BoM warns of ‘classic fire spike day’ for Victoria – as it happened

We’ll leave our live coverage of today’s news there. Thanks for reading. Here are the day’s top stories:

Woman’s death in Melbourne’s east investigated by homicide squad

A woman’s death this morning in Melbourne’s east is being investigated by homicide squad detectives.

Victoria police said officers found the woman dead after 11am today at a property on Mountain Highway in Bayswater.

A 39-year-old local man, believed to be known to the woman, was arrested nearby at about 11.40am, police said.

Homicide squad detectives were investigating and the man was expected to be interviewed this afternoon, police said.

Labor rejects Liberal proposed migration and budget cuts

A Labor minister has rejected Liberal proposals for budget and migration cuts, saying one proposal could dismantle Australia’s humanitarian migration program.

Under Sussan Ley’s leadership, the Liberal party was considering proposing blacklisting specific countries and regions from the migration program. You can read more here:

Andrew Leigh, the assistant minister for competition, has said such a proposal would “effectively dismantle” Australia’s humanitarian immigration program.

Leigh told the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing that cuts could also cost the country’s skilled migrant intake. The government had no plans to change its 185,000-person target for annual permanent migration, he said.

The government has also rejected Angus Taylor’s offer for a bipartisan budget review to rein in government spending, with Leigh saying the new opposition leader “doesn’t bring anything to the table of credibility”.

South Australian police plan to continue searching the area around missing four-year-old Gus Lamont’s home on Tuesday.

Police said they had concluded today’s renewed search for evidence at Oak Park Station, Lamont’s home, and expected to remain in the area tomorrow.

On 5 February, police declared his September disappearance a major crime and alleged someone who lived with Lamont was a suspect.

Police also today arrested a 75-year-old and charged them with firearms offences. Those charges related to a previous police search at Oak Park Station but were not connected to Lamont’s disappearance, nor to a separate incident involving media attending the site in October, police said.

The 75-year-old has been bailed to appear in the Peterborough magistrates court on 6 May.

Former NSW Liberal leader calls for gender quotas

The first woman to lead the NSW Liberals has called for the party to introduce quotas for gender representation after Sussan Ley was replaced as federal leader.

Kerry Chikarovski, a former state parliament Liberal leader, said she had dropped her opposition to quotas because of the party’s historic failure to nominate women in winnable seats. She told the ABC:

[It’s] time to actually step back, look at where you are, has that worked? And the answer is no. So do something different and introduce quotas.

A leading advocate for greater representation of women in the party, Charlotte Mortlock, gave up her membership after the NSW division last week abandoned plans to consider gender quotas.

Chikarovski also said she was “appalled” by suggestions Sussan Ley was not strong enough to lead the federal opposition, saying she had faced similar criticism when she was a leader:

It’s that impossible situation. I had thought that 20 years later we had moved beyond that.

The Australian federal police say “no further action” will be taken against independent senator Lidia Thorpe, after her comments – which she said were a figure of speech and not literal – that she might have to “burn down Parliament House” to make a point about the war in Gaza.

Thorpe was investigated by the AFP over the comments at a Melbourne rally in October. On Monday, an AFP spokesperson said it had finalised its investigation, with “insufficient evidence” of a crime being committed. They said:

The AFP began investigating the matter on 13 October, 2025 after receiving numerous AFP Reports of Crime. Following an investigation, the AFP has concluded there is insufficient evidence of a criminal offence. The matter has now been finalised and no further action will be taken.

Thorpe’s office declined to comment. Thorpe told the rally at the time:

We stand with you every day, and we will fight every day, and we will turn up every day, and if I have to burn down Parliament House to make a point … I am not there to make friends.

Thorpe later said she had not meant the words literally and condemned what she called the “mock outrage” that followed them, adding:

My rally remarks were clearly a figure of speech – a metaphor for the pain in our communities and the urgent need to end genocide in Palestine and everywhere.

Victorian bushfires being contained ahead of extreme danger tomorrow

Victoria’s emergency management commissioner, Tim Wiebusch, said two of the major fires Victorian authorities had been battling for more than a month – at Walwa/Mt Lawson and Longwood – were deemed under control on Friday.

Of the Otways bushfire, he said:

Firefighters are continuing to put in containment lines and control lines around that fire as we head into tomorrow, but we are hopeful that that fire may be deemed contained some time this week …

Our focus really is shifting, after the weather tomorrow, to really be about recovery here in Victoria. We now have 17 recovery hubs that are active across the state.

A cold front is also forecast to bring cooler gusty winds on Tuesday. The Bureau of Meteorology’s Briony Macpherson said the cold change brought the risk of severe thunderstorms, with the potential for damaging wind gusts of up to 90km/h:

That added risk of potential fire starts due to the lightning and also the instability will make it a little bit more challenging for firefighters tomorrow if we do see any starts.

Hot, dry and windy conditions ahead of a cool change are forecast to drive extreme fire dangers across much of Victoria on Tuesday.

On Monday afternoon, high fire dangers were affecting much of South Australia and Victoria, according to Bureau of Meteorology senior meteorologist Dean Narramore.

