Federal spending on a long-sought high-speed rail project is on track to reach almost $700 million before the first shovel hits the ground.

A two-year development phase of a high-speed rail line between Sydney and Newcastle has begun, which will ensure work on the long-awaited transport project can begin.

The development phase will be responsible for the approvals process of the route, awarding contracts and finalising the design.

It’s estimated a high-speed rail line would mean travel time of only one hour between Sydney and Newcastle and 30 minutes from Sydney to the Central Coast.

The federal government will pump an extra $229 million into the project, bringing the total spent by the Commonwealth on the development to almost $660 million.

Transport Minister Catherine King said the development phase would be the ground work for construction to finally begin on the rail link.

“Carefully planned, costed and detailed preparation takes time, but it means when construction starts, it is built to last,” she said.

A business case for the Newcastle to Sydney stage will also be released on Tuesday.

The case projects a boost of $250 billion to the economy over the next 50 years, with the first stage set to produce about 99,000 jobs.

High-speed rail has been long been touted as a future transport option in Australia, but successive governments over multiple decades have failed to see the thought bubble leave the station.

There’s been several proposals for a high-speed rail route linking Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Nationals leader David Littleproud is among those who have cast doubt over the viability of the latest attempt, saying it risks becoming a white elephant without Australia having more baseload power at its disposal.

“I am not opposed to examining these types of projects. There have been proposals from Toowoomba to Brisbane as well,” he said last week.

“But if you are going to build this infrastructure, you need to be able to power it. It is pointless laying track if you cannot run the trains.

“Unless the energy system is fixed, this will not work.”

Australia’s largest childcare operator will face further scrutiny over the safety of its centres as its boss fronts a public inquiry.

G8 Education chief executive Pejman Okhovat will give evidence on Tuesday to a Senate inquiry examining the quality and safety of Australia’s early childhood education and care system.

He is expected to face questioning over child safety after former educator Joshua Dale Brown was charged with more than 70 sex offences against eight alleged victims aged under two between April 2022 and January 2023. 

It has been revealed that G8 Education investigated Brown twice while he was employed at the company and while both incidents were substantiated, his working with children check was not revoked.

The inquiry was sparked by calls for reform after a series of high-profile scandals, including claims of sexual abuse, unnecessary restraints and low-quality meals in the sector.

Public hearings held in Brisbane on Monday heard that parents, faced with declining childcare safety standards and falling quality, needed alternative childcare options.

“One in four Australian children live in so-called childcare deserts,” advocacy group For Parents co-founder Cecilia Cobb said. 

“This means one in four children live in an area where there are three children for every available childcare place.

“The reality is that access to a childcare centre, let alone a high-quality centre, depends on your postcode.” 

Parents living in isolated regional areas were among the hardest impacted, Ms Cobbs said. 

The lack of supply means thousands of Australian parents travelled “significant and unreasonable distances” to access childcare.

Others pay for unsubsidised care out of pocket, or are forced to decline work shifts until a place becomes available.

The group highlighted a family in regional Victoria where grandparents drove a six-hour round trip, twice a week, to care for their grandchild so the mother could work.

“I live in a childcare desert – I have no choice of centre,” mother Elly wrote in her submission to the inquiry. 

“My daughter is on three waitlists and has been since before she was even born.”

While For Parents welcomed the crackdown on poor-quality services, Ms Cobbs said subsidised support should be available for registered carers, including nannies, au pairs and grandparents. 

“Too many families are effectively locked into the traditional long day-care model, even when it doesn’t suit their circumstances,” she said. 

“Shift workers, regional families, parents on 18-month waitlists, parents who have pulled their children out due to safety concerns – these families get zero government support because the only subsidised option doesn’t work for them.” 

The inquiry is due to report back by the end of March.

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Ukraine’s economy is enduring its toughest period since the early months of Russia’s invasion after sustained air strikes left its power system in tatters as the war enters a fifth year, forcing firms to cut output and shrinking state revenues.

From steel mills to miners, cement makers ‌and food producers, Ukrainian industry is being forced to cut output and absorb rising costs as it struggles to shift work schedules and save equipment from emergency shutdowns, executives at eight companies said.

Sergii Pylypenko, CEO of Kovalska Group, Ukraine’s largest producer of concrete and building materials, said ‌the diesel generators it had bought could not power the entire output of its large factories:

“For more than two months now, we have been working under emergency power cuts without any predictable schedule,” Pylypenko said.

