A big four bank is ending its relationship with its auditor of nearly six decades in the latest fallout from a whistleblower scandal.

KPMG has been ANZ’s auditor since 1969 and while the partners who worked on the audit have regularly rotated, the bank is looking for a new firm.

“A tenure of this length is no longer considered appropriate and has been under consideration by the board for some time,” ANZ said in a statement on Friday.

ANZ will commence a competitive tender process to select a new auditor beginning with the 2028/29 financial year.

The tender process will conclude in April and KPMG won’t be eligible to participate, the bank said.

KPMG earned $21.4 million for auditing and reviewing ANZ’s accounts in 2024/25, with its total fees including non-audit services coming to $29.6 million for that financial year.

KPMG Australia has been under fire after Labor Senator Deborah O’Neill in March revealed a whistleblower’s allegations that the accounting firm used confidential documents from audit clients Lendlease and Optus to win audit engagements with Westpac, Dexus and Telstra.

The scandal has resulted in the resignations of chief executive Andrew Yates, chairman Martin Sheppard and other partners, as well as the loss of long-term clients Macquarie Group and Lendlease.

The firm cut nearly 400 of its Australian workforce in August amid the loss of clients.

KPMG has been contacted for comment.

The accounting firm has said it is overhauling its governance arrangements and appointed new independent board members in a bid to address its shortcomings.

”Trust will only be rebuilt through sustained action and demonstrable change,” interim chief executive Stan Stavros said in June.

“We are determined to confront what went wrong, act transparently and ensure these failings are not repeated.”

Some of the world’s largest gaming companies have been put on notice by Australia’s online safety watchdog for not doing enough to keep children safe on their platforms.

The eSafety Commission outlined how the providers of four major gaming platforms had responded to notices it issued in April, in a report released on Friday.

It found big gaps in the behaviour of some companies, which could lead to immediate harm for children, commissioner Julie Inman Grant said. 

“The primary demographic is eight to 13-year-olds,” Ms Inman Grant told Nine’s Today.

“If you are a predator, whether you’re a violent extremist or you’re grooming for sexual purposes, you’re going to go to the digital playgrounds where children are.”

The notices, issued to the providers of Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite and Steam, required them to explain how they were meeting the government’s Basic Online Safety Expectations.

The commission found some of the platforms had introduced additional safety mechanisms since receiving the notices, but significant gaps remained.

Among changes made include those implemented by Roblox in response to a court-enforced undertaking issued in August.

The gaming giant, which is the second most popular game platform among Australian children, agreed to introduce a number of additional safety measures.

This included introducing accessible reporting mechanisms, preventing adults from contacting unknown children without parental consent, and making children’s accounts private by default.

Roblox was prioritising the safety of Australian users, including children, the company said.

“We have invested heavily in what eSafety acknowledges is one of the gaming industry’s largest trust and safety teams and continue to strengthen our multi-layered safeguards,” a spokesperson said.

“(It includes) advanced detection technologies and mandatory age checks to access chat that no other large online platform has adopted at the scale we have.”

Ms Inman Grant said gaming providers needed to do better to protect children.

“We’ll have to see what they actually deliver in the coming months and we can always take formal enforcement action if they don’t comply,” she told ABC Radio.

“Australian children have a right to play online without being exposed to predators, sexual extortionists, violent extremist content or other harmful material.”

In March, age assurance requirements were introduced for all gaming platforms. They mean companies must find out the age of a player and not serve children dangerous content, including things that contain sexual or self-harm references. 

The push for compliance comes as the government continues to introduce reforms to its online safety legislation, which began with its world-first social media ban for children under the age of 16.

Further reforms announced in September would allow users to opt out of algorithmic social media feeds.

While gaming platforms are exempted from the government’s social media ban for under 16s, Roblox began limiting access to certain features to Australians aged 18 and over in December.

Epic Games and Mojang Studios, the studios behind Fortnite and Minecraft, relies on users self-declaring their age and allowed users identified as aged 18 or over to access what the commission describes as high-risk features.

It includes all-ages chatrooms and, in the case of Minecraft, access to unmoderated third-party servers.

