Child protection authorities from the Northern Territory were overwhelmed by the amount of under-reported sexual abuses involving children.

According to data compiled by a royal commission, only 5 sex abuse victims had been taken into temporary protective custody between 2012 and 2016 despite there being 232 abuse cases.

Former Northern Territory Children’s commissioner, Howard Bath, said the rise in sexual abuse cases was not a result of more nasty predators running around, but the easy access and lack of supervision in the area.

A third person died from eating a melon infected with listeria bacteria, following fifteen others that were affected by the potentially deadly bacteria.

The 15 people diagnosed with the infection had all consumed rockmelon before falling ill, which left authorities to warn the elderly, pregnant, and infants against consuming rockmelon which has been pre-sliced.

The contamination has been traced back to a farm near the city of Griffith in New South Wales, with Rockmelons having been withdrawn from supermarket shelves across Australia.

More than 100 millimetres of rainfall was recorded overnight in Brisbane which left several roads flooded.

Six roads across the Moreton Bay Region remained closed Tuesday morning including the Griffin entrance at Dohles Rocks Road and Old North Road at Bellmere.

Parkland Boulevard at Roma street was also closed with rain expected to fall throughout the day on Tuesday.

A Southport boarding school closed for three days this month after reports of a gastro outbreak has sent hundreds of students and many teachers home from school.

Over 400 students were affected when the school announced it would close on March 23rd, just three days before the end of first term.

While it is understood that the number of affected students has decreased since it was first discovered five weeks ago, the school will still ended its term 3 days early to allow anti-virus personnel to sanitize the school.

A new option for HPV testing is being rolled out nationwide, where instead of pap-smears, the new do-it-yourself option will involve self-inserting a swab like a tampon.

This is a part of the new HPV testing system that also only needs to be done every five years rather than every two.

It is hoped this test will mean people uncomfortable with traditional examination will be screened for the disease which kills over 200 women a year in Australia, with many of those deaths preventable.

Two anti-establishment parties are competing for power in Italy after no party gained a majority in the national election.

The populist Five Star Movement became the largest single party, with 33 percent of the vote, but the anti-immigrant League party says it has been endorsed to lead as part of a centre-right alliance.

The leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, says that he is not interested in forming a coalition with the Five Star Movement.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has hosted a landmark dinner for South Korean delegates earlier this week, marking the occasion as the first time officials from the south have met the young leader since he took office in 2011.

While partly aimed at restarting diplomatic dialogue between the North and the United States, the landmark  meeting will also look into the North's nuclear program and how the two states will manage their relationship in the future.

A freak storm dropped nearly a month’s worth of rain in just half an hour on Singleton, a town in the News South Wales Hunter region yesterday afternoon.

Families have been left homeless, several houses have been severely damaged and trees have been uprooted throughout the town.

News South Wales SES member, Simon Merrick, said in the first 10 minutes of the storm he had 32 requests for assistance and responded to more than 40 calls for help.

Queensland Parliament is likely to pass legislation that will allow police access to driver’s license photos without a warrant.

Authorities said that a comprehensive database of photos is necessary to ensure security.

Queensland Council for Civil Liberties president Michael Cope argued that when driver’s license photos were introduced in Queensland the government accepted that the database would never be searched without a warrant.