Friday's news in 5 minutes.

1. Mother-of-five charged after her nine-month-old baby drowned in a bathtub.

Qld loses another precious baby to neglect https://t.co/QqzGfAqjDA @violencehurts @LennaLeprena

— Act For Mason (@act_mason) March 29, 2017

28-year-old Kandita Kattenber, a mother of five, has been charged over the death of her nine-month-old son after he died in their Townsville home in November last year, the Townsville Bulletin reports.

Baby Carlyle was allegedly left in the bath alone while his mother “socialised with her family”.

Hi two older brothers – aged seven and 10 – rushed to his aid and tried to revive him, but he could not be saved.

“This case is based upon, what we will allege, is the gross neglect on the part of the mother, regarding a child being left unsupervised in a bath for an extended period of time,” Townsville Child Protection Investigation Unit officer-in-charge detective Senior Sergeant Dave Miles said.

“Police will allege during the course of that the child has drowned. The mother of the child was also at the residence talking to other people while the child was in the bath.”

Kandita was charged with manslaughter after police allege she put “more priority in her social activities than she did in the supervision of her child”.

All of the woman’s remaining children no longer reside with her. Police waited for medical and forensic evidence to be completed before charging her.

She is scheduled to appear in Charters Towers Magistrates Court on April 18.

2. Woman loses custody of children after DNA tests reveal 71-year-old granddad fathered two of her children.

‘Grandpa’ was children’s father https://t.co/mmafpuouLQ

— news.com.au (@newscomauHQ) March 30, 2017

A Queensland woman has lost custody of her three children after DNA testing revealed a 71-year-old ‘step-grandfather’ had actually fathered two of her kids, news.com.au reports.

The Family Court heart the 71-year-old man and 42-year-old woman – his stepson’s wife – had a decade-long affair, which resulted in the woman’s eldest and youngest child.

The man’s stepson has now been awarded custody of all three children after believing he was the biological father of all of them for over a decade.

Justice Catherine Carew found that even though he was not the biological father of two of the three children, he had “fulfilled that role since birth”,

The court also heard that the 71-year-old man believed he had not done anything wrong in having an affair with his stepson’s wife, and that a third pregnancy was terminated in 2011 as a result of the relationship.

The woman claimed that she had been raped by the older man, but Justice Carew found “considerable evidence” the relationship between the two was consensual.

The woman will be allowed access to her children by telephone or Skype, be able to visit once a week at 7pm and once a fortnight for up to three hours until May 2019.

3. Gold Coast residents ‘could be isolated’ by floodwaters, evacuations ordered in northern NSW.

FLOOD EMERGENCY: Southeast QLD and Northern NSW under threat from rising flood waters #sun7 pic.twitter.com/hhyhsbEdv3

— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) March 30, 2017

Rising floodwaters will likely isolate some Gold Coast residents and evacuations have been ordered in northern NSW as heavy rain dumped by Cyclone Debbie continues across the region, bringing major flooding, AAP reports.

An emergency alert has been issued for the Tallebudgera Valley, which is expected to be cut off as roads are inundated.

“You should prepare for short term isolation,” the Gold Coast council warned in a statement on Thursday.

At nearby Springbrook, in the Gold Coast hinterland, a massive 380mm had fallen in the 12 hours up to midday, with as much as 500mm predicted.

Meanwhile, the extreme weather has forced authorities to suspend a search for a bushwalker missing in a national park on the Queensland-NSW border.

A landslide on the Lamington National Park’s access road is stopping authorities heading in to look for the man, aged in his 60s. He went hiking on Wednesday but failed to meet up with friends at 2pm, as agreed, and last made contact with authorities later that day.

Over the border in far northern NSW, residents have been ordered to evacuate ahead of major flooding.

This morning, the State Emergency Service wanted that people may have perished in floodwaters overnight,

NSW SES Deputy Commissioner Mark Morrow said there were 130 flood rescues overnight on Thursday and some people who called for help couldn’t be reached and dawn could bring “distressing news”.

“There could be people overnight that perished in that flood, we don’t know at this stage,” he told ABC television on Friday.

