1. Frydenberg dismisses super policy’s effect on rising house prices
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has said the effect the Coalition’s newly introduced superannuation policy allowing prospective home buyers to access $50,000 from their super accounts would have on property prices is “marginal”.

“You’re talking about $700 billion a year of residential property transactions in Australia. If 100,000 people, which is the number of first time buyers every year ... access that full amount, you’re talking about $5 billion out of a $700 billion residential transaction number every year,” Frydenberg said on Nine Network’s Today Show.

“Really, it’s immaterial to the overall size of our housing market and the number of transactions that it will have.”

2. Latest corporate distancing from Russia sees McDonald’s leave the country after more than 30 years
Global fast-food giant MacDonald’s has announced it will be removing all operations from Russia in protest against the war in Ukraine. “The departure carries huge symbolic as well as economic weight because the fast-food chain was one of the first Western brands to set up shop in Russia when it opened a branch in Moscow’s Pushkin Square in 1990, just before the fall of the Soviet Union,” Bloomberg reports.

“McDonald’s and Russia have become so intertwined that it seems impossible to imagine one without the other,” Chief Executive Officer Chris Kempczinski said in a note to employees Monday. “And yet, unfortunately, that is where we are today.”

3. Elisabeth Borne becomes France’s first female prime minister in over 30 years
Elisabeth Borne, the 61-year-old French minister for labour, has been elected as the first female prime minister for France in more than 30 years, and only the second ever in the country’s modern history.

“I dedicate this nomination to all the little girls in France, to tell them, ‘Follow your dreams’,” Borne said while taking office. “Nothing should stop the fight for women’s place in our society.”

Borne, “an engineer with a long career in government ministries, the senior civil service, public administration and state businesses, was chosen by Emmanuel Macron for the difficult task of delivering his complex policy promises at the start of his second term, against a background of rising inflation and the war in Ukraine,” The Guardian reports.

4. Musk seeking Twitter deal on the cheap
‘Cheap’ comparatively speaking to the original takeover bid of $US44 billion. According to Bloomberg, Elon Musk had hinted at potential price renegotiations, saying on a popular podcast that a deal for Twitter at a lower price was not “out of the question”. His comment saw Twitter’s share price drop further from the wider tech sell-off late last week. The stock has now erased all gains made since the Tesla billionaire disclosed his investment in the company on April 4.

5. ASX to rise thanks to lower weighting in tech
ASX futures were up 23 points or 0.3% to 7100 near 7am AEST, with the AUD +0.4% to 69.66 US cents.

On Wall St: Dow +0.1% S&P 500 -0.4% Nasdaq -1.2%.
In tech: Tesla -5.9% Apple -1.1% Amazon -2% Alphabet -1.5% Atlassian -6.3%.

2-year yield: US 2.57% Australia 2.53%. 10-year yield: US 2.88% Australia 3.38%.