Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan says “there is nothing to fear” about a new State Parliament dominated by a single party following Labor’s historic victory on Saturday night, which decimated the Liberals. Early results indicated Labor was on track to hold at least 52 of the Parliament’s 59 Lower House seats. It is too early to know the exact makeup …

Nearly 160,000 people have now had a COVID-19 vaccination, including the Prime Minister who received his second Pfizer dose on Sunday. However, the figure is well below what the federal government had hoped to achieve, with a target of inoculating 4 million people initially set for early April. Scott Morrison has blamed international supply issues but is hopeful vaccination rates …

What can we do with Australia’s property market, with soaring prices and rental shortages in many regional areas of Australia, from WA’s Pilbara to Hobart in Tasmania? While more than 60 per cent of Australians own their own home, Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows home-ownership rates for people aged under 40 are declining, part of a trend of intergenerational inequality and a growing gap between …

A rape allegation against one of Scott Morrison’s own Cabinet Ministers has been referred to federal police after a letter was sent to the Prime Minister detailing the allegations. The alleged sexual assault dates to 1988, before the unnamed senior minister entered politics. The victim, who was 16 at the time of the alleged crime, took her own life last …

China’s government is celebrating President Xi Jinping’s “complete victory” in the country’s campaign to eradicate rural poverty. However, some experts say China has set a low bar in its definition of poverty, with sustained investment required to fund continued development in its poorest areas. The party announced in November, with little fanfare, that China no longer had anyone in extreme …

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 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 …

Air New Zealand has announced it will trial a digital vaccination passport on flights between Auckland and Sydney from April. The trial of the Travel Pass app, developed by the International Air Transport Association, will allow travellers to create a ‘digital health wallet’ that is linked to their passport. Once they have been tested or vaccinated, the lab can securely …

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 …