Goodbye, my friends. That’s all I have time for you today. I’ll be back bright and early tomorrow morning for more politics fun.

You can look back on today’s developments below, or download the ABC News app and subscribe to our range of news alerts for the latest updates.

If you’re keen to stay around in ABC blog land, my friends over at the business team are going full steam ahead before the Reserve Bank’s interest rate decision at 2.30pm.

The Productivity Commission says Australia will benefit from Donald Trump’s trade tariffs because some global capital flows will be redirected towards Australia.

It says Australia should also keep lowering trade tariffs, especially “nuisance tariffs” that cost more to enforce than they generate in revenue.

Read more from ABC’s business editor Michael Janda and business reporter Gareth Hutchens.

Children are being exposed to childcare staff who lack basic training in first aid, child protection or hygiene practices.

In some cases these failures have resulted in serious injury and presented “suffocation risks”, documents have revealed.

Experts say the failures are driven by substandard training, lax and poorly resourced regulation, and the rapid expansion of private operators cutting corners to protect their bottom line.

These failures are part of a deepening childcare crisis in Australia.

The revelations follow an ABC investigation that uncovered how thousands of students are enrolling in fast-tracked childcare courses, some buying fake qualifications, others using the sector as a pathway to permanent residency.

Convictions for sexual assault remain incredibly low in Australia. The Australian Law Reform Commission was tasked with looking at why, and released its final report containing 64 recommendations earlier this year.

One of the biggest barriers to reporting sexual assault is stigma. Lily Steele-Park knows this all too well. Lily was in her first year of university when she was raped by a man known to her friends.

She started feeling isolated from her friends, who sided with the perpetrator, and her mental health deteriorated. But despite the barriers, Lily took her rapist to court and won. Just 7 per cent of reported rapes and sexual assaults result in a conviction in New South Wales, according to the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, making Lily’s story very rare.

You can read more about Lily’s story and what the justice system needs to do to support victim-survivors at the link below.

And if you or someone you know needs support, help is available through 1800 RESPECT on 1800 737 732.

It must be a force of habit for the opposition leader, whose talking points have had a cost-of-living theme for so long that they’re a little past their use-by date.

Asked today about the prospect of an RBA rate cut, her answer:

“I hope for the community that interest rates go down. And I would certainly say to the banks, please pass these interest rate cuts on in full as soon as possible, because inflation is still high, costs are still rising, and families are still struggling with the cost of living.”

Inflation still high? On the latest monthly figures, it is 2.1 per cent, which is on the lower end of the RBA’s 2-3 per cent target and below its preferred “mid-point” of 2.5 per cent.

Underlying inflation, the other common measure, is 2.4 per cent.

None of those numbers, to be clear, are “high”.

Ley is right to say that costs are still rising, of course. That’s the case whenever inflation is positive.

But a reminder: the RBA doesn’t aim for 2-3 because “near enough is good enough” and it certainly does not think that inflation of 0 (or prices falling) is a good thing.

It’s called deflation, and in fact, it’s a disaster. When prices continuously fall, it has a chilling effect on spending as people wait for lower and lower prices — a very nasty spiral associated with recessions.

2-3 is considered the healthy range where price growth is predictable, but there’s a buffer zone from the dreaded land of zero.

Mining giant BHP has been defeated in a landmark test of the federal government’s “same job, same pay” laws and ordered to pay 2,200 of its Central Queensland coal miners an average of $30,000 more.

Labour hire workers at BHP’s Saraji, Peak Downs and Goonyella Riverside mines will now receive the same wages as their directly employed peers.

It is the largest ruling relating to the coal mining sector since the Albanese government’s “same job, same pay” laws came into effect last year.

The laws require labour hires to be offered the same pay and conditions as full-time employees when doing the same work.

Continue reading the story at the link below.

Amid ongoing global uncertainty France is looking to further enhance co-operation with Australia in the Indo-Pacific with a sharp focus on security and climate action.

France’s ambassador to Australia, Pierre-André Imbert, spoke to ABC’s Radio National this morning.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley is in Melbourne visiting the synagogue targeted in an arson attack on Friday.

Twenty people were forced to flee the East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation after a man allegedly poured flammable liquid on the front door and set it on fire during a Shabbat meal.

Standing on the steps of the synagogue, Ley urged the prime minister to consider holding a national cabinet to address antisemitism.