But as that front approaches tonight into tomorrow, we’re going to see those winds really increase across south-eastern Australia.

Tim Wiebusch, Victoria’s emergency management commissioner, said extreme fire danger was forecast for five districts on Tuesday:

The south-west, the Wimmera, central, north central, and west and south Gippsland, with the remainder of the state with high fire danger.

Total fire bans in those five areas will be instituted from midnight. BoM senior meteorologist Briony Macpherson said Tuesday would bring “a classic fire spike day over Victoria” with temperatures “getting up into the mid-30s over much of the state, including Melbourne”. She added:

We’ll see the fresh north to north-westerly winds start to increase from around dawn tomorrow … those north-westerly winds really pick up as we go into the afternoon, across most of the western and central parts of the state.

We’re looking at winds generally 30 to 40km/h, but with gusts 50 to 60km/h.

In addition, Macpherson said, the “danger of a wind change” would see temperatures dropping “10C or so in a fairly short period of time” in places like Melbourne, but that it would “make fires hard to fight if any do start”.

High fire danger is also likely through eastern South Australia, and central and eastern Tasmania, Narramore said.

Coal Australia head defends millions in election donations

Coal Australia has dismissed claims it donated millions of dollars to third-party “fronts” during the 2025 federal election to advance its lobbying efforts for the fossil fuel industry.

In a Senate hearing earlier this afternoon, the coal lobby group’s chief executive, Stuart Bocking, dismissed an array of questions from Labor and crossbench senators on whether it had deceived voters.

Earlier this month, election donation disclosure data revealed it had given $3.68m to third-party campaign group, Australians for Prosperity, making up 95% of its total donations.

Bocking said Coal Australia donated the money to campaign groups aligned with the lobby group’s messaging, and denied a suggestion from Labor senator Michelle Ananda-Rajah that they were “fronts”.

“There are no fronts for Coal Australia,” he said, adding:

When you donate money, you donate money assuming that that organisation has the wherewithal, the logistics, the organisational ability to be able to deal with media buyers, creatives and various others. They’re things that generally go beyond the realm of Coal Australia. So we donated money to that group [Australians for Prosperity].

Sydney measles case visited healthcare sites

Two new measles cases have been identified in Sydney, with one visiting healthcare facilities while unknowingly infectious.

Health authorities have urged residents in the city’s inner west to watch for symptoms, after Concord hospital, Ryde emergency department and Ryde urgent care clinic were revealed as sites of possible exposure.

The two cases were not known to each other but were linked to an earlier patient who caught the disease while travelling in south-east Asia, where measles outbreaks are ongoing, according to NSW Health.

Sydney has now had 16 identified cases of measles so far in 2026. NSW Health has shared a full list of locations visited by those with the disease on its website.

People should watch for fever, runny nose, sore eyes and a cough, usually followed by a rash, according to Dr Christine Selvey, director of communicable diseases at NSW Health.

Computer and mobile phone prices to surge, JB Hi-Fi warns

Electronics retailer JB Hi-Fi is expecting higher prices for personal computers and mobile phones amid a global chip shortage.

Computer companies had faced higher costs for memory and storage components, which were set to result in ticket prices rising 20% on average from March onwards, JB Hi-Fi’s chief executive, Nick Wells, said.

Wells said mobile phone prices have already been rising but further hikes could be delayed as suppliers waited for new product launches, telling analysts:

If you think about an iPhone, that’s typically not until September. So we’ve got a fair amount of time before that [price increase] will come through.

Large numbers of customers were expected to buy PCs and phones in the coming year regardless of the price increase, Wells said.

Promotional discounts have also been easing, with Wells saying discounting had eased back to a normal level after an intense couple of years of promotions – meaning less savings for shoppers. The company’s gross profit margin picked up over late 2025.

Despite that, consumer spending has stayed strong, with JB Hi-Fi Australia’s financial results today showing sales grew 6.3% to $41.2bn for the six months to December 2025, compared to the same period in 2024.

Price hikes amid strong consumer demand for electronics and other durable goods has worried the RBA and may have contributed to the recent interest rate rise. You can read more here:

Businesses caught selling illegal tobacco and vaping products could have their shops shut down for up to three months under new laws planned for Western Australia, AAP reports.

Offenders found in possession of a large commercial quantity of the products could also be slapped with multimillion-dollar fines and more than a decade behind bars.

The legislation, to be introduced in the Western Australian parliament on Tuesday, would give the state “some of the strongest penalties in Australia,” the state premier, Roger Cook, said.

The maximum penalty for possession of a large commercial quantity of illicit tobacco and vaping products will be $4.2m for an individual, or $21m for a company, and 15 years’ imprisonment.

NSW and Queensland have introduced laws to penalise commercial property landlords who knowingly allow illegal tobacco and vape stores to operate on their premises.

Black-market trade in cigarettes has boomed after the excise on legal tobacco sales climbed 60% since 2020. Treasury is considering changing the excise, as Patrick Commins reports here:

That’s all from me! Luca Ittimani will take things from here. Take care, and enjoy the rest of your Monday.