Child safety officials were warned a diabetic girl faced an extreme risk of death if returned to her science-denying, religious extremist mother, two years before the girl’s preventable death, a coroner has heard.

Eight-year-old Elizabeth Rose Struhs died at her family’s home near Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, after her parents, brother and 11 other members of “the Saints” church group gathered to pray around her.

Her father, Jason Richard Struhs, had stopped administering her insulin shots days earlier.

A coroners inquest started on Monday into the adequacy and appropriateness of the responses by child safety, health and other government agencies prior to Elizabeth’s death on January 7, 2022.

Elizabeth was “minutes from death” when airlifted to Brisbane Children’s Hospital in July 2019 after her mother Kerrie Struhs refused to seek treatment for her ill six-year-old, a pediatrician testified.

The girl was subsequently diagnosed with type-1 diabetes.

The pediatrician, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she had been stonewalled by Queensland’s child protection authority over concerns Elizabeth faced “extreme risk of harm including death” if returned to a mother who rejected medical science.

“Elizabeth was in a comatose state and very near to death,” the pediatrician said.

Elizabeth’s endocrinologist had reported to Child Safety that the mother believed her daughter would be cured of diabetes and would not need insulin to stay alive, the coroner heard.

“It is a life-threatening condition … if the mother continues to deny treatment, she cannot be in Kerrie’s care,” the endocrinologist said.

The mother had been a member of “the Saints” for years and had a history of refusing to seek medical or dental treatment for Elizabeth, the coroner heard.

The pediatrician said Child Safety had not received the endocrinologist’s report but were aware of its contents when they decided to return Elizabeth home.

She said officials were “stuck on” the idea that Elizabeth would also be cared for by her father, who at the time had not joined the cult.

The two medical specialists saw Jason Richard Struhs as “weak” in the face of pressure from the Saints, the pediatrician testified

The safety plan drawn up by Child Safety relied on the then-six-year-old girl identifying herself if she was unwell, the inquest was told.

“It’s not developmentally appropriate”, the pediatrician said.

Jason Struhs agreed to a diabetes treatment plan but by January 2022 had been convinced by his wife and the Saints to stop Elizabeth’s insulin.

Elizabeth rapidly became unwell, was unable to speak and fell into unconsciousness.

She died on a mattress on her living room floor after her parents and 12 other Saints members gathered around her to pray and sing.

The coroner also heard of an earlier opportunity for officials to intervene, after older sister Jayde Struhs triggered the Struhs family’s first contact with child protection services in 2013.

Jayde told her school nurse her parents had become involved in an extreme religion based on the Bible, counsel assisting Simon Hamlyn-Harris said.

A Child Safety manager giving evidence on Monday agreed the then-teenager was concerned for herself and her siblings “about the controlling nature of the religion (and) concerns about things she was required to believe”.

Jayde was at a point where she “wanted to get out”, Mr Hamlyn-Harris said.

But the manager said no harm was identified.

The system had since changed, and staff now relied more on professional judgement than prescriptive guidelines, the coroner heard.

Jayde fled the family home a year later but remained in contact with her younger sister.

Coroner Ainslie Kirkegaard on Monday acknowledged the loss for Jayde and her family was made worse by public scrutiny, including through the inquest.

Elizabeth’s parents are serving 14-year jail terms after they, along with Saints leader Brendan Stevens and 11 others, were found guilty of manslaughter in 2025.

The inquest is due to run for two weeks.

Senior Liberals have welcomed the possibility of Josh Frydenberg throwing his hat back in the political ring.

Despite criticism from the former treasurer towards Angus Taylor’s handling of the party, MPs insist the opposition leader was the right choice to lead the coalition to the next election.

Mr Frydenberg used an interview to criticise Mr Taylor’s handling of the Liberal Party, saying he had contributed to its polling being at an “all-time low”.

“Things have to change, because there’s something existential about the threat that I think the party now faces,” he told Nine’s 60 Minutes.

