Liberal leadership aspirant Angus Taylor is expected to resign from the opposition frontbench to launch a spill against the party’s first female leader as pressure builds for a change at the top. 

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley escaped a challenge at Tuesday morning’s routine Liberal party room meeting but Mr Taylor will likely announce his intention to run for leadership as soon as Wednesday. 

A series of opinion polls revealing the coalition’s support hitting historic lows, including the most recent Newspoll on Monday, has prompted some Liberal MPs to privately push for a change. 

But Ms Ley’s backers, including moderate Liberal MP Maria Kovacic, have urged colleagues to publicly put their name to a petition calling for a spill so the party can move on. 

“We’ve had enough of what’s been going on over the past couple of months, it has spiralled out of control in the last few days,” she told ABC TV.

“Enough is enough. If you want this, put your name to it and get it over with.”

She said the ongoing turmoil was damaging the party’s credibility and ability to hold the Labor government to account.

“I don’t think (Australians) give a toss who the next leader is, because we haven’t actually showed them what we are going to do to make their lives better, and that is a failure,” Ms Kovacic said.

Liberal rules require anybody in a leadership position or in the shadow ministry to resign if they are part of a challenge. 

MPs can also request the leader call a special party room meeting to consider a leadership spill. 

If Ms Ley refuses to hold a meeting, Mr Taylor would need a petition endorsed by the majority of Liberal MPs and senators to force her hand.

In 2018, a petition was circulated to call for a party room meeting to resolve the leadership, which led to former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull being toppled by Scott Morrison.  

A special party room meeting is likely to be held on Thursday or Friday, once senators have finished with parliamentary committee hearings for the week.

Mr Taylor is confident he has the numbers to win a spill.

Mr Turnbull joined the calls for the conservative aspirant to “stand up and be counted”.

“This is a place where we vote in public right?” Mr Turnbull told reporters at Parliament House on Tuesday. 

“If Angus wants to be leader of the Liberal Party, he should stand up and say so and say why.”

Australia’s spy chief says his agency will own any mistakes following Bondi’s anti-Semitic terrorist attack as he revealed an external investigation cleared ASIO’s review of one of the gunmen in 2019. 

Naveed Akram and his father, Sajid, killed 15 innocent people and wounded dozens more during a shooting massacre at Bondi Beach in December during a Jewish Hanukkah festival.

Law enforcement alleges they were inspired by Islamic State ideology.

The father was shot dead by police at the time while the son faces terrorism and murder charges.

ASIO director general Mike Burgess said while ASIO and law enforcement partners had disrupted 28 major terrorism plots since September 2014, Australia’s intelligence agencies couldn’t catch everything.

He said the attack weighed heavily on him and his officers but this didn’t mean intelligence was ignored or people made mistakes. 

“The grim reality is, as I’ve said many times, ASIO is not all-seeing and all-knowing, we cannot stop every terrorist, just as we cannot catch every spy,” Mr Burgess told a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday night.

“It appears the alleged terrorists demonstrated a high level of security awareness to hide their plot. In simple terms, they went dark to stay off the radar.

“If ASIO is found to have made mistakes, we will own them, and we will learn from them.”

The director general said an external investigator had “unfettered and unfiltered access” to the agency to review whether there were any intelligence shortcomings.

It follows the younger Akram having come across ASIO’s radar in 2019 due to his association with others, but the then-teenager wasn’t deemed to present any ongoing threat.

Mr Burgess said the highly classified review into his agency following the Bondi attack reaffirmed ASIO’s actions in 2019.

“I can say that we stand by our 2019 assessment the Akrams did not adhere to or intend to engage in violent extremism at that time,” he said.

“In other words, many of the claims and criticisms being made about ASIO’s handling of the case are baseless.”

His public comments following an ABC Four Corners program aired on Monday, during which a former ASIO agent claimed he shared intelligence about Naveed’s radicalisation with the agency in 2019.

ASIO said it investigated the information but couldn’t substantiate it.

The intelligence agency further denied accusations that it failed to act on the former agent’s intelligence, saying his comments to the ABC were untrue, as he had attributed things to Naveed that were said and done by another person.

Mr Burgess also cautioned against applying hindsight.

“Things that might appear obvious in retrospect may not have been obvious at the time, and when individuals made decisions in one context, it may not be fair to judge them in a different context,” he told senators in the Tuesday hearing.

“In the days and weeks after the Bondi attack, assumptions, assertions, hypotheticals and opinions quickly became accepted as facts by some.

