Amid the chaotic and action-packed final sitting week of Parliament for 2016, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton quietly added a sixth property to his impressive and expanding portfolio.

"Barnaby gave me a big cuddle," says Burke's Backyard host.

George Christensen said his favourite response was from comedian Magda Szubanski.

A Turnbull government MP who charged taxpayers for flights to his own wedding also spent $1875 for his wife to travel to a golf tournament in Queensland.

Employers who take on workers with disabilities are overwhelmingly glad they did. Almost 90 per cent report benefits including improved morale, getting skills they might not get in another way and greater customer loyalty according to the second annual disability confidence survey released to coincide with World Disability Day.

Properties granted to World War Two veterans are among 150,000 hectares of farmland in northern Queensland that the Defence Department has earmarked for acquisition to allow Singaporean soldiers more room to train on Australian soil.

Summer is here, Parliament has risen and no doubt our more bookish leaders will use the long break to catch up on their reading and expand their horizons. It's only now, with the release of expenditure reports from the first half of the year, that we get a look at what politicians were reading last summer.

It's a stunning moment in the last episode of the SBS documentary series, but was it about safety, politics or simply an old feud?

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson says she is angry at her fellow senators, particularly party colleague Rod Culleton, after the backpacker tax passed the senate.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has predicted that the Liberal Party will replace Malcolm Turnbull with a new leader before the next election.

The Turnbull government has struck an 11th hour deal with the Greens to tax backpackers' incomes at 15 per cent, ending a week of farcical politicking over the controversial tax.

An Australian government update on what it is doing to protect the wounded Great Barrier Reef includes no new funding and no new commitments to tackle the biggest threat to its health, climate change.

One Nation has ended the parliamentary year with a deepening rift, after Pauline Hanson led two of her senators in voting against embattled colleague Rod Culleton, in the lead up to the fight for his political life.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull won't be banned from attending next year's Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, after the organisation's board overruled moves by members to protest the government inaction on same-sex marriage. 

Most public servants earning below average wages after three-year "siege of attrition" by Coalition.

• EXCLUSIVE

Australia's most celebrated architect, Glenn Murcutt, has slammed planned changes to Parliament House that will block public access to the building's famed grassy slopes, labelling the security upgrade a knee-jerk reaction.

Housing supply and more affordable rentals will be top of the agenda when Treasurer Scott Morrison and his state counterparts meet in Canberra on Friday.

Harbourfront suburbs will breathe easier after the Turnbull Government agreed to revive restrictions on the sulphur content of fuels used by cruise ships at dock in Sydney Harbour.

Some of the nation's best known organisations have been named and shamed for failing to comply with the workplace equality act.

When Hurricane Michaelia is spinning there's no stopping her.

Protesters have returned to Parliament House for the second day in a row, this time scaling the building's front wall and unfurling a banner which reads "close the bloody camps now".

Malcolm Turnbull has ramped up his rhetoric by accusing Bill Shorten of favouring "rich white kids" over poor Pacific Islanders.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and Queensland senator Malcolm Roberts have cancelled a planned event with a Jewish group on Sunday, citing security fears.

Defence Department boss could not make reasonable pay offer under Tony Abbott.

Agile government takes a stumble as digital pioneer logs off after just six weeks.

Morale within the Turnbull government spiked on Wednesday following the successful passage of its long-denied building unions watchdog legislation, but any smiles were shortlived when a crossbench deal on its 15 per cent backpacker tax collapsed just half an hour later, delivering a humiliating defeat in the Senate.

• EXCLUSIVE

"There have been some dark days where I have thought, 'am I in the right political party?'."

They chanted "close the camps" and accused the Coalition and Labor of being world leaders in cruelty.

• COMMENT

Even if you know nothing about taxation, happy multinationals are usually a fool-proof measure that can be employed to determine if a tax is raising the appropriate amount of revenue.