“We expect this morning that as we start to go out and try to find people that made those calls overnight, there could be some very distressing news.”

4. Western Australian school bans kids from doing ‘dangerous’ cartwheels.

A school in our South-West has banned kids from doing cartwheels and handstands. https://t.co/nHfgjriCee

— 7 News Perth (@7NewsPerth) March 30, 2017

Parents have been left bewildered after a primary school in WA’s south-west banned students from doing cartwheels and handstands, 7 News reports.

Bunbury Primary School says at least two students a day were being injured in the playground and that it was “too dangerous” to allow children to keep doing them.

“What happened to kids being kids and being allowed to play?” one mother asked.

“I don’t know where it has come from, but that’s what they do and they’ve been doing it for years and I don’t know what the problem is with it,” a father told 7 News.

The school’s principal said in a statement the decision was “not about stopping kids from taking risks and having fun”.

“But attempting things like flips or handstands on bitumen and sloping grassed areas without learning how to do it properly is never a good idea,” the statement said.

The school has confirmed that the ban is only temporary at this stage.

5. Man charged with murder over disappearance of Brisbane man Sam Thompson.

Police charge man with murder over disappearance of Samuel Thompson. https://t.co/iCevWM9J3f #7News pic.twitter.com/V1nby4ZyF1

— 7News Yahoo7 (@Y7News) March 30, 2017

A man has been charged with the murder of missing Brisbane 22-year-old Sam Thompson after police seized a car and searched an Ipswich rubbish tip.

The 23-year-old Bald Hills man has also been charged with one count of interfering with a corpse, AAP reports.

Mr Thompson’s remains are yet to be found and forensic officers are continuing investigations at a home in Bald Hills which “remains a primary crime scene”, police say. Police refused to confirm whether the Bald Hills man lived at the property, or if he was connected to it in any way.

A team of 40 detectives has been working the case and turned their attention to the Bald Hills home after failing to find anything during a search of the Swanbank landfill on Wednesday.

Mr Thompson vanished in suspicious circumstances on March 7.

A car similar to the one spotted on CCTV at the car park of the Deep Water Bend Reserve at Bald Hills, where he was last seen, was seized from an Albany Creek home on Wednesday night.

Mr Thompson’s distinctive orange 2016 Ford Mustang was also spotted in the car park that day. His parents reported him missing earlier this month.

He was the victim of an unsolved robbery in Brisbane last September, in which his car was stolen.

Police believe he met with foul play and were investigating whether his disappearance was linked to that crime.

The man is due to front Brisbane Magistrates Court later today.

6. Changes to race-hate speech laws killed off in late night Senate debate.

BREAKING: Senate veto on 18C. https://t.co/nmFkvaH8HZ pic.twitter.com/hjqqBNIOHz

— The Australian (@australian) March 30, 2017

Controversial changes to race-hate speech laws are dead in the water following a marathon late night Senate debate.

The Turnbull government failed in its attempt to change the words “offend”, “insult” and “humiliate” in Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act to “harass and intimidate”.

The government had also sought to tweak the Human Rights Commission’s complaints process, but the fate of those changes is still up in the air, AAP reports.

The attempt to re-word the section was killed off by a Labor amendment to the bill, 31 votes to 28.

Critics dubbed the result a win for multicultural Australia but Attorney General George Brandis said it was a “sad day” for free speech.

The government was accused of dragging out the debate on the bill while behind the scenes negotiations were still underway with the Nick Xenophon Team over the next item on the Senate’s agenda – the company tax cut package.

Debate on the gutted bill was adjourned until a later time.

Senator Brandis argued during the debate that it was a hallmark of a free and democratic society that all members have a right to voice their opinions.

“If we do not believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe it at all,” he said.

Senator Brandis outlined all the “deeply offensive and insulting” instances other senators had called him a white man and said the spirit of the late cartoonist Bill Leak had presided over the debate.

Labor senator Jacinta Collins said there was no popular support for the 18C changes, while, Pauline Hanson used the debate to declare Australians were not racist.

Senator Bernardi said 18C was being used by the left to shut down debate and the process attached to investigate alleged breaches was “rotten to the core”.

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