A guard on duty the night of the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins in a Parliament House ministerial office has questioned Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s claim it was a “security breach”. Higgins, a former Liberal staffer, alleges she was raped by a colleague in minister Linda Reynolds’ office in March 2019. Experienced security guard Nikola Anderson found Higgins naked on a couch in …

A proposal by one of Australia’s top police officers to use phone apps to record sexual consent has been branded “naive”. NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said the country needed to modernise ideas around “positive consent” where consent is “active and ongoing throughout a sexual encounter”. “Intimate violence particularly against women is a real problem crime for us at the …

Australian Federal Police have been notified of a letter sent to Prime Minister Scott Morrison detailing an alleged historical rape by a Cabinet Minister in the federal government. The letter requests urgent action be taken by the Prime Minister to investigate the alleged rape, which occurred in 1988 before the accused man entered politics. The matter has also been referred …

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 …