Labor is under mounting pressure to scour the budget for more savings as consumers grapple with sticky inflation after the party recorded another slide in a closely-watched poll.

Core support for Labor was at its equal lowest level since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese came to power in 2022, according to the latest Newspoll released on Monday, which also registered a bump for the coalition.

The government’s primary vote share was 27 per cent, behind One Nation on 28 per cent but ahead of the coalition on 21 per cent, The Australian’s survey showed.

The sobering tally has put the onus on Labor frontbenchers to burnish their economic management credentials while the prime minister schmoozes world leaders at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in the Caribbean. 

It also comes as borrowers brace for a likely fifth interest rate rise for 2026 on Tuesday, which could hitch the cash rate up to 4.85 per cent – its highest level in 18 years.

Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek on Monday said Labor was being hamstrung on savings measures when pressed on how the government would tighten its belt.

“We will make savings – we’ve made $180 billion worth of savings already, but we don’t want to make savings that hurt people,” she told Seven’s Sunrise.

“We’ve got billions of dollars of savings tied up in the Senate because we can’t get the Greens or One Nation or the coalition to vote for them.”

Ms Plibersek defended the government’s electric vehicle tax breaks and subsidies for home batteries, whose costs have blown out amid higher-than-expected demand and have been described as middle-class welfare.

“Those subsidies … really have made a big difference to people’s energy bills – some people are paying nothing now for their electricity.”

The Greens and coalition recently teamed up to throw out legislation reducing private health insurance rebates for over-65s, meant to redirect $3 billion into aged care improvements.

Labor is poised to put more belt-tightening measures into the mid-financial year budget update due in December.

In light of Monday’s poll, One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce said Ms Plibersek, who has the second-highest approval rating of any Labor frontbencher, “could definitely do the job” of prime minister in Anthony Albanese’s place. 

“Tanya is a very capable lady, but unfortunately, Tanya is not doing the job, and Mr Albanese has lost confidence with the people,” he said.

“Prime minister, they’re over you, and if you stay there, it’s not going to get better.” 

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson gained more ground in the latest Newspoll, landing at a net approval rating of minus one ahead of Angus Taylor at minus 10, and the prime minister at minus 23.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers fared worst in the tally’s minister-by-minister breakdown, earning the disapproval of 40 per cent of voters, while Foreign Minister Penny Wong led the approval ratings at 38 per cent. 

“There’s been no reforming treasurer in Australian history that hasn’t copped it when they’ve made big changes – we all support Jim,” Ms Plibersek said.

“We all make decisions together, they are tough decisions – they’re exactly the tough decisions that Barnaby and all his friends say the country needs.”

Mr Chalmers last week said he took responsibility for “difficult things in my portfolio” and he would leave it for other ministers to take responsibility for spending on their patches.

That came after reports of tension between Mr Albanese and the treasurer over plans the latter had put forward to find budget savings, which Finance Minister Katy Gallagher had on Sunday described as “overblown”.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says he’s had a constructive conversation with US President Donald Trump about a potential trade deal.

Negotiators are set to work toward an agreement in the coming weeks as the countries seek to resolve their bitter trade dispute just days before the US midterm elections.

Trump subsequently said both sides had “the concept” of a mutually beneficial deal.

Carney said the conversation built on recent discussions about the outlines of a deal that would create jobs, lower costs for families and protect Canada’s languages, culture and sovereignty.

“Our teams will now be working in the coming weeks to deliver that outcome,” Carney wrote on X on Sunday.

Hours later, after landing in Iowa for a rally, Trump said confirmed the conversation.

“We have the concept of a very good deal with Canada,” he said.

“We’ve been losing money for many years with Canada,” he said. 

“So we have – we are now very close to having a deal.”

The US president mentioned speaking with Carney on Saturday and said the possible agreement is “going to be great for our farmers, great for our country, and it’ll be fine for Canada”.

Trump said the negotiations involved construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and prospects that the agreement could erase tariffs paid by US farmers for Canadian products. 

“Part of the agreement is that our farmers will have to pay no tariffs,” he said, even though his comments also made clear that final details had not yet been established. 

Still, the upbeat assessment from both leaders was a shift from August, when Canada walked away from negotiations after rejecting US demands that Carney said threatened Canadian sovereignty, French-language protections and the auto industry. 

