The following lists events that happened during 2006 in Australia.
Incumbents
Monarch – Elizabeth II Governor-General – Michael Jeffery Prime Minister – John Howard Deputy Prime Minister – Mark Vaile Opposition Leader – Kim Beazley (until 4 December), then Kevin Rudd Chief Justice – Murray Gleeson
State and territory leaders Premier of New South Wales – Morris Iemma Opposition Leader – Peter Debnam Premier of Queensland – Peter Beattie Opposition Leader – Lawrence Springborg (until 18 September), then Jeff Seeney Premier of South Australia – Mike Rann Opposition Leader – Rob Kerin (until 18 March), then Iain Evans Premier of Tasmania – Paul Lennon Opposition Leader – Rene Hidding (until 30 March), then Will Hodgman Premier of Victoria – Steve Bracks Opposition Leader – Robert Doyle (until 8 May), then Ted Baillieu Premier of Western Australia – Geoff Gallop (until 16 January), then Alan Carpenter Opposition Leader – Matt Birney (until 24 March), then Paul Omodei Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory – Jon Stanhope Opposition Leader – Brendan Smyth (until 16 May), then Bill Stefaniak Chief Minister of the Northern Territory – Clare Martin Opposition Leader – Jodeen Carney Chief Minister of Norfolk Island – Geoffrey Gardner (until 1 June), then David Buffett
Governors and administrators Governor of New South Wales – Marie Bashir Governor of Queensland – Quentin Bryce Governor of South Australia – Marjorie Jackson-Nelson Governor of Tasmania – William Cox Governor of Victoria – John Landy (until 7 April), then David de Kretser Governor of Western Australia – Ken Michael (from 18 January) Administrator of the Australian Indian Ocean Territories – Neil Lucas (from 30 January) Administrator of Norfolk Island – Grant Tambling Administrator of the Northern Territory – Ted Egan
Events
January 1 January – Bushfires grip parts of the Central Coast and the Riverina in New South Wales and the Wimmera in Victoria after one of the hottest New Years Days on record, with the Sydney central business district reaching 45 °C (113 °F). 2 January – A skydiving plane crash near Willowbank in Queensland claims five lives. 9 January – Communities in the Pilbara region of Western Australia are evacuated due to Cyclone Clare. 10 January – Six Australians die when a bus flips over in Egypt. 16 January – Premier of Western Australia Geoff Gallop resigns, citing clinical depression as the reason. 22–29 January – Bushfires affect several towns in Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania. Three volunteer firefighters are killed. 24 January – Alan Carpenter replaces Gallop as Premier of Western Australia.
February 18 February – Six teenagers are killed and another is injured in a hit and run accident in Cardross, Victoria, near Mildura.
March 5 March - Sydney FC win the inaugural A-League Grand Final, beating Central Coast Mariners 1–0. 18 March – South Australia and Tasmania vote in parliamentary state elections. Both the Mike Rann and Paul Lennon governments are re-elected. 20 March – Tropical Cyclone Larry strikes Innisfail and Cairns in Far North Queensland. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, no-one is killed. 23 March – Microsoft releases the Xbox 360 games console in Australia. 27 March – The WorkChoices industrial relations reforms come into effect.
April 7 April – John Landy retires as Governor of Victoria, and is succeeded by David de Kretser. 18 April – More than 19 Australian Federal Police officers are injured as the capital of the Solomon Islands, Honiara, erupts into rioting. In response to this, the Prime Minister of Australia John Howard orders an Army deployment of 220 troops. 21 April – Private Jacob Kovco becomes the first casualty of Australia's involvement in the Iraq campaign. The reason given initially was that his gun had accidentally discharged while cleaning his gun, although this was later retracted. It was later stated that he had accidentally shot himself while skylarking with his pistol. 25 April – A small earthquake causes a rock fall in a gold mine in Beaconsfield, Tasmania. Eleven miners come out, but three are left inside. One of them is found dead on 28 April. The other two are freed on 9 May. 26 April – The body of Bosnian civilian contractor Juso Sinanovic is taken to Australia instead of the body of Private Kovco. Private Kovco's body later arrived in Australia on 29 April.
May 16 May – Bill Stefaniak topples Brendan Smyth as leader of the ACT Liberal Party. 25 May – Australian troops are redeployed to East Timor after fresh outbreaks of violence.
June 2 June – The A$1.4 billion sale of the Myer department store chain to Newbridge Capital and the Myer family is completed. 12 June - Australia's national football team, the Socceroos, play their first FIFA World Cup match in 32 years against Japan. The match ended in a historic 3–1 victory to Australia, courtesy of late comeback goals by Tim Cahill and John Aloisi. The match is considered one of Australia's finest sporting achievements, and was responsible for the emergence of the Australia-Japan football rivalry. 18 June - Brazil beats Australia 2–0 in Munich. 22 June - Australia drew with Croatia 2–2 in Stuttgart to progress to the Round of 16 for the first time in their World Cup history. 26 June - Australia's FIFA World Cup campaign ended with a 1–0 lost to Italy in Kaiserslautern thanks to a controversial Totti penalty-kick.
