Latest news with #CoffsHarbour
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- General
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Why Pauline Hanson is the surprise massive WINNER of the election
The final make up of the Senate after the federal election has been decided, with One Nation claiming the final seat to equal its best standing in federal parliament. One Nation's Warwick Stacey won the sixth slot in NSW after the Australian Electoral Commission declared the results for the state on Friday. Labor was expected to pick up the final seat in NSW, but a strong flow of preferences meant the One Nation candidate was able to get over the line. It means Pauline Hanson 's party will have four senators in the next parliament, equalling its high watermark from 2016. Mr Stacey will join Senator Hanson alongside re-elected Queensland senator Malcolm Roberts and the newly elected Tyron Whitten from Western Australia. The other five senators elected from NSW included Labor's Tony Sheldon and Tim Ayres, Liberals Andrew Bragg and Jessica Collins as well as Mehreen Faruqi from the Greens. Labor will have 28 senators in the 76-seat upper house, with the coalition having 27, the Greens with 11, One Nation with four and the remaining six being independents or from minor parties. A total of 39 votes is needed to pass laws in the Senate, meaning Labor can ensure passage of bills with the support of just the Greens or the coalition. It comes as the Australian Electoral Commission launched an investigation after almost half of all votes from a polling place were ruled as informal. Of the 111 people who voted at a polling booth in Missabotti near Coffs Harbour in the seat of Cowper, 50 ballots for the lower house were filled out incorrectly. Residents from the area told the ABC they were informed by election staff to number both ballot papers from one to six, despite there being 11 candidates. Ballots for the House of Representatives must have all boxes numbered in order of preference to be deemed valid. A minimum of six boxes must be filled out on the Senate ballot paper for the party of the voter's choice. The high informal votes would not have affected the outcome in the seat, with Nationals MP Pat Conaghan winning by more than 5,000 votes. 'If the reports from Cowper are accurate and our staff were providing incorrect instructions, this is disappointing,' an electoral commission spokesman said. 'The AEC takes ballot paper formality very seriously - our intention is always to maximise the number of voters who are able to participate in a federal election by casting a formal vote.'
ABC News
6 days ago
- General
- ABC News
AEC investigates high informal vote at Missabotti election polling place
People who cast ballots in the recent federal election at a small booth in northern New South Wales are worried they will be known as the "stupidest" voters in Australia. Of the 111 people who voted at Missabotti, south-west of Coffs Harbour, 50 filled out the House of Representatives ballot incorrectly. Many are now blaming incorrect directions issued by Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) staff. Missabotti is in the electorate of Cowper, which had 11 lower house candidates. Resident Adrian Weir said he could clearly recall his conversation with an AEC employee who handed over his ballot papers. "They just said to vote one to six, that's all you needed to do [on both ballot papers]," Mr Weir said. The experience has sparked a formal AEC investigation and left residents calling for better training procedures for regional election staff. One resident joked during an emergency meeting of concerned locals that "everyone is going to think we're the stupidest people in Australia". Another resident, Dawn Kennedy, said she carefully researched how she would cast her vote in the federal election. But she said AEC staff handing over her ballot papers told her only to number six candidates for the House of Representatives. "I said straight away, 'Isn't it one to 11?', and she said, 'No, it can be just one to six,'" Ms Kennedy said. Ms Kennedy followed the instructions and cast her vote but became confused after overhearing contrary instructions from a friend handing out how-to-vote cards. "So I went back inside to question it, and [was told], 'No, you can vote one to six on the House of Representatives form.'" "He said it was a valid vote." Days after the election, Ms Kennedy realised something had gone horribly wrong after her daughter noticed a massive spike in the rate of informal voting in Missabotti. It recorded the highest increase in informal voting (up 38.35 per cent) anywhere in Australia, other than a few mobile polling teams deployed to hospitals and prisons. AEC spokesperson Alex Morris said it was clear that something had gone wrong in Missabotti. "The open question now is what exactly has happened here, and what instructions were provided to voters?" he said. Mr Morris said the informal votes would not change the result in Cowper, which was won by Nationals MP Pat Conaghan by a margin of 5,441 votes. The AEC said it had not received allegations of incorrect information being issued by staff at other polling places. Missabotti resident Spencer Parry said he too was given the wrong information about how to vote, but decided to follow the instructions on the ballot paper to number every candidate. He said the incident had shaken his faith in the democratic system. "How did that come about? Was it just one person's mistake or are there many other polling booths around the country that would hold the same wrong information?
