3 February – Prime Minister Kevin Rudd unveils a second economic stimulus package to the value of A$42 billion.[7]
4 February – Heavy rain causes major flooding at Ingham in north Queensland.[8]
7 February – Bushfires in Victoria kill 173 people in what are not only the nation's worst ever bushfires, surpassing the record set by Ash Wednesday in 1983. Also the nation's worst peacetime disaster since Cyclone Mahina in 1899.[9][10]
13 February – The Federal Government's $42 billion economic stimulus package is passed in the Senate, paving the way for promised cash bonuses for workers around the country.
22 February – Australia observes a National Day of Mourning in remembrance of the 209 (later revised downwards to 173) people who perished in the Victorian bushfires.[11][12]
25 February – Pacific Brands announces it is ceasing manufacturing operations in Australia, at a cost of 1,850 jobs.[13]
Cyclone Hamish, the first category 5 cyclone since Cyclone George in 2007, develops in the Coral Sea and moves southwards along the Queensland coast causing extensive damage to the Great Barrier Reef but does not make landfall. It eventually dissipates on 14 March.[14]
Australia's economy slumps 0.5 per cent, its first quarter of negative growth in 8 years.
20 March – Marcus Einfeld (former Superior Court judge) is sentenced to 3 years in jail for lying relative to a speeding ticket.[17][18]
20 March – Emirates Flight 407 was taking off from Melbourne Airport for a flight to Dubai and failed to become airborne in the normal distance. When the aircraft was approaching the end of the runway, the crew commanded nose-up sharply causing the tail to scrape along the runway as it became airborne.
31 March – Torrential rain around the mid-north New South Wales coast leaves thousands stranded and forces people from over 100 properties to evacuate in the Coffs Harbour area.[22]
11 May – The Australian Broadcasting Corporation television program Four Corners presents a report titled "Code of Silence" about alleged sexual misconduct by rugby league players, leading to a public debate on professional sportsman and group sex.[27]
3 June – Australia avoids a recession after the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveals the economy for the March quarter grew by a 0.4 per cent from the final quarter of 2008.
18 July – Five members of the Lin family are murdered in their North Epping home. A relative, Robert Xie, is arrested in 2011, and found guilty of the murders in 2017 after numerous retrials.
4 August – Over 400 police and intelligence officers conduct a series of dawn raids in Melbourne, arresting members of an alleged Islamic terrorist cell who are suspected of plotting a suicide attack on Holsworthy Barracks in Sydney.[36]
11 August – Nine Australians, including seven from Victoria and two from Queensland, are killed when their plane crashes into the side of a cliff face on their way to Kokoda, Papua New Guinea.[37]
30 August – Victorian MP Tim Holding goes missing while on a solo hike on Mount Feathertop. Searchers find him alive and well two days later on 1 September.[39]
31 August– New South Wales Minister for Health and Australian Labor Party leader in the Legislative Council, John Della Bosca, resigned his Ministerial and leadership positions following public revelation of an extra-marital affair.[40]
9 October – The world's largest tensegrity bridge, the Kurilpa Bridge is opened in Brisbane
15 October – A six-month-old baby survives when his pram rolls off the platform at Ashburton railway station, Melbourne and is struck by the approaching train.[42]
18 October – Australian Customs vessel the MV Oceanic Viking rescues 78 asylum seekers – claiming to be Tamil refugees from the conflict in Sri Lanka – inside Indonesia's search and rescue zone. The migrants are taken to Bintan island in Indonesia however they refuse to disembark or co-operate with Indonesian customs officials.[43]
11 November – Claude Choules becomes the world's oldest first-time author at the age of 108 when his autobiography The Last of the Last is published.[44]
16 November – Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull apologise on behalf of Australia to the "Forgotten Australians": people who suffered neglect and abuse as children in state care, in particular, thousands of Home Children – British child migrants forcibly emigrated to Australia until the 1960s.[45]
10 January – Peter Overton takes over as the anchorman of Sydney's 6pm Nine News on weeknights after Mark Ferguson is suspended indefinitely after poor ratings, losing to Seven News.
7–14 February – All three commercial networks in Australia take extensive news coverage of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires, in which 181 people lost their lives, including former Nine newsreader Brian Naylor and actor Reg Evans.
9 February – The premiere of Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities sets the ratings record of the highest-rating Australian television series launch since the introduction of the OzTAM people meter system in 2001.[54][55] The launch attracted 2.58 million viewers,[54][55] and is also the highest rating non-sporting program in television history.[54]
12 May – The ABC receives an extra $136.4 million over three years from the 2009 federal budget to develop an advertising-free digital children's channel (ABC3),[59] and increase its production of local drama to 90 hours a year,[59] a similar level to the amount required by the commercial networks.[59] The budget also allocated SBS an extra $20 million over the same period to produce up tp 50 hours of new Australian content each year.[59] This figure is significantly below the extra $70 million SBS were seeking per year.[59]
3 June – A skit involving terminally ill children and the fictional 'Make a Realistic Wish Foundation' (a parody of the Make-a-Wish Foundation) causes public outrage after airing on an episode of The Chaser's War on Everything on ABC1. The skit involved The Chaser members Chris Taylor (as the foundation spokesperson) and Andrew Hansen (as a doctor). The premise of the skit was that if the terminally ill children are only going to live for a few more months before dying, it is not worth spending money on lavish gifts for them. It portrayed the children requesting extravagant items such as a trip to Disneyland and the chance to meet Zac Efron, with Taylor and Hansen instead giving them a pencil case and a stick respectively. The skit concluded with Taylor stating "Why go to any trouble, when they're only gonna die anyway". Following public criticism of the skit, both The Chaser and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation issued statements of apology. The ABC subsequently suspended the series for two weeks following the controversy. The series returned on 24 June.
12 July – Mark Webber wins his first Formula One Grand Prix at the 2009 German Grand Prix in his eighth year in Formula One. He was the first Australian to win a Grand Prix since 1981. Webber also set a new record for most Formula One race starts prior to his first win, at 130.
23 August – The Australian cricket team loses The Ashes cricket series, 2 Tests to 1 in England. Australia drop from the first-ranked Test team to behind South Africa, Sri Lanka and India.[75]
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