Australia seized a record 23 metric tons of illicit drugs in 2011-2012 with arrests at a 10-year high, data showed Monday, as officials warned the country had become a key target for traffickers.

The most senior Catholic in the Australian state of Victoria on Monday admitted the church had been too slow to act on pedophile priests, but insisted things had changed.

An Australian man who raped and strangled his Indian student neighbor and threw her body into a canal in a suitcase was jailed Friday for 45 years for the “horrifying” murder.

Australia on Thursday extended tough refugee policies to any asylum-seeker who lands on its mainland, allowing them to be banished to remote Nauru or Papua New Guinea for detention.

In a rare departure from her characteristically tough style, a teary-eyed Prime Minister Julia Gillard introduced a new tax bill to Parliament on Wednesday that would fund better care for Australians with severe physical and mental disabilities.

Politicians in northern Australia said Tuesday they were considering putting neglected Aboriginal children up for adoption, sparking fears of a new “stolen generation.”

Investigations were under way Thursday into who lobbed Vegemite sandwiches at the Australian prime minister as she toured a Queensland school.

Australia officially made Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg its first honorary citizen on Monday in recognition of the thousands of Jews he saved from the Holocaust, many of whom came to live Down Under.

Two Australian drug smugglers on death row in Indonesia have made a desperate plea for their lives, insisting they are reformed characters and deserve a second chance.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard Sunday insisted she can win another term in office at September elections, giving a fiery defense of her chances when the “white noise” of politics falls away.