“They were recycled and exaggerated in the following weeks. This resulted in calls for action that were not supported by any fact.”

Police could face legal action after punching and pepper-spraying protesters during a rally against the Israeli president’s visit to Australia.

Officers were seen beating, pushing and deploying pepper spray at a Monday demonstration held after Israeli head of state Isaac Herzog arrived in the harbour city.

NSW Premier Chris Minns defended the actions of police and said they faced “incredibly difficult” circumstances.

But videos of officers from Monday night could embroil the force in a storm of reputational and legal trouble.

“Civilians see this kind of violence so rarely in Australia, but when we do, it’s shocking,” University of Newcastle criminologist Justin Ellis told AAP.

“Police are going to have to deal with any reputational fallout.”

A message about safety, rather than officer tactics, could help reassure the public going forward, Dr Ellis said.

But the damage may already have been done.

Greens MP Abigail Boyd is considering all of her options, including legal action, after she was shoved by police.

Others could also take the police to court or make formal complaints, with videos posted to social media showing a man with raised hands being punched repeatedly in the stomach by officers, while another depicted a group of Muslim men praying before being ripped from their knees and taken away by police.

The justice system can move in favour of protesters.

Former Greens candidate Hannah Thomas, who suffered a serious eye injury when she was arrested at a protest in 2025, had charges of resisting police dropped and an assault charge was laid against the constable who allegedly maimed her.

Officers arrested 27 people that night and later charged nine with offences including behaving in an offensive manner in a public place and resisting police.

Five members of the public were hospitalised.

The violence has not deterred protesters in other parts of the country from taking to the streets in coming days as Mr Herzog continues his Australian tour through Melbourne and Canberra.

During his two-day visit in Sydney, he met victims of the Bondi terrorist attack, students from Jewish schools and attended a ceremony at the Chabad of Bondi with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Demonstrators will gather at the lawns of Parliament House in the nation’s capital on Wednesday to speak out against Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

ACT chief police officer Scott Lee said the territory’s force was trained to peacefully manage protests when questioned about the violent scenes in Sydney.

“Absolutely, I can provide you with that assurance,” he told a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday regarding the prospect of police violence.

Struggling brand Gucci has dragged down luxury goods company Kering, with a decline in revenue in the final quarter of 10 per cent compared to the same period of the previous year, the company says.

The result came even though the brand’s revenue fell less on a comparable basis at the end of the year than in the third quarter.

Kering’s chief executive Luca de Meo, who has been in the job for only a few months, now wants to lead a turnaround in the business.

“The performance in 2025 does not reflect the Group’s true potential,” the former Renault chief executive said in a press release issued on Tuesday.

Measures have already been initiated in the second half of the year to strengthen the group’s financial position and reduce costs.

“On April 16, during our Capital Markets Day, we will present a clear roadmap to boost the desirability of our Luxury Houses and reignite growth, with well-defined brand strategies, a more effective organisation and strong financial discipline,” de Meo said.

The French company, which also owns brands like Yves Saint Laurent and Balenciaga, has lagged behind competitors in recent years.

It suffered from a decline in the popularity of Gucci products amid a general slowdown in luxury consumption, especially in China.

In 2025 alone, sales of Gucci products fell by more than a fifth to just under 6 billion euro ($A10 billion).

The group’s revenue dropped by 13 per cent to 14.7 billion euro.

The adjusted operating profit plummeted by a third to just over 1.6 billion euro.

The net profit attributable to shareholders shrank to 72 million euro, after generating a surplus of more than 1.1 billion euro the previous year.

Honda has reported a 42 per cent drop in profit for the nine months through December, compared with a year earlier, as US President Donald Trump’s tariffs hurt the Japanese auto maker’s earnings.

Tokyo-based Honda Motor Co’s profit over the three quarters totalled 465.4 billion yen ($A4.2 billion), down from 805.2 billion yen.

That marked the second straight year that profit declined during the period at Honda, the maker of the Accord sedan, Civic compact and Odyssey minivan.

Sales for the three quarters dipped 2.2 per cent to 15.98 trillion yen from the previous year. 

Honda stuck to its full fiscal year profit forecast at 300 billion yen. 

The slowdown in electric vehicles in the US market was one negative factor, according to Honda, while the relatively healthy performance in its motorcycle division worked as a plus. 

Honda lowered its global EV sales ratio projection for 2030 to 20 per cent from its previous target of 30 per cent. 

It also said it cancelled the development of some EV models, because the EV market was changing. 

