Australia’s support of US strikes against Iran continues to draw fire as a UN expert blasts Canberra’s stance on the military action.

It was “crystal clear” the US-Israeli strikes were an illegal, armed aggression against Iran, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism Ben Saul said.

“Every death in Iran is a violation of the human right to life as well under international human rights law,” he told AAP.

“These aren’t acts in self-defence because Iran has not attacked either country and is not about to imminently attack them and the security council hasn’t given any authorisation.”

Professor Saul accused the federal government of “trashing” rules of world order while dodging questions around the legality of the attacks. 

Australia was one of the fist countries to back the strikes by US and Israeli forces on Iran at the weekend.

Tehran has retaliated with a barrage of drones and missiles aimed at neighbouring states targeting oil and natural gas infrastructure.

Asked if the strikes were legal, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles each have said that was a question for the United States and Israel. 

“It is for the US and Israel to explain the legal basis, and they’ve made comments about that,” Senator Wong told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday. 

Mr Albanese has said Iran’s retaliation since the initial strikes showed why it was a threat to peace and stability in the region.

About 115,000 Australians are believed to be stranded in the Middle East as the conflict continues to disrupt air travel.

Australia’s embassy in Saudi Arabia has warned citizens in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dhahran to shelter in place, while an Australian defence base in the United Arab Emirates was hit in an Iranian attack.

Some limited flights are resuming out of the UAE but services have been largely grounded, throwing plans into chaos and threatening to leave Australians stranded for weeks.

Prof Saul rejected arguments the strikes could be justified as pre-emptive self-defence aimed at preventing Iran from developing or using nuclear weapons.

“Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon, hasn’t taken the decision to build one and hasn’t ordered that one is about to be used,” Prof Saul said. 

Middle powers like Australia must stand up for international law and follow suite with other countries including Spain and Switzerland that strongly protested against the attacks, Prof Saul said.

He said it was disappointing Australia seemed to support a “violation” of the United Nations Charter by “trashing the most fundamental rule of world order and peace of the last 80 years”.

The UN expert suggested the federal government’s cautious tone might reflect a desire to preserve the AUKUS submarine deal and avoid trade retaliation from Washington.

He argued such a stance risked emboldening countries such as the US and Israel to “keep violating international law in other situations”.

Opposition industry spokesman Andrew Hastie, an Afghanistan veteran, said US President Donald Trump’s four to five-week timeline for action in Iran was optimistic. 

“I think the rules-based global order is dead and buried and so these sorts of legal arguments are nice, but we live in the world of reality,” he told Sky News.

Small businesses have been roped into an incoming Australian-first legal right for staff to work from home as industry figures warn it will send trade interstate and abroad. 

All businesses will be subject to the Victorian government’s policy to legislate a right for employees to work from home two days a week if they reasonably can, Premier Jacinta Allan announced on Tuesday.

The premier had said an exemption would be considered for small businesses when launching a consultation period in August.

But while the legislation was still being drafted, the “key detail” was ticked off in a cabinet meeting on Monday.

Ms Allan said the policy would get more women back into the workforce, lifting participation rates and economic productivity.  

“People want to see their right to work from home protected because it’s at risk,” she told reporters on Tuesday.

“It’s at risk from employers who are … refusing requests to work from home for people who can.”

The decision would create a cost and compliance burden for “mum and dad” operators and sole traders with as few as one employee, Council of Small Business Organisations Australia chair Matthew Addison said.

“Small business don’t have a team of lawyers to interpret this,” he told AAP.

“They are already saying they lose a day a week on red tape – here’s some more red tape for them.”

Mr Addison said the election-year legislation appeared to “appeal to part of the population” and he doesn’t believe there is an appetite for it to spread nationally.

Victoria’s business and investment community have expressed a sentiment that the state is not business-friendly enough, spawning a catchcry of “Anywhere But Melbourne” and “Anywhere but Victoria”.

“We have borders but businesses and capital don’t,” Victorian Chamber of Commerce acting chief executive Scott Veenker said.

“The economy is in such a fragile state … this is just another reason for people to choose other states or other countries to trade in.”

