Brisbane artist Julie Fragar has won the $100,000 Archibald Prize with her portrait of fellow artist Justene Williams.

The winning work is titled Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene), and is painted in grayscale, showing the artist floating among the stars.

The title comes from Williams’ recent endurance performance in New Zealand – Making do rhymes with poo – about the labour of juggling a day job with art making and motherhood.

Fragar has been a finalist in the Archibald four times, and burst into tears when Art Gallery of New South Wales director Maud Page called Friday morning to tell her she had won.

“To be the winner of the Archibald Prize is a point of validation. It means so much to have the respect of my colleagues at the Art Gallery. It doesn’t get better than that,” she said.

She also paid tribute to her subject, Justene Williams, describing her as a dear friend and an extraordinary artist who has a “multiverse of artwork” spinning from her.

“Justene is incredible. I feel very fortunate that she allowed me to do this portrait. There is nobody like her,” said Fragar.

“The work is a reflection on the experience of making art to deadlines, and the labour and love of being a mother.”

The winner was selected from 903 entries and 57 finalists, with entries painted in the past year from at least one live sitting.

The award, widely regarded as Australia’s most prestigious art prize, is judged by the trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Jude Rae has won the $50,000 Wynne Prize for landscape painting or sculpture, for the oil on linen work Pre-dawn sky over Port Botany container terminal.

The $40,000 Sulman Prize for genre painting went to Katoomba-based artist Gene A’Hern for Sky painting, beating a record field of 732 entries.

Ms Page, who was announced in March as the new director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, said the winning work showed two of Australia’s great artists in conversation about what matters most to them.

“Julie Fragar has a sumptuous ability to transcend reality and depict her subjects technically but also psychologically,” she said.

“Justene Williams is a larger-than-life character, a performer – cacophonous and joyous.”

For the first time in 2025, women artists made up the majority of finalists in each of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prize competitions.

Earlier in May, the $3000 Packing Room Prize selected by the gallery’s art handling staff went to Abdul Abdullah for a portrait of his friend Jason Phu.

The finalists for all three prizes will be on show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from Saturday until August 17, before touring Victoria and across NSW.

Japanese stocks jumped on Friday, supported by the dollar’s surge against the yen, after a US trade deal with Britain fuelled hopes of progress in tariff talks with other countries.

Bitcoin soared to the highest since January and US crude ticked up after a more than 3.0 per cent surge on Thursday, when President Donald Trump announced the agreement with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer – the first in the month since Trump started a 90-day pause on trade tariffs to allow room for negotiations.

At the same time, concerns that the limited trade agreement with London may not provide much of a blueprint for additional deals cooled optimism around the outcome of Sino-US trade talks set for Saturday in Switzerland.

Mainland blue chips started the day 0.2 per cent lower, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.2 per cent.

Japan’s Nikkei and broader Topix each climbed about 1.2 per cent, with the Topix set to extend its winning streak to an 11th session, the longest run since October 2017.

Taiwan’s equity benchmark advanced 1.0 per cent, while Australian stocks added 0.4 per cent.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was broadly flat.

“The deal between the US and UK was more style over substance,” said Kyle Rodda, a senior financial markets analyst at Capital.com.

“However, it feeds the narrative that the US is looking to bang-out rapid fire trade deals and reduce tariffs – at the margins – and other trade barriers,” Rodda said.

“Constructive language and statements of intent will likely be enough to drive stocks higher off the back of the US-China trade talks.”

Trump pushed back against seeing the UK deal as a template for other negotiations.

The “general terms” agreement leaves in place a 10 per cent tariff on goods imported from the UK but lowers prohibitive US duties on UK car exports. Britain agreed to lower its tariffs to 1.8 per cent from 5.1 per cent and provide greater access to US goods.

Last week, Trump said he has “potential” trade deals with India, South Korea and Japan.

Nymex crude ticked up 0.2 per cent to $US60.02 ($A93.75) per barrel early on Friday, building on the previous day’s 3.2 per cent surge. Brent crude added 0.3 per cent to $US63 ($A98) per barrel, following Thursday’s 2.8 per cent rally.

Safe-haven gold continued its slide, weakening 0.5 per cent to around 3,288 an ounce, after dropping 3.6 per cent in the past two sessions.

The US dollar index, which measures the currency against six major peers, edged up 0.1 per cent to reach a one-month peak at 100.77.

The euro sagged to a one-month trough at $US1.1210 ($A1.7510)5, and sterling slipped to a three-week low of $US1.3220 ($A2.0650)5.

The yen ticked up slightly to 145.77 per dollar, but that was after a 1.5 per cent tumble on Thursday, when it touched a one-month low of 146.175.

