Fathers and daughters are hardly strangers to disagreement. And so it is with Tony Abbott, the prominent Australian anti-same-sex marriage campaigner, and his daughter Frances, who has backed the rival yes campaign in the country’s keenly contested postal survey. Two weeks after she put herself at odds with her father, the country’s former prime minister, with a post on Instagram, ...

Australia is to be a launch partner on the UK’s innovative new small radar satellite, NovaSAR. The spacecraft, which will track shipping and forestry change from orbit, is due to launch on an Indian rocket early next year. Australia’s main research organisation, CSIRO, has signed a 10% share in NovaSAR’s data. The deal comes on the heels of an announcement that the ...

It might surprise you that Australia doesn’t already have a space agency. The country has been involved in the space field for decades — in 1967, it was among the first countries to launch a satellite. Two years later, a NASA tracking station in Australia received and transmitted the first TV images of Neil Armstrong taking the first steps on the Moon. Now, after ...

world-first collaboration between the University of New South Wales and the Chinese government, celebrated as a $100m innovation partnership, opens a Pandora’s box of strategic and commercial risks for Australia, according to leading analysts. These include the potential loss of sensitive technology with military capability, an unhealthy reliance on Chinese capital and vulnerability to Beijing’s influence in Australia’s stretched research and ...

AUSTRALIA’S new $10 note enters circulation from tomorrow, and the Reserve Bank is hoping to avoid a repeat of last year when consumers found some businesses and vending machines unable to accept the new $5 notes. The new note, which includes a top-to-bottom window, a patch with a rolling colour effect, fluorescent ink and raised tactile printing, retains the images ...

Australia’s tourism industry could be hit by new Chinese government restrictions on companies investing overseas, the Turnbull government fears. The Chinese government ban on “irrational” overseas investment by private Chinese companies, and move to put property and entertainment deals on a restricted list, could hit Australia’s tourism and hotel sector, according to Treasurer Scott Morrison, who has sought clarity around ...

A VEILED woman applying for her driver’s licence was the trigger for George Christensen’s populist plan to “ban the burqa’’. The conservative north Queensland MP will light the fuse on a politically explosive debate this weekend when he demands the National Party support a ban on full-facial coverings in all government buildings and public spaces. The Islamic burqa, he insists, ...

AUSTRALIAN educators are increasingly coming under attack from Chinese students, raising concerns their government’s influence is permeating our universities. The students have been openly complaining about Western teaching methods and ideas, and publicly demanding apologies or changes to how subjects are explored. The trend has raised concerns that the ideology of China’s Communist Party is weaving its way into Australian ...

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Thousands of people rallied for marriage equality in Australia’s second-biggest city of Melbourne on Saturday ahead of a postal survey on same-sex marriage which could lead to its legalisation. Australia is one of the only developed English-speaking countries not to have legalised same-sex marriage, despite strong popular support and the backing of a majority of lawmakers. Shadow ...

The Australia-US refugee deal signed in September last year was not the first time both nations have tried to trade refugees — a similar deal from 2007 fizzled, with not a single transfer being made. This latest agreement could go the same way but for different reasons. A decade ago, the Howard government offered to resettle Haitian and Cuban refugees ...