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Police are appealing for information to locate a teenage girl missing from the state’s north.
Hope Booth, aged 13, was last seen in Shortland about 5.30am yesterday (Saturday 4 October 2025).
When she could not be located or contacted, officers attached to Newcastle Police District were notified and commenced inquiries into her whereabouts.
Police hold concerns due to her age.

Hope is described as being of Caucasian appearance, about 145cm tall, of thin build, with long black hair and a nose ring.
She was last seen wearing a black ‘Redbull’ hoodie, blue ripped jeans and white ugg boots/slippers.
She is known to frequent Bolton Point and Newcastle areas.
Police are urging anyone with any information to contact Newcastle Police Station or Crime Stoppers.

The Victorian Greens have said Melbourne Water’s new flood-risk maps will mean very little without a plan by Labor to protect at-risk communities from worsening climate disasters.

Earlier today Melbourne Water released the first of its new flood-risk maps for Yarra and Darebin, revealing over 60,000 properties across the two council areas to be flood-prone.

The Greens say with climate disasters increasing in frequency and continuing to devastate communities across the state, Labor must ensure Victorians aren’t continuing to bear the costs of decades of government inaction on climate change.

Instead, Labor should invest in protecting communities from these climate disasters, to prevent the impacts of disasters like the Maribyrnong floods in 2022 which saw homes destroyed and residents displaced.

Earlier this year, a Greens-established inquiry into climate resilience recommended a resilient homes scheme, similar to those in New South Wales and Queensland.

A scheme like this would help cover the costs of retro-fitting, lifting, renovations, and in some instances relocations and buybacks or compensation for homes at greater risk of floods.

The Greens say Labor should take up this recommendation and make the polluting fossil fuel giants pay for it.

Labor and Melbourne Water should also be fast-tracking investment in flood mitigation measures, such as upgrading stormwater systems and urban greening, to reduce the risk to communities from flooding. 

Victorian Greens MP for Richmond, Gabrielle de Vietri:

“We’re already in a housing crisis, and the increasing frequency and intensity of climate-driven disasters is only going to make this worse as more and more homes become uninsurable and uninhabitable.

“Why should Victorians continue to bear the costs of decades of government inaction on climate change?

“Flood-risk maps are an important step, but what good will they do without a plan by Labor to protect the people on those maps most at risk?

“A resilient homes scheme would help cover the costs needed to retro-fit, lift, and upgrade homes under threat from flooding, rather than saddle homeowners with the price tag.

“Labor also needs to recognise its own role in worsening climate disasters, and stop approving new coal and gas.”

The Victorian Greens have said Melbourne Water’s new flood-risk maps will mean very little without a plan by Labor to protect at-risk communities from worsening climate disasters.

Earlier today Melbourne Water released the first of its new flood-risk maps for Yarra and Darebin, revealing over 60,000 properties across the two council areas to be flood-prone.

The Greens say with climate disasters increasing in frequency and continuing to devastate communities across the state, Labor must ensure Victorians aren’t continuing to bear the costs of decades of government inaction on climate change.

Instead, Labor should invest in protecting communities from these climate disasters, to prevent the impacts of disasters like the Maribyrnong floods in 2022 which saw homes destroyed and residents displaced.

Earlier this year, a Greens-established inquiry into climate resilience recommended a resilient homes scheme, similar to those in New South Wales and Queensland.

A scheme like this would help cover the costs of retro-fitting, lifting, renovations, and in some instances relocations and buybacks or compensation for homes at greater risk of floods.

The Greens say Labor should take up this recommendation and make the polluting fossil fuel giants pay for it.

Labor and Melbourne Water should also be fast-tracking investment in flood mitigation measures, such as upgrading stormwater systems and urban greening, to reduce the risk to communities from flooding. 

Victorian Greens MP for Richmond, Gabrielle de Vietri:

“We’re already in a housing crisis, and the increasing frequency and intensity of climate-driven disasters is only going to make this worse as more and more homes become uninsurable and uninhabitable.

“Why should Victorians continue to bear the costs of decades of government inaction on climate change?

“Flood-risk maps are an important step, but what good will they do without a plan by Labor to protect the people on those maps most at risk?

“A resilient homes scheme would help cover the costs needed to retro-fit, lift, and upgrade homes under threat from flooding, rather than saddle homeowners with the price tag.

“Labor also needs to recognise its own role in worsening climate disasters, and stop approving new coal and gas.”

The Palestine Action Group will be defending the right to protest in the Supreme Court of NSW after the NSW Police announced they will challenge a planned rally in Sydney on 12 October, claiming that it poses a “potential terror threat”. The planned rally will mark two years of genocide in Palestine and comes after up to 300 thousand people safely marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in August this year.

Labor Premier Chris Minns and Police Minister Yasmin Catley have both signalled their opposition to the protest.

Greens MP, Spokesperson for justice and Solicitor Sue Higginson said:

“It is outrageous, extreme and racist of the NSW Police to claim the planned peaceful rally is a “potential terror threat” and it’s oppressive to resort to arduous court proceedings, once again, to try to stop it. The Palestine Action Group is simply trying to facilitate the much needed event to mark two years of the atrocities committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza,”

“The Police have lost the plot, claiming that the planned event is a “terror threat” is outlandish, not based on evidence and is completely counter-intelligent. If this is a sign of how things are to be under the newly appointed Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon, we should all be concerned,”

“The Minns Labor Government does not seem to have learnt anything from the last two years of peaceful pro-Palestine marches and the historic March for Humanity across the Harbour Bridge. The pro-Palestine movement here in NSW is a peaceful movement of hundreds of thousands of people who choose constructively to exercise their right of political expression and their hope as they protest against Israel’s genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza,”

“It is essential that the Minns Labor Government acknowledges the genocide that is motivating these protests. It’s also time for the Premier to declare which side of history he is on. Two years ago he decided to light the sails of the Opera House in support of Israel, now two years later it is understood that more than 680,000 Palestinian people have been killed, women and children maimed and starved, forcibly displaced and Gaza has been razed. The people of New South Wales have the right to march to the Opera House to honour the Palestinian people who have lost their lives and those who are suffering the unbearable atrocities that continue to be inflicted.”

The State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA) has quietly commissioned research into the identification of suicidal risk, and to enhance suicide prevention and postvention, in the workers compensation system.

The need for a targeted focus on suicide in the NSW workers compensation system comes in the wake of the NSW Labor government’s planned legislation that would raise barriers for entry into workers compensation for psychological injuries, as well as dramatically curtail access to ongoing critical assistance by way of medical treatments and weekly wage replacement for psychologically injured workers. Under the government’s proposed reforms, over 99% of all psychologically injured workers would have their access to assistance cut in half, to terminate after two and a half years.

The last time entitlements were curtailed through legislation such as this, we saw in the first year of effect 375 injured workers being identified as vulnerable to self harm, 13 instances of confirmed self-harm, and six deaths of workers on workers compensation being referred to the coroner. By 2020, when the majority of workers impacted by the changes were starting to feel its effect, there were 115 incidents of self-harm.

In the 2024 calendar year, 1,025 injured workers had their weekly payments terminated, and 2,013 injured workers had their medical entitlements terminated, due to the arbitrarily imposed legislative timeline. From 2020 to May 2024, SIRA has recorded 59 instances of suicides by injured workers receiving workers compensation support. icare recorded a further 33 attempted suicides during this period, and 170 incidents of self-harm for NSW government workers on workers compensation. SIRA has confirmed that incidence of suicide remains under-reported.

In response to questioning over the government’s planned legislation to cut entitlements further for psychologically injuried workers in particular, icare confirmed they had done no modelling or calculations as to the number of suicides or self-harm incidents that might result from the proposed legislation. 2 months after that evidence was given to parliament, SIRA commissioned new research into suicide in the workers compensation scheme, due to report back mid-next year – just before the predictable wave of self-harm incidents wouldlikely occur if the government’s proposed cuts to support for psychologically injured workers are allowed to pass.

Despite calls from SIRA themselves to reform the workers compensation scheme to become ‘person-centred’, the research Statement of Work expressly prohibits researchers speaking to anyone ‘who has lived experience of an attempted or actual suicide’.

Greens NSW MP, Abigail Boyd, Chair of the Public Accountability and Works Committee, and Greens NSW spokesperson for Work Health and Safety:

“The NSW Labor Government’s proposed cuts to workers compensation entitlements for workers with serious psychological injuries will have genuinely devastating effects on thousands of injured workers across this state.

“We saw the heartbreaking and life-shattering impacts last time cuts such as these were introduced. These cuts are even more targeted towards people who are already more vulnerable by the nature of their injury, and so the impact can be expected to be even more acute and devastating.

“I cannot emphasise enough how dangerous this government’s proposed cuts will be, ripping away support from those who need it the most.

“The government and business lobby are desperate to cut off workers who have been injured as a result of their work just to save a few dollars in the short-term, rather than actually doing the hard work of reforming a system in which poor claims management, administrative inefficiencies and faulty premium calculation methodologies are driving bad outcomes for injured workers and employers alike.

“This government is proposing the blunt and lazy option of eliminating nearly an entire class of injured workers from support when they need it the most. The government’s plan to cut costs will leave injured workers and their families paying the price.”