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A judge has given the nod to an amendment in a class action over Victoria's COVID-era hotel quarantine program that will exclude non-retail and hospitality businesses, but he won't make the order operate retrospectively.

A native title group has won an appeal to the High Court over a 30-year licence granted by the Northern Territory government to Fortune Agribusiness to extract groundwater for irrigation on its property.

Energy minister Chris Bowen has warned the federal government will legislate if necessary to prevent states from competing for data centres, after announcing plans last month to roll out a national AI framework to govern the booming area.

Construction company Maas Group has acquired an additional $300 million stake in AI infrastructure company Firmus, executing on its strategy to expand into digital infrastructure after shedding its construction material division for $1.7 billion.

The High Court has agreed on an early November hearing date in a dispute over Bass Strait hydrocarbon royalties, despite a plea to the heavens by counsel for Esso and Woodside.

By the time Australia's emissions targets were set in 2015, the effects of climate change were already being felt in the Torres Strait, the Commonwealth has told an appeals court, saying a class action over Islanders' cultural loss can't prove causation.

The law of negligence should be expanded to recognise cultural loss as a compensable form of harm, a group of Torres Strait Islanders argue in challenging a ruling tossing their class action against the government.

Hotly contested political issues should not be considered a judicial "no-go zone" that leaves policy decisions on climate change outside the reach of the courts, a landmark class action has told an appeals court.

A retired Northern Territory judge faces allegations of sexual harassment by a former associate after failing in his challenge to a decision allowing the complainant to proceed with the case, filed more than a decade after the alleged conduct.

A Federal Court judge has rejected a suppression order application in a lawsuit by an enterprise account manager against data centre developer NextDC, saying it was “an affront to principles of open justice”.