The Latest Breaking News from the Australian Research Council

The Albanese government’s environmental reforms are likely to feature prominently on federal parliament’s agenda this week. A Senate inquiry into the long-awaited reforms is due to deliver its findings on Monday. Meanwhile, the Coalition is reportedly preparing to oppose the changes, potentially forcing Labor into negotiations with the Greens.

After becoming mainstream in 2023, generative artificial intelligence (AI) is now transforming the way we live.

We have discovered rare and very old human fossils on the Indonesian island of Flores, including an astonishingly small adult limb bone. Our finds are reported in a new paper out today in Nature Communications.

ASIO has raised Australia’s national terrorism threat level from “possible” to “probable”.

Since European colonisation, 29 million hectares (54%) of the forests and woodlands that once existed in New South Wales have been destroyed. A further 9 million ha have been degraded in the past two centuries. This amounts to more than 60% of the state’s forest estate.

Community-level opposition to marriage equality and the stress that came with it is still making some Australians in same-sex relationships sick years after the vote, our study suggests.

On January 1 this year, the commercial logging of native forests ended in Victoria and Western Australia. It was one of the most significant changes in the history of forest management in Australia.

The Southern Ocean is wild and dynamic. It experiences Earth’s strongest winds and largest waves. It is home to city-sized icebergs and the biggest ocean current on the globe, as well as tiny turbulent flows that fit inside a teacup.

Climate change has killed billions of corals and fundamentally changed coral reefs. The response, especially in Australia, has been to fix the symptoms, not address the cause – climate change for which humans are responsible.