Labor’s longest-serving premier, Mike Rann, is in deep trouble in South Australia, where the ALP’s primary vote has been overtaken by the state Liberals, leaving tied after preferences. Labor’s primary vote in Queensland dropped five percentage points to 38 per cent, against 41 per cent for the newly merged Liberal National Party.

The Rudd Government has bowed to pressure from the Greens and Independent Senator Nick Xenophon and slashed the proposed income thresholds for the Medicare surcharge to $75,000 for singles, although Health Minister Nicola Roxon wants to leave the proposed new threshold for couples unchanged at $150,000.

Ms. Bishop exercised her right as deputy Liberal leader to claim the treasury prize, and becomes the first woman to hold the treasury portfolio on either side of politics. Meanwhile, the Opposition Leader has dumped Bronwyn Bishop, Jo Gash and Pat Farmer from the shadow ministry.

Kevin Rudd will use his visit to the United States to meet a variety of economic officials, which he believes will be crucial in helping Australia deal with the fallout from the US turmoil. The prime minister has come in for criticism for his decision to head off on the three-day visit when the Australian economy is on a rollercoaster of its own.

After a week of economic turmoil and his damaging remark on Monday that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” Senator McCain aggressively sought to regain his footing. Battling to distance himself from the Bush administration and blame for the economic instability, Mr. McCain also called for the firing of SEC chief Christopher Cox.

The Prime Minister will unveil a strategy to put Australia at the forefront of the technology, which captures emissions from coal-fired power plants and permanently stores them deep underground. The critical importance of carbon capture and storage to Australia’s climate change response has become increasingly evident.

Coming almost 10 months after the Labor Party was swept to power on a promise to tear up the WorkChoices laws, the Workplace Relations Minister’s speech fleshing out the details of the Rudd Government’s replacement industrial relations regime was met with anger from unions, particularly over the revised unfair-dismissal rules.

In a speech today titled ‘Introducing Australia’s New Workplace Relations System’, Julia Gillard threw down the gauntlet to the Coalition, arguing the Rudd Government had a mandate to introduce the next wave of legislation to end the previous Work Choices regime.

Mr Turnbull, 53, a former merchant banker and republican campaigner, was today elected the 12th leader of the Liberal Party. He praised Dr Nelson for leading the party through difficult and challenging times and said he was owed a debt of gratitude.

It is understood that Brendan Nelson is trying to end the damaging speculation regarding the Liberal leadership issue. However, one source predicts that treasury spokesman Malcolm Turnbull has the numbers to take the top job. Mr Turnbull only narrowly lost the leadership to Dr Nelson last year, and his supporters are now counting numbers for him.