The NSW council of the RSL has agreed to step aside amid mounting pressure from the rank-and-file as well as the league's national board over the financial scandals plaguing the state leadership.

Parts of the Great Barrier Reef are enduring periods of heat stress worse than during last year's record-breaking coral bleaching event.

It's hard to know how many lives Carly Ryan has saved, how many childhoods she has kept intact.

Powerful government backbencher says only a return to Australian values will stop Coalition voters from drifting to One Nation.

Joko Widodo's ambitious program to develop tourism beyond Bali will be among the issues discussed.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has conveyed Labor's concern about Israel's construction of settlements in occupied territories to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a meeting he described as "warm and productive".

The last time Malcolm Turnbull spoke with one of the handful of world leaders Australia might consider among its closest friends, the verbal stoush that ensued ended up becoming a global story.

Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has no plans to cut interest rates, and worries that he did he would make an already indebted nation "more fragile".

Labor's proposed method to achieve a 50 per cent renewable energy quota for Australia by 2030 would cost billions more than previously understood, modelling commissioned by the Turnbull government has found.

• SKETCH

Boris Johnson works hard to appear as if he has just got out of bed after a rough night. Enter Australia's Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop.

An attempt by Tony Abbott to drag the Liberal Party to the political right appears to have backfired spectacularly as former Abbott loyalists broke ranks in disgust at comments they viewed as rank disloyalty to the party and an attempt to deliberately damage Malcolm Turnbull.

The RSL's largest state district has pleaded with NSW Veterans' Affairs Minister David Elliott to step in and dissolve the state council in the most substantial grassroots revolt yet over the financial scandals plaguing the leadership.

Tony Abbott has pledged his "full support" for Malcolm Turnbull, just hours after launching his strongest attack on the government and calling for a range of conservative policy changes.

• ANALYSIS

Civil war has broken out in the federal parliamentary Liberal Party, and more importantly, within the government of Australia.

Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe has dashed hopes of a further cut in interest rates, pleading for people to "focus on other things other than quarter of a per cent moves in the cash rate".

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he will not be distracted by Tony Abbott's "latest outburst" and most direct attack on the government to date, defending his record of achievement and portraying the backbencher as a hypocrite who was unable to govern effectively when he was leader.

Australian schools pay $9 million each year to display web pages that are  available freely available on the internet. They are even charged for displaying thumbnail images of book covers on their library intranet sites.

London: A defiant Julie Bishop has hit back at suggestions she was disloyal to former Prime Minister Tony Abbott saying she is elected Deputy Leader by the Liberal partyroom and her loyalty is to her colleagues and not the leader. 

Tony Abbott has laid out a five-point plan for the Coalition to have a chance at the "winnable" next election.

The Australian government is being sued $103 million for allegedly jailing Indonesian juveniles for people smuggling in adult prisons or holding them in immigration detention between 2008 and 2012.

• ANALYSIS

The time you spend working on a Sunday is still worth more than it is on a Saturday, but not as much as it was in the past, according to the Fair Work umpire.

• EXCLUSIVE

Planning is under way for Malcolm Turnbull to stand side by side with Donald Trump on the deck of a battleship in New York Harbour to affirm the solidarity of the alliance.

He was supposed to be the human face of the thousands of weekend workers affected by the cut in Sunday penalty rates.

• ANALYSIS

Former Treasury chief and National Australia Bank chairman Ken Henry is far from a zealot on cutting company tax rates.

• EXCLUSIVE

A group of federal Labor MPs have urged Australian recognition of a Palestinian state, echoing the high-profile interventions of party elders ahead of Opposition Leader Bill Shorten's meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

• ANALYSIS

After laying siege to the Australian labour fortress of weekend penalty rates over decades, employers have finally loosened a few bricks and clambered over the wall.

Ahmed Fahour's successor as Australia Post chief executive is set to receive a massive multi-million dollar pay cut after the Turnbull government stripped the postal service's board of responsibility to set the salary of its managing director.

Who will gain the most from the changes, and who will be the hardest hit? The penalty rates decision in a nutshell.