ABC News
24-05-2025
- ABC News
Vision of floodwaters in Frederickton, NSW
Photo shows Body found in Coffs Harbour: SES personnel dispatch rescue boats from an emergency vehicle, moving down a submerged road. Has Video Duration: 5 minutes 26 seconds . 5 m
ABC News
24-05-2025
- ABC News
Drone footage of floodwaters in Kempsey, NSW
Photo shows Body found in Coffs Harbour: SES personnel dispatch rescue boats from an emergency vehicle, moving down a submerged road. Has Video Duration: 5 minutes 26 seconds . 5 m
SBS Australia
23-05-2025
- Business
- SBS Australia
Could Australia become a coffee-growing nation?
The coffee's steaming hot at the Happy Frog café in Coffs Harbour in northern NSW. This cup is one of six billion consumed nationwide each year, according to Agrifutures Australia. Unlike most, this one is made with locally grown beans. The cafe's owner is Kim Towner: 'That's been a real passion of mine since I first went into the cafe business, was to buy as close to home as I could. And it's just a win-win all round for everybody, I think. It's beautiful coffee. We get to know the people that have grown it. And that has been probably my biggest, favouritest thing. But of course it's got the low food miles, so it's good for the environment. I know its story.' Australia grows less than half a percent of all the coffee we drink. Producing more sounds a great idea, but is it worth the effort? At Southern Cross University in Lismore, Professor Tobias Kretzschmar is finding out by trialling new trees. 'So we're part of a larger project with the World Coffee Research. They're interested in trialling 20 to 30 coffee varieties all around the globe. So we piggybacked on that global project to be able to trial those varieties in Australia. And our aim for Australia is to find new varieties that are better suited for this environment and better suited for the mechanized conditions of coffee farming in Australia.' Most Australian coffee grows in Queensland or northern New South Wales where farmers face climate challenges. 'They put their money on a variety that's much too vigorous for this environment. So we're looking at something that's semi-dwarf, easy to be machine harvested. So the next stage would be to take the two to three varieties that we're thinking will out-compete the current varieties and trial them at scale.' Globally, coffee exports spiked recently after a run of falls and prices remained volatile due to trade tensions and fears of economic slowdown. Paul Joules is a research analyst with Rabobank. 'In April we did see Arabica prices ease slightly but nonetheless on a year-on-year basis we're still around 100% higher.' And that means ever-rising prices at the coffee shop. So could Australia ever compete with Brazil or Colombia? Professor Tobias Kretzschmar again: 'We're covering around half a percent of what the Australian consumer is drinking at the moment. If we can double that, that'd be fantastic. If we can triple or quadruple that, we'd be punching above our weight.' It's also about finding a coffee style with broad appeal. For clues, scientists have turned to a unique taste wheel which helps analyse the makeup of a particular taste. Dr Ben Liu is behind the taste wheel. 'First we actually have this coffee tasting by different professionals. They work in the coffee industry for decades. And then we actually collect a different type of data from them and from description from them. And then we summarise them with also some of the score for the taste and the flavour of the coffee. And then we bring the exact same sample they taste back to our lab and do carry out analysis. And so we can associate the data from the chemistry also to the taste and the smell of the coffee.' The taste wheel doesn't just identify the flavour of the coffee, but its character as well and uses words as diverse as 'yoghurty', 'apple like' and even dirty. ' So this coffee character wheel basically helps the panel members to actually get an idea of what they think, what could be used to describe the taste, the flavour, or a different mouthfeel they actually feel. But saying that there are some bad words there because there are also some bad taste coffee there. Unfortunately, during our coffee research, (we not just taste the best coffee, we also taste bad coffee as well.' But Dr Liu says Australian grown coffee does have some common characteristics: 'We collect 100 single-origin coffee around Australian farmers. And when we run this tasting panel, the words that keep coming out for Australian coffee are they are sweet and they are fruity and they are nutty and roasty. So that's the thing that's coming up the most for Australian coffee.' For Kim Towner, the decision to use locally grown coffee was simple. 'All of these things you hear different blends and different stories about the coffee. But I just thought it tasted good. And it's super fresh. We know that everybody is getting paid fairly for it. We know that it hasn't had to travel across the ocean and up and down highways to get here. It's just over the hill. You can't get much closer than that. And I think that's important with everything. As much as possible, if we can source from our local area and just use as much of that as we can, we're going to make a big difference to how we look after the planet.'
