Queensland government says it has already killed six of the 10 dingoes seen near the body of 19-year-old Piper James * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Dingo experts have said a decision to kill a 10-strong pack of the animals linked with the death of Canadian tourist Piper James on K’gari could push the island’s population towards extinction while doing little to protect humans. The Queensland government revealed on Sunday it had already killed six of the pack seen around the body of the 19-year-old in a move that has angered the island’s traditional owners who have said they were not consulted. Continue reading...

Ombudsman says agency knew for years that part of its child support processing not in line with law * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Services Australia knew its internal practices relating to child support payments conflict with the law but did nothing about it for six years, a report from the commonwealth ombudsman has found. In 2019, the agency identified that its child support practice that stipulated that parents with less than 35% care of a child do not receive financial support was not aligned with the law. Continue reading...

The Wilderness Society lodges complaint with consumer watchdog over hardware and garden chain’s sale of timber sourced from NSW Forestry Corporation * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast One of Australia’s biggest environment groups has accused Bunnings of “greenwashing” its timber, claiming it may have sold products illegally logged by the New South Wales forestry agency. The Wilderness Society (TWS) has asked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to investigate the hardware and garden chain because it could be selling unlawfully logged timber, despite Bunnings’ policies and websites promoting responsible sourcing. Continue reading...

Advocates say many renters live in ‘glorified tents’ that are too hot in summer and too cold in winter, forcing them to spend more on energy * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast When temperatures are this extreme, Melissa Fisher is trapped in her bedroom – the only bearable spot in her home in the Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth Vale. Fisher sweltered through South Australia’s hottest 26 January on record, with an overnight minimum of 31C. Now she faces a top of 43C on Tuesday as severe heatwaves continue across the nation. Continue reading...

It’s time to get voting for your favourite Australian picture book. Here’s how the Guardian’s poll works * Vote for the best Australian children’s picture book Move over bird of the year: voting is now open in the Guardian’s poll to find Australia’s best children’s picture book of all time. In December, more than 3,000 Guardian readers shared their favourite Australian picture books, which shaped the top 50 shortlist. Continue reading...

Picture books help children to develop their imaginations, find empathy for others and take pride in what makes them unique – all of which make for good adults * Vote now for the best Australian children’s picture book Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” – Emilie Buchwald I can’t think of a better way to start the year than having one of my books chosen in the Guardian’s readers’ poll for the best Australian picture books of all time. Come Over to My House, co-written with musician Eliza Hull and illustrated by Daniel Gray-Barnett, is a rhyming picture book that explores the home lives of children and parents who are d/Deaf or disabled. I am so proud to have been a part of creating this book, and so thrilled to see it on this list among so many extraordinary titles. Sally Rippin is an award-winning children’s author and the outgoing Australian children’s laureate for 2024-25. The next laureate will be announced on 10 February Continue reading...

Cast your vote for the best Australian children’s picture book in our poll from 27 January to 5 February. The five books with the least votes will be eliminated each morning from 28 January, with tallies starting afresh at 9.30am. You can vote every day. Continue reading...

Unlike journalling, sticking glossy pictures and ribbon scraps helps me explore how I’m feeling in in a language only I can decipher * Read more summer essentials I had always associated scrapbooking with grandmas and bored children, so, imagine my surprise when – as a twentysomething with a Big Girl Job – I found myself enamoured of printing, cutting, and sticking random bits and bobs into a book. If, like me, you’ve racked up a disconcerting amount of screen time, you may have stumbled across a multitude of craft-inspired social media posts made primarily by young women. Described as “junk journalling”, the hobby is distinguishable by an affinity with collecting and storing physical mementoes, such as tickets, receipts, packaging and Polaroids. Continue reading...

If the races is a nightclub, the tennis is a long lunch with spectators in silk dresses, sneakers and tailored shorts Something is happening sartorially at the Australian Open. In addition to the on-and-off-court partnerships with some of the world’s most recognisable fashion brands – Rolex, Louis Vuitton and Polo Ralph Lauren – Melbourne Park visitors are dressing up. The men are in tailored knee length shorts, leather loafers and softly textured button-downs. The women are in pretty mid-to-ankle length dresses and sneakers or flat sandals. While the crowd’s look at the country’s biggest sporting event (the organisers expect it to inject more than $600m into the economy) is undeniably preppy – plenty of jumpers are tied around shoulders and T-shirts are tucked into high waisted trousers – the energy is decidedly more inclusive than a cordoned off country-club. Even though almost everyone looks like if you threw them a racket they’d happily take to court. Continue reading...

