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Australians are facing the prospect of having to visit sex shops to buy cigarettes, in a bid by lobbying groups who say ‘adult only’ premises should get a monopoly on selling tobacco products.The Australian Sex Party, which has one member of parliament in Victoria, has made the claim with the Eros Association, which represents the interests of sex shops and adult venues, reports ABC.The Eros Association is encouraging all of its members to get tobacco licences, and is campaigning for laws to force all tobacco retailers to sell the products in ‘adult only’ areas where minors cannot enter.

The Order of New Zealand The Queen has been pleased, on the occasion of the celebration of Her Majesty's Birthday, to make the following appointment to The Order of New Zealand:

Australia’s political opposition hopes to harness momentum from the Irish gay marriage referendum after it proposed a law Monday that would recognize same-sex marriages, something the country’s conservative prime minister is against. Center-left Labor Party leader Bill Shorten became the first leader of a major Australian political party to back a bill to overturn a national ban on gay marriage. Gay rights advocates fear that government lawmakers will be reluctant to support the bill as such a law would be seen as a political victory for Shorten over Prime Minister Tony Abbott, a former Roman Catholic seminarian and a staunch...

The National Security Agency and its closest allies planned to hijack data links to Google and Samsung app stores to infect smartphones with spyware, a top-secret document reveals. The surveillance project was launched by a joint electronic eavesdropping unit called the Network Tradecraft Advancement Team, which includes spies from each of the countries in the “Five Eyes” alliance — the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia. The top-secret document, obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, was published Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept. The document outlines a series of tactics that the NSA...

Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith is set to take over as boss of Seven Queensland, which is the regional group of stations for the network. Staff at 7Q have been told of the unexpected development which is set to push Roberts-Smith from the deputy role into the General Manager's position, sources have told Daily Mail Australia. While Mr Roberts-Smith was being groomed to eventually take the role from ex-Today Tonight reporter Neil Mooney, he has now had to step up after just one month with the network. ..... Corporal Roberts-Smith was thrust into the national spotlight in 2011 when he...

She died after 25 days on the pill. She was only 21. As in so many blood clot cases caused by birth control, she was misdiagnosed when she went to the hospital struggling to breathe and experiencing pain in her legs and ribs. She was sent home diagnosed with a bruised sternum. Four days later, she collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. On May 14, three days after arriving at the hospital, she was pronounced dead. According to an article in Cosmopolitan, tests revealed a large blood clot on her lung. Her name was Fallan Kurek, and she worked with...

The stage is set for Australian property to finally feel the pain so evident across other sectors of the economy. A series of headwinds -- combined with tighter lending standards -- ensures that the investor property boom is now on borrowed time. Yesterday, Westpac decided to cut the lucrative interest rate discounts offered to new housing investors -- following similar action from its major rivals last week -- as regulatory pressure from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority begins to take effect. The implication of this shift in regulatory policy will be modest at first but could soon snowball into a...

ONCE in danger of being branded a costly turkey, the RAAF's Wedgetail aircraft are now flying high. AFTER more than 1200 hours directing Australian and coalition aircraft in strike missions against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the six E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft have been declared fully operationally ready. Defence Minister Kevin Andrews said Australia now had the most advanced air battle space management capability in the world. But this didn't come easy. A succession of technical problems with the aircraft's advanced radar raised concerns that the entire project could be cancelled. US aerospace company Boeing...

AN arrest warrant has been ­issued for an accused fake war hero who told a magistrate he was dying of cancer after he failed to appear in court. “Major-General” Neville Donohue faces deception charges, including impersonating a public official, and is also being chased for failing to repay a $460,000 loan. Mr Donohue has repeatedly failed to appear in court, writing to a magistrate in February last year that he was dying of cancer and had just months to live. On Monday, police officer Vaughan Atherton told the Ringwood Magistrates’ Court Mr Donohue was “an old-time swindler” after he again...

CAN you recite Australia’s citizenship pledge? Tony Abbott believes we all should be able to rattle off the five lines of the oath and wants to talk to you about it if you can’t. The Prime Minister made that clear today as he confirmed plans to strip terrorists of their nationality. Mr Abbott wants a “national conversation” about the rights and duties of Australian citizenship as well as its privileges. He underlined the “profound commitment to this country” in the pledge to highlight the seriousness of withdrawing citizenship. “Every new citizen takes the citizenship pledge. Increasingly at citizenship ceremonies, all...

