An Australian received a bravery award on Monday for grabbing a 3.7-meter (12-foot) great white shark by the tail as it mauled a snorkeler.

An aborted Labor party leadership coup has badly tainted the standing of the Australian prime minister's office with most voters also seeing Julia Gillard as a “lame duck” leader, a poll showed Sunday, six months ahead of a general election.

Three Australian government ministers quit their portfolios on Friday in the continuing fallout from a bungled leadership showdown that reinforces perceptions of a crisis in Prime Minister Julia Gillard's administration six months before national elections.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered a historic national apology in Parliament on Thursday to the thousands of unwed mothers who were forced by government policies to give up their babies for adoption over several decades.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard faced down a leadership challenge Thursday, emerging victorious from a party vote after former leader Kevin Rudd made a last-minute decision not to run.

The founder of Sea Shepherd left the environmental group's fleet of anti-whaling ships before they docked in Australia on Wednesday, though the government says it has no reason to arrest him at the moment.

Authorities in Australia are searching for a truck driver who dumped more than two tons of dangerous asbestos waste on a road near two child-care centers.

The first Aboriginal to head a government in Australia took office on Thursday as chief minister of the Northern Territory, after staging a backroom coup.

Australia's center-left Labor government unveiled a shake-up of media laws Tuesday, introducing a public interest test for mergers but stopping short of press regulation as feared by the industry.

Australia on Sunday said it had offered Indonesia a formal guarantee that drug trafficker Schapelle Corby would comply with parole in a letter supporting her release from prison.