Western Australia has been named the fastest-growing state in the country following the release of new figures by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

In the last 24 hours, the state hit a population milestone of 3 million residents, with the growth driven largely by immigration.

Net overseas migration – arrivals, minus departures – made up for 64,902 people now calling the state home over the year to March, accounting for almost 75 per cent of the total amount.

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Sunny days and an outdoor lifestyle were the drawcard for David and Gemma Hanrahan, who moved with their daughter from the UK to Western Australia 10 weeks ago.

"The possibilities out here for her, as well as us, and what we've been able to enjoy out here are definitely worth the sacrifice," Mrs Hanrahan told 9News.

"Back in the UK we lived in a town, not in a city, and we wanted to re-create that – somewhere that wasn't as busy, so going somewhere like Sydney wouldn't have given us a lifestyle that I think we wanted."

The family now call Carramar, in Perth's north-west, home.

"You have so much free outdoor space, free activities, you cater for families, it was the best place for us," Mr Hanrahan said.

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The ABS population clock estimates that Western Australia grows by one person every six minutes and eight seconds.

And it's not just immigration making WA busy – there's also a birth every 16 minutes and 44 seconds.

Despite the population boom, WA's birth rate is currently the lowest it's been in two decades.

More than 25,000 babies were born last year, which is a 6 per cent drop from four years ago.

On the flip side of things, there's one death every 29 minutes and 43 seconds in the state, while a resident leaves to live overseas every 14 minutes and 33 seconds.

But WA wasn't always this busy.

The state's population was first recorded in 1829 after a mining boom saw hundreds of gold-hungry hopefuls heading to the shores on the west of Australia.

"The next expansion was around about World War II," Richard Offen tells 9News.

"And by about 1949, we were about 300,000 in Western Australia".

The state's come a long way since then, tipping the 2 million people mark in 2005.

Less than 20 years later, another million's been added to the tally. In the last calculated 12-month period, the state's population grew by 90,000.

That represents a 3.1 per cent growth rate, making it the fastest-growing state in Australia.

Victoria was the second fastest-growing state with a 2.7 per cent population increase in the past year, totalling 184,000 new residents.

Queensland followed with a 2.5 per cent increase and there was a 2 per cent hike in NSW.

The ACT had a 1.8 per cent rise, while South Australia and Tasmania followed with 1.5 per cent and 0.4 per cent population increases, respectively.

The biggest driver for all states was net overseas migration, other than in the Northern Territory, which registered a 0.8 per cent population lift due largely to births.

Overall, Australia's total population is up by 2.3 per cent to more than 27 million.

Western Australia's population boom has left many asking if the state's infrastructure can handle the increase?

Premier Roger Cook says he's hoping to mirror Queensland and to transform more regional towns into hubs and small cities to help cope with the influx.

A public health expert has praised radio star Jackie O Henderson for her decision to open up about her private battle with a drug addiction live on air this morning.

The KIIS FM host was in tears as she made a vulnerable statement about her use of pain killers, sleeping pills and alcohol in a three-year addiction battle that ended with a month-long stay in a rehabilitation centre in November 2022.

Henderson admitted while she was concerned about public judgement, she wanted to use her platform to help others in the same position.

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"I'm not crying because I'm ashamed, I'm just crying because I kept this in for so long and saying it out loud right now to everyone is scary in a way," the broadcaster said as she read the prologue of her upcoming book.

"I didn't know whether I should say this or not.

"No one ever found out and I was really grateful for that, but people will look at me differently and judge me.

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"I think sometimes it's important that we share these things and get rid of the shame that might be attached to it.

"I don't want to get to the end of my career and look back and regret that."

Henderson's admission as the co-host of one of Australia's highest-profile radio shows is likely to have a positive effect, according to Dr Robert Stirling, CEO of the Network of Alcohol and other Drugs Agencies.

"Seeking assistance for problematic drug and alcohol use is a courageous decision," Stirling said.

"We commend Jackie on her bravery and on her recovery.

"It is a positive thing for people with a high profile to speak up about their alcohol or drug use.

"It sends the message that these issues can and do touch many of us."

Stirling said there were a range of world-class drug and alcohol support services across Australia for those seeking help.

"We need to ensure these are properly funded to support those who reach out for help," he said.

"Community drug and alcohol support services have faced chronic underfunding which has left our sector hanging on by a thread. 

"We look forward to participating in the upcoming NSW Drug Summit to raise awareness of these issues and to ensure the government is removing barriers to treatment."

