Australian stocks rise amid global economic concerns

Long-awaited US-China trade negotiations have helped push the local share market higher but worries about inflation and global growth remain, with neither nation budging on tariffs, AAP reports.

By midday AEST, the S&P/ASX200 was up 26.5 points, or 0.32%, to 8,257.7, as the broader All Ordinaries rose 26.6 points, or 0.31%, to 8,488.9.

Weekend talks between China and US officials in Switzerland were hailed for making “substantial progress”, but neither side mentioned plans to remove or reduce the US’s 145% duties on China’s imports, nor Beijing’s 125% imposts on US goods.

Seven of 11 local sectors were trading higher by midday, led by a 2.4% rally in energy stocks as the trade talks between the world’s two biggest oil consumers pushed the crude price higher, with Brent futures trading at US$63.78 a barrel.

The worst performing sector on the ASX was consumer staples, down 0.5%, with Woolworths shedding 0.9% to $32.95 as it announced plans to cut prices on hundreds of items from Wednesday.

Locally, Wednesday’s employment data will be the last major economic figures ahead of the Reserve Bank’s meeting next week, when markets expect the central bank to cut rates for the second time this year.

The Australian dollar is buying 64.23 US cents, up from 63. 97 US cents on Friday at 5pm.

HMAS Sydney has been deployed under the enforcement of United Nations security council (UNSC) sanctions against North Korea.

The ADF said in a statement it had enforced UNSC sanctions against North Korea since 2018 to “deter and disrupt illegal maritime activity, including ship-to-ship transfers at sea”.

These sanctions limit North Korea’s imports of refined petroleum and crude oil, and its exports of coal. HMAS Sydney support to Operation Argos marks the 13th time a Royal Australian Navy vessel has been deployed to enforce UNSC sanctions since 2018.

The commanding officer of HMAS Sydney, Ben Weller, said the missile destroyer previously supported Operation Argos in September 2024.

We work closely with the enforcement coordination cell located at Yokosuka in Japan, and sail in areas where suspected illegal activity is expected to take place.

The ship is equipped with an MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter and a suite of sensors that allow us to monitor illegal ship-to-ship transfers of sanctioned goods.

Dan Jervis-Bardy

Who will – and won’t – be able to vote for next Liberal leader

The makeup of the Liberal party room that will decide the next leader has been finalised as the final seats in the election are called.

The Liberal Party’s federal director, Andrew Hirst, was given until Monday morning to determine which candidates in the remaining undecided seats were projected to win to allow time for them to travel to Canberra ahead of Tuesday’s leadership ballot.

Guardian Australia has confirmed Gisele Kapterian (Bradfield), Mary Aldred (Monash), Zoe McKenzie (Flinders) and Terry Young (Longman) will be allowed a vote.

However, Amelia Hamer won’t be in the room after falling short in her bid to reclaim Kooyong from teal MP Monique Ryan.

The ABC called Bradfield for Katperian and Kooyong for Ryan on Monday morning.

Flinders, Longman and Monash remain “in doubt”, according to the ABC, although the Liberals are ahead in each.

What Price’s elevation would mean for Liberal party

It’s a big week for the future of the Coalition. The Liberals will elect their new opposition leader on Tuesday, while the National party will go to a leadership vote later today.

Liberals deputy leader Sussan Ley and shadow treasurer Angus Taylor are vying for the top spot, with Taylor running on a joint ticket with Northern Territory senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

Price’s confirmation she will run for Liberal deputy has put the members of an already shell-shocked party into a new spin, Michelle Grattan writes:

Tuesday’s leadership contest, where the numbers are said to be tight, is a battle for the direction of the party as much as one between the two personalities.

Read more here:

ABC projects Greens will keep Brisbane seat of Ryan

Caitlin Cassidy

Election analyst Antony Green has confirmed the ABC’s projections for four close seats – Ryan, Kooyong, Bradfield and Bean.

Green told the ABC Elizabeth Watson-Brown would come in second place in the Brisbane seat of Ryan, allowing her to take Labor’s preferences and defeat the Coalition.

He said Monique Ryan was also “far enough ahead” to withstand Amelia Hamer in the Melbourne seat of Kooyong, while Labor was also projected to win the ACT electorate of Bean following a surprise close challenge against independent candidate Jessie Price.

