MELBOURNE, Australia — She seemed an ideal political candidate in a country that likes to call itself the world’s “most successful multicultural nation.” Tu Le, a young Australian lawyer who is the daughter of Vietnamese refugees, was set to become the opposition Labor Party’s candidate for Parliament in one of Sydney’s most diverse districts. She grew up nearby, works as […]

AUCKLAND, New Zealand — For a year and a half, New Zealand has pursued a strategy of “Covid zero,” closing its borders and quickly enforcing lockdowns to keep the coronavirus in check, a policy it maintained even as other Asia-Pacific countries transitioned to coexisting with the viral threat. On Monday, New Zealand gave up the ghost. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern […]

Australia will lift its bans on international travel in November under a plan that Prime Minister Scott Morrison outlined on Friday. It is the second time in 10 days that officials have accelerated the country’s plans to ease travel restrictions. Until last month, Australia was poised to keep its borders closed into 2022. The tourism minister, Dan Tehan, then said […]

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. Recently, I’ve been reporting on the controversy over Labor’s pick to represent Fowler, where Tu Le, a young lawyer and the daughter of Vietnamese migrants, was passed over, with the party instead choosing Kristina Keneally, a party leader and white woman. I’ve […]

Construction workers in Melbourne, Australia, clashed violently with the police for the second day in a row on Tuesday in a dispute over mandatory vaccinations. Up to 2,000 protesters descended into the city’s central business district, the police said. Videos posted to social media showed workers hurling bottles at the police and setting off flares, while officers in riot gear […]

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. This week, I’ve looked out of the window of a high-rise apartment in Tyumen, Russia, through a skylight in Trorod, Denmark, and out a balcony in Toulouse, France. Not physically, unfortunately. A few lockdowns ago, a friend introduced me to a website […]

LETTER 222 Can the celebrity civil servant steering New Zealand through its lockdown succeed again? By Natasha Frost The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. Last October, I attended a rock concert by Don McGlashan, a veteran New Zealand singer-songwriter, in Wellington. Halfway through, he paused the show to […]

New Zealand will begin a three-day nationwide lockdown after reporting its first coronavirus case in six months, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Tuesday. The snap lockdown, which starts at 11:59 p.m. local time, was set off by the discovery of an infection in Auckland, New Zealand’s most populous city, that is believed to be the country’s first case of the […]

As the Delta variant spreads beyond Sydney into the surrounding state of New South Wales, concern is mounting about the potential impact on vulnerable, unvaccinated Aboriginal Australians. The Australian government had made Aboriginal people a priority group for vaccination because of the lack of health care services in the remote areas where many of them live. But as of Sunday, […]

MELBOURNE, Australia — Months after a former Australian government employee said she had been raped in Parliament House, the police announced on Friday that they intended to charge a man with sexual assault in the case. The former government employee, Brittany Higgins, 26, sent shock waves through the country when she said earlier this year that she had been attacked […]