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Treasurer Jim Chalmers will hand down his pre-election federal budget on Tuesday promising “meaningful and substantial” cost-of-living relief for struggling Aussies while seeking to avoid fuelling inflation with cash handouts.
Labor’s fourth budget is likely to contain few surprises, since really it was the budget we weren’t supposed to have — the arrival of ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred earlier this month scuppered Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s plans to call the election that weekend for April 12.
Chalmers tempered expectations for huge announcements, but said “responsible” cost-of-living relief would once again be a key theme.
The budget is tipped to show a cash deficit of $26.1 billion and revenue downgrades of $11.3 billion over the next four years.
After posting Australia’s first budget surplus in 15 years, Mr Chalmers confirmed on Monday that the budget would be back in the red amid domestic and global headwinds.
The Treasurer has rolled out billions of dollars in new spending in recent weeks including changes designed to provide relief for families through cheaper medicines and GP visits, cuts to student HECS debts, and a reduction in beer excise for schooners at the pub.
It follows a big injection of funding for public schools and childcare and a $150 energy rebate.
Former Prime Minister John Howard has been out campaigning in my seat of Paterson where incumbent Meryl Swanson of Labor is under pressure to lose her seat. Howard dismissed suggestions that Mr Dutton was a “Trumpy” or as some have described him Trump-lite or Temu-Trump
A Sydney woman charged after reports novel contained child abuse material
Police seize copies of novel to be forensically examined as 33-year-old charged with producing child abuse material
New South Wales police said they began investigations in March “following reports of a fiction novel containing child abuse material”.
About 12.30pm on Friday detectives attended a home in the western Sydney suburb of Quakers Hill where they arrested a 33-year-old woman.
The Queensland government has accepted that a $7.1bn deal with Canberra to fund 2032 Olympic venues cannot be topped up, sounding the deathknell of the showpiece Brisbane Arena.
A $750m green hydrogen project in South Australia has been quietly shelved, adding to a string of projects failing to move beyond a feasibility stage.
DNA testing firm 23andMe files for bankruptcy as demand dries up
Co-founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki, ex-wife of Google founder Sergey Brin and sister of the late Susan who was Google’s first marketing manager who once led You Tube quits after multiple failed buyout bids
The company's market value peaked in 2021 at nearly $6 billion amid booming interest in DNA testing kits but demand has waned in recent years, hurting firms such as 23andMe and its Blackstone-owned rival AncestryDNA.
In 2023, hackers exposed the personal data of nearly 7 million 23andMe customers over a five-month period, dealing a major blow to the company's reputation and compounding its growth problems. The breach raised alarm among customers concerned about their privacy and how DNA-testing firms handle their data.
The San Francisco-based firm has also laid off 200 employees and stopped development of all therapies as part of what will be a major overhaul.
Wojcicki has been pushing for a buyout since last April, but has been rebuffed by 23andMe's board.
The company did not say whether there are other interested bidders. It will continue to operate during the sale process, having secured $35 million in financing over the weekend.
Congressman Jim Jordan announces the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing to grill Judge James Boasberg next week over his activist injunctions and political history.
Boasberg was the judge who ordered the return to the US of the criminals from Venezuela and El-Salvador. He just reaffirmed a ruling that blocks President Donald Trump from using wartime powers to summarily deport alleged gang members.
The new development from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg came just hours in advance of a critical courtroom showdown before a federal appeals court on Trump’s deportation authority.
Boasberg said legal precedents are clear that even if Trump’s invocation of the two-century-old statute is valid, the people subject to it are entitled to a meaningful opportunity to dispute their deportation by presenting evidence, for instance, that they are not members of a gang.
“This is an out of control judge — a federal judge trying to control our entire foreign policy,” Bondi said on Fox Business Channel Sunday. “He’s trying to ask us about national security information which he is absolutely not entitled to. … It’s basic public safety. Get these people out of our country as fast as we can.”
Boasberg was the same judge who ruled on the FISA case that allowed the FBI to surveil the Trump campaign and for who FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith altered a document to convince the judge to grant said surveillance. Clinesmith was the only person convicted in the John Durham investigation into the origins of the case, pleading guilty and sentenced by Boasberg. Clinesmith is back working in Washington DC as a lawyer
Police find multiple “incendiary” devices placed at Tesla showroom in Austin, Texas
Meanwhile, Tesla shares have risen 20% since failed VP Tim Walz candidate celebrated the stock dropping.
Tariffs
Hyundai will announce a $20 billion investment in the U.S. later today, including $5.8 billion for a steel plant in Louisiana.
Rolls-Royce planning to shift production to U.S. to avoid Trump tariffs - reports Breitbart.
Trump’s statement on Venezuela: Starting April 2, 2025—“Liberation Day in America”—the U.S. will impose a 25% secondary tariff on any country buying oil or gas from Venezuela.
Trump says Venezuela deliberately sent tens of thousands of violent criminals, including the terrorist-designated Tren de Aragua gang, into the U.S.
Former US Rep. Mia Love, the first Black woman elected to Congress as a Republican, passed away following a fight with an aggressive form of brain cancer, her family announced on X Sunday night.
Love, who was 49, represented Utah’s 4th Congressional District from 2015-2019. She was diagnosed in 2022. She became a contributor on CNN in 2019.
A North Carolina mother and her son can sue a public school system and a doctors' group for allegedly giving the boy a COVID-19 vaccine without consent, the state Supreme Court ruled.
The ruling handed down Friday reverses a lower-court decision that a federal health emergency law prevented Emily Happel and her son Tanner Smith from filing a lawsuit.
Both a trial judge and the state Court of Appeals had ruled against the two, who sought litigation after Smith received an unwanted vaccine during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Meanwhile The Guardian has published an article, ‘The goal is to disassemble public health’: experts warn against US turn to vaccine skepticism
Former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, 38, received the sentence of 12 months probation and 400 hours community service from U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg Friday during a video hearing.
Clinesmith admitted that in June 2017 he sent an altered email to an FBI agent that indicated a target of court-ordered FBI surveillance, former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, was “not a source” for the Central Intelligence Agency. The statement, passed along as the FBI was applying for a third extension of surveillance of Page, made Page’s actions seem more suspicious by downplaying his past cooperation with the CIA.
Clinesmith insisted that he thought the statement was true at the time and only altered the message to save himself the hassle of procuring another email from the CIA. Prosecutors contested that claim, arguing that the FBI lawyer intended to mislead his colleague, but Boasberg sided with the defense on that point.
“My view of the evidence is that Mr. Clinesmith likely believed that what he said about Mr. Page was true,” Boasberg said. “By altering the email, he was saving himself some work and taking an inappropriate shortcut.”
Instead of prison, Boasberg sentenced Clinesmith to one year probation and 400 hours of community service.
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