I wasn’t able to reach the exact future I had dreamed of as a child, but I know now that the hardships and failures on the way all counted My first year out of school was not the easiest. I was lost, full of yearning and big dreams. I didn’t realise the ways in which my time at school had been containing my anxiety. I was too busy, along with all the other girls, being excited about the future. School and its expectations were there to be railed against, and teachers and rules are to be left far behind. Bring on the future! I would leave home and move to the city to study! I would perform in plays! How thrilling! And wonderful! Continue reading...

The home favourite has taken his speed and returns to new levels in Melbourne, but it’s his serve that will be key against world No 1 Alex de Minaur went into his quarter-final with Jannik Sinner at the 2025 Australian Open hopeful that he could make life difficult for the defending champion. Not only did that not happen, but the manner of his one-sided defeat left him wondering if he really had the game to trouble the top players. Fast forward a year and the Australian again finds himself in the last eight, again facing one of the sport’s superstars, this time Carlos Alcaraz. As with Sinner, the head to head doesn’t make pretty reading for De Minaur, with Alcaraz leading 5-0. This, though, is their first grand slam meeting and there is a growing feeling that things can be different. Continue reading...

* Qualifier leaves with $480k after 0-6, 3-6 defeat * Inglis exit ends Australian interest in women’s singles Maddison Inglis leaves Melbourne Park with a lot, including the high-end toaster she’s always wanted. There is pride, having reached the round of 16 at the Australian Open, but also disappointment. In the biggest match of the local qualifier’s career, the world No 2 Iga Swiatek proved too polished, securing a 6-0, 6-3 victory on Monday night. The result leaves no more local players in the women’s singles draw. In the men’s singles, there is only Alex de Minaur, who plays top seed Carlos Alcaraz on Tuesday evening. Continue reading...

Fire in Otways has burned about 9,400 hectares and could spread as far as Lorne amid onset of heatwave in Victoria * Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Residents of more than 1,000 homes in Victoria have been urged to leave before sunset in anticipation of a massive fire spreading and the onset of a severe heatwave. Six fires were burning across the state on Monday afternoon, and authorities were concerned that Tuesday’s heatwave conditions and forecast northerly winds could cause the fire in the Otways to spread as far as Lorne. Continue reading...

The cap, which Bradman wore in his final home Test series, had been ‘hidden for 75 years’ A baggy green cap worn by the Australian cricket great Sir Donald Bradman has sold for $460,000 to an anonymous buyer at a Gold Coast auction. Bradman wore the cap during the 1947-48 series against India – his final home Test series before retiring in 1948 with a career batting average of 99.94, earning him the reputation as cricket’s greatest batter. Continue reading...

But this is not a day for celebration * Sign up here to get an email whenever First Dog cartoons are published * Get all your needs met at the First Dog shop if what you need is First Dog merchandise and prints Continue reading...

What began as a hole-in-the-wall falafel shop in 1968 became a Sydney landmark. What does Abdul’s closure tell us about the area’s past and future? * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast When Abdul’s Lebanese Restaurant closed earlier this month, it was a shock. A beloved fixture of inner Sydney’s landscape since 1968, the restaurant fed celebrities, broke students and anyone in need of a hearty kebab at the end of a night out. For Hiba Damaa, whose parents Dib and Nizam Ghazal opened the restaurant and named it after her eldest brother Abdul – who eventually ran it with his two brothers – it represented the pioneering spirit of early Lebanese migration. Continue reading...

Temperatures in Ouyen and Mildura in northwest Victoria forecast to reach 49C on Tuesday * Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast South Australia faced another day of searing heat on Monday, as Victorians prepared for conditions forecast to be the hottest in history. Tuesday could see heat records broken throughout eastern South Australia and Victoria, with maximums expected to be near 50C across inland areas, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Continue reading...

Updates from the women’s singles on Rod Laver Arena Americans meet in battle of the podcast co-hosts Any thoughts? Get in touch with an email Hello everybody and welcome to live coverage of day nine of the Australian Open and the conclusion of the fourth round of the men’s and women’s singles. The most intriguing match of the day is up first on Rod Laver Arena, featuring close friends Jessica Pegula (6) and Madison Keys (9). That all-USA affair kicks us off around 11:30am local time. Continue reading...

Taika Waititi, Yael Stone and Ian Thorpe are among the big names lending voices to this ‘chaotically strange’ animation drawing on Indigenous perspectives * Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email I’ve never seen a film quite like this chaotically strange animation from writer-directors Tyson Yunkaporta and Jack Manning Bancroft, who fill it with slap-happy pleasures and plotlines that bounce around like pinballs. Attempting to explain the narrative is a fool’s errand, like trying to tickle yourself. I can say with confidence – assuming I didn’t unknowingly consume magic mushrooms beforehand and hallucinate the entire thing – that the story follows a teenager, Kim (voice of Yolande Brown), who gets pulled into a surreal alternate universe that they explore with their new pal Jeff (Yunkaporta), a bright-green alien dog. Continue reading...

