BRISBANE: Former Queensland Labor and independent Senator Mal Colston was alive in Brisbane at 7.35pm last night after a long bout with cancer. He was 62. Funeral arrangements have not yet been made.

SYDNEY: The recently announced line-up Australian entertainers booked for the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics will perform as an ensemble, ceremony organiser, Ric Birch, announced today.
John Farnham, John Williamson, Olivia Newton-John and others will entertain the stadium crowd and millions of people around the world when the Games begin later this month.
Mr Birch said a lot of names for the one-off “super group” had been considered.
But, he said the special legislation covering Games events and related activities required that any name be accurate as well as evocative of the spirit of the 2000 Olympics.
“For that reason we’ve settled on The Fat Has-Beens,” Mr Birch explained.

MELBOURNE: It was important to remember that the Victorian capital had never at any stage sought to host this year's Olympics, the city's Lord Mayor said last night in a prepared statement.

WAGGA WAGGA: Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has branded plans by David Ettridge and David Oldfield to register a new political group to be called the No GST Party as "a cheap and under-hand trick to garner votes for their discredited One Nation Party". Mr Beazley was speaking at one of the regional launches of New Improved Rural Labour.

DARWIN: The Royal Australian Air Force launched its new 'ute' seeking missile here yesterday to mixed reviews. The two-metre, 130 kg RAAF dummy missile (named after the pilot) was dropped from an F/A-18 Hornet fighter high over the capital. Minutes later, it imbedded itself uneeringly in a 1974 Toyota Landcruiser ute being restored in one of the city's waterside suburbs by a Mr Basil Roe. After impact, one of Mr Roes' neighbours was heard yelling " Roe, Roe, Roe your ute! " A military spokesperson later would neither confirm nor deny that Mr Roe's ute was the one the missile had been aiming for. As alarming as this non-comment might be, the new missile appears to be a justifiable expense in the overall defence budget: a recent poll of Australian residents found that bombing by armed services is a reasonable solution to the problem of rusty vehicles on blocks replacing swans made out of old tyres painted white as northern Australia's official lawn ornament.

Report: Steve Webb