Fresh retail figures are tipped to show a rebound in consumer spending as falling interest rates encourage a recovery.

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday will indicate if there was a comeback in spending in May after further falls in inflation levels.

After spending went back by 0.1 per cent in April, because of hits to consumer sentiment and unseasonably warm weather making customers put off buying winter clothes, experts predict retail trade will be on the up.

The Commonwealth Bank has forecast spending to increase by 0.5 per cent for the month, with household expenditure also going up by the same amount.

ANZ has been more subdued in its predictions, saying a rise of 0.2 per cent for May is on the cards.

The May figures will also partly include the period following the Reserve Bank’s decision towards the month’s end to cut interest rates by 25 basis points to 3.85 per cent.

Another cut is predicted at the next meeting of the bank’s board on Tuesday, following better-than-expected inflation numbers.

Building approval figures for May will also be released on Wednesday.

Housing figures will come off the back of a 5.6 per cent drop in approvals during April, which was driven by a drop in the number of apartments approved for construction.

But private sector house approvals rose 3.1 per cent for the month.

One year on from the start of Australia’s national housing accord targets being rolled out, the number of new dwellings is expected to fall short.

The target was 1.2 million homes built in five years, but will likely come under the mark by 262,000 dwellings, according to the Property Council of Australia.

The low supply and falling interest rates have pushed up house prices further, with values going up for the fifth month in a row.

Australia’s foreign minister is making the case for an exemption from US tariffs in crucial talks with her American counterparts.

Penny Wong has a one-on-one meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday morning, Australian time, as negotiations continue in Australia’s hope of removing the economic measures.

The face-to-face discussions with Mr Rubio take place in Washington on the sidelines of a meeting of Quad foreign ministers, which also includes Senator Wong’s counterparts from India and Japan.

It’s the second time in six months foreign ministers from Quad nations have met for in-person talks, with the grouping also holding formal discussions in Washington in the days following US President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Defence, trade and stability in the Indo-Pacific have been high on the agenda during the discussions.

“The United States is our closest ally and principal strategic partner,” Senator Wong said in a statement.

“Our alliance contributes to the peace, prosperity and stability of our countries and the region we share.”

The meeting comes against a backdrop of tariffs due to apply to US trading partners from July 9.

Mr Trump’s administration has imposed the baseline tariff of 10 per cent on all Australian goods imported into the US, while a 50 per cent tariff on steel and aluminium has also been ordered.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been under pressure from the federal opposition to secure an in-person meeting with the president to argue for tariff removals.

The two leaders were due to speak on the sidelines of the G7 session held in June in Canada, but the meeting was scrapped at the eleventh hour when Mr Trump left the summit early due to instability in the Middle East.

A replacement meeting is yet to be scheduled.

An overhaul to working with children checks is among the safety changes desperately needed to protect kids from predators lurking in Australian childcare centres.

That’s the verdict from leading advocates for children and abuse survivors after a childcare worker was charged with more than 70 sex offences against eight children aged under two.

Charges laid against Joshua Dale Brown, 26, include sexual penetration of a child under 12, attempted sexual penetration of a child under 12 and producing child abuse material.

He worked at 20 childcare centres, but the allegations relate to his time at one site at Point Cook, in Melbourne’s west, between April 2022 and January 2023.

Brown was not known to police until the start of the investigation, there were no formal complaints against him and he had a valid working with children check.

Those screenings are widely used around Australia to allow adults to work with children, but they are in urgent need of an overhaul, according to Sexual Assault Services Victoria chief executive Kathleen Maltzahn.

“We can’t rely just on working with children checks because they only work if someone has already been found guilty of child abuse,” she told AAP.

“Evidence of abuse or concerning behaviour that hasn’t resulted in criminal charges or disciplinary action (should be) considered.”

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan committed to strengthening any safeguards needed but the allegations have raised broader concerns.

Industry body Early Learning Association Australia and charity Act for Kids both pushed for changes to be rolled out nationwide.

The charity said working with children screening requirements were inconsistent between Australian jurisdictions and “often put the rights of workers ahead of the rights of children”.

Parent advocate group The Parenthood ramped up calls for a national early childhood commission to ensure appropriate oversight, quality and accountability throughout the sector.

State, territory and federal education ministers recently backed a national overhaul of childcare safety rules, including tougher regulations around photography and mandatory reporting.

But advocates want changes to go further, with Ms Maltzahn calling for a rethink of how centres approach children’s bathrooms and the potential introduction of a national register for staff.

Victorian Childrens Minister Lizzie Blandthorn said national reforms were moving too slowly and her state would develop its own register of workers.