Trump responded with 50 per cent tariffs on roughly $US20 billion ($A28 billion) in Canadian goods, prompting Canadian retaliation.

As recently as Wednesday, Carney said the countries were not yet in a position to reach an agreement before Tuesday’s midterm elections.

The two sides have been discussing possible relief from US tariffs on Canadian steel and automobiles.

Trump’s trade war with Canada has become an issue in Tuesday’s elections, particularly in Michigan and Maine, where crucial Senate races are taking place. Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers has called for an end to the tariff war.

Trump’s trade war and repeated threats to make Canada the 51st US state have pushed Carney to reduce Canada’s dependence on its southern neighbour.

Australia’s second-biggest bank has revealed a one per cent fall in annual profit after recently cutting about 250 jobs amid an uncertain economic backdrop.

Westpac’s net profit dipped to $6.8 billion in fiscal 2026, even as net interest income – the difference between interest earned and interest paid – rose by one per cent to $19.7 billion from a year ago.

But chief executive Anthony Miller said it was a solid result for the bank, which is in the midst of a multi-year transformation program to simplify core systems, cut operating costs, and lift its engagement with artificial intelligence.

“In an uncertain economic environment, we’ve remained focused on supporting our customers,” he said on Monday.

“We’ve improved the customer experience, grown our core businesses and maintained a strong balance sheet.”

Westpac, which ranks second to Commonwealth Bank in size, pointed to strong growth in customer deposits and lending, which rose by six per cent and five per cent respectively, in the year ended September.

“We’ve also increased first-party mortgage origination and this remains a priority,” Mr Miller said, adding the bank had supported more than 190,000 Australians to buy a home.

Westpac is targeting $100 billion in housing-related lending by 2030.

Looking ahead, Mr Miller said the domestic economy was holding up “relatively well”, with strong business investment supporting the medium-term outlook.

“This is evident across our business and institutional customer base, where demand for credit remains strong,” he added.

“However, inflation remains about the Reserve Bank’s target range and interest rates are likely to remain elevated into 2027.”

The central bank on Monday begins a two-day meeting on monetary policy which is widely expected to end with a decision to hike the key cash interest rate by 0.25 per cent to 4.85 per cent.

Last month, Westpac said it would cut about 250 through voluntary and unplanned redundancies.

The bank declared a final dividend of 77 cents, taking the total payout to shareholders for the year to $1.54.

Two days before the US midterm elections, President Donald Trump’s Republicans have secured an unexpected boost in Michigan, with an endorsement from a prominent Democrat, while suffering ‌a setback in Alaska when a federal judge dismissed a legal challenge.

US Representative Haley Stevens, who lost Michigan Democrats’ Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed in a bitterly contested race, on Sunday publicly backed Republican candidate Mike Rogers, threatening to exacerbate divisions in a ‌state viewed as crucial to Democratic hopes of retaking the US Senate.

“I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign,” Stevens said in a video posted on X.

Thirty-five Senate seats and all 435 House of Representatives seats are on the ballot on Tuesday. Republicans hold narrow majorities ‌in both chambers. 

Polls show Democrats are favoured to win a majority of the House and locked in a tight battle for control of the Senate with a handful of races likely to determine the outcome.

The Trump administration’s attempt to intervene in Alaska’s Senate race faltered on Sunday when a federal judge dismissed the US Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to block certification of the results if Republican incumbent Senator Dan S Sullivan narrowly loses.

The Justice Department argued voters may be confused by the presence of a challenger named Daniel J Sullivan Jr on the same ballot.

If Democrats take control of the House or Senate, they could block Trump’s legislative agenda for his final two years in office and launch investigations of an administration that has so far faced largely compliant Republican ‌majorities. The White House has been ‌preparing to implement portions of Trump’s agenda without ⁠the aid of Congress.

More than 52 million Americans have already voted in person or by mail, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, a record for ​a midterm and up from nearly 46 million who voted before Election Day in 2022.

In Michigan, Stevens’ endorsement of Rogers came on the same day she was supposed to appear with El-Sayed in a show of party unity. But the event unravelled after Stevens called on El-Sayed to condemn an outside group’s ad that she said blames Israel for high grocery prices.

“We can’t stand with hate,” Stevens told reporters on Sunday, standing alongside Rogers after joining him at a Detroit church service.

