Sussan Ley is likely to hold onto her job as opposition leader for at least another week as conservative agitators struggle to coalesce around a single candidate.

Liberal frontbencher Angus Taylor and backbencher Andrew Hastie are widely seen as the two most likely replacements for Ms Ley, whose critics say she has presided over a steady slide in the opinion polls and failed to lead properly.

But neither man appears willing to cede ground, despite secret talks at a home in Melbourne’s suburbs on Thursday to try and thrash out a compromise.

Ms Ley’s supporters believe she has the numbers to retain the leadership for now, because the conservative vote will be divided while both MPs remain in the race.

Mr Taylor ran unsuccessfully against Ms Ley for the party leadership after the coalition’s horror federal election result in May.

Backers of Mr Hastie, a former SAS soldier who served as opposition home affairs spokesman until he moved to the back bench to speak more freely about immigration issues, have been loudly claiming he has the numbers to win.

Ms Ley’s camp hotly disputes that suggestion.

Parliament returns next week, when tensions within the Liberals are expected to flare.

While Mr Hastie’s side had been hoping to roll the opposition leader on Monday or Tuesday, the ongoing split over who should challenge for the job appears likely to delay any spill.

Sources confirmed to AAP a vote was unlikely next week – although if a consensus candidate were to be agreed upon, the challenge could move quickly.

Liberal backbencher Ben Small added to the leadership speculation by nailing his colours to the mast on Thursday, declaring his support for Mr Hastie.

“Australia does best when it has a good government and a strong opposition. Presently, we have neither,” he told AAP.

“Generational change is key to reconnecting to voters who have simply stopped listening to the Liberal Party, but I need to be clear – changing salespeople alone does not help.

“The Liberal Party needs to speak clearly again, without being afraid of what we believe in.

“I have come to the deeply considered view that Andrew Hastie is the right person to lead the Liberal Party, should an opportunity to lead arise.”

Accelerated hospital funding is needed to shorten wait lists, doctors warn, as the clock ticks for the nation’s leaders to strike a deal.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will meet with state and territory leaders in Sydney on Friday as the federal government seeks to lock in a new five-year hospital funding agreement.

The national cabinet meeting will also discuss efforts to rein in runaway spending on the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Mr Albanese hosted a dinner at Kirribilli for the premiers and chief ministers on Thursday evening ahead of formal talks.

The South Australian government will go into caretaker mode a month out from the March 21 state election, meaning if an agreement isn’t reached imminently, there won’t be time to land something new by July 1.

Failure to secure a funding pact would likely necessitate another one-year rollover arrangement.

The Albanese government in December offered $23 billion for public hospitals across five years, including $2 billion to help states manage elderly patients languishing in hospitals while they wait for aged care beds.

Up to one-in-10 Australian public hospital beds were being taken by stranded patients needing alternative accommodation in aged care and disability support, an independent report released in 2025 found.

Health Minister Mark Butler described the December offer as “generous”, saying the Commonwealth was approaching negotiations in good faith.

But the states and territories have insisted the federal government stick to a 2023 agreement that the Commonwealth would increase its share of public hospital funding to 42.5 per cent by 2030 and 45 per cent by 2035.

The actual share of Commonwealth funding is understood to be well short of those targets.

Mr Albanese on Thursday pointed to health commitments already made by the federal government, such as the tripling of the bulk-billing incentive.

“We’re not an ATM,” Mr Albanese told reporters in Cairns.

“We have to make sure that we’re responsible going forward. We understand a number of state budgets are under pressure as well.”

Queensland Premier David Crisafulli this week called for a better deal, saying unless the offer presented to the states adequately dealt with the issue of stranded aged care patients, he would not sign an agreement.

South Australian counterpart Peter Malinauskas has indicated the states could be amenable to a deal if the offer is lifted enough to leave the Commonwealth share tracking towards the 42.5 per cent figure.

Australian Medical Association president Danielle McMullen said funding for hospitals could not be left on “auto-pilot”.

“More funding to ‘just keep pace’ will not lessen wait lists … what matters with hospital funding is the fine print,” she said.

“Comparing how much you are paying for the next five years compared to the last five years is not fair or honest because the fact is, costs are rising, our population is increasing, and care is getting more complex.”

Dr McMullen called for an increase of up to $40 billion to bring the federal government’s contribution to 45 per cent of hospital funding by 2030.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s ‍largest, has reported a 2025 profit of 2.36 trillion crowns ($A350 billion), driven by a rise in tech, financial and basic materials stocks, falling ​just short of its 2024 record of 2.51 trillion crowns.

