Wayne Swan wins Labor presidency – question time live

Swan will take over as ALP president from Mark Butler after counting was completed on Monday. All the day’s events, live

Turnbull loses 34th Newspoll running
Tim Storer pleads for tax relief for low paid

Bill Shorten has responded to Wayne Swan’s election as ALP president:

It’s a great pleasure to congratulate Wayne Swan on his election as President of the Australian Labor Party

Just further to the Mediscare bill, here is some of what Christian Porter had to say in that URGENT press conference:

I just wanted to make three comments about the significance of this bill. The first is that the integrity of the Australian democratic system absolutely relies on the proposition that we have a clear, statutory statement of principle that it is a criminal act to use modern mass communications to deceive Australian voters, and that’s what the Mediscare bill does today.

The second point about this is that the new offence, which will make it a criminal act for anyone to impersonate or contend that they are acting on behalf of a Commonwealth body, will apply to a very broad range of Commonwealth bodies, from Commonwealth departments like the department of attorney-general to Commonwealth corporations like the NBN, right through to critical service delivery agencies of the Commonwealth such as Medicare, Centrelink and the NDIS.

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You’re less likely to stay overnight in the hospital for abortion than wisdom teeth removal

Although state lawmakers pushing new abortion restrictions often say they’re just looking out for patients’ health, new research shows those concerns may be unjustified.

An Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) study looking at national emergency room data from 2009 to 2013 found that it’s very rare for people to visit emergency rooms for abortion-related reasons. Only 0.01 percent of all those visits by women aged 15-49 were related to abortions....

The Republicans’ Jekyll And Hyde approach to denting the opioid crisis

This week, the House has been voting on dozens of opioid bills ranging from monitoring prescriptions better to money for recovery coaches — a culmination of lawmakers’ work over the last year and a half. But as Congress works to make a dent in a drug epidemic that kills 115 people daily on average, many of these same lawmakers endorse ideas that undermine how people access addiction treatment.

So how far can piecemeal bills go when the Trump administration and Republican...