Fergus Hunter is a breaking news reporter for Fairfax Media in the federal press gallery at Parliament House
Treasurer Scott Morrison has shed more light on which "life events" leading to large financial windfalls will be exempt from a proposed $500,000 lifetime cap on non-concessional superannuation contributions.
Maverick conservative senator Cory Bernardi will reintroduce legislation to water down section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act when Parliament returns at the end of August.
More than half of Australian households have completed the census, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has revealed, more than a week after the nationwide survey was launched and then shut down for 40 hours following an attempted cyber attack.
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce will host a dairy symposium in late August to consider solutions to the milk industry crisis with farming, processing and retail representatives.
The nation's peak welfare body, the Australian Council of Social Service, has called on the government to dump superannuation measures benefiting the wealthy in favour of a boost to the retirement savings of low-income earners.
The Coalition and Labor will back a plan ensuring many of the new Senate crossbenchers are forced to seek re-election in 2019 while roughly half the major party senators are guaranteed job security for six years.
Newly extended consultations on the referendum to recognise Indigenous people in the constitution - delays that render a 2017 vote unlikely - have been embraced by the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples as acknowledgement that a "historical opportunity" should be approached in the right way and not rushed.
The minister responsible for the Census has compared it to Facebook, saying concern about its ability to track people is "much ado about nothing".
Senate powerbroker Nick Xenophon has declared he will refuse to provide his name on the 2016 census form this week amid privacy concerns and criticisms of recent changes made to the nation-wide survey.
Full independent costings of the major parties' election campaign commitments have shown Labor's policies would leave the budget $16.6 billion worse off over the next four years but "significantly improve" the budgetary position over a decade.
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