2016 in Australia


The following lists events that happened during 2016 in Australia.

Incumbents

January

  • 1 January –
  • *The Queensland State Archives releases 1985 Cabinet documents in accordance with the 30-year embargo.
  • *The National Archives of Australia releases selected key cabinet records for the years 1990–91 after a 25-year embargo.
  • *A palliative care patient tests positive for Legionnaire's disease at the Wesley Hospital, which was at the centre of a fatal 2013 outbreak.
  • 3 January – Brisbane teenager, Cole Miller, is severely injured in a one-punch attack in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane and dies in hospital on 4 January. A funeral is held in Brisbane City Hall on 13 January.
  • 4 January –
  • *Australia Post raises the basic postage rate from 70 cents to $1, in addition to instituting a priority delivery service for an extra 50 cents.
  • *Immigration Minister Peter Dutton apologises for a text message in which he referred to a female reporter as a "mad f—ing witch".
  • *The Australian stock exchange suffers after the Shanghai Industrial Index loses 7 per cent, rocking global markets.
  • 5 January – Electronics retailer Dick Smith goes into voluntary administration.
  • 6 January – Three days of heavy rain causes widespread flooding, the worst hit area being the Hunter Region, New South Wales, forcing home evacuations.
  • 7 January –
  • *Bushfires in Western Australia destroy many homes and other buildings, especially in the town of Yarloop.
  • *The Australian share market plunges after the Chinese government devalues its currency then shuts down trade for the second time in a week.
  • 10 January – Prisoner, Jake Devenney-Gill, escapes from the low security section of Adelaide's Yatala Prison. The State Opposition raises concerns that prison overcrowding may have contributed to the escape.
  • 12 January –
  • *Chinese steel maker Ansteel signals its intent to withdraw funding from the ailing Karara magnetite project, in Western Australia's north-west.
  • *Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews publishes a response to Victorian Coroner Ian Gray's 29 recommendations from the Luke Batty inquest, agreeing to implement all the recommendations relevant to the government.
  • 14 January – New South Wales Labor Party general secretary Jamie Clements resigns after denying allegations from political staffer Stefanie Jones that he sexually harassed her. Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten orders a report into the New South Wales Labor Party.
  • 16 January – V/Line initiates a ban on trains running on Melbourne railway tracks, with the exception of the Ballarat and Geelong lines, forcing passengers to switch to Metro services in the city's outer suburbs. The ban is initiated because a V/Line train failed to trigger boom gates at Dandenong on 13 January.
  • 18 January –
  • *Clive Palmer's Queensland Nickel refinery is placed into voluntary administration.
  • * Immigration Minister Peter Dutton announces in the Daily Telegraph that 72 children will be returned to immigration detention on Nauru within weeks.
  • 19 January – Billionaire mining magnate Andrew Forrest pledges to support the reconstruction of Yarloop.
  • 20 January –
  • *The West Australian Government announces an independent investigation into fire that destroyed 90 per cent of the historic town of Yarloop. The former chief of the Victorian Country Fire Authority, Euan Ferguson, will head the investigation.
  • *Tasmania turns the Combined Cycle Gas Turbine at the Tamar Valley Power Station back on to cope with hydroelectric power dams at only 20 per cent capacity after record low rainfall.
  • 22 January –
  • *Victorian Agriculture Minister Jaala Pulford announces a full-length duck hunting season for 2016 with modified bag and species limits, causing some internal dissent within members of the Labor Party, some of whom want a permanent ban.
  • *The Queensland Government begins processing compensation claims for Indigenous workers who had their wages stolen.
  • *Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman announces that the Government will change the Tasmanian criteria for Aboriginality to bring the state in line with all other states.
  • *The New South Wales Government pays compensation to victims of abuse within the Parramatta Girls Home for the first time.
  • 24 January – An eight-day construction blitz to remove three dangerous and congested level crossings in Melbourne's south-east begins.
  • 28 January
  • *Victorian Transport Minister Jacinta Allan announces that the CEO of V/Line has resigned due to disruptions across the V/Line network.
  • *South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill unveils the Northern Economic Plan to create 15,000 jobs and kick start other industries in the wake of the impending closure of Adelaide's Holden manufacturing plant.
  • 29 January – The Federal Government announces that it will set up a national framework to offer compensation to victims of institutional sexual abuse following recommendations from the Royal Commission.
  • 31 January – Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews attends the annual Pride March for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community and announces that the Government will formally apologise on 24 May to those who received criminal convictions before homosexuality was decriminalised.

