In a week's time, Scott Morrison will hope to salve the aches and pains of a disastrous lead-in to the election campaign with the release of his government's 2022 budget.
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But if promises to relieve cost-of-living pressures and drive economic recovery fizzle, the Coalition could be in need of a new leader after the May election.
Two Liberal heavyweights have already veered into pole position for the next shot at the top job: Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Defence Minister Peter Dutton.
In South Australia, the new Premier Peter Malinauskas will reveal his full cabinet on Thursday with promises "to ensure it's the best cabinet my government can offer," he said.
As counting continues, Labor seems certain to hold at least 26 seats in the 47-seat House of Assembly and is strongly favoured to pick up one more.
In tragic news, there are no signs of survivors after a China Eastern Airlines flights crashed in mountains in southern China.
The Boeing 737-800 was carrying 132 people.
Media reports cited a rescue official as saying the plane had disintegrated and caused a fire, which also destroyed bamboo trees.
China's last fatal airplane accident was in 2010, when 44 people on board an Embraer E-190 regional jet flown by Henan Airlines were killed as it crashed on approach to Yichun airport.
A hybrid variant of the Omicron and Delta strains of the coronavirus, being called Deltacron, is raising a lot of questions for scientists.
They don't yet know how much the new variant resembles its origins, but it has now been picked up in France, the Netherlands, Denmark, the US and UK.
It will be a little while longer before it's clear whether Deltacron will overtake Omicron as the dominant variant, but scientists are keeping an eye on it.
In lighter news, an iconic image of Marilyn Monroe created by Andy Warhol is coming to auction, at an estimated price of $US200 million ($A270 million).
Known as Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, the silkscreen image is a close-up of Monroe with her hair yellow, her eyeshadow blue and her lips red.
It is expected to be part of a week of sales in May, and could be the most expensive 20th-century artwork to be auctioned if it meets the sale estimate.
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