Australia news LIVE: Plea for gambling ad ban; Voters mark down Labor on economy; Women hold more board roles

Now for something completely different: bandicoots are savaging the Australian truffle industry.

The native marsupials are sniffing out and gorging themselves on thousands of dollars of black, or French, truffles a night, causing a headache for farmers.

The omnivorous foraging creatures normally move quickly around the landscape nibbling insects and a range of native mushrooms and truffles.

But the unlikely gourmands have taken a particular liking to black truffles of the French variety, large underground edible fungi that sell for $2500 to $3000 a kilogram.

Researcher Annabel Ellis has come up with a promising solution – fooling the bandicoots by injected truffle-scented oil into places where there is no food.

Caitlin Fitzsimmons reports on efforts to train ravenous bandicoots to ignore the alluring scent of truffle.

More eyewitness accounts of the helicopter crash in Cairns are emerging.

The pilot is reported to have been killed and two other people injured after a helicopter struck the upper part of a waterfront hotel early on Monday.

Hotel guest Alastair Salmon, who was staying on the third floor, told the ABC he woke up to “a colossal ear-deafening bang”.

His roommate Harry Holberton likened it to a bomb going off.

“All over the hotel there was debris, parts of a windscreen,” Holberton told the ABC.

There are no reports of injuries sustained by people on the ground, police say.

Coverage of the crash is being updated here.

Australians appear to be navigating tighter budgets by making more considered technology purchases, with JB Hi-Fi posting lower revenue and profits amid a tough retail trading environment.

The electronics retailer’s earnings fell 8.2 per cent to $634.1 million and net profits dropped 16.4 per cent to $438.8 million in the 2024 financial year as it cut more deals with customers who were asking for discounts.

Chief executive Terry Smart described sales as “remaining solid”.

“In this tough retail environment where customers are seeking value, our brands continue to resonate strongly driven by the trust customers have in our low-price best value proposition,” he said in a statement.

The company is also declaring a special fully franked dividend of 80¢ per share, which will see $200 million go to shareholders when taken together with the final dividend of 103¢ per share due to be paid on September 6.

In early trade, JB Hi-Fi was up 10.2 per cent, the biggest large cap advancer on the market today.

Tina Zou, a glamorous property developer who amassed a $500 million fortune in Sydney before moving to Hong Kong, is embroiled in a dispute over an alleged theft of millions of dollars linked to an espionage case involving a dead Royal Marine in London.

In Hong Kong, Zou’s companies Yearshine Investments and TWT Global are locked in a legal dispute with a former employee, Monica Kwong, over the alleged theft.

The Hong Kong High Court heard in July that Zou has also been named in one of the UK’s most high-profile espionage cases over her role in commissioning former Royal Marine Matthew Trickett to track down Kwong, who moved to London.

Trickett, a security consultant who tailed Hong Kong dissidents in Britain, was found dead in a British park in May.

Why did the Sydney property mogul hire the same security consultant, which the Hong Kong government also used to find dissidents in London, to track down a former employee?

Eryk Bagshaw, Lisa Visentin and Daniel Ceng investigate here.

Survivors of what appears to be a massacre of civilians in Myanmar have recounted seeing hundreds of people, including an unknowable number of children, slaughtered in indiscriminate drone attacks near the water border with Bangladesh.

Squeezed to the riverbanks by the deadly shelling of Maungdaw town in Rakhine State, members of the Rohingya Muslim minority claimed they were targeted by the Arakan Army (AA), a powerful ethnic group warring with both the military junta and “extremist Muslim armed groups”.

The attacks happened on August 5, but details are now only starting to emerge, such is the chaos of civil war in Myanmar and the inability of non-government organisations to reach the worst-hit areas.

AA, the military wing of the state’s Rakhine ethnic group, denied responsibility for the assault on Rohingya trying to flee fierce fighting in the town by crossing the Naf River into Bangladesh.

Gruesome videos circulating on social media and purportedly filmed near Maungdaw in the aftermath of the strikes show dozens of mangled bodies of men, women and children on the estuarine mudflats. Another video shows masses of panicked people in the water and on land.

The news report is here (Warning: Graphic content)

Allegations of shadow directing have been made in an administrator’s report of the failed group that operated the Wilkie Creek coal mine in south-western Queensland.

The report by KordaMentha has raised the possible involvement of shadow directors in the operation of New Wilkie Energy, the group that ran the Wilkie Creek coal mine.

The KordaMentha report noted that Andrew Lowry, whose real name is Andrew Lowy, was made the sole director of all seven of the inter-related New Wilkie companies, one week before the group was placed into voluntary administration last December.

“We note that whilst the director of the group entities upon our appointment was Mr Andrew Lowy, there are multiple directors that resigned shortly before an appointment, and multiple other individuals whose conduct may consider them to be shadow directors,” the report said.

New Wilkie Energy collapsed with debts of $304 million, most of which was owed to private lenders.

The full story is here.

Survivors of a paedophile teacher who was moved around Victorian schools for decades received up to $34 million compensation from the state government – the highest payout linked to a state school offender.

Vincent Henry Reynolds was jailed in 2019 after pleading guilty to sexually abusing 38 children over three decades at state primary schools across north and central Victoria.

Reynolds, 83, is serving a 12-year sentence and will be eligible for parole after spending nine years behind bars.

The $34 million in compensation paid to his victims is the most the department has paid out in relation to a single perpetrator.

But one man, abused by Reynolds as a schoolboy and who did not wish to be named, said the damage could not be measured in monetary terms.

“It’s lives lost, education abandoned, health and happiness destroyed,” the survivor said.

Read the full story here.

Federal Housing Minister Clare O’Neil weighed in on legislation Labor will be bringing into parliament to force the embattled CFMEU into administration, saying it is possible the union’s allegedly corrupt conduct had added to construction costs.

“There are lots of pieces of analysis and it is entirely possible that there are elements of what’s happened here that are adding to construction costs,” O’Neil told ABC Radio National.

“The important thing is that there is one course that the government is focused on here and that is making sure that we take appropriate action and strong action against that union. If it is having that impact on construction costs, then we may see an impact there.”

Currently, the CFMEU is challenging the introduction of an independent administrator at the Federal Court, which could take weeks, as Workplace Minister Murray Watt will introduce legislation today forcing the union into administration sooner.

Greens leader Adam Bandt has not said if he supports the government’s plan to introduce legislation to force the union into administration, saying his party’s usual approach is to allow court proceedings to play themselves out.

“I guess in the principle that we support is that everyone should comply with the law, especially when it comes to some of the allegations that have been made,” he said.

Read the full report here.