Slightly more optimistic economic figures gives Scott Morrison and the Turnbull government a boost heading into 2018, as the charts explain.
Lukas Coch/AAP and The Conversation
Seven charts on the highlights from the government’s mid year update of the budget.
Fewer government welfare recipients due to higher than expected employment growth provides a slightly stronger budget outlook for the Turnbull government as they head into 2018.
Lukas Coch/AAP
The improvements in the government’s debt position are entirely because of revisions in economic assumptions, not fantastic fiscal management.
Watered down higher education measures, a stronger employment rate and lower than expected debt levels are the highlights for MYEFO 2017.
Lukas Coch/AAP
The drawn-out process of Australia legalising marriage equality has finally come to a close, with a bill passing the lower house by an overwhelming majority on Thursday.
Malcolm Turnbull has again had his hand forced by rebel backbenchers.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Seldom is a government’s impotence and frustration as much on display as it was when Malcolm Turnbull finally capitulated and announced he would set up a banking royal commission.
Scott Morrison released Treasury costings he has had done of Labor’s tax policies.
Daniel Munoz/AAP
What’s still missing in the religious freedoms debate is any clarity around what people think they won’t be able to do, or where the existing laws are likely to fail to protect them.
The lack of moderates in the Liberals’ succession list is notable, given Christopher Pyne’s ill-judged boast to the faction that it was in the ‘winners’ circle’.
For the ABS, even the basic task of sending out ballot papers will not be straightforward.
AAP/Alan Porritt
The key question in a legal challenge to the ‘postal plebiscite’ is whether information about Australians’ opinions on same-sex marriage constitutes ‘statistical information’.
Another leaked recording – this time of Tony Abbott – has the Liberal Party under pressure.
Brendan Esposito/AAP
Senior Lecturer in Political Science: Research Fellow at the Cairns Institute; Research Associate for Centre for Policy Futures, University of Queensland, James Cook University