Cairns Regional Councilors are against changes to the Local Government Act, as all councilors elected on a team ticket must abstain from voting on issues where one councilor had a conflict of interest.

The changes mean the Chief Executive Officer of the council must decide on matters where a majority cannot be reached.

Local Government Association of Queensland chief executive Greg Hallam said it was a problem for six councils and called on Local Government Minister Stirling Hinchliffe to intervene.

Visitors to Brisbane are expected to have spent $50 million more in Brisbane than the past year.

Brisbane’s lord mayor, Graham Quirk, said the increase from the previous year was because of the city hosting a showcase of events in the past 12 months.

“International students are also good news for Brisbane with numbers of enrolments rising 12 per cent,” he said.

46 Ethiopians have drowned and 16 are missing after a human smuggler's boat carrying at least 100 refugees capsized as it approached Yemen.

The vessel left the port of Bossasso in Somalia on Tuesday with 83 men and 17 women on board.

The International Organisation for Migration director of operations and emergencies, Mohammad Abdiker, said the Gulf of Aden's migration tragedy was shameful.

“They are treated appallingly and go through horrendous conditions. This has to end," he said.

Iran seniors in finance and international relations are writing to both the U.S. State Department and the President to gain exclusion from incoming sanctions against the country.

Without sanctions relief, Iran has threatened to pull out of the deal.

The Queensland government is considering funding a multi-million dollar access road for the Adani Carmichael mine, despite insisting no taxpayer funds would be used to prop up the project.

A Right to Information request revealed thousands of pages of documents relating to potential state government funding of the upgrade of the Elgin-Moray and Moray-Carmichael roads.

The pages were recorded as "official discussions" about Cabinet Budget Review Committee deliberations, while others were redacted because the matter was still being negotiated.

The Lower House of Victoria’s Parliament is scheduled to vote in favour of negotiating Australia’s first Aboriginal treaty.

Thirty years since former prime minister Bob Hawke promised a treaty, Aboriginal leaders urged the Federal Government to reignite the idea.

Aboriginal Victorians said such an agreement could be a watershed moment.

Janine Coombs, chair of the Federation of Victorian Traditional Owner Corporations said a treaty would be "for the future generations."

The rising number of solar rooftop installations is creating concerns that too much energy is flooding into the electricity grid, and could cause blackouts as the system struggles to control the excess power.

"Solar spill", when high levels of energy are generated by rooftop installations in the middle of the day when demand is low, is becoming a problem for Australia’s electricity networks, according to Andrew Dillon from Energy Networks Australia.

A protest is scheduled in the Federal region of Hinker against debit cards, which control payments received by those on welfare.

The program is currently in a trial phase to gather data about benefits of putting welfare receivers on managed income.

Locals are gathering in Hervey Bay on Sunday the 16th of June at Boat Harbour Drive to protest against the planned roll out of the trial program in the region.

Organisers claim that it violates human rights, and causes suffering and humiliation for those put on the program.