The first lesson this week was that when offered cheap money, a significant number of Australians will rush to buy residential real estate, recession or not. The second lesson was this is pretty much what core economic policy has been reduced to in Australia – inflating asset prices in hope that the “wealth effect” will trickle down into broader consumer …

More than 100,000 people have backed Kevin Rudd’s call for a royal commission into News Corp, but it seems his former colleagues are not among the masses. The Parliament House website was unable to cope with the support for the former Labor PM’s petition, as traffic spiked 500 per cent on the back of his call. Mr Rudd set social …

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 …

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 …

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 …

The inquiry into what went wrong in Victoria’s hotel quarantine program has been delayed due to the state’s stage 4 coronavirus restrictions on workplaces. The board of inquiry, headed by former Family Court judge Jennifer Coate, was due to start hearing evidence tomorrow, but this has now been postponed until August 17. It was originally due to report by September …

Not long after news of a virus outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan began to spread worldwide, this image hit the internet: Some people claimed it was a map of Wuhan travellers across the 2020 Lunar New Year. Tabloids in the United Kingdom picked it up. Channel 7’s Sunrise used it in a live segment. But it did not …

In 1911, a deadly epidemic spread through China and threatened to become a pandemic. Its origins appeared to be related to the trade in wild animals, but at the time no one was sure. Lockdowns, quarantine measures, the wearing of masks, travel restrictions, the mass cremation of victims, and border controls were deployed to try to lower the infection rate. …

Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral has been vandalised, with the words “rapist” and “no justice” graffitied across its doors a day after Cardinal George Pell was acquitted on child sex abuse charges. “Rot in hell, Pell” was also scrawled across the doors of the cathedral at the centre of allegations the cardinal abused two choirboys in the 1990s. The words “the …

Wuhan residents believe up to 18 times the number of people died in their city from coronavirus than authorities are reporting. The seven funeral homes serving Wuhan have reportedly been running nonstop recently, prompting one resident to say “anyone with any ability to think” knows officials are lying about the death toll. China announced 2,535 deaths in Wuhan – the …