23 January – The Tasmanian Conservation Foundation commences court proceedings to overturn 2 of the 11 woodchip licenses issued by the Federal Government.
3 February – A 4-day blockade of Parliament House, Canberra by 300 trucks and 2,500 timber workers and supporters ends as Prime Minister
Paul Keating partially backs down on his 27 January decision to freeze logging in 509 old-growth coupes.
13 February – 2,000 rally at Sydney Airport causing disruption.
Media magnate
Kerry Packer appears on Channel 9's A Current Affair to attack cross-media ownership, and speaks of
John Howard as prime minister material.
Federal Opposition Leader
John Howard promises to woo "the battlers", traditional Labor voters hurt by Labor's policies, and "demonstrate that our policies are not antagonistic to them".
Ian McLachlan resigns his shadow portfolio of Environment for having misled Parliament over the opening of secret Aboriginal women's documents relating to the proposed construction of a bridge to Hindmarsh Island, South Australia.
The New South Wales Government announces 7 new parks and reserves, adding 6,000 hectares to the New South Wales National Parks estate.
18 March – The campaign to save the Tarkine wilderness achieves success a week after the arrest of Trish Caswell, Australian Conservation Foundation Executive Director, for trespass, when Australian Heritage Commission Chair, Wendy McCarthy, announces its interim listing for May.
New South Wales Premier
Bob Carr assumes the Arts and Ethnic Affairs portfolio and Deputy Premier
Andrew Refshauge assumes Health and Aboriginal Affairs.
Peter Collins replaces
John Fahey as New South Wales Liberal leader. Ron Phillps beats incumbent
Kerry Chikarovski as Deputy Leader by 19:10.
11 April – The
Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting is held. The assembled Premiers and territory leaders endorse a program of reforms envisaged by Professor
Fred Hilmer's National Competition Policy Review.
May – The
Australian Grand Prix is moved from
Adelaide to
Melbourne after the
Premier of Victoria spends what is reported to be quite a large amount on securing the rights to the race from 1996 onwards. Protests ensue about what many saw as the turning of public parkland into a private racetrack.
28 April – Rob O'Regan retires after 3 years at the helm of the
Criminal Justice Commission (CJC) in Queensland, critical of poor standards of conduct among many politicians.
May
9 May – The Federal Budget is delivered. The Budget's enormous turnaround in projected revenue, from a deficit of $12.9 billion to a small surplus, is received with scepticism by many commentators.
30 May –
Dorothy Davis disappeared. Believed murdered, her remains had not been located as of 4 August 2016[update], when the man convicted of her murder died.
7 June – Prime Minister
Paul Keating announces to Parliament that Australia would have a referendum on the republic with a head of state elected by Parliament by a majority of at least two-thirds.
8 June – The Tasmanian Labor Party and unions reach a historic agreement to overturn the Groom industrial relations regime if Labor wins office.
20 June – The Federal Labor Caucus selects
Kim Beazley to replace
Brian Howe who unexpectedly stepped down as deputy leader.
30 June – Democrats Leader
Cheryl Kernot launches the Democrats' "Keeping the Senate Strong" campaign, attacking the "anarchical" Greens.
July
1 July – Telecom Australia changes its domestic trading name to
Telstra.
17 July – The West Australian Government's Royal Commission into former West Australian Premier
Carmen Lawrence's role in the Easton affair opens in
Perth, Western Australia, an inquiry earlier labelled by Prime Minister
Paul Keating as a "flagrant abuse of the judicial system".
25 July – The count in Mundingburra is complete. Labor wins by 16 votes, with Labor claiming a one-seat victory (45 seats), Nationals won 29 seats, Liberals won 14 seats and 1 Independent.
August
2 August – A combined Queensland Opposition Coalition frontbench is announced, with
Joan Sheldon as Deputy Leader and Shadow Treasurer.
7 August – A second West Australian Federal MP leaves the Liberal Party to sit as an Independent, following the bitter power struggle in the West Australian branch.
16 August – New South Wales Premier
Bob Carr concedes that his pre-election promise to lift the tolls on the M4 and M5 tollways in western Sydney would be abandoned as being impossibly expensive.