The policy, as described by the state Labor government, only applies to workers who can “reasonably” do their job from home.

“We haven’t tested it and it’s ambiguous by nature,” Swinburne human resource management expert Peter Holland said.

“You cannot be the checkout person in a small shop and expect to work from home, but if you’re a back-office person do you need to be at work every day?

“The mandate would be for those companies that are a bit recalcitrant – my way or the highway.”

Professor Holland said small businesses could benefit from providing flexibility to workers in a tight labour market and compared the reforms to Australia introducing paid maternity leave in 1973 and superannuation in 1992.

“The world was going to fall in and it didn’t,” he said.

“It’s a positive for everybody. We’re in a different world now post-COVID.”

The Victorian opposition is trying to avoid being wedged politically on the legislation, with Liberal leader Jess Wilson maintaining she supports working from home while demanding more detail from the government.

Ms Allan has repeatedly pushed back against claims the move may not be legal, pointing to advice about an “explicit provision” in the Fair Work Act for state-based anti-discrimination laws.

Section 109 of the Australian Constitution dictates that if a state law conflicts with a Commonwealth law, the latter prevails. 

“We have advice that it is constitutionally valid,” Ms Allan said.

“But let’s be clear, what does it say about someone who wants to race off to the High Court to strip away a worker’s right to work from home.”

A scathing Liberal review into the party’s disastrous federal election campaign has called out its ability to “thoughtlessly offend” migrants as its new leadership adopts a more hardline stance on immigration.

The examination of the party’s worst electoral result in history has also singled out then-leader Peter Dutton’s personality, a lack of coherent policies and poor campaigning.

The Liberals put off almost all demographics, especially women, young people and multicultural Australians.

“The party’s capacity to thoughtlessly offend groups, including the Chinese, was, as others have observed, a widespread problem,” according to the report compiled by party elders Nick Minchin and Pru Goward.

“The 2025 federal Liberal campaign failure is widely considered to be the worst campaign the party has ever fought.”

Liberals criticised the lack of women’s policies in their submissions, while female candidates told reviewers Mr Dutton was disliked by women and they didn’t want him to visit their electorates.

“Peter Dutton’s previous ministerial image as a hard man needed considerable work with paid and unpaid media, but that did not eventuate,” the review noted. 

“Peter Dutton was viewed as lacking connection with women and younger voters.”

This was compounded by Labor’s “negative portrayal of Peter Dutton with personal references to Voldemort and Mediscare”.

Mr Dutton’s reflection of US President Donald Trump, described “in the unkind words of one candidate (as) Temu Trump”, handicapped the campaign.

So too did the then-leader attending a fundraiser in Sydney when his Brisbane-based electorate was subject to floods, while the prime minister was highly visible on the ground during the natural disaster.

His actions were compared to former prime minister Scott Morrison, whose decision to holiday during the 2019 bushfires was “a political disaster”.

“It contributed to the perception of Peter Dutton as a politician who did not care,” the report said. 

“The electorate expects to see and hear an upbeat and inspiring leader. All of that was lacking and the leader’s grim and introverted demeanour, clothed in the ubiquitous suit whatever the occasion, did not change during the campaign.”

A crack down on working from home arrangements, which was later scrapped because of its unpopularity, was one such policy that alienated voters, and a regional candidate said it cost her the seat.

“After at least a decade of a declining female vote it remains a mystery that the party has not performed a deep-dive into its causes,” the review said.

Angus Taylor took over the party’s top job in February after knifing Sussan Ley, the federal Liberals’ first female leader.

It resulted in the head of Hilma’s Network, an organisation which aims to promote Liberal women, to resign her membership.

The review had said the party should work closer with Hilma’s Network to improve female representation and policies.

Mr Taylor continues to take a harder line on immigration and has made subscribing to “Australian values” the cornerstone of his pitch.

The leader dumped moderate Paul Scarr from the immigration portfolio after he had urged his colleagues to stay away from anti-migrant rhetoric.

The review also found the Liberals’ opposition to Labor’s tax cuts on the eve of the election “immediately impacted on the coalition’s economic credentials, historically, a strong part of the coalition’s brand”.

