Mini-tornado slams Bargara

The Queensland coastal town of Bargara has been hit by a mini tornado as bad weather wreaks havoc across the state.

A "MINI tornado" has ripped through the seaside town of Bargara, near Bundaberg, bringing down powerlines, tearing off roofs and flinging iron and windows across the streets.

Local councillor Greg Barnes has told The Courier-Mail he witnessed the mini tornado as it tore through his neighbourhood.

For our comprehensive wrap of the flood crisis, click here.

Cr Barnes said a man and woman are currently trapped in their ute after a Norfolk Pine was brought down onto the cab of the vehicle. They appear to be seriously injured, he said.

Cr Barnes said the tornado swept through the northern end of Bargara, impacting buildings and homes including his own.

This Twitter photo from Channel 7 Bundaberg shows emergency crews working to free a man trapped in his car after a pine tree fell on the vehicle during a mini-tornado. PIC: Pippa Bradshaw/ Channel 7

He said the most affected areas were between Bargara Road and McCavanagh Street and Davidson Street and the Esplanade.

Emergency crews have been activated and residents are urged to stay away from the area as there are live wires down.

Cr Barnes said he had heard reports the local bowls club may have lost its roof.

"It's not a good situation. I urge people to keep away. It's not something you need to come and see. It's very dangerous. There are live wires down in nearly every street,' Cr Barnes said.

This Twitter picture from Channel Nine News shows emergency personnel at Bargara after the mini tornado hit. PIC: Courtesy Nine News.

"They're going to have to shut down the power out here. We need the public to play their part and keep away."

Bargara resident Judith McNamara, who witnessed the tornado through her kitchen window, said it left a car in her yard with a tree through it.

"All of a sudden ... I looked up and a tree went flying through the air ... and the car went up," she told ABC radio.

Police Commissioner Ian Stewart said it damaged homes, shops, a bowling club and government buildings.

All roads into the town are closed.

with AAP

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Body found in shallow SA grave

Human remains have been found in a shallow grave north of Adelaide, police say. Source: AAP

A MURDER investigation is underway after human remains were found buried in a shallow grave on farmland northwest of Adelaide.

The bones and ragged clothing were discovered on Friday at Long Plains, a rural area about 75km northwest of the city, by a landowner clearing land for fence repairs.

Detectives say the remains probably lay in situ for several years before being found and are treating the death as murder.

A forensic anthropologist visited the scene on Saturday and conducted a preliminary examination.

The expert was unable to immediately determine the identity, age, sex and ethnicity of the dead person.

The cause of death is also yet to be established and an autopsy will be carried out on Saturday night.

Dental records and DNA from the bones is due to be checked to try and identify the person.

Detectives are reviewing missing person and previous murder case files.

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Reporters to be compelled to give evidence

TWO Fairfax journalists will be compelled to give evidence about a confidential source in a banknote bribery case after a judge rejected a bid to prevent them from testifying.

The Age journalists Nick McKenzie and Richard Baker were summonsed to give evidence at a committal hearing for former executives of a Reserve Bank of Australia subsidiary allegedly involved in a bribery conspiracy to secure contracts to make plastic banknotes.

They challenged the summons but on Friday Victorian Supreme Court Justice Michael Sifris dismissed the challenge, saying lawyers for the pair had failed to demonstrate grounds for a review.

Justice Sifris said it was his job to decide if the magistrate who ordered the pair give evidence followed the law correctly, and the consequence the journalists may have to reveal their sources was not the point.

"This case is not about the protection of sources by journalists," he said.

"It is an assessment as to whether correct procedures were followed and the law was complied with, and not the substantive correctness of the ruling."

Lawyers for the journalists had argued the magistrate's ruling requiring the pair to take the witness stand was unclear.

A barrister for the journalists, Kristine Hanscombe SC, told the court earlier this month the magistrate's reasons did not shed light on how compelling the pair to testify could lead to obtaining evidence about alleged misbehaviour of investigating officers, through leaking to the media.

The summons came after an article written by the pair on December 8 last year that stated an Indonesian man had done a deal to give evidence against some of the former executives.