The report also found the level of industry collaboration varied across studios, with Mojang Studios and Roblox participating in multiple industry initiatives aimed at combating child sexual exploitation online while Valve, the developer behind online gaming marketplace Steam, did not.

Lawyers who lodge visa applications they know are unlikely to succeed will be penalised as part of a federal crackdown on Australia’s migration system. 

Registered migration agents and unregistered operators have been put on notice over the potential exploitation of vulnerable travellers.

Agents who assist with applications they know, or reasonably ought to know, have no legal basis will be banned under proposed government changes, Assistant Citizenship Minister Julian Hill said in a speech to the Migration Institute of Australia on Friday.

“Australia is and will remain extremely kind and generous to genuine asylum seekers, and part of the social licence to do so is to reduce the abuse of the system,” he said.

“Trust is key. If Australians sense that a government is not in control of our nation’s borders or the system, then anger rises and trust falls.”

The government’s changes to provisional standards would replace a protocol that allows agents to proceed with applications likely to be futile if the client acknowledges in writing that they understand the risk.

About 90 per cent of protection applications are refused, which he said wasted resources and left people in limbo.

The government announced a long-anticipated overhaul to migration settings in September, which will change the way students can access visas, the number of working holiday makers let into the country, and prevent visa hopping.

The plan includes reducing the roughly 77,000 unlawful non-citizens in Australia.

Also announced in September, roughly 250 beds will be added to detention centre capacity, which Mr Hill said would “improve overall compliance by many thousands of extra departures each year and stem the growth in overstayers”.

“We are sending a signal to everyone and giving firm meaning to a visa’s expiry date,” he said. 

Greens Senator David Shoebridge, who was the immigration spokesman at the time and became party leader this week, accused the government of taking a hard-line approach that would harm vulnerable migrants. 

”This is where Labor has sunk to, reheating Tony Abbott’s immigration attacks, with a 2026 Donald Trump twist,” he said at the time. 

It comes as Pauline Hanson’s right-wing tactics continue to capture the imagination of voters. 

The coalition, which is polling near record-lows as One Nation’s popularity has surged, has also proposed to slash the net overseas migration number. 

A crackdown on student visas unveiled by Mr Hill will mean there are only three ways people can jump to another study progression: an extension to their visa if they get sick, an onshore transfer, or progression to further studies after finishing a course.

“The community’s view has changed and Australians now want and expect governments to more tightly control temporary flows,” Mr Hill said.

Radio star Jackie “O” Henderson’s quest to recoup the bulk of her nine-figure contract has been pushed back more than six months.

A civil trial between the owner of KIIS FM and its former breakfast star was set to begin on October 12, but a delay in pre-trial proceedings and the filing of documents have caused a mammoth delay.

Federal Court Justice Wendy Abraham on Friday postponed the two-week trial until late April after a crucial pre-trial hearing was aborted on Thursday.

“There is no option but to adjourn the trial,” she said.

Dozens of documents in the 3900-page court book have been caught up in battles between the two sides over legal privilege.

Hearing arguments and then adjudicating on those before October 12 proved too big a mountain to climb.

“Documents did have to be provided in a far tighter timeframe than they were,” Justice Abraham said.

The court case relates to ARN – which operates the KIIS and GOLD brands – severing its contract with Henderson after her co-host Kyle Sandilands made offensive comments about her on-air in February.

Henderson is suing the radio giant for unlawful termination of her $100 million contract after refusing to work with her volatile co-host.

The Adelaide-born shock jock is expected to give evidence at trial about alleged damage she suffered to her mental health and wellbeing after a series of attacks from Sandilands.

Henderson, 51, says she made a bullying complaint about Sandilands in 2025.

But ARN claims the proceedings were dropped after the former Triple M and 2dayFM host sought spiritual assistance.

“She believed the issue had been resolved through her arranging for exorcists to clear Mr Sandilands’ demons,” the amended cross-claim filed by ARN states.

“Her basis for telling ARN no further action was required was not a rational one.”

In a defence made public by the court, the company claimed Henderson’s threats to initiate a workplace bullying claim with SafeWork NSW were not made in line with workplace law.

