New South Wales

Many residents in the NSW town are yet to learn what government help – if any – they will get for their damaged homes

The body responsible for managing logged forests in NSW is failing to ensure protected trees aren’t being cut down but has improved its compliance monitoring since copping several fines from the environmental regulator.

State-owned Forestry Corporation of NSW (FCNSW) was still failing to properly monitor contractors and track its own efforts for tighter oversight, according to a report released by the auditor-general on Thursday.

Justice John Sackar questioned whether the public can be confident the police are capable of handling unsolved homicides.

Documents revealed NSW police removed mention of paramedics, a knife and a Taser in their first statement about the incident

An anomaly in the state's workers compensation laws that mean emergency service workers get smaller payouts than other employees.

Around 2,000 homes were expected to be eligible for the voluntary scheme announced eight months ago, but the Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation (NRRC) has revised that figure to 1,100 households across the region.

The names of the victims who died in the tragic wedding bus crash in the Hunter Valley have been released.

“One of the purposes of body-worn cameras is accountability, but if you leave it up to the individual officers to make themselves accountable it makes sense that they could err on the side of caution in terms of using them,” she said.

“It’s like putting the fox in charge of the chicken pen.”

A bus driver has been charged over the crash that killed 10 people and left more than 20 injured in the NSW Hunter region overnight.