Higher US Treasury yields helped support the greenback, with the 10-year yield steady at 4.3687 per cent following Thursday’s 10-basis point jump as demand for the safety of bonds ebbed.

Bitcoin was also buoyed by the improvement in market sentiment, rising to the highest since January 31 at $US103,090.17 ($A161,025.89), and closing the distance with the all-time high from January 20 at $US109,071.86 ($A170,369.24).

Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick no longer sees risk sentiment as the main driver for the world’s biggest cryptocurrency.

“It is now all about flows, and flows are coming in many forms,” said Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, pointing to an influx of cash into bitcoin ETFs, as well as buying by so-called whales.

“I think a fresh all-time high for bitcoin is coming soon,” he said. 

“I apologise that my $US120,000 ($A187,000) Q2 target may be too low.”

Julie Fragar has won the $100,000 Archibald Prize with her portrait of fellow artist Justene Williams.

The winning work is titled Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene), and is painted in grayscale, showing the artist floating among the stars.

The title comes from Williams’ recent endurance performance in New Zealand – Making do rhymes with poo – about the labour of juggling a day job with art making and motherhood. 

The winner was selected from 903 entries and 57 finalists, with entries painted in the past year from at least one live sitting.

The award, widely regarded as Australia’s most prestigious art prize, is judged by the trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Jude Rae has won the $50,000 Wynne Prize for landscape painting or sculpture, for the oil on linen work Pre-dawn sky over Port Botany container terminal.

The $40,000 Sulman Prize for genre painting went to Katoomba-based artist Gene A’Hern for Sky painting, beating a record field of 732 entries.

Maud Page, who was announced in March as the new director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, has congratulated all of the artists who entered the 2025 awards.

For the first time in 2025, women artists made up the majority of finalists in each of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prize competitions.

Earlier in May, the $3000 Packing Room Prize selected by the gallery’s art handling staff went to Abdul Abdullah for a portrait of his friend Jason Phu.

The finalists for all three prizes will be on show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from Saturday until August 17, before touring Victoria and NSW.

Blood is being spilled across the political aisle as party leaderships are on the table and powerbrokers carve up the spoils of victory.

Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley has officially announced her tilt at the leadership, confirming she will put herself forward to refresh a decimated party.

The Liberals will meet in Canberra on Tuesday to choose a new leader, with shadow treasurer Angus Taylor also courting colleagues for the top job.

“I’m determined and convinced that I am the right person to lead the party forward at this time and I think my appointment would send a strong signal to the women of Australia,” Ms Ley told Seven’s Sunrise on Friday.

Ms Ley acknowledged the Liberals suffered a significant defeat and needed to “meet the Australian people where they are, because clearly we didn’t do that at the last election”.

The bloodletting continues ahead of Tuesday’s meeting as the coalition’s Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price defected from sitting with the National Party to the Liberals.

As a Country Liberal Party senator from the Northern Territory, she can choose to sit in either partyroom but the spot has historically sided with the Nationals.

Her colleagues have expressed disappointment as it means the loss of a Nationals senator takes the party below the five needed in the Senate to receive entitlements offered to larger parties.

Queensland MP Michelle Landry branded it disloyal.

“We’re all very upset that she’s decided to move over to the Liberals and I just think that there’s a lack of loyalty there,” she told ABC radio.

Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie accused the Liberals of actively recruiting Senator Nampijinpa Price five days out from an election.

“That is not the behaviour of trusted partners,” she told Sky News.

“I’ve been on the phone late into last night with territorians in the CLP very concerned about this decision and what it means for them and their representation.”

People who ran under one party and then jumped ship when they were elected should be disendorsed and run under their own banner, Ms Landry said.

Senator Price is rumoured to be pushing for the deputy Liberal leadership under Mr Taylor but hasn’t officially confirmed a tilt.

“To be quite honest, it is something that I wanted to do from the first time I was elected (in 2022) … and chose at that time that I needed to sit in the National partyroom,” she told Sydney radio station 2GB.

Tony Abbott had spoken to her and supported the move, she said.

Despite its landslide win, Labor hasn’t emerged unscathed in the election aftermath with a brutal move from internal powerbrokers resulting in two cabinet ministers being dumped to make way for fresh faces.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and Industry Minister Ed Husic were axed from the ministry as Labor’s more progressive left and more conservative right factions carved up the 30 spots.

Mr Dreyfus will be replaced in the ministry by Victorian MP Sam Rae, a factional ally of Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles who hails from the same state.

