Up to $300 billion in government spending will come under scrutiny as state and territory leaders consider a "refresh" of the Closing the Gap strategy to reduce Indigenous disadvantage in Australia.

Gay couples will enjoy free venue hire in the City of Sydney once same-sex marriage is legalised, in a provocative move that will outrage conservatives.

The Senate has passed only $24 billion of the government's $50 billion program of company tax cuts.

An image and health-obsessed Australia has provided a jobs boon for fitness instructors and beauty therapists.

Sydney is running a ''population deficit'' with the rest of the country, new census figures show.

The manual was lost by a company involved in security upgrades at Parliament House.

Protecting the National Broadband Network from private sector competition would be a "disastrous" move that would inflict higher internet costs on households, according to Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims.

An image and health obsessed Australia has provided a jobs boon for fitness instructors and beauty therapists.

The Australian government will pay up to $250 million a year in services even after the regional processing centre closes next week.

Politicians and bureacrats are in the spotlight as they face Parliament's powerful estimates' committees.

One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts has accused the Bureau of Meteorology of tinkering with weather data, but failed to produce any evidence when challenged by a senior government minister.

An image and health obsessed Australia has provided a jobs boon for fitness instructors and beauty therapists.

• EXCLUSIVE

Activist group GetUp! is readying itself for a costly legal battle to resist a push to have it declared a "front" for Labor and the Greens.

​The Hobart DJ who headbutted former prime minister Tony Abbott on Hobart's waterfront last month has appeared in court for the first time.

The department's secretary-designate defended against claims it would be a 'sinister behemoth'.

Almost half the Australian population has moved house during the past five years, one in every six people in the past 12 months.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says that, in hindsight, the National Broadband Network project was a mistake and blamed the former Labor government for setting up a new government company to deliver the mammoth infrastructure project.

• EXCLUSIVE

The national broadband network is losing money on each suburb it connects.

The soft drink industry said its fight against a sugar tax was "consuming vast amounts of resources", but by lobbying politicians and bureaucrats it had managed to keep the policy of the table.

Teachers and doctors are the key targets of a five-year blueprint for productivity to be unveiled by Treasurer Scott Morrison on Tuesday.

A purportedly eco-friendly hybrid electric car emits four times more greenhouse gas than manufacturers claim, according to a report backed by Australia's motoring heavyweights that opens up a new front in the nation's energy policy tussle.

• EXCLUSIVE

NBN Co chief Bill Morrow has gone on the offensive ahead of a Four Corners program due Monday night.

• INVESTIGATION

A $13 billion plan to rescue Australia's most important rivers is being "actively destroyed" by the NSW and Victorian governments, which refuse to ensure water flows freely to keep floodplains and forests alive, leading scientists say.

Job search company Indeed says it recorded a 10 per cent drop on searches almost instantaneously after the government announced its crackdown on foreign workers.

• Analysis

Bob Hawke and John Howard held off their younger rivals by deploying the oldest trick in the book.

Australia's leaders have been the first to congratulate new New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on her victory, two months after Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop expressed concerns about working with Labour.

Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating has reacted angrily to the passage of Victoria's Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill through the state's lower house, branding it "deeply regressive" and an abrogation of "the core instinct to survive".

The Turnbull government's national energy guarantee could supply as large a share of renewable energy into the market as proposed by the Finkel Review, Bloomberg New Energy Finance says.

"The refugees are very worried about the future and extremely scared by this situation."