As it happened: Scott Morrison’s office responds to meme backlash amid portfolio saga; industrial relations debate brews after unemployment rate hits 48-year low

The biggest mystery in the universe could be solved one kilometre underground in a gold mine in country Victoria where a new laboratory opened on Friday.

Dark matter makes up 85 per cent of the cosmos and binds the universe together, but exactly what it is and how it works remains unknown.

A new high-tech laboratory at the Stawell Gold Mine hopes to solve the mystery and detect dark matter within five years, allowing scientists to one day unlock its secrets.

China sentenced Chinese-Canadian financier Xiao Jianhua to 13 years in prison and fined his company Tomorrow Holding 55 billion yuan ($AU11.7 billion), bringing an end to a long-running saga that has seen many of the tycoon’s business interests reined in since he was seized in Hong Kong more than five years ago.

Xiao was found guilty of illegally obtaining public deposits, breach of trust, bribery and the illegal use of funds, according to a ruling by the Shanghai First Intermediate People’s Court on Friday.

Xiao used his financial network to offer pooled funds and sell insurance and other investment products, absorbing more than 311.6 billion yuan ($AU66.3 billion) from the public alone, according to the court.

The trial marked Xiao’s first public appearance since 2017 when he was taken from his room at the Four Seasons hotel in Hong Kong, where he had been staying for several years after fleeing China.

Aboriginal enrolments to university have doubled in the past decade, but financial challenges result in many Indigenous students abandoning their studies after their first year.

Warumungu and Warlmanpa man 23-year-old Ethan Taylor is one of the success stories. He is headed from Melbourne University to Oxford to study political philosophy on a fully funded Charlie Perkins scholarship and is hoping to become an academic.

“[Political philosophy] is one of the last fields to get decolonised,” Taylor said.

Between 2010 and 2020, Aboriginal student enrolments have essentially doubled in bachelor, postgraduate and postgraduate research respectively from 7605 to 15,290, from 1285 to 3330 in postgraduate studies and 423 to 751 in postgraduate research.

Queensland police deputy commissioner Paul Taylor has resigned after lewd comments made at conferences with the top brass were aired during an inquiry on Thursday.

The Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Queensland Police Service Response to Domestic and Family Violence on Thursday heard that two officers had made comments at two conferences earlier this year, attended by some of the highest-ranking officers in the state.

In one instance, a superintendent shouted “did she shut her legs on you?” to the master of ceremonies at a conference attended by about 100 QPS staff.

Australian egg producers will be allowed to use battery cages until 2036 in a decision animal welfare organisations say will consign 55 million hens to a life of suffering.

The Department of Agriculture released new animal welfare standards for the poultry industry this week, which for the first time set an end date on the use of battery cages.

Hens kept in battery hens occupy a cage area less than the size of an A4 paper, meaning they cannot stretch their wings, perch, scratch or nest as is normal behaviour for chickens.

Three quarters of OECD countries have either banned or begun phasing out battery cages. The EU first voted to ban the cages in 1999 and along with the UK, ended their use in 2012.

A legal row over moves by the Kiribati government to deport an Australian citizen and senior Kiribati judge who is married to the country’s opposition leader has intensified after a New York-based lawyer acting for the government said the decision of the executive should be treated with “maximum deference”.

Lawyers for Australian David Lambourne, a former solicitor-general of Kiribati who was appointed to its High Court in 2018, successfully applied to the country’s Court of Appeal last Friday for an urgent order releasing him from immigration detention pending a further court hearing.

The parties returned to court on Friday. Sydney barristers Perry Herzfeld, SC, and Daniel Reynolds acted for Lambourne and argued deportation notices issued to him by the government were invalid.

“It seems to be suggested that neither we nor the court is entitled to know why the [Kiribati president] ... decreed Justice Lambourne to be a risk to security and the court must give utmost deference to that assessment,” Herzfeld said, in reference to submissions for the government made by US lawyer Ravi Batra.