Hospitals are planning to close several vital specialist mental health beds across a state as more than half of public psychiatrists prepare to resign.

A suspicious blaze has engulfed a Caulfield Racecourse grandstand, sparking a police investigation.

Australia’s southeast sweltered in a heat wave that raised the risk of bushfires and led authorities to issue fire bans for large parts of Victoria state.

Another year is ending and Australians are poised to ring in 2025 with typical style and fanfare.

Two men have been charged with drug trafficking at the first Victorian festival to trial pill testing, while one person has been treated for an overdose.

Drugs and greed are likely behind the shooting death of a man as he left his family home in what police believe is the latest targeted murder linked to organised crime.

Two men are accused of trafficking 200kg of cocaine into Australia in a clandestine plot involving a small aircraft, a remote airstrip and night-vision goggles.

Bushfire-hit workers and sole traders can apply for income support as the prime minister visits the area where a massive blaze has destroyed at least three homes.

Hundreds of Australians are now back on home soil after being airlifted out of earthquake-stricken Vanuatu on Royal Australian Air Force flights.

Out-of-control bushfires are raging in different corners of the nation, confirming grim forecasts of a difficult emergency season ahead.

Australian rescue and medical teams have reached Vanuatu, authorities said, where at least 14 people including one French and two Chinese nationals were killed and hundreds were injured in a 7.3 magnitude earthquake two days ago.

After a powerful magnitude-7.3 earthquake struck near Vanuatu’s capital earlier this week, 148 Australian citizens have been assisted back home.