The co-author of the Albanese government’s plan to transform the Australian Defence Force and combat China has sounded the alarm about the lack of lethality in the navy’s surface fleet, foreshadowing a major shift to smaller and more heavily armed vessels.

Hundreds of patients have been awarded a total of $140m in compensation because of state government medical bungles in the past 13 years, parliament has been told.

A teenager has died where he fell after a horrific knife attack at a western suburbs railway station.

The immediate future of Queensland’s only children’s hospice has been secured with a $900,000 eleventh hour payment, after The Courier-Mail revealed funding for the vital service had not been extended in the federal budget.

Police Commissioner Karen Webb has said she “shares the community’s concerns” about why officers used their tasers on a 95-year-old dementia patient with a knife at a southern NSW nursing home.