As it happened: Anthony Albanese back in Australia as Penny Wong jets off to Fiji; Peter Dutton to run unopposed for Liberal leadership

Here’s the major headlines from today.

• Foreign Minister Wong pledged Fiji development support, a new family visa option, climate resilient infrastructure and warned Pacific leaders a deal with Beijing could sacrifice their independence.
• Meanwhile, China’s foreign minister arrived in the Pacific on a ten country charm offensive offering new deals on security and a potential free trade zone.
• Peter Dutton says a Voldemort jibe from Labor’s Tanya Plibersek is ‘water off a duck’s back’
• Marise Payne was warned flight caps would strand thousands of Australians overseas during the COVID-19 border closures.
• The Liberal party will review its loss of seats to teals, NSW pre-selection mess.

• A decision on the Biloela family case is set to be announced tomorrow.

Thanks for reading our live coverage, we’ll be back tomorrow morning with more. Until then, have a jolly good evening.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Perth radio this afternoon there will be a decision tomorrow on the Biloela family.

He said the decision by interim Home Affairs Minister Jim Chalmers “will be made tomorrow and there’ll be a further announcement there.”

“In 2019, I said that the case was very clear. I went to Biloela, I met with the community there, this is a community that wants this family home,” he said.

“Nade’s worked at the local meatworks, a meatworker there imports temporary workers.. Priya worked at the local St Vincent de Paul.

“We are a strong enough society to say that we should not treat people badly to send a message to others. This has gone on at enormous cost - 10s of millions of dollars.

“We’re better than that, Australia is a more generous and kind country than that.”

Women are giving birth in emergency departments and new mothers are prematurely discharging themselves from hospital, as a worsening shortage of midwives hampers access to maternity ward beds.

Labour inductions are being delayed each day at major Melbourne hospitals, along with routine pregnancy check-ups, amid warnings that legislated midwife ratios – two midwives for every three birthing suites – are not being met.

“It’s like ambulance ramping, the hospital can’t actually move [the mothers],” said Liz Wilkes, who heads private midwife service My Midwives.

Wilkes said several of her clients had been forced to give birth in emergency departments as if they were “car crash” victims, while others were being prematurely “shunted out the door”.

“Mothers are discharging themselves from the birth suite because they’re going ‘oh well, we haven’t actually got a bed to go to on the maternity ward, so we’ll just go home’.”

Read more here.

Fewer than 100,000 people across Sydney are out of work and looking for a job as the nation’s tight employment market increases pressure on businesses already anticipating further price rises to deal with growing inflation.

As new figures pointed to a lift in business spending on capital works, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics highlighted the strength of the jobs market, although it is yet to translate into high pay rises for staff.

Across the Greater Sydney region, the bureau estimates there were 97,000 unemployed people in April, with almost 3 million holding down work. A year earlier, there were almost 180,000 people considered unemployed. It’s the lowest number of unemployed – considered those actively seeking a job – across Sydney since 2010, when there were 500,000 fewer people in the jobs market.

Read more here.