Your morning Briefing

Welcome to your morning roundup of what’s making news and the must-reads for today.

Hello readers. Here is your two-minute digest of what’s making news today.

Federal opposition leader Bill Shorten visited Cairns to announce Labor's proposal for a Northern Australia Tourism Infrastructure fund and board, should the party win the next election. Picture: BRENDAN RADKE

Shorten showdown

Bill Shorten is facing escalating factional hostilities with senior frontbenchers now pitted against each other over the party’s national presidency, and the looming threat of four by-elections this year ­following the resignation of key ally David Feeney. Ahead of parliament resuming next week, the Opposition Leader has been tested by a worsening factional row and an impending battle with the Greens and environmental activists to retain Mr Feeney’s Melbourne seat of ­Batman. Mr Shorten also faces a showdown at the ALP national conference in July, with his own right faction moving to block Labor frontbencher Mark Butler from seeking another term as national president, following an incendiary speech he delivered on internal ­reform, which many believe was targeted at Mr Shorten. Leading left-wing figures, led by Mr Shorten’s long-time leadership rival Anthony Albanese, yesterday backed Mr Butler’s pushback against factional hostilities inside Labor.

“He is certainly correct to say that we need to give rank-and-file members more power and more influence and more say in a range of decisions.”

Anthony Albanese

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ASIO staff secure Cabinet files at the ABC.

Files returned

The ABC last night returned up to 1500 sensitive cabinet documents, following negotiations between the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and senior staff at the public broadcaster. An agreement was reached to return the files, which were being held at ABC offices in Canberra, Brisbane and ­Melbourne. The document bundles, which included classified files related to national security agencies, were returned after assur­ances were made to protect the ABC source. ASIO officers took custody of the cache, which had been left in a filing cabinet, at about 9.30pm.

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New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at a meeting for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) during an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Danang, Vietnam, Friday, November 10, 2017. (AAP Image/POOL/Mick Tsikas) NO ARCHIVING

Ardern assessed

You have to hand it to Jacinda Ardern. When she marks her 100th day in office tomorrow she could say without fear of contradiction that New Zealand has never before had a prime minister quite like her, writes Jamie Walker. The toothy 37-year-old has come so far so fast, it’s easy to forget where she was six months ago: deputy to the leader of a down-and-out Labour opposition that was on track to notch up a fourth successive election defeat at the hands of a confident and successful conservative prime minister. Ardern defied the opinion polls — her party was on a disastrous 24 per cent when she stepped up to the plate last August — as well as the pundits who predicted Labour had finished too far behind the governing National Party to stand a chance in the horsetrading that followed the inconclusive election result on September 23. But here she is, heading an ­unlikely and seemingly unwieldy alliance between Labour and two minor parties that loathe each other, the unabashed populists of Winston Peters’s New Zealand First and the Greens.

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This image provided by NASA shows an artist's depiction showing a discovery by NASA's Kepler mission of a world where two suns set over the horizon instead of just one. The planet, called Kepler-16b, is the most |Tatooine-like| planet yet found in our galaxy and is depicted here with its two stars. Tatooine is the name of Luke Skywalker's home world in the science fiction movie Star Wars. In this case, the planet it not thought to be habitable. It is a cold world, with a gaseous surface, but like Tatooine, it circles two stars. The largest of the two stars, a K dwarf, is about 69 percent the mass of our sun, and the smallest, a red dwarf, is about 20 percent the sun's mass. (AP photo/NASA)

New creation

A Canberra astronomical discovery threatens to challenge the accepted theory of how the universe formed. The discovery of an unexpectedly well-behaved troupe of dwarf galaxies threatens to torpedo the dominant theory of the history of the universe. An international astronomy team has found that mini-galaxies orbiting the full-blown galaxy Centaurus A, about 13 million light years away, are rotating in an ordered way in a disc-shaped plane around their parent galaxy. The discovery, reported this morning in the journal Science, conflicts with the standard model of cosmology — a theory that has stood largely unchallenged for two decades and posits, among other things, that about one-fifth of the universe is composed of dark matter.

“It seems our Milky Way and Andromeda are normal galaxies after all. Spinning pancake-like systems of satellite galaxies are more common than scientists expected.”

Helmut Jerjen, ANU

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(FILES) This file photo taken on June 17, 2014 shows bitcoin medals in Washington, DC. US prosecutors have charged a New York woman with using Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies to send funds to the Islamic State group. Zoobia Shahnaz, 27, was arrested at her Long Island home on December 14, 2017 for sending over $150,000 through shell accounts in China, Pakistan and Turkey to benefit IS extremists. / AFP PHOTO / KAREN BLEIER

Bitcoin tax

The Turnbull government is investigating how it could tax digital currencies like bitcoin, as regulators around the world attempt to clamp down on the nascent technology. Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar, speaking at a financial services briefing on Wednesday night, confirmed he was working through options with Treasury and the Australian Taxation ­Office.

“I have been informally working with people in Treasury and the ATO about how we characterise and potentially tax and treat cryptocurrencies.”

Michael Sukkar

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Supplied photo of Mark Robson, Ultra Marathon Runner from Perth.

Alleged cheat to swim

An alleged serial cheat who was banned from all Australian ultra-marathon events for taking shortcuts during a race two weeks ago will be allowed to take part in this month’s Rottnest Channel Swim, one of the world’s toughest open-water events. Organisers of the high-profile Rottnest race have rejected calls for Perth-based finance broker Mark Robson, 46, to be thrown out of the 20km race despite revelations he cheated in the 100km Australia Day Ultra on January 19. Mr Robson, who is coached by Australian long-distance swimming legend Shelley Taylor-Smith, has entered this year’s Rottnest event as a solo swimmer rather than as part of a team.

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Kudelka’s view

Jon Kudelka Letters Cartoon for 02-02-2018Version: (650x366)COPYRIGHT: The Australian's artists each have different copyright agreements in place regarding re-use of their work in other publications.Please seek advice from the artists themselves or the Managing Editor of The Australian regarding re-use.