Sydney news

In a week when AFL vilification has again raised its ugly head, further evidence emerges about the games Indigenous origins, with an anthropologist citing transcripts she says proves a key Aboriginal influence.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is investigating an incident on a Qantas flight from Melbourne to Hong Kong in which 15 people were injured.

A painting by renowned Australian landscape artist Eugene von Gurard, which has not been seen by art scholars for almost 150 years, is rediscovered.

Cameron McEvoy continues his redemption following his Rio disappointment with victory over Olympic champion Kyle Chalmers at the national swimming titles.

The father of Launceston man Tyson Timothy Clark-Robertson remembers his son as a happy and generous person, as the man charged with his murder faces an out-of-hours court session in Tasmania.

Almost 400 more Tasmanian students finished Year 12 last year than the year before, a jump which is being credited to a "cultural change".

The WA coroner recommends police officers' powers to detain people be curtailed, following the death of an Indigenous woman at a Kimberley Police Station in 2012.

A Sydney-based start-up that designs and builds software and electronics to control robots finds rare success on the world stage within just two years of being founded, claiming it has no current need for investors.

Just as weekly travel expenses are capped at $60 per week on an Opal card, the Mayors of Blacktown and Penrith want the same for road tolls.

Real estate agents in Perth are reporting a spike in inquiries from interstate and overseas, with data seen by the ABC showing 30 per cent of searches for properties in the western suburbs on one major real estate website came from outside the state last month.

Gene Gibson, an illiterate Aboriginal man, has walked free today after a court found he was wrongly jailed for manslaughter. He had been serving a seven-year sentence over the death of Josh Warneke in Broome.

A couple of years ago young apprentice boilermaker and welder Brady Bennett was let go by Tasmanian ship builder Incat. Today he started the engine of the company's latest $100 million product.

Victoria Police say the leaders of the Apex crime gang have been charged and imprisoned and while there may be "some remnants" of the group but they have morphed into "networked offending" linked by social media.

Creating a dedicated space agency could help Australia tap further into the multi-billion-dollar industry, one of Europe's most prominent space leaders says, as an Adelaide company prepares to launch 100 satellites.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is in a bind over Adani's Carmichael coal mine - sandwiched between Labor supporters who despise the project on environmental grounds and those in the party and union movement who are calling for the project to be backed.

A mother and two of her three children are farewelled at a funeral on the NSW North Coast after their car plunged into the Tweed River last week.

A new survey shows 70 per cent of NT businesses have been victims of crime within the last year, prompting businesses to demand the Government act.

The NSW Health Care Complaints Commission finds two nurses caring for a patient in mid-2014 who died kept no record of about 20 falls captured on CCTV.

A Melbourne teenager who helped steal $200,000 worth of jewellery avoids jail, with a judge attributing his "violent and lawless" behaviour to his use of the drug ice, but his co-offender is given a four-year prison term.

While tapping into superannuation might be the boost needed for aspiring Sydney home owners, some young people are not jumping on the idea.

The Federal Government's new broadband performance monitoring will not include the Sky Muster satellite which serves rural internet customers.

Adelaide's Lyell McEwin Hospital emergency department might need a significant expansion, South Australian Health Minister Jack Snelling say, as more people are presenting to the northern suburbs hospital at times than the Royal Adelaide in the CBD.

WA Premier Mark McGowan accuses the City of Perth of having a "Stalinist culture" in another escalation of the war of words between the council and the State Government.

Harpreet Dhillon will soon be the first woman in her family to finish high school, but on top of her studies the 17-year-old is an advocate for gender equality, young migrants and refugees.

Inmates are being forced to sleep on the floor of a regional Western Australian prison, the Department of Corrective Services confirms, as overcrowding grows increasingly severe.

An ABC investigation into the activities of business advisers who help companies avoid paying millions of dollars in tax and money owed to mum-and-dad small businesses has uncovered a raft of potentially illegal transactions.

The Victorian Government is looking at a "range of options" to end the long-running CFA pay dispute, including a major shake-up of the state's two firefighting agencies.

Two hairdressers in Brisbane's north are endeavouring to bring dignity to the homeless through a free mobile barbershop, launched today north of Brisbane.

Two teachers are among three staff members of a regional WA high school charged with drug offences related to ice with the Education Department refusing to say if they have been suspended.

Irish hairdresser Stacey Gouldie decides to give Belfast the flick and try life in the Australian outback in far west New South Wales.

The lead singer of Desert Stars, James Minning, has been jailed just days before being announced as a finalist in the West Australian Music Song of the Year awards.

Jessie Wilson was sentenced to a maximum of four and a half years in jail for beating his former partner so severely during an afternoon binge drinking session that she died.

Former Northern Territory police commissioner John McRoberts has fronted court in Darwin for the first time since he was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Environmental lawyers warn directors of the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility to not loan $900 million needed for Adani's proposed coal railway in central Queensland because it is in breach of their duties.

A spearfisher leads by example for women in the sport after winning a silver medal in Guam at the Inter Pacific Spearfishing Championships.

The New South Wales Government is being urged not to allow an "open slather" for big childcare operators in suburbs that are heading toward an oversupply.

Infrastructure Australia's top 100 priority projects list contains 35 in NSW and 15 in Victoriaso does the Sydney-based advisory body have a bias towards the nation's largest state?

Bob Katter says the State Government is "dicing with death" by not changing crocodile hunting laws in the wake of several attacks in far north Queensland.

An elderly German couple who died while walking in Central Australia could have been saved if a fence had not been washed away, their daughter says.

A Supreme Court murder trial underway in Tamworth hears a violent bashing may not have been responsible for the death of a man in 2015.

A Native Title law specialist says claims the Prime Minister is offering to amend the Native Title Act to assist the controversial Carmichael coal mine are incorrect.

The WA Government ups pressure on Australian Rugby Union (ARU) over the future of the Western Force, urging the governing body to "uphold its end of the bargain" by not axing the Perth-based Super Rugby team.

No criminal offence has been committed by a cemetery worker who took photos of human remains and showed them around at social occasions, Adelaide police say.

Researchers want to use the natural human response to music to create affordable, home-based therapy for stroke victims.

The Western Australia State Government flags axing the $80 million SuperTowns scheme because it has failed to increase the population in regional areas.

A former Canberra public servant who trafficked drugs to pay off his financial debts is given a suspended sentence by the ACT Supreme Court.

A Ballarat woman who lost $90,000 worth of gold in a burglary says she believes she was being watched by the thief before he broke in.

A Ballarat woman who lost $70,000 worth of gold in a burglary says she believes she was being watched by the thief before he broke in.

A staged transition of woolgrowing to winemaking has impressed the judging panel who recently crowned Milton the 2017 Tasmanian Vineyard of the Year.

The south-east town of Millicent wants to keep its trading hours regulated, despite being the only regional town in the state to remain restricted.