“This is courage in politics in America today,” Rogers said. 

“When you see a party, ⁠and at least a sliver of the party, veering off into the virulent hate that they have been spewing toward a group of ‌people, it gets dangerous.”

Polls indicate that El-Sayed has largely consolidated Democratic support. He holds a nearly four-point lead against Rogers according to the Real Clear Polling estimate.

Meanwhile, in Alaska, a federal judge rejected a ​Trump administration lawsuit against the state.

The Department of Justice had asked a court to block certification and order an investigation if the outcome indicated that voters may have voted for challenger Daniel J Sullivan Jr when they intended to vote for the incumbent Dan S Sullivan.

The issue has roiled the campaign over the last several days after the New York Times reported Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign was involved in recruiting Daniel J Sullivan Jr into the race as a ​spoiler.

The senator ​said he would accept the results of Tuesday’s election even as the Trump administration presses ​a criminal investigation into the issue. 

But Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, has suggested he may not certify a victory ‌by Peltola, and the incumbent Sullivan declined to say whether he would support efforts to refuse certification.

Meanwhile, Trump is set to return to the campaign trail on Sunday with rallies in Iowa and Kansas, Republican-leaning Farm Belt states where his party is fighting to hold US Senate seats.

with AP

Nationals leader Matt Canavan will try to move to the lower house at the next election and dodge a difficult battle to hold onto his Senate seat against a surging One Nation. 

The Queensland senator is expected to announce he will run for the seat of Capricornia, vacated by coalition MP Michelle Landry, who on October 23 announced she will not recontest the seat she has held since 2013.

Ms Landry’s resignation prompted widespread speculation Senator Canavan, who lives in the electorate, would resign and make a bid for the lower house seat, which the LNP holds on a 5.8 per cent margin.

The Nationals leader holds the second spot on the coalition’s Queensland Senate ticket, behind Liberal James McGrath.

He won the second of two Queensland Senate seats the LNP won six years ago, but One Nation’s recent polling surge means they could conceivably pinch that second upper house berth.  

But Senator Canavan could still face a stiff challenge from the anti-immigration party as its national director James Ashby has not ruled out standing as a candidate for Capricornia himself.

The One Nation party elder has served as Pauline Hanson’s chief of staff and lives on the Capricorn coast, where he made an unsuccessful tilt for the seat of Keppel at the 2024 Queensland election.

One Nation placed third on primary votes in Capricornia at the 2025 federal election, behind the LNP and Labor, and registered about a one per cent swing in their favour.

Senator Canavan initially downplayed reports he would run for the central Queensland seat, saying the matter was up to LNP membership. 

He had previously said he would do what it takes to keep a strong coalition presence in the region despite the prospect of a One Nation wipe-out.

It is expected he will announce a move to seek preselection for the electorate later on Monday.

National Senate leader Bridget McKenzie said One Nation should not be contesting coalition-held seats if it was serious about taking the fight to Labor.

“If One Nation is really serious about firing the liar, then they need to start running in Labor Party seats instead of running against someone like Matt Canavan,” she told Nine’s Today program.

“(I’m) not afraid of a fight – I want to save our country, and that means changing the prime minister, and that means taking Labor Party seats.”

A growing number of older Australians need government-subsidised aged care and social welfare despite being deemed asset-rich.

A study has revealed nine in 10 older Australians applying for government-supported aged care rely on social welfare payments.

The study looked at the financial circumstances of more than 920,000 older Australians, with an average age of 82, who applied for government-subsidised aged care between 2010 and 2019.

The findings should inform government thinking on policies such as co-payments, according to researchers from Flinders University and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute.

Making at-home care more accessible could save the nation money in the long run by keeping people out of more expensive residential care for longer, the study’s lead author Stephanie Harrison said.

The mandatory superannuation system was introduced in 1992, meaning many of those surveyed were near the end of their working life and missed out on years of contributions.

The study found social welfare payments accounted for 84 per cent to 91 per cent of income for most older Australians.

The proportion of aged care applicants reporting non-government income rose from 12 per cent in 2010 to 30 per cent in 2019, but for most people, the amounts remained relatively small.

Only a small cohort of those seeking home-based aged care had substantial income, despite about 60 per cent owning their own home, the study found.