July 9 July – Revelations are published in News Limited newspapers that, in 1994, John Howard made a secret deal with Peter Costello to hand over the leadership of the Liberal Party to him after having served two terms in office as Prime Minister. 17 July - Australia's largest recorded inundation caused by a tsunami hits the Western Australian coast at Steep Point. 29 July – In the face of a worsening water supply crisis, a referendum is held in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia's second largest inland city, on the issue of using water recycled from the city's sewerage as a source of drinking water. The acrimonious campaign and emotional debate were watched closely nationwide as most other Australian cities raise water restrictions in the face of record low dam and river levels.
August 8 August – night.
September 4 September – Steve Irwin dies in an accident when he is struck in the heart by a stingray barb off Queensland's coast. 8 September – Peter Brock is killed in a smash when his rally car skids off a bend and hits a tree. 9 September – Peter Beattie is re-elected Queensland premier at an early state election. 26 September – Seven people are killed in a horror road smash outside the Victoria town of Donald.
October After some of the hottest October days on record, bushfires ravage parts of New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. 18 October – Linda Lavarch resigns as Queensland's Attorney-General to seek treatment for depression, after it is revealed she refused a deal to return Jayant Patel (dubbed "Dr Death" by the media) to Australia to face criminal charges. 20 October – Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation company buys a 7.5 per cent stake in its main competitor, John Fairfax Holdings (publisher of the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Australian Financial Review). 25 October – New South Wales Police minister Carl Scully is sacked after it is shown that he had misled parliament on two occasions about the 2005 Cronulla riots. 25 October – Comments that Sheikh Taj El-Din Hilaly made about women who dressed immodestly being responsible for rape are made public in The Australian. The sheik is forced to retract such comments on 26 October.
November 11 November – Belinda Emmett, a TV personality and wife of Rove McManus, dies, after a battle with breast cancer. 22 November – Sydney is covered in smoke after raging fires in the Blue Mountains. 25 November – Steve Bracks is re-elected Victorian premier at the state election. 29 November – One SAS soldier and the helicopter captain are dead and eight more rescued when a Blackhawk helicopter hits the deck of HMAS Kanimbla and crashes into waters off the coast of Fiji. 30 November – Greg Page, the founding member and lead singer of Australia's famous children's band The Wiggles, announced his retirement due to orthostatic intolerance. He handed his yellow skivvy to Sam Moran.
December 4 December – Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard successfully challenge Kim Beazley and Jenny Macklin in a caucus ballot for leadership and deputy leadership of the Australian Labor Party. 18 December – 16-year-old girl Stacey Mitchell is murdered by lesbian couple Jessica Stasinowsky and Valerie Parashumti. She was bludgeoned with a concrete block and strangled with a chain, with her corpse found in a wheelie bin. The Gippsland region of Victoria and Eastern Tasmania come under threat as a result of bushfires.
Non-specific dates Investigation into AWB Limited's role in the Oil-for-Food Programme, sometimes referred to as Wheatgate or Oil for wheat. The official inquiry states that AWB directors did know about the kickback payments as early as 2001 and that government ministers did not know about the kickbacks, although this was not in their brief.
Arts and literature
22 June – Roger McDonald wins the Miles Franklin Award for The Ballad of Desmond Kale. Gregory Day is awarded the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for The Patron Saint of Eels. Kate Grenville's novel The Secret River wins the Christina Stead Prize for fiction. Peter Carey's novel Theft: A Love Story wins the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction.
Film Ten Canoes, the first full-length feature film made entirely in an Australian Aboriginal language, wins a special jury prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Happy Feet becomes the country's biggest earning film
Television
1 January – Mildura Digital Television, a joint venture between WIN Television Mildura & Prime Television, goes on air in the Mildura area of Victoria as a Network Ten digital-only affiliate. 2 January – The Seven and Ten Networks outbid Channel Nine and win the rights to broadcast the AFL from 2007 to 2011 for a record $780 million. Also around this time, Seven announce that they have won the rights to broadcast the V8 Supercars from 2007 to 2014. 30 January – Channel Nine launches a new logo, dropping the famous dots and replacing it with a stand-alone nine in a blue box. February 2006 – Wheel of Fortune returns and starts in 2006. Larry Emdur & Laura Csortan will definitely host WOF in a partnership instead of one. On the very first episode in 2006, the car was won! The final edition of the version was screened on 28 July. 9 February – It is announced that Eddie McGuire will become Channel Nine's new CEO. 13 February – Network Ten's motto, Seriously... becomes Seriously Ten (this was Network Ten's 2001 motto), and has its new look Ten Watermark on the bottom right of the TV screens 17 February – ABC premiered The Chaser's War on Everything 20 February – Television Sydney formally launches after three months of testing, giving Sydney community television for the first time in almost two years. 21 May – Brant Webb & Todd Russell speak to A Current Affair'''s new host Tracy Grimshaw about their time underground in Beaconsfield in a 2-hour special called The Great Escape. They are paid a reported $2.6 million by Channel Nine for the right to talk to them. 4 June – After 12 years & a record-breaking 510 episodes, the last episode of the Seven Network show Blue Heelers goes to air. 14 September – Today Tonight host Naomi Robson is deported from Indonesia after doing a story on a West Papuan boy called Wa Wa who, supposedly, was going to be eaten by cannibals. This sparks a war of words between Seven & Nine, who ran the original story on Wa Wa in May on 60 Minutes. Naomi presents her final edition of Today Tonight on 1 December.