Mr Taylor has acknowledged this was a mistake and vowed to take a package of lower taxes to the next election.

Two men armed with knives have been shot dead by police in incidents in Sydney and Brisbane.

The fatal incidents within 40 minutes of each other came hours after officers in Newcastle fired on a man wanted by police on Tuesday morning.

At an inner-Sydney unit complex, a knife-wielding offender died after a police office opened fire.

The man had entered a unit complex in the upmarket suburb of Potts Point and assaulted two women in separate units about 10.50am.

Arriving officers used a taser to control him but it was ineffective, police said.

The alleged attacker then confronted police before an officer fired one shot, hitting the man, who died at the scene, Assistant Commissioner Peter McKenna said.

The women, aged 48 and 56, suffered facial injuries and were taken to hospital.

Mr McKenna would not speculate on why the stun gun was ineffective.

“Tasers have been an effective part of our arsenal,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

“They are a less-lethal option but like anything, they’re not always successful.

“(Police) don’t come to work to be confronted by this type of thing or take a life – that’s the last thing we want to do.”

He emphasised officers had been responding to the women in distress when the situation escalated quickly.

A crime scene was established with officers using sheets to cover the dead man, who is believed to be aged in his late 30s to early 40s.

The street was cordoned off with a helicopter flying above the scene and up to 20 riot cars, police vehicles and ambulances descending on the block.

Nuria Cobos, who has been living down the quiet street for about a year, described the scene as confronting in a safe neighbourhood.

“I feel lucky. I went out for a walk and came back to see all of this,” the 40-year-old woman told AAP.

With several detectives entering the street in front of the HMAS Kuttabul navy base, she was waiting to be let back in along with confused food delivery drivers.

Forty minutes later, police responding to a welfare check request shot dead a man in his Tingalpa home in Brisbane’s east.

Officers had attempted to negotiate with the 21-year-old man but he made threats with a knife towards officers and was shot, police said.

He died at the scene with one officer suffering a minor injury

“These incidents are often dynamic … and split-second decisions need to be made,” Acting Chief Superintendent Heath McQueen told reporters.

“I am confident that the use of force is appropriate.”

The matter is also being investigated with oversight from Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission.

In a third incident, a man was shot as police from a high-risk domestic violence offender squad tried to arrest him in inner-city Newcastle.

The officers forced entry into a unit at 8.30am and found the man – wanted on five warrants – armed with an edged weapon, police said.

Two stun guns were deployed but both were ineffective.

The man, 36, allegedly continued threatening officers before a police officer shot him in the shoulder, police said.

He survived and was taken to hospital in a stable condition.

Both NSW incidents are being investigated by out-of-area police before being reviewed by the internal police investigative unit.

Each investigation was overseen by the state police watchdog.

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China’s annual parliament meeting is expected to show tolerance for slightly slower economic growth in 2026, opening the door for greater, albeit not decisive, efforts to curb ‌industrial overcapacity and rebalance the export-reliant economy.

Most analysts expect Premier Li Qiang’s report on March 5, the first day of the gathering, to announce a growth target of between 4.5 per cent and 5 per cent, while pledging to boost both consumption and investment ‌in high-tech industries.

China’s 15th five-year plan, which sets strategic objectives and policies for 2026–30 and will be released the same day, is expected to reaffirm this dual, and contradictory, goal.

“Policymakers will step up efforts to spur consumption while continuing to ‌stress tech-driven new productive forces,” said a policy adviser who expects the target to shift to a range, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the topic’s sensitivity.

This dual pledge is decades old but Beijing has been far more successful in expanding its vast industrial complex than the consumer sector, turning China into a mighty manufacturing power that dominates strategic supply chains and giving it leverage in the intensifying rivalry with the US and its allies.

China’s 5 per cent growth last year has largely been achieved through a $US1.2 trillion ($A1.7 trillion) trade surplus, while domestic consumption lagged.

This growth model has fuelled unsustainable debt, wasteful investment, deflationary pressures and industrial overcapacity.