“In certain periods, the lack of a stable power supply can reduce production volumes by ‌up to 50 per cent.”

Ukraine’s economy shrank by nearly a third in the first year of the war and, despite modest growth during subsequent years, it remains far smaller than before the invasion and heavily reliant on government spending. 

Nearly six million people have left Ukraine and more than three million are displaced within its borders, accounting for over a fifth of the pre-war population. 

In February, the monthly business activity recovery index of the Institute for Economic Research in Kyiv – which compares the number of companies reporting that business is worse or better than last year – turned negative for the first time since 2023.

Ukraine’s economy is vital not only to provide tax revenues to finance the war and fund debt, and to produce armaments, but also to provide jobs and economic prospects ‌for soldiers and returning refugees when ‌peace finally returns.

Oleksandr Myronenko, chief operating ⁠officer at Metinvest, a mining and metals group with annual revenues of around $US7 billion ($A9.9 billion), said the long power outages made it difficult to restart production after Russian strikes.

Metinvest – controlled by ​Rinat Akhmetov, one of Ukraine’s richest men – has been a major generator of tax revenues and steel for the war effort.

It has forecast growth this year in Ukraine, but failed to achieve that in the first two months owing to the impact of Russian bombardment, Myronenko said.

“This included damage to generating capacities and also to the transport infrastructure, which affects not only steel makers but all producers in Ukraine: they have to decrease volumes,” he said.

Nataliia Kolesnichenko, economist at the Centre for Economic Studies in Kyiv, estimated energy demand had exceeded supply by 30 per cent in January and February. 

“The energy situation has deteriorated dramatically in recent months,” she said.

Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said that even though temperatures were warming, peak demand stood at 16.4 gigawatts, still well above the 12.3 gigawatts Ukraine was able to produce, ⁠and that it was importing almost two gigawatts at peak times.

Businesses are having to contend with lower output, rising costs, disruption of supply chains and ‌longer delivery times. These all affect competitiveness ​and will increase inflation, already running at around 7 per cent, three economists said.

The power crisis has already prompted Ukraine’s central bank to cut its forecast for economic growth this year to 1.8 per cent from 2.0 per cent – in line with the 1.8 per cent growth expected to be announced ​for last year.

A plan for people who help Islamic State-linked families to be thrown in jail is a reckless thought bubble, aid agencies warn, arguing it could set a dangerous precedent.

The federal opposition plans to introduce legislation when parliament sits in March that would punish anyone who helps the so-called “ISIS brides” travel to Australia with up to 10 years jail.

Save the Children Australia chief executive Mat Tinkler, who has advocated for the Australian partners and children of Islamic State fighters, said while the proposal lacked detail, it was a slippery slope.

“I think it’s pretty reckless, to be honest,” he told ABC TV on Monday.

“It feels like a thought bubble to me and it’s potentially setting a very dangerous precedent where advocacy and humanitarian assistance from organisations like Save the Children … is suddenly called into question.”

Mr Tinkler said he did not know whether his organisation would be caught up in the coalition’s policy and has offered to brief the party on Save the Children’s work in Syria.

A group of 34 Australian women and children has been trying to return home from a Syrian refugee camp.

They travelled to the Middle East with men who wanted to fight for Islamic State before the terror organisation was defeated in 2019.

The group has been issued with Australian passports but were unable to travel to the Syrian capital Damascus for a flight home.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said he would make it illegal to assist in the repatriation of people who had travelled to declared terrorist hotspots or committed a terrorist offence.

“We need to shut the door to people who are going to bring hate and violence to our shores from another part of the world,” he told reporters on Monday.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the proposal should be ignored.

“They don’t have serious plans,” he told reporters earlier on Monday.

“If they did, they wouldn’t have allowed more than 40 people to come, including fighters, on their watch when they were in government.”

That claim was disputed by former prime minister Scott Morrison, who told News Corp Australia that only orphaned minors were allowed back under his government.

Anti-Semitism in Australia and how it contributed to the Bondi Beach terrorist attack are set to go under the royal commission microscope.

The first public hearing of the royal commission will start on Tuesday, with commissioner and former High Court judge Virginia Bell to reveal how she will approach the inquiry.

Called about a month after 15 innocent people were killed in the terror attack on December 14, the inquiry will probe the nature, prevalence and key drivers of anti-Semitism in Australia’s society and institutions.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also tasked the royal commission with making recommendations that strengthen wider social cohesion and counter the spread of ideological and religious extremism.

