UPDATE: Prime Minister elect Tony Abbott has announced his new cabinet.

It is as follows:

Warren Truss, Deputy Prime Minister
Matthias Cormann, Finance Minister
Julie Bishop, Minister for Foreign Affairs (Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party)
George Brandis, Attorney-General and Minister for the Arts
Joe Hockey, Treasurer
Barnaby Joyce, Minister for Agriculture
Eric Abetz, Minister for Employment and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on the Public Service
David Johnston, Defence Minister
Christopher Pyne, Minister for Education.
Nigel Scullion, Minister for Indigenous Affairs
Malcolm Turnbull, Minister for Communications
Peter Dutton, Minister for Health and Minister for Sport
Andrew Robb, Minister for Trade and Defence
Greg Hunt, Minister for the Environment
Scott Morrison, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection
Kevin Andrews, Minister for Social Services
Phillip Ruddock, Chief Government Whip

1. Tony Abbott is expected to reveal his leadership team today, but he’s already announced that Ian Macdonald and Sophie Mirabella will be gone from the front bench. After the election, Macdonald was reportedly told by the Prime Minister-elect, “he has no room for me in the new ministry”.

Mirabella has bowed out, given that it seems likely she will lose her seat in Indi to independent Cathy McGowan. Bronwyn Bishop will be the next Parliamentary Speaker.

It’s likely they’ll only be one woman on the front bench – Julie Bishop who is expected to be named as Foreign Minister.

2. The soon-to-be sworn-in Abbott government has indicted they’ll support a US/Russia deal to rid Syria of its chemical weapons. Julie Bishop – the Foreign Minister in waiting – has said she welcomes the US and Russia deal to destroy all of the chemical weapons in Syria by mid-2014. Julie Bishop said of the agreement, “It is as a result, I believe, of the United States making it quite clear that they would use military force if need be.”

The United States and Russia have agreed on a deal to combat Syria’s chemical weapons, aiming to have it complete by the middle of next year. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov have given Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a week to hand over details of the weapons. The deal has been welcomed by the West, but members of the Free Syrian Army are less than impressed, saying that mid-2014 is too far away.

3. Meanwhile, Sweden has reportedly offered permanent residency to every Syrian refugee who has already applied for asylum in the Scandinavian country, which is around 8000 people. The civil war in Syria has forced more than one million people to flee Syria in the last couple of years.

4. Police in Papua New Guinea say they are close to catching all six of the men who attacked a group of Australian and New Zealanders on September 10 and killed two of the guides the guides they were trekking with. Four of the assailants have since been captured, and the PNG Commissioner of Police Toami Kulunga has said, “I believe it is only a matter of time before the other two are captured and brought in.” The government has urged citizens not to participate in retaliation killings.

5. The public hearings for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse are scheduled to begin today. The commission’s chief Janette Dines told ABC, “We’re looking at all sorts of institutions that have responsibility to look after children, and this week there are five institutions whose conduct will be examined.” Scouts Australia and the Hunter Aboriginal Children’s Service are among the first organisations, as well as government departments. Over the coming weeks and months, the Catholic Church, the Salvation Army and the YMCA will all be examined.

6. One man has died and 14 others have been taken to hospital after overdosing on drugs at a Sydney festival. Revelers at the Defqon.1 music festival have reported seeing lines of ambulances at the festival to attend to those in trouble. One band manager said she believed people were taking all their drugs at the start of the festival to avoid being arrested. Police are investigating whether a toxic batch of pills could be responsible for the overdoses.

7. Four people have been confirmed dead and at least 500 are still unaccounted for after floods ravaged the US state of Colorado. National guard troops arrived on the ground over the weekend, searching for those who had been cut off from communities for the past 3 days. The floods, which started last Wednesday, have affected over 11,000 kilometres of land, with more rain expected to fall as the week goes on.

Have you seen anything in the news that you want to talk about?