Australia's budget deficit is forecast to balloon to Aus$40.4 billion (U.S.$33.2 billion) this financial year as the government struggles with a sharp slump in commodity prices, Treasurer Joe Hockey said Monday.

In the national budget released in May, the government forecast a Aus$29.8 billion deficit for 2014/15, but it revised the figure Monday, citing lower tax revenues and delays in passing legislation.

Australia's government warned of further job losses Saturday as media reports said around 175 government agencies working in areas as diverse as Antarctic science and drought will be scrapped.

The conservative administration of Prime Minister Tony Abbott which came to power in September 2013 has consistently argued that government had become too big and wasteful under the previous Labor leadership.

The Catholic Church in Australia on Friday said that obligatory celibacy may have contributed to priests abusing children, and recommended that clergy should be given "psycho-sexual" training.

In a landmark report, an Australian Catholic Church body dealing with the legacy of child sex abuse added that some church institutions and their leaders turned a blind eye to what was going on for years.

Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who was famously accused of misogyny by former leader Julia Gillard, on Friday suggested sexism was behind criticism of his female chief-of-staff.

Abbott's office has battled falling polls in recent weeks and some within the conservative government's ranks have complained that his advisor Peta Credlin holds too much power.

The Australian government failed in its duty to protect asylum-seekers at a camp in Papua New Guinea where a February riot left one dead and 69 injured, said a damning parliamentary report released Thursday.

Iranian Reza Barati was killed in the riot at the Manus Island detention center in February as tensions flared among inmates about their fate under Australia's hardline asylum-seeker policies.

Australia on Tuesday accused Islamic militants of using foreign fighters as "cannon fodder" and "propaganda tools" as it revealed 20 nationals have now been killed in Syria and Iraq.

More than 70 Australians are currently fighting in the two nations, the government has said, with several more deaths reported as coalition fighter planes pound Islamic State group positions.

Australia's conservative government on Friday further tightened immigration laws, introducing controversial temporary visas for refugees which do not grant permanent settlement in the country.

The amendments to the Migration Act narrowly passed the lower house Friday morning after a stormy late-night debate in the upper house Senate.

Australia's Parliament on Thursday appeared close to passing a bill creating a new class of temporary visas for refugees that will allow them to stay and work in the country for three to five years but prevent them from making Australia their permanent home.

More than 30,000 asylum seekers who arrived on Australian shores since August 2012 have yet to have their refugees claims assessed because the government doesn't want them to stay permanently.

Australia Thursday nominated the Syrian city of Raqqa as the first place to be hit with a travel ban under sweeping new counter-terrorism measures aimed at blocking jihadists going overseas to fight.

Canberra outlined plans to block citizens travelling to terror hotspots in October amid concern about the flow of foreign fighters joining militant groups in the Middle East such as Islamic State, with 70 citizens believed to have already made the journey.

A Jordanian man was jailed for a year on Wednesday for threatening on Facebook to blow up the Australian embassy in Amman and to kill tourists from the country.

Ali al-Hasanat, 37, had denied any wrongdoing in a November 3 hearing at the state security court that could have been imprisoned him for up to 15 years.