The cancellation of Anthony Albanese’s one-on-one meeting with Donald Trump is not surprising given the Middle Eastern instability, the treasurer says.

The prime minister was set to meet with the US president on the sidelines of the G7 leaders summit in Canada, but Mr Trump is leaving early due to the conflict between Iran and Israel.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said Australia would continue to push for a meeting with the president.

“When you see the perilous moment in the Middle East and what it means for the world, it’s not especially surprising. It’s understandable that President Trump has left the meeting early,” Dr Chalmers told Sky News on Tuesday.

“This was always a chance of happening, given what’s happening around the world and particularly in the Middle East.

“Prime Minister Albanese has had three conversations with President Trump in recent months. We’ll continue to engage in the usual way.”

Tariffs on Australian exports into the US as well as the AUKUS submarine deal were set to be on the agenda of the face-to-face discussions.

It would have been the first time the two leaders would speak in person.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said the president leaving the summit was reasonable due to the international situation, but was to the detriment of Australia.

“This was an important opportunity for the prime minister to seek assurances on AUKUS and protect Australia from tariffs,” she said.

“Given global volatility and the growing list of issues in our relationship with the United States, this underscores that the Albanese government should not have merely relied on meeting with the president on the sidelines of international summits.”

But Ms Ley said the coalition would work with the government to improve the relationship with the United States.

“The prime minister should have been more proactive in seeking to strengthen this relationship, Australia’s most important, and we encourage him to change his approach to advance our national interest,” she said.

Opposition trade spokesman Kevin Hogan said the government needed to clarify what its approach was to dealing with the Trump administration.

“We expect the prime minister to advocate forcefully for Australian interests – resolving tariff issues, securing our trade future, and advancing AUKUS co-operation in a way that supports jobs and strengthens our national security,” he said.

“The prime minister must provide assurances on what his plan is now to ensure he gets a face-to-face meeting with President Trump.”

The prime minister’s much-anticipated meeting with Donald Trump has been cancelled.

Anthony Albanese was scheduled to hold his first face-to-face talks with the US president on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada on Tuesday local time.

But 24 hours before their discussion, the US president’s press secretary revealed Mr Trump would leave early due to the growing conflict between Israel and Iran.

The two are not expected to meet before Mr Trump flies out.

“Given what is occurring in the Middle East, this is understandable,” a spokesperson from the prime minister said.

Mr Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt said much was accomplished during the president’s time at the summit.

“The president had a great day at the G7 … but because of what’s going on in the Middle East, President Trump will be leaving tonight after dinner with Heads of State,” she posted on X.

Mr Trump was also scheduled to meet with other leaders like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi and Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum on the last day of the summit.

The news broke just minutes after Mr Albanese held his last press conference of the day.

The prime minister told reporters he prepared for the meeting through a variety of means, including contacting those close to the US president, like Australian golfer Greg Norman.

“I’ve engaged as much as possible because I think that I have a great responsibility to take that responsibility seriously,” he said.

Mr Albanese was expected to advocate for Australia’s nuclear submarine deal with the US and UK, which the Pentagon is reviewing, and to try to negotiate an exemption from Mr Trump’s controversial tariffs.

But he is now unlikely to see the president before the departure, as the prime minister is set to attend a dinner for nations invited to the summit that are not part of the G7.

For days, many had speculated that the escalation between Israel and Iran would overshadow the meeting of international leaders.

About an hour before it was revealed Mr Trump would leave, the US president urged everyone to immediately evacuate the Iranian capital Tehran in a post on Truth Social.

The prime minister also expressed his concerns.

“We are deeply concerned and urge all parties to prioritise dialogue and diplomacy,” Mr Albanese said.

The prime minister previously held his first bilateral meeting with his Canadian counterpart Mark Carney and also had discussions on regional security with the newly-elected South Korean President Lee Jae-myung.

Mr Albanese is also due to participate in a string of diplomatic talks on Tuesday with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Despite the US launching a review to explore whether the AUKUS deal aligns with Mr Trump’s “America first” agenda, there is hope the president might have formed a positive view of the nuclear submarine deal without Australia’s help.

After a bilateral meeting on Monday, the president and the UK prime minister backed AUKUS, with Mr Starmer adding it was “a really important deal to both of us”.

But the tariff issue remains.

Australian aluminium and steel products face 50 per cent tariffs when shipped to the US, while other exports have been hit with a baseline 10 per cent levy.

The prime minister was already tempering expectations before Mr Trump’s departure announcement.

“I don’t think it would be reasonable to expect that you would have a complete change and a complete resolution of the issues,” Mr Albanese said.

During his first phone conversation with the president, Mr Trump said he would give great consideration to Australia and the prime minister said he expected that reflection to continue.