In the Sydney north shore seat of Bradfield, Green said there weren’t enough outstanding votes to turn around the Coalition’s lead. Giselse Kapterian has faced a tight contest against independent Nicolette Boele, who ran this federal election for a second time after the resignation of Paul Fletcher.

Bradfield is … the bluest of blue electorates traditionally. There’s been a surge of support in the north shore for the independents and the Liberals have haemorrhaged. Bradfield has stayed with the Liberals but by a very narrow margin.

Four seats remained in doubt – Flinders, Monash and Calwell in Victoria and Longman in Queensland.

Green said Labor was “probably favoured” in Calwell, but it would be more than a week before the result was clear.

Monash remains in doubt but is probably leaning to the Liberals. In Flinders, an independent will finish second, but I think Zoe McKenzie [of the Coalition] will probably hold it. Longman … at this stage that one is too close to call.

Caitlin Cassidy

La Trobe unveils strategy to increase regional enrolments

La Trobe university has unveiled a five-year strategy to drastically increase regional student participation in a bid to narrow the participation gap with metropolitan students.

The strategy aims to grow enrolments in on-campus, hybrid and online courses by four times the growth rate of the domestic student population in regional Victoria by 2030.

La Trobe’s chancellor, John Brumby AO, said fewer than 20% of regional, rural and remote Australians attended university, but the federal government commissioned Universities Accord estimates that 55% of Australian jobs could require a university degree by 2050.

[La Trobe’s] bold targets … will contribute to reducing the gap between metropolitan and regional higher education participation and boosting the skilled workforce in areas of greatest need such as health and education.

Increasing higher education participation in under-represented communities was a key focus of the accord, which recommended a $10bn infrastructure fund to expand study hubs in regional, rural and remote areas.

Tim Wilson mulls tilt at Liberal party leadership

Dan Jervis-Bardy

Tim Wilson is mulling a tilt at the Liberal leadership ahead of Tuesday’s party room meeting to select Peter Dutton’s replacement.

Sources close to Wilson confirmed the incoming Goldstein MP was considering vying with the shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, and the deputy leader, Sussan Ley, for the top job, although a final decision was yet to be made.

As reported earlier, the former Liberal MP Jason Falinksi made the case for Wilson in an interview on ABC RN Breakfast this morning.

I think that Tim is a fighter, and I think that our supporters, any supporters of any political party after the loss that we’ve just had, want someone who’s going to fight, who’s actually going to stand there and say I believe in these things and I will fight for these things.

Liberal sources familiar with Wilson’s thinking rated the chances of the 45-year-old ultimately putting his hand up at roughly “35-45%”.

One factor weighing against a leadership tilt was timing, the sources said.

Colleagues who might be prepared to back Wilson in 18 months’ time believed it was too early for the one-time assistant energy minister to vault into the leadership.

However, sources said the low level of enthusiasm for either Taylor or Ley could attract undecided MPs to Wilson.

Taylor is running on a joint ticket with Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, fresh from her defection from Nationals to the Liberals, while Ted O’Brien will reportedly put his hand for the deputy’s position under Ley.

The party room meeting is scheduled for 10am on Tuesday.

ABC projects Greens to hold Brisbane seat of Ryan

The ABC’s Antony Green is now projecting that Greens candidate Elizabeth Watson-Brown will hold on to the Brisbane seat of Ryan. He said a provisional three-candidate preferred count conducted by the AEC has made clear that Labor will not catch up.

The result means Watson-Brown will be the only member of the Greens in the House of Representatives.

Benita Kolovos

Jacinta Allan on ‘really difficult drought conditions’ in some parts of Victoria

The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, was asked this morning about the drought in regional parts of the state. She says in September the government announced a $13.5m drought support package for farmers.

So far, 1,569 grants have been provided to primary producers to fund farm water systems, stock containment areas and grain and fodder but she did not rule out doing more.

Allan said:

I have been speaking regularly with the agriculture minister, Ros Spence, who is working with other colleagues to support farmers and primary producers but also to those rural communities that rely on our rural industries, because we are seeing some really difficult drought conditions that we haven’t seen in some parts of the state since the millennium drought some years ago now.