“(Mr Taylor is) getting (criticism) from lots of corners. People are saying that the Liberal Party needs to do better.”

Excerpts from Mr Frydenberg’s memoir, which is likely to contain policy suggestions, are fuelling rumours he plans to make a political comeback. 

“Look, I certainly haven’t closed the door, but I don’t need to rush to a decision,” he said.

“The next election is 18 months away.”

But the opposition leader said he would welcome the political return of Mr Frydenberg, despite the attack on his leadership.

“I welcome every Liberal who cares about the future of our nation – and I know Josh does – to put shoulder to the wheel in the coming months to get rid of a rotten Labor government and make the change that Australia needs happen,” he told reporters in Canberra on Monday.

“I ask all Liberals and Nationals and people who are supportive of our view about where the country needs to go … to get in there and help in any way they can.”

Opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan said the party was behind Mr Taylor.

“I’ve got to say, Angus Taylor is doing a first-class job,” he told News24.

“Obviously, he took over in very difficult circumstances.

“What we’ve been able to do in articulating policies is putting us right back in the game.”

Liberal backbencher Leon Rebello said Mr Frydenberg would have a lot to contribute to parliament should he return.

“Josh Fryenberg has contributed enormously, not only to the Liberal Party but also to our side of politics more broadly and to this parliament in his role as a former treasurer,” he said.

Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson encouraged people to “put themselves forward” as candidates to create a stronger Liberal Party. 

“I encourage them to do so, so they can be part of a winning team,” he told ABC Radio.

“What we need is people who’ve got courage in their hearts and are prepared to make the sacrifices necessary for public office.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used Question Time to propel Mr Frydenberg’s comments into parliamentary conversation. 

“You’ve got a predecessor out there campaigning openly, campaigning openly against the front bench on the other side, saying that they’re not up to it,” he said. 

Mr Frydenberg held the seat of Kooyong for 12 years from 2010 and was treasurer in the Morrison government, including through COVID-19. 

He lost the seat to independent MP Monique Ryan at the 2022 election, in which she won almost 53 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. 

Dr Ryan appeared unfazed by his possible return. 

“He was the member for that seat for 12 years and in 2022, our community rejected him because they were so frustrated with his inability to affect any change to government policy on climate change,” she told Nine’s Today program. 

“People were unhappy with his economic management.”

The fuel crisis caused by Middle East conflict would have had a softer landing if Australia been clear-eyed about its vulnerabilities, the RSL president says.

Peter Tinley has used Australia’s dependence on foreign fuel as an example of where Canberra failed to mobilise in the face of obvious challenges. 

He says economic, technological and security threats are encroaching rapidly and on top of one another, outstripping the nation’s well-meaning but toothless defence strategies.

A government duty-bound by law to keep Australia prepared, a commission analysing national resilience and an adviser to determine if the country is ready would help cushion blows such as the one caused by the Middle East conflict, Mr Tinley told the National Press Club on Monday.

“There was a crisis and there we are found wanting,” he said.

Mr Tinley’s proposal would involve passing a law which, among other things, would mean parliament and the public were informed annually about whether Australia was becoming more or less prepared.

“If this architecture or something like it was in place before the Iran crisis, we wouldn’t have had the same problem,” he said.

Mr Tinley’s address is the RSL’s latest foray into a string of hot-button political issues.

In September, it weighed into a vicious feud between Liberal frontbencher and former Special Air Services soldier Andrew Hastie and One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, over a cartoon calling the coalition MP a traitor.

“The word ‘traitor’ has a particular meaning for somebody who’s worn the uniform,” Mr Tinley, who also served in the SAS, said.

“That was beyond the pale, and we need to make a contribution to civil debate.”

Labor’s plan to sell off 67 defence assets to rake in about $1.8 billion, including Sydney’s Victoria barracks, also met full-throated resistance from the advocacy group. 

