On Sunday at Bondi we witnessed the appalling consequences of hatred and how it breeds radicalisation and violence. But as the Jewish community and the whole country grieved, some politicians went on ...

It was designed to be clean and clear, but upset users are calling the national weather forecaster’s new site confusing, clunky and ‘really bad’ * Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast It was designed to be clean and clear, but the Bureau of Meteorology’s new website has come in for criticism for being confusing, clunky and “really, really bad”. After years of development, the government site, which has 2.6bn page views a year, was relaunched on Wednesday, its homepage giving users a snapshot of weather in capital cities around the country and latest news updates from the bureau. Continue reading...

Ombudsman releases secret advice against government plan to lower standard of proof for misconduct * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast New South Wales prisoners could face some of the harshest penalties in the country for trivial infractions such as “looking untidy” or “eating food in a cell”, as the government flouts advice and attempts to lower the burden of proof for inmate misconduct. On 14 October, the government introduced a bill proposing an amendment to the Crimes (Administration of Sentences) Act. If adopted, the legislation would mean offences committed by inmates while inside prison only need to be proved to the civil standard of the “balance of probabilities”, rather than the current criminal threshold of “beyond reasonable doubt”. Continue reading...

Researchers say carbon emissions change in Queensland tropical rainforests may have global climate implications * Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here Australian tropical rainforest trees have become the first in the world to switch from being a carbon sink to an emissions source due to increasingly extreme temperatures and drier conditions. The change, which applies to the trees’ trunk and branches but not the roots system, began about 25 years ago, according to new research published in Nature. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter Continue reading...

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Class action members will have the option of individualised assessments, which means some will receive more than others The federal government has agreed to pay $475m in compensation to the thousands of victims of the robodebt scandal. Both the government and Gordon Legal, who brought the class action, have pointed out that this is the largest class action settlement in Australian history. The settlement is still subject to approval by the federal court. It is remarkable how little interest there seems to have been in ensuring the Scheme’s legality, how rushed its implementation was, how little thought was given to how it would affect welfare recipients and the lengths to which public servants were prepared to go to oblige ministers on a quest for savings. Truly dismaying was the revelation of dishonesty and collusion to prevent the Scheme’s lack of legal foundation coming to light. Continue reading...

Letters: Matthew Ord says pay insecurity pushes many skilled people out of construction entirely, while Stuart Green notes that career paths only exist in sheltered pockets. Plus a letter from Mark St...

Coalition opponents of net zero spruik coal, nuclear and gas as emissions policy divides opposition * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Barnaby Joyce and other leading opponents of net zero by 2050 want Australia to build new coal-fired power plants, focus on gas and nuclear energy and abandon all efforts to cut carbon emissions. As the former Nationals leader pushes a private member’s bill to block net zero – sparking new divisions within the Liberals and Nationals this week – he said any long-term emissions reduction from renewables would not make a meaningful difference to the climate and would cost households too much. Continue reading...

Australia has agreed to not deport refugees back to face possible persecution. But advocates say for many ‘transitory persons’ stuck in legal limbo, their only option is to do the unthinkable Lana and Scott* met in torrential rain: she was waiting for a bus, he offered her a lift. “We just kicked it off,” Scott remembers of the chance meeting on Nauru in 2015. He was a senior manager in construction, building Australia’s offshore detention centre on the island. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...

Beaches are littered with fish carcasses and scientists warn they are only ‘the tip of the iceberg’ as underwater habitats deteriorate * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Anthony Rowland was heading out for a pre-dawn surf at Waitpinga Point when he felt a tickle in his throat. He was out on the pristine water as the sun rose on South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula, then headed back up the hill towards the car park with his friends. “Halfway up, all three of us were barking,” he says. Continue reading...

One fresh early morning spring back in 2018, I was huddling with a couple of colleagues on a sturdy wooden bench in one of Sydney’s inner city parks. None of us were carrying our mobile phones.

Estimated 16,000 litres of petroleum products spilled into Indian ocean on 8 May during decommissioning works at Griffin field * Australia news live: latest politics updates * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Australia’s offshore energy regulator has launched an investigation into an oil and gas spill at a Woodside Energy project off the Pilbara coast in Western Australia. An estimated 16,000 litres of petroleum products were released into the Indian Ocean on 8 May during decommissioning at the company’s Griffin field, 58km north-west of Exmouth and 60km from Ningaloo marine park. The field stopped production in 2009. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...

Campaigners and conservationists decry decision, saying it will worsen climate crisis, blow out emissions reductions targets and put groundwater at risk * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast The Queensland government has opened nine new areas for gas exploration across 16,000 sq kilometres in a step environmentalists say will only worsen the climate crisis. The state’s natural resources minister, Dale Last, said the move would make Queensland more attractive for gas industry investment and would help bring down gas prices and ease the supply pressures on the east coast. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...

Forty-year extension of North West Shelf gas project granted by environment minister, Murray Watt, will result in huge greenhouse gas emissions, putting the already degraded Indigenous rock art at risk * Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email We don’t know all the evidence that the new environment minister, Murray Watt, had before him when he decided to approve a 40-year life extension to one of Australia’s biggest fossil fuel developments so that it could run until 2070. But we do know this. The decision largely turned on whether the North West Shelf liquefied natural gas (LNG) development on the Pilbara’s Burrup Hub can coexist for decades into the future with an incredible collection of ancient Murujuga rock art, some of it nearly 50,000 years old and unlike anything else on the planet. Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email Continue reading...

Former Labor senator also says child removals are a way to ‘eradicate a people from the landscape’ * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Former Labor senator Patrick Dodson has condemned the country’s Aboriginal youth incarceration rates and child removals as an ongoing genocide against First Peoples and an “embarrassing sore” on the nation. “It’s an assault on the Aboriginal people. I don’t say that lightly [but] if you want to eradicate a people from the landscape, you start taking them away, you start destroying the landscape of their cultural heritage, you attack their children or remove their children,” Dodson said. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...

Simon Stiell says investors ‘ready to hit the go button’ if they have the right signals from governments The climate crisis has raised the price of commodities and exacerbated famine – and only strong action on greenhouse gas emissions can restore economic stability, the UN’s climate chief has said. Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, was speaking in Panama, where recent years of drought drove the water to perilous lows that disrupted international trade. Continue reading...

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