Australia news live: NT residents warned ‘crocs absolutely everywhere’ as Katherine and Daly rivers flood

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South Australian Liberal insiders fear for the party’s existence as polls point to an election catastrophe

The sound of The Killers’ song The Man was blaring at Adelaide’s Hackney hotel as Steven Marshall waded through a throng of supporters to celebrate a drought-breaking triumph for the South Australian Liberal party.

Marshall had defeated Jay Weatherill’s Labor government and seen off the threat of Nick Xenophon’s SA Best, to end the party’s 16 years in opposition.

“A massive thank you to the people of South Australia who have put their trust, their faith in me and the Liberal team for a new dawn, a new dawn for South Australia,” Marshall told the crowd late in the evening of 17 March 2018.

Four years later and the Marshall government was wiped out in a Labor landslide led by Peter Malinauskas.

Now, another four years has passed and the optimism of 2018 has been replaced with a mix of trepidation and resignation as catastrophic opinion polling puts the Liberal party in a battle for its continued existence on 21 March.

Some downcast party insiders fear Ashton Hurn’s Liberals could be reduced to fewer than five of the 47 lower house seats, and wiped out in metropolitan Adelaide in a political earthquake on the scale of their Western Australia’s counterparts’ landslide defeat in 2021.

Read the full story here:

Twenty-six men charged as part of ‘one of most significant online child abuse investigations’

Alleged members of a secret online child exploitation group have been charged with more than 1,000 offences in what police are describing as “one of the most significant online child abuse investigations in Australia”.

In a statement today, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said a year-long joint investigation with Victoria police had begun in late 2023, following intelligence shared by Queensland police.

Police said this led to the infiltration of an online group allegedly using encrypted messaging to share abuse material. The group was shut down and 26 alleged members, all Victoria-based and male, have been charged with offences including the possession, access, transmission, solicitation and production of child abuse material.

Some have been convicted and sentenced to terms of imprisonment, while others remain before the courts. A further nine alleged offenders have been arrested by NSW police.

About 65,000 unique child abuse images and videos, including more than 300 hours of footage, were seized during the investigation. The statement said the material shared by this group was “was truly among the most depraved ever seen by law enforcement”. AFP detective superintendent Bernard Geason said:

I am extremely proud of the persistence of the investigators involved in this extremely distressing investigation. I would like to thank them for their unwavering dedication to identifying the alleged offenders and stopping further abuse. This is a hard reminder of how pervasive this crime can be.

Labor set to take back Greens’ only seat in NT parliament amid low turnout at byelection

Labor appears set to take a Northern Territory city seat back from the Greens following a low turnout byelection triggered by an MP’s resignation, AAP reports.

Voters in the Darwin electorate of Nightcliff went to the polls yesterday in a byelection called after Greens MP Kat McNamara resigned, citing health reasons.

She won the Green’s first and only seat in the Northern Territory parliament by 36 votes at the 2024 poll, when the former Labor government was reduced to four members in the 25-seat legislature.

At the close of counting on Saturday night, Labor’s Ed Smelt led the Greens’ Suki Dorras-Walker by 141 votes after preferences, with Dorras-Walker needing around three-quarters of the remaining votes to win.

Voter turnout in the byelection was low, at under 67% compared with 76.6% in the 2024 election. Voting is compulsory at all levels of government in the NT but turnout at federal, state and local level is consistently among the lowest of Australian states and territories.

- AAP

Penny Wong signals possible defensive military support for Gulf nations

Here’s our full report on foreign minister Penny Wong’s comments from this morning about Australia’s possible offer of military support to Gulf nations facing strikes from Iran:

‘There are crocs absolutely everywhere,’ NT police say, warning people not to go in flooded rivers

Gill has called on people not to venture into floodwaters, following reports of people swimming in rivers. Asked if there is increased crocodile activity in flood-affected areas, he said:

There are crocs absolutely everywhere … Please don’t go in the water. The message is quite clear. Don’t swim in the water for two reasons. It’s because it’s a fast flowing river, and also this is when crocs are most active.

Asked about reports that residents in Katherine were unable to contact emergency services, Gill said he does not have details of specific incidents, but said the advice remains to call triple zero. Earlier he said there had been “telecommunications issues” alongside power outages.

Speaking alongside Gill, the Bureau of Meteorology’s Jude Scott said the Daly River could stay at major flood level for some time:

The Daly River is a huge river holding enormous volumes of water, so it will continue to slowly rise during the next week. And at this stage, we’re expecting it to stay in excess of major flood level for at least this week and into next week.

Eighty people in NT still to be evacuated from floods after ‘very difficult day’

Northern Territory police incident control acting commander, Shaun Gill, says 80 people are still to be evacuated as the Daly River continues to rise today.

Speaking to reporters earlier about the flooding yesterday, which saw hundreds evacuated by emergency services from Nganmarriyanga (formerly known as Palumpa), Nauiyu (the Daly River community), Katherine and Jilkminggan, Gill said it had been an “incredibly difficult day”, saying his priority was now the remaining people in Nauiyu/Daly River.

We currently have 80 people who were unable to be evacuated yesterday due to weather conditions. So in order to achieve that, they actually had to move people by boat up until midnight last night up to higher ground. So as you can understand, it’s quite tough, and today we have helicopters flying out there with the hope of getting all 80 of them out by today.

