Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill says homelessness charities providing food and laundry services are "enabling people to live a lifestyle" without doing anything to stop antisocial behaviour.

You might expect to see wheelchairs and walking frames in the corridors of an aged care facility, but you might not expect to see a 850-kilogram horse.

There are fewer than 1,000 black-throated finches in the wild, but one north Queensland primary school has bred 120 as part of a science class.

The case against Queensland man Ronald John Toft, who was accused of trying to kidnap a six-year-old girl at an Adelaide caravan park earlier this year, is dropped.

Six staff members within Queensland's Youth Justice Department are sacked amid dozens of substantiated cases of corruption that include criminal behaviour, inappropriate conduct and using excessive force.

A five-year-old boy has died in North Queensland after he was hit by a car overnight while riding his bicycle along the footpath with his father.

When Magnetic Island resident George Hirst saw piles of household items left on the side of the kerb for collection, he believed they were telling a story. So he turned it into art.

In the north-west Queensland town of Ravenswood, two heritage-listed buildings at a school have been moved due to an expansion of the local gold mine.

Children sleeping at home have been woken and arrested in Alice Springs, according to lawyers dismayed at a potential government back down on the use of arrest as a last resort.

The Northern Territory cattle industry calls for freight subsidies as "emergency" destocking continues across the drought-stricken Barkly region.

Four Northern Territory public service executives are being paid more than $200,000 a year to facilitate a planned gas industry that some experts doubt will ever stack up economically, particularly as terminals for importing gas from "wherever's cheapest" secure approval on the nation's east coast.

Ucharonidge Station is the ninth cattle station Consolidated Pastoral Company has sold from its cattle portfolio.

An Alice Springs paraplegic man is pulled over by police for using a NDIS-funded wheelchair aid deemed illegal in the Northern Territory.

An Alice Springs family is feeling lucky to be alive after a speeding car missed a turn and crashed into the front of their house, with one passenger sent to hospital with head injuries.

Thread Together, a charity committed to reducing waste in the era of fast fashion, joins forces with a rabbi to help an Indigenous community stay warm over the cold desert winter.

Aboriginal traditional owners, politicians, and local community members are renewing calls for the Aboriginal flag to fly on Alice Springs's Anzac Hill 365 days a year, after it was raised on Monday morning solely to mark NAIDOC Week.

A Northern Territory judge previously sanctioned for "harsh" and "gratuitous" remarks from the bench has criticised other Aboriginal defendants. A legal body says the comments are "clearly offensive" but has not yet decided to make any formal complaint.

With groundwater levels critically low and the wet season yet to begin, some rural Northern Territory residents fear they may have to pay thousands of dollars to truck in water for their homes.

Sprinting into the path of a bucking 600-kilogram bull is not something most people would consider enjoyable, but it is what Cain Burns does for fun.

Dujuan, a 12-year-old who was nearly jailed as a 10-year-old, addresses the NT Parliament, urging them to try to understand troubled youth and look for alternatives to detention.

Residents in Mount Isa, Cloncurry, Longreach, Barcaldine, Blackall, Karratha and Kalgoorlie can expect to benefit from the new scheme, pricing airfares to the nearest capital city at a maximum of $800.

Two young South Australian entrepreneurs launch their own social enterprise selling sanitary products whose profits will go to disadvantaged women fighting period poverty around the world.

The Agriculture Department is standing by a controversial water buyback deal worth $80 million, which Labor leader Bill Shorten says is a "scandal" worthy of inquiry.

A Murray-Darling Basin community leader says the former agriculture minister originally opposed water purchases as the Queensland Government suggests there was a better deal.

A random survey of people living in the Murray-Darling Basin shows support for reallocating water from irrigators to Indigenous communities.

Emergency services are warning Victorians to brace for a cold snap and wind gusts of up to 130kph in parts of the south-east, while alpine areas may enjoy heavier snowfall.

New analysis of water prices in the southern Murray-Darling Basin finds water prices sitting at levels only previously seen during the Millennium Drought.

The parents of a teenage girl who died after falling off a horse say riders are subjected to avoidable risks when there is no way to trace an animal's history.

Victims of a bushfire almost a decade ago are set to receive millions of dollars in compensation following a ruling by the High Court.

A $30 million proposal for a sheep abattoir that would employ 150 full-time workers is opposed by a group of residents, who are concerned about potential health impacts and devaluation of their properties.