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.

ASIO agents raid the ABC office.

Filing cabinet Cabinet files

ASIO agents have raided ABC offices in Canberra and Brisbane this morning to secure thousands of top secret and classified Cabinet files left inside two filing cabinets sold at a second-hand shop. The ABC is reporting that ASIO officers arrived at the broadcaster’s Parliament House Bureau and South Bank studios in Brisbane around 1am to secure the hundreds of cabinet documents detailing policy decisions of five governments dating back to John Howard. The raid came hours after the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet launched an urgent investigation into the highly sensitive cabinet documents that were discovered in the two old filing cabinets bought at a second-hand shop in Canberra.

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President Donald Trump delivers his first State of the Union address in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol to a joint session of Congress Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018 in Washington. (Win McNamee/Pool via AP)

Trump’s tub thump

Donald Trump has declared a new “American moment” of prosperity and opportunity is upon the US, in an upbeat and unifying State of the Union address, his first as US President. Mr Trump said a strong economy and tax cuts were bringing the American dream back to life for workers, those he once dubbed “the forgotten people”. “This is our new American ­moment,” Mr Trump told a packed US congress yesterday. Now that Trump has appeared presidential and statesmanlike, asks Greg Sheridan, will his critics give him the benefit of the doubt? David Rogers writes that markets enjoyed a Trump bump, with the ASX recovering from below 6000 as the US President fuelled optimism, while inflation data cut rate hike prospects.

“There has never been a better time to live the American dream. Together we are rediscovering the American way … no matter where you have been or where you come from, this is your time.”

Donald Trump

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Al Gore giving his updated presentation in Houston, TX in An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power from Paramount Pictures and Participant Media.

Inconvenient spoof

Al Gore’s vision of a dangerous ­climate “tipping point”, foreshadowed in his 2007 book Assault on Reason, has failed to materialise, according to a top American business professor who a decade ago challenged the former US vice- president to bet on how global ­ave­rage temperature would change. Mr Gore’s staff said he did not take bets, but a decade on Scott Armstrong, a business professor at the Wharton Business School, has concluded that global temperature deviations since 2007 had easily fallen within the natural level of variation, and “no change” was the most accurate way to describe global weather patterns over the past decade.

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30/8/17 City Holden dealer principal Julian Newton with Marketing Manager Jess O'Callaghan at City Holden in Grenfell Street. Picture by Matt Turner.

Dealerships ‘doomed’

Electric vehicles will sound the death knell for half of all car dealerships as they lose vital revenue from servicing internal combustion engines, an industry survey by KPMG says. With EVs capable of going 100,000km without maintenance, it said dealerships that survived would have to evolve into “experience hubs” akin to Apple stores, where buyers could sample products and immerse themselves in a brand. The KPMG annual survey of 900 car industry executives worldwide highlights changes to retailing as one of the key fallouts from the rise of EVs.

“The majority believed that over 50 per cent of bricks and mortar dealerships would close by 2025.”

KPMG survey

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13/02/2016: Generic picture of Commonwealth Bank branch, Sydney. Hollie Adams/The Australian

Treasury eyes CBA

US anti-money-laundering agency FinCEN has in the past two years received hundreds of pages of reports about Commonwealth Bank under laws designed in part to protect against international terrorism, The Australian can ­reveal. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which is part of the US Department of the Treasury, has denied The Australian access to 511 pages of documents following a request under freedom of information laws for records relating to breaches and violations of anti-money-laundering and counter-terror finance rules involving CBA since the beginning of 2016.

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Bernard Tomic of Australia reacts against Lorenzo Sonego of Italy during qualifying round 3 for the Australian Open tennis tournament, Sunday, January 14, 2018. (AAP Image/Julian Smith) NO ARCHIVING, EDITORIAL USE ONLY

Tomic’s pot shot

Australia’s former No.1 player ­Bernard Tomic has accused Tennis Australia of being corrupt and vowed to turn his career around and “prove everyone wrong’’ in a display of bravado after he left the reality television show I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here. He expressed his desire to play Davis Cup again and dismissed Davis Cup captain Lleyton ­Hewitt’s assertion that it was “highly doubtful’’ that Tomic would play for Australia again.

“I don’t care what Lleyton said, I never lost to him. They know they can’t win without me and I know they can’t win without me so it’s a tough situation but I wish them luck and success with the coming tie.”

Bernard Tomic

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Kudelka’s view

Jon Kudelka Letters page cartoon for 01-02-2018Version: (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.