Dom Vukovic

Bronze statues of Aboriginal leaders Bennelong and Barangaroo have been unveiled in Sydney. The busts, which frame the door at St Patrick’s Catholic Church in The Rocks, were unveiled by NSW Governor Margaret Beazley who urged Australians to gain a greater understanding of their achievements.  Husband and wife and leaders of the Eora people, Bennelong and Barangaroo were communicators and mediators between their people and the British in the late 18th an…

Jan Harris was evacuated from her rental accommodation in Bega, on the New South Wales south coast, after already losing her family home to a major bushfire in the nearby town of Tathra the year before.  “I really don’t think you ever get over it. Like any grief, you learn to live with it,” she says.  “Some days it’s worse.” It's thinking about the things she lost that hurts the most.  “I have nothing of my children of whe…

A grassroots campaign is calling for big business to better support the local music industry ... and put an end to annoying hold music. Companies are being asked to prioritise Australian songs for their hold music above license-free generic tunes. It comes at a time when the industry is crying out f…

With the music industry having been catastrophically hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic, one woman has come up with an idea that could both put money in the pockets of local performers and improve customer wait experiences on the phone.

Durga Owen is a lecturer at Western Sydney University, but today she's driving around her neighbourhood delivering essential food hampers during the COVID-19 lockdown to help others in need. “And that means we mask up, we get out there, and we shop for people and drop it off at their door,” she tells SBS News. “We don’t want anyone forgotten, we don’t want anyone going hungry or anyone feeling like they’re alone through this lockdown in our area.&#x…

This year's national census will be the most inclusive and accessible survey yet, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The rollout of a raft of assistive technologies on the census website promise to provide extra support and resources for people who are deaf or vision-impaired and would like to submit their forms online without having to seek additional help.  “The whole idea of the census is to make it as easy as possible to complete and make it as less of a…

Monday marks eight years since the Australian government’s offshore detention program came into force. The anniversary has sparked renewed calls for asylum seekers languishing in detention to be set free.

Farhad Bandesh is now a free man, but up until last week the 39-year-old was detained with about 60 others at the Mantra Hotel in Melbourne. "Can you imagine, for 20 months they’re stuck in this hotel? They are suffering," he tells SBS News.  "And they spend six years in offshore detention centres. They need to be with us.” Mr Bandesh - a Kurdish asylum seeker and musician - fled Iran in 2013. After arriving on Christmas Island he was detained on Manus Island in…

A father-of-seven who has lived in Australia for more than 40 years believing he was an Australian citizen has had his deportation order overturned in a landmark Federal Court ruling.  Edward McHugh, 52, was born in the Cook Islands and adopted by a Queensland family in the 1970s when he was six years old. He went on to father seven Aboriginal children and was granted an Australian passport, leading him to believe he was a citizen.  But after being convicted in 2018 of aggravated assau…