries. Visible ecologies. Visible not merely as something that sighted people can perceive, but visible…

The New South Wales Labor party will create new powers to sack its general secretary and set up an internal audit and risk committee able to blow the whistle on breaches to external regulators. The federal leader, Anthony Albanese, and…

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority has warned of more mass fish deaths and blue-green algae events throughout the Murray-Darling River system as the peak group representing First Nations issued a plea for the states to stick with the…

Groups representing business, unions, farmers, investors, the environment and social policy advocates say Australia should adopt climate change policies that can put it on a stable path to net zero national greenhouse gas emissions if…

The prime minister Scott Morrison has announced a major shake-up of the public service that will see four departments abolished, five secretaries sacked and responsibility for emissions reductions removed from the department of…

Hi Helen, so what’s all this I hear about Naomi Wolf, an Australian government minister and the War on Christmas?Let’s go back to 1991: Angus Taylor, who is now Australia’s somewhat embattled energy minister, was a Rhodes scholar at…