Corowa mayor Cheryl Cook says the proposal is intended to unite the town as a ‘single, cohesive community under one sovereign emblem’, but traditional owners say it erases their past * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Kevin Atkinson knows his history, which is rooted deep in the red gums that line the Murray River. But he says a recent decision by a local council against flying the Aboriginal flag is removing that history from view. “If they want (Aboriginal) people to respect them and their history, they gotta do the same to us,” the Bangerang elder says. “That’s the way that you move forward together, instead of two different groups going in two different directions.” Continue reading...

Serco employees also say they are given email addresses identical to public servants, making them indistinguishable * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Outsourced call centre staff on the national disability insurance scheme (NDIS) phone lines must pretend to be public servants, according to workers, and are responsible for deciding which funding requests are prioritised despite having no specialised welfare training. Workers at Serco, a major outsource provider, have also been issued government agency email addresses, making it impossible for the public to tell them apart from direct employees despite vast differences in their pay, conditions, training and support. Continue reading...

Is prayer not that which unites different faith traditions and stretches across the vast expanse of history? * Making sense of it is a column about spirituality and how it can be used to navigate everyday life On my birthday last year, I found myself in Westminster Abbey. I had missed the time slot for tourist visits and could only enter for the Evensong program. Being a practising Muslim, I was not familiar with Anglican liturgical rites, but curiosity prevailed and so I entered. As I walked in, my gaze was seized by the sacred art, the high vaulted ceilings, the looming majesty of a place that, over the past nine centuries, has witnessed the coronation of every English king. “Don’t bother about the idea that God ‘has known for millions of years exactly what you are about to pray’. That isn’t what it’s like. God is hearing you now, just as simply as a mother hears a child. The difference His timelessness makes is that this now (which slips away from you even as you say the word now) is for Him infinite. If you must think of His timelessness at all, don’t think of Him having looked forward to this moment for millions of years: think that to Him you are always praying this prayer.” Ali Hammoud is a PhD candidate at Western Sydney University. He is broadly interested in Shia Islam and Islamicate intellectual history. More of his writings can be found on his Substack page Continue reading...

What would it actually take for Australia to ditch Aukus, dispense with the little America cloak and rethink the alliance? * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Once again on this divisive day of national celebration, Australia’s leaders can be expected to indulge in official monologues of self-congratulation based on assertions of who we supposedly are as a country and a people. Notwithstanding the perennial affront to many First Nations people’s sensibilities each 26 January, Australia will officially talk over the protests to cast itself as a tolerant, inclusive, egalitarian, self-sufficient, ruggedly individual nation of mates – always underpinned by a reverence for democracy and a hardy streak of anti-authoritarianism. Continue reading...

The most popular posts on r/animalid are exotic lizards and rare birds – but it’s the haziest trail cam screenshots that feel the most dangerous, the most spectacular * Read more in the Internet wormhole series I spent the first decade of my life in Vancouver Island, Canada, in an area rich with parks, lakes and forests. Deer would occasionally wander into our neighbourhood and nibble on the blossoms in our front yard. In that neck of the (literal) woods, mountains and deer also mean cougars. My sister and I would play at a local park, then walk home along a track parallel to a dense forest. My older sister, being three and a half years ahead of me in life and therefore lightyears ahead of me in wisdom, would helpfully declare that if we encountered a cougar it would attack me, not her, as I’m the smaller prey. Continue reading...

It was pouring and traffic was drying up. Then a car came along and the driver asked where I was staying the night * Read more in the kindness of strangers series It was 1970 and I was 17 years old. I had decided to “go west” and seek adventure and fortune in Western Australia’s mineral boom, so I set out hitchhiking from Melbourne to Kalgoorlie, where a lot of mining companies had their offices. I’d heard labour was in short supply and was assured if I knocked on a few doors I’d get a job. I just had to travel almost 3,000km to get there first. With nothing but the $10 I’d borrowed from my brother in my pocket, I was picked up by a truck driver delivering potatoes to every pub along the way to Bendigo, then a priest with his collar on. The priest dropped me off at a big intersection in Adelaide, which he said was a good spot to get a ride. But not long after he left me it started to pour with rain and I’m not sure any of the passing drivers could so much as see me standing there. Or, if they could, they probably didn’t want a muddy young man hopping in their car. Continue reading...