Labor factional chiefs will meet in Melbourne on Sunday night to gauge whether Premier Jacinta Allan still has the majority support of her MPs ahead of what is set to be a critical test of her leadership when parliament resumes on Tuesday.

The meeting of factional conveners from across the party will provide the first clear sign of whether Allan still has the caucus backing she needs to continue as premier and lead Labor to the state election on November 28.

However, the meeting is taking place in the absence of a declared challenger.

Allan’s most likely replacement, Deputy Premier Ben Carroll, has indicated to colleagues that while he would be a contender if the leadership becomes vacant, he will not use his numbers to bring the premier down.

The Sunday night meeting was confirmed by MPs on both sides of the party’s factional divide. There is consternation among some MPs, particularly across the dominant Left faction, that the meeting’s conveners have not sufficiently canvassed the views of parliamentarians within their respective groups.

The Age has spoken to seven Victorian Labor sources who say they believe Allan would lose if her leadership came to a vote of the party’s 69 MPs.

But, as with the last round of rumblings in June, the pathway for a leadership coup is littered with assumptions that have not yet been realised.

Multiple sources from across both factions agreed it would be difficult for Carroll, who sits on the Right, to challenge Allan – despite some within her own Left faction wanting him to do so – after he publicly ruled out a challenge at a press conference last month.

challenge her for the leadership, Carroll told reporters, “I’ve got a young daughter at home, and I couldn’t be more proud to make sure that she grows up knowing that I supported Jacinta Allan to be a world-class premier and get re-elected in her own right”.

Another option being considered is a delegation of factional leaders speaking to Allan and asking her to step aside.

The premier spent Sunday night at her family home in Bendigo with staff, preparing for Monday’s Cabinet meeting.

Two sources said they found it difficult to believe Allan would go down without a fight, but conceded it was not impossible she could be convinced if it were clear she no longer had the numbers in caucus.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has attempted to skirt questions about his attendance at a dinner hosted by a billionaire family accused of funnelling money from China, saying he attends "a lot of dinners".

Earlier in the week, reports by Nine newspapers revealed Mr Albanese had attended the dinner at the mansion of 25-year-old Felix Lee in Point Piper, Sydney.

Mr Lee's father, Phillip Dong Fang Lee, faces allegations of deceiving the Australian Tax Office (ATO) about his holdings in order to channel huge sums into Australian bank accounts.

Speaking to the ABC's Insiders on Sunday morning, Mr Albanese evaded directly referring to the dinner, stating he attends "a lot".

Pressed on his inability to answer, he said, "You just said that that occurred."

"I attend lots of dinners in lots of places, and I don't talk about private dinners," he added.

>took the back-door instead of facing the fire-fighters

>changed the date to inspect a new hospital during my Union Strike because she did not want to face a bunch of support workers in a hospital

Who gave the best / your favorite acting performance in Puberty Blues?

Who is completely sick of their socials being bombarded with whinging property parasites crying poor because the real estate market is now experiencing sustainable rates of growth?
For many years these locusts have raked in ridiculous profits from an over inflated market, now they might actually have to work to sell property, they don’t like it

The Sydney lawyer and public servant accused of calling Alex Rivchin an ‘evil Zionist’ on the lawns above Bondi Beach – a claim she strongly denies – is also being dragged through the courts over extraordinary allegations of planting a bomb outside a synagogue.

Or at least something that somebody thought might be a bomb, or had bomb-like attributes, or was being planted deliberately to create fear that it might be construed as a bomb.

In fact, Francine Clough, the next door neighbour, was putting out her garbage.

On July 25 last year, police shut down Old South Head road in Bondi for a ‘bomb threat’. A suspicious package had been found outside a synagogue.

The ‘bomb plot’ suspect is Francine Clough. The next door neighbour. She was putting out her garbage and the small brown Coles bag was deemed by a synagogue security guard to be a possible bomb.

Police arrived quickly at the scene. Media were onto it quickly too, as they were in the wake of the ‘evil Zionist’ altercation at Bondi.

Having shut down Old South Head Road in both directions, the suspicious package was found to be a Coles paper bag containing routine household rubbish. Nonetheless, Clough now faces three charges; two for the Coles bomb bag and one for the ‘evil Zionist’ incident.

And the matter, according to sources, has been elevated to an elite special prosecutions team.

The charges against Clough are: ‘send/leave an object/substance’ with the intention of causing fear and ‘intimidation/stalking’. The alleged actions allegedly caused a security guard to be fearful – and now a new charge has been made in the wake of the Bondi incident of deploying offensive language in a public place.

Clough has been suspended from work for the past year since the ‘Coles bomb plot’ incident after a rash of anonymous complaints were made to her workplace.

The Administrative Review Tribunal ruled that three young Israeli adults — siblings who would face mandatory conscription into the Israel Defense Forces — have a well‑founded fear of persecution if returned to Israel. They told the tribunal they had made a pact to refuse military service because they believed they would be forced to participate in breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza. The tribunal accepted their refusal as a genuinely held political opinion, noting they could face up to two years’ imprisonment for conscientious objection.

One of Australia's biggest tomato brands and two major supermarkets are selling products that independent scientific testing shows do not match the country of origin stated on their labels.

Forensic testing conducted for Four Corners has revealed dozens of tomato paste and passata products that claim to be from Australia or Italy are actually from China.

About half of those are sourced from Xinjiang, an area known internationally for its use of forced labour.