The fund, which holds assets of $US2.2 trillion, is one of the world’s largest investors, holding on ⁠average 1.5 per cent of all listed stocks globally.

The fund’s return on investment in 2025 was 15.1 per cent, or 0.28 percentage points lower than the return on its benchmark index, set by the country’s finance ministry, it said in a statement.

“Stocks in technology, financials and basic materials stood out, making a significant contribution to the overall return,” fund CEO Nicolai Tangen said in the statement.

The fund is worth the equivalent of $US385,000 for every Norwegian man, ‌woman and child ​and finances some 25 per cent of the country’s fiscal budget.

It invests the Norwegian state’s revenues from oil and gas production in ‍bonds, stocks, property and unlisted renewable energy projects outside its home market.

The value of US Treasuries held by the wealth fund increased during the second half of 2025 to $US199 billion, or 9.4 per cent of the fund’s total investments as of December 31, continuing a long-term trend, fund data showed.

That compares with the $US181 billion the fund held in US Treasuries, or 9.2 per cent of its total investments, at June 30.

Some big ​northern European investors are increasingly wary of the risks of holding US assets ‌in the face of geopolitical tensions, pension chiefs told Reuters last week, a sign of a broadening shift away from the world’s biggest financial market.

But the Norwegian fund has increased its US ‍holdings.

Overall, 52.9 per cent of the fund’s assets were invested in the United States at the end of 2025, across equities, bonds and property, compared with a share of 52.4 per cent six months earlier, the data showed.

Facebook parent company Meta says it’s sharply ramping up spending on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, supported by strong growth in its advertising business. 

For the current year, Meta projected capital expenditure of between $US115 billion and $US135 billion. In 2025, the company spent around $US72 billion, primarily on expanding data centres for AI.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has ambitious plans to outpace rivals such as ChatGPT developer OpenAI, as well as Google and Elon Musk’s company xAI, in the AI race.  

He is willing to spend billions of dollars, even at the risk of building excess data-centre capacity. Speaking on a conference call with analysts, Zuckerberg again voiced confidence that the AI business is currently gaining strong momentum. 

Funding for the AI expansion continues to come largely from Meta’s booming advertising business across platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Revenue jumped 24 per cent year-on-year to nearly $US59.9 billion in the last quarter, exceeding analysts’ expectations. Net profit rose nine per cent to $US22.77 billion. 

At least one Meta app is now used daily by 3.58 billion people, up seven per cent from a year earlier. Meta’s portfolio includes messaging app WhatsApp and Threads, a rival to Elon Musk’s social media platform X. 

The company’s planned investment spending for the year exceeded analysts’ expectations, while its revenue outlook of $US53.5 billion to $US56.5 billion for the current quarter also topped the average market forecast.

The alleged throwing of a homemade bomb into an Invasion Day rally crowd must be treated as a racial hate crime, Indigenous advocates say.

A 31-year-old man is in custody after being accused of throwing a device “designed to explode” into a crowd of 2500 people at the protest in Perth.

Police are investigating the incident as a potential terrorist act, saying it was only because of good luck the device did not explode.

It allegedly contained a mixture of volatile chemicals with nails and metal ball bearings attached to its exterior.

Indigenous legal and human rights expert Hannah McGlade believes it should be treated as a hate crime and a racist attack targeting Aboriginal people.

The Curtin University associate professor said First Nations people feared for their children going out on Australia Day because of abuse and threats.

“We are worried for our kids and their safety on this day because of this rising right-wing influence and racism that really hasn’t abated in Australia,” she told AAP.

In Western Australia, racial motivation had never been acknowledged properly by the courts, even though the law was amended to allow for racism and to be a circumstance of aggravation to increase penalties, she said.

“Because Australia has failed miserably to tackle racism and racist violence we haven’t seen the authorities use that provision, even in relation to murders,” Prof McGlade said.

Thousands of people were evacuated from Forrest Place in Perth’s CBD on Monday after a man was accused of removing the explosive device from a bag, throwing it into the crowd and attempting to flee.

The 31-year-old was charged with an unlawful act or omission with intent to harm and making or possessing explosives under suspicious circumstances.

A Perth magistrate granted a suppression order on the man’s identity because of fears for his safety.

State and federal police and ASIO were working to determine if the January 26 incident met the criteria for a terrorist attack, WA Agriculture Minister Jackie Jarvis said on Thursday.

“They will work through that normal process and we need to let that play out,” she told reporters.

Indigenous activists have criticised police and political leaders for “double standards” over the incident, given the Bondi Beach massacre was promptly declared a terror attack.

“When violence is linked to Muslims, the word ‘terrorism’ appears in headlines almost immediately,” Victorian senator Lidia Thorpe said.