“They’re what we call the asset-rich, income-poor and we really don’t know how this is impacting how they access aged care,” Associate Professor Harrison told AAP.

“If it means they end up moving to residential aged care earlier, that will be more costly for the government in the long run.”

A year since the federal government introduced a co-payment system for in-home care, the impact of the changes is unclear.

Means-testing could misinterpret people’s ability to pay for at-home care if their greatest asset was the roof over their head, Assoc Prof Harrison said.

“Although they’re home owners, they’re largely relying on social welfare payments and this isn’t necessarily translating into them being ready for these changes in terms of paying more for aged care,” she said.

“What we need to monitor really is how this impacts people’s use of these services and whether they end up delaying their use of aged care.”

Democratic US senator Chris Murphy ‌has been hospitalised after suffering a ‌stroke, the senator’s chief of staff says.

Murphy began experiencing numbness in his arm while attending ‌his ‌son’s ⁠hockey game on Saturday ​afternoon, Allison Herwitt, chief of staff to the Connecticut senator, said.

“He was taken to a local ⁠hospital, ‌where it ​was discovered he had experienced ​a stroke. ‌He was transferred to Johns ​Hopkins for further monitoring and is responding well to ​treatment,” ​she said in ​a statement.

“The doctors ‌are encouraged by his progress, he is awake and alert, and we are optimistic he ​will make a full ​recovery.”

The 53-year-old Murphy is not on the ballot in the midterm elections on Tuesday.

He was elected to the House of Representatives in 2006 and the Senate in 2012.

with AP

Superannuation funds are ignoring warning signs as complaints about the way they treat customers mount, the corporate watchdog says.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has found superannuation funds wanting in handling members’ complaints at a critical time for the $3.4 trillion industry.

As millions of Australians transition from accumulating super balances to withdrawing their retirement income, issues such as timely payment of death benefits have been piling up.

Commissioner Simone Constant said super funds should treat complaints as the “canary in the coal mine”, but were often ignoring the warning signs.

“Superannuation is too important for there to be failures now, in terms of member services and complaints,” she told AAP.

The death benefit failures were an example of how better complaints-handling could have saved members and their families from harm, the regulator found in a report released on Monday.

The regulator has been cracking down on the industry after finding widespread delays in trustees paying out deceased customers’ remaining super balances and insurance payments to family members.

In some cases, loved ones waited years to receive money they were owed.

The regulator reviewed all 45 superannuation trustees and found a quarter were not regularly analysing their complaints data to identify systemic issues, Ms Constant said.

That comes despite a 43 per cent year-on-year increase in superannuation complaints to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority.

Ms Constant said the issue was industry-wide, declining to single out any particular funds for poor complaints handling.

“We see some funds detecting zero or practically zero systemic issues from complaints, despite AFCA identifying complaints (that could be systemic) at twice the rate of the industry,” she said.

While complaints growth flattened for a period after the death benefits issues were identified, the regulator has seen it rising again.

That raised real concerns about customer culture, complaints culture, and risk culture across the industry, Ms Constant said.

“When we see several of the funds attributing well more than half of the root causes to the customers, essentially blaming the customer, we’re really concerned about whether the industry has used the time, used the processes, and used their complaints data to understand what’s really going on with their members in terms of these important services,” she said.

Peak body the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia said the industry heard loud and clear that trustees needed to do better.

“There are clear areas for improvement here, and the sector will use the information ASIC has collected and its recommendations to act quickly to better use complaints to improve how we look after members,” the association’s chief executive Mary Delahunty said.

“Members reasonably expect super funds to listen to them, and this should be uniform across the industry.”

An Australian-made roadside system that uses artificial intelligence and cameras to detect drivers using mobile phones is expanding as its technology sparks international interest.

Stock exchange-listed Acusensus on Monday will officially open a new manufacturing facility in Ingleburn, NSW.

It is three times the size of its previous plant in the southwestern Sydney suburb.

The company’s fixed and portable roadside camera systems are used across Australia and New Zealand, along with in parts of the US and UK, to detect motorists using smartphones.

Chief executive Alexander Jannink founded the company in 2018, five years after losing a close friend to a distracted driver in Los Angeles. It was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2023.

In August, the Melbourne-based company reported a full-year revenue jump of 45 per cent to $86.2 million, with its revenue from international sources climbing to $22.9 million, up from $4.2 million a year earlier.

