Morning mail: budget’s big infrastructure spend, Jerusalem unrest, plunging sperm counts

Thursday: federal government to pledge $4bn for major projects to aid economic recovery. Plus, why are sperm counts declining among western men?

Hello, and happy Monday. Sydney is on Covid standby, China's rocket (or parts of it) landed, and the federal budget comes out tomorrow (which people already have plenty to say about). It's Imogen Dewey with the main stories for you this morning, plus a podcast about those plummeting sperm counts.

The Morrison government will allocate more than $4bn to infrastructure projects in Tuesday night's budget as part of efforts to lock in economic recovery after the pandemic and drive down unemployment. While such investments improve the productive capacity of the Australian economy, the program will also help lay the groundwork for an election contest either late in 2021 or early next year. New analysis meanwhile shows the government last year spent just 16 cents out of every $100 addressing the climate crisis, and that spending on the environment and climate programs has fallen by nearly a third since the Coalition was elected eight years ago. (The Australian Conservation Foundation is calling for policy reform matched by investment.) The government preannounced a number of measures on Sunday, including $353.9m in spending for women's health initiatives, and signalled that more than $10bn will be committed to aged care. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg yesterday told the ABC the royal commission had confirmed the sector was in dire need of reform".