But it is hard for Beijing to ‌completely give it up ‌at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions ⁠that call for a higher degree of self-sufficiency in key industries such as semiconductors and aircraft – where China is still catching up with the US.

“There ​is clearly some tension between these two agendas and so we will be looking to the full five-year plan to clarify what balance the leadership will strike,” analysts at Capital Economics said in a note.

“That balance will determine how much progress is made in tackling overcapacity and deflation over the next few years.”

A more flexible growth target would give policymakers room to pursue some painful structural reforms, such as accelerating efforts started last year to curb industrial capacity and contain price wars in various sectors.

Expectations that Beijing may set this year’s growth target as a range came after about two thirds of China’s provincial governments downgraded their own ambitions, even if in some cases that ⁠only meant shifting wording from ‘above’ to ‘around.’

Guangdong, the country’s largest provincial economy, set its 2026 growth target at 4.5–5 per cent, down from “around ‌5 per cent” in 2025. Jiangsu, the second-largest, ​set a 5 per cent target, compared with “above 5 per cent” last year.

“If confirmed, this would signal a stronger willingness among policymakers to tolerate slower but more sustainable growth, rather than relying on debt-fuelled investment stimulus that risks exacerbating supply–demand imbalances,” ​said Michelle Lam, Greater ‌China economist at Societe Generale.

Morgan Stanley analysts are among those expecting the target to remain unchanged at around 5 per cent. They estimate the weighted average of provincial targets at 5.1 per cent versus last year’s 5.4 per cent.

They said “Beijing values ​anchoring confidence” and that the first year of a new quinquennial plan “is not the moment to blink.”

Beijing is expected to keep the budget deficit at 4.0 per cent of GDP, with debt issuance plans similar to last year.

The US Supreme Court’s decision in February to strike down President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” imposed in 2025, including on China, reduces the need for more sizeable stimulus.

Young people see the housing market as being stacked against them, Australia’s housing minister says, as the Greens call for drastic changes to property tax concessions.

Clare O’Neil continues to play a straight bat to suggestions the government is considering scaling back the capital gains discount and negative gearing arrangements for property, but says there is a lot more work to do to address the housing challenge.

Official data released on Tuesday showed dwelling approvals fell for a second straight month in January, further setting back the government’s national housing accord target of 1.2 million new homes in five years.

Getting more homes built was the government’s main focus to alleviate affordability, but when asked whether scaling back tax concessions would help, Ms O’Neil wouldn’t shut the door.

It was absolutely clear that the housing burden was falling unfairly on younger Australians, she said.

“Our tax policies haven’t changed and nor have our housing policies,” Ms O’Neil told reporters in Canberra.

“Our government absolutely sees housing as a core part of the generational challenge that faces our country.”

Treasury is reportedly leaning towards slashing the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount, which economists, think tanks and crossbench MPs argue is overly generous and turbocharging house prices, to 33 per cent on investment properties.

With the coalition already ruling themselves out of negotiations, Labor will need the Greens on board to get any changes through parliament.

Greens economics spokesman Nick McKim, who is leading a Senate inquiry into the impact of the capital gains tax discount of housing prices, said the government should use its large parliamentary majority to go even further.

“The capital gains discount … should be removed entirely and it should not be grandfathered in,” he said, citing comments by former Reserve Bank governor Bernie Fraser.

Senator McKim said there was a “very strong consensus across economists and experts” that the government should not exempt existing properties.

Opposition housing spokesman Andrew Bragg said the government was toying with changes to the discount and negative gearing to fix its broken budget.

“Higher taxes on housing will not lead to more houses – it makes no sense,” he said.

“If anything, it will cut supply and push up rents.”

Labor was only making the housing crisis worse, Senator Bragg said, pointing to falling dwelling approval figures.

Dwelling approvals fell 7.2 per cent in January, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, driven by a 25 per cent dip in apartments and townhouses.

The result was below economist expectations for a five per cent rise, but the dataset is notoriously volatile.

Economists tend to focus more on the trend rate, which has risen moderately over the past year but has levelled off in recent months.

Paramount will merge its Paramount+ streaming service with HBO Max following a successful bid for Warner Bros Discovery.