“That Ms Henderson and Henderson Media reserved their right to make a report to SafeWork NSW was not done in good faith and for a proper purpose,” the radio giant claims.

ARN also argues it was not the true employer of Henderson.

Rather, it contends that was Henderson Media, the 51-year-old’s company, for which she is the sole director and shareholder.

“Henderson Media had all of the statutory duties in respect of workplace health and safety,” the amended cross-claim states.

Sandilands settled his case with ARN in June, receiving a $12 million payout.

The pair were in just the second year of a mammoth 10-year, $200 million contract.

But Henderson’s deal was scrapped when she told KIIS FM’s parent company ARN she could not continue to work with Sandilands in February.

Sandilands, who has been embroiled in a series of scandals throughout his contentious career, was hit with a breach notice for “serious misconduct” and was taken off air for two weeks.

Henderson is still seeking the full payout of the remaining balance of her contract, estimated to be about $85 million.

The case will return to court on October 19 for the argument over legal privilege.

Australian businesses will need time to adjust to the new ban on card surcharges as the major banks prepare for a potential merchant fees war.

The change, driven by the central bank to give consumers transparency at the till, only came into effect on Thursday.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia says that from its end, the transition has been relatively smooth, although it has sensed pockets of anxiety.

“We do what we can at our end to support customers in making those changes,” head of retail sales and services Angus Sullivan told AAP.

Even though consumers will no longer see the surcharge on eftpos, Visa, Mastercard and Amex transactions, businesses are still on the hook to cover the cost by either absorbing it or increasing product prices.

The banks have already remotely removed the surcharge option from the in-shop terminals used by merchants, including key hospitality operations that were the biggest fee users.

“That’s a big day of change, and I think there’s a lot to navigate as businesses work it out,” Mr Sullivan said.

At the same time, banks still have to cover the interchange fee – paid by the merchant’s bank to the customer’s bank when a payment is processed – even though it has now dropped to 0.3 per cent, from 0.8 per cent (roughly three cents on every $10) – and shopkeepers still pay merchant fees to their banks.

Commonwealth has just dropped its merchant pricing to 0.99 per cent, from 1.10 per cent, while last week Westpac cut its fee to 0.79 per cent, which it says is the lowest in the market.

“What it’s going to do is it’s probably going to create some more price-based competition for merchant services for businesses across the country,” Mr Sullivan said.

But Commonwealth, which has about 80,000 merchant payment terminals, is confident it can meet that competition, especially from the three main competitors: Westpac, National Australia Bank, and ANZ.

“Obviously, there are higher-priced merchant facilities that tend to bundle together a bunch of services,” Mr Sullivan said, in an apparent reference to flat-fee providers such as Square.

“But I think bundling will be more difficult in the future because businesses will want to understand: what am I paying for and do I actually need that?

“It’s a time of real change and a bit of confusion for a lot of businesses about how to navigate it and make sure they’re doing the right thing.

“We know how busy they are, how much they’ve got on.”

Meanwhile, bank customers are watching their institutions roll back lucrative credit card reward programs, hike annual card fees and limit previous benefits, because payment processing does not happen for nothing.

Asked if Commonwealth had seen any pushback from that, Mr Sullivan said that while the value proposition of a credit card was changing, his bank was “creating more ways for customers to earn points”. 

This appears to be by encouraging clients to embed more of their business in the bank.

“We do see a lot of customers trying to navigate and work out what works for them,” he said.

Asked if the bank had noticed customers moving to lower-fee cards, Mr Sullivan said “not much”.

“We’ve seen a little bit of customers downgrading during the last month or two, but actually the attrition has been lower than we expected when we planned for these changes.”

Steven Bugeja still thinks about how different his life would be if as a child he had access to the support his kids receive.

“I only discovered that I had autism myself through my own children,” he told AAP.

“If my parents knew that, and if they had the support of NDIS … it would have made a huge difference.”

Mr Bugeja’s four kids, who live with autism, receive NDIS assistance for health, psychology, occupational and speech therapy, and for things like excursions to parks and the cinema.

He’s still in the dark about what happens when the scheme undergoes its biggest ever overhaul.