The Trump administration, which has favoured the oil and gas industry, has back-pedalled on prior programs supporting the proliferation of EVs, dismantling programs that kicked in during the Biden administration, which had encouraged environmentally cleaner cars and trucks. 

In 2025, Trump lowered the tariffs on automobiles and auto parts to 15 per cent from an earlier 25 per cent that he had initially announced. 

Japan promised to invest $US550 billion ($A778 billion) in US projects.

Tariffs are a major blow to Japan’s export-reliant economy, including the auto makers. 

Last week, Japan’s top auto maker Toyota Motor Corp reported a decline in recent profit, and announced that its chief financial officer, Kenta Kon, would become its new chief executive and president.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who took office in October as Japan’s first female leader, scored a landslide parliamentary election victory for the governing party at the weekend. 

That is expected to make it easier for her Liberal Democratic Party to push forward on its policies, including bolstering growth by boosting government spending, especially in technology and defence.

Honda stock jumped 2.1 per cent in Tuesday’s trading. 

The Nikkei 225 benchmark finished 2.3 per cent higher, renewing a record high for the second day straight, in a rally set off, in part, by Takaichi’s popularity.

The leader of Australia’s largest biopharmaceutical company has retired suddenly amid concerns about the company’s growth prospects and operations.

Paul McKenzie stepped down on Tuesday as chief executive and managing director of CSL, the $89 billion company announced.

“Paul and the board have determined that now is the right time for new leadership to continue to drive CSL’s strategic transformation and performance,” chairman Brian McNamee said.

Former CSL senior executive Gordon Naylor, a non-executive director of the company, has been appointed interim CEO and managing director.

He starts the role on Wednesday.

Dr McNamee paid tribute to Dr McKenzie’s contributions and commitment to CSL over the past seven years, including three as CEO.

“During his tenure, Paul guided CSL’s global operations through the challenges of COVID-19, stabilised manufacturing and supply chains and increased plasma collection volumes beyond pre-pandemic levels,” Dr McNamee said.

CSL in October downgraded its 2025/26 earnings guidance amid falling US vaccination rates and reduced demand from China for the blood protein albumin, leading to a sharp sell-off in CSL shares.

Dr McNamee expressed his frustration and disappointment at the company’s annual general meeting, adding CSL’s operations had become too complex for it to react decisively.

Dr McKenzie said the past three years had been challenging for the business but he was proud of its organisational improvements, continued investment in research and development and new vaccine facility in Melbourne.

Dr Gordon has a 33-year tenure at CSL, including as chief financial officer and president of CSL Seqirus, its flu vaccine division.

CSL shares closed Tuesday at $183.64, up 1.8 per cent from Monday but down 32.1 per cent for the past 12 months.

The leader of Australia’s largest biopharmaceutical company has retired suddenly amid concerns about the company’s growth prospects and operations.

Paul McKenzie stepped down on Tuesday as chief executive and managing director of CSL, the $89 billion company announced.

“Paul and the board have determined that now is the right time for new leadership to continue to drive CSL’s strategic transformation and performance,” chairman Brian McNamee said.

Former CSL senior executive Gordon Naylor, a non-executive director of the company, has been appointed interim CEO and managing director.

He starts the role on Wednesday.

Dr McNamee paid tribute to Dr McKenzie’s contributions and commitment to CSL over the past seven years, including three as CEO.

“During his tenure, Paul guided CSL’s global operations through the challenges of COVID-19, stabilised manufacturing and supply chains and increased plasma collection volumes beyond pre-pandemic levels,” Dr McNamee said.

CSL in October downgraded its 2025/26 earnings guidance amid falling US vaccination rates and reduced demand from China for the blood protein albumin, leading to a sharp sell-off in CSL shares.

Dr McNamee expressed his frustration and disappointment at the company’s annual general meeting, adding CSL’s operations had become too complex for it to react decisively.

Dr McKenzie said the past three years had been challenging for the business but he was proud of its organisational improvements, continued investment in research and development and new vaccine facility in Melbourne.

Dr Gordon has a 33-year tenure at CSL, including as chief financial officer and president of CSL Seqirus, its flu vaccine division.

CSL shares closed Tuesday at $183.64, up 1.8 per cent from Monday but down 32.1 per cent for the past 12 months.

Fresh figures have allayed fears of a tightening in Australia’s labour market, which should rule out the Reserve Bank returning to a major rate-hiking cycle.

Australia’s economy added an estimated 21,000 jobs in January, while wages grew by 0.8 per cent over the quarter, according to Commonwealth Bank data drawn on de-identified salary payments from about 400,000 CBA accounts.

