Your noon Briefing

Welcome to your noon digest of what’s been making news and what to watch for.

Hello readers. Here is your noon round-up of today’s top stories so far and a long read for lunchtime.

Job PD900844: One Nation Senators, Pauline Hanson with NSW senator Brian Burston and WA Senator Peter Georgiou in the Senate chamber in Parliament House in Canberra. Picture Gary Ramage

Perils of Pauline

One Nation senator Brian Burston says he wants to remain in Pauline Hanson’s party as former Labor leader Mark Latham refuses to deny the party approached him to run on its NSW Senate ticket. Senator Burston said he believed Senator Hanson would “have more sense” than to expel him from One Nation, saying he still considers her a friend and the company tax stoush was their first argument in 22 years.

Peter Van Onselen, meantime, suggests One Nation isn’t a party of conviction. It’s a personality cult built around Pauline Hanson who stands for nothing except division.

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Australian notes and coins are seen in Adelaide, Monday, April 16, 2018. (AAP Image/Morgan Sette) NO ARCHIVING

Minimum wage to rise

The Fair Work Commission has awarded a $24.30-a-week increase in the minimum wage in its annual review. The weekly minimum wage will rise by 3.5 per cent to $719.20. The new hourly rate is $18.93.The commission rejected the ACTU claims for a record $50-a-week pay rise finding granting the claim would have adverse employment effects.

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Flying over the suburbs of Melbourne; australian housing generic, real estate

Melbourne slumps

Melbourne’s housing market has recorded its worst quarterly result in more than six years with prices falling 1.2 per cent for the three months to the end of May, helping to drag national housing values down 0.3 per cent for the period, according to researcher CoreLogic. Melbourne’s housing prices dropped 0.5 per cent for the month outstripping Sydney’s 0.2 per cent fall in May.

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EM9FJ0 Prescot.Merseyside. Town Centre Photos March 2015.Prescot is a town and civil parish within the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley in Merseyside, England. Historically part of Lancashire, it lies approximately eight miles to the east of Liverpool city centre

Northern exposure

Prescot may not have the dazzle, allure and prestige of New York but, when it comes to defending its honour, residents of the Merseyside town can more than hold their own against the Americans. They have hit back after a front-page article in The New York Times on Monday which used it as a case study for the state of the nation. Peter Goodman, the newspaper’s European economic correspondent, wrote: “A walk through this modest town amounts to a tour of the casualties of Britain’s age of austerity.”

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Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China Li Keqiang (left) and Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at a signing ceremony in Canberra, Friday, March 24, 2017. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas) NO ARCHIVING

The long read: Weathering the big chill

When Malcolm Turnbull and ­Chi­nese Premier Li Keqiang shook hands last year on a $500 million deal to allow Australian chilled beef into China, it was ­described as “an absolute game-changer”. Six months later, the deal is on ice as debate simmers over Chinese influence in Australia, leaving government and business wildly at odds over the relationship with Beijing.

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Comment of the day

“The trouble for Pauline Hanson is that she is not a leader but a brand, and it follows that One Nation senators are franchises that use her brand to support their own causes.”

Peter, in response to ‘He stabbed me in the back’.