By: Jade McMillan Doctors are calling for a more effective communications strategy to convince people to get COVID-19 vaccines, warning Australians are “sitting ducks” until a much larger portion of the population is protected. Vice-president of the Australian Medical Association, Chris Moy, said he was worried too many Australians felt safe from the virus to the point where they were ...

WIRES   Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead with Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip, pushing back against calls from the United States to move towards a ceasefire. US President Joe Biden told Mr Netanyahu “that he expected a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire,” according to the White House. In comments that marked the first public rift between ...

By: Paul Karp Scott Morrison has confirmed that Australia has bought 25m doses of Moderna’s vaccine, set to be the fourth Covid-19 vaccine in the Australian rollout and its second mRNA vaccine. In a statement, Moderna announced it could supply 10m doses to Australia by the end of the year and a further 15m would arrive in 2022. The vaccine is ...

  By: James Glenday NSW Liberal senator Jim Molan has announced he is going on sick leave leave after being diagnosed with “an aggressive form of cancer”. Over the next week, the 70-year-old will undergo a series of medical tests to confirm his prognosis and begin treatment. In a message to colleagues, Senator Molan said the diagnosis last week had come as ...

Daniel Andrews says he’s making steady progress in his recovery from a serious back injury and is now walking about 18 minutes a day. Victoria’s premier suffered broken ribs and a fractured T7 vertebra after slipping on wet stairs at a holiday home on the Mornington Peninsula on 9 March. The 48-year-old, who is recovering at home, said the past few weeks ...

By: Mostafa Rachwani Australians are being urged to secure their social media accounts after the details of more than 500 million global Facebook users were found online in a massive data breach. The details published freely online included names, phone numbers, email addresses, account IDs and bios. In a statement, Facebook said the leaked information was old, and came from a ...

By: Olivana Lathouris Prime Minister Scott Morrison has denied criticising the European Union over Australia’s shortfall of COVID-19 vaccines but maintained the government was expecting an extra 3.1 million doses it never received. “Any suggestion that I, in any way, made any criticism of the European Union yesterday would be completely incorrect,” Mr Morrison told reporters this morning. “I simply stated a fact – that 3.1 million ...

By: Jade Macmillan and Nour Haydar The head of the Prime Minister’s department has paused his investigation into who within Scott Morrison’s office knew about a rape allegation at Parliament House, and when. Former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins alleges she was raped by a male colleague inside a ministerial office in 2019. Mr Morrison asked the secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, ...

Australians will have to wait until next month to find out when they can fly to New Zealand again without quarantining, after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said more time was needed to set up a new trans-Tasman travel bubble. Ms Ardern told a press conference in New Zealand today that she would reveal a date for the start of quarantine-free ...

By: Jamie McKinnel Former NRL player Jarryd Hayne has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman on the night of the 2018 NRL grand final. A retrial in the NSW District Court heard he met the then-26-year-old at her house on the way back to Sydney from a buck’s weekend in Newcastle. The Crown alleged Hayne sexually assaulted the woman in ...