The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. When Brittany Higgins first alleged earlier this month that she had been raped in a Parliament building, the Australian government’s initial response was silence. The following day, it went into damage control, announcing a review of support […]

MELBOURNE, Australia — When a government employee first went to the police two years ago with claims of being raped in Australia’s Parliament building, she dropped the case, fearful of losing her job. Two years later, she decided to speak out publicly, prompting a political fallout that emboldened her on Wednesday to file an official […]

MELBOURNE, Australia — Just days after residents of Perth, Australia’s fourth-largest city, were ordered to stay in because of the coronavirus, some were forced to flee their homes on Tuesday as a ferocious wildfire bore down on the city’s outskirts. The blaze northeast of Perth, which began on Monday and was fueled by hot, dry […]

MELBOURNE, Australia — Those who celebrate Australia Day, the country’s national holiday, associate it with barbecues and pool parties. But for those who protest against it, it is a reminder of the continent’s brutal colonization. On Tuesday, tens of thousands of people marched through Australia’s major cities in opposition to the holiday, which they instead […]

MELBOURNE, Australia — When the authorities brought Ramsiyar Sabanayagam to the Mantra Bell City Preston hotel in suburban Melbourne in November 2019, he assumed he would be there for only a few weeks. Instead, Mr. Sabanayagam, a refugee from Sri Lanka, spent the next 14 months locked inside his room for all but a brief […]

MELBOURNE, Australia — When the authorities brought Ramsiyar Sabanayagam to the Mantra Bell City Preston hotel in suburban Melbourne in November 2019, he assumed he would be there for only a few weeks. Instead, Mr. Sabanayagam, a refugee from Sri Lanka, spent the next 14 months locked inside his room for all but a brief […]

Australia on Friday canceled a roughly $750 million plan for a large order of a locally developed coronavirus vaccine after the inoculation produced false positive test results for H.I.V. in some volunteers participating in a trial study. Of the dozens of coronavirus vaccines being tested worldwide, the Australian one was the first to be abandoned. […]

MELBOURNE, Australia — One would think that koalas are easy to find — and count — because they are large, fluffy and mostly immobile since they are prone to sleep for about 20 hours a day. Not so. “It’s the fact that they don’t move much that makes them hard to spot,” said Desley Whisson, […]

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. This week’s issue is written by Yan Zhuang, a reporter for the Australia bureau. Former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke certainly never called the Queen “a pig” dressed “in twin set and pearls.” There is no evidence […]

MELBOURNE, Australia — The shark attacked on Sunday, when Charles Cernobori, 59 and a father of three, was bodysurfing off Cable Beach in Western Australia. A couple found him, dragged him to the beach and called emergency services. By the time they arrived, it was too late to save Mr. Cernobori. His death was the […]