“We believe very firmly that it is in the United States’ interest, as well as in Australia’s interest, for these tariffs to not be in place,” Mr Albanese said.

Poor productivity and economic growth are dulling Australia’s competitive edge and sending it sliding down an international economic leaderboard.

Australia fell five spots to 18th place in the latest World Competitiveness Yearbook report, released by the Swiss-based Institute for Management Development on Tuesday.

The disappointing result reiterates the need to revive flagging productivity – which measures how efficiently an economy converts inputs to output – said Cassandra Winzar, chief economist at independent think tank the Committee for Economic Development of Australia.

Australia dropped from 28th to 49th in the productivity and efficiency standings.

That accords with data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that shows the nation’s labour productivity growth rate has slowed to its lowest level in at least 20 years.

“With inflation looking to be under control in the short-term, we must now tackle the longer-term challenges holding back our economy,” Ms Winzar said.

“Key to this is lifting weak productivity through measures such as streamlining regulation, encouraging business investment and undertaking broad-based tax reform.”

The federal government has targeted productivity growth as a key economic focus of its second term.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a roundtable of industry, unions and experts in August to help guide its efforts.

“We hope the Albanese government’s recently announced productivity roundtable yields tangible policy outcomes that can lift us out of this funk,” Ms Winzar said.

“CEDA has long been calling for tax reform to be part of the Federal Government’s agenda, and this report makes the need even more clear, given our consistently high levels of company and personal income taxes (ranked 59th and 58th respectively).”

The government has remained coy on whether it would consider lowering the corporate tax rate as part of its productivity push, with Assistant Minister for Productivity Andrew Leigh focusing instead on slashing onerous red tape.

“One of the big challenges here is that you’re working across a range of tiers of governments, and so it’s local, state and federal governments have these regulations. In many cases well-meaning, but often the cumulative effect of them is to create this thicket of regulation,” Dr Leigh told Canberra radio station 2CC on Tuesday.

Housing was being particularly held back by layers of red tape, Dr Leigh said, but he backed away from a suggestion to take a “stick” to local councils that get in the way of new supply.

“Look, I’m a collaborative person. I wouldn’t naturally think about taking a ‘stick’ to other tiers of government,” he said. 

“And I think there is a political challenge if you’re a jurisdiction where your votes are coming from local residents who don’t necessarily want to see infill.”

Australia’s worst result in the institute’s ranking was its level of entrepreneurship, rating 68th out of the 69 countries included in the report.

In real GDP per capita growth – a common measure of living standards – Australia tumbled 40 places to 60th spot, reflecting the fact that the country has experienced a fall in output per person in eight out of the last nine quarters.

Opposition finance spokesman James Paterson and productivity spokesman Andrew Bragg said growth in government-funded jobs under Labor was crowding out the private sector, diminishing innovation and productivity.

“If Labor is serious about making its productivity roundtable a success, they should commit to a process beyond a one-day meeting in Canberra,” the duo said in a statement.

London’s Oxford Street, one of Britain’s busiest and most famous shopping districts, will be pedestrianised, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan says, in a move designed to smarten up the area and create a new public space to help drive growth.

The plan to rid Oxford Street of cars and buses, which has been over 20 years in the making, looks set to become a reality after consultations on proposals published in September showed a majority of Londoners and businesses back the idea.

Supporters of pedestrianising the 1.6km-long stretch in central London say similar traffic-free schemes for Times Square in New York and La Rambla in Barcelona have breathed new life into tired areas.

“We want to rejuvenate Oxford Street; establish it as a global leader for shopping, leisure and outdoor events with a world-class, accessible, pedestrianised avenue,” Khan said in a statement announcing the results of the public consultation.

Oxford Street attracts around half a million visitors every day, according to the mayor’s office, but many flagship stores including House of Fraser and Topshop have shut in recent years, and Khan said the area had been neglected.

“Oxford Street was once the jewel in the crown of Britain’s retail sector, but there’s no doubt that it has suffered hugely over the last decade”, Khan said last year.

The mayor will now work with the UK government on legislation to go traffic-free, which would happen “as quickly as possible”. That will require finding new routes for the dozens of buses which travel down it each hour.

The government has said Khan’s plan for a new “beautiful public space” which will attract more tourists, drive new investment in the area and create jobs.

A controversial gas project faces another hurdle, as environmental activists launch an 11th-hour bid to overturn a state government approval.

Friends of Australian Rock Art are challenging the Western Australian government’s environmental approval to extend the life of Woodside Energy’s massive North West Shelf venture.

The Supreme Court action against the WA government and Woodside will argue the state did not consider the impact of climate change that would result from the project, including its effect on Indigenous rock art in the area.