“Teachers are already required to be registered with the Victorian Institute of Teachers, (early childhood) educators are not, so there are things that we are working with the Commonwealth on moving forward,” she said.

Legislation that would allow the government to cut subsidies to centres due to safety breaches is due to be introduced to federal parliament within months.

Early Childhood Education Minister Jess Walsh said the federal government supported Victoria and NSW pushing ahead with their own reforms while the Commonwealth worked with all jurisdictions on changes, including nationwide registration.

National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds said Australia has been quite slow to minimise risks to children and called for greater training.

“We need to strengthen the regulators, they need to be visiting more often,” she said.

1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)

National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028

Strengthening security and regional unity in the Pacific will be on the agenda when the Australian prime minister meets with his Fijian counterpart.

Sitiveni Rabuka will address the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday after he was welcomed to Government House by Governor-General Sam Mostyn on Tuesday afternoon.

Later in the week, Mr Rabuka and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will attend the Wallabies-Fiji Test in Newcastle to watch the two national teams clash for the Vuvale Bowl in a statement of the cultural bonds shared through rugby.

Fiji’s prime minister, whose nation is a key regional ally of Australia, has previously advocated for the concept of the Pacific being the “ocean of peace”.

That includes adopting foundational ethics and principles for “Pacific regionalism” and outlines themes of climate protection in addition to managing increasing strategic competition between China and the US.

Blake Johnson, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Pacific Centre, said Mr Rabuka would likely want to elaborate on the proposal in his televised address.

“It’s trying to unite the Pacific to push back against some of the competition that’s taking place,” he told AAP.

“To really focus on taking care of the oceans and getting a more unified approach to getting partners like the US and Australia and others to commit to supporting climate change adaptation projects.”

Mr Johnson said the concept also pushed for a cohesive approach from within the Pacific in trying to resolve the region’s security challenges.

“That’s something that Australia has been getting better at over the last 12 months,” he said.

“A lot of its different initiatives are trying to support a Pacific-driven security solution that doesn’t involve drawing in all of this additional support from Beijing or from the US.”

Any visit by a Pacific leader to Australia was an opportunity for Canberra to spruik its support for the bilateral relationship, Mr Johnson added.

“The security of Australia depends on the security of our surrounding region,” he said.

“There can sometimes be unrest in Pacific Island countries and if that all spills over, it creates an unstable region around Australia, and that’s not good for our overall security.”

The Republican-controlled US Senate has passed President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill, signing off on a massive package that would enshrine many of his top domestic priorities into law while adding trillions of dollars to the country’s debt.

The bill now heads back to the House of Representatives for final approval.

The House set debate and a vote for Wednesday for the bill.

Trump has pushed lawmakers to get it to his desk to sign into law by the July 4 Independence Day holiday.

Trump’s Republicans have had to navigate a narrow path while shepherding the 940-page bill through a Congress that they control by the slimmest of margins.

With Democrats lined up in opposition, Republicans have had only three votes to spare in both the House and Senate as they wrangled over specific tax breaks and healthcare policies that could reshape entire industries and leave millions of people uninsured.

Yet they have managed to stay largely unified so far.

Only three of the Senate’s 53 Republicans joined with Democrats to vote against the package, which passed 51-50 after Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote.

Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against the bill.

The vote came after an all-night debate in which Republicans grappled with the bill’s price tag and its effect on the US healthcare system.

It was not immediately clear what changes had been made to the massive package to resolve those concerns.

The vote in the House, where Republicans hold a 220-212 majority, is likely to be close as well.

An initial version passed with only two votes to spare in May, and several Republicans in that chamber have said they do not support the version that has emerged from the Senate, which the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates will add $US800 billion ($A1.2 trillion) more to the national debt than the House version.

The House Freedom Caucus, a group of fiscal hawks who repeatedly threatened to withhold their support for the tax bill, is pushing for deeper spending cuts to reduce its total price tag.

“That’s not fiscal responsibility. It’s not what we agreed to,” the group said on Monday.

A group of more traditional House Republicans, especially those who represent lower-income areas, object to the steeper Medicaid cuts in the Senate’s plan.

“I will not support a final bill that eliminates vital funding streams our hospitals rely on,” Representative David Valadao, a California Republican, said during the weekend debate.

The bill would make permanent Trump’s 2017 business and personal income tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of this year, and dole out new tax breaks for tipped income, overtime and seniors that he promised during the 2024 election.

It provides tens of billions of dollars for Trump’s immigration crackdown and would repeal many of his predecessor Joe Biden’s green-energy incentives.

