A new smart phone app has been launched for people who are experiencing domestic and family violence. The application gives users the ability to create a trusted network of friends who can be easily contacted with an agreed message and a GPS system to call-for-help and alert recipients of the senders location. The app was developed in consultation with the NSW Police Force, with input from experts from the domestic and family violence sector. You load the application on an...

Minister for Courts Chester Borrows this week launched a pilot scheme that will place some defendants at the centre of criminal court proceedings to better involve them in the process. The two-year pilot will be held at the North Shore District Court and will explore how the defendant's level of understanding and engagement is affected by bringing them to centre of proceedings, rather than in a dock to the side of the courtroom.

Generation Z, born since 1995, are the most financially endowed generation of children ever. Every child has their own set of everything. We are not in the era of shared toys or hand-me-downs. Mr McCrindle also found the average Aussie child had more than 100 toys but that parents threw out or gave away only five toys a year.

The cost of raising a first child to the age of 18 in Hobart is just over a quarter of a million dollars, or $268,629, according to the only state-by-state breakdown of the cost of kids in Australia. This was below the national average of $276,445. Childcare is by far the biggest cost for parents. The research, by associate professor Paul Henman of the School of Social Work and Human Services at the University of Queensland, uses a "budget standards" approach.