The RSL’s spirited response to the proposal was partly for the sake of future veterans, Mr Tinley revealed. 

“We are in some disagreement with the government, but also the government’s been listening,” he said, with Defence Minister Richard Marles among the press club attendees.

“We’re getting some movement.”

On the issue of national readiness, the former state Labor minister pre-empted criticism about the RSL’s position propelling the organisation out of its lane.

“This is the lane. It always has been,” Mr Tinley said.

“How well this country prepares itself is a veterans’ issue, because veterans and their families are among the people who pay when it does not.”

Mr Tinley came to the RSL presidency in October 2025 with well-burnished military and political credentials, having served 25 years in uniform in Lebanon, Syria, Papua New Guinea, Afghanistan and Iraq, rising to the rank of major.

He also commanded the SAS counter-terrorism force infamously deployed to Christmas Island in 2001 to ward off the MV Tampa when it was carrying asylum seekers. 

Mr Tinley later labelled the move, green-lit by then-prime minister John Howard, an overreaction.

After his service, he spent 15 years as a Labor MP in the WA parliament where he held several portfolios including veterans issues. 

Watered-down online safeguards still face hurdles to become law after the opposition labelled them “fatally flawed” while would-be supporters called for further measures to rein in big tech.

Proposed digital duty of care laws are among a number of bills the government is hoping to pass with the resumption of parliament on Monday.

The legislation will put the onus on social media companies to ensure under-18s aren’t exposed to harmful content, such as pornography, bullying and material that glorifies crime.

It will also include a “my feed, my way” measure to allow all social media users to opt out of algorithm-driven feeds.

The laws have been amended to remove sweeping powers that would allow the communications minister to decide what constituted harmful content – a key sticking point for some critics.

But opposition communications spokeswoman Sarah Henderson said the plan was still “a blank check for political censorship” and “a dog’s breakfast”.

“This is an attack on free speech, full and centre,” she told News24.

“This (amendment) doesn’t improve the bill whatsoever. The bill is fatally flawed and it must be scrapped.”

The Greens broadly support the legislation, but they believe it does not go far enough.

The minor party, which holds the balance of power in the Senate, called on the government to give people safe legal pathways to get compensation from tech companies if they were harmed by online content.

“Australians say that if we’re getting mucked around by one of these platforms, they should be able to take them on and sue them and fix the harm,” leader David Shoebridge said.

“We should have legislation that is empowering Australians.”

Communications Minister Anika Wells called for her counterparts to put politics aside and pass the bill, which she said parents had spent years calling for. 

Primary school students who were surveyed also wanted crackdowns, she said. 

“If a few hundred primary school students can work it out, the adults in this place can too,” Ms Wells told Question Time.

Independent MPs Monique Ryan and Zali Steggall confirmed they supported the bill.

“It is essential that we put guardrails around the online environment to make sure there’s a safe space,” Ms Steggall told AAP. 

“It’s long overdue and desperately needed.”

The return to parliament comes as multiple polls point to a slide in support for One Nation from recent highs, while Labor was still poised to retain government.

The anti-immigration party was behind Labor for primary support in the latest Newspoll and Resolve surveys, while a DemosAU analysis for Capital Brief suggested it was losing momentum in its regional heartland.

The latter data, based on polling of 9740 Australian voters in August and September, suggested Labor would likely win a slender majority in parliament if an election were to be held.

Its central projection was for One Nation to win 24 seats, while the coalition would lose eight from its current tally to sit on 34.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will welcome King Abdullah II of Jordan to Canberra.

Jordan is a key defence partner for Australia and a major player in the Middle East, where war continues to rage.

Australia’s share market has started the week higher after banks rallied in anticipation of US earnings season, while rebounding metals prices supported mining stocks.

The S&P/ASX200 rose 66.6 points on Monday, up 0.76 per cent, to 8783.2, as the broader All Ordinaries gained 59.3 points, or 0.67 per cent, to 8937.