Ms Bell and senior counsel assisting Richard Lancaster will give opening statements on Tuesday, but no evidence will be presented.

Findings and recommendations are due to be handed down by December 14, the first anniversary of the attack.

“I acknowledge the importance of addressing anti-Semitism within the Australian community … I plan to conduct the inquiry as expeditiously as possible,” Ms Bell said.

Jewish advocacy groups have widely welcomed the royal commission, including the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, which described it as “the only way that Australia’s time-honoured standards of decency and fairness can be upheld”.

Other groups have urged the commission to include the voices of other affected communities to explore wider social cohesion.

NSW announced a royal commission soon after the attack and the federal government came under intense political pressure to call its own as the prime minister steadfastly refused to do so.

But he relented in January, with the NSW commission cancelled and a separate inquiry, headed by former ASIO boss Dennis Richardson, to be folded in.

Mr Richardson’s inquiry will scope how potential intelligence failures contributed to the attack.

Federal parliament has passed laws aimed at restricting the ability of hardline radical groups to incite violence against people based on their faith, while also making it easier to deport extremists and deny them entry to Australia.

Canada’s Prime Minister ‌Mark Carney will travel to Australia as part of a broader Asia-Pacific tour aimed at diversifying trade links amid ongoing tariff turbulence from the US Trump administration.

The Canadian government on Monday announced the prime minister’s three-country tour to India, Australia and Japan from February 26 to March 7.

Mr Carney ‌will visit Sydney and Canberra for talks with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to deepen cooperation on defence and maritime security, critical minerals, trade, and advanced technologies, including AI.

He will deliver a speech to both houses of Australia’s federal parliament, marking the first such address by a Canadian leader in nearly 20 years.

Mr Carney will also meet with business leaders and investors to attract new capital into Canada.

“In a more uncertain world, Canada is focused on what we can control,” Mr Carney said in a statement.

“We are diversifying our trade and attracting massive new investment to create new opportunities for our workers and businesses. We are forging new partnerships abroad to create greater certainty, security and prosperity at home.”

According to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, two-way trade between the two countries was worth $11 billion in 2024.

During the first leg of the international tour, Mr Carney will visit Mumbai, then New Delhi, where he will meet with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He’ll then head to Australia and round out the trip in Tokyo with talks with Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae.

Last week, President Donald Trump flagged ‌introducing temporary tariffs of 15 per cent on almost all US imports after the Supreme Court struck ‌down his previous tariff program.

It’s not clear if or when there would be any tariff refunds.

Friday’s court ruling will most likely prolong political and economic chaos over international trade.

President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address is likely to be a test run of the message Republicans will give to voters in November’s elections for control of the House and the Senate.

The president and his party appear vulnerable, with polls showing that much of America distrusts how Trump has managed the government in his first year back in office. 

In addition, the Supreme Court last week struck down one of the chief levers of his economic and foreign policy by ruling he lacked the power to impose many of his sweeping tariffs. 

Though Trump is expected to focus on domestic issues on Tuesday, his intensifying threats about launching military strikes on Iran over its nuclear program cast a shadow over the address.

Here are a few things to watch as Trump tries to make his case:

The economy and immigration are no longer strengths for Trump.

Trump swept back into the White House on promises to bring down prices and restore order to immigration in America. 

But on both issues, public sentiment has turned against him.

Only 39 per cent of US adults approve of his economic leadership and just 38 per cent support him on immigration, according to the latest Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research survey. 

Those low numbers show the country is still fretting about the costs of groceries, housing and utilities, a problem compounded by Trump’s whipsawing use of tariffs. 

They also show how the public was disturbed by videos of violent clashes with protesters, including two US citizens killed by federal agents.

Since his party passed a massive tax cut bill last year, Trump has yet to unveil major new policy ideas on the economy. 

In recent speeches, he has largely offered the public re-runs about his tax cuts, plans to reduce mortgage rates and a new government website for buying prescription drugs.

The Supreme Court ruling against many of Trump’s far-reaching global tariffs on Friday and the president vowing to use other means to forge ahead with import taxes will only prolong the economic turmoil over trade and prices. 

“I think it makes it even more important that the speech really focus on the economy,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist. 

Conant said between the tariff ruling and a Commerce Department report on Friday that showed US economic growth slowed in the final three months of last year, “the president needs to bolster his economic message”.

The administration is trying to make the case that, despite Trump’s rewiring of global trade and tax cuts, the economy is still struggling because of choices made in 2021 and 2022 by his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden. 