The CBA data provides an early indicator of official Australian Bureau of Statistics figures.

While it shows the jobs market remains in a good position, the sharp fall in unemployment in official figures for December was more noise than signal, CBA economist Harry Ottley said.

ABS figures showed the jobless rate fell to 4.1 per cent in December, well below the RBA’s estimate of the natural, non-inflationary rate of unemployment.

If that was indicative of a sustained tightening trend in the labour market, the central bank could see it as evidence inflationary pressures were getting worse.

“But we’re not seeing in our data yet any evidence of a material re-tightening that was hinted at in the (ABS) labour force survey,” Mr Ottley told AAP.

“It gives us confidence that we’re still in a bit of a fine-tuning phase in terms of monetary policy, rather than a big risk of a massive (tightening) cycle.”

CBA economists expect the central bank to lift the cash rate once more in May to 4.1 per cent.

But from then, they see the bank sitting on hold, with other indicators also showing the economy finely balanced.

Consumer confidence fell further on Tuesday, with the Westpac-Melbourne Institute consumer sentiment index declining 2.6 per cent to 90.5, following the RBA’s rate hike a week prior.

Confidence levels have plummeted since November, when the index was in positive territory at 103.8, and markets were still relatively bullish about the chance of more rate cuts.

While the continuing strength of the jobs market and wages growth will support consumption, weakening sentiment, the high Australian dollar and the impact of higher interest rates should slow the economy and bring it back towards balance, Mr Ottley said.

A NAB survey released on Tuesday showed business conditions also softened, driven by declines in trading conditions and profitability, while capacity utilisation eased 0.6 percentage points.

AMP economist My Bui said the combination of data pointed to the economy in a roughly balanced position, with business and consumer sentiment softer than usual and capacity utilisation slightly tighter than historical averages.

“With the consumer sector still very price conscious, evident in their concentration of purchases in promotional periods, we think that the softer sentiment readings point to some slowing in discretionary spending ahead as well as a moderation in underlying inflation pressures,” Ms Bui said.

The world’s biggest social media companies are facing several landmark trials seeking to hold them responsible for harms to children who use their platforms.

Opening statements in one such trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court began on Monday.

Instagram’s parent company Meta and Google’s YouTube face claims that their platforms deliberately addict and harm children. TikTok and Snap, which were originally named in the lawsuit, settled for undisclosed sums. 

Jurors got their first glimpse into what will be a lengthy trial characterised by duelling narratives from the plaintiffs and the two remaining social media companies named as defendants. 

Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt spoke of the disagreement within the scientific community over social media addiction, with some believing it doesn’t exist or that addiction is not the most appropriate way to describe heavy social media use.

Mark Lanier delivered the opening statement for the plaintiffs first, in a lively display where he said the case is as “easy as ABC”, which he said stands for “addicting the brains of children”.

He called Meta and Google “two of the richest corporations in history” that have “engineered addiction in children’s brains”.

He presented jurors with a slew of internal emails, documents and studies conducted by Meta and YouTube, as well as YouTube’s parent company, Google.

He emphasised the findings of a study Meta conducted called ‘Project Myst’,in which they surveyed 1000 teens and their parents about their social media use.

The two major findings, Lanier said, were that the company knew children who experienced “adverse events” like trauma and stress were particularly vulnerable for addiction; and that parental supervision and controls made little impact.

He also showed internal Google documents that likened YouTube to a casino, and internal communication between Meta employees in which one person said Instagram is “like a drug” and that employees are “basically pushers”.

At the core of the Los Angeles case is a 20-year-old identified only by the initials “KGM”, whose case could determine how thousands of other, similar lawsuits against social media companies will play out. 

She and two other plaintiffs have been selected for bellwether trials – essentially test cases for both sides to see how their arguments play out before a jury.

Lanier spent time speaking about her childhood and particularly focused on what her personality was like before she began using social media, saying her mother called her a “creative spark” as a child. 

She started using YouTube at six and Instagram at nine and before she graduated elementary school, she had posted 284 videos on YouTube.

The outcome of the trial could have profound effects on the companies’ businesses and how they will handle children using their platforms. 

Lanier said the companies’ lawyers will “try to blame the little girl and her parents for the trap they built”, he said.

She was a minor when she said she became addicted to social media platforms, which she claims had a detrimental impact on her mental health.

