That’s where we will leave the live blog for Wednesday. Here are the major points from today:

• The Australian government has promised to establish “a new dedicated executive agency responsible for delivering the optimal pathway for Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine program” and promised to consult First Nations communities over the issue of nuclear waste.

• The government and opposition have struck an agreement whereby the Coalition will support the referendum machinery act changes.

• The attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, has announced the parliamentary joint committee on human rights will conduct a review of Australia’s human rights framework, including examining whether Australia needs a Human Rights Act.

• The voice working group is close to finalising advice to government on the wording of the proposed change to the constitution to be voted on at a referendum later this year. The group is meeting with the PM tonight, ahead of the legislation being introduced into parliament next week.

• The government could announce the proposed changes and the question as soon as tomorrow.

• The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has signed a partnership agreement with the visiting prime minister of Samoa, Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa.

• New Zealand will allow anti-trans agitator Kellie-Jay Keen to visit after her tour of Australia wraps up. Keen is visiting Canberra on Thursday.

Amy Remeikis will be back with you again tomorrow morning bright and early with all the latest on the last sitting day of this week. Until then, have a good evening.

Confirmation of the Indigenous voice referendum question and constitutional amendment could come as soon as tomorrow, following a meeting of the referendum working group with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, tonight.

Multiple sources have told Guardian Australia that there may be news on the crucial outstanding details, including the question and proposed alteration to the constitution, as early as Friday morning. The shift was first reported by the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas late on Wednesday. There will likely need to be a special meeting of the federal cabinet to tick off on the details, which we’ve been told probably won’t happen tonight.

We have contacted the offices of the PM, attorney general Mark Dreyfus, and Indigenous Australians minister Linda Burney for comment.

We have been told there could be a few minor changes to the details outlined by PM Albanese at the Garma festival last year, but there’s unlikely to be any major surprises in the final draft. Of course, that will then go to a parliamentary committee, which will run for six weeks.

Getting news on the details tomorrow would be a change to the schedule, with government sources saying earlier this week that we likely wouldn’t get those details until mid or next week.

Prof Megan Davis, a key member of the working group and co-chair of the Uluru dialogue, earlier said the government and group were “very close” on the details. Before the meeting, she noted one of the group’s “key principles” was the voice advising parliament as well as government.

If you’ve been following our reporting on the voice, you would remember there has been concern from some conservatives and critics about voice talking to government. The working group has long rubbished those concerns, saying it was critical that the voice could advise government.

Davis stressed it was a key feature before the meeting, hinting that it wasn’t up for alteration. She also noted other key design principles, including that the voice’s membership would be chosen by First Nations people in local communities; that it would be representative, community-led, gender balanced; that it would be accountable and transparent; and that it would have no veto or program delivery function.

Looks like a rough one across large parts of NSW and the ACT tomorrow.

My colleague Josh Butler is reporting that we could know the wording of the question on the voice to parliament and the proposed change to the constitution as soon as tomorrow.

Former Greens leader Bob Brown has quit his life membership of the Australian Conservation Foundation in protest after the environment group urged parliament to “strengthen and pass” a signature Albanese government climate policy.

Brown said he had returned his life membership – awarded in the 1980s for his leadership in the campaign to save Tasmania’s Franklin River – over ACF’s position on the safeguard mechanism, an industrial emissions policy that is the subject of negotiations between Labor and the Greens.

And on tomorrow’s bit of the tour.

Here’s First Dog On The Moon’s take on the Hobart anti-trans event and the much larger counter-protest yesterday.

25m-year-old marsupial fossils give insight into descendants

An early relative of the wombat with a powerful bite and a possum with large teeth have been discovered in central Australia, helping to solve an evolutionary puzzle, AAP reports.

The fossils, deposited about 25 million years ago in the late Oligocene, were found by Flinders University paleontologists in 2014, 2020 and 2022 near the small Arrernte township of Pwerte Marnte Marnte in the southern Northern Territory.

They give key insights into the diet and lifestyle of long-extinct marsupials that lived in a once-lush forest landscape dominated by megafauna, including giant flightless birds and crocodiles.

“These curious beasts are members of marsupial lineages that went extinct long ago, leaving no modern descendants,” PhD candidate Arthur Crichton said.

“Learning about these animals helps put the wombat and possum groups that survive today in a broader evolutionary context.”

The newly described possum species, called Chunia pledgei, had teeth with lots of bladed cusps that were positioned side by side.

“We know that these animals had a lemur-like short face, with particularly large forward-facing eyes, but until more complete skeletal material is known their ecology will likely remain mysterious,” Crichton said.

The new species is named after South Australian paleontologist Neville Pledge, who discovered fossils in rocks east of Lake Eyre.

The other new species, called Mukupirna fortidentata, was a larger distant relative of wombats and had jaws and teeth shaped to suggest a powerful bite with large and steeply upturned incisors.

Weighing about 50kg, it was among the largest marsupials of its time.

Here is Greens senator Nick McKim’s response in parliament earlier regarding anti-trans agitator Kellie-Jay Keen’s comments about his trans stepson.

Four of Australia’s top 12 fertility apps are unnecessarily collecting highly sensitive information and have left the door open to selling the data to other companies, a study has found.

The study, conducted jointly by University of New South Wales law researcher Dr Katharine Kemp and consumer group Choice assessed the privacy policies of the 12 most popular fertility apps in Australia, which help people track menstrual cycles, ovulation, potential fertile windows, and stages of pregnancy.

The review of Australia’s human rights framework and the possibility of a federal Human Rights Act has been welcomed by the Charter of Human Rights campaign – a campaign that is made up of 80 organisations.

Caitlin Reiger, CEO, Human Rights Law Centre said:

A Charter of Human Rights is a missing piece to protecting human rights in Australia. We urge community groups, the legal profession and all who see this as important to a fair and just Australia to engage actively with this inquiry. There is overwhelming evidence of the need for a Charter of Human Rights so that everyone can enjoy equal access to justice, safety, health, education and housing.”

Dr Cassandra Goldie, Australian Council of Social Services (Acoss) CEO said:

Recent events like Robodebt highlight again just how vulnerable we are to government abuses of power without adequate human rights protections in place.

We need a Charter of Rights that provides protections for people against human rights abuses and builds a culture of respect for basic rights for all. It will be vital to include economic and social rights in the Charter.

Sam Klintworth, Amnesty International Australia national director said:

We’re very encouraged by the announcement of a Parliamentary inquiry. Your human rights are important. Every Australian should have the same fundamental human rights in law.

They should be protected and defendable.

One overarching Human Rights Act is simpler and more effective than multiple pieces of legislation attempting to protect individual rights. And it has overwhelming public support as our annual Human Rights Barometer has demonstrated.

A Human Rights Act provides an accountability framework so we can all have a tool in our kit to protect and defend our rights.