Resurgent copper prices lit a match under BHP shares, which surged more than two per cent to $62.39, adding a cool $7.3 billion to the market value of Australia’s largest company.

Westpac led the big four banks higher amid optimism around US banking earnings due later in the week, while oil prices eased during the session despite ongoing supply risks and conflict in the Middle East.

The Australian dollar is buying 69.77 US cents, down from 69.83 US cents on Friday at 5pm.

A US judge has blocked the Trump administration from using taxpayer money to ‌pay for political advertisements, after publicly-funded television ads glorifying President Donald Trump sparked a bipartisan backlash.

Manhattan-based US District Judge Jennifer Rochon temporarily barred the advertisements ‌on Sunday, after plaintiffs including watchdog group Common Cause brought a lawsuit alleging the ads were political propaganda designed to help Republican candidates in the November 3 midterm elections, not public service announcements.

The Trump administration was already planning to stop running the ads before Rochon’s order, according to a separate statement ‌filed with the ‌court on ⁠Saturday.

The decision caps days of controversy over the taxpayer-funded advertisements, ​which were aired in the final weeks before the midterm elections.

“We won’t stop until this administration is held fully accountable, and no president from any party can waste and abuse taxpayer funds for propaganda ever again,” Common Cause President and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón said.

Trump said ⁠he considered the ads to be a “positive promotion for ‌our ​great USA” but that they would no longer be funded by taxpayers.

The White ​House said ‌the president’s political action committee, MAGA PAC, would fund the ads going ​forward.

The White House said Trump’s political action committee wouldn’t reimburse taxpayers for the ads that have already run.

The ads end with a disclaimer saying they ​were ​paid for by the US government.

The ​Justice Department did not immediately respond to a ‌request for comment about the judge’s order.

The plaintiffs, which also included a public employee union and a candidate for Alabama state representative, had asked Rochon to temporarily block the ads by Friday so that they could not air during weekend programming such as football games and Saturday ​Night Live.

Democratic Party officials also challenged the ads in a separate suit brought in ​federal court in Washington.

The government has defended a messy transition period that is set to cost millions of dollars as it covers the bill for businesses’ card surcharges on tax payments.

The Australian Taxation Office planned to stop accepting credit card payments for tax bills from December following a Reserve Bank-led ban on card surcharges.

But the federal government announced on Friday it would cover the cost for the tax office to continue to accept credit card payments from small businesses until mid-2027 after backlash over the change.

It extended a transition period from two months to almost a year as part of the intervention.

But Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino said the exact cost to taxpayers for doing so would not be announced until the mid-year budget update, due in December.

“The costs are partly dependent on ongoing negotiations between the ATO and the credit card companies,” he told ABC Radio on Monday.

ATO commissioner Rob Heferen previously said merchant fees were expected to cost the tax office almost $200 million annually, which it could not absorb.

Asked if the government had failed to show proper oversight, Mr Mulino said conversations about the change were ongoing.

“Those conversations will hopefully yield benefits for the taxpayer,” he said.

“We heard loud and clear that small businesses found it to be an insufficient transition period.”

Labor frontbencher Kristy McBain said the Reserve Bank should go even further by preventing banks from charging small businesses for point-of-sale fees.

“These banks are making billions of dollars in profits every year and small businesses are already paying account keeping fees and a range of other fees directly to their banks,” she told Seven’s Sunrise program.

Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson said the about-face on tax payments showed the government didn’t understand how small businesses operated.

“The treasurer’s had to back down again after realising he didn’t understand the impact of his changes,” he said.

The government is also expected to introduce a minimum 30 per cent tax on distributions from discretionary trusts in the current sitting week, which the coalition opposes on the grounds it would impact small businesses.

Mr Wilson said there was no way for the government to protect businesses and bring in the change, particularly at a time when profits were already declining.

“The whole proposition is that they think that there are these family distributions to minimise tax and that’s not why small businesses use trusts,” he said.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers maintained his government had consulted closely with business owners.