    February

  • Multiple days – A campaign of school bomb threats is carried out at several schools throughout Australia.
  • 2 February – The Federal Government reintroduces its bill for the Australian Building and Construction Commission on the first parliamentary sitting of 2016.
  • 3 February –
  • *The High Court of Australia rejects a legal challenge to the validity of the immigration detention centre on Nauru after considering the case of a pregnant Bangladeshi asylum seeker who was brought to Australia from Nauru for treatment for serious health complications. In a majority decision the court said the woman's detention on Nauru was not unlawful.
  • *Former Governor-General and Archbishop of Brisbane, Peter Hollingworth, formally apologises to a child abuse victim at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearings in Hobart, saying his handling of his case was misguided, wrong and a serious error of judgment to allow John Elliott to continue as rector of Dalby.
  • *Brisbane Airport authorities detain Robert Somerville, a Canadian man suspected of fighting with a Kurdish militia.
  • 4 February –
  • *Victorian Transport Minister Jacinta Allan announces a temporary, stable V/Line service interim plan which sets out exactly which services will run as trains, and which will be replaced by coaches for the next five weeks.
  • *Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison refers to anxious Coalition MPs in marginal seats as "bedwetters" over their concerns over a Goods and Services Tax increase.
  • *At least 28 people fall ill from a Salmonella outbreak in salad greens.
  • 5 February –
  • * The Federal Court of Australia in Brisbane fines Woolworths for selling faulty goods and failing to promptly report on serious injuries caused by the problem products.
  • * A Senate committee hears that 7-Eleven workers are still being underpaid, and others are being physically intimidated to prevent them from making a compensation claim.
  • 6 February – Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews offers to accept full responsibility for asylum seekers facing deportation back to Nauru in the wake of the High Court of Australia decision.
  • 8 February –
  • *Philip Ruddock announces he will leave Federal Parliament. The Federal Government gives him the job of Australia's first Special Envoy for Human Rights.
  • *Ratings agency Moody's downgrades Western Australia's credit rating from AA1 to AA2, citing rising debt and deficit as the reasons.
  • 9 February –
  • *Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull confirms that the Federal Government is looking at privatising elements of Medicare as part of its innovations agenda.
  • *Nearly $43 billion is wiped off the value of the Australian sharemarket with shares falling by nearly 3 per cent to the lowest level in two and a half years over fears about the global economy.
  • 10 February –
  • *The Commonwealth Bank posts a $4.6 billion profit for the past six months, an increase on the same period last year.
  • *Trade Minister Andrew Robb announces that he will not contest the next election, and intends to pursue a career in the private sector.
  • *The 2017 Closing the Gap report is released, and shows that little progress has been made on increasing the life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
  • 11 February –
  • *The Federal Government abandons a plan to increase GST to 15% due to Treasury modelling which revealed that the plan would deliver negligible net growth.
  • *Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the National Party Warren Truss announces his resignation and is replaced by Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce, who is elected unopposed as Leader of the National Party.
  • *West Australian Police Commissioner announces that 700 officers have five days to begin exclusively targeting four key crime areas after an unprecedented crime wave.
  • * The Independent Commission Against Corruption provides to a parliamentary committee secret phone tap recordings which it provided to the Australian Crime Commission, as it sought to dispute the findings of ICAC Inspector David Levine's scathing report into the investigation into Crown Prosecutor Margaret Cunneen.
  • 12 February –
  • *Federal Human Services Minister Stuart Robert resigns from the frontbench after a review by the Prime Minister's Department finds that he breached ministerial standards through his private trip to China in 2014 with a friend and Liberal Party donor Paul Marks.
  • *An independent review recommends that Victoria overhaul its climate change laws with new targets to cut emissions.
  • 13 February – Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten announces plans to change negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount if the Australian Labor Party wins the next federal election.
  • 15 February –
  • *Former Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane announces his retirement.
  • *More than $1 billion worth of liquid methylamphetamine is seized from a shipment of stick-on gel bras and inside storage units filled with art supplies. It is described as the biggest seizure in Australian history.
  • *The Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission recommends a waste facility could be safely set up in South Australia.
  • 16 February – Australia's population reaches 24 million.
  • 17 February –
  • *Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison addresses the National Press Club of Australia saying that tax cuts will be modest and aimed at helping those about to slip into higher tax brackets. He also announces that the Federal Government will not be assisting the States with the rising cost of health.
  • 18 February –
  • *The Tackling Alcohol-Fuelled Violence Legislation Amendment Bill passes Queensland Parliament after the Government secured support from Katter's Australian Party agreeing to a compromise to postpone a 1 am lockout in entertainment precincts until February 2017.
  • *Australia's unemployment rate rises to 6 per cent in January, making it the first time that unemployment has risen in six months. The Bureau of Statistics figures show 7,900 jobs were lost in the month, driven by the loss of more than 40,000 full-time jobs.
  • 19 February – The New South Wales Land and Environment Court rejects a challenge to the Shenhua Watermark coal mine by the Upper Mooki community group, which had argued that the project was too great a threat to local koala populations.
  • 22 February –
  • *The Federal Government's proposed changes to Senate voting are introduced into Parliament. The changes are designed to make it more difficult for crossbenchers to get elected if they have a tiny proportion of the vote.
  • *Baby Asha is released from the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital, Brisbane after a week-long stalemate where her doctors refused to release her, fearful that she would return to detention on Nauru.
  • 23 February –
  • *BHP Billiton reports a first half loss of $7.8 billion and is described as the worst half-year result in the company's lifetime, thereby showing further signs of the mining downturn.
  • *The Federal Government agrees to review the Safe Schools programme, which is designed to eliminate bullying in schools, after complaints by Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi that the programme asks children to imagine that they have no genitals, or that they're attracted to someone of the same sex.
  • 24 February – The Federal Government announces an inquiry into the laws and frameworks to safeguard elderly Australians from abuse.
  • 25 February –
  • *The Federal Government releases its White Paper on Defence which allocates $195 billion for new defence equipment, including submarines, drones and a strategy to counter cyber attacks, as well as predicting that defence spending will reach $58 billion a year in a decade.
  • *Former Federal Treasurer Peter Costello is named as the new chairman of Nine Entertainment.
  • 26 February – Mal Brough announces that he will not contest the seat of Fisher at the next election.
  • 29 February – Cardinal George Pell gives evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse via a video-link from a hotel in Rome, saying that he is "not there to defend the indefensible".