Mr Husic was dumped to rebalance the ledger between the NSW and Victorian right with the former over represented in cabinet as spots are decided on a proportional basis between factions and states.

Health Minister Mark Butler said the government had to “balance stability with some renewal”, acknowledging it was tough for the two senior MPs.

“But that’s how democratic processes work,” he told ABC TV.

Labor senators Jess Walsh and Tim Ayres will also be promoted.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will address caucus on Friday where the ministerial nominations will be rubber-stamped.

Mr Albanese will then allocate portfolios over the weekend ahead of the ministry being sworn in on Tuesday.

The Australian Catholic community is welcoming news of the election of American Robert Francis Prevost as the Pope, saying it represents a momentous event in the life of the church. 

Cardinal Prevost will be known by the name Leo XIV and is the first American to be appointed to the papacy. 

Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president Archbishop Timothy Costelloe offered the Catholic church in Australia’s heartfelt congratulations. 

“Cardinal Prevost brought to his most recent role as Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops an approachability and willingness to listen which were no doubt developed throughout his many years as an Augustinian missionary in Peru,” Archbishop Costelloe said. 

“He will be warmly welcomed by the Church in Latin America, as Pope Francis was, by the Church in the United States from where he comes, from the English-speaking world as a native English speaker, and from the whole Church as a man of God steeped in the rich spirituality of his Augustinian Religious Order.”

Archbishop Costelloe said the new Pope would guide the Church with renewed hope and strength.

“Recent Popes have sought ways to be of service to the wider Christian family and we can expect that Pope Leo XIV will follow this same path. 

Catholic Social Services Australia executive director Jerry Nockles said Pope Leo’s appointment came at a critical time when the world yearned for compassionate leadership grounded in gospel values of justice, dignity and solidarity with the vulnerable. 

“At a time when Australia and indeed the world faces unprecedented social challenges – from growing inequality to escalating violence and social division – Pope Leo’s election offers a beacon of hope and a powerful reminder that the church stands firmly for peace and with those on the margins,” Dr Nockles said. 

“His voice will undoubtedly challenge us all to build a more just and peaceful society where every person’s dignity is honoured, and peace is actively pursued.”

Cardinal Mykola Bychok was the sole Australian representative at the conclave in Rome. 

Archbishop Costelloe and Sale Bishop Greg Bennet have indicated they will travel to Rome for the installation representing the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and the church in Australia.

More online criminals are weaponising artificial intelligence to steal from Australian businesses, including using the technology to create deepfakes of employees’ voices and appearance.

Small and medium-sized businesses were at highest risk from the emerging trend, but almost all Australian organisations had encountered AI-based online attacks over the past year, a report has found.

Security firm SoSafe has released the findings in its Cybercrime Trends report, which also found Australia is one of the nations most often targeted by AI-generated attacks.

The warnings come one month after some of the nation’s biggest superannuation firms were hit with a co-ordinated online attack that saw $750,000 stolen from personal accounts.

Sydney animal vaccine firm Virbac has been regularly targeted by hackers who use AI to create realistic invoices.

Chris Mousley, a supply chain analytics specialist at the firm, said Virbac had been forced to educate staff and change its process for paying suppliers to avoid being robbed by cyber criminals.

“I get at least five to 10 of these a month and they’re extremely convincing commercial documents that look like pro-forma invoices,” Mr Mousley said.

“These are very specific documents and they’re AI-generated to look like companies we would deal with.”

The fake invoices were often for specific raw materials, he said, which indicated criminals were specifically targeting the firm and its industry.

AI software was not only being used to improve the grammar and apparent legitimacy of email scams, but to craft targeted and sophisticated attacks across different platforms, SoSafe human-centric security advocate Jacqueline Jayne said.

“We’ve had deepfakes using people’s voices to pretend to be someone on the phone and it is incredibly difficult, unless you have a code word, to be able to tell are we talking to (a colleague) or is this someone pretending to be her,” she said.

“It’s getting harder and harder to pick the difference.”

The Cybercrime Trends report, released in Friday, was prepared by research firm Censuswide and surveyed 500 IT workers across nine countries.

Despite their prevalence, only one-in-four IT workers rated their ability to detect AI-based attacks as “high”.

Most Australian organisations had experienced attacks delivered to workers’ personal devices such as phones and laptops, the report found.

Companies were also targeted by “multi-channel attacks” that used their email and social media accounts, messaging apps and voice calls.

Educating employees in how to detect deepfake scams would be vital to shutting down the attacks, particularly in small and medium-sized businesses that often did not deploy the same level of cybersecurity, Ms Jayne said.

“We’re going to see more AI-assisted and driven attacks in Australia and globally,” she told AAP.