“But when First Peoples are targeted … the response is silence, minimisation and delay.”

Rally organiser Fabian Yarran said the incident must be fully investigated as an act of terrorism and a hate crime against First Nations people.

Threats had been made against the event before the incident, organisers have said.

Social Justice Commissioner Katie Kiss said the potential for mass casualties caused deep distress and fear among First Nations people.

“While the motive is yet to be determined, there is no question that the targets of the attack were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their allies,” she said.

She called on the government and law enforcement agencies to treat the incident with the same urgency and seriousness as the Bondi terror attack.

WA Police said significant resources were deployed to the event in case protest participants required protection from a range of possible scenarios, “including the critical incident” which took place.

Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy said she was pleased the incident was being considered a potential terrorist act.

“There is no reason a group of people in Perth, First Nations people, cannot protest without feeling their lives are in danger,” she told ABC News.

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Nvidia, Amazon, and Microsoft ‍are in talks to invest up to $US60 billion in OpenAI, The ​Information reports.

Nvidia, an existing investor whose chips ⁠power OpenAI’s AI models, is in talks to invest up to $US30 billion, The Information said, citing a person with knowledge of the situation.

Microsoft, a longstanding backer, is in talks to invest ‌less than $US10 billion, ​the report said. It added Amazon, which would be ‍a new investor, is in discussions to invest significantly more than $US10 billion, potentially even more than $US20 billion.

OpenAI is close to receiving term sheets, or an investment commitment, from these firms, the ​report said.

Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft and ‌OpenAI did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment outside regular business hours.

Reuters could ​not immediately verify the report.

Amazon’s investment could depend on ‍separate negotiations, including a possible expansion of OpenAI’s cloud server rental deal with Amazon and a commercial agreement ​for ​OpenAI to sell its products, ​such as enterprise ChatGPT subscriptions, to Amazon, ​The Information said.

This follows reports from earlier this week that said that SoftBank Group is in talks to invest as much as an additional $US30 billion in OpenAI.

OpenAI is grappling with rising costs to train and run its AI models as competition from ‍Alphabet’s Google heats up.

Tesla is set to discontinue its larger electric car models, the Model S and Model X, to free up capacity for robot production.

Owners of the vehicles will continue to receive technical support over the lifetime of their cars, the US automaker’s owner Elon Musk said during a conference call with analysts.

Musk said production of the two models is due to be phased out in the coming quarter.

Launched in 2012, the Model S was Tesla’s first vehicle developed entirely in-house.

It helped establish the company’s reputation for producing electric cars that could compete with the combustion-engine vehicles dominating the market at the time, offering strong driving range, speed and a distinctive design.

The Model X, known for its falcon-wing doors, followed in 2015. Both models have been refreshed several times since being launched.

More recently, newer vehicles such as the Model 3 and Model Y have come to dominate Tesla’s business, accounting for nearly 97 per cent of deliveries in 2025.

Tesla plans to use the existing production lines for the Model S and Model X to manufacture its humanoid robots, known as Optimus. Musk has previously said he aims to begin selling the robots by the end of 2027.

The company also intends to start producing fully autonomous robotaxi vehicles in 2026, branded Cybercab, which will not have a steering wheel or pedals.

Musk said that in the future Tesla expects to build far more of these vehicles than any of its other models. He added the Cybertruck is also expected to be developed into a fully autonomous vehicle.

Workers across Australia received their pay late while thousands of people had property settlements delayed due to an issue at the Reserve Bank.

The systems at the central bank and a major settlement platform have since been resolved, but many property buyers have been left inconvenienced, forced to re-book new settlement arrangements with their conveyancers.

An issue on direct entry and property settlements occurred between 10am and 4.30pm AEDT on Tuesday, an RBA spokesperson told AAP.

Although the system has been restored and transactions have resumed, the issue created a backlog that delayed about 900 settlements.

About 100 settlements in Victoria were unresolved until late on Thursday morning.

Digital settlement platform PEXA said it would be in touch with those affected.

“The Reserve Bank of Australia experienced a technical incident on Tuesday that caused delays to property transactions scheduled on the PEXA platform,” it said in a statement.

“PEXA appreciates that this issue is stressful for our customers and for people who experienced disruptions and we regret the inconvenience caused.

“We actively collaborate with our partners, including the RBA, on an ongoing basis to ensure that the eConveyancing system remains resilient, secure and efficient.”

PEXA’s systems were functional throughout the RBA issue, and the platform insisted it was not a problem on their end.

Conveyancers on Tuesday were told by PEXA there had been an outage throughout at least NSW.

Clients hoping to settle on that day would have had to rebook their settlement, which means council rates and water rates may have changed.

