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 Australian Federal Police is assessing whether to suspend officer Ivan Kovacic after he allegedly committed an act of indecency on a woman he had invited to his apartment with her two friends to try some craft beer.

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.

Three accused Rebels bikies who appealed to the High Court to overturn an order preventing them from associating with one another have lost their bid, clearing the way for the NSW Police Commissioner to impose strict restraints on them, including a curfew and restricted mobile phone possession.

A Snowy Mountains RSL wants charges laid against the local council, which it has accused of desecrating part of a war memorial that a historian says has "state significance".

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.

Murray River water destined for Adelaide will be reallocated to farmers upstream so they can grow feed for their livestock, as part of a federal drought stimulus package announced today.

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.

To encourage more migrants to work in regions, the Government is relaxing long-held restrictions on temporary workers.

New research finds each feral cat in Australia will kill 740 animals a year. Together with their domesticated cousins, cats are killing about three million animals a day.

A leg wound that became infected after a fall eventually claimed the life of Bertha Aalberts, but her Melbourne nursing home had no record of the injury's severity, a Cairns hearing of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety is told.

Celebrity chef Maggie Beer says nothing can forgive the abysmal standard of meals given to some aged care residents as the royal commission into the sector hears people were served meals from trolleys near maggot-infested rubbish bins.

Letters of solidarity and more than 400 Aboriginal 'passports' will be delivered to Manus Island refugees as a group of boats set sail for Papua New Guinea.

Police have released new images of a fugitive's tools in a fresh appeal for information to find one of the country's most wanted, on the run for nine years.

After pleading guilty to drug possession and admitting he uses steroids, Afghanistan veteran and former Invictus Games competitor Tyrone Gawthorne is handed a suspended sentence for steroid and cocaine possession.

Running outside and swimming in the ocean is a rare luxury for eight students who lived through the terror of the tsunami that hit the Fukushima nuclear plant in 2011.

New laws are before Queensland Parliament to protect the Great Barrier Reef from harmful nutrient and sediment run-off, with a voluntary scheme not working fast enough according to the Environment Minister.

A 21-year-old woman suffers serious leg injuries in an attack by what is believed to be two sharks in Great Barrier Reef waters off Cape York Peninsula.

They travelled across the world in the 1950s and '60s to build a new life cutting cane in the steamy paddocks of north Queensland. Now Basques return to learn the story of their ancestors.

There are concerns, and equally hopes, that an extension to a ban on live sheep exports and cruelty charges against a live exporter are eroding the livestock exporting industry.

Australian icon Les Hiddins is back and instead of publishing another book, the Bush Tucker Man has gone digital, with a searchable website and a social media account.

For the first time in his life, Alistair Bowie, 26, doesn't have to share a home with up to a dozen extended family members and he helped to build the house himself.

Scientists are in a race against time to map "extraordinary and complex" ancient fish traps on one of Australia's most remote islands.

An ominous drone photo of sharks circling a whale beached near Albany in WA snaps top prize at this year's Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year awards, with the photographer saying the scene was "unreal".

A North Queensland Cowboys feeder club hopes its American import is more than your average Joe when he trots out for his first QRL game this weekend.

TV personality Ernie Dingo is travelling around Australia to improve Indigenous men's health by taking them camping in the bush.

A man accused of murdering a woman in Far North Queensland changes his plea to guilty two days into his Supreme Court trial and will face sentencing this morning.

People in parts of tropical Far North Queensland wake to early-morning frost as the region experiences its coldest August night in more than 60 years.

More dead wallabies have been found on a Cairns sporting field, taking the total number of carcasses in the past week to more than 30.

Myanmar's national sport is similar to volleyball but players use their feet instead of their hands. The game is now being regularly played in Australia by Karen refugees.

A potential vaccine for streptococcal infections is being tipped as a game changer in remote communities after a recent outbreak was detected in Cape York.

Farmers build bioreactors on their farms to reduce run-off of fertilisers that have been blamed for declining coral health.

Locals in far-north Queensland say it's "ludicrous" to install an Optus satellite small cell service in a remote Telstra-dominated area.

The manager of Australia's best-known locally produced tea brand says there is a real shift in the climate on its plantations in Queensland's far north.

Stakeholders call for an overhaul of the government's $5 billion fund that promised to turn northern Australia into an economic powerhouse.

Two teenagers who have recently sought help to stop chroming are speaking out about their addictions, which have led to the loss of friends and family members, in the hope of deterring others from heading down the same path.

The makers of Rexona, the deodorant identified by retailers and police as the product most misused by Queensland children, acknowledges its product was implicated in five deaths across two states through misuse but says there is "nothing that currently exists" to fix the problem.

The swimming pool is more than just a place to take a quick dip, as these seven watering holes around the country celebrate.