But Trump is also seeking to take credit for positive signs in the current economy, such as recent stock market gains. 

“Watch the State of the Union. We’re going to be talking about the economy. We inherited a mess,” Trump said at the White House on Wednesday.

Of course, Trump made the same kind of argument in his address to a joint session of Congress last year, invoking the Biden name 13 times.

Trump’s focus on foreign policy has yet to resonate politically.

Despite Trump’s America First credo, his aggressive approach abroad over the past year has sparked concerns among some of his supporters about whether he should spend more time focusing on voters at home.

Trump, who’s made it clear he covets a Nobel Peace Prize, is likely to use the speech to remind Americans of his attempts to try to broker peace accords in global conflicts.

But in many respects, the president hasn’t been extending olive branches. 

Within the past year, his administration has launched strikes in Yemen, Nigeria and Iran, along with an ongoing campaign of lethal military strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels near South America. 

Trump also shocked the world in January with a surprise raid to capture Venezuela’s then-leader, Nicolás Maduro, and floated the idea of using force to seize Greenland.

In recent weeks, as he pressures Iran, Trump has bolstered the US military’s presence in the Middle East. 

But he has yet to make a clear case to voters about what his actions overseas mean for their lives. 

He might even minimise foreign policy in his State of the Union despite his belief that it’s been a major success.

“For as much as foreign policy has dominated his last year in office, this speech will mostly focus on the economy,” Conant predicted.

Vice President JD Vance offered a similar prediction, saying in an interview Saturday on Fox News Channel that in the speech, “you’re going to hear a lot about the importance of bringing jobs back into our country, of re-shoring manufacturing, of all these great factories that are being built.”

He said Trump would also speak about lowering energy costs.

The State of the Union used to be about recapping accomplishments and seeking to unite the country, but it increasingly reflects divisions in society.

“What you’re going to expect is some version of a campaign speech in which the Democrats are the villains, the Republicans he likes are the heroes, and he is the saviour not only of the nation but of the globe,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Trump supporters might cherish the moment in 2020 when the president mid-speech reunited a military family.

 He also bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host and author who died in 2021. 

But that moment turned off Democrats who saw Limbaugh as a destructive figure in political media.

The reaction in the room could matter as much as Trump’s words.

Trump is delivering the speech, but his audience sitting in the House chamber has a big role, too. 

When Trump delivered his 2020 State of the Union, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi theatrically ripped up a copy of the speech afterwards, overshadowing much of what Trump said.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York has said in a letter to colleagues, “it is important to have a strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber,” indicating some members might choose not to attend in protest to Trump. 

But there’s also the possibility of Democrats razzing Trump as Al Green, did in 2025, leading him to be removed from the chamber.

If Trump in his speech, lays out a fuller case for why he’s using other mechanisms in federal law to continue his tariffs, Conant said it’ll be interesting to see the reaction from Congress representatives.

“I think that any House Republicans that don’t applaud his tariffs are going to be featured prominently on the telecast,” he said. 

While some presidential phrases endure, much of the rhetoric in State of the Union addresses is forgettable. 

And with Trump — who’s known for veering off-script — there’s a good chance a stray comment or a social media post could step on his message.

Matt Latimer, a former Republican speechwriter for then-President George W Bush, noted that people hear the president talk all of the time, so the State of the Union has lost much of its lustre.

A State of the Union “only matters in moments when the country is undergoing a great trauma — a war, an attack, a global crisis — and a president and Congress want to speak in a (mostly) united voice to the country,” he said. 

“That’s not what we are experiencing now.”

China is making a “full assessment” of the ‌US Supreme Court’s tariff ruling and has urged Washington to lift “relevant ‌unilateral tariff measures” on its trading partners.

The Chinese ‌commerce ministry issued a statement on Monday, days after the highest US court dealt President Donald Trump a stinging defeat by striking down many of ‌the tariffs ‌he has ⁠used in a global trade war, ​including some against China.

Within hours of the ruling, Trump said the US would impose a new 10 per cent duty on imports from all countries starting on Tuesday, which he ⁠raised to 15 per cent ‌on ​Saturday.

“US unilateral tariffs … violate international trade rules and US domestic ​law, and ‌are not in the interests of any party,” the ​Chinese ministry added.

“There are no winners in a trade war.”

The ministry said it noticed the US planned to maintain tariffs on trading partners ​through ​alternative means, including trade ​investigations.

