Queensland's Senate hopefuls could well face a long wait, worthy of the metre-long ballot paper on which they appeared, to know whether or not they will be Canberra-bound to sit in Australia's 45th Parliament.

Federal elections are largely fought on a macro level – taxation, the economy, national security, health and education funding.

Unions fear funding for victims of domestic violence and homelessness is at risk.

Finally the campaigning is over and the country will elect the next government today. But what, from a business point of view, are the parties promising? This handy guide is here to help.

A collective yawn may have met the rallying cries of politicians over the past eight weeks, but Hashmat Najib can't get enough of the protracted election campaign.

Conformism plagues both sides of politics, retiring Labor MP Laurie Ferguson says, and after 26 years in federal parliament he is looking forward to being "totally unemployed".

Tax cuts promised from Friday July 1 will fail to arrive for up to a year after the Tax Office confirmed it won't be changing its tax schedules to accommodate the prime minister.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has linked asylum seekers with terrorism, insisting recent attacks overseas have made border security a key issue for voters at the election.

'The Australian video games industry is a perfect example of the sort of innovative 21st century industry that the current Prime Minister gushes about', says said Senator ScottLudlam. 'We’d prefer that enthusiasm translated into real action'.

The central Queensland coast has emerged as the state's key election battleground, as both major parties turn their attention to Rockhampton, Gladstone and Mackay.

Claims of a boost to living standards from the government's planned company tax cuts rest largely on a dramatic reduction in tax avoidance, a new analysis shows.

America's openly gay Ambassador John Berry has said Australia could conduct a same-sex marriage plebiscite campaign with "great respect" and in a way that unites the country on the issue.

The overwhelming majority of people Australia sent to Papua New Guinea are genuine refugees, new figures suggest.

With one day to go the media is at fever pitch speculating about the election.

Glenn Lazarus may have had a few preconceived ideas about politics before being voted into the Senate, but starring in a sexually charged political advertisement was not one of them.

Roger Corbett, a former Reserve Bank board member, Woolworths chief executive and Fairfax Media chairman, confirmed the pair had, in recent months, discussed a post-poltics career for the former Liberal leader.

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Elections are all about giveaways, right? And just who pays for all the promises?

A powerful right wing union is being taken to the Federal Court after the workplace tribunal found it had massively rorted its membership numbers.

Anouk Sireude resigned from her job when she was 12 weeks pregnant because another company offered her an extra month of paid parental leave.

The country's biggest operators of landfills have pocketed almost $200 million from the Abbott-Turnbull government's Emissions Reduction Fund without having to prove the funds reduced their greenhouse gas production.

The deadly Istanbul terrorist attack shows that busy international airport terminals are now a "soft target" of choice for the so-called Islamic State, a leading terrorism expert says.

A tsunami of cameras, microphones, reporters, video crews and protective police surges from the Hurstville railway station, sweeping shoppers and families before it and gathering them into its maw.

Bill Shorten has defended his shift of position on a same-sex marriage plebiscite by saying it might have been valuable a few years ago but now "the community's moved on".

Saturday's federal election represents controversial political figure Pauline Hanson's best chance of winning since 1998, according to a respected political analyst.

Australians' trust in our political system has ebbed away, with more voters breaking away from the major parties, a survey has revealed.

Britain's got Brexit. The United States has Donald Trump.

If company tax in Australia was reduced, tax benefits for Australia's largest companies would be $5.53 billion a year, according to a report commissioned by GetUp.

Britain's decision to leave the European Union was fuelled by mainstream concern about immigration, former prime minister John Howard says.

Fast food giant McDonald's Australia cut its tax bill by more than halve in 2015 by routing payments via the low-tax nation of Singapore.