While its net loss for the year widened to $24.3 million, from $2.6 million a year earlier, most of that was due to a one-off legal settlement involving an intellectual property dispute with a competitor.

Transport for NSW was Acusensus’s first customer when the state became the world’s first jurisdiction to launch a mobile phone detection camera enforcement system in December 2019.

When first deployed, the firm’s 10 transportable and 11 fixed cameras detected mobile phone use by about one in 100 motorists, according to the company.

The rate fell to one driver in 1208 using a mobile phone by 2025/26.

“It’s quite a shift in driver behaviour and we’ve seen that in the other jurisdictions as well,” Mr Jannink told AAP.

“Each of the programs has also coincided with some pretty strong fatality reductions.”

Transport for NSW also has a mobile speed camera contract with the firm, which it extended in June through the end of 2026 at a cost of $16 million.

Acusensus’s phone-detecting system uses radar and high-resolution cameras taken at a very steep angle to peer into vehicles with an AI system then analysing each image for signs of mobile phone use.

Images are automatically cropped to show only the driver before being presented to humans for multiple rounds of review.

In addition to Transport for NSW, Acusensus has contracts with authorities in multiple other Australian states and territories, as well as NZ and 12 US jurisdictions.

Its cameras are deployed under a services contract, costing agencies between $5 million and $10 million annually.

Acusensus deploys and maintains its equipment, and conducts the first level of human review.

It has about 400 employees globally, including about 80 based in NSW, and is working on a new system to detect motorists impaired by drugs, alcohol or dangerous levels of fatigue.

“For example, random breath tests, everybody gets pulled over, but what if we could inform the police ahead?” Mr Jannink said.

Deployed ahead of roadside sobriety tests, Acusensus’s cameras might be able to tell police which drivers are likely to test positive, letting them leave the sober, attentive drivers alone, he added.

Sydney home prices are lower than they were five years ago but Australia’s housing downturn has a way to go to return to affordable values.

National median dwelling values fell another 1.2 per cent in October, extending the home price slump to 6.7 per cent since the March peak, data provider Cotality reported on Monday.

In a market already constrained by elevated affordability and serviceability pressures, rising interest rates and higher taxes have further weighed on housing demand.

In Sydney, the market that led the downturn, prices fell 1.6 per cent in the month. 

At $1,178,959, the median Sydney dwelling is more than 10 per cent cheaper than the February peak and has dropped below where it was five years ago.

But the mid-sized capitals of Perth and Brisbane are falling even faster.

“We saw such an enormous accumulation of value in those mid-sized capitals over the past five years,” Cotality head of research Gerard Burg said.

“It means when you see these sizeable declines in those markets, they have a lot they can give up, with a lot of home owners not feeling too much direct pain.”

Brisbane’s median value plunged two per cent in October but was still 46 per cent more expensive than five years earlier.

In Perth, where prices were growing at an annual rate of about 25 per cent a few months ago, values fell 1.7 per cent.

In Melbourne, it was a very different story, Mr Burg said.

The Victorian capital has underperformed the rest of the country for five years but is now giving up value more slowly than the other mainland capitals.

Melbourne’s affordability advantage was beginning to attract residents on net, a reversal from the exodus to cities like Perth and Brisbane during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr Burg said.

Still, Melbourne-based Ray White real estate agent Dexter Prack says the declines are the biggest he has witnessed in his 28-year career.

“Some properties, they’ve gone back to 2017, 2018 prices, which is scary,” he told AAP.

In the prestige Mornington Peninsula market, Mr Prack said some properties were going on the market at a 25 per cent discount.

By exiting a falling market, some investors would have taken a sizeable haircut. But for owner-occupier vendors buying in a falling market, Mr Prack said there were plenty of opportunities.

However, prospective buyers would have to wait for prices to fall further, or for the Reserve Bank to start cutting interest rates, to see affordability really improve.

Nationally, the median dwelling value is worth approximately $63,400 less than in March.

Four interest rate rises have eroded a median household’s borrowing capacity by about $71,000 since February, Mr Burg said.

The Reserve Bank is widely tipped to hike rates again on Tuesday.

With most economists not forecasting a cut until late 2027, Mr Burg expects values to keep falling until then.