PM

The Victorian government has rejected recommendations to set up a facility that would force vulnerable children into treatment for drug addiction and mental health problems. The recommendations are contained in a report by KPMG and the Australian Childhood Foundation which has been obtained by the ABC under freedom of information laws. It concludes that while there's limited evidence that compulsory therapeutic treatment is effective, there is a place for it in Victoria as child protection agencies grapple with how to deal with increasingly troubled and traumatised young people. It comes as the Victorian government faces mounting anger over its recently announced plan to build a $250 million youth detention centre in Melbourne's west.

The RSL's National leadership and its NSW branch are negotiating terms for the entire state council to stand down. RSL NSW is currently being investigated by police, the charities watchdog, and an independent auditor over several alleged financial scandals. Among them, that former President Don Rowe claimed expenses of $475,000 between 2009 and 2014. The RSL NSW state council has agreed to step down, but only on the condition it can name the caretaker who'll replace them.

The WA Liberals preference deal with One Nation has sucked up a lot of the oxygen in Canberra today. It's incensed the Nationals, the Liberals have had to defend it and Labor has had a field day mocking it. But One Nation's leader Pauline Hanson has told the Senate Queensland Labor approached her staff for a preference deal just last month. Labor's Queensland State Secretary Evan Moorehead denies the claim, saying One Nation called him.

The Government and the Opposition have ignored calls for a truce on energy policy, and are continuing to blame each other for unreliable supply and higher prices. The Prime Minister took the opportunity in Question Time today to again point the finger at Labor governments for the country's energy problems. While Labor is pointing to new information that suggests renewable energy didn't contribute to recent blackouts. In the meantime, the Government has given an ultimatum to the Opposition and Senate crossbench on its cuts to welfare, saying that if they don't pass them it'll be those dependent on the National Disability Insurance Scheme who will suffer.

One of the key crossbenches who'll decide the fate of the Government's bill to cut billions from welfare, South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon says the Government's plan to link the savings to the National Disability Insurance Scheme is gobsmacking. He says funding for the NDIS should come from other sources, namely a modest increase to the Medicare levy or holding off company tax cuts.

An auxiliary bishop has told the child sexual abuse Royal Commission the Catholic Church probably hasn't done enough to ensure priests trained overseas are suited to work in Australia given that many of them are coming here with different attitudes to the rights of the child.

The Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane is in damage control, after a public stoush with the Queensland Government over its moves to legalise abortion. Archbishop Mark Coleridge has declined interviews, but released a video saying he was taken out of context in a report linking the issue to Nazi Germany. He's also accused the catholic Deputy Premier, Jackie Trad, of using slippery language after she rejected his offers to counsel the Government.

There's been more evidence today that the big four banks are protecting themselves against a major property downturn. Bank West, owned by the Commonwealth Bank, has decided it will no longer accept gains from negative tax breaks as part of new loan applications. At least one fund manager has told PM the banks are getting nervous about their exposure to the property market.

Bushfires in New South Wales have claimed almost 20 homes near Dunedoo in the state's central west, but the full extent of the loss to property remains unclear. Hundreds of people gathered in a sports club at the tiny hamlet of Coolah, where they were told about unprecedented stock losses.

An Indigenous politician from Arnhem Land is leading a call for child protection workers to stop taking children away from remote communities. It's been nine years since former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to the Stolen Generations, but the Arnhem Land group says the removal of children hasn't stopped. They say a legal obligation to keep Aboriginal children in their communities where possible is not being followed.