TRANSCRIPT:
- The Reserve Bank delivers another cut to interest rates;
- The Opposition says the PM's 'out of his depth' on the Palestinian statehood decision;
- Donnell Wallam returns to Australia for the Super Netball league.
The Reserve Bank has delivered a widely expected cut to the official cash rate.
The cut of 0.25 per cent is the third drop in the last six months and brings the interest rate down to 3.6 per cent.
Economists were expecting the change on the back of the latest inflation data.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers says he's not surprised by the decision - and that the government can take full credit for paving the way.
"For the first time in almost two decade, we've seen three interest rate cuts in a calendar year with the unemployment rate still lower than 5 per cent. That gives you a sense that here in Australia, we've been able to get inflation down, we're seeing interest rates come down three times in six months, and at the same time as we have maintained historically low unemployment as well."
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The leader of the Opposition says the Prime Minister is out of his depth in deciding that Australia will recognise a Palestinian state.
Sussan Ley has told 2GB Radio that the Coalition's position is recognition should come at the end of a peace process with Israel - and that doing it while Hamas is still fighting in Gaza makes it harder to achieve a two-state solution, and damages our relationships with allies.
"It dismisses that relationship in an appalling way, our friends, our allies. And most importantly it is disrespectful of the relationship with the U-S. Because any peace that happens in this region will be brokered by the U.S. And the prospects of a ceasefire are not good with this decision. The prospects take a step backwards."
But Foreign Minister Penny Wong says the Australian government has made a considered decision that now is the best time for Australia to contribute to the momentum for a two-state solution.
She has told Sky News that recognition could also be used to isolate Hamas, who the Minister says should have no role in governing Gaza.
"Success is not guaranteed, but success never comes from just doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different outcome. And that's the judgement countries of the world, including Australia, are making."
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A date for the by-election in the New South Wales seat of Kiama has been announced.
State Parliament speaker Greg Piper has confirmed the election will be held on September 13.
The previous MP Gareth Ward resigned on Friday as the parliament was preparing to vote to expel him after his conviction for sexual and indecent assault offences.
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Tropical reefs off the coast of Western Australia have suffered the worst coral bleaching ever recorded.
In the latest data collected by scientists, conditions have worsened across parts of the 1,500 kilometres of tropical reefs offshore.
Areas including Ningaloo and north Kimberley, which have been rarely affected before, have recorded heavy losses on the back of record sea surface temperatures around Australia last summer which were the warmest on record.
Dr James Gilmour, from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, says the heat stress was more intense and widespread than previously.
"What we've seen is temperatures have increased by a degree or up to four, and that has remained for several months, so it is really that cumulative heat stress that have caused corals to bleach, and in some instances, to cook and die."
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Washington DC officials have moved to reassure residents after the deployment of 800 National Guardsmen to the city, on the orders of US President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration has also temporarily taken over the city's police department in an extraordinary assertion of presidential power in the nation's capital.
The president says his actions are necessary to save the city from what he has described as a wave of lawlessness.
Mayor Muriel Bowser says there is no justification for what Trump has done.
"We don't believe or believe it's legal to use the American military against American citizens on American soil. I'm not a lawyer. And so but I think that's a fairly widely held fact. And so but we've seen them move, I think, the active military into California."
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The military government in Mali has started to return home the historic manuscripts of Timbuktu, which were spirited out of their fabled northern city when it was occupied by al-Qaida-linked militants more than a decade ago.
The majority of the documents dating back to the 13th century were saved by the devotion of the Timbuktu library's Malian custodians, who carried them out of the occupied city in rice sacks, on donkey carts, by motorcycle, by boat and four-wheel drive vehicles.
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To sport and in netball news,
Donnell Wallam is returning to Australia to play for the Sunshine Coast Lightning in the Super Netball League next year.
She has spent the last year in New Zealand.
Donnell is the second Indigenous woman to play in the Suncorp Super Netball league, and the third to play for Australia.