“One way to address it is to think about what humans are doing, how they’re responding to (attacks), and how we can help them to think before they do anything.”

Companies needed to educate staff in how to scrutinise incoming communication carefully, Mr Mousley said.

This included looking for hints such as misspellings and different payment methods, and running credit checks on local firms.

“You can’t be complacent,” he said.

“We didn’t get any of these 12 months ago.”

New faces will be welcomed to the fold as Labor politicians come together for the first time since their emphatic victory at the federal election.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will address the caucus meeting in Canberra on Friday after his party’s landslide win.

The scale of the success has taken even senior Labor ministers by surprise, lending to a buoyant feeling among the party’s members.

A record number of women will be taking their seats in parliament, with women to outnumber men in the Labor partyroom.

At least 46 seats will be held by women in the Labor government out of a total of 150 in the House of Representatives.

More than a dozen new MPs will join the ranks after Labor increased its seats from 77 to at least 90 as the count continues.

Australian National University political historian Frank Bongiorno said Labor hadn’t had a victory this size since 1943.

“It’s a remarkable opportunity for the government to craft a legacy, which could extend even beyond this term,” he said.

“Governments don’t normally extend their majorities … you normally win your first election reasonably comfortably, and then you begin burning political capital straight away in that first term, and then often have to scrape a win the second time round.”

New Dickson MP Ali France has been hailed a “Labor legend” after she became the first person to unseat an opposition leader at an election with her defeat of Peter Dutton.

Former Tasmanian state opposition leader Rebecca White’s victory in Lyons has her among the contenders to be elevated to the ministry, expected to be unveiled on Monday ahead of a swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday.

The depleted Liberals will hold a partyroom meeting on Tuesday to pick their new leader with Angus Taylor and Sussan Ley looming as the leading candidates.

Attracting women voters and candidates has been a major issue for the coalition.

The new women joining Labor’s ranks were to the party’s “major political advantage”, Professor Bongiorno said.

“We know that there will be women at the table, at the cabinet table, there’ll be women there in caucus when issues come up that are of particular interest to women,” he said.

“We know that women’s voices and women’s agency will be there.”

US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer have announced a “breakthrough deal” on trade that leaves in place a 10 per cent tariff on goods imported from the United Kingdom while the UK agreed to lower its tariffs to 1.8 per cent from 5.1 per cent and provide greater access to US goods.

The agreement announced by Trump from the Oval Office marked the first since Trump triggered a global trade war with a barrage of levies on trading partners following his return to the White House in January.

“It opens up a tremendous market for us,” Trump said.

“This is a really fantastic, historic day,” Starmer said by teleconference.

The United States has been under pressure from investors to strike deals to de-escalate its tariff war after Trump’s often chaotic policymaking up-ended global trade with friends and foe alike, threatening to stoke inflation and start a recession.

Top US officials have engaged in a flurry of meetings with trading partners since the president on April 2 imposed a 10 per cent tariff on most countries, along with higher rates for many trading partners that were then suspended for 90 days.

The US has also imposed 25 per cent tariffs on autos, steel and aluminium, 25 per cent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and 145 per cent tariffs on China. 

US and Chinese officials are due to hold talks in Switzerland on Saturday.

With the UK economy struggling to grow, the tariffs had added to the pressure on his government.

Jaguar Land Rover paused its shipments to the US for a month and the government was forced to seize control of British Steel to keep it operating.

While seeking a deal with the US, the UK had refused to lower its food standards, which are closely aligned with the European Union. 

However, the UK’s farming trade union has said that some US producers who do not use growth hormones or antimicrobial washes could be given greater market access.

The status of the 10 per cent “baseline” tariff was unclear, as was a threatened tariff on the pharmaceutical industry which could damage AstraZeneca and GSK.

Initial news of an announcement sent shares in luxury car maker Aston Martin up 10 per cent while UK retailers with operations in the US including JD Sports and Primark owner AB Foods also rose.

Starmer’s government has been seeking to build new trading relationships post-Brexit with the US, China and the European Union without moving so far towards one bloc that it angers the others.

Economists and one FTSE 100 chief executive said the immediate economic effect of a tariff deal was likely to be limited but that trade agreements in general would help long-term growth. 

The UK struck a free trade agreement with India this week.

The Bank of England is cutting its main interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.25 per cent amid concerns over the potential shock to global growth emanating from the tariff policies of the Trump administration.

The decision on Thursday was widely expected, though there was an array of opinion on the nine-member monetary policy committee, with two voting for a bigger half-point cut to four per cent, and two voting to hold rates.

