Netflix plans to lay off about six per cent of its workforce, amounting to nearly 1000 positions, as the streaming giant makes wider “organisational changes”.

Co-chief executives Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos announced the job cuts in a memo to employees on Wednesday.

They said the company’s product, tech, legal and human resources teams would be the most affected.

“Decisions like these are never easy, and we don’t take them lightly,” Peters and Sarandos wrote in the memo, which was obtained by the Associated Press.

They maintained business was strong – but that Netflix needed to be “disciplined about where we prioritise our people and resources” as it invests in future growth and “high impact areas to improve our service”.

Beyond the memo from its chief executives, Netflix declined to comment further about the job cuts.

Between membership sign-ups and price increases, Netflix’s profit has grown this year.

In its second financial quarter, the company earned $US3.4 billion ($A4.9 billion) and racked up revenue of $US12.56 billion – up nine per cent and 13% per cent respectively from the same period last year.

Still, Netflix’s forecast for the third quarter fell below Wall Street’s expectations.

The company plans to report those earnings next week.

Competition in the streaming space is growing more crowded overall.

Netflix continues to be a dominant player – accounting for 19 per cent of the market per the latest data from streaming guide JustWatch – but rivals like Amazon’s Prime Video and Disney+ are close behind.

HBO Max and Paramount+ are also now under the same roof – Skydance -after Paramount’s $US81 billion buyout of Warner Bros Discovery closed last week.

Netflix initially signed a deal to buy Warner’s studio and streaming business late last year but walked away from that offer back in February.

At the end of 2025, per regulatory filings, Netflix had about 16,000 full-time employees worldwide.

The lay-offs announced on Wednesday mark the biggest round of cuts the California-based company has rolled out in years.

As Australian property prices slump nationwide, regional home owners can take solace that their assets have out-performed those in the big smoke over the past year.

In the year to September, regional dwelling values gained 5.6 per cent, while those in the capital cities have declined 1.8 per cent, according to a Cotality report on Thursday.

Even though cities such as Perth and Darwin recorded average dwelling value increases exceeding 10 per cent in the period, the decline in east coast metropolises such as Sydney and Melbourne has brought the average for the capitals down.

The increase in regional-area house prices, albeit from a lower base, has kept the national average stationary in the period, despite the nationwide slump in recent months.

The last quarter proved particularly grim, with only a handful of regional areas and Darwin having sustained price growth.

Central to the continuing downward trend was the impact of sustained and possible future increases to interest rates, which meant buyers had considerably reduced borrowing capacity, according to Cotality research director Tim Lawless.

“They’re also weighing up higher repayments and the prospect of further price falls, which is making some reluctant to commit even if they can afford to buy,” Mr Lawless said.

Sellers are hesitant to list their property as they try to avoid being unable to sell, with more homes staying on the market for longer.

The amount of houses sold in September slumped 20.9 per cent compared to the same month in 2025, despite spring traditionally heralding a boost in market activity.

That slumped continued a nine-month trend of lower sales compared to the same period in 2025.

Again, the metropolitan market has been the main contributor to the decline, as the median property across the capital cities took nearly six weeks to sell.

Renters have also been slugged with rising rents of 5.5 per cent on average in the past year, with Darwin facing the biggest 12-month increase of nearly 12 per cent. 

AMP chief economist Shane Oliver said market would likely only rebound once the Reserve Bank, which has implemented four interest rate hikes in 2026, looks certain to cut them.

“But that to me looks to be a fair way off,” he told AAP.

This latest update to the housing market comes after the Australian Property Institute warned prices could fall up to 11 per cent from their March peak and only rebound in late 2027.

Deepfakes and artificial intelligence-powered attacks are making elections harder to safeguard, but don’t leave all of it to the election regulator. 

AI was boosting misinformation, foreign interference and exacerbating threats on political figures, Australian Electoral Commissioner Jeff Pope told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday.

“It is a new threat that amplifies and accelerates existing threats to electoral integrity,” he said during Canberra hearings into the potentials and pitfalls of AI.

Mr Pope floated a legal requirement to label deepfakes, but stressed the AEC’s enforcement powers were limited by its “fine tuned” design.

It could tackle campaigning that was not properly authorised, educate the public and publish generalised debunks, but could only very rarely make truth determinations, the MPs and senators heard.