The bill would also tighten eligibility for food and health safety net programs, which analysts say would effectively reduce income for poorer people who would have to pay for more of those costs.

The CBO estimates the latest version of the bill would add $US3.3 trillion to the $US36.2 trillion debt pile.

US President Donald Trump has suggested the government efficiency department should review the subsidies to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s companies to save money, reigniting a war of words between arguably the world’s most powerful person and its richest.

Trump’s remarks came after Musk, a Republican mega-donor, renewed his criticism of the sweeping tax cut and spending bill and vowed to unseat lawmakers who supported it despite campaigning on limiting government spending.

Tesla shares fell more than six per cent before the market open as the feud could add fresh hurdles for the business empire of Musk, whose main source of wealth, the electric car maker, is betting on the success of robotaxis being tested in Texas.

The US Transportation Department regulates vehicle design and will play a key role in deciding if Tesla can mass-produce robotaxis without pedals and steering wheels, while Musk’s rocket firm SpaceX has about $US22 billion ($A33 billion) in federal contracts.

“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

“No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!,” he said, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency.

In response, Musk said on his own social media platform X, “I am literally saying CUT IT ALL. Now.”

Trump said Musk was upset because he lost the EV mandate in the recent tax and spending bill and warned the Tesla CEO “could lose a lot more than that”.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also pushed back on Musk’s criticism that the bill would balloon the deficit, saying, “I’ll take care of” the country’s finances.

Trump had in early June threatened to cut Musk’s government contracts when their relationship erupted into an all-out social media brawl over the tax-cut bill, which non-partisan analysts estimate would add about $US3 trillion to the US debt.

The rift had resulted in Tesla shares erasing $US150 billion in market value as investors feared a tougher regulatory road for the self-driving robotaxi that underpin much of the company’s valuation.

The stock recovered after Musk walked back some of his jabs, saying he had gone “too far”.

“Musk cannot stop himself. He is getting on Trump’s bad side again. Tesla international sales have fallen significantly and if he loses US subsidies, US sales are likely to fall as well,” said Stock Trader Network Chief Strategist Dennis Dick, who holds Tesla shares.

“Musk needs Trump, Trump does not need Musk,” he said.

Tesla sales have dropped for a sixth straight month in Sweden and Denmark in June, data on Tuesday showed, but they rose in Norway and Spain during the same month.

Analysts expect the company to report a drop in second-quarter delivery figures on Wednesday.

After weeks of relative silence, Musk rejoined the debate on Saturday as the Senate took up the package, calling it “utterly insane and destructive” in a post on X.

On Monday, Musk said lawmakers who campaigned on cutting spending but backed the bill “should hang their heads in shame!”

“And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this earth,” Musk said.

He also called again for a new political party, saying the bill’s massive spending indicated “that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!”

The criticism marked a dramatic shift after the billionaire spent nearly $US300 million on Trump’s re-election campaign and led the administration’s DOGE initiative.

Musk has argued that the legislation would greatly increase the country’s debt and erase the savings he says he achieved through DOGE.

It remains unclear how much sway Musk has over Congress or what effect his opinions might have on the bill’s passage.

But Republicans have expressed concern that his on-again, off-again feud with Trump could hurt their chances to protect their majority in the 2026 midterm congressional elections.

The mushroom trial jury has been sent back to their accommodation after completing their first full day of deliberations on whether Erin Patterson is guilty of a triple murder.

Twelve jurors retired to consider their verdict on Monday afternoon as the Victorian Supreme Court trial at Morwell, in regional Victoria, reached its 10th week.

They returned to the court about 10.30am on Tuesday where they spent a full day deliberating before being sent home to their sequestered accommodation at 4.15pm.

Black tarp has been placed across the front of Patterson’s home, in Leongatha, since the jury retired to deliberate on Monday.

After hearing more than two months of evidence, the jury must decide whether Patterson, 50, intentionally served her lunch guests beef Wellingtons laced with death cap mushrooms.

Her former in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister Heather, all died after consuming the lunch at Patterson’s regional Victorian home on July 29, 2023.

Heather’s husband Ian Wilkinson also ate the meal but survived after spending months in hospital.

Patterson claims it was all an accident and has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and one charge of attempted murder.

The jury heard from more than 50 prosecution witnesses throughout the trial before Patterson entered the witness box for eight days.

The prosecution and defence then spent a week delivering their closing arguments before Justice Christopher Beale provided his directions to the jury. 

He said the jurors needed to consider whether the prosecution had proved beyond reasonable doubt Patterson deliberately served death caps with the intention to kill her guests.