National Alcohol and Other Drug hotline on 1800 250 015 or call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

A nine-year-old boy has died and his father is fighting for life after the e-bike they were riding collided with a Honda Odyssey on the Gold Coast yesterday.

Emergency services were called to reports of the crash on Robina Town Centre Drive, near Bayberry Lane, in Robina about 6.15pm.

Paramedics rushed the 46-year-old and his son, who had been riding with him, to Gold Coast University Hospital, both in a critical condition.

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The nine-year-old died from his injuries.

His father remained tonight in a critical condition.

The driver of the car, a 47-year-old man, was taken to Gold Coast University Hospital in a stable condition for assessment.

An investigation has been launched and any witnesses – particularly anyone with relevant vision – are urged to contact police.

Friends and relatives of three people killed in a horror crash in South Australia say they have forgiven the Italian tourist behind the wheel.

John and Cynthia Clark and their daughter Jackie were killed when Gabriele Cairo's van hit their car at Everard Central near Blythe in November last year.

Friends of the Clark family say they don't want to see Cairo jailed as the judge weighs how to sentence the foreign national, who's stuck here on the other side of the world.

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"In this case, he didn't mean to do it and we all agree with that," Clark family friend Jon Reinke said.

"If he was a nasty person it would be a different ball game altogether, throw the book at him.

"But that's not the way it is."

Gabriele Cairo was on his honeymoon at the time of the crash.

The 29-year-old Italian tourist pleaded guilty over the crash which also injured his new wife.

Cairo had travelled all over Australia and has said he could not explain why he didn't see the give-way sign.

"He's extremely remorseful, he's thought of the Clark family and their relatives the whole time," Cairo's lawyer Michael Woods said.

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The Judge said Cairo was a good man and a decent human being, who unfortunately took the lives of three people through a lapse in concentration.

The couple has been stuck in Australia for a year since the crash, with their visas set to expire before Cairo is sentenced.

If he's jailed, his wife will likely have to return to Italy without him.

If he is given home detention, the couple will have to find somewhere to live.

Cairo's lawyer is pushing for a suspended sentence so they can both go home.

"In our opinion, we don't think he should go to jail, we can't see the point of that – their lives have changed like ours," Reinke said.

A would-be assassin has accidentally set himself alight while torching a getaway car following a botched underworld hit in Sydney's west.

Detectives have released the footage in hopes of finding the two men, who they allege were involved in a shooting on Chisholm Road in Auburn yesterday, targeting 19-year-old Khoder Hamdan.

The footage shows two men starting a fire on Haughton Street in Carramar before running away.

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One man's foot catches alight before his pants fall down.

He then collects himself before the pair run through a park opposite the car fire.

It's understood they were meant to flee in a second getaway car sitting nearby, but they became spooked when a resident pulled into the street. 

"They quickly lit it and they turned around and saw her…she was still in the car blasting the horn," the mother of the resident told 9News.

"One of the young men … because he was surprised by my daughter, his pants caught on fire."

Police believe the man would have suffered serious burns to his leg.

The two men were seen running from the scene towards Heiden Park and Prospect Creek dressed in all black, police said.

The car was found alight at 3.20pm yesterday following the shooting in Auburn.

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Detectives allege the vehicle was used as a getaway car following the shooting in Auburn, where three people were shot at by a group of men.

Hamdan was sitting in his car when the shots were fired but was unharmed.

Police also allege shots were fired at two people standing outside the home, with bullets hitting the house.

Anyone who has dashcam footage or CCTV in Heiden Park and Prospect Creek, or who may have seen the men, has been urged to contact Crime Stoppers.

Widespread flooding and landslides set off by a tropical storm in the northeastern Philippines on Thursday left at least 24 people dead, swept away cars and prompted authorities to scramble for motorboats to rescue trapped villagers, some on roofs.

The government shut down schools and offices — except those urgently needed for disaster response — for the second day on the entire main island of Luzon to protect millions of people after Tropical Storm Trami slammed into the country's northeastern province of Isabela after midnight.

The storm was blowing over Aguinaldo town in the mountain province of Ifugao after dawn with sustained winds up to 95km/h and gusts up to 160km/h.

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It was blowing westward and was forecast to enter the South China Sea later on Thursday, according to state forecasters.

At least 24 people died, mostly due to drowning in the hard-hit Bicol region and nearby Quezon province but the toll was expected to rise as towns and villages isolated by flooding and roads blocked by landslides and toppled trees manage to send out reports, police and provincial officials said.

