Hello and welcome to the day in politics.

Tony Abbott warned that any energy package agreed to in cabinet must pass a party room wary of anything approaching a clean energy target.

Senior ministers are stressing the Coalition will only adopt green schemes where the benefits clearly outweigh the costs they impose on the energy system.

A huge increase in electricity network costs - driven by regulation and over investment - has been the number-one cause of rising household power bills over the last decade.

• ANALYSIS

Not content with the teenage hash he is making of the North Korea missile crisis, mostly via Twitter, Donald Trump has chosen this of all moments to escalate tensions with Tehran.

US officials have issued a "please explain" to Australia after sensitive military data was hacked from a defence contractor.

• EXCLUSIVE

World-first research finds children born of parents on Centrelink almost twice as likely to be on benefits in later life than children who are not.

The government banned the Yarra and Darebin councils from holding citizenship ceremonies after they passed motions to dump Australia Day celebrations.

Crossbench senators are discussing the biggest clampdown on federal lobbying in a decade, including five-year bans and a new "integrity commissioner".

Representatives of the British government flew to Australia in the lead-up to the 1975 dismissal of the Whitlam government to meet with the then governor-general.

Religious believers would be vulnerable to discrimination suits and some could lose their jobs, promotions, businesses and political careers if same-sex marriage is legalised, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney says.

The Turnbull government has hit back at North Korea, saying it won't be cowed by the rogue state's threats.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale✓​ says he is prepared to fight at the barricades and risk arrest to stop the Adani coal mine.

North Korea has criticised and threatened Australia for aligning itself with South Korea and the United States and for its attitude toward the Pyongyang regime, according to state-run media.

Australians could be handed greater control over who can access their Medicare card details amid fears the information can be too easily obtained.

China has drawn up secret plans to invade Taiwan with a Normandy-style beach landing by the mid-2020s, sparking a possible region-wide conflict that would likely draw in Australia, a new book claims.

Labor will create a new $1 billion advanced manufacturing fund to back Australian industries and business if it wins the next federal election.

Thirty years on, Bob Hawke's infamous pledge that no Australian child would live in poverty is shaping up to be an achievement rather than an embarrassment, new research shows.

• EXCLUSIVE

Alarm sparked by recent cases in which baby monitors that use the owner's home wifi to transmit had been hacked.

Could fining MPs for disorder stop the trend of more being thrown out of parliament?

Climate change scepticism, Safe Schools and calls to pull the plug on ABC funding dominated One Nation's cost-of-living summit.

There are an estimated 5000 lobbyists in Australia, who promise their paying clients an inside track to political decision makers.

John McCain, the US war hero and long-standing friend of Australia's, has a protege.

The Nationals are already making preparations in case the High Court rules against the Deputy Prime Minister.

Consumer advocates are calling for more evidence that households will see savings as a result of the federal government's private health insurance changes.

Mortgaged households are for the first time spending less on food than on housing.

Mortgaged household are for the first time spending less on food than on housing.

NSW could be left without its state-wide, 24/7 sexual assault counselling service if the organisation behind the NSW Rape Crisis Centre does not get an emergency funding boost.

The global shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy will continue regardless of political action such as the US withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement or outbursts from ex-Australian prime ministers, a senior ratings analyst says.