The Australian dollar is on the move, now hovering around 80 US cents. Over February alone it’s gained roughly 5 cents against the US dollar. That’s quite a move for any currency. The Australian dollar is increasing in value for several reasons, and one of those reasons is also tied to how much you’ll be paying on your monthly mortgage …

With the dust settling on the news media bargaining code battle royale, both Facebook and the Australian government have declared victory. The legislation passed the Senate on Tuesday night, meaning the government can now make Facebook and Google negotiate with news producers to pay for content that appears on search engines or social media. It’s seemingly the end of a series …

A woman who blackmailed a grieving couple over a lost phone containing photos of their dying daughter will stay behind bars, after Victoria’s highest court knocked back her appeal. Siti Kamal, a 26-year-old Malaysian national, was jailed last year for blackmailing Jay and Deanne Windross while their 11-month-old daughter, Amiyah, was dying in the Monash Children’s Hospital. Days earlier, Ms …

A criminal gang spent months terrorising the Sydney family of a senior Iraqi politician in an attempt to extort up to $10 million from him, police say. Authorities in NSW and Canada have arrested four people over a series of attacks on the Chester Hill home of Ahmed Al-Asadi’s wife and five children. Mr Al-Asadi is a dual Iraqi/Australia citizen …

The federal government has announced the base rate of its JobSeeker unemployment payment will rise by $50 a fortnight. It means an individual gets $615 a fortnight, which equates to about $44 a day, while a single parent will get about $58 a day. So how many people does this affect? The latest figures from the Department of Social Services show …

The federal government is pulling all its advertising campaigns from Facebook, as the social media platform continues to block Australians from accessing news. On Sunday, Health Minister Greg Hunt said his department would not be using Facebook for advertising campaigns. Finance Minister Simon Birmingham, who oversees public expenditure, said on Monday that the ban would be extended across the government. …

Australia’s top nurse is putting the Northern Territory’s Howard Springs quarantine facility’s capacity under the microscope, as the nation’s coronavirus vaccine rollout gets underway. Freshly vaccinated chief nursing officer Alison McMillan is travelling to the Top End to see whether more people can quarantine at the hub. “She is looking at the maximum safe capacity for expansion of Howard Springs,” Health …

A fourth woman has come forward to allege she was sexually assaulted by the same political staffer accused of raping a colleague inside Parliament House. The woman alleges the former Liberal Party staffer reached under the table to stroke her thigh at a Canberra bar in 2017. She has filed a report at a police station in Canberra and will …

An Australian infectious disease expert says Chinese authorities refused to give raw data on early COVID-19 cases to a World Health Organization-led team probing the origins of the pandemic. The team had requested raw patient data on the 174 cases of COVID-19 that China had identified from the early phase of the outbreak in Wuhan in December 2019, as well …

Victoria’s hotel quarantine authority denies it knew a man took a nebuliser into the venue at the heart of the state’s current coronavirus outbreak. The use of the air compression device by the man for his asthma has been blamed for spreading the UK strain of COVID-19 through the Holiday Inn hotel at Melbourne Airport, leading to a five-day lockdown …