Tim Fischer highlights education, leadership, bold thinking, and towns working together as his tips for a successful regional Australia in his final pre-recorded video speech.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison pays tribute to Tim Fischer at his state funeral, saying the former deputy prime minister's political courage in advocating for stricter gun laws had made Australia safer.

The humble haberdashery shop was once a mainstay of many a town centre, but is browsing the colourful bits and bobs in these stores in danger of becoming a thing of the past?

Operations will cease at Albury's Norske Skog paper mill, with 183 employees to lose their jobs after the company announced the sale of its Ettamogah site to Australian papermaker Visy.

A man collapses and dies while hiking with a family member on a remote bush trail near Mount Sonder in Central Australia. It is the second death on the trail in 18 months.

A $500 million methanol plant with the capacity to produce 1,000 tonnes a day of the chemical could begin operating by 2024 in the Darwin Harbour.

GRAPHIC WARNING: The Department of Agriculture is investigating the alleged inhumane killing of Australian cattle at the Festival of Sacrifice in Indonesia.

School students are learning meditation and reporting their emotions with apps in a bid to prevent disruptive behaviour in the classroom.

Darryl Butler had lived an intellectual life, but in a moment of crisis it would be dance and his study of the body that would save him.

Time is ticking for regional and remote Australians to have their say on a draft report into changes to remote tax concessions.

Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show almost 78 per cent of Katherine residents are now either overweight or obese, the highest proportion in the country. But the town's Mayor is not quite convinced.

The Northern Territory produces two thirds of Australia's total mango crop, but industry figures say the Top End's mango sector is facing serious threats from climate change.

As tourists flock to Uluru ahead of the October 26 climb closure, a young South Australian girl has fallen at least 20 metres while descending from the summit.

Resources giant Santos is strengthening its grip on the north Australian gas sector, as it moves to secure billions of dollars worth of exploration and production investments in the Top End.

In the turbid waters of the Wessel Marine Park in the Gulf of Carpentaria, an underwater garden of sponges, corals and creatures is revealed.

An Aboriginal corporation in the Kimberley is set to become the first to commercialise the breeding of native freshwater prawns.

Despite objections from Aboriginal traditional owners, thousands of Australians have flocked to Uluru to climb the rock before it officially closes this week. We travelled to Uluru to ask a few of them why they decided to make the journey.

In the early 1970s a company spent millions of dollars developing a cattle and cropping empire near Katherine in the NT. What went wrong?

Manal Aqrawe is a doctor with more than 20 years of experience, but she can't get a job in Australia even outside medicine. Her story is sobering, but far from isolated.

With 11 voyages and 300,000 recorded observations under his belt, population ecologist Eric Woehler has dedicated his life to building a dataset to help monitor and track bird populations in a changing world.

One week after the end of the Uluru climb, Parks Australia has flagged the first fee increase at the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in more than a decade and tourism operators could be the big losers.

Directors of building companies responsible for substandard works in Canberra could be held personally responsible for defects, under new laws proposed by the ACT Government.

A deadly pig disease that has decimated herds across Asia has spread closer to Australia with the Philippines confirming it has tested positive to African swine fever.

The new energy storage will help the ACT avoid blackouts and meet its commitment to renewable electricity.

The ACT becomes the first Australian jurisdiction to legalise the possession, use and cultivation of small amounts of cannabis.

A historic train carriage is destroyed in a suspicious fire at the Canberra Railway Museum, just hours before its reopening. The 1930s passenger carriage was gutted in the blaze and two adjacent cars were also damaged.

Firefighting experts and senior scientists tell Background Briefing they're concerned the Federal Government is refusing to guarantee funding for the only national research body for bushfires beyond 2021.

Sydney Roosters fans chant "back to back" as they focus on the positives of their team's controversial second NRL grand final victory in two years.

If Morrison had a message for farmers, announcing it on a Friday afternoon amid football finals, school holidays and long weekends is not how you'd typically deliver it, writes Kath Sullivan.

Haider Ali, 37, is returned to Australia to face court after he fled the country while on trial for sexual offences two years ago.

Several hundred online enthusiasts generate thousands of leads for investigators after a single day of competitive 'ethical hacking' across Australia.

Canberra's youth detention centre issues an apology and an undisclosed financial settlement after an Indigenous teenager filed a lawsuit alleging her human rights had been violated when she was separated from her peers and her belongings for two months.

It's impossible to count the millions spent on Australia's biggest police hunt, two trials, two High Court challenges, a judicial inquiry and 19 years of imprisonment.

Celebrated children's writer and novelist Gail Jones takes out two of six Prime Minister's Literary Awards, worth a total of $480,000.

Last year, Nigel Shedden got married to wife Belinda and together they moved into their dream home. Today, the couple are living with Mr Shedden's mother, and the home they spent 18 months building has been sold.

Australia is set to become only the second country in the world to have a dedicated national women's baseball competition.

Up to one in three Australian women have experienced birth trauma and one in 10 women emerge from childbirth with post-traumatic stress disorder, prompting calls for a major shake-up of the maternity system.

Chinese telco giant Huawei urges the Federal Government to reconsider its ban on the company providing equipment to Australia's 5G mobile network, describing claims it answers to Beijing as "unfounded attacks and smears".

The Australian Bureau of Statistics won't ask you about your sexual orientation in the 2021 census. But that won't stop it from trying to figure it out anyway.

The call comes as a probe into complaints handling and treatment of small business proposed better access to review schemes and beefed up compensation for taxpayers wrongly targeted by the ATO.

Steve Smith played every shot in the book and then some from outside the coaching manuals as his unbeaten 80 helped Australia to a seven-wicket win over Pakistan in their Twenty20 clash in Canberra.

What do John Farnham, Olivia Newton-John and Savage Garden all have in common? Apart from producing bona-fide pop bangers, they've all just been added to the official Sounds of Australia archive.

A decade of dry conditions and lower rainfall has left parts of northern Australia facing an early and "above normal" bushfire risk in parts of northern Queensland and the Northern Territory.

Stagnant domestic production and a slump in global raw sugar prices require serious action to combat future declines in the $2 billion sugar industry, a report finds.