The Indian side have also asked for greater market access for it fruits and vegetables including potato, tomatoes, onion, okra and cucumber to increase exports. “We have also raised the issue of investment proposals of certain Indian mining companies which are stuck there,” the official added. During his visit, Prabhu has sought investments from Australian superannuation or pension funds in ...

A former intelligence officer who exposed an Australia spying operation in East Timor is facing criminal prosecution, an MP has revealed. East Timor took Australia to a UN court in 2014 over the spying row, related to a border deal from a decade earlier. That treaty set out how the nations would divide lucrative gas reserves in the Timor Sea. East Timor ...

A Queensland woman has won the right to use her dead boyfriend’s sperm to have children after a judge ruled that she was confident any baby would be “loved, cared for and supported”. Ayla Cresswell should be able to use Joshua Davies’ reproductive tissue, the Queensland supreme court justice Susan Brown said in Brisbane on Wednesday. However, it was up to the ...

The Turnbull government will on Thursday steer its $143bn income tax package through the parliament after days of brinkmanship around the economic policy debate that will form the centrepiece of the next election. The package will go to the House early after the Senate successfully amended the package on Wednesday to strip out stage three of the plan – the ...

Young Aborigines are four times more likely to commit suicide than non-indigenous Australians. Experts and Aboriginal elders believe a variety of reasons drive Aboriginal youth to suicide, including a disconnection from traditional culture and land. In 2012, 101 East travelled to Western Australia’s Kimberley region to find out what was behind the abnormally high suicide rates there. Numbers were the highest among Australia’s ...

The Australian economy has gone without a recession for 26 straight years and is still going strong, but the same can’t be said about the performance of its currency. Official data on Wednesday pointed to Australia starting 2018 on a strong note: Its gross domestic product expanded by 3.1 percent year-over-year in the first quarter, handily beating forecasts and avoiding a recession yet again. ...

The Turnbull government says allegations that members of Australia’s elite special forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan are being taken seriously, after a confidential report was leaked to the media. Labor says it is seeking a briefing from the government about the “deeply concerning” allegations, and it wants the report to be made public to the extent possible. Fairfax Media reported on Friday ...

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) agreed to a record penalty of A$700 million ($529.3 million) to settle explosive money laundering charges brought by Australia’s financial intelligence agency. The fine is almost double the amount CBA had set aside to finalize the matter and represents a record penalty for money-laundering and terror finance breaches, the Australian government said on ...

Australia’s response to China’s continuing rise mixes anxiety, even a touch of paranoia, with anticipation of the riches that derive from the sale of vast quantities of commodities. Economic dependence on China is two-edged and potentially policy-distorting. To put this in perspective: Australian exports of goods and services to China in 2016-17 were worth $110.4 billion. That accounts for nearly 30 per ...

The final stages of the Turnbull government’s plan to dramatically flatten Australia’s income tax scales will provide a multibillion-dollar boon to the top 20% of income earners, and they deserve further scrutiny by parliament, a progressive thinktank says. The Australia Institute has produced new modelling of the most expensive elements of the government’s income tax plan, saying the Senate needs ...