“Woodside’s proposed North West Shelf extension is one of the most polluting fossil fuel projects in the world, and will have severe consequences both for the Murujuga rock art and for the environment of Western Australia as a whole,” the group’s spokeswoman, Judith Hugo, said on Tuesday.

Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt gave provisional approval to push out the life of the project from 2030 to 2070 in May, following WA’s approval in December.

Woodside is currently considering the strict federal conditions on cultural heritage and air quality, which Senator Watt said would ensure the 60,000-year-old Murujuga Indigenous rock art was not destroyed.

A final decision has not been made.

The activists say their case in the WA court could impact the Commonwealth approval, which relies on the state assessment in order to satisfy federal laws.

Mardathoonera woman Raelene Cooper previously launched legal action against the Commonwealth in a bid to compel it to consider a heritage application to protect rock art, with the Federal Court to hear the case in mid-July.

Woodside’s project is based on the Burrup peninsula in northwest WA, an area known as Murujuga.

It is nominated for UNESCO World Heritage listing as it contains the world’s largest collection of Aboriginal rock art.

The company said it was aware of the rock art group’s case.

“We have confidence in the robustness of the state government’s comprehensive approval process,” a spokesman said.

“As the matter is before the court, we have no further comment.”

Australia is looking for certainty from its partners as the prime minister’s impending discussion with Donald Trump looms large.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will continue meeting with world leaders on the sidelines of the G7 summit when he holds talks with the newly-elected South Korean President Lee Jae-myung and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation secretary general Mark Rutte in Canada on Monday local time (Tuesday AEST).

Though Australia is not a member of the G7, Mr Albanese was invited to the event in Kananaskis by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

He has taken the opportunity to build rapport with other nations as the US president’s tariffs cast a shadow over the global trade.

“What’s clear is that in (an) uncertain world, what people are looking for is certainty in relationships, trusted relationships,” Mr Albanese told reporters.

Defence and security will be top of mind in talks with Mr Lee, with the two leaders expected to discuss a shared vision for the Indo-Pacific region.

Mr Albanese will also hold his first face-to-face meeting with the secretary general of NATO, a political and military alliance of European and North American nations.

He and Mr Rutte will likely discuss Australia’s support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

“Australia always has a case for maximising our defence and security relationships in what is an uncertain world” Mr Albanese said.

But the centrepiece of Mr Albanese’s trip is his much-anticipated talk with the US president on Tuesday.

Their first face-to-face meeting presents a crucial opportunity for the prime minister negotiate an exemption from Mr Trump’s controversial tariffs.

Australia faces 50 per cent tariffs on aluminium and steel products sent to the US, while other goods have been hit with a baseline 10 per cent levy.

Tariffs are generally passed on by importers to the citizens of the country imposing the measures, but can reduce demand for the exporting country’s products.

Mr Albanese has argued the tariffs are an “economic act of self-harm” and his government is considering using US beef imports and critical minerals as potential bargaining chips.

The prime minister is not the only world leader hoping to leave the summit with a tariff exemption, with Mr Carney and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba lining up to speak with the US president.

Mr Albanese has also discussed trade with other world leaders, and called Canada a “true friend” of Australia after meeting with Mr Carney.

Mr Albanese is also scheduled to meet leaders including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Mr Ishiba and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

The environmental credentials of projects across six industries, from mining to manufacturing, will be assessed and rated under a system experts say could boost international investment in Australia.

The Australian Sustainable Finance Institute released its long-anticipated sustainable finance taxonomy rules on Tuesday, with its chief executive hailing the move a “transformative moment” for green investments.

The framework will be tested in an eight-month pilot by a group of Australian financial institutions, including the nation’s four major banks, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and superannuation firms Rest and HESTA.

The announcement follows the development of similar rules for green investments in 47 countries, including China and Singapore, and forecasts Australia could boost its revenue with green metal exports.

The sustainable finance taxonomy rules were developed by the institute across 20 months, led by a 25-member technical expert group.

Unlike rules in other nations, the Australian taxonomy will classify projects in six sectors: mining, minerals and metals, electricity generation and supply, building and construction, manufacturing, transport and agriculture.

Australian Sustainable Finance Institute chief executive Kristy Graham said assessing projects within the uniquely Australian categories would be vital to ensuring local and international investors could be confident about their claims.

“Australia needs to attract a lot of capital to support our net-zero transition,” she told AAP.

“It is a global race for capital and many countries are a bit ahead of us.

“The taxonomy is a framework that credibly, using a scientific basis, defines those assets and activities that are in line with that net-zero transition so both Australian investors and international investors can identify and channel capital towards those activities.”

The framework, which Ms Graham said would be “transformative” for the Australian green investment market, is designed to help businesses assess whether projects can be classified as green or transition activities.

The taxonomy includes rules to set social safeguards, such as engagement with First Nations people, and to exclude projects that cause significant environmental harm.

