PM

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and her Senate colleague Rod Culleton insist things are 'fine' between them after a long-delayed meeting this afternoon. A police investigation into Senator Culleton sparked the latest round of tension, but Senator Hanson says she's been 'assured' his legal situation is 'under control'.

The Australian Government is describing the threat posed by online crime and cyber espionage as 'cyber storms'. The phrase was used by Dan Tehan, the Minister assisting the Prime Minister for Cyber Security, at the National Press Club. The Government has also revealed for the first time that Australia is engaging in cyber warfare against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

A government department in Victoria is under pressure to improve access to its collection of childhood health records for former wards of the state. Survivors of institutional abuse say the Department of Health and Human Services has denied them full access to their records, with heavy redactions made to the documents they request.

The union movement has added its voice to the campaign against the West Australian Nationals' proposed mining tax. The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union fears the plan risks jobs and could lead to pay cuts for workers. It comes as the former Queensland premier Campbell Newman warns the tax poses a significant sovereign risk.

A whistleblower has filmed more than 170 hours of vision inside Riverside Meats Abattoir in Echuca, showing workers mistreating animals. Victoria's Chief Vet says it's the worst case he's seen in his career.

A budget monitor report released by Deloitte Access Economics has warned that the upturn in natural resources prices will not be sufficient to avoid a $34 billion blow-out in budget forecasts, pointing to low jobs growth and sluggish wage rates. The Treasurer, Scott Morrison, refused today to commit himself to the Government's timetable for a return to surplus, effectively lending credence to the report's findings. Today's parliamentary session was overshadowed by a series of bitter personal attacks, as a wave of anti-elitist rhetoric swept through the House.

Farmers say their fruit will soon be rotting on the ground if politicians in Canberra don't come to a consensus on the backpacker tax. From next year backpackers' pay will be taxed at a rate of 32.5 per cent. Farmers say it's far too high and will drive away backpackers who come to Australia to pick fruit. The Government says they'll be happy to lower that rate to 19 cents, but Labor and some key crossbenchers want it lower still. The political stalemate is frustrating farmers who want to make sure there will be a workforce to pick their fruit. Some farmers are starting to panic as the deadline for a solution draws closer.

The National Farmers Federation is urging Labor to accept the Government's proposed 19.5 per cent tax rate for backpackers. But the Opposition spokesman for agriculture, Joel Fitzgibbon, says farmers have told him that the rate is too high; and that Labor is committed to a rate of 10.5 per cent. He says that, if the Government wants to negotiate, they'll have to come to him - not the other way around.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has suggested that too many Lebanese Muslims were allowed to resettle in Australia in the 1970s. Last week Mr Dutton said the former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser made a 'mistake' with Australia's large refugee intake when he was in office. Today the Minister was pressed by the Opposition on whom he was referring to specifically. The Minister pointed out that most of the Australians charged with terror-related offences have been second- and third-generation migrants with Lebanese Muslim backgrounds.

Former residents of a church-run home for Indigenous Stolen Generation children in the Northern Territory have moved a step closer to becoming the first group to gain compensation from the Federal Government, after giving evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The former residents of Darwin's Retta Dixon Home launched a class action in the Northern Territory Supreme Court last year to try to gain redress for years of horrific sexual and physical abuse. The case has now been put on hold because the Commonwealth has agreed to enter into mediation.