Most of the storm deaths were reported in the six-province Bicol region, southeast of Manila, where at least 20 people died, including seven residents in Naga city, which was inundated by flash floods as Trami was approaching Tuesday, dumping more than two months' worth of rainfall in just 24 hours at high tide, regional police chief Brigadier General Andre Dizon and other officials said.

While thousands of villagers, who were trapped in floodwaters, have been rescued by government forces, many more needed to be saved Thursday in the Bicol region, including some on roofs. About 1500 police officers have been deployed for disaster-mitigation work, Dizon said.

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"We can't rescue them all at once because there are so many and we need additional motorboats," Dizon told The Associated Press by telephone.

"We're looking for ways to deliver food and water to those who were trapped but could not be evacuated right away."

Flash floods swept away and submerged cars in some parts of Naga city while mudflows from Mayon, one of the country's 24 active volcanoes, in nearby Albay province, engulfed several vehicles, Dizon said.

Stormy weather remained in the region, hampering relief efforts, officials said.

The government's disaster mitigation agency said more than 2 million people were affected by the storm, including 75,400 villagers who were displaced from their homes and are sheltering on safer ground.

About 20 storms and typhoons batter the Philippines each year. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest recorded tropical cyclones in the world, left more than 7300 people dead or missing and flattened entire villages.

An innocent stroll around the block in the weeks and days leading up to October 31 might trigger a cold sweat for some Australians.

Then there's a prickly feeling snaking up the arms and neck, shallow breaths or wave of nausea.

That's what Hildegunn Hodne, who lives in Tasmania, once felt during Halloween.

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Hodne had an "intense and deep" fear of spiders – known as arachnophobia – and the spooky decorations she'd see around the neighbourhood weren't so fun for her.

"Just looking at pictures of a spider would set off my phobia, so I would be jittery and sweaty," Hodne, originally from Norway, tells 9news.com.au.

"I often might have to go and have a shower just to get rid of that sensation on my skin that there might be a spider around."

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It wasn't the comically large spider decorations which would awaken Hodne's phobia.

She said it was the scary-looking small creepie crawlies which were hard to discern from real ones.

"When someone's decorated with a spider that could be the same size as a live spider, then it would trigger my fears," Hodne said.

The author and illustrator would "steer clear" of any decorated houses because of how uncomfortable it made her.

Thankfully, most of this fear is in the past.

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Hodne describes herself as "100 per cent cured" thanks to exposure therapy from writing her book Spider Stories: My Journey from Phobia to Fascination.

"I also work as a gardener, so I encounter them on a regular basis, and it's curiosity that's triggered now and not fear."

Halloween is still a tough time for a lot of people suffering from arachnophobia.

One woman from Five Dock in Sydney's Inner West took to her local Facebook group to call for compassion for arachnophobes during the spooky season.

She urged people to avoid putting fake spiders near fences or on gates in her neighbourhood because it's "limiting where I can walk".

Inner West locals love to embrace Halloween, particularly in areas like Five Dock, Lilyfield, Leichhardt and Balmain, where dozens of houses are draped in decorations.

While her plea elicited some light-hearted banter from locals, clinical psychologist Dr Sophie Li said the fear is no laughing matter.

Li ran a workshop in 2017 to help arachnophobes overcome their phobia and said fake spiders can trigger the same troubling anxiety as real ones.

"Images of spiders, spiders on the television, diagrams of spiders in biology textbooks, toy spiders… they would certainly be things [they] avoid because it produces an anxiety response," Li said.

"A lot of people don't understand or they can't empathise with just level of distress people with phobias have, they will think the fear is extreme and excessive.

"It's not just a little bit of discomfort. It's a flight or fight response. It's pounding hearts, it's sweating, it's trembling, it's sometimes it's actually freezing and not even being able to move, so the reactions can be quite extreme."

Li said exposure therapy, much like how Hodne overcame her fear, is "unequivocally the best therapeutic approach" for kicking a spider phobia to the curb.

"It's getting a person to confront their fear, but in a really manageable, graded kind of way," she added

"It is a really, really effective form of treatment if it's delivered in the right way by the right professional and if the person is engaging in the process."

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EXCLUSIVE: Lawyers for an Australian man who was jailed in Japan last week say they believe the court ignored crucial evidence throughout the trial.