“It is a good suggestion. There are issues around this which require the policing authorities across the different states to come together, so we don’t have failures of laws
and law enforcement,” she said.

“The prime minister should be looking at national cabinets on a regular basis, yes.”

Ley reaffirmed the Liberals support for the Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s 15-point action plan on antisemitism.

The PM says he’ll visit three cities – Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu – when he travels to China soon for high level annual talks.

The government has been quietly planning the trip for weeks, but Anthony Albanese confirmed it publicly after reporters asked him about a push from China’s ambassador to update the free trade agreement between the two countries.

The PM says he’ll focus on expanding the economic relationship during the visit, stressing that he wants to create new job opportunities for Australians.

But he’s responded cooly to the ambassador’s suggestion that the 2014 free trade agreement could be expanded to encourage cooperation in slightly more contested fields, like artificial intelligence.

“My priority is jobs. We have a free trade agreement with China” Albanese said, simply.

That’s not a “no” — but it doesn’t suggest the PM has a great appetite for the idea either.

Anthony Albanese says he’s not giving up on negotiating for a removal of the Trump administration’s baseline 10 per cent tariff.

But the prime minister was quick to remind reporters in Hobart that Australia had a better deal than most.

“No country has a better deal than Australia,” he said.

“We’ll continue to put our case that tariffs are an act of economic self-harm and that we should be entitled to reciprocal tariffs, which is zero.

“We’ll continue to put that case. But the US administration has a view that
they’re engaged with other countries on as well.

“It varies, the tariff, from country to country. But no country has secured an exemption from the US administration.”

Anthony Albanese has brushed off a call for a national cabinet to be convened to tackle antisemitism, saying “people want action”, not a meeting.

It comes after 20 people were forced to flee the East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation after a man allegedly poured flammable liquid on the front door and set it on fire during a Shabbat meal.

“Antisemitism is a scourge, it has no place in Australia, and what we saw in Melbourne with the attacks that occurred are reprehensible, deserve condemnation, and the gentleman concerned the system should face the full force of the law,” the PM said. 

He added part of the reason why the alleged perpetrator was caught so quickly was in part due to the federal government’s action.

“CCTV that was in place there was as a direct result of commonwealth government funding, in addition to that the reinforcement of the door of the synagogue was done with that Commonwealth security funding,” the PM said.

Albanese says the government will “continue to engage constructively with the community to make sure that they get the support that they need”.

The prime minister says he’s been working with special envoy for antisemitism, Jillian Segal, and will have “more to say” in coming days.

Prop alert! Anthony Albanese has whipped out his Medicare card as he gives his preamble reminding Tasmanian voters of Labor’s record on health.

The PM uses it as an opportunity to remind voters it was in Tasmania where he launched the $8.5 billion plan to triple the bulk billing incentive for GPs.

State Labor leader Dean Winter and his health spokesperson Ella Haddad are also in tow, promoting their “TassieDoc plan” to open five new fully bulk-billed doctors’ clinics across the state.

Anthony Albanese is in Hobart this morning, where he’s visiting a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic alongside state opposition leader Dean Winter. 

It’s the prime minister’s second visit to the Apple Isle during the state election campaign.

For those longtime election watchers, it’s probably no surprise Albanese is popping up at a urgent care clinic. They featured prominently during the PM’s re-election bid.

Alex Robson, deputy chair of the Productivity Commission, argues the best way for Australia to respond is to do the exact opposite and “eliminate all of its remaining tariffs”.

“That makes us much better off,” he told ABC Radio National Breakfast. 

The government last year abolished just under 460 “so-called nuisance tariffs where the compliance costs outweighed the revenue it collected.

“Currently 90 per cent of imports into Australia are tariff free and the remaining have about a 5 per cent tariff imposed on them,” he said.

“They raise revenue of about $2 billion, but the compliance costs are up to $4 billion. So they’re not protecting any industries, they’re not raising much revenue relative to the costs that they’re imposing.”

Robson says the PC has identified another 315 that could be removed.

“There’s 315 of them where the compliance cost is more than 10 times the revenue that is raised and those would be the most urgent to remove,” he said.

Australia’s Productivity Commission has warned the government not to retaliate to Donald Trump’s tariff regime, saying the situation could even have a “small, positive” effect on our economy.

Speaking with ABC Radio National Breakfast, deputy chair Alex Robson said the US stands to lose the most from its own tariffs.

“There’s capital outflow from the United States. That’s got to go somewhere. It comes to Australia, as well as other countries, and the overall impact on us in the long run,” he said.

