“I thought this was a fresh beginning … I’m going to have to bury another child.”

It comes after six women, working under punishing conditions, were found to be employees.

Project Jonah said they would welcome volunteer help.

Police said initial indications suggest there are serious injuries.

Local Boards, not AT, will decide projects in their communities.

The MPI has confirmed 80,000 birds will be culled at an Otago farm.

Eastern Australia will be battered with a fresh deluge of severe storms and heavy rainfall over the next few days.

A band of rain and thunderstorms is rolling across southern Queensland, inland NSW, central and eastern Victoria and much of Tasmania, with more wild weather expected this week.

Senior meteorologist Dean Narramore from the Bureau of Meteorology warned the rainbomb may bring flash flooding for large parts of the eastern states.

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"With those storms, we could see flash flooding, particularly through southern Queensland and northern NSW, with those storms [brings] heavy rainfall rates, and that could also lead to dangerous driving conditions," he said.

"If you're out and about through country parts of Victoria and north-east parts of NSW and southern Queensland, and some of these storms, if you're directly underneath them, could bring down trees and power lines, lead to localised power outages and also cause inundation for homes, properties and businesses."

Western and central NSW, eastern Victoria and inland Queensland are forecast to be hit with more heavy storms and showers this afternoon.

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More rain is also predicted for the east coast of NSW and Canberra, though the showers will quickly clear tonight and tomorrow.

The high-pressure system will then move to south-east Australia.

"Another round of showers and thunderstorms for north-east NSW and southern Queensland could be severe as well," Narramore added.

These areas, along with north-east Victoria and even parts of northern Queensland, could see up to 100mm of rainfall over the next three days. This could result in further flash flooding in impacted areas.

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Large parts of Tasmania are also warned to watch for flooding as the rainfall continues to batter the north-east.

"With all this weather around eastern Australia in the coming days, make sure you stay up to date with the latest forecasts and warnings by our website, app and social media," he continued.

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"If the storms get really bad, listen to all advice from emergency services near you."

Early summer storms have pounded Queensland and NSW this week, with major flooding across Brisbane, the Gold Coast and in Sydney.

Flash flooding in Brisbane left Roma Street unrecognisable as suburbs across the city quickly went under on Sunday.

A flash of heavy rain forced planes to divert, streets to flood and ceilings to collapse in Sydney on the first day of summer too.

The winning aurora displays have been captured from rare locations in Australia, southern Europe, the southern states of the US, the Chilean Patagonia and more.

A young couple have been spared jail for a hateful neo-Nazi graffiti spree at a major university campus despite a magistrate labelling their behaviour as abhorrent.

Christopher Carrig, 20, and Taylor Bayly, 20, were sentenced today over the vandalism at Macquarie University in the early hours of January 25, 2024.

The pair were ordered to reimburse the university for the cost of the damage.

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Carrig was also sentenced over an anti-Semitic incident in which he intimidated a 20-year-old man at a bus stop, who he targeted for being Jewish.

The encounter was filmed and posted to social media.

During the interaction, Carrig told the man to remove a Jewish kippah – or skullcap – he was wearing and ordered him to kiss his shoes, Sydney's Burwood Local Court heard.

The 20-year-old also told the man: "It's quite low for a Jew to be waiting for the bus. Can't you call uncle Goldstein and ask him to bring you a BMW?"

Carrig's lawyer Rylie Hahn said her client had recently experienced significant trauma with the tragic deaths of two family members.

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"His mother and sister recently and tragically passed away," she said, adding that incident meant the young man had to move out of his family home.

Police located the bodies of the woman and her teenage daughter in July at an address in Marsfield in Sydney's north, prompting a major forensic investigation.

About a week before the bodies were discovered, a police search of Carrig's home revealed what a prosecutor today described as "more or less a shrine to the Third Reich".

Carrig was given some of the Nazi paraphernalia by his late mother, the court heard.

