Victoria's health department counsels Annaliese van Diemen over her tweet comparing the impact of COVID-19 with Captain Cook's arrival in Australia, but clears her of breaching the Victorian public sector code of conduct.

The busiest airport in regional Victoria has laid off more than half its workforce and has lost 95 per cent of its revenue — but says it isn't eligible for government programs like the JobKeeper allowance.

In 1979, the CSIRO imported a boutique wine grape from France. Since then the drop has been celebrated by growers and experts alike — but it turns out they've been enjoying a different variety all along.

Shadow Local Government Minister Tim Smith and Ratepayers Victoria president Dean Hurlston are calling for rates to be frozen and for the State Government to do more to help council staff, May 6, 2020.

The findings are expected to reveal what the royal commission made of the evidence put before it about whether Cardinal Pell could or should have done more to prevent children from being abused by priests in the 1970s and 80s.

The new coronavirus has brought an increase in racism towards Australia's Asian community, but experts feel the current laws are not strong enough to deter offenders.

Doctors label medicinal cannabis prescriptions a "bureaucratic nightmare" requiring "a massive learning curve", as patients say people in pain cannot wait months for relief.

A man who raped a woman in his Melbourne apartment, which he described as "the perfect location", has been jailed for eight years for the "violent act" he inflicted on his victim.

Looking to replace the second oldest radar on its network at Mildura airport, the BOM marks a spot at Cullulleraine.

Two more Victorian police officers are suspended over the leak of unauthorised photos of former AFL coach and player Dean Laidley in a police station, as the state's corruption watchdog says it will oversee the investigation into the leak.

The Victorian Government launches a new campaign against family violence, as St Vincent's Hospital records a doubling of family violence victims presenting to its emergency department during the coronavirus pandemic.

The campaign will launch in Victoria on Monday to remind victims help is available and to let bystanders know they can call out family violence even with physical restrictions in place.

Another "quite fat" king penguin is spotted on the Tasmanian mainland, with one wildlife officer calling the sighting especially rare "unless you're on a tourist ship going to Antarctica", although no cause for concern.

Sex, politics, and religion are traditionally avoided as dinner conversation, but in Queensland there's the emergence of 'rain guilt' — where you got some but your neighbours missed out.

Fish have been found on the streets of Yowah, in outback Queensland, after record rainfall.

Captain Tom Moore, the British Army veteran who raised more than $55 million for Britain's National Health Service, tops the UK music charts with a cover of You'll Never Walk Alone.

The magpie and the kookaburra are two of Australia's favourite birds and, although they're not endangered yet, concerns for their wellbeing and survival are beginning to grow.

After years of drought, drenching rain in March gives farmers in Queensland's south-west a reprieve from paddocks of dust and destocking.

Giant fibreglass dinosaur Big Kev has escaped extinction after a community outside Darwin demanded it be saved.

A man who assaulted a South Australian paramedic while she attempted to help him while he was having a mental episode has avoided jail time.

Alan Clarke thought completing a 500km run across some of Australia's roughest terrain would be his biggest challenge. But that all changed when he spotted something in the shallows.

Bob the Railway Dog, an icon of Peterborough in South Australia's mid-north, is again being celebrated with a book detailing some of his many adventures.

A flight school is forced to improve its safety regime after a student pilot who was sleep deprived and sick flew into Adelaide's controlled airspace after falling unconscious at the controls.

A man and woman are arrested after allegedly threatening a woman with a pocket knife and stealing her car before leading police on a chase in the Mid North of South Australia.

A community weeks away from being evicted has launched legal action against the South Australian Government in a bid to stop their town's closure.

Part of the Port Augusta Prison has been evacuated after a letter containing a mystery white powder was opened by staff.

Heavy rain has fallen over parts of South Australia, providing desperately-needed relief for some of the state's farmers but unfortunately some areas have missed out.

A diver reveals footage of the final resting place of Nyora, a beloved steam tug that sank in treacherous seas off South Australia 102 years ago.

Mining giants Rio Tinto, BHP and Glencore have listed several of their tailings dams across Australia as being at "high" or "extreme" risk to public safety if they fail.

A patient bringing a loaded gun into the Royal Adelaide Hospital and nurses being threatened with knives are just some of the concerning incidents plaguing staff at South Australian hospitals, the union for nurses says.

It's been 55 years since Geoff Prime was diagnosed with Bell's palsy and told he wouldn't work on the family farm again. He's now retiring from the farm, aged 94.

A young father who "snapped" while trying to settle his five-week-old son, shaking the baby so hard that his development has now "effectively frozen", is sentenced to at least 18 months in prison.

A woman and a man aged in their 50s are in a stable condition after the light plane they were flying in flipped upon landing at the William Creek Airport.

A former military pilot from WA is being praised after switching his light plane's engine off when it flipped during a landing on a remote SA airstrip. He and his wife are in a stable condition in hospital in Adelaide.

Award-winning 'heritage hero' Roy Taplin breathes new life into a 1917 Commonwealth Railways dining car.

South Australian police say they have discovered the bones of murdered man Martin Meffert during a dig at a property in the state's Mid North today.

A Flinders Ranges woman who killed a man after ramming him with her ute as part of a family dispute over a trailer is found guilty of manslaughter, not murder, with an Adelaide judge saying she "cannot be sure" the woman intended to kill.

Dairy farmers say they are devastated a 10-cents-a-litre increase in the retail price of milk in July has not been passed on to them.

Allegations a female firefighter was grabbed by the neck by a male colleague, and another suffered burns after being "blocked" from leaving a house fire, spark an investigation at a regional SA fire station but the findings will not be made public.

After allegations of misconduct and violent behaviour at a South Australian fire station were revealed by the ABC, some staff are now facing fresh claims of a serious conflict of interest as calls for a public inquiry intensify.

A couple charged with the criminal neglect of their baby boy fails to explain what happened to the child who was taken to hospital "close to death", a court hears.