“That capital inflow increases our production and is actually good for [gross domestic product].”

The PC’s modelling was included as part of its annual trade and assistance review.

The US president has set a 25 cent import tariff on all goods from Japan and South Korea for next month. Australia received the 10 per cent baseline tariff by Trump back in April.

“The ideal scenario would be if Australia didn’t have those tariffs imposed on us, given what’s going on in the rest of the world. But what we’re saying here is in the aggregate, it’s not all bad news,” he said.

Kerrynne Liddle was also asked if she’d be supportive of gender quotas to boost the number of Liberal women elected to parliament.

The shadow minister said she supported “terrific women” getting into parliament “regardless of the party”.

“I’ll be doing, as well as our leader … Sussan Ley, everything possible to ensure that we have more women not just pre-selected but more women elected to parliament,” she told ABC Radio National Breakfast. 

So does she support quotas as a way to do that?

“I want to see the very best people in parliament, and I think there are plenty of women out there who should nominate through our processes and can get into parliament.

“I did.”

Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this blog post contains the name of an Indigenous person who has died, used with the permission of their family. 

The long-running inquest into the fatal police shooting of Kumanjayi Walker has ended with the Northern Territory coroner concluding the 2019 death of the teenager was avoidable and at the hands of a quote racist constable.

Coroner Elisabeth Armitage made 32 formal recommendations for change in her 683-page report.  Shadow Indigenous Australians Minister Kerrynne Liddle says there are some that can be acted on “relatively quickly”.

“But certainly I know that, and I’ve asked this question the Commonwealth have in the last few years, given a significant amount of money to the Northern Territory police force through the Northern Territory government. And they need to also ask, how are you actually deploying that money and what’s the prioritisation of the deployment of that money” she told ABC’s Radio National Breakfast.

Liddle says she wants the Commonwealth’s role to be ‘clear” to make sure the government is funding programs for Indigenous Australians that “ensures better outcomes for people” and that services are delivered effectively.

“We have to focus on the Commonwealth’s role in funding the things that provide the drivers and the support the drivers and the protective factors for people,” she said.

A leading Australian fertility lawyer is urging governments to regulate the “wild west” of online semen donation, accusing them of being “asleep at the wheel” as women continue to turn to websites and apps to seek donors.

Stephen Page is calling on health ministers to look at regulating the space as part of the three-month rapid review of the nation’s fertility sector that was sparked by the second Monash IVF mix-up.

“There’s no regulation, you can set up a website, you can set up an app and bang the drum and get men coming along saying that they will be donors, either by AI (artificial insemination), or NI (natural insemination, or what we used to call sex),” he said.

“Basically, it’s the wild west.”

You can read the full story by Kate McKenna and Janelle Miles at the link below.

Shadow Finance Minister James Paterson was also out and about this morning, where he reiterated the opposition’s claim Anthony Albanese did not put Australia in the best position to secure a tariff exemption.

“The only fair tariff on Australia would be 0 per cent and I hope that’s what we get,” he told Nine.

“But we haven’t given ourselves the best chance of securing that from the Trump administration, because the prime minister has not even met President Trump.

“Now, seven months after he was elected. In stark contrast to other world leaders like the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who did secure an exemption from steel and aluminium tariffs for the UK because of the personal relationship that he formed with President Trump.

“I really hope the prime minister doesn’t leave it any longer before he forms that relationship and argues for the best case possible for our country.”

Australia was hit initially with the 10 per cent tariff on all exports to the US as part of Donald Trump’s so-called Liberation Day back in April.

We weren’t singled out. That 10 per cent rate is effectively a baseline rate that the Trump administration imposed on all nations.

So what does the Albanese government make of the latest in the Trump tariff saga?

“Nothing has changed for Australia,” Workplace Relations Minister Amanda Rishworth told Nine this morning.

“Some of the letters that you’ve seen overnight are suggesting reciprocal tariffs of 25 per cent. We are already at the lowest level.

“But of course we will keep putting forward the case to say that we don’t think any tariffs are justified. And we’ll take every opportunity to do that.”

Because Australia was only hit with the baseline 10 per cent rate, the government didn’t receive a letter to negotiate with the Trump administration. The White House has its focus on securing deals with countries it slapped a higher tariff on.

Australia’s argument is that we already have a free trade deal agreement with the United States (which it ratified into law back in the George W Bush era).