Commentary In May, with the support of the opposition and the left-wing Greens, the Queensland state Parliament adopted the Path to Treaty Act 2023. Although media outlets and opinion pages have been saturated with stories about “The Voice” and Indigenous claims to sovereignty, there has been little discussion of this potentially divisive Queensland legislation. Unsurprisingly,…

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) says banks should consider attaching “deforestation” conditions on loans in a proposal most likely to impact farmers. The ACF claimed that over 200,000 hectares of koala-inhabited habitat in Queensland, Australia, were destroyed in the past 10 years and that over 364,000 hectares of native vegetation were cleared from 2018 to…

Australian researchers have developed the first genetically modified (GM) banana in the world and now await official approval from food authorities to produce and sell the banana crops on a large scale. The Cavendish variety of bananas known as QCAV-4 was engineered by scientists at Australia’s Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and is a major…

Queensland state leader Annastacia Palaszczuk says she is willing to travel to the UK to try and retrieve artefacts belonging to the ancestors of local Indigenous communities. The Labor premier’s comments come after the Queensland Parliament, on May 10, passed a new law—with bipartisan support—to set up a “Truth-telling inquiry” to investigate the “continuing impacts”…

Queensland state leader Annastacia Palaszczuk says she is willing to travel to the UK to try and retrieve artefacts belonging to the ancestors of local Indigenous communities. The Labor premier’s comments come after the Queensland Parliament, on May 10, passed a new law—with bipartisan support—to set up a “Truth-telling inquiry” to investigate the “continuing impacts”…

Australia’s Sunshine State has given away a $220 million (US$146 million) taxpayer-funded quarantine facility after it housed just 730 travellers over a 14-month period. The cost equates to around $300,000 per person. The Queensland Labor government will return control of the facility to the Wagner Corporation upon expiration of the lease, who will then run…

Commentary Talk about “drug reform” should always start with the recognition that non-medically prescribed drugs deform. Drug use unrelated to medical conditions nearly always deforms and harms health. Surely the Queensland government is aware of that truth. So why does it want to make life easier for the drug pedlars and their hapless clients? All…

Commentary Who should have the authority in relation to a child’s welfare? Most mums and dads would be confident in asserting no one loves their children or is more invested in their children than they are. As the wise saying goes, “Blood is thicker than water.” The bond between parent and child is strong and…

A perceptive diner has spotted dinosaur footprints in a restaurant in southwestern China, with an international research team confirming that they belonged to the sauropod—a long-necked and small-headed herbivore. Hongtao Ou, a self-reported palaeontology buff, was having a meal at a restaurant in Leshan, Sichuan, when he found evenly divided craters on the floor and…

Maternity services at two Queensland regional hospitals were under threat last year as the Health Department struggled to find staff amid a COVID-19 wave, freedom of information documents reveal. Email correspondence obtained by the state opposition under FOI laws details efforts to find obstetrics staff for the city of Gladstone, which went on bypass in…