Australia news live: McCarthy welcomes ‘milestone’ as one Closing the Gap target reached; three dead in Sydney house fire

Early childhood education enrolment for First Nations children reaches 95% across the country. Follow updates live Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Finance minister says inflation figures ‘encouraging’, but ‘uncertain times’ will likely have ongoing impact on economy Katy Gallagher, the federal minister for finance, said yesterday’s inflation numbers were “encouraging”, but the country still had a “job ahead of us”. I think we are living in very uncertain times. There’s a lot of global instability. … We saw it the last time the Middle East war increased. We saw that impact on inflation … We will see some of what’s happened in the last month flow through [into the economy]. Continue reading...