Australia’s financial aid to Southeast Asia continues to hold steady, despite major powers pulling back, leaving the region’s development finances at a decade low.

Canberra directed $1.1 billion to aid projects in the region in 2024, a slight increase on the previous year, according to figures from the Lowy Institute’s 2026 Southeast Asia Aid Map, unveiled late on Sunday.

The report, which analysed the flow of $456 billion in aid to all 11 Southeast Asian nations between 2015 and 2024, showed Australia’s investment bucked a trend of other traditional bilateral donors noticeably retreating from funding to the region.

Australian development assistance is expected to remain stable due to a national interest in the Indo-Pacific and overarching aid safeguarding policies, Southeast Asia Aid Map research lead Rahul Nath told AAP.

Across the board, development finance fell by almost 10 per cent to $37 billion in 2024, the report found.

Japan represented the single largest aid reduction in 2024 at $2.2 billion mainly due to the conclusion of COVID-era loans.

Aid cuts by traditional donors, such as the US, UK, Germany and Japan, are forecast to fall by another $2.6 billion in 2025, which is a worrying trend according to Dr Nath.

“It is concerning given how important aid is to the region and specifically to social protection and to helping countries essentially build resilience,” he said.

“We’re actually quite worried about what happens to the social sector funding and also what happens to some of the poorest countries in the region that rely predominantly on grants and highly concessional loans to support their development.”

Social protections could be further threatened by shock factors such as tariffs and repercussions of the Iran war, Dr Nath said, sparking concerns about the resilience of the region’s largely successful development model.

Rather than stepping into the gap left by traditional bilateral partners, China represented the second largest funding drop, with donations slumping $1.6 billion in 2024.

Despite the drop, China still accounted for one-fifth of all aid to Southeast Asia in 2024, with about 90 per cent of its financing going to infrastructure.

“We’re seeing a lot of mega projects coming to an end, but also we’re seeing those projects aren’t being replenished,” Dr Nath said.

“We’re also seeing southeast Asian countries really putting greater scrutiny on Chinese projects, and that might also be driving why there’s been so few signings in the last few years.”

The gap left by world powers carved space for multilateral development banks to emerge as the region’s main development partner for the first time since 2015.

“We’re expecting that they’re going to play a much, much larger role in the region in the years to come,” Dr Nath said.

That includes the 10-year-old Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which provided a $2.9 billion surge in funding in 2024.

Slumping auction clearance rates show buyers continue to eschew the property market, but prospective home owners are set to win long term.

The nation’s housing market is undergoing its biggest affordability improvement in 50 years, according to left-leaning think tank the Australia Institute.

Labor’s curbs to investor tax breaks were largely to thank, chief economist Greg Jericho said.

“After 25 years of governments ignoring the real problem with housing, the changes to the capital gains tax discount and negative gearing in the May budget have finally tackled the heart of the issue,” he told AAP on Sunday.

“I think you can see even in the short time since then that it really has cracked the nut.”

National housing prices have fallen by 5.2 per cent since March, according to property data firm Cotality.

Prices were already falling before the budget due to rising interest rates and high living costs, lending data shows the downturn has hit investors especially hard.

There are signs carve-outs for new builds are also having their intended effect of directing investment into extra supply.

While investor loans for established dwellings fell 14 per cent in the June quarter, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, investor loans for new builds rose 4.4 per cent.

“To me suggests that actually there has been a real change in behaviour,” Mr Jericho said.

But even if prices fall 15 per cent from peak to trough, as the most bearish of forecasts suggest, that would only bring them back to 2024 levels.

Mr Jericho said the changes meant prices should no longer grow at a much faster rate than incomes over the long term and affordability would gradually improve even after the downturn was over.

For now, even owner-occupier demand remains cool.

Preliminary auction clearance rates held below 50 per cent for a second straight week, despite there being 31 per cent fewer auctions than a year earlier, Cotality said.

