From 31m ago Inflation in rental prices expected to increase: Treasury You may have noticed he mentioned rental increases there. It is not great news for that already tight market, according to Treasury: Rising housing costs remain a source of cost-of-living pressures for many households. Inflation in newly advertised rental prices has been rising sharply for around a year, reaching 10 per cent nationally in January. The national vacancy rate has reached a near-record low of around 1%. Despite the slowdown in population growth during the pandemic, underlying demand for…
Tag: Australian military
‘We don’t have limitless resources’: Australian government prepared to scale back defence projects
Richard Marles has signalled the Australian government is prepared to scale back some defence projects to fund others in a major shake-up, declaring “we don’t have limitless resources”. The deputy prime minister said the government would weigh up “how best we can use the resources that we have to make sure that we have a defence force which maximises Australia’s capability”. In his first substantive interview of the year, Marles refused to rule out the possibility Australia’s first nuclear-powered submarines could be built offshore before production in South Australia can…
Australian officials warned in 2021 about possible recruitment of ex-ADF members by Chinese military
Australian government officials were first warned a year and a half ago about alleged attempts to recruit former defence force personnel to train the Chinese military, the defence department has revealed. But it is unclear what action, if any, the then defence minister, Peter Dutton, took at the time. The current defence minister, Richard Marles, appeared to have been spurred into action when the issue hit the media about two months ago. Marles announced in mid-October he had asked his department to investigate claims that some Australian pilots may be…
Australia news live: ‘couldn’t think of anything more distressing for victim-survivors’ – Daniel Andrews rules out George Pell state funeral
From 44m ago No state funeral service for George Pell: Victorian premier Benita Kolovos Victoria’s premier, Daniel Andrews, says there will not be a state funeral service for George Pell out of respect for victims of institutional child sexual abuse. Asked if Pell, who died on Wednesday morning AEDT from heart complications arising from hip replacement surgery in Rome, would receive a state-funded service, he replied that he would not: I couldn’t think of anything that would be more distressing for victim-survivors than that. <gu-island name="TweetBlockComponent" deferuntil="visible" props="{"element":{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TweetBlockElement","html":" Victoria's premier,…
Australia live news update: fifth child airlifted to hospital with irukandji jellyfish sting; Albanese and Dutton trade insults over Indigenous voice
From 4h ago Fifth child stung by irukandji on K’gari in a fortnight A primary school-age girl has become the fifth child airlifted to hospital from K’gari with suspected irukandji jellyfish stings in the past fortnight, AAP reports. The girl was swimming in the ocean near a popular creek at K’gari – also known as Fraser Island – when she was stung on her lower back and leg. Her parents used vinegar and water on the stings before the RACQ LifeFlight Rescue helicopter landed on a beach on the western…
US asks Australia for extradition of former Marines pilot Daniel Duggan
The US government has sent an extradition request to Australia for former US Marines pilot Daniel Duggan, who is accused of breaking US arms control laws by training Chinese military pilots to land on aircraft carriers. “The US has made a formal request for extradition for Mr Duggan,” Trent Glover, a lawyer for the US government, told a Sydney local court on Friday. Australia’s attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, has until 25 December to make a decision under a bilateral extradition treaty, said Glover. Outside the court, Duggan’s lawyer, Dennis Miralis,…
Penny Wong issues emphatic plea to US and China to ‘prevent catastrophe’ of war
Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has urged China to take up a US offer to put in place “guardrails” to prevent growing tensions from spiralling into war. Wong will use a speech in Washington DC on Thursday to hit back at claims that Australia’s plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines under Aukus is driving a regional arms race. Wong will also urge the leaders of China and the US to learn from diplomacy spurred by the Cuban missile crisis, saying she hopes “nationalistic domestic posturing won’t sink their efforts to…
US to increase rotation of forces to Australia, condemns China’s ‘dangerous and coercive actions’ in region
The US will increase rotations of its air, land and sea forces to Australia and has condemned China’s “dangerous and coercive actions” across the Indo-Pacific region. As part of the step-up in defence ties, the US plans to preposition munitions and fuel in Australia to support its military forces. Airfields in northern Australia are set to be upgraded to enable rotations of US aircraft. The defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, also said the US would not allow Australia to experience a capability gap in its naval forces and pledged to help…
Shrouded in secrecy: the Australian trial of a former Marines pilot facing extradition to the US
Planes are Daniel Duggan’s passion. His professional life has been spent flying military aircraft and training others. His social media is filled, almost exclusively, with videos of aircraft from around the world. But a man so often untethered to the ground has now spent 45 days in segregated and high-security custody in New South Wales. He still does not know the charges against him. The arrest of Daniel Edmund Duggan, an Australian citizen and former US Marines fighter pilot, on secret charges is a “politically motivated injustice”, his wife has…
Australian defence chief warns of rise in ‘grey-zone activities’ in Indo-Pacific region amid China tensions
The chief of the Australian defence force, Gen Angus Campbell, has offered a gloomy assessment of developments in the Indo-Pacific region, warning of a rise in “coercive statecraft and grey-zone activities”. Ahead of a major defence review, Campbell has declared that Australia and Japan are bound together by “increasingly shared strategic challenges” in our region. “Across our region, large-scale military modernisation is accelerating,” he said, in a clear reference to China. “National sovereignty, the law of the sea, freedom of navigation are all facing challenges from both states and non-state…