Paramount chief executive David Ellison said the companies plan to combine their streaming portfolios into a single platform over the coming years.

Together, the services currently have more than 200 million direct-to-consumer subscribers across over 100 countries, although some overlap is expected to reduce that figure once the integration is complete.

Paramount ended the fourth quarter with 78.9 million subscribers, while Warner Bros Discovery reported 131.6 million subscribers. For comparison, Netflix recently surpassed 325 million subscribers.

The unified service would bring together major franchises, including HBO’s Game of Thrones and The Sopranos, alongside Paramount’s Yellowstone and Star Trek.

Ellison did not announce a name for the new platform, which would mark another rebrand for HBO Max after prior iterations as Max and HBO Now.

As part of the transaction, Paramount will also acquire US broadcaster CNN. Ellison said there are no current plans to divest cable assets.

The planned merger follows a rival pursuit by Netflix, which ultimately walked away from the bidding war for Warner after deciding the deal’s financial terms were no longer attractive.

Travellers stranded by a widening war have begun departing the United Arab Emirates aboard a small number of evacuation flights, even as most commercial air traffic across the Middle East remained suspended.

The limited flights out of Dubai and Abu Dhabi took place as the US State Department urged its own citizens in 13 countries, including UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and Oman, to “depart now via commercial means due to serious safety risks”.

Sweeping airspace closures and flight cancellations across the region left many fewer options for heeding the advice.

Since US and Israeli strikes on Iran and retaliatory attacks on Israel and Gulf states started on Saturday, commercial flights have been halted or heavily restricted, leaving tourists, business travellers, migrant workers and religious pilgrims stuck in hotels, airports and aboard cruise ships.

Airspace remained closed Monday over Iran, Iraq and Israel. 

Jordan instituted a temporary closure beginning Monday afternoon. 

Other countries in the Gulf – including Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia – had partial or temporary closures that could be extended, according to flight-tracking service Flightradar24.

The service showed that after reports of Riyadh explosions from a drone, flights into King Khalid International Airport near Riyadh were holding or turning back. 

About 13,000 of the roughly 32,000 flights scheduled into and out of the Middle East since Saturday have been cancelled, aviation analytics firm Cirium said.

Airlines operating evacuation flights are likely doing so with government backing, and the carriers’ home countries may be assuming part of the financial risk, said Henry Harteveldt, president of travel market research firm Atmosphere Research Group.

“Airlines aren’t going to resume operations until they are fully confident that there is a zero – or as close as possible to zero – risk that their aircraft will be attacked,” Harteveldt said.

Long-haul carriers Etihad Airways and Emirates, based in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, along with budget carrier FlyDubai, said on Monday they would operate limited flights from the country, where air defence systems were deployed to intercept Iranian missiles and drones.

At least 16 Etihad flights left Abu Dhabi during a three-hour window on Monday, according to Flightradar24, heading to destinations including Islamabad, Paris, Amsterdam, Mumbai, Moscow and London. 

The airline’s website, however, said all its regularly scheduled commercial flights remained suspended until Wednesday afternoon.

Emirates said customers with earlier bookings would get priority for seats aboard the limited flights it planned to operate starting Monday evening. 

FlyDubai said it would operate four outbound flights and five inbound. 

Dubai Airports, the authority that runs the city’s two airports, showed a larger number of flights on Tuesday but urged passengers to go to airports only if their airline had notified them with confirmation since operations remained curtailed. 

The disruptions have been far-reaching because Gulf airports serve as critical global transit hubs linking Europe, Africa and Asia. Dubai International Airport alone handled a record 95.2 million passengers last year, making it the world’s busiest airport when measured by international travel.

The US operator of a family location-sharing app growing in popularity in Australia has reached a major milestone after delivering its first annual profit.

Life360 delivered net income of $US150.8 million ($A212.7 million) in calendar 2025, compared to a $US4.6 million ($A6.5 million) loss in 2024.

“2025 was a landmark year for Life360,” CEO Lauren Antonoff said on Tuesday in an earnings call from San Francisco.

