The disgraced Cardinal faces claims he knew of child sex abuse by notorious paedophile Edward "Ted" Dowlan and was involved in moving him from school to school, allowing the abuse to continue.

A teenager molested by Christian Brother John Laidlaw in the 1980s tells a Melbourne court he thought he was being "punished by God" when he was sexually assaulted at his family home, as the former teacher pleads guilty to abusing six boys over two decades.

A rise in the number of assaults against local government employees prompts Victorian councils to call for a change in sentencing laws to better protect their staff.

Locals in the Victorian town of Daylesford say they are shocked and devastated by council's decision to remove an "aggressive" gaggle of geese from the area, describing them as "a bit of an icon" in the tourism hotspot.

A Christian Brother who sexually assaulted boys at some of Victoria's most prestigious Catholic schools is sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

A scoreline of 79.41 (515) to 1.0 (6) has reversed a country AFL team's own, regular weekly triple-figure defeats. But is this just another tally of country footy's troubles?

Once the staple of regional travel, motels are facing an increasingly uncertain future as online alternatives bite away at revenue.

The ABC understands the Victorian Department of Corrections considers the Hopkins Correctional Centre in Ararat, 200 kilometres west of Melbourne, to be the most appropriate place to send the high-profile cleric.

Around one person dies on Victoria's rail lines every week, with most long-term train drivers experiencing at least one fatality in their career.

More than 500 protesters stop traffic outside the Victorian Parliament to rail against the planned destruction of trees sacred to Aboriginal people in Victoria's west.

Garry Lyon pays an emotional tribute to former AFL star Danny Frawley as he returns to his radio show, speaking of the "utterly, impossibly heartbreaking" reality of his friend and former colleague's death.

This specialist nurse teaches thousands of prostate cancer survivors how to revitalise their sex life after diagnosis, but she is the only one of her kind in an area spanning 48,000 square kilometres.

A child abuse survivor says the priest who assaulted him did so in the 'welcoming' home of another clergyman. His claim comes amid new allegations that paedophiles acted in concert within the Catholic Church.

A Victorian man accused of murdering Adelaide mother-of-two Suzanne Poll at her workplace in 1993 will plead not guilty to the charge, a court has heard.

A ratepayers advocacy group says a damning report into the risk of corruption within local government in Victoria highlights the need for greater scrutiny of regional councils.

The green hills of south-west Victoria couldn't be further from the latest outbreak of the highly contagious viral disease African swine fever (ASF) in Timor-Leste, but pork producer Xavier Meade isn't taking any chances.

A former private investigator is using her skills to try to crack a cold case murder in her own family.

A jury hears of the moment the woman accused of causing a crash that killed four people in western Victoria realised the deceased were "probably grandmothers" as well.

'You don't have to be a scientist to work on them': Vintage tractors, some more than 80-years-old go under the hammer, attracting buyers from around Australia.

Alexander McCall Smith

Ian Graham

Robert Rankin

Rob Minshull is an avid reader, and the producer of Weekends with Warren Boland

Coast FM Book Club reviews Robotham's 'Bleed for Me'

