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Brendan O’Malley has been a journalist with The Courier-Mail and Quest Newspapers for 30 years, covering Council, state politics, the environment, science and the far north Qld bureau. He currently covers courts and local issues in Brisbane’s inner-west, southwest, inner south and inner north suburbs.

Brendan O'Malley

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Local

Ashgrove State School year 6 studentsSebastian Cumplido-Richards, Luke Jacobsen, David Plater, and Ethan White, winners of the Australian open World Educational Robot competition, Ashgrove. Photographer: Liam Kidston.

Westside dominates top schools list: How they performed

Brisbane’s inner west has once again showed why it is by far the best area in the state for school achievement, and one of the best in Australia.

Local

St Peters 2019 Yr 12 grads Ben Kennedy and Ella Hussey-Simmonite completed International Baccalaureates last year. Wednesday, January 15, 2020. (AAP Image/Renae Droop)

How Queensland’s smartest Year 12s performed

It’s an intense, internationally-focused curriculum offered in only 21 Queensland schools – this is how the state’s International Baccaluareate graduates performed in 2019.

Local

Kenmore's eWaste Connection will have to find a new home after Council decided to throw its storage and office area open to bookings from community groups.

Council throws disabled out of recycling hub

How could they? That’s what a Brisbane recycling centre, staffed by entirely by the disabled, is asking after Council took away their storage and office space.

Local

Indooroopilly resident Michael Yates poses for a photograph at the site of a proposed development in Rylatt Street, Sunday, January 12, 2020 (AAP Image/Richard Walker)

Quiet character street. Giant unit block. Something doesn’t fit.

Plans to build a huge unit block on an Indooroopilly street make a mockery of a transition zone designed to protect the area’s character.

Local

Dead and dying red gum trees cut off from the Murray River, north of Swan Hill.

Heatwave triggers mass dieback in Brisbane gum trees

Mass dieback in eucalypts around Mt Coot-tha in Brisbane’s inner west, triggered by heatwaves, have left forest looking “autumnal’’.

Local

Fix parking signs or we will die: westside businessman

Ten years after he took up cudgels to fight “draconian’’ parking rules, a westside businessman says Council still hasn’t got it right.

Local

A firefighter patrols a controlled fire as they work at building a containment line at a wildfire near Bodalla, Australia, Sunday, Jan. 12, 2020. Authorities are using relatively benign conditions forecast in southeast Australia for a week or more to consolidate containment lines around scores of fires that are likely to burn for weeks without heavy rainfall. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

Bumper year for Brisbane burn-offs

Brisbane City Council has disproved claims greenies are responsible for a lack of controlled burns, achieving one of its biggest hazard reduction programs on record.

Local

A burnt house is seen after bushfire in Batlow, in Australia's New South Wales state on January 8, 2020. - Australian officials issued fresh evacuation warnings on January 8, 2020 ahead of a forecast spike in the intensity of out-of-control bushfires that have devastated vast swathes of countryside and sent smoke clouds as far away as Brazil. (Photo by SAEED KHAN / AFP)

Brisbane insurance premiums unlikely to rise after fires: expert

Australia’s peak insurance body has downplayed the risk household premiums will skyrocket in bushland parts of Brisbane in the wake of the national fire emergency.

Local

Give us a rural fire brigade before it’s too late

Brisbane westside residents say a rural fire brigade closed in the 1980s must be rebooted soon before a disaster can strike.

Call for burn-off KPIs to tackle bushfire crisis

Fire managers will be set performance targets for hazard reduction burns after revelations the State Government has failed its own targets, four years running.

Original URL: https://www.couriermail.com.au/journalists/brendan-omalley/page/183