Australia

Thursday dawned bright and warm over the beaches of northern New South Wales. It was a perfect morning to enjoy sun, surf and sand. One young couple, tourists escaping the Swiss alpine autumn, couldn’t resist the temptation of a 6 a.m. swim at the remote Kylies Beach in Crowdy Bay National Park, a beautiful and rugged natural coastal haven, accessible only by dirt track. The holidaymakers expected a refreshing dip in sun-dappled waves, and it now appears they took to the water to film dolphins with their underwater camera. Instead, death and tragedy found them. Without warning, the pair were attacked by a three-metre bull shark and savaged brutally before

When it comes to major decisions certain to anger Donald Trump and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, seeking safety in numbers is a wise idea. For that’s what the joint decision by Britain, Australia and Canada to recognise a state of Palestine actually is. It isn’t a bloc of Anglosphere nations showing a united front to Trump and Netanyahu; rather, it is their huddling together in an attempt to deflect the wrath of the Israelis and Americans. Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese foreshadowed the possibility of Palestinian recognition several weeks ago, giving him something to announce today in New York as the UN General Assembly yet again deliberates on the

Australia and Israel are – were – traditional allies. A former leader of Australia’s Labor party and then president of the United Nations General Assembly, Herbert Evatt, played a significant role in the establishment of Israel in 1948. In recent decades, Labor prime minister Bob Hawke was one of Israel’s staunchest international supporters, once observing ‘if the bell tolls for Israel, it tolls for all of us’. That was then. Now, Australia’s Labor government, headed by left-wing prime minister Anthony Albanese, and his factional ally, foreign minister Penny Wong, are clear that their sympathies are no longer with Israel almost two years after the 7 October atrocities. Last week’s decision

Notoriously, the Australian state of New South Wales was founded as a penal colony. Since it was granted responsible government by Britain nearly 200 years ago, more than a few of the state’s MPs have gone from parliament to prison. Not all that long ago, the New South Wales corrective services minister was convicted of taking bribes to grant certain prisoners early release, and saw the inside of prisons he once administered. An honourable person would have taken the hint and resigned, but Ward was not honourable and refused to quit But that former minister’s disgrace is almost nothing compared to the case of the former minister and serving MP

After an eight-week trial followed avidly around Australia and the world, and a week’s jury deliberation, Australia’s answer to Lucrezia Borgia today has been found guilty of murdering three of her dinner party guests and attempting to murder the fourth. The jury of five women and seven men decided, beyond reasonable doubt, that the presence of fatal death cap mushrooms in the beef wellington that Erin Patterson, 56, cooked for her parents-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, her sister-in-law Heather Wilkinson, and Heather’s husband Ian, was no tragic accident. The jury was satisfied that, coolly and deliberately, Patterson’s toxic beef wellington killed three of them and almost killed Ian Wilkinson too.

America’s policy undersecretary of defence, Elbridge Colby, is one of the brightest brains in Donald Trump’s administration. Having served in the first Trump presidency, Colby has an outstanding reputation as a defence and strategic thinker. He is also, however, very much aligned with Trump’s America First thinking in respect of foreign policy, and the United States’ relationship with her allies. That would be a strategic disaster for Australia and Britain In tasking Colby on Wednesday with reviewing the Aukus nuclear submarine-centred strategic partnership between the US, the UK and Australia, the president sends a clear message to Britain and Australia: Aukus is part of his inheritance from Joe Biden, and its

Since its general election a month ago, Australia’s politics have endured their biggest upheaval in fifty years. Its Labor government was re-elected by a massive majority, when just months ago it was in danger of being tossed out, and the conservative opposition parties are in existential turmoil and even briefly severed their coalition. Erin Patterson is a a frumpy, middle-aged woman, with a mien unfortunately drawn by nature as a mask of permanent misery Yet Australia’s epicentre of interest this past month hasn’t been the nation’s capital, Canberra. Instead, it’s been Morwell, a dying industrial town in the Gippsland region of the state of Victoria. There, Australia’s Trial of the

Tonight, Australia voted decisively for continuity. The Labor government of prime minister Anthony Albanese has not merely been re-elected. It has absolutely thumped the conservative Liberal-National party coalition, headed by Liberal leader Peter Dutton. At the close of counting tonight, Labor achieved a majority in the 150-seat parliament, winning 77 seats and leading in another five. The coalition has been decimated, reduced from an already-low 55 seats to winning just 29 and leading in another eight. Frontbenchers and talented up-and-comers around the country have been swept away in seats deemed safe. Worse for the conservatives, Dutton himself has had the ultimate Portillo moment, losing his own constituency having held it

Today is Anzac Day, arguably the most solemnly sacred day in the Australian calendar. At dawn on this day in 1915, as part of an Anglo-French operation, men of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed on a rocky beach on Turkey’s Gallipoli peninsula in the face of murderous fire from Turkish defenders. Many died then and there. Many more were doomed to fight, suffer and die in a losing campaign, pitted against an enemy they scarcely knew, in a European war that could have, should have, been averted in July 1914. The greatest Anzac military achievement of the Gallipoli campaign was a masterly overnight withdrawal, without a single