The article, which was published two days before closing submissions in a pre-trial committal hearing, referred to senior government sources and prosecutors.

A magistrate ordered the pair give evidence and answer the witness summons, which asked for "information regarding the source(s)" of the article and required the reporters to produce all documents relating to the article.

Justice Sifris said if the plaintiffs' sources for the article are connected with the investigation or prosecution of the case, this may strengthen the submissions of one of the executives that the charges against him should be dismissed.

After Friday's decision, Ms Hanscombe flagged the possibility of an appeal or further court action.

The Age's editor-in-chief Andrew Holden told theage.com.au the newspaper would follow its code of ethics, which holds that sources promised confidentiality must be protected at all costs.

The committal hearing is expected to resume in Melbourne Magistrates Court on February 4.

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Aussie of the Year prepares to move on

Geoffrey Rush has spent a year talking to citizens across the country as the Australian of the Year. Source: AAP

ACTOR Geoffrey Rush has wound up 12 months as 2012 Australian of the Year.

In his valedictory speech at a lunch in Canberra for this year's Australian of the Year finalists, the Oscar winner said he was often asked what it meant to be an Australian.

Rush told how he gained a sense of Australia's multi-dimensional character while travelling on a train to Melbourne, snaking through the suburbs with ever-changing contours before dropping into the mix of people in Flinders Street.

He didn't talk with the other commuters, but they had much in common.

"We are all texting someone else who is not on that train," he said on Friday.

"Now I stand here with incomprehensible disbelief that I was at this luncheon exactly 12 months ago."

During his time as Australian of the Year, Rush visited schools and institutions throughout Australia, including Brisbane's "Ekka" show, where he sheared sheep, dodged prize bulls and drank beer with legendary barflies.

"It seems we talked with, at and to everybody everywhere on the vast shopfloor of Australia. It was amazing," he said.

Rush said perhaps the greatest moment was a visit to the National Centre for Indigenous Excellence in a resurrected schoolhouse in Redfern, Sydney.

"In the bus on the way there we had passed a giant billboard featuring the towering beautiful faces of my colleagues Jessica Mauboy and Deborah Mailman advertising The Sapphires, just about to open," he said.

"Our host Jason Glanville said simply 'this place endeavours and strives to stimulate a positive image for my people'.

"He said 'you can change perceptions in a flash, you know'. I now knew what he meant."

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Woman denies setting another woman on fire

A 28-YEAR-OLD Perth woman accused of setting another woman on fire has pleaded not guilty to the charge and will stand trial to fight the allegation.

Natalie Dimitrovska is accused of setting Dana Vulin, 26, on fire in February last year and has been charged with grievous bodily harm with intent.

She appeared in Perth Magistrates Court on Thursday via video link from Bandyup Women's Prison where she has spent the past 11 months in custody.

Dimitrovska was arrested at Perth International Airport on February 24 last year before she could board a flight to Macedonia.

Her lawyer argued that she was planning to escort her ill father back to Perth, but the claim was rejected by a magistrate who denied her bail in November.

Vulin, who was fined more than $3000 for drug offences in November, suffered burns to 60 per cent of her body and faces further operations.

Dimitrovska will appear in the District Court on April 19.

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Australian held in India for illegal phone

AN Australian man has been arrested in India for being in possession of a banned type of satellite phone favoured by militants.

The man, identified as S Ramachandran, 35, will be held for 14 days while the case is investigated, the Times of India reported on Thursday.

Mr Ramachandran, who was born in Sri Lanka, was arrested on Tuesday near Tiruchirappalli in southeast India and brought before a magistrate.

He was in possession of a Thuraya phone, the use of which has been banned in India since 2010.

The phones are used by militants in Jammu and Kashmir and were used by terrorists in the Mumbai attacks in 2008.

The newspaper said Ramachandran had been living in the area for a few years and planned to start a farm there.

"His immediate family members are in Australia where the family owns a departmental store," it reported.

Mr Ramachandran allegedly told police he had been using the phone because he could not get a signal on his mobile phone.

