Water crisis meeting in regional New South Wales as the drought bites hard at dam storage levels. And mixed views from regional Queensland about what voters in marginal seats want.

Review of farmer welfare scheme recommends separating it from Centrelink. A podcast prompts women to come forward with allegations of sexual abuse at a regional high school.

Irrigators in New South Wales are pursuing a class action against the Murray Darling Basin Authority over alleged water mismanagement. Chemical company Monsanto has been ordered to pay $US2 billion to a couple who contracted cancer after using the weed killer Roundup. President of the National Farmers Federation Fiona Simson said glyphosate had been through a rigorous approval process in Australia.

Social service providers are working hard to push for a commitment to increase the Newstart allowance. Labor has left some wriggle room, promising to revise the rate, but the Coalition says it’s fine as it is. And we head to the seaside town of Batemans Bay in New South Wales where the unemployment rate there is at 14.9 percent, nearly three times the national average.

Rural families are spending months away from home in order to get treatment for seriously ill children and a town in South Australia divided over a coal gasification project.

The Prime Minister Scott Morrison spends the day in the marginal seat of Cowper to bolster the chances of the National Party retaining the seat, while the electoral commission undertakes the logistical challenge of gathering votes from the remote Ngaanyatjarra Lands.

Middle-aged men living outside major cities are Australia's heaviest drinkers. That's what a national study has found. Dr Hestor Wilson says how much people drink is really weighing on people's minds, but many don't understand what risky drinking is. And what it is like living on the Basics Card that was introduced as part of the Howard Government’s intervention in the Northern Territory.

Australian voters are pretty evenly split on the issue of immigration. Views differ over whether there should be more, less or stay the same. We head to the diverse regional town of Shepparton. And farmers gear up to travel long distances to vote as some bush polling booths close in regional Australia.

Early remote polling starts today across the country. We hear what matters to the people in the seat of Durack. And posters belonging to the Labor candidate for O’Connor in Western Australia have been defaced. A burka, the garment traditionally worn by Muslim women, has been drawn over Shelley Payne’s posters. She says multiple posters have had to be replaced and that “racism is an issue” in her community.

Voters' distrust of politics is at the highest levels since the 1960s. That's according to successive political surveys since then. Dr Ian McAllister says in the bush this could translate to more people voting for minor parties and independents. And we hear from older voters, who make up a quarter of all eligible Australian voters.