Victoria Police say they plan to charge a Melbourne woman with assaulting police after she posted a video of her arrest to social media showing her being dragged from a car by officers. Police arrested 29-year-old Natalie Bonner after she allegedly refused to provide her details and driver’s licence at a checkpoint in Kalkallo just before 6pm on Saturday. Ms …

Victoria has reported 41 new cases of COVID-19 and seven further deaths, with the latest figures supporting the state’s planned easing of lockdown restrictions. Sunday’s statistics for the past 24 hours take the state’s death toll to 723 and the national count to 810 since the start of the pandemic. As parts of Victoria’s move towards eased restrictions, tensions are …

Late-stage trials for a leading coronavirus vaccine have been suspended after a study participant suffered a “potentially unexplained illness”. AstraZeneca has put on hold phase three trials of a vaccine being developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford. The Australian Government last month signed an agreement with the UK-based company to secure the potential COVID-19 vaccine, if its trials prove successful. …

The NSW state government has announced its guidelines for the HSC exams at the end of the year. Exam rooms will be cleaned and sanitised after each use and one person will collect papers at the end of each day. NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said masks will be optional during tests, just as they are in classrooms. Temperature checks for students …

Premier Daniel Andrews says one of the first lockdown restrictions to be eased up is the isolation of single-person and single-parents households. Under Victoria’s roadmap out of current restrictions, single-person and single-parent households throughout the state will be allowed to create a “social bubble” with one other person from September 14. And from October 26, if daily cases continue to decline enough, all Melbourne households will be able …

Free vaccinations for COVID-19 will be made available next year in Australia, depending on the outcome of “promising” drug trials, the Australian Government is expected to announce on Monday. In a statement released late on Sunday, the Federal Government said that contingent on the outcome of ongoing trials, vaccines would be made available “progressively” throughout 2021, following a $1.7 billion …

A landmark study of television news and current affairs has found that presenters, commentators and reporters on Australian television are overwhelmingly of an Anglo-Celtic background. In terms of the number of appearances during the survey period, almost 76 per cent of those on Australian screens were found to have an Anglo-Celtic background. Just 6 per cent were from an Indigenous …

A security company contracted to provide guards for Melbourne’s COVID-19 quarantine hotels potentially breached its agreement with the Victorian Government, with an email suggesting it failed to inform at least one of its subcontractors of its obligations. Wilson Security then attempted to conceal this failing by asking the subcontractor to backdate documents for the Government. Wilson made the backdating request …

The federal opposition is pushing for higher scrutiny of the Ruby Princess cruise ship debacle which led to more than 660 COVID-19 infections and 28 deaths. A NSW special commission of inquiry has revealed “inexcusable”, “inexplicable” and “unjustifiable” errors by authorities which allowed 2700 passengers to disembark at Sydney’s Circular Quay on March 19. Labor leader Anthony Albanese says a …

A 12-year-old girl is among three minors caught gambling and drinking at Sydney’s Star Casino, costing the venue $90,000 in fines. Her mother snuck the girl in through the exit doors, took her to the main gaming floor and watched on as the child placed 21 bets on the pokie machines over 17 minutes. The girl and her parents, visiting …