“The the more we’re asked to regulate and to make judgement, then there is a risk around that impartiality being challenged.”

He patiently stepped through the regulator’s powers as the committee threw him bizarre scenarios involving AI. 

They included questions about deepfakes showing the prime minister giving “a bag of cash to someone dodgy” and biting the head off a puppy, suggested by WA MP Kate Chaney.

Mr Pope revealed the AEC did not have the power to contain that kind of content.

Misleading and deceptive information could be stopped only if it related to the casting of a vote, according to the commissioner.

“If it was a deepfake of a senior person in government saying ‘the only way your ballot paper will count is if you complete it this way: one here, two there’ – anything else won’t count,” he said.

Banning deepfakes entirely might also run afoul of Australia’s implied freedom of political communication, Mr Pope warned.

The committee also previously heard artists and AI companies might not need copyright law to change at all.

Instead, Canberra could interrogate whether there really is any need to train AI models in Australia, and let licensing markets evolve on their own, according to the Productivity Commission.

When asked about the economic upside to hosting cutting-edge “frontier models”, commission representative Stephen King replied: “That is an open question.”

It questions what the committee has repeatedly been told about Australia needing top-of-the-line bots and onshore training to reap the AI boom’s biggest benefits. 

Training home-grown models may well require copyright law to change to either require tech giants to license content or give them a pass to use it at no cost, experts have testified. 

“Copyright law would rule out the training of those models in this country, unless the party training those models licensed the relevant material,” Mr King affirmed to the MPs and senators on Wednesday.

The government could also hold out for artists and AI companies to strike deals on their own, which Mr King said was already happening.

“Three years – let the markets develop, if they haven’t developed, if there’s still a significant problem, then then we should start considering alternative solutions,” he said.

Japanese farm minister Kazuo Yana has stepped down after coming under fire for remarks about cutting road funding ‌for municipalities that did not support him, becoming the first minister in Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government to resign.

Takaichi appointed Yana in a cabinet reshuffle last month but had openly chided him in parliament for the remarks over the road funding, which local media first reported earlier this month.

Yana offered his resignation to avoid causing any more trouble for ‌parliamentary deliberation and ‌diverting attention from ⁠overseeing agricultural, forestry and fishery policies, the prime minister said.

“I am the ​one who made the appointment. Responsibility for appointing him (to the post) rests upon me, the prime minister,” Takaichi told reporters.

Yana’s replacement will be announced on Thursday, she said.

The resignation comes during an extraordinary parliamentary session in which Takaichi faces a high-stakes challenge to win approval for key policy goals ⁠including a temporary sales tax cut on food and beverages.

Opposition ‌parties in ​parliament’s upper house, where the ruling coalition lacks a majority, were preparing a censure motion against Yana while ​some threatened to ‌block debate on the sales tax legislation until he stepped down, according to local media reports.

Yana confirmed ​the authenticity of an audio clip, obtained by several local media, in which he said one reason for the budget cuts in two municipalities in his constituency was their support of a rival ​candidate ​in a parliamentary election held in February.

He ​has since denied having the power to sway such budget ‌decisions.

His comment quickly drew widespread criticism as an abuse of power.

An opinion poll by public broadcaster NHK this week indicated 78 per cent of respondents thought Yana’s explanation was unacceptable.

Support for Takaichi’s cabinet fell two percentage points from last month’s poll but remained elevated at 51 per cent, according to the same survey.

Grilled in parliament, Yana has ​also admitted that his campaign provided free transportation for supporters to attend his election rally, a move ​that some MPs criticised as ⁠a potential violation of election law.

The US and other wealthy nations need to urgently tackle mounting global debt levels that are weighing heaviest on low-income countries and straining the global financial system, the head of the International Monetary Fund says.

IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said that while US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other US leaders recognised that the federal deficit and national debt had grown too high, just trying to grow the US economy out of its more than $US40 trillion ($A57 trillion) in national debt would not suffice. 

“At the fund, we believe that, growth, of course, helps, but it cannot deliver fast enough the necessary adjustments,” Georgieva said at the autumn meeting of the IMF and World Bank in Bangkok on Wednesday.

“There is no magic,” she said, noting some other measures would be needed. 

“You have to go in a direction of tightening that, bringing it down, bringing deficit down.”

Rising debt levels and global inflation, partly resulting from high energy costs due to the Iran war, have pushed interest rates to multi-decade highs, adding to the burdens of the world’s poorest nations. 

Efforts to bring debt under control with what Georgieva and other experts call “fiscal consolidation” have suffered setbacks from heavy spending during the COVID-19 pandemic and since.

“Fiscal risks are rising, and a proper reaction is largely absent in many countries,” said Rodrigo Valdes, director of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department. 

“And in major advanced economies, the effect of fiscal indiscipline does not stop at the border. It travels to the rest of the world.” 

“Among the world’s poorest countries, interest payments have reached historic highs relative to revenue, and declining amounts of aid are creating gaps that some countries have been unable to finance,” the IMF’s latest Fiscal Monitor said. 

That is forcing countries to make hard choices between supporting their most vulnerable people and meeting their debt repayment obligations. 

“We know that today the median developing country is going to pay, is actually today paying three times more on their interest repayments than developed countries,” Alexander De Croo, former Belgian prime minister and the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

On average nearly 10 per cent of government spending is going to repay debt, and the combination of high prices for fuel, fertiliser and other needs, the impact of the El Nino weather phenomenon and higher borrowing costs has left many low income countries with little opportunity to recover.

“I mean, we don’t see really a light at the end of the tunnel,” De Croo said. 

Private health insurance for older Australians will stay cheaper for now, after a plan to scale back rebates on their premiums was thrown out. 

Over-65s were set to lose additional discounts on their insurance under measures announced during May’s budget, with the forecast $3 billion in savings to be redirected into aged care.

The policy sparked outrage by also proposing to take pensioners off their cheaper premiums, which are subsidised by the government. 

The coalition and Greens on Wednesday teamed up to strip Labor’s proposal from the Senate notice paper, meaning it couldn’t be debated and passed during the session.

“They’ve paid their private health insurance all their lives, and at a time when they’re most likely to need it, it’s been ripped away from them,” coalition Senator Anne Ruston told reporters in Canberra.

“The Albanese Labor government has declared war on older Australians.”

But Labor was undeterred and has vowed to reintroduce the bill unchanged on Thursday morning.

“This is an absolute travesty that flies in the face of any of the members of the coalition’s professed commitment to sound budget management,” Health Minister Mark Butler told reporters on Wednesday shortly after the Senate threw the legislation out.

“We’re not waiting around, we’re going to reintroduce the bill tomorrow morning, and we intend to press ahead.”

The aged care changes intended to be funded by the $3 billion in savings will also march on, whether Labor gets its way or not, Mr Butler said.

The Labor frontbencher blamed an uncompromising attitude from freshly minted Greens leader David Shoebridge for the party’s intransigence.

The government had been in negotiations with the crossbench at the beginning of the week and were surprised the Senate had rejected the bill out of hand, Mr Butler said.

“If this is a change of approach under the new leadership of the Greens Party, then I think that is not going to be in the national interest,” he said.

Senator Shoebridge said the Greens would pass the bill if Labor agreed to a carve-out to let pensioners continue to access more generous health insurance rebates.

“That’s a revenue measure, but it won’t be one that comes at the expense of picking the pockets of pensioners in the middle of cost of living crisis,” he said.

Both Mr Butler and Senator Ruston declined to comment on whether they would support that tweak.

The bill does not propose to scrap the base rebates for individuals earning up to $164,000, and families earning up to $328,000, with those earning under $105,000 still receiving the maximum payback of 24 per cent.

“It’s a pretty sad indictment on the government that they’re in a situation where they mismanage their budget so badly that they can’t actually manage both their health and their aged care portfolio,” Senator Ruston said.

The government’s setback came shortly after Labor was also forced to abandon a $5000 cap on allied health services for veterans, which was meant to save the government $750 million over three years.

The health minister pleaded with the coalition and Greens to let debate proceed on the bill partly to float alternative savings measures to fully fund the aged care improvements.

Mr Butler’s department is on the hook for up to $60 billion in budget savings, factoring in sweeping changes designed to slow spending growth on the NDIS, which passed parliament in August.

Lower gas prices for consumers have trumped higher revenue for Australians in Labor’s plans for a national gas reservation.

Resources Minister Madeleine King knocked on the head the prospect of a gas exports tax as she introduced the scheme to parliament on Wednesday.

The reservation, which will force gas producers to supply the equivalent of up to 20 per cent of their exports to the domestic market, has been a long time in the making, Ms King told the National Press Club in Canberra.

The scheme, which mirrors one already in place in Western Australia, was announced in December 2025, following a viral campaign led by independent Senator David Pocock and progressive groups for a tax on gas exports.

A 25 per cent tax on export revenue, as championed by the Greens, would raise more revenue than the much-maligned petroleum resource rent tax, as well as divert more gas into the domestic market where it would be taxed at a lower rate, proponents argued.

But the gas industry was stridently against it, as well as countries that rely on Australian gas exports, such as Japan.

Canberra was warned that anything that threatened the flow of gas to Asian trading partners could threaten the flow of fuel back to Australia during a global oil crisis.

Ms King said the reservation was a better policy than a tax because it would result in a modest oversupply of gas in the market, causing gas prices to fall, while enabling an export industry to continue.

“We’ve got no plans for the gas tax, as previously proposed in various popular circles,” she said.

“Our focus is all about getting more Australian gas to more people and driving down those prices.”

While the gas lobby was more supportive of a reservation than an export tax, the industry still said it would discourage future investment.

A requirement for exporters to sell gas below cost or on non-commercial terms to the domestic market would deliver a “short-term sugar hit” but risked driving up prices in the long-term, Australian Energy Producers chief executive Samantha McCulloch said.

Ms King would not say how much prices were likely to fall once the policy kicks in in 2028.

As well as households, it is hoped that the policy will benefit heavy industrial gas users, such as smelters and chemical processors, and arrest the decline in Australia’s manufacturing capability.

But the Australian Industry Group said the legislation risked allowing exporters like Santos to dodge their domestic supply obligations.

William Poole, lead gas analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said changes to the draft legislation released showed one loophole had been closed at least.

Santos’s Gladstone LNG project, which has negatively impacted Australian gas prices as the project bought up domestic supply to fulfil export contracts, will not be exempt from the reservation if it renews its current contract, Mr Runciman said.

“The revised reservation bill now provides clarity that the contract will be respected only until 2031, a move likely to be welcomed by gas users and other exporters,” he said.

Other changes to the legislation included reining in the minister’s powers to decide how much gas an exporter can be forced to reserve for the Australian market.

But critics are still miffed over the government watering down the requirement for exporters to set aside 20 per cent of their production for the domestic market to a more ambiguous obligation of “up to 20 per cent”.

While a federal gas tax is seemingly off the cards, the states and territories could still share in about $17 billion extra revenue each year from the oil and gas sector.

By copying royalty systems already in place overseas and in Queensland, Australia could increase its share of production value from 14 per cent to 40 per cent, said think tank Prosper Australia in a report.

House prices are likely only halfway through their downward spiral, with rents rocketing the other way.

The property market has been tipped to fall up to 15 per cent from its March peak, only stabilise in the second half of 2027 and not fully recover for three to four years, according to economists.

At the same time, median rents have hit about $700 a week nationally, according to housing data firm Cotality, and fresh polling from the Australia Institute shows the vast majority of Australians favour rental caps.

There were no signs of the housing market bottoming out soon, AMP chief economist Shane Oliver told AAP.

Australians should expect a 10 to 12 per cent total fall in house prices and a similar climb in rents before the market hits the floor, Mr Oliver said on Wednesday.

For Sydney and Melbourne, an 11 per cent dip would pull median house prices down to levels of early February 2021.

Labor clarifying the federal budget’s tweaks to negative gearing and capital gains tax would help lure investors back into the market and push home values back up, Australian Property Institute research head Sherman Chan said.

The group predicted a recovery would begin in the three months to September 2027, soon after the tax changes kick in.

But Mr Oliver argued rising interest rates were much more closely watched and any recovery would take up to four years to lift home values back to where they once were.

“Once it’s clear that the (Reserve Bank) is heading towards rate cuts, I think that will enable the property market to start recovering,” he said.

“But that to me looks to be a fair way off.”

The RBA hitched the cash rate up to a 15-year high of 4.6 per cent in its September meeting, which governor Michele Bullock warned might be followed by more rises.

Money markets have priced in a 30 per cent chance of another hike in November but think the bank will hold steady.

Mr Oliver said the boffins’ strident language about keeping a lid on inflation was likely to endure.

“Our base case is that the Reserve Bank has hit the high point on the cash rates, but another hike is a very, very close call,” he said.

The alarming median rent figures sent the Greens clamouring for the government to institute caps, which Housing Minister Clare O’Neill on Wednesday said would wipe properties off the rental market and cause construction to shrivel up.

Greens housing spokeswoman Barbara Pocock responded with the example of the ACT.

Tenants in the national capital should only expect rises once a year, by a maximum of 10 per cent above the portion of Canberra’s inflation attributable to rent increases.

“There is a rent cap here, it follows inflation, and what do we see as a consequence? Rent increases are half the rate in other comparable cities,” she told reporters in Canberra.

“There is better availability of rental property, so I see no evidence in support of an argument against rental regulation.”

The coalition has pinned renters’ pain on Labor paring back negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts, but Mr Oliver said the link between the two things was far from clear-cut.

“What we see at the moment is on par with expectations that existed before the budget,” he said.

“If anything, rental growth has slowed down a lot because of the slowing economy.”

China’s exports surged 36.3 per cent in September from a year earlier, its customs agency says, bringing it on track to exceed 2025’s record trade surplus as pressure ramps up from its trading partners, including the European Union, to rebalance trade.

The exports data, which was better than what economists had expected, accelerated from the 25 per cent growth in August.

High-tech goods such as semiconductors and autos have helped fuel its rising shipments overseas.

Imports climbed 31 per cent in September year-on-year, also accelerating from August’s 28.2 per cent rise.

That resulted in a $US133.5 billion ($A190.8 billion) trade surplus for China in September, widening from $US119.1 billion in August.

For the first nine months, China’s trade surplus reached $US938 billion, with expectations growing that it could surpass 2025’s full-year $US1.2 trillion record.

Strong exports have helped drive China’s overall economic growth in 2026 at a time when domestic consumption and investment remained sluggish, weighed on by a years-long real estate sector downturn.

However, China’s export resilience faced mounting challenges, said Ecaterina Bigos, a senior market strategist at BNP Paribas Asset Management.

“While US-China trade tensions have eased somewhat, the EU’s push to rebalance directly targets high-value exports,” she said.

The US has launched an ongoing probe against China and other trading partners on their excess industrial capacity, although Washington and Beijing in September reached an agreement to extend their trade truce and cut tariffs on $US60 billion worth of goods.

The EU has particularly been struggling to rebalance a trade deficit exceeding $US1.1 billion a day with China.

EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic, following his visit to Beijing where he met his Chinese counterpart Wang Wentao last week, said a deal has been reached with Beijing, including halving Chinese hybrid car imports into the EU during the next few years.

Many of China’s trading partners faced weak growth prospects and were fearful of their manufacturing industries being overrun by exports from China, said Eswar Prasad, a professor of economics and trade policy at Cornell University.

Policymakers have also pointed to a weakened yuan, China’s currency, versus the US dollar and other currencies contributing to Chinese exports being cheaper overseas when compared with goods from other countries, adding to trade imbalances.

China has said it has “no need or intent” to gain competitive advantages through currency devaluation and that its trade growth has been driven by its industrial competitiveness in the global market.

Australian shares have dipped following a sharp sell-off in the major banks, after disappointing earnings from their US counterparts highlighted the challenging backdrop for financial institutions.

The S&P/ASX200 fell 56 points on Wednesday, down 0.64 per cent, to 8727.9, as the broader All Ordinaries dropped 52.5 points, or 0.59 per cent, to 8869.

The heavyweight financials sector tumbled 1.6 per cent as the big four banks sold off, after US bank earnings failed to impress investors and a shareholder address from CommBank boss Matt Comyn noted a host of local and international economic headwinds.

Miners also sold off, with gold prices still under pressure from elevated bond yields and as iron ore futures continued to linger at two-year lows.

The Australian dollar is buying 70.02 US cents, up from 69.77 US cents on Tuesday, the greenback easing after a Federal Reserve official tempered fears around the US interest rate outlook.