Since Australia’s general election was called by Labor prime minister Anthony Albanese at the end of March, the contest for the 3 May poll has been an uninspiring one. Voters must choose between a mediocre Labor government that overpromised and woefully underdelivered since coming to office in 2022, and an underprepared and underpowered conservative opposition. Just two months ago, it seemed the electorate’s anger with Labor was going to do what has not happened in Australia since the height of the Great Depression: turf out a first-term federal government. Liberal opposition leader, Peter Dutton, effectively had set the national agenda since Dutton opposed Albanese’s 2023 divisive referendum to give Aboriginal

Early this morning, even before dawn broke, Australia’s Labor party prime minister, Anthony Albanese, asked the country’s governor-general to call a general election for Saturday 3 May. Albanese’s short drive to Government House in Canberra capped a week when his government brought down a budget, in response to which Liberal opposition leader Peter Dutton set out his stall as prime minister in waiting. Effectively, both leaders gave their critiques of each other, and outlined their policy manifestos. It’s only day one, but the signs so far are it will be a bare-knuckle, five-week election campaign This will be one of the closest and most unpredictable elections for years. All indications

James Harrison, who died in his sleep at a care home in Australia last month at the age of 88, possibly did more good and saved more lives, pound for pound, than almost anyone else born in the last century. His blood plasma contained a rare antibody, Rho(D) immune globulin (called Anti-D), which can be used to prevent the blood of some pregnant women from doing damage to their unborn babies. But that is under-selling it. Anti-D is extremely rare (fewer than 200 people produce enough of it to donate their plasma in Australia) and the conditions which it helps with are common. Anti-D injections protect unborn babies from Rh

Just when it seemed Australia’s anti-Semitism crisis couldn’t worsen, it has. This week, it was disclosed that a caravan loaded with plastic explosive was found in Sydney’s rural fringe. The explosives are of a type commonly used in mining operations and, along with the explosives, papers were discovered that named a Sydney synagogue – reportedly the Great Synagogue in central Sydney – presumably as an identified target. Police estimated that, if detonated, the caravan’s deadly cargo would have created a 40-metre blast wave: if parked outside the synagogue, the explosion would have destroyed it and surrounding buildings, likely with very heavy human casualties and loss of life. The owners of

As the hot Australia summer rolls on, so too do the summer silly season stories. The latest is a Sydney council imposing bans on G-string bathing costumes at its public swimming pools.  When it comes to swimwear, Australia has had a long tradition of community standards conflicting with personal freedom. In the early years of the 20th century, anything not neck-to-knee got you ejected from Sydney beaches. In the fifties, as bikinis became popular, patrolling beach inspectors actually measured women’s bikini tops and bottoms to ensure they retained the requisite degree of modesty. Whatever happened to good taste and decorum? This summer, Blue Mountains City Council, in the eponymous hills

Another Australian Open tennis tournament, another Novak Djokovic media sensation. As play gets under way at Melbourne Park, Djokovic the showman has been working the Australian media, as well as doing a glossy spread for the upmarket US magazine, GQ. The common thread of his media commentary is his experience coming to the 2022 Australian Open when, as the Covid-19 pandemic still raged, the unvaccinated Djokovic was detained and deported after seeking to enter Melbourne, the city oppressed by arguably the most draconian lockdown and vaccination mandates in the world, let alone Australia. The Serbian star’s 2022 experience clearly gnaws at him Having initially been given an exemption to enter

At a time when Donald Trump threatens to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal, China is flexing its military and economic muscles, Britain is in a state of seemingly permanent political crisis, Los Angeles tragically burns, and murderous conflicts still ravage Ukraine and the Middle East, here in Australia just one issue dominates public debate this week: whether a true Australian has the right to reserve beach space by setting up an American-style beach shelter – a cabana – to stake a claim, whether or not it’s occupied. Even the country’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has waded in on the subject – and finally found popularity by condemning the canvas

As Christmas comes around again, we will discover that Australia is no longer a Christian country. According to the most recent census in 2021, Christianity is not a majority faith here and, of its denominations, none has declined more rapidly than Anglicanism – which has lost more than a third of its declared adherents since the turn of this century. Meanwhile, steadily growing non-Christian faiths are headed by Islam, which claimed over 3 per cent of Australians in 2021. Muslims in Australia now outnumber Jews by more than eight to one. Furthermore, the main Anglican and Catholic denominations are more C and E – Christmas and Easter – than C

It’s hard to make head or tail of where Australia stands on the gender debate that has divided the West. The issue boils down to a simple question: should men be allowed in women’s spaces? But the answer is far from simple. And a court ruling by a Tasmanian court ruling may have just added to the confusion. Tasmania’s avant garde Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) is not everyone’s cup of artistic tea. Its curator, American-born artist and wife of Mona’s very wealthy founder, David Walsh, Kirsha Kaechele, is certainly no stranger to controversy. ‘The men are a little hysterical, I’m a bit concerned’, Kaechele said In July,