I would hazard a guess that the fact that the Australian market is actually quite small might be a reason for a launch prior to the US. Another chance for early adopters to bug-test and get major bugs fixed before the big launch in the US. Considering that the population of Australia is 22million vs USA's 310million, it's not a very big market.
As to the quality of news coverage, this is a great example of how much fact checking goes into the news:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMQCcOSfaYw