BHP is likely to appoint Geraldine Slattery, the miner’s current head of Australia, as its first female chief executive to replace current CEO Mike Henry, the Financial Times reported.

The appointment to the world’s largest mining company would be the first female leader in the company’s 140-year history.

Henry is expected to step down by the middle of 2026 after five years as CEO, the report said, citing unnamed people “familiar with the board’s thinking”, FT said.

However, BHP said the board was “not in a rush” to make a change, the report added.

The company did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

Slattery has been at BHP for three decades and previously led the company’s US petroleum business.

Peer Rio Tinto had also appointed insider Simon Trott as its new CEO in mid-July. Trott earlier headed the company’s most profitable iron ore unit.

A technical glitch caused hundreds of triple-zero calls through Optus to fail in three Australian states, including in households where people died.

Up to 600 households in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory were impacted by the triple-zero outage during a network upgrade on Thursday, Optus chief executive Stephen Rue said.

“I have been advised that in the process of conducting welfare checks, three of the triple-zero calls involved households where a person tragically passed away,” Mr Rue told reporters in Sydney on Friday.

“Please know that these welfare checks are ongoing.” 

He said the technical problem on the network had been resolved.

The boss of Australia’s second-largest telco provider offered “a sincere apology to all customers who could not connect to emergency services when they needed them most”.

“I offer my most sincere and heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of the people who passed away – I am so sorry,” he said.

“What has happened is completely unacceptable.”

The chief executive said the duration of the outage was not yet known and further details would be made public when an internal investigation was completed.

Communications Minister Anika Wells said Optus’s conduct was “incredibly serious and completely unacceptable” and would be investigated by federal authorities.

“The impact of this failure has had tragic consequences and my personal thoughts are with those who have lost a loved one,” she said in a statement.

“While details are still emerging, no triple-zero outage is acceptable. Optus and all telecommunication providers have obligations to ensure they carry emergency services calls.”

The glitch comes after Optus paid more than $12 million in penalties in 2024 for breaching emergency call rules during a nationwide network outage a year earlier that caused significant disruption.

In the 2023 incident, Optus failed to provide emergency call access to 2145 people and subsequently did not conduct welfare checks on 369 people who tried to call triple zero, the communications watchdog found.

Mr Rue took over as the company’s chief executive in 2024 from Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, who resigned after the nationwide outage.

Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, a consumer advocacy organisation for communications, said Optus’s latest failure came despite a thorough federal review following the previous high-profile outage.

The network’s chief executive Carol Bennett told ABC News telcos were “aware that this has a really big impact” on communities and their trust in telcos.

She hoped Optus’s probe would urgently look at the technical issues that sparked the outage and the timeliness of its response.

A technical glitch caused hundreds of triple zero calls through Optus to fail in three Australian states, including in households where people died.

Up to 600 households in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory were impacted by the triple zero outage during a network upgrade on Thursday, Optus chief executive Stephen Rue said.

“I have been advised that in the process of conducting welfare checks three of the triple zero calls involved households where a person tragically passed away,” Mr Rue told reporters in Sydney on Friday.

“Please know that these welfare checks are ongoing.” 

He said the technical problem on the network had been resolved.

The boss of Australia’s second largest telco provider offered “a sincere apology to all customers who could not connect to emergency services when they needed them most”.

“I offer my most sincere and heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of the people who passed away – I am so sorry,” he said.

“What has happened is completely unacceptable.”

The chief executive said the duration of the outage was not yet known and further details would be made public when an internal investigation was completed.

The apology comes after Optus in 2024 paid more than $12 million in penalties for breaching emergency call rules over a nationwide network outage a year earlier that caused significant disruption.

A resources company claims one of its mines paid millions of dollars in coal royalties despite not making a profit under a controversial scheme, sparking more job cuts.

Queensland company QCoal is the third major miner in as many days to confirm layoffs, with one of its underground sites to be shut down in coming weeks.

The company took aim at the state government’s coal royalties scheme after announcing the closure of one of Cook Colliery mine’s two underground sites in central Queensland.

About 170 people are employed at the mine’s two sites near Blackwater operated by Core Crew, with about half of the workers to be affected by the shutdown in early October.

It comes after Anglo American and BHP Mitsubishi Alliance announced job cuts and mine mothballing, with a total of about 1000 workers axed.

QCoal said rising costs and market conditions had played a role in their decision but also highlighted coal royalties.

“Unfortunately Cook Colliery has been affected by high production costs, high taxes and royalties and low coal prices, and its ongoing operation at its current levels is unsustainable,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.

“Cook Colliery has contributed $25 million in royalties to the Queensland government since its March 2022 re-opening despite never making a profit.”

BHP Mitsubishi Alliance this week blamed its 750 job cuts on the government’s “unsustainable” royalties regime and market conditions, claiming the state coal industry was reaching “crisis point”.

It has prompted calls for reforms, with Nationals leader David Littleproud the latest to ask the Queensland government to step in and ditch the coal excise.

“There is a need for a review of the royalty tax if we want to have a sustainable mining industry,” he told reporters on Thursday.

Queensland’s Liberal National government has refused to make any changes to the state’s progressive royalty regime, fulfilling a 2024 election promise.

Premier David Crisafulli is set to hold a meeting with the resources sector next week.

But it is believed to have been organised weeks ago and not in response to royalties scheme criticism or layoffs.

Opposition Leader Steven Miles still suspected the LNP government may concede to the mining companies and trigger royalty reforms.

He accused mining companies of helping “lay the groundwork” for Mr Crisafulli to break his election promise and tweak royalties following the string of layoffs.

“This is using workers and their livelihoods as bargaining chips to let David Crisafulli off the hook,” he told reporters on Friday.

“Now we understand that he has a meeting with … the coal companies next week.

“Expectations from the coal companies are very high that he will indicate an intention to walk back, break his promise, reduce coal royalties, and that would be a great shame for Queensland.”

BHP flagged one of its alliance-operated mines may be mothballed last month after posting an underlying net profit that fell by more than a quarter to $US10.6 billion ($A16.05 billion) for the 2025 fiscal year.

BHP Mitsubishi Alliance’s Adam Lancey said this week under the current regime his company paid about eight times more in royalties than it made in profit.

The former Labor government introduced a tiered royalties system in 2022.

Under its progressive structure, higher revenues are generated during boom periods of high coal prices but less was taken when market conditions deteriorated.

Exceptionally high coal prices ensured Queensland’s royalties revenue nearly doubled from $7.7 billion for 2021-22 to $14.8 billion in 2022-23.

However changing market conditions has ensured a decline since, falling to $6.1 billion in the latest Queensland budget compared to $10 billion in 2023-24.

Anthony Albanese has refused to promise power bills will be cheaper for households under Australia’s freshly announced climate action for the coming decade.

Labor unveiled its 2035 climate target on Thursday, aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by between 62 and 70 per cent compared to 2005 levels.

While emissions may be falling, Mr Albanese isn’t repeating a pledge made prior to the 2022 election that power prices would also go down.

Asked whether energy would become cheaper with the rise of renewables, the prime minister declined to guarantee a drop in prices.

“The modelling is out there, and you can see the modelling,” he responded on Friday.

“I can guarantee that the cheapest form of new energy is renewables.”

The Climate Change Authority cited Australian Energy Market Commission projections that average household energy costs would be around $1000 cheaper in 2035 than now. 

But Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen also tempered expectations of a hip pocket win.

“That’s not a political promise. It’s a statement of modelling by expert agencies,” he told reporters in Sydney.

In December 2021, Mr Albanese relied on independent modelling to promise a $275 power bill cut – benefits that have not materialised.

Grattan Institute energy and climate change senior fellow Tony Wood said the new policy was unlikely to produce significant change in power prices.

“I am not one of those people who would argue that we’re going to see electricity prices come down significantly from where they are now,” he told AAP.

“The most likely situation outlook would be that they broadly stay around a bit where they are now. 

“But if we could do that and reduce our emissions … we’d be making dramatic improvement on the environmental side with a very, very small if any cost on the power side.”

The emissions target has been attacked as “built on fantasy” by the opposition, but Liberal leader Sussan Ley also found herself on the back foot on Friday.

Ms Ley had to correct herself shortly after fronting the media, when she initially said the coalition “don’t believe in setting targets at all, from opposition or from government”.

She later clarified that the coalition did not support setting targets in opposition but it was not against targets as a whole.

“We do, of course, recognise the importance of targets in government when we have the full information in front of us, which we don’t have,” Ms Ley said.

Australia first committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050 under the coalition government led by Scott Morrison in 2021.

Both the Liberal and National parties are engaged in heated debate on the merits of continuing to support the net zero goal.

Mr Albanese launched into the opposition leader’s “bizarre statements”, adding the coalition changed its policies “from hour to hour”.

“It says it all. If the opposition aren’t clear from minute to minute, let alone in any considered way,” he said.

As part of the measures, $5 billion will be set aside from an existing industry fund to cut emissions in hard-to-abate heavy industry.

The 2035 target provoked a range of reactions, with environmental groups hoping for more ambition and the business sector warning even the lower end of the range would be challenging.

The contribution to global emission cuts landed days after a diabolical report on Australia’s expected climate impacts, including a warning that 1.5 million people could be exposed to coastal hazards from rising seas by 2050.

The opposition leader has been forced to backtrack on Australia’s emissions targets after saying the coalition did not believe in setting concrete climate goals.

The Albanese government unveiled its 2035 climate target on Thursday, aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by between 62 and 70 per cent compared to 2005 levels.

The target was accompanied by billions of dollars in policy announcements as officials outlined plans for the energy, industry and transport sectors to do the heavy lifting.

Ms Ley corrected herself shortly after fronting the media on Friday, when she initially said the coalition “don’t believe in setting targets at all, from opposition or from government”.

She later clarified that the coalition did not support setting targets in opposition but it was not against targets as a whole.

“We do, of course, recognise the importance of targets in government when we have the full information in front of us, which we don’t have,” Ms Ley said.

Australia first committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 under the coalition government led by Scott Morrison in 2021.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese launched into the opposition leader’s “bizarre statements”, adding the coalition changed its policies “from hour to hour”.

“It says it all – if the opposition aren’t clear from minute to minute, let alone in any considered way,” he said.

The Liberals, who have been riven by internal division over maintaining the net-zero commitment, have criticised the 2035 emissions target as “built on fantasy” with no detail about the cost or impact of the plan.

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said Australia was punching above its weight in its bid to reduce the impact of climate change, but further efforts were required beyond the 2035 target.

“There’s no doubt there’s more to do,” he said.

“We are right up there with the most ambitious countries in the world, as we should be, as we need to be, but also, (the target) has to be achievable.”

As part of the measures, $5 billion will be set aside from an existing industry fund to cut emissions in hard-to-abate heavy industry.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation has also been granted a $2 billion top-up to grease the wheels of the renewables transition.

As much as $40 million has been set aside to install more kerbside chargers to power electric vehicles, with funding also earmarked to help households and businesses cut energy use.

The 2035 target provoked a range of reactions, with environmental groups hoping for more ambition and the business sector warning even the lower end of the range would be challenging.

The Superpower Institute, which has long framed decarbonisation and clean export industries as a major economic opportunity for Australia, warned the nation would struggle to hit the top of its 2035 range under existing policy settings.

The contribution to global emissions cuts landed days after a diabolical report on Australia’s expected climate impacts, including a warning that 1.5 million people could be exposed to coastal hazards from rising seas by 2050.

The head of Australia’s corporate watchdog is set to step down and won’t seek a reappointment in the role.

Australian Securities and Investment Commission chair Joe Longo said he will not seek a second term in the position once his tenure ends in May 2026.

Mr Longo was appointed to head up ASIC in 2021 by the former coalition government.

“It has been an immense privilege top serve as chair of ASIC and to have been given the opportunity to rebuild and renew the agency,” the outgoing chair said.

“When I accepted the position, I was clear ASIC needed to become a modern, confident and ambitious regulator.

“I see that transformation is delivering dividends.”

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said Mr Longo had made a large contribution to the regulator during his time in the role.

“Since his appointment in 2021, ASIC has carried out significant enforcement actions to uphold the integrity of our corporate, market and financial services sector,” he said.

“Mr Longo has overseen ASIC during a period of heightened economic, geopolitical and technological change, and I thank him for his leadership.”

The announcement of Mr Longo stepping back from the role after ASIC slapped ANZ with a $240 million fine, the largest penalty given out to a single company.

The watchdog fined the bank for four separate acts of wrongdoing, including failing to respond to hundreds of notices about customer hardship, making false and misleading statements about its savings interest rates and failing to pay those amounts to customers.

Dr Chalmers said the Treasury Department will now begin work to appoint a successor to head ASIC.

The department will also look to find a replacement for a deputy chair of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, with Margaret Cole also announcing she would not seek an extension to her term after it finishes in June 2026.

Uber Eats will soon be making some meal deliveries with drones.

Uber Technologies is partnering with drone company Flytrex, the company says, and deliveries are expected to begin in test markets by the end of 2025. 

Uber did not say where those markets will be, but Flytrex is already operating in Texas and North Carolina.

It’s the latest partnership in the fast-growing drone-delivery space. 

Flytrex, which is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, also makes deliveries for Uber Eats’ rival DoorDash.

Wing, a drone company owned by Google parent Alphabet, works with DoorDash and Walmart. 

Zipline, a drone company based in South San Francisco, works with Walmart and Panera Bread and also makes deliveries for hospitals. 

Amazon also making deliveries with its own Prime Air drones.

“Autonomous technology is transforming mobility and delivery faster than ever before,” said Sarfraz Maredia, Uber’s president of autonomous mobility and delivery, in a company statement. 

“With Flytrex, we’re entering the next chapter – bringing the speed and sustainability of drone delivery to the Uber Eats platform, at scale, for the first time.”

“The promise of autonomous vehicles is here, redefining logistics on the ground and in the air,” said Noam Bardin, executive chairman of Flytrex. 

San Francisco-based Uber is making an investment in Flytrex as part of the deal. 

Financial details of the partnership were not shared on Thursday. 

Flytrex, which was founded in 2013, said it has made more than 200,000 deliveries across the US Flytrex executive chairman Noam Bardin said the partnership combined Uber’s logistics expertise with Flytrex’s aerial innovation.

“Autonomous drones are the future of food delivery – fast, affordable and hands-free,” Bardin said in a statement.

Australia’s productivity performance improved in the June quarter, but weak capital investment is still holding back growth in living standards, the Productivity Commission says.

Growth in labour productivity – or doing more with less – accelerated to 0.3 per cent in the three months to June 30, the commission reported in its quarterly bulletin.

It’s a welcome improvement after the measure, considered a key ingredient to rising living standards, failed to grow in the first three months of the year.

The commission’s deputy chair Alex Robson said it would be “premature to say Australia’s productivity malaise has passed”.

“While this is good news, Australia’s workforce is barely more productive now than it was prior to the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.

The commission puts the economy’s productivity stagnation down to a lack of capital deepening since the mid-2010s.

Capital deepening – when workers have access to more capital, such as tools, tech or better buildings – was a key reason Australians had become wealthier and more productive over the year, graduate research economist Daniel Arzhintar said.

In a research paper released alongside the latest productivity estimates, Mr Arzhintar said the decline in capital deepening was driven by businesses becoming more risk-averse and Australia’s tax and regulatory settings making investment less attractive.

He reiterated the commission’s recommendation for the government to implement a novel corporate cash flow tax that would boost incentives for companies to invest but raise the nominal tax rate for Australia’s largest firms.

While the government did not rule out the idea at its economic reform roundtable in August, the business community has rejected it.

Even the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia, which represents companies that would stand to pay a lower tax rate as a result of the proposal, joined a chorus of employer groups in shooting it down earlier in September.

“The proposed cashflow tax is not acceptable. It’s more red tape,” the council’s chair Matthew Addison said.

“Small businesses need simplicity, not more complexity.”

The recent surge in jobs growth in the health and social assistance sectors, which show lower recorded productivity growth, was another driver behind Australia’s productivity slowdown.

In recent months, growth in non-market jobs has slowed while the market sector has picked up, “suggesting potentially better productivity outcomes in the September quarter”, CommSec chief economist Ryan Felsman said.

The Reserve Bank would be keeping a close eye on the labour market as the transition from public sector-led growth to private sector continued, HSBC chief economist Paul Bloxham said.

Jobs figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday were weaker than expected, with employment falling by 5400 and the participation rate retreating.

But there were signs a significant gap in the public-private handover was unlikely, Mr Bloxham said. 

“For the RBA, we expect the main focus will be on the unemployment and underemployment rates which are both continuing to signal a fully employed jobs market,” he said.

Thursday’s labour force release should not have changed the Reserve Bank’s view about its path forward for interest rates, Mr Bloxham said. 

“With a jobs market that is fully employed, our view is that the RBA has little to worry about at present,” he said.

Slashing emissions from heavy industry, speeding up the renewables rollout and a kerbside charger blitz feature in Australia’s updated climate action pledge.

The commitment to a 62-70 per cent emissions reduction by 2035 was unveiled by the federal government on Thursday after more than year in the pipeline.

The mid-2030s target was accompanied by a suite of policy announcements to get there.

Energy, industry and transport are expected to do the heavy lifting.

A total of $5 billion will be ring-fenced from an existing industry fund for cutting emissions in hard-to-abate heavy industry.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation has also been granted a $2 billion top-up to grease the wheels of the renewables transition.

As much as $40 million has also been set aside to install more kerbside chargers to power electric vehicles, with funding also earmarked to help households and businesses cut energy use.

The six sector plans showed industry and investors the most feasible decarbonisation pathways beyond 2030, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said.

“The global shift to clean energy is the biggest economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution and it presents Australia with our best-ever economic opportunity,” he said.

The minister also stopped short of guaranteeing power prices go down as more renewable energy enters the grid.

“I can guarantee that renewables are the cheapest form of energy,” he told the ABC’s 7.30.

The Superpower Institute, which has long framed decarbonisation and clean export industries as a major economic opportunity for Australia, warned the nation would struggle to hit the top of its 2035 range under existing policy settings.

“If Australia is to achieve a credible and ambitious emissions reduction target of a minimum of 70 per cent, we need to energise the private sector,” said chair of the think tank Rod Sims.

“The way to do this is to put a price on carbon so that fossil fuel producers pay for the damage their products do to the environment.”

Carbon pricing remains a politically-fraught issue, though Professor Sims warned companies would not cut emissions unless they had a clear incentive to do so.

Australia does have the Safeguard Mechanism, aimed at big polluters, and it could be toughened up following a legislative review in 2026.

Thursday’s 2035 targets provoked a range of responses, with environmental groups hoping for more ambition while business warned even the lower end of the range would be challenging.

On the backdrop of Liberal infighting over climate policy, the federal opposition came out hard, with leader Sussan Ley labelling the targets and plan a “train wreck”.

The opposition believes the target is “unachievable without a massive intervention”, while the Greens are no less withering, but from a different perspective.

“Labor has given up on the science and listened to their coal and gas donors,” Senator Larissa Waters said, arguing for a target of at least 75 per cent.

Given that, Mr Bowen is unlikely to seek to legislate the target.

“If the Greens indicate a willingness to vote for it, we’ll take it to the parliament,” Mr Bowen told ABC’s 7.30.

“If not, we won’t.”

The contribution to global emissions cuts landed days after a diabolical report on Australia’s expected climate impacts, including a warning that 1.5 million people could be exposed to coastal hazards from rising seas by 2050.