However, the US-Australia listed group’s profit result was boosted by a one-off tax benefit and would fall to $US32.7 million ($A46.1 million) with that stripped out.

Total revenue for the year climbed to $US489.5 million ($A690.5 million), up 32 per cent, on the back of higher subscriptions income as the group continued to convert ‘freemium’ users to paid.

Most of Life360’s revenue upside came from its users in the US, where its penetration is about 16 per cent.

But Australia sits in the top three non-US markets with 14 per cent penetration, behind the UK on 12 per cent and Canada on five per cent.

Ms Antonoff said the numbers for these “triple tier” markets show there is a runway for growth across the countries, where there is strong interest in digital safety.

In terms of monthly active non-US users, Australia comes in fourth, behind the UK, Brazil and Mexico.

Life360 began as a location-sharing app that allowed family members to share their real-time whereabouts with other users.

It has since rolled out features such as SOS alerts, roadside and medical assistance, severe weather alerts, family driving summaries and pet-finding features using GPS trackers.

Life350 is also looking at developing a GPS tracker for the elderly, although Ms Antonoff said that’s going to take time.

“We’re starting our way in elderly, in ageing parents, really focused on bringing them into our ecosystem and we’re working on devices for the future but we don’t expect to launch those this year,” she said.

The platform had 95.8 million monthly active users worldwide at the end of 2025’s December quarter, up 20 per cent from a year ago.

That period represents the strongest fourth-quarter user growth in the company’s history.

Life360 wants to grow that number by 20 per cent in 2026, to more than 100 million.

Most users belong to Life360’s free tier, with 1.9 million US and 800,000 international users opting to pay for subscription plans that range from $9.99 to $29.99 a month.

Life360 is dual-listed on the US Nasdaq Global Select Market and the Australian Securities Exchange, where it made its debut in 2019.

Its Australian shares rose more than eight per cent in morning trading to $26.78, giving it a market value of about $6 billion.

Strong demand for Australian beef and a record winter crop have pushed the agriculture sector’s value over $100 billion, but tricky trade and climate conditions mean the record peak will be short-lived.

The gross value of agricultural production is expected to reach a record high of $101.4 billion in 2025/26, according to data released by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences.

The industry has had a long-held ambition of reaching $100 billion by 2030.

The early peak was largely driven by higher beef production to meet strong export demand and the second-largest winter crop on record, the bureau’s March quarter report said.

“This forecast gives Australians 100 billion reasons to thank our farmers, whose hard work, resilience and skill is helping power our national economy,” Agriculture Minister Julie Collins said on Tuesday.

But the forecast warned of a six per cent fall to $95 billion in 2026/27, due to the likelihood of lower livestock prices and a more modest crop.

Beef export market conditions were expected to become less favourable after China imposed 55 per cent ‍tariffs on beef imports over certain quotas in January.

About 800 million burgers’ worth of Australian beef may need to be diverted into alternative markets, according to a separate analysis from Rabobank’s research arm.

The Trump administration also announced new tariffs in February, which could hit some Australian produce.

While decent rainfall and mild spring temperatures helped growers deliver a bumper winter crop, summer harvests were hit by a hot and dry January and a lack of irrigation water availability, the report said.

The government would continue to support farmers, Ms Collins said.

“As we celebrate this significant milestone, we also reaffirm our commitment to supporting our farmers and producers during difficult conditions because we will always have their back.”

In the medium-term, the combined value of agriculture, fisheries and forestry production was projected to reach $102 billion over the five years to 2030/31, the report said.

Some conservationists, scientists and farmers have questioned the focus on agriculture’s economic gains, particularly as the government considers its national food security strategy.

A 2025 CSIRO report on the state of Australia’s food system warned emphasising the economics of agriculture has “crowded out” the pursuit of sustainability, equity, food safety and health goals.

National Farmers’ Federation president Hamish McIntyre said the $100 billion target was never about a headline number.

“It is underpinned by a detailed road map that places farmer wellbeing, sustainability and natural capital alongside productivity and profitability,” Mr McIntyre said.

He said the record value was a landmark moment for the industry.

“It proves Australian agriculture can compete with the best in the world.”