More than 300 senior doctors, registrars, junior doctors, medical students and allied health professionals are heading to Alice Springs this week for Australia’s biggest rural doctor conference. Rural Medicine Australia 2011 (RMA 2011) will take the latest in rural and remote medical skills, knowledge, and issues to the heart of the country where attendees will be discussing future directions for rural healthcare in Australia.…

The sheepmeat industry has released its strategy to assure the welfare of Australian sheep in major Middle Eastern markets, including during the upcoming religious festival Eid al Adha. The plan co…

Victorian waterways damaged by the year’s floods will benefit from $16 million in government funding for a range of flood recovery and repair works. Five catchment management authorities (CMAs) will receive money through the Australian Government’s Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements to assist with flood recovery which meets the needs of individual areas. Water Minister Peter Walsh says the money will be used for riverbed and bank stabilisation, repairs to more than 500kilometres of riverbank fencing, revegetation, restoration of CMA assets and removal of debris which pose…

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) is once again being accused of not doing its research, following allegations that it intends to hugely increase groundwater extraction entitlements as part of…

Large variations have appeared in Australia’s state economies, dividing them into three clear groups, according to Commonwealth Securities' latest quarterly State of the States report. The report a…

Kevin and Ros O’Bryan admit they knew next to nothing about poultry farming when they bought Australia’s oldest game bird farm more than 15 years ago. It was supposed to be semi-retirement… “We saw…

A rare and elusive native rock-rat, re-discovered near Mt Sonder in Central Australia’s West MacDonnell National Park 12 months ago, has thrilled researchers by popping its head up again in a differen…

The oldest sign of life on earth has recently been discovered in Western Australia’s Pilbara region – a scientific breakthrough which actually changes the perception of how we came to be…. or at least…

It’s the muster that put the town on the map. Thirteen years ago, when 2,839 utes created an official Guinness World Record at a community sporting reserve in a quiet, agricultural town in New South W…

She’s famous for the stunning and creative baby pictures that first circulated in the 1990s, but never before has Anne Geddes been attached to wool – not professionally that is… But here it is, the…

AUSTRALIAN CLIMATE COMMISSION: The Chief Climate Commissioner, Tim Flannery, was today misrepresented in the Australian Newspaper in an article titled “Tim Flannery backs coal seam gas”. Professor Flannery commented that he was “very disappointed that the headline of the article seriously misrepresents my view and bears no resemblance to the speech I delivered.” Professor Flannery had been quoted from a speech he had made at the NSW Minerals Council environment and community conference, a meeting of environmental workers in the minerals industry. He released the following statement in re…

QUEENSLAND RESOURCES COUNCIL: Jubilant scenes in the House of Representatives yesterday following passage of the world’s biggest carbon tax would be repeated more boisterously in Canada, the USA and South America, Queensland Resources Council Chief Executive Michael Roche says. "The hugs and backslapping in Canberra this morning are nothing compared with the level of excitement that this tax on Australia’s key export industries is generating among our global competitors," he says.…

CHRIS DALEY: Much of Australia's agriculture and environment rely on the Murray-Darling river system. Yet the paltry 2,400 billion litres proposed to save it will only condemn it to a long, slow death…

 ANTHONY ALBANESE: Our industry has declined from 55 ships in 1995 to just 22 today. This is in spite of the fact that Australia accounts for ten percent of the world’s entire sea trade. But while 99 percent of our international trade is carried by ships, only one half of one percent of that is carried by vessels that proudly display the Australian flag. Those 22 Australian ships that still service our ports average 20 years of age, around eight years older than the world average. Our seafarers are also getting on in years with half of them aged older than 45. With so few ships, an agein…

CHRIS GRIFFIN, Australian Dairy Farmers: Coles has continually tried to claim that dairy farmers are not being impacted by the pricing of milk at an unsustainable $1 per litre. This is simply not true. The evidence is in and the Coles’ led milk price war is directly impacting dairy farmers. There is now no doubt that Coles’ gain is farmers’ pain. Dairy farmers in the key drinking milk markets of Queensland, northern NSW and Western Australia are being hit hard. In its submission to the Senate inquiry into milk prices ADF shows how. In the last seven months dairy farmers have had to conte…