AGRICULTURE officials have yet to hear from sheep reportedly upset they've been sworn at. AN extraordinary complaint, in which animal activists reported shearers at a NSW property for abuse because they were upsetting the herd with abusive language, generated global headlines last week. While the case has been dropped, the issue came up at a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday with Nationals senator John Williams demanding to know if department officials had received any formal complaints - from the sheep themselves. "Not yet senator," policy official Fran Freeman said.

THE mother of a Sydney women who chose life under the brutal dictatorship of Islamic State over her children says she has been brainwashed. Jasmina Milovanov, 26, abandoned her two children, aged five and seven, with a babysitter earlier this month before telling friends she was in “Sham” — Arabic slang for Syria. The Muslim convert or “revert” told the babysitter she was going to pick up a new car when she left her Western Sydney home and never returned. She sent a text message to her Turkish-Australian ex-husband on May 3, while he was in Turkey, telling him she...

The remains of 25 Australian servicemen killed in Vietnam will be brought home four decades after the conflict ended. Tony Abbott and Veterans’ Affairs Minister Michael Ronaldson will announce today that the government will offer the families of Australian servicemen killed in Vietnam War and buried overseas the chance to repatriate their remains. More than 60,000 men and women served in Vietnam between 1962 and 1973 and 521 died. In line with earlier Australian policy, those killed were buried in the nearest Commonwealth war cemetery. After January 1966, a change of policy meant those killed were brought home. However, 24...

President Barack Obama is negotiating a multilateral trade agreement with the governments of 11 nations. These include Malaysia and Vietnam -- as well as Japan, Brunei, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Peru. This so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership would govern most of the commercial relations between the nations that sign it. "With over 20 chapters under negotiation," explains a Congressional Research Service report published in March, "the TPP partners envision the agreement to be 'comprehensive and high-standard,' in that they seek to eliminate tariffs and nontariff barriers to trade in goods, services, and agriculture, and to establish or expand...

The first air warfare destroyer built in Adelaide, the Hobart, is launched at Osborne. Picture: Tom Huntley Source: News Corp Australia AUSTRALIA’S most powerful warship, the Hobart, is being launched this morning in a ceremony at shipbuilder ASC’s Osborne headquarters. Praising the highly skilled workforce, Defence Minister Kevin Andrews said Australia could not afford to lose a naval shipbuilding industry. Premier Jay Weatherill drew cheers from thousands of workers at the ceremony when he praised them for their efforts and urged the Federal Government to build the next-generation submarines in Adelaide. “I want our Federal Government to trust South Australians...

..... Australia’s most senior Salafist cleric says if he knew then what he does now, he wouldn’t have come at all. On a Saturday night in Coolaroo, an industrial northern Melbourne suburb where more people consider themselves Muslim than any other religion, the sheik speaks with disappointment, a tinge of bitterness and overwhelmingly a deep sense of dismay. He says he feels like a foreigner in his own country. ..... “If I knew that one day this would happen in Australia, I swear by the almighty God I will never step foot in my — in your — country,” he...

The National Security Agency planned to infiltrate the Google and Samsung app stores to plant spying software on smartphones, according to new documents published from files leaked by Edward Snowden. The Intercept and CBC News jointly published the documents Thursday, which outline the snooping efforts designed by the U.S. and its “Five Eyes” alliance: Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia. The intelligence agencies came up with the strategy as a potential way to hack smartphones. The pilot project was code-named “IRRITANT HORN.” Essentially, the agents sussed out smartphone Internet traffic by browsing through its Web traffic database created...

'A sikh man in New Zealand removed his turban to save a boy’s life – and his story is going viral. Harman Singh used his turban to stem the bleeding of a five-year-old boy who had been hit by a car on his way to school. Men of the Sikh religion are expected to keep their heads covered by turbans at all times in public.'

MEMORIAL plaques for 15 war veterans were among 48 stolen from graves at a Frankston cemetery in a crime branded ‘despicable’ by police. Caretakers of the Frankston Memorial Park were horrified when they discovered the headstone plaques missing on May 13. They were taken overnight. Frankston RSL sub-branch secretary Brent Clyne said: “Desecrating a grave in itself is an abominable act but to also target war graves it’s just heartless and senseless”. “A war grave is a sacred site meaning so much to the Frankston Community, it’s where many of our war dead are laid to rest and these sites...

As authorities grapple with the threat posed by Islamic State, there are calls from within the Muslim community to tighten Australia's immigration policies. The founding president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC), Haset Sali, who also served as both a president and legal adviser to the organisation, said moderate Muslims had been sidelined by an Islamic leadership promoting more fundamentalist views. Mr Sali also said there was a widening gulf between Muslims who had integrated into Australian society and those who had not. "Sometimes the truth has to be faced and if the truth is awkward, then it...