25 August – Labor's National Executive bans ALP members from associating with the right-wing League of Rights. When maverick Kalgoorlie MP, Graeme Campbell, persists in his association and espousal of anti-immigration views embarrassing to the party, his pre-selection is revoked, causing him to resign.
1 to 31 August –
Sydney's official Observatory Hill weather station records its driest and only rainless month since records began in 1859.[1] At the close of the month the city had gone 46 days without measurable rain, twelve more than the previous record from 1970 and 1975.[2]
13 September – The Queensland Government abandons the controversial Eastern Tollway to link Brisbane with the Gold Coast, having lost 4 seats in the affected area.
October
11 October –
John Fahey is selected as Liberal candidate for the marginal seat of Macarthur.
20 October –
Brenda Hodge, the last person to be sentenced to death in Australia before the full abolition of capital punishment, is paroled from prison after serving eleven years of a life sentence.
24 October –
Anna Wood, a 15-year-old schoolgirl from
Sydney, dies after taking
ecstasy at a
rave. Her death sparks a media firestorm and a national debate over the use of illicit drugs.
1 November – Federal Opposition Leader
John Howard attempts to mend relations with the Asian community, telling Chinese business people in Melbourne how he values their commercial networks.
3 November- After a six-month trial,
David Harold Eastman is convicted by a jury of the assassination of
Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Colin Winchester. He is sentenced to
life imprisonment and can only be released by approval of the ACT parliament, Federal Parliament and the Governor-General.
7 November – The
Federal Court of Australia rules against Minister Tickner's ban on the building of a bridge to Hindmarsh Island in South Australia.
14 November – Commissioner Marks delivers his final report, damning
Carmen Lawrence's role in the Easton affair, the weight of her colleagues' evidence being against her version.
15 November – Legislation decriminalising owning or working in a brothel is passed by the New South Wales Legislative Council, thereby fulfilling the recommendations of the Wood police corruption inquiry.
20 November – South Australian Democrat and former leader Senator
John Coulter resigns due to ill health, warning
Cheryl Kernot that the party risked losing votes by becoming too mainstream. John Coulter is replaced by former student activist and party worker
Natasha Stott Despoja.
26 November – The Australian Women's Party is launched in
Brisbane, Queensland by a group which includes disenchanted Labor women.
December
1 December – A new licence for a trial shipment of 200,000 tonnes of woodchips to Taiwan reignites plans for a "Son of Wesley Vale" pulp mill for northern Tasmania.
8 December – In the Court of Disputed Returns, Mr. Justice Brian Ambrose orders a fresh election in Mundingburra, Queensland after finding some 22 soldiers serving in
Rwanda had effectively been disenfranchised in the
1995 Queensland state election.
10 December – Tasmanian Premier
Ray Groom hands back to Tasmania's indigenous people 12 sacred and cultural sites totalling 3,800 hectares in an historic ceremony at Kidson Cove.
15 December – The Queensland Labor Party replaces former member and current candidate for Mundingburra, Ken Davies, with Townsville Mayor Tony Mooney, provoking a voter backlash.
21 December – South Australian Royal Commissioner, Iris Stevens finds that Aboriginal women had "fabricated" beliefs on which they grounded opposition to the building of the Hindmarsh bridge.
July –
Cheez TV begins on the
Ten network. It later became a huge hit and eventually made Agro's Cartoon Connection end in 1997.
Sport
International rugby league representative forward
Ian Roberts became the first high-profile Australian sports person and first rugby footballer in the world to come out to the public as gay.[3]
2 March – First day of the Australian Track & Field Championships for the 1994–1995 season, which are held at the
Sydney Athletic Field in
Sydney. The men's 10,000 metres events were conducted in conjunction with the Zatopek Meet at
Melbourne, Victoria on 15 December 1994.
31 March – The
Super League war begins. Lightning raids begin across the country to sign players on vastly inflated contracts. The
Kerry Packer backed
ARL responds by signing 50 players onto equally inflated contracts on 2 April.
16 July –
Roderic deHighden wins the men's national marathon title, clocking 2:13:58 in
Brisbane, while
Julie Rose claims the women's title in 2:38:44.
