Peter Dutton appears to be kicking with the wind behind his back, with multiple opinion polls showing the Albanese government could be on the nose with voters as an election nears.
The local share market has hit a new record for a third day this week, despite double-digit losses for Cochlear and AMP following disappointing earnings results.
A late rally has carried the local share market into uncharted territory after Commonwealth Bank, Suncorp, AGL and Computershare all delivered better-than-expected first-half earnings.
Wall Street held relatively firm overnight following president Donald Trump's latest tariff escalation and after the Federal Reserve hinted interest rates may not change for a while.
All three US stock indexes closed lower on Friday after President Donald Trump said he plans to announce reciprocal tariffs on many countries next week, following weak jobs and consumer sentiment data.
Wall Street drifted higher overnight as gains for most stocks outweighed drops for Alphabet and some other big-name companies following their latest profit reports.
Calm returned to Wall Street overnight, and tech stocks led US indexes higher following a strong profit report from Palantir Technologies, a darling benefiting from the artificial-intelligence boom.
Billions of dollars have been wiped from the Australian share market as it plunged to its worst loss in four months and the dollar fell to a near five-year low.
Australia is leaning on its strong ties to the United States and a trade surplus to keep out of Donald Trump's firing line as he imposes tariffs on allies.