“China will continue to pay ‌close attention to this and firmly safeguard its interests,” the ministry said.

Trump will travel to China from March 31 to April 2 for a highly anticipated ​meeting between the leaders of the world’s two biggest ​economies.

Tens of thousands of export coal workers could miss out on gold standard federal support to retrain for new careers as demand for the fuel dwindles.

Unions, a business group and local governments representing coal communities have all voiced support for the inclusion of export mine workers in the Commonwealth’s flagship workforce transition program.

The Energy Industry Jobs Plan was set up in 2024 to support employees of closing coal power stations and affiliated mines with upskilling, financial planning and other services to support their career transition.

Several submissions to the Net Zero Economy Authority’s review of the scheme argue it should be opened to more workers impacted by global decarbonisation, including export miners and employees of other emission-intensive sectors.

Jeff Drayton, mayor of the coal-dominant Muswellbrook Shire municipality, said the mining sector was “just as much on the front line of the transition as their colleagues in coal-fired stations”.

He described a “two-tier system”, with power generation workers afforded coverage by the federal program while mining workers were only sometimes covered by “inferior” Regional Workforce Transition Plans.

The latter did not mandate the involvement of employers in “extensive” transition assistance, the mayor wrote in his submission.

“If this two-tier system of benefits and assistance for workers is not addressed, the anomaly will actually add to distress and anxiety in our community, not alleviate it.”

While the region’s Bayswater station closure threatens 1000 jobs, the looming shutdown of the Mt Arthur and Mangoola mines could displace more than 12,000 workers.

Unions were also in favour of an expanded scope, with the Mining and Energy Union acknowledging the coal export industry’s “structural decline”.

“Whether due to reduced coal demand stemming from the net zero goals of key export customers, difficulties obtaining environmental and planning approvals for extensions, or shareholder pressure,” the union’s submission said.

The federal government’s own modelling recognises demand for the fuel is weakening, with Treasury figures suggesting the value of coal and gas exports could fall by 50 per cent by 2030.

Hunter Jobs Alliance coordinator Justin Page said there was growing support in the region for the federal transition scheme to include export miners given 90 per cent of coal from the region is shipped overseas.

His organisation, which represents unions and environmental groups, was of the view the export industry was in decline, with some mine closures already slated for the end of the decade.

But exports are expected to remain into at least the middle of the century.

Business Hunter, representing businesses in the region, also recognised the merits of applying a similar framework offered to the power station workers to the broader mining industry. 

Unstaffed, fuel-only stations are proving a success, petrol retailer Ampol says.  

The company converted 27 of its Australian petrol stations to its unmanned U-Go sites in 2025, taking its portfolio to 46, out of 622 company-operated Australian sites as of December 31.

U-Go sites operating for at least 12 months were showing a 50 per cent uplift in fuel volumes and an average of $350,000 earnings improvement, Ampol chief executive Matt Halliday told analysts on Monday.

“We’re really pleased with it,” he said.

“We are seeing that it’s taking about six months for the local market to settle on that operating model, but we’re really pleased with the success we’re seeing once it takes hold.”

The unstaffed sites were open around the clock and designed to compete in the “second franchise operator” end of the market, Mr Halliday said.  

He said Ampol’s high-end convenience Foodary stations were also going “from strength to strength”.

Overall, Ampol’s full-year earnings from convenience retail were up 3.2 per cent to $562.1 million, compared to 2024, while its earnings from fuel and infrastructure were up 64 per cent to $572.1 million.

The company delivered a full-year statutory net profit of $82.4 million, down a third from 2024, in part due to a $89.9 million writedown of its 20 per cent interest in Seaoil, an independent fuel company in the Philippines.

Ampol said since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rebalancing of global oil markets, market dynamics in the Philippines had changed and Ampol viewed that change as structural in nature.

The company said its Lytton oil refinery in Brisbane – one of the last two refineries operating in Australia – performed strongly during 2025, delivering $226.9 million in earnings, up from $23.4 million in 2024.

Ampol said the global energy market remained unsettled, given developments involving Iran, Venezuela and Russia and Ukraine.

“While it is too early to be conclusive on the implications, the integrated nature of Ampol’s value chain means we are well placed to navigate changing conditions through our trading and shipping operations and the Lytton refinery to maintain supply for our customers,” the company said.

Ampol will pay a final dividend of 60 cents per share, fully franked, taking its dividends for the year to $1, the same as a year ago.

Ampol shares were down 3.6 per cent to $27.94 on Monday morning.