AAP cl

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Matisse criminals jailed in Miami

A US federal court has jailed an American man and a Mexican woman for trying to sell a $US3 million ($A2.85 million) Henri Matisse painting stolen from a Venezuelan museum.

Pedro Antonio Marcuello Guzman, 46, of Miami, was on Tuesday sentenced to two years and nine months in prison and Maria Martha Elisa Ornelas Lazo, 50, of Mexico City got one year and nine months.

The pair had initially denied in court that they conspired to transport and sell Odalisque in Red Pants. They then changed their story and pleaded guilty in October.

Venezuelan authorities realised in 2003 that the painting hanging at the Museum of Contemporary Art in the capital Caracas was actually a fake. The exact date of the theft is unknown, though December 2002 has been suggested.

The indictment accused Marcuello of negotiating the sale of the Matisse for approximately $US740,000 during several meetings with undercover FBI agents. The painting has been valued by experts at $US3 million.

Marcuello also agreed to have the painting transported to the US from Mexico, where it was stored. In July, Ornelas brought the piece to Miami from Mexico City.

Undercover FBI agents posing as buyers recovered the Matisse in August and arrested the two suspects.

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Aust bons stronger on CPI data

AUSTRALIAN bond futures prices are higher following the release of weaker-than-expected domestic inflation figures.

Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show the consumer price index (CPI) rose just 0.2 per cent in the December quarter, below economists' expectations of a 0.5 per cent rise.

Nomura head of fixed income Jon Linton said the figures made it easier for the Reserve Bank of Australia to cut the cash rate again over the coming months and, therefore increased demand for bonds.

But he said the rally in bond prices was relatively weak.

"We are about five basis points lower in yield, which is about the minimum you would expect in response to a weak CPI print," he said.

Mr Linton said the market was still not expecting the RBA to cut the cash rate from its current level of three per cent at its February 5 board meeting.

"People don't think the CPI print in itself is enough to change the RBA's mind," he said.

"The market is telling you this isn't a game changer."

Mr Linton said that, with no major pieces of local economic data due out this week, local bond futures prices would take their lead from movements in overseas markets over the next few days.

At 1630 AEDT on Wednesday, the March 10-year bond futures contract was trading at 96.730 (implying a yield of 3.270 per cent), up from Tuesday's close of 96.665 (3.335 per cent).

The March three-year bond futures contract was also higher, at 97.280 (2.720 per cent), from 97.230 (2.770 per cent).

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Govt urged to rethink uni loans

Almost a quarter of uni student loans are not expected to ever be repaid, a new report says. Source: AAP

AUSTRALIAN graduates who work overseas might still have to pay off their university loans as the federal government looks to reduce the estimated $6.2 billion that will never be repaid.

Almost a quarter of money owed to the government from HELP income-contingent loans will never be recouped, a new report says.

The Grattan Institute's 2013 Mapping Australian Higher Education report finds that students and former students have accumulated HECS and HELP debts of $26.3 billion.

Of this $6.2 billion is "doubtful debt", or money the government is unlikely to recover.

This is a rise of $1 billion from the previous year.

The report says most of the bad debt is owed by HELP debtors who are forecast to die or move overseas before they finish repayments.

Other graduates never earn above the annual threshold for repayments, which is $49,095 in 2012/13.

Report author Andrew Norton says the total debt and bad debt amounts are growing because the original designers of the scheme didn't foresee so many people would be going to university or subsequently working overseas.

"That doubtful debt is not a problem; it's a deliberate part of the design of the loan scheme," Mr Norton told AAP.

"But I think it is expanding in ways which the people who designed the loan scheme back in 1989 would never have envisaged and therefore didn't take into account."

The cost to governments was only going to increase as more people went to university.

Mr Norton said people going to work overseas before paying off their loans wasn't necessarily a problem, but the loan amounts were much higher now than the original $2000 annual flat fee.

"Now that we've got people routinely leaving university with $20,000 to $30,000 in debt, people leaving the country for example is an issue in a way that it just wasn't," he said.

He believed the government probably should look at ways to make the loan scheme cheaper for taxpayers.

