A whistleblower and an academic have said pressure from the Australian government’s top cyber security agency led to their speeches being cancelled at a conference in Melbourne.

Former NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, and Melbourne University academic Dr Suelette Dreyfus were both due to speak at the Australian Cyber Conference in Melbourne this week, but were told by officials that their speeches had been cancelled.

The Morrison government has defended Newstart allowance as affordable and well targeted, as it faces criticism sparked by research showing it is one of the lowest unemployment benefit schemes in the developed world.

Analysis provided by the Australia Institute said Newstart was also the third-lowest unemployment benefit in the OECD for a newly unemployed minimum wage worker. 

The Government has dismissed the comparisons, saying most countries required contributions from employers and employees or were paid for by higher taxes.

A home in Laidley, west of Brisbane has been destroyed by flames due to the hot and windy weather in Lockyer Valley, which reached 41 degrees on Tuesday as westerly winds fuelled the bushfire.

The fire flared shortly before 3:00pm on Tuesday, with authorities quickly issuing an emergency warning for residents to seek shelter.

Fire crews have now extinguished the bushfire that destroyed the Queensland home as they continue to fight a fire  burning in the Glen Rock State Forest near Gatton and another blaze, burning near Thornton.

A cashless welfare card trial that restricts people’s spending on gambling and alcohol has made the Bundaberg-Hervey Bay community in Queensland feel humiliated, according to residents on the scheme

There are 6000 people on the card trial in the area and 80% of their spending is scrutinized in the scheme.

Despite the inconvenience to residents, the president of the Burrum District Community Centre, Fay Whiffen, says the scheme has proved useful in helping people control their budgets.

A University of Melbourne academic is allegedly being held against her will in Iran, according to a report released by the ABC last night.

Meimanat Hosseini Chavoshi, a population expert at the University of Melbourne and dual Australian-Iranian citizen, was on a study tour in Tehran last year when she was arrested on charges of "social espionage" and "collaborating" with the West. 

Three scientists have been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for Medicine in Stockholm for discovering how the body’s cells sense and react to low oxygen levels.

Two Americans, Professor William G Kaelin Jr, Professor Gregg L Semenza, along with British Professor Sir Peter Ratcliffe will share the $1.35 million prize for their groundbreaking cellular research 

Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, has teamed up with billionaire and Hungry Jack’s founder Jack Cowin, to make and market a plant-based alternative to the beef burger, known as the ‘Rebel Whopper.’

The legume-based patty burger has been launched by v2 food, a joint initiative between of Jack Cowin and the CSIRO.

With the science agencies help, the v2’s burger patty aims to imitate the taste and texture of beef with added nutrients and fibres.

Victoria has launched a suite of incentives to keep the state's best teachers in some of its toughest schools, including a $50,000 lure to draw educators to "hard-to-staff" positions and schools.

The implementation of the ‘biggest investment in their educational workforce in its history’ has been prompted due to a lack of teachers in rural and regional areas.

A Cairns resident has stumbled across a 7 metre snake skin on his daily walk near a creek in the suburb of Freshwater.

Stuart Morris, who lives in the suburb of Freshwater said he initially thought the snake was a native scrub python that had shed its skin, but on closer inspection he decided that it had been skinned. 

Snake expert David Walton said the skin appeared to belong to a reticulated python from South-East Asia, and said it was a mystery as to how the snake came to end up in Australia.