At the time of spray-painting the Nazi slogans at Macquarie University, both Bayly and Carrig were intoxicated and were acting in response to a socialist poster they had seen, Magistrate Mark Whelan was told.

The pair admitted to blackening their faces and entered the northern Sydney campus before they graffitied offensive symbols, including swastikas, across 24 locations.

The slogans included "f— Antifa scum" and "Heil Hitler", as well as references to the Australian neo-Nazi group National Socialist Network.

Carrig and Bayly, who have been in a relationship for about three years, have matching tattoos of the numbers "14" and "88" behind their ears, which carry neo-Nazi associations and were clearly visible as they faced court.

The two numbers are common white-supremacist code, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Mr Whelan sentenced Bayly to serve a 15-month community corrections order, while Carrig was handed a two-year intensive corrections order in lieu of a full-time jail sentence.

The magistrate described the offending as "abhorrent".

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The ongoing supply chain strike has cost Woolworths a whopping $50 million in lost food sales over the past 12 days.

In an update to investors, the grocery giant said the 12-day strike by the United Workers Union (UWU) has already resulted in huge losses and sales will continue to plummet if it is not resolved.

"The full financial impact at this stage is unknown. It will be dependent on the duration and extent of the ongoing industrial action across the affected sites, and the time taken to rebuild inventory ahead of the Christmas trading period," Woolworths said in an ASX statement.

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Woolworths chief executive Amanda Bardwell apologised to customers for the continuing strike action and said the company is working to resolve it.

"We sincerely apologise to all of our customers for the inconvenience caused by the inconsistency of supply across some product lines in some of our stores in Victoria, southern NSW and ACT," Bardwell said.

"We are working hard to try and improve the situation and would like to thank our customers for their understanding and for treating our teams with respect."

Woolworths said negotiations with the UWU remain unresolved.

It said workers are demanding pay increases "materially above inflation" at a time when customers are facing cost of living pressures.

In response, UWU national secretary Tim Kennedy said Woolworths could end the strike now if they wanted.

"Warehouse workers have been engaged in good faith negotiations for almost seven months as they have raised concerns about the punitive framework that expects workers to achieve a 100 per cent benchmark, 100 per cent of the time, pushing them into unsafe work practices as they rush to meet deadlines," he said in a statement.

"They are also fighting for a fair pay rise.

"In terms of shortages on shelves and Woolworths' statements about the impact of the strike, we have consistently said that Woolworths is in a position to end this strike right now by agreeing to a reasonable outcome with workers – and they should do so today."

Woolworths today lodged an application with Fair Work to stop striking workers from blocking access to distribution centres as stock runs low across the country.

The grocery giant is seeking orders from the workplace regulator to prevent the United Workers Union (UWU) stopping employees from entering the Melbourne south regional distribution centre and three other sites in Victoria and NSW.

The application alleges UWU members are in breach of the good faith bargaining requirements of the Fair Work Act.

"The application comes after the UWU refused to give any assurance of safe passage for team members seeking to return to work at our Melbourne south regional distribution centre yesterday and this morning," Woolworths said in a statement.

"A majority of the team at the site had indicated they wished to return to work to begin being paid, which will help increase supply of essential food and grocery products such as nappies, toilet paper and drinks to Woolworths' Victorian stores."

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Woolworths claims UWU created an "unsafe environment for team members who had shown up to work".

"The majority of our team members at this site are not members of the UWU," the statement continued.

"We will again be attempting to operate the MSRDC today, and we will follow the advice of the Victorian police to ensure the safety of our team."

The application has not been listed for hearing yet.

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Union members commenced industrial action at the Woolworths distribution centres to demand better pay and conditions.

The strike has now neared two weeks and as a result supermarket shelves have been left empty ahead of a busy pre-Christmas period.

Workers are demanding a pay rise above inflation, seeking an immediate 25 per cent increase and a further 30 per cent over the next two years.

They are also wanting the productivity "framework" scrapped, which forces them to meet 100 per cent adherence to a speed-related metric known as pick rates.

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