The Tokyo District Court found Daniel Otto, 33, intruded into the Shinjuku home of Masahiro Masuda, 70, at 11.30pm on June 23 last year.

The court ruled the Australian man said "this is a robbery" before engaging in a scuffle with the older man.

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Otto's lawyers claimed the whole incident was a misunderstanding and the Australian's attempts to warn Masuda about the smell of a nearby gas leak were lost in translation.

Defence lawyer Rie Nishida argued Otto had been practising parkour outside when he smelled gas coming from a nearby building.

His lawyers claimed that after smelling the gas, he tried to warn the nearby residents of the potential fire risk by climbing their fence.

According to his lawyers, when he came face-to-face with the 70-year-old inside, Otto said in English, "Go to a door" – a phrase that sounds like "gōtō da", which means "this is a robbery" when translated into Japanese.

"Otto called out in simple English, saying, 'Gas, gas,' and 'Go, gas'," Nishida told the court in the opening stages of the trial.

The court found Otto reached inside the apartment and Masuda, who was gripping both of Otto's hands in resistance, was pushed back into the house.

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A Melbourne private school boy turned hoon has been blasted by a magistrate who called him an "entitled, spoilt, fool" after he filmed himself letting his souped-up car drive itself three times last year.

Sushant Mittal, 20, fronted Melbourne Magistrates' Court today, pleading guilty to more than 100 driving offences, including reckless conduct endangering life.

The court heard Mittal, who was 18 and 19 at the time, filmed his hoon driving and shared the outrageous clips to TikTok under the name "Sushi on Fire".

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In one video, the P-Plater can be seen speeding through the Domain Tunnel with his hands on his phone instead of the wheel.

Then, goaded by his brother in the backseat, he gets out of the driver's seat.

The modified Mercedes soared past cars on cruise control with no driver behind the wheel.

Other videos showed the former Haileybury student reaching speeds of up to 262km/h.

At one point he reached 187km/h on the Monash Freeway, passing 40 cars in 40 seconds.

Magistrate Malcolm Thomas couldn't contain his fury in court today, calling Mittal an "absolute fool".

"He's risking death and traumatic brain injuries and happy to leave families destroyed.. For likes? So he seems like some big hero?" Thomas said.

Thomas labelled Mittal as"immature, spoiled and protected from a lack of consequences".

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"He doesn't realise. He hasn't looked at the photos, looked at the victim impact statements. And neither have a huge number of young men who want to engage in similar behaviour for likes or to feel powerful," Magistrate Thomas said.

His own defence lawyer described him as "outrageous and idiotic".

Mittal's twin brother was sentenced earlier this year for similar offending.

He avoided a jail term, but today Mittal was told the same may not be the case for him when he is sentenced next month.

That's despite the court hearing he would be vulnerable in custody because of his privileged background.

Mittal moved to Australia from India 10 years ago.

The court heard both he and his brother have "never had to take responsibility for anything in their lives".

They were gifted luxury AMGs and BMWs by their parents.

When Mittal didn't want to do VCE, he was made a director in the supermarket his father owns.

Police say when specialist hoon officers arrested him in April last year, he denied involvement and nominated his friends and family members as drivers.

Operation Achilles was established by Victoria Police in 2021 to target hoon drivers.

A Victorian real estate agent has allegedly fled overseas after being accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from clients and employees.

Debra Lawry, who traded as Debra Watchman, is accused of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from her clients and staff, emptying the company's trust accounts and telling other agents she was in hospital while flying to Europe at the end of last month.

Primary school teacher Shay Preston had just sold her family home, and while she got the deposit back from Ray White, it cost the single mum thousands of dollars in extra expenses in the meantime.

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"It was very hard, very anxious, very stressful," Preston told 9News.

"It's been a very stressful month."

It is understood staff from Ray White Romsey, north of Melbourne, are also owed tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid super, leave entitlements and commission, including from Preston's sale.

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"I felt horrible, they have done, they were doing a job for us and regardless of who they were working under, they did a job," Preston said.

Staff claim they discovered their boss had been trying to book long-term accommodation in Italy after they found her office cleared out.

"I hope she steps one toe out of wherever she is and just they get her, because that's a lot of people that she's hurt," Preston said.

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In the lead-up to the real estate agent's disappearance, Consumer Affairs Victoria publicly announced it was looking to suspend or cancel her estate licences, alleging she had deliberately failed to comply with auditing obligations over the last four years.

Ray White said it is committed to paying all of the commissions owed to staff.

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