In addition to Ars Technica, I also read Kotaku Australia. I find Mark Serrels' contributions to the Australian edition to be some of the best material on the site.

I read /r/australia as a filter for domestic news (mainly links from The Age, SMH, ABC and Crikey).

I also use Stylebot to hide the comments section on every news site I read regularly, generally nothing good will come of reading them.