Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has labelled US President-elect Donald Trump's trade policy "dangerous" and probably his biggest concern.

Universities will be forced to come clean to prospective students about the real ATAR cut-offs for their courses, following recommendations to the Turnbull government from the nation's top higher education panel.

• EXCLUSIVE

Australia's Labor party is advocating a break in the longstanding bipartisan consensus towards Australia's chief ally.

The International Monetary Fund has taken aim at the first Turnbull budget for winding back spending too quickly, especially in the coming financial year when, it says, the budget will rip $20 billion out of the economy,

'There is a strong feeling of disrespect.'

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has accused opposition leader Bill Shorten of hypocrisy on a breathtaking scale as the issue of foreign workers taking Australian jobs threatened to become a defining argument that could last all the way to the next election.

Staffers seething at wage offer.

The ABC and "élite media" are to blame for distracting people from the government's focus on economic growth, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said, at pains to emphasise that he is in touch with the concerns of real people.

The captain wryly says the ship is built for speed, not comfort, but Sea Shepherd hopes its new rugged fast boat will be a "game changer" in its battle to stop Japanese whalers.

Asylum seekers who have left Nauru and Manus for medical treatment in Australia, including sexual assault victims and mental health patients, will have to return to the islands if they are to have any chance of being accepted under the US resettlement deal.

Crisis in the leadership ranks of the RSL in NSW has deepened, with two councillors resigning in disgust at the league's handling of the controversy.

Australia's ineffective political donation laws have allowed 85 per cent of all private money going to major parties avoid scrutiny, a new report has found.

The "Australia first" push that has followed the election of Donald Trump is already producing unlikely alliances across party lines, with Nationals MP George Christensen echoing Opposition Leader Bill Shorten's calls for a crackdown on 457 foreign worker visas.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has stressed that the United States resettlement deal is a "one-off" and will only apply to refugees currently held in the Manus Island and Nauru detention centres, including those temporarily in Australia for medical care.

Bill Shorten will announce a new emphasis on local employment on Tuesday, as Labor moves to protect Australian jobseekers from being replaced by overseas workers brought in by employers under skilled migration visas designed to fill holes in the labour supply.

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has committed his state to a referendum on whether to host Australia's first nuclear waste dump, saying he will push ahead despite lukewarm public support.

• ANALYSIS

He was the hero of the left who became the champion of the right, held up as both saviour and betrayer - often at the same time.

With the rise of cashless payments and internet shopping, the production of coins has been dwindling for a decade. Until now.

Malcolm Turnbull's "ring of steel" asylum seeker arrangements designed to buttress his new US resettlement deal could be weakened by Labor, Greens and crossbench opposition to a proposed lifetime visa ban on post-2013 boat arrivals.

Every Australian prime minister from John Howard onward should be investigated for crimes against humanity in relation to the indefinite detention of asylum seekers, a group of international lawyers claims.

The federal government will require a new operator for the triple-zero call service to base all of its call centres in Australia and to guard against the type of cyber threats that caused the census debacle.

Australia's dilapidated embassy in Washington DC is set to be replaced with a new $237 million environmentally sensitive building.

Canberra's get-out-of-jail card on the future of the hundreds of Australia-bound refugees on Nauru and Manus Island may have a very short shelf-life, with the head of a prominent US anti-immigration think tank warning: "this is the kind of thing the Trump administration will nix on Day 1."

Secret discussions to resettle asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island in the United States have been underway since January, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has revealed. 

Your personally curated news with six things you need to know before you get going.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has used the breakthrough refugee resettlement deal with the United States as an opportunity to heap praise on Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and his predecessor in the portfolio, Treasurer Scott Morrison, whom he says have been unfairly maligned.

• COMMENT

Not a moment too soon, Malcolm Turnbull has delivered a pathway to end the suffering of around 2000 refugees who have spent more than three years in tormented limbo on Manus Island and Nauru.

There is a fear and confusion among asylum-seekers on Nauru - as well as joy for some- as they struggle to assess the impact on their fractured lives of Sunday's announcement of a resettlement deal with the United States.

Eight years in the making, the giant Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal between Australia, the US and ten other regional powers is as good as dead after the Obama administration walked away from its plan to put it before the "lame duck" of Congress ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration as president.