“The volume of auctions held through the first six weeks of spring hasn’t been this low since 2020 when pandemic lockdowns were in full swing,” research director Tim Lawless said.

While home-building figures have improved in recent months, detractors of Labor’s changes have warned lower investor demand for housing would result in less supply and higher prices for renters.

Rental price growth eased to 0.5 per cent in the September quarter, down from the 1.6 per cent increase in the June quarter and 2.1 per cent in the three months to March, Cotality data showed.

Independent economist Saul Eslake said the higher rents argument was flawed.

Fewer investors buying homes means more homes for owner-occupiers, which means demand for rentals falls at the same time as rental supply.

Despite the changes having the desired impact of increasing affordability without causing a spike in rents, Mr Eslake said Labor leaders had been curiously reluctant to own their policy.

“It reflects the fundamental reason why housing has become so unaffordable; Australians as a people and the politicians they elect have shifted from seeing housing as meeting basic human needs towards seeing housing as primarily a vehicle for accumulating wealth,” he said.

One Nation’s Pauline Hanson has revealed her pick to head right-wing counterparts the Liberals after dismissing its current leader as a “smarmy management consultant”.

Angus Taylor became the first sitting opposition leader to address the Australian Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Brisbane on Saturday as the coalition and One Nation vied for the fractured right-wing vote.

But Senator Hanson emerged the crowd favourite as she made jibes about her conservative rivals while also offering to “put personal history aside” and team up with the coalition to remove Labor from government.

Opposition frontbenchers headlined on Sunday as their leaders swapped the conference stage for the morning media rounds.

Senator Hanson said she did not “want to be around the table” with the Liberals, but they should still work together to get rid of Labor as it would be extremely hard for either One Nation or the coalition to govern alone.

A day after suggesting Mr Taylor – a former partner at global consulting firm McKinsey & Company – was a “smarmy management consultant”, she also dismissed shadow treasurer and Liberal leadership hopeful Tim Wilson as “full of himself” and “woke”.

“He put us last in the last election, called us a racist party,” she told News24.

“If they’re thinking about Tim Wilson, I think you better think again because I’ve got no time for that man.”

Senator Hanson said she got on “reasonably well” with former Liberal treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who is reportedly mulling a return to politics after losing his seat at the 2022 election.

But she said former prime minister and current party president Tony Abbott was the person with the best chance of leading the Liberals.

The coalition has consistently trailed One Nation in the polls since the start of the year, while some surveys have put the anti-immigration party ahead of Labor on primary support.

Mr Taylor said he would welcome Mr Frydenberg “playing whatever role he’s able to play” as he needed “every good Liberal with shoulder to the wheel” in the lead-up to the next election.

But he poured cold water on an idea floated by the former treasurer to raise the GST while lowering income taxes.

“We will not be raising the GST in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis … we’ll put Australia and Australians first, but we won’t be raising taxes,” he told ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.

In an extract from his soon-to-be-published memoir, Mr Frydenberg called on the coalition to ignore calls to appeal to the extremes and instead target the electoral centre.

But during his speech to the conservative conference, Mr Taylor described the coalition under his leadership alongside the Nationals’ Matt Canavan as “unashamedly on the right”.

Opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan took the stage on Sunday, telling the audience the coalition would axe Labor’s policies to achieve net-zero emissions.

Earlier, Mr Tehan told AAP he was using “every forum available” to inform Australians of the coalition’s energy agenda.

His Labor counterpart, Chris Bowen, said Liberals were competing with One Nation on “crazy”.

“We’re going to see a whole bunch of crazy over the next few days as the Liberal Party and the One Nation party try to outdo each other on the race to the right and the race to the bottom,” the energy and climate change minister said.

Mainstream journalists – given “fake news” media passes – were not allowed to put questions to leaders at the conference, while some were refused entry outright.

CPAC was imported to Australia from the US in 2019.