Some planning on moving in on the same day would have had to make alternative arrangements as well.

“It has been a bit stressful! We were supposed to pick up keys earlier this afternoon,” said one Reddit user.

“We planned for every single thing that could go wrong except this,” said another user.

Employees expecting their salary on Tuesday afternoon panicked as they were forced to endure an hours-long wait for their pay.

The pay run issue is believed to have mainly affected employers who use ANZ for their pay runs.

Bendigo Bank, which has millions of customers including through digital arm Up Bank, was also impacted.

It uses ANZ as a file courier, but it is unclear whether other financial institutions experienced similar issues.

Workers across Australia received their pay late while thousands of people had property settlements delayed due to an issue at the Reserve Bank.

The systems at the central bank and a major settlement platform have since been resolved, but many property buyers have been left inconvenienced, forced to re-book new settlement arrangements with their conveyancers.

An issue on direct entry and property settlements occurred between 10am and 4.30pm AEDT on Tuesday, an RBA spokesperson told AAP.

Although the system has been restored and transactions have resumed, the issue created a backlog that delayed about 900 settlements.

About 100 settlements in Victoria were unresolved until late on Thursday morning.

Digital settlement platform PEXA said it would be in touch with those affected.

“The Reserve Bank of Australia experienced a technical incident on Tuesday that caused delays to property transactions scheduled on the PEXA platform,” it said in a statement.

“PEXA appreciates that this issue is stressful for our customers and for people who experienced disruptions and we regret the inconvenience caused.

“We actively collaborate with our partners, including the RBA, on an ongoing basis to ensure that the eConveyancing system remains resilient, secure and efficient.”

PEXA’s systems were functional throughout the RBA issue, and the platform insisted it was not a problem on their end.

Conveyancers on Tuesday were told by PEXA there had been an outage throughout at least NSW.

Clients hoping to settle on that day would have had to rebook their settlement, which means council rates and water rates may have changed.

Some planning on moving in on the same day would have had to make alternative arrangements as well.

“It has been a bit stressful! We were supposed to pick up keys earlier this afternoon,” said one Reddit user.

“We planned for every single thing that could go wrong except this,” said another user.

Employees expecting their salary on Tuesday afternoon panicked as they were forced to endure an hours-long wait for their pay.

The pay run issue is believed to have mainly affected employers who use ANZ for their pay runs.

Bendigo Bank, which has millions of customers including through digital arm Up Bank, was also impacted.

It uses ANZ as a file courier, but it is unclear whether other financial institutions experienced similar issues.

Senior Liberals are confident of a reunion with the Nationals, but the resumption of the coalition won’t be rushed.

One week after the Nationals walked away from the coalition following divisions over hate speech laws, tensions remain over whether Sussan Ley will be able to stay on as opposition leader.

Deputy Liberal leader Ted O’Brien said he had not heard from other MPs about a possible challenge to Ms Ley’s leadership when parliament resumed on Tuesday.

“I don’t believe there’ll be a challenge next week … I’m in close contact with my colleagues,” he told ABC TV on Thursday.

“I haven’t spoken to any colleague who believes that Sussan didn’t make the right call last week. She demonstrated enormous strength and dignity in a very difficult situation with the National Party.”

Mr O’Brien said both parties would be stronger in a coalition, but a reunion would not be expedited for the sake of it.

“We are best served by a coalition government, the Liberals and Nationals working together; at the moment, that reunion hasn’t happened,” he said.

“I believe it will at some point, it can’t be forced. It’s got to be at the right time for the right reason.”

Conservative faction members Andrew Hastie and Angus Taylor are angling for Ms Ley’s role, but neither have put their hand up to run for the leadership or declare a spill motion.

Liberal frontbencher James Paterson said Ms Ley had backing in the party.

“I can’t predict what all of my colleagues may or may not do, but I can say that, in my assessment, Sussan continues to enjoy the support of the majority of the party room,” he told ABC radio.

“I understand my responsibilities under the Westminster convention. The first responsibility if you don’t support any leader is to tell them, and the second responsibility is to resign, and I haven’t done either. 

“So you can assume I continue to support Sussan.”

Ms Ley has yet to name her full shadow cabinet following the split with the Nationals.

It means shadow portfolios such as emergency management and trade are unfilled due to those roles previously being held by Nationals members.

Senator Paterson said it was likely the Liberals would appoint acting spokespeople for the missing portfolios before parliament resumed on Tuesday.

“I note that David Littleproud has not yet appointed any spokesman for those areas as well,” he said.

“We should continue to talk with the National Party and see whether reformation of the coalition can occur.”