Making the right choice in life is never straightforward but is one of the main reasons we find ourselves and each other so fascinating. Three Dollars is the story of Eddie Harnovey, a honest, compassionate man with a brilliant wife, Tanya, and a beautiful, if possibly epileptic, daughter Abbey. Eddie's life revolves around work and the three women in his life; the third is Amanda, a childhood sweetheart who re-appears in his life with mathematical precision every nine-and-a-half years. Eddie has a lovely house in the suburbs, he has a strong moral conscience, he's intelligent and witty, and the world around him is falling apart. On the brink of bankruptcy with just $3 to his name, has he made the wrong choices?Perhaps a large part of the answer lies in the speed with which we live our lives. It is easy to feel sympathy for Eddie as he bemoans the pace of change: "Everything happens too quickly to be understood while it is happening. Analysis is impossible until the event is over."A more likely cause of Eddie's predicament may lie in the fact that his wife is about to lose her teaching position at the university and Eddie, an engineer working for the Department of Environment, has been asked by his wife's former lover to falsify a report to allow a smelting plant to be built by Amanda's father.The depth of these relationships is explored with insight and great wit, unpicking those worries that come to us at night while, like Eddie, we lie and notice (and usually ignore) the cracks and flaking of paint on the bedroom ceiling. For Eddie, it is a time to rank debts and what has become the persistence and tyranny of the day-to-day struggle to financially survive.Three Dollars was written in 1998, but set in the times of Australia's introduction to what the surely misnamed 'economic rationalism'. The obsession with material goods and the soulless never-ending pursuit of profit are both a target for Eddie's scorn as well as a source of hilarious black comedy. Written with great humour and prose which at times may seem just a little too deliberate, Three Dollars is as pertinent today as it was in the 1990s.There are times, however, when the characters' tendency to editorialise or sermonise is a touch overwhelming, even if the sentiments seem sound or relevant to Australian politics today. Take this monologue from Eddie's wife, Tanya:"People's fear of change and their despair at the lack of certainty in any area of their lives, particularly where the social and the personal meet, that is with respect to their jobs and income, if it lasts long enough, will lead them to abandon reason, to be suspicious of it and to look for scapegoats and simplistic solutions. The wisdom or correctness of a government's decision will scarcely be discussed but instead attention will be focused on the strength with which the decision was made, the apparent certainty, the conviction with which it was implemented."Admittedly, Tanya is a university politics lecturer, but the moral hectoring in the novel can easily distract from the plot and soon become tiring.Ignoring the occasional sermon, however, Three Dollars an entertaining read, beautifully written and extremely funny. It sat on my bookshelf for over a decade and was rescued only because the mixed reviews for Perlman's latest novel, The Street Sweeper, made me curious. No ambiguity about Three Dollars though: compelling, dramatic and a disconcertingly humorous reflection of the way so many of us live our lives. In 2005, Three Dollars was made into an Australian movie, starring David Wenham. A superb interpretation of the novel, both film and book are highly recommended.

Gold Coast author Richard Davis says the time is ripe to re-evaluate the life of Australian opera singer, Marjorie Lawrence.

The renowned painter launches legal action against his stepdaughter, saying she influenced her dying mother who "suffered from cognitive impairment" to withdraw $2.2 million from a bank account in 2016.

St George Illawarra's season is all but over, but a sensational debut from young winger Jason Saab in the team's latest loss may be a sign of better things to come.

Music teacher and actress Kimmie Jonceski performed a lead role in a musical while undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer this year and wants her courageous story to inspire other young women facing a cancer diagnosis.

Authorities say a man had been trying to land a light aircraft near Braidwood, one hour east of Canberra, when he was killed in a crash this morning.

Do you suffer from an indescribable feeling of vertigo, constant dizziness and motion sickness? Chances are you could have Mal de Debarquement Syndrome.

Australia has an extensive list of previously banned books that were once considered "obscene" and a threat to the country's morals and literary standards.

A court hears a former NSW Northern Beaches baseball coach allegedly kept torture tallies, diaries naming victims, footage of alleged assaults and was in possession of child pornography.

A New South Wales man claims he has been "deceived" by the state's public trustee after his elderly mother's will was allegedly changed without his knowledge.

Lance Daly has been through a heroin addiction, multiple stints in jail and gang violence and now wants to help people remove the marks of the past that are stifling their futures.

Illawarra is not a hotbed of top NBA talent, but LaMelo Ball has already done enough in the NBL preseason to rocket to the top of NBA mock drafts.

Energy Australia has apologised to a customer for issuing him multiple bills that 'did not make sense' despite his repeated complaints.

Stephen Grimmer, the brother of murdered toddler Cheryl Grimmer who disappeared in 1970, pleads guilty to indecently assaulting a 14-year-old girl.

With so much of Australia's allure to tourists based on our oceans and waterways, a charity founder has launched a campaign he'd like to see played in airports and pushed via visa applications.