We provided a package of support for drought affected farmers in that south-western part of our state. In September of last year, around $13m was allocated, and minister Spence has been meeting and talking with both representatives of the farming industry and primary producers themselves, because we recognise that despite that support … there is more to do here, because we haven’t seen rain pretty much since the start of year.

The ABC has called the seats of Bean, Bradfield and Kooyong, where close races have been playing out since election night.

Labor MP David Smith leads by fewer than 200 votes for Bean, and ABC election analyst Antony Green says that will be enough for him to retain the seat. That will give Labor a total of 93 seats in the House of Representatives.

The ABC also projects that independent MP Monique Ryan will retain the electorate of Kooyong, in Melbourne. Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer received similar levels of support to former treasurer Josh Frydenberg in 2022, but Ryan is about 700 votes ahead.

The Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian will win the Sydney seat of Bradfield, taking over from outgoing MP Paul Fletcher. Independent Nicolette Boele initially seemed on track to win it off the Liberals, but Kapterian currently has a lead of about 200 votes, and there are only 1,000 left to count.

Benita Kolovos

More on Metro Tunnel funding

Victoria’s transport infrastructure minister, Gabrielle Williams, says the $727m for Metro Tunnel will also include introducing “turn up and go” services for the Sunbury, Cranbourne and Pakenham lines. It will mean commuters on those lines will be able to hop on a train every couple of minutes during peak hours.

Williams says the extra services – across both the lines that travel through the tunnel and the others announced today – will be introduced in phases.

The extra services that are in this package today are staggered over a period of time, some slightly before the opening of Metro Tunnel, some from day one of Metro Tunnel, some after the Metro Tunnel [opens] so we try to sequence changes to our timetables in a sensible way so that we’re not compromising the reliability of our network.

Williams says the entire network’s timetable will be altered to account for the new tunnel:

[It impacts all] the modes that intersect with it. So it’s buses, it’s trains, it’s trams, it’s our entire network. It’s a very, very complicated endeavour, and one that [is] well under way at the moment, and I look forward to being able to share more with you about that very soon.

Erin Patterson trial update

You might notice the absence of posts about the Erin Patterson trial today. That’s because it is a jury-free day, which the judge decided last week would be in the interests of efficiency.

On Thursday, Justice Christopher Beale told the jury:

I’ve just been having a discussion with counsel about the way the case is progressing and the way that we can save some time, and we can best achieve that by not sitting on Monday.

There are things happening behind the scenes to try and condense the material that will be presented to you, and if Monday is devoted to that rather than you sitting here in court listening to some evidence, I expect the case will conclude earlier.

We’re expecting the jury to be back hearing evidence again on Tuesday.

Benita Kolovos

Victorian premier announces train funding of almost $5bn

The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, is announcing almost $5bn in funding in next week’s budget will be spent to “switch on” the Metro Tunnel, run more train services and kick off works on Melbourne airport rail.

She’s making the announcement at Sunshine station, flanked by her deputy premier, Ben Carroll, transport infrastructure minister, Gabrielle Williams, and seven Labor MPs representing the other northern and western suburbs.

Some $4bn will be spent on the station’s redevelopment, which she says is stage one of a train line to Melbourne airport. Allan says:

Sunshine station is such an important gateway for the airport, for the western suburbs, for the city and for the regional trains as well, and this will transform Sunshine station into a transport super hub for suburban and country and airport rail trains. It also paves the way, because it untangles the network, for future works to be able to deliver more services for the western suburbs.

Allan says $727m will be spent to “operationalise” the Metro Tunnel, which is set to open later this year.

And $98.7m will be spent on running more frequent services on several metropolitan and regional train lines:

• Werribee line will get two additional trains per hour in the morning and afternoons

• Sandringham line will get two extra trains per hour in peak periods

• Craigieburn and Upfield lines will see an increase in services during shoulder peak and off-peak periods, with trains running at least every 20 minutes including late at night and on weekends

• Bendigo lines will get longer trains running on more weekend services

• Seymour line will get an additional service in the morning and afternoon peaks

• Gippsland line will get additional weekday interpeak services on the Traralgon line following the completion of upgrades later this year