The Australian government has provided the first look at Australia's new icebreaker, a ship it says will offer scientists unprecedented and extended access to the Southern Ocean and Antarctica.
Australia will no longer appoint knights and dames under its honours system, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced, arguing that the titles were not appropriate in modern Australia, and that Queen Elizabeth had accepted the cabinet's recommendation to drop them.
A merino sheep from Australia is making headlines after he was discovered in the wild with massively overgrown fleece.
An Indonesian firing squad executed eight convicted drug-traffickers from several countries on Tuesday, prompting Australia to recall its envoy to Jakarta and bringing an angry reaction from Brazil.
Australia has intercepted in the Southern Ocean the fishing vessel Perlon, believed to have been operating under a false flag in defiance of international conventions, according to an official report from the Ministry of Immigration and Border Protection.
One of Australia's biggest commercial fishing businesses has joined forces with militant environment group Sea Shepherd in an unheralded bid to stop pirate fishing boats. David Carter, from Perth-based Austral Fisheries, said the company was joining forces with Sea Shepherd because it wanted to lend moral support to the group's efforts to stamp out poaching.
China, Australia and possibly Thailand are planning to increase, replace or incorporate modern submarines to their fleets according to reports from Asia-Pacific countries. In the case of China they are expected to be nuclear-powered attack subs armed with ballistic missiles and should be operational by 2020.
Brazil's JBS, the world's biggest meat group, beefed up its growth in Australia with the 1.25bn dollars purchase of Primo Smallgoods Group. JBS said that through its JBS Australia business, it had paid Aus$1.45bn in cash for the supplier of the likes of ham and bacon to Oceania.
Leaders from the G20 group of nations agreed on Sunday to boost flagging global growth, tackle climate change and crack down on tax avoidance but ties between the West and Russia plummeted to a new low over the crisis in Ukraine.
China and Australia have sealed a major free trade agreement, as Chinese President Xi Jinping made a rare address to parliament in Canberra. The deal, the result of a decade of talks, will open up markets worth billions of dollars, Canberra says.