Justice Beale reminded the jurors if they held any doubts about Patterson’s guilt, they must acquit her.

“You cannot be satisfied that the accused is guilty of an offence if you have a reasonable doubt if she is guilty of the offence,” he told the jury on Monday.

The jury is being sequestered during the deliberations and will have to remain together until unanimous verdicts are reached on all charges.

Justice Beale reiterated that every juror must agree on the verdict, although it did not matter how each person reached their conclusion. 

He reminded the jurors they cannot return home until their unanimous decision.

The jury can deliver its verdicts any time from 10.30am to 4.15pm on Monday through to Saturday.

They’ll remain sequestered on Sunday if they have not reached a verdict but will not deliberate that day.

The jury will return to the court to reconvene their deliberations on Wednesday morning. 

Jewish community leaders have celebrated their vindication after an Islamist preacher was ordered not to repeat “perverse” and racist anti-Semitic tropes.

Sydney-based Al Madina Dawah Centre cleric Wissam Haddad made the comments in a series of fiery sermons from November 2023, which racked up thousands of views online. 

In the speeches, Mr Haddad – who is also known as William Haddad or Abu Ousayd – variously referred to Jewish people as “vile”, “treacherous”, “murderous” and “mischievous”. 

He was sued by Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim and deputy president Robert Goot, who claimed the lectures were offensive and could incite violence towards Jews.

Justice Angus Stewart ruled in their favour on Tuesday, finding the speeches contained disparaging imputations that were likely to offend, insult, harass or intimidate Jewish people. 

He concluded the speeches contained “devastatingly offensive” imputations that were based on the race or ethnicity of the Australian Jewish community.

“The imputations include age-old tropes against Jewish people that are fundamentally racist and anti-Semitic,” Justice Stewart said. 

“They make perverse generalisations against Jewish people as a group.”

He said the racist remarks were intimidating and harassing because of the history of persecution of Jewish people and the heightened sense of insecurity because of the war involving Israel in Gaza.

Outside court, Mr Werheim and Mr Goot said they were vindicated by the legal win that they took as confirmation the days of targeting Jewish people with impunity are “long gone”. 

“No community in this wonderful country should be dehumanised in the way Mr Haddad treated us,” Mr Goot said. 

“Freedom of expression should not be abused by the promotion of hateful anti-Semitism and those who wish to do so should know that conduct shouldn’t be tolerated by us.”

During the landmark case testing the limits of religious expression and hate speech, Mr Haddad’s lawyer argued ruling against the preacher would be tantamount to restricting the free exercise of religious expression. 

But Justice Stewart rejected Mr Haddad’s defence he had been acting in good faith while delivering historical and religious lectures on events from the Koran to contextualise the war in Gaza. 

He said there was no basis for the preacher to believe the remarks were the teachings of Islam and he was not persuaded Mr Haddad had not also made them to stir up controversy. 

The lectures were not religious but instead “little more than bigoted polemic(s)” that had little basis in Islam, the judge said.

“This case was not about freedom of expression or freedom of religion, it was about anti-Semitism and the abuse of those freedoms to promote anti-Semitism,” Mr Wertheim said outside court. 

Mr Haddad, who arrived in Federal Court midway through the delivery of the judge’s decision, remained silent with crossed arms as his lawyer spoke outside court. 

“Mr Haddad maintains the sermons, delivered in the context of religious instruction and based on scriptural references, were never intended to insult any group in Australia on the basis of their ethnic identity,” his lawyer Elias Tabchouri said.

The preacher was ordered to remove the lectures and not to repeat similar racist statements about Jewish people in public. 

He will also have to pay the legal bill for Mr Wertheim and Mr Goot, which is estimated to be six figures. 

A separate interview and sermon didn’t amount to racial vilification because they would be understood as directed towards the Israeli army and Zionists instead of Jewish people generally, Justice Stewart said. 

Mr Haddad’s speeches were delivered after Hamas, designated by Australia as a terror group, attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.

The onslaught sparked Israeli retaliation that has left Gaza in turmoil and tens of thousands of civilians dead.

Australia has been urged to zoom out on its approach to the US relationship, instead of honing in on the nitty-gritty of tariffs.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese faces growing pressure to organise a face-to-face with US President Donald Trump after their scheduled June meeting was scuppered by events in the Middle East.

With Mr Trump’s tariffs continuing to dominate global economic discussions, the prime minister has hinted at ways his government could negotiate a carve-out.

But United States Studies Centre research director Jared Mondschein said Australia should take a more long-term view on the US as trying to predict the Trump administration was “a bit of a fool’s errand”.