Lanier said that despite the public position of Meta and YouTube being that they work to protect children and implement safeguards for their use of the platforms, their internal documents show an entirely different position, with explicit references to young children being listed as their target audiences.

Lanier also drew comparisons between the social media companies and tobacco firms, citing internal communication between Meta employees who were concerned about the company’s lack of proactive action about the potential harm their platforms can have on children and teens.

“For a teenager, social validation is survival,” Lanier said. 

The defendants “engineered a feature that caters to a minor’s craving for social validation,” he added, speaking about “like” buttons and similar features.

In his opening statement representing Meta, Schmidt said the core question in the case is whether the platforms were a substantial factor in KGM’s mental health struggles. 

He spent much of his time going through the plaintiff’s health records, emphasising that she had experienced many difficult circumstances in her childhood, including emotional abuse, body image issues and bullying.

Schmidt presented a clip from a video deposition from one of KGM’s mental health providers,  Thomas Suberman, who said social media was “not the throughline of what I recall being her main issues”, adding that her struggles seemed to largely stem from interpersonal conflicts and relationships.

Schmidt emphasised to the jurors that the case is not about whether social media is a good thing, the content seen on social media, whether teens spend too much time on their phones or whether the jurors like or dislike Meta, but whether social media was a substantial factor in KGM’s mental health struggles.

Judge Carolyn B Kuhl emphasised jurors should not make any changes to the way they interact with the platforms, including changing their settings or creating new accounts and should decide the liability of Meta and YouTube independently when they deliberate.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is refusing to heed calls to quit, even by the leader of his party ‍in Scotland, pledging to fight on after his appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador plunged his government into crisis.

Under pressure over the appointment of a man whose close ties to the late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have ​come into full focus, Starmer has attempted to change the narrative.

Starmer has told Labour MPs he had “won every fight I’ve ever been in” as he vowed not to “walk away” amid calls for him to resign.

The prime minister addressed a packed meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party in Westminster on Monday in the wake of Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar’s call for him to step down.

The new scandal over Mandelson, who was sacked as ambassador to the US in September, came after files released by the US Justice Department last month included emails suggesting Mandelson had leaked discussions on possible UK asset sales and tax changes to Epstein during the financial crash.

The resignation of communications chief Tim Allan followed the exit of Starmer’s closest aide Morgan McSweeney, who said he took responsibility for advising on the appointment of Mandelson to the United Kingdom’s top diplomatic role in the US.

But Starmer, flanked by his cabinet, struck a defiant note, telling MPs he was staying.

“After having fought so hard for the chance to change our country, I’m not prepared to walk away from my mandate and my responsibility to my country, or to plunge us into chaos as others have done,” he said.

Arguing he had changed the Crown Prosecution Service so it “better served victims of violence against women and girls” and changed the Labour Party so it could win an election.

“I have won every fight I’ve ever been in.”

Downing Street sources characterised the prime minister as “absolutely determined” as he appeared before MPs hours after Sarwar said he should quit.

But they added he acknowledged his operation had not been “open or inclusive enough”, and pledged to give more weight to the views of the Parliamentary Labour in a meeting described by MPs present as broadly positive towards Starmer.

But Sarwar, speaking in Scotland where polls suggest support for Labour has slumped since the 2024 election, said it was with a heavy heart that he had to defend Scotland and call for a change of leader in the UK capital London.

“The distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing Street has to change,” he told a press conference.

In response, a Downing Street spokesman said Starmer had “a clear five-year mandate from the British people to deliver change, and that is what he will do”.

With his statement, Sarwar became the most senior Labour figure to call for Starmer’s resignation, and did little to quell a febrile mood in parliament in London’s Westminster.

Government borrowing costs rose, reflecting investors’ concerns that a ​more progressive Labour leader, who was willing to borrow and spend more, could take over.

The climb in yields, along with ‌the value of the pound against the euro, later eased after the potential successors came out in Starmer’s support.

With Starmer losing his fourth director of communications, his record in government is under scrutiny, including the gaffes and policy U-turns that have tainted his almost two ​years in power.

“It’s painful,” said one Labour MP on condition of anonymity.

“It’s like watching a fatal car crash in slow motion.”

But Starmer received a show of support from his deputy, David Lammy, finance minister Rachel Reeves and ‍foreign minister Yvette Cooper, among others.

Angela Rayner, his former deputy who is seen as a leading leadership candidate, offered him her “full support”.

“I urge all my colleagues to come together, remember our values and put them into practice as a team. The Prime Minister has my full support in leading us to that end,” she said on X.

with Reuters