Gill says there are about 1,000 people in shelters across Darwin, Katherine and Mataranka following evacuations that used six aircraft 18 helicopters, including winch rescues.

He says at least 90 homes are without power, and electricity has been turned off in the main street of Katherine, which has flooded after experiencing the highest river levels since 1998.

A quick update to the previous post: we’ve just been advised by the government that flight EK420 from Dubai to Perth, due to land this afternoon Perth time, has 93 Australians onboard.

Dubai to Perth flights update

Further to our earlier posts about flights inbound to Australia out of the UAE, Emirates has advised there is an additional flight en route from Dubai, due to land in Perth today today at 17:15hrs AWST.

Information about that flight, EK420, can be found on the Emirates website. We do not know at this stage how many Australians are onboard.

Daly and Katherine rivers flooding update

In the Northern Territory, where yesterday we reported that hundreds of people were being airlifted from remote communities amid major flooding, there are still major warnings in place for the Daly and Katherine rivers.

River heights are expected to exceed 1957 levels – or 15.3 metres – on the Daly River this evening. On Katherine River, river levels peaked at 19.2 metres yesterday evening, the highest since floods in 1998 which claimed three lives.

Hines says water levels have started to drop on the Katherine, but there is a chance more isolated rainfall could “pump more water into the river”:

We wouldn’t rule out a sort of renewed rise in that water level the next couple of days, but for the time being that water level is starting to drop.

NT emergency services are now providing an update on evacuations, which we will bring you news from shortly.

Weather warnings for Queensland and NT amid flooding and heavy rain

A severe weather warning and several major flood warnings are in place as tropical lows continue to bring heavy rain to Queensland and the Northern Territory today.

In Queensland, a severe weather warning is in place for the north-west, with a tropical low gradually expected to move to the south-east during the day, continuing into tomorrow. Isolated six-hourly rainfall totals of up to 100mm are likely, as high as 170mm on the Sunshine Coast.

The Bureau of Meteorology’s Angus Hines says the region is experiencing the cumulative impacts of a “long and quite widespread wet season”:

We’re seeing rain in that area at the moment, and that rain is forecast to get heavier in the coming hours, heading into tonight ... right through until tomorrow.

A flood watch warning is in place for most of state, with major flooding a possibility on the Georgina, Lower Flinders and Thomson rivers.

Yesterday, there were multiple rescues in the Gladstone region after flash flooding, including 34 people from a bus which became stranded in floodwaters, as well as six other motorists. Queensland emergency have services have confirmed there have been no further rescues over night.

We’ll bring you updates shortly about the major flooding situation in the Northern Territory, where hundreds of people have been airlifted from the remote community of Daly River (Nauiyu), and the town of Katherine remains under threat.

Here’s our report on where things were at late yesterday afternoon, if you need to catch up:

‘Symphonies in stone’: conservation v commerce in our national parks

When the Gardens of Stone in the Blue Mountains was declared a state conservation area in 2022, it should have been cause of great celebration for Keith Muir. Instead, the plans put forward by the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) for the nature reserve make him weep.

“The geology is spectacular,” he says of the nature reserve:

The pagoda landforms are sculptured natural artworks, that is the only way to describe them. They are symphonies in stone.

Muir’s tears are not of joy but grief and rage – not just for this place he loves, close to his home in Katoomba, but for all wild places of Australia.

NPWS, as landowner, is proposing the construction of a multi-day walk passing through the Gardens of Stone, along with luxury glamping-style accommodation. It will be built in the heart of this protected area, which sits alongside a world heritage area, and leased to a private operator. Amid the wildflowers of the Gardens of Stone, between old growth banksia and unique sandstone formations – that resemble the temples of Angkor Wat – on uncleared bush, will sit 18 twin cabins.

But Muir argues that the proposed cabins are not, as they were labelled in public consultation which closed last Thursday, “bush camps”. Instead, he describes the development as a resort. And if you can develop a resort in the Gardens of Stone, he argues, you can develop a resort anywhere.

Read the full story here:

Captured by IS, Amera began writing letters to her lost brother: ‘I wrote because I was scared, but also because I have hope’

When Islamic State militants arrived at their family’s home in northern Iraq, Amera and her brother were sitting under their grandmother’s fig tree.

The 11-year-old girl had been watching a ripening fig for days but needed her older brother Ali’s height to reach it. Now, with IS beginning an assault on their town’s Yazidi people, she thought this may be her only chance.

The IS members arrived in five cars outside her home in Solagh, a village in Sinjar. They barked orders. Females and males were to be separated. A hand was on her shoulder pulling her towards the other Yazidi women and children.

Amera has not seen Ali since that afternoon of 4 August 2014.

“He told me, ‘my heart always be with you,’” Amera, now 22, recalls.

Amera is one of more than 6,000 Yazidi women and children kidnapped and enslaved by IS. More than a decade after IS began their genocidal campaign against the Yazidis – killing and displacing thousands of the religious minority – she is fighting for the estimated more than 2,700 still missing.

This month, she published a book about her eight months in IS captivity.

Read the full story here: