12.04am BST

Good morning,

The senate remains fully in focus today with the carbon tax - again - expected to be voted down, some say before lunchtime, if there is such a thing here.

Wednesday gave us a little taste of how this new senate will work and in a strange karmic echo of the last parliament, the government negotiations were frenetic and unpredictable.

But the government is maintaining a stiff upper lip, as you would expect, and the leader in the house, Christopher Pyne, declared:

We are not going to throw in the towel after three days.﻿



As a result of the precarious senate situation, we now know that the government will need to find extra funding for:

an increase in the tax-free threshold from 2015 from $18,200 to $19,400 worth $2bn



the schoolkids’ bonus – which provides eligible families with $410 per primary school child and $820 per high school child. Retaining the bonus will cost the budget $3.9bn over four years.



the low income superannuation guarantee – which provides a $500 top-up to the superannuation accounts of very low income earners to make up for the vastly higher tax advantage super savings offer higher income earners. Retaining the guarantee would cost $2.7bn over four years.



the income support bonus – a top-up for government benefits – at a cost of $955m.



Elsewhere today, Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs confirmed seven women have attempted suicide, threatened suicide or self-harmed at the Christmas Island detention centre in the past two days. The government is preparing for a High Court challenge on the Sri Lankan asylum seekers next week.

Billionaire businessman James Packer, has weighed into the trade debate, telling Rick Wallace at The Australian the Abbott government should "go for broke" and put commerce and investment at the forefront of bilateral deals with Asia. Packer didn't much like Kevin Rudd's handling of relationships with Asia.



But it will be foreign minister Julie Bishop's comments which will be more closely watched by China.

She spoke to John Garnaut at Fairfax, after the visit of Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe caused waves of consternation north to Beijing. Here is Garnaut:

Ms Bishop said it had been a mistake for previous governments to avoid speaking about China for fear of causing offence. "China doesn’t respect weakness," she said.

But they may respect a bloody big tyre, as displayed on our blog this morning and tweeted by the prime minister last night after his visit to the Pilbara.

Stay with us as the day's events unfold, captured in full colour by Mike Bowers.