Labor parliamentary secretary Mark Dreyfus said Tertiary Education Minister Chris Evans had asked his department to look at ways of retrieving the money from graduates who were overseas.

The National Union of Students is concerned one of those ways might be to deregulate fees, meaning students could be charged more.

"Students at university are paying more for their education than ever before and it now takes around a decade for graduates to pay off the average HECS debt," national president Jade Tyrrell said in a statement.

"It is crucial that students are not forced into shouldering the burden of paying even more for their education."

Liberal MP Steve Ciobo said university students using the public education system had a responsibility to repay the taxpayer assistance that had been afforded to them.

The Grattan Institute report also criticised the plethora of different HELP arrangements in place.

It said as new schemes were added, the system has become "confusing and sometimes seemingly unfair" because of different arrangements for loan fees and repayment discounts.

"You've got all these differences that don't seem to have any kind of real, explained policy rationale," Mr Norton told AAP.

"The scheme has been fiddled with over the last 25 years and we've ended up with something that is pretty messy and arguably unfair to some students."

He said it may be time to start again with a single, simpler loan scheme.

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Redmond says she's staying put

SOUTH Australian Opposition Leader Isobel Redmond has reaffirmed that she has no intention of standing aside to allow former foreign minister Alexander Downer to take her job.

Ms Redmond has faced renewed speculation in recent days as the deadline nears for Mr Downer to nominate for Liberal pre-selection to contest a seat at the next state election.

The party wants to have all its candidates in place at least a year out from the poll in March, 2014 and that process may be accelerated at Monday's state executive meeting.

Ms Redmond said she would not comment on what might happen at state executive meetings, but remained adamant she would not be stepping down.

"I've made it as clear as I can possibly make it that I'm not planning to go anywhere," she told reporters on Monday.

"I expect to continue to lead the party to the next election."

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Original Batmobile sells for $4m

The original Batmobile from the 1960s television series has sold at auction for $US4.2 million. Source: AAP

THE original Batmobile from the 1960s television series has sold at auction for $US4.2 million ($A4 million).

A spokeswoman for the Barrett-Jackson Auction Company in Scottsdale, Arizona says the winning bidder has not been disclosed following Saturday's auction.

The 5.79 metre-long black, bubble-topped car was used in the Batman TV show that starred Adam West as the Caped Crusader.

The car's owner - famed Los Angeles car customiser George Barris - transformed a one-of-a-kind 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car into the sleek crime-fighting machine.

On the show, it boasted lasers and a Batphone and could lay down smoke screens and oil slicks.

Barris' publicist says his client is pleased with the auction result.

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Police save man who drove into Swan River

THREE police officers are being hailed as heroes after pulling to safety a man who deliberately drove his car into Perth's Swan River in a bizarre Sunday morning incident.

The man, who is yet to be identified, was seen driving his white Hyundai sedan along a footpath to the edge of the water at the popular Barrack Street jetty in the heart of the city at around 10.30am WST.

Police said after stopping the vehicle, and placing some personal items including an empty jerry can on the jetty side, the man got back into his car, accelerated hard and ploughed through a temporary fence.

At speed, the car hit rocks at the water's edge, which catapulted the vehicle metres into the water.

Amazingly, witnesses reported then seeing the driver treading water in the river as the car sank, before swimming back under the waves and back into the car.

He was submerged inside the car for some minutes, before police arrived, dived in and rescued the man.

They performed immediate resuscitation on the prone driver, before ambulance officers arrived and continued attempting to revive the man.

He was taken to Royal Perth Hospital in a critical condition.

Inspector Derek Staats from WA police said the incident was highly unusual.

"He accelerated heavily, as witnesses heard screeching of tyres, and drove off," Inspector Staats said.

"They then observed him get out of the car, when it was semi-submerged, and swimming on the surface.

"When the car had sunk, the driver then swum back under water and got back in the vehicle.

"The police officers took immediate action ... they're actions are very admirable."

The incident occurred just yards from the Aquatic Super Series open water swimming event, which is taking place in Perth this weekend.

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