“Instead of focusing – in my view – too myopically on the tariff side, I encourage the Australian government to focus instead on the broader conversation,” he told AAP.

“(Tariffs are) something unique to this administration, I can’t imagine other administrations doing it similarly.

“There’s a lot of opportunity where Australia has more influence.”

Security, supply chains, space co-operation and critical minerals were all areas in which Australia could bolster ties to the US for years beyond Mr Trump’s second term, Mr Mondschein said.

Washington had shown a particular eagerness to get its hands on critical minerals as China had previously used its hold on rare earths to gain economic leverage.

Mr Mondschein noted Beijing blocked exports to Japan in 2010, but in the 15 years since there had been “more rhetoric than substantive gains in any sort of calibrated response”.

“It’s all the more important for allies and partners to start getting their act together,” he said.

Resources Minister Madeleine King on Tuesday said Australia would continue working with the US to invest in critical minerals to ensure the nation could become a “robust” part of the global supply chain, capitalising on its geological and geographical advantages.

Mr Albanese was expected to meet the US president on the sidelines of the G7 summit in mid-June but Mr Trump left the event the night before their scheduled conversation to deal with escalating tensions between Iran and Israel.

The coalition has continued to pressure the prime minister over the relationship with Australia’s key ally, with opposition defence spokesman Angus Taylor saying the prime minister “has never had any great love for the US alliance”.

While Mr Albanese wasn’t the only world leader to be stood up by the Republican president, the relative insignificance of Australia as a US trading partner has been raised as one obstacle to getting a rescheduled meeting.

But Mr Mondschein did not believe missing a bilateral meeting was an existential challenge as Australia’s relationship with the US had never been so consequential.

The prime minister said Australia was an important ally for the US as it helped deliver peace and security in the Pacific region, and provided goods and services to the world, making it a significant economy.

“Australia always pulls our weight,” he said.

Mr Albanese added he understood the president’s decision to leave the G7, a move that eventually led to a fragile ceasefire between Iran and Israel.

The G20 leaders meeting in November, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in June and the Quad meeting – which will occur some time in the year – all offer a second chance for the two to get together. 

Foreign Minister Penny Wong landed in the US capital Washington on Tuesday, Australian time, as Canberra tries to broker an exemption from America’s 50 per cent tariffs on Australian steel and aluminium imports and 10 per cent levies on other goods.

She is set to attend a meeting of Quad foreign ministers, which includes US Secretary of State Marco Rubio along with ministers from India and Japan.

Japan won’t sacrifice its agricultural sector as part of its tariff talks with the United States, its top negotiator says, after President Donald Trump complained that the key Asian ally isn’t buying American rice.

Trump’s comment, made in a social media post on Monday, comes as Tokyo scrambles to convince the US to scrap a 25 per cent tariff on Japanese cars and a 24 per cent reciprocal tariff on other Japanese imports.

The reciprocal tariff has been paused until July 9, but Japan has yet to secure a trade deal after nearly three months of negotiations.

While the auto sector is Japan’s top employer and exporter, the farm sector has traditionally been an important voting bloc for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party, which faces key upper house elections on July 20.

“I have repeatedly stated that agriculture is the foundation of the nation,” top trade negotiator and Economy Minister Ryosei Akazawa told a press conference on Tuesday.

“In negotiations with the United States, our stance remains unchanged: We will not engage in talks that would sacrifice the agricultural sector,” he said, adding that he would continue to negotiate with his US counterparts to protect Japan’s national interests.

Akazawa, who returned from his seventh trip to Washington a few days ago, declined to say whether rice was part of those discussions.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that Japan’s reluctance to import American-grown rice was a sign that countries have become “spoiled with respect to the United States of America”.

“I have great respect for Japan, they won’t take our RICE, and yet they have a massive rice shortage,” he wrote.

Japan has in fact imported historically high volumes of US rice in recent months as domestically grown rice has skyrocketed in price since last year, hurting consumers.

But Tokyo caps tariff-free imports of staple rice – which is consumed at meals as opposed to rice used for feed or ingredients in other products – at 100,000 metric tonnes a year and imposes a levy of 341 yen ($2.37) per kg for anything beyond that. That amount is a fraction of Japan’s total annual consumption of about seven million tonnes.

While Farm Minister Shinjiro Koizumi has lamented the influx of foreign rice as a threat to Japan’s food security, the government has brought forward a tender usually held in September for this year’s first 30,000 tonnes of tariff-free staple rice imports as part of efforts to lower domestic prices.

with AP