Bank governor Andrew Bailey said inflationary pressures had continued to ease, paving the way for the fourth quarter-point rate cut since August.

The bank believed tariff increases by the US and other countries would weigh somewhat on British economic growth and push down on inflation, but stressed the outlook was unclear.

“The past few weeks have shown how unpredictable the global economy can be,” he said.

“That’s why we need to stick to a gradual and careful approach to further rate cuts. Ensuring low and stable inflation is our top priority.”

The decision is the first since US President Donald Trump made his tariff announcement in early April.

Though most tariffs were paused for 90 days following the ensuing market turmoil, including the 10 per cent baseline tariff applied to UK goods entering the US, the backdrop for the global economy remains highly uncertain.

Some of that uncertainty, with regard to the British economy, could be lifted later on Thursday when details of a trade deal between the US and the UK are announced.

At the very least, they are expected to lower the tariff burden.

Though the tariff burden may be eased, the biggest uncertainty facing the global economy is the potential for a US-China trade war, which would dampen economic growth everywhere.

The rate cut comes despite expectations that inflation will rise further above the bank’s two per cent target in coming months, from the current 2.6 per cent as a result of a raft of price increases in April, such as domestic energy and water bills, and firms passing on tax rises to consumers.

“While headline inflation is expected to rise in the near-term, we do not expect that to persist,” said Bailey, adding it would be back around target in two years’ time.

Unlike the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank, which in April also cut interest rates, the US Federal Reserve kept rates unchanged on Wednesday as its policymakers wait to see how Trump’s tariffs affect the US economy before making any moves.

World shares have inched higher, buoyed by US President Donald Trump’s promise of a first trade deal in his global tariff war – tipped to be Britain – while the dollar gained as markets pushed out the chance of near-term Fed rate cuts.

Traders were also limbering up for an expected Bank of England quarter-point rate cut later on Thursday.

Sweden and Norway had already left their rates steady, but both hinted at future cuts given all the global uncertainty.

Europe’s main stock markets opened higher, led by a one per cent rise from Germany’s export-heavy DAX and a 0.3 per cent gain for London’s FTSE, plus a similar lift for sterling against the euro, on the trade deal signals.

US President Donald Trump posted on social media that he would hold an Oval Office media conference on a “major trade deal with representatives of a big, and highly respected, country”.

Wall Street futures were up nearly one per cent, too, but economists are eager to see the deal’s details later and whether the baseline 10 per cent tariff Trump has slapped on all countries up until now can be negotiated away.

Investors are also anxiously awaiting planned talks between US and Chinese officials in Switzerland on Saturday, which could mark the first step in dialling down the damaging trade war between the world’s top two economies.

Markets were still digesting the Federal Reserve’s decision to leave US interest rates in the 4.25 per cent to 4.5 per cent range for a third straight meeting and its warning that the stagflationary risks of higher inflation and higher unemployment had risen.

Chair Jerome Powell said the Fed was still in “a good place” in terms of its policy, given that it was not clear if the US economy would continue its steady growth or wilt under mounting uncertainty and a possible spike in inflation.

In the bond markets, 10-year US Treasury yields edged up 2 bps at 4.29 per cent, while Germany’s 10-year yield – the euro area’s benchmark – also rose fractionally to 2.48 per cent.

The Fed’s wait-and-see message also gave the dollar index a lift.

After a brief wobble in Asia, it regained traction to sit 0.5 per cent higher in Europe at just above the psychological 100 points threshold.

Trade deal hopes also saw Britain’s pound climb as much as 0.5 per cent, although it eased back slightly to $US1.3315 as the focus turned to the Bank of England’s widely expected quarter-point rate cut later.

Overnight in Asia, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan had ended down 0.3 per cent while Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.4 per cent and Chinese blue chips rose 0.5 per cent as they continued to recover ground lost since Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs last month.

Wall Street had seen a late rally too after reports that the Trump administration was planning to rescind and modify a Joe Biden-era rule that curbed the export of sophisticated artificial-intelligence chips.

Nvidia shares jumped 3 per cent although Google’s parent firm Alphabet suffered a 7.2 per cent tumble on reports that Apple is readying a new artificial-intelligence enhanced web browser.

In commodities markets, the brighter trade deal sentiment lifted oil prices after they had fallen more than $US1 on Wednesday. US crude futures rose 0.7 per cent to $US58.50 a barrel while Brent was at $US61.50 per barrel, up 0.6 per cent on the day.

Gold prices rose 0.3 per cent to $US3,374.5 an ounce amid the uncertainties about Fed policy outlook, but still short of its record high of $US3,500.