Having rules to rate and classify green projects could boost international investment in net-zero projects, Clean Energy Finance Corporation chief executive Ian Learmonth said, as the framework was compatible with international standards.

“It is an important step in building further confidence in Australia’s transition to net zero in international markets,” he said.

“The taxonomy facilitates investors and business to work in concert and to channel capital into credible, net-zero-aligned and transition activities.”

The Australian framework would also be compatible with the Climate Bonds Initiative’s certification scheme, its co-founder Sean Kidney said, to “support investor confidence”.

Forty-seven nations use sustainable finance taxonomies to assess environmental projects following the launch of the European Union’s framework in 2020.

Australia’s political and military leaders are warning of dangerous global conditions as violence in the Middle East escalates.

Hundreds of people, including civilians, have been killed in the days since Israel launched a surprise assault on Iranian nuclear and military sites.

The two nations have since exchanged air and missile strikes, with Iran vowing to “open the gates of hell” against its sworn enemy.

As analysts watch the unfolding violence with concern, leaders are also flagging shocks to the global economy.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said there had already been substantial economic consequences, pointing to a spike in the cost of oil.

“This is a perilous moment for the Middle East, and it’s a perilous moment for the global economy as well,” he told ABC News.

“Now this obviously poses two kinds of risks.

“Higher oil prices do pose a risk to the inflation outlook, but they also pose a risk to global growth.”

Dr Chalmers said despite the events, the market’s expectations for interest rate cuts in Australia had increased rather than decreased.

“What that tells us is that the market is more focused on the implications for global growth,” he said.

Australia’s defence force chief, Admiral David Johnston, called for restraint and for all countries to pursue a diplomatic solution.

“The recent strikes between Israel and Iran represent a deeply concerning escalation,” he told a News Corp defence summit in Canberra.

“The risk of further regional instability is severe, particularly recognising ongoing volatility across the Middle East region in Gaza, Syria and Yemen.”

Admiral Johnston said all Australian Defence Force personnel assigned to the region were safe, and Defence would continue to monitor events and provide for their protection.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Monday 350 Australians had registered for help to flee Iran, while 300 had asked for assistance in Israel.

WhatsApp says users will start seeing ads in some parts of the app, as owner Meta Platforms moves to cultivate a new revenue stream by tapping the billions of people that use the messaging service.

Advertisements will be shown only in the app’s Updates tab, which is used by as many as 1.5 billion people each day.

However, they will not appear where personal chats are located, developers said.

“The personal messaging experience on WhatsApp isn’t changing, and personal messages, calls and statuses are end-to-end encrypted and cannot be used to show ads,” WhatsApp said in a blog post.

It is a big change for the company, whose founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton vowed to keep the platform free of ads when they created it in 2009.

Facebook purchased WhatsApp in 2014 and the pair left a few years later.

Parent company Meta has long been trying to generate revenue from WhatsApp.

WhatsApp said ads will be targeted to users based on information like the user’s age, the country or city where they’re located, the language they’re using, the channels they’re following in the app, and how they’re interacting with the ads they see.

WhatsApp said it will not use personal messages, calls and groups that a user is a member of to target ads to the user.

It is one of three advertising features that WhatsApp unveiled on Monday as it tries to monetise the app’s user base.

Channels will also be able to charge users a monthly fee for subscriptions so they can get exclusive updates.

And business owners will be able to pay to promote their channel’s visibility to new users.

France has shut down the four main Israeli company stands at the Paris Airshow for apparently displaying bombs and other offensive weapons, in a move condemned by Israel that highlights the growing tensions between the traditional allies.

A source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday that the instruction came from French authorities after Israeli firms failed to comply with a direction from a French security agency to remove offensive or kinetic weapons from the stands.

The stands were being used by Elbit Systems , Rafael, IAI and Uvision. Three smaller Israeli stands, which didn’t have hardware on display, and an Israeli Ministry of Defence stand, remain open.

France, a long-time Israeli ally, has gradually hardened its position on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu over its actions in Gaza and military interventions abroad.

French President Emmanuel Macron made a distinction last week between Israel’s right to protect itself, which France supports and could take part in, and strikes on Iran it did not recommend.

Israel’s defence ministry said it had categorically rejected the order to remove some weapons systems from displays, and that exhibition organisers responded by erecting a black wall that separated the Israeli industry pavilions from others.

This action, it added, was carried out in the middle of the night after Israeli defence officials and companies had already finished setting up their displays.

“This outrageous and unprecedented decision reeks of policy-driven and commercial considerations,” the ministry said in a statement.

Rafael described the French move as “unprecedented, unjustified, and politically motivated,” adding it fully supported the Israeli ministry of defence’s decision not to comply with the order to remove some equipment from display.