“It just makes my brain explode,” Mr Bugeja said.

Thriving Kids, a plan for states to take care of autistic and developmentally-delayed children aged eight or younger with low-to-moderate support needs, began rolling out on Thursday.

It kickstarts a 15-month countdown to when those kids are expected to be out of Canberra’s hands entirely.

But who will take care of which kids, and what will happen to youngsters after the age of eight, largely remains a mystery.

Having scoured all the available info, Mr Bugeja – whose youngest child is nine – is no closer to a clear picture.

“You see (what) your kids achieve … gone through therapy and all that, and you just don’t want to see that ruined and you don’t want to see it going backwards again,” Mr Bugeja said.

“There’s no clarity on where NDIS is heading.”

Thursday’s changes included launching an information platform and autism helpline.

States will chip in $4 billion and the federal government $2 billion over five years to Thriving Kids, as part of sweeping reforms designed to rein in the NDIS’s soaring costs.

Another measure involves halving budgets for community participation, which also began on Thursday.

“That’s where you learn the most, living your life and contributing to social activities,” Mr Bugeja said, adding the excursions also helped parents stave off burnout.

“Therapy is very good, it’s just sometimes you’ve got to put yourself out there and live that social life and learn how to do it independently.

“They (kids) realise it’s OK and the world is not as hard.”

Thriving Kids had the potential to be a once-in-a-generation improvement on caring for certain children, advocates have said, but the speed of the changes has sowed doubt about what the scheme can achieve.

“There is a level of anxiety, (we) take that seriously … we’re confident that we will come up with the best combination of services and care,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers said on Thursday.

Queensland is still not signing on to the plan, with Labor now relying on that state’s disability community to bring its government to heel.

The federal government maintains the reforms, the bulk of which were announced in April, will leave the NDIS more sustainable.

“I hope this goes to a place where it’s going to help families,” Mr Bugeja said. 

“Just listen.”

Global bond markets have come under renewed pressure, with Treasury yields hitting their highest in decades and threatening stocks, even though tech names managed to draw some support from ‌AI chipmaker Micron’s blockbuster earnings.

The 10-year US Treasury yield, a yardstick for global borrowing costs and asset prices, rose to 5.34 per cent, its highest since 2002 before dip buyers stepped in, bringing ‌it back to 5.28 per cent.

It posted its biggest quarterly rise this century in the three months to September, with the selling pressure also rippling through bonds in France, Britain and Japan.

Yields have been surging around the world as soaring energy costs fan inflation and as the boom in AI and data centre building lifts expectations for growth and for where short-term interest rates will settle.

Stalling peace talks between the US and Iran to end the seven-month-long war in the Middle East have kept crude prices elevated.

Brent futures surged 42 per cent in the July-September ‌quarter, and the December ‌contract, the current benchmark, was ⁠last at $US100 a barrel.

“We have had a prolonged sell-off in bonds – they have been correlated with oil prices ​and also we’ve had strong US data,” said Rory McPherson, chief market strategist at Wren Sterling.

“We don’t have enough buyers who want to buy bonds.”

That all left European shares under pressure on Thursday, with the broad STOXX 600 down 0.75 per cent and European banks off 1.8 per cent though US share futures managed to hold steady.

Helping the US were high-stakes earnings from Micron, a key supplier to AI bellwether Nvidia.

They signalled strong demand for AI memory chips, with financial commitments under long-term supply agreements at $US32 billion ($A46 billion), up from $US22 billion in June.

That ⁠helped push tech-heavy stock markets in Asia higher.

Japan’s Nikkei jumped more than three per cent, and South ‌Korea’s KOSPI reversed earlier ​losses to gain 1.7 per cent.

Global yields surged in September as bond prices tumbled, amid the ​soaring energy costs and the AI boom, leaving investors bracing for a period where interest rates stay higher for longer.

Market focus has been on how long US Treasury yields stay above the psychologically important five per cent level while some investors even weigh the possibility of yields breaching six per cent.

The US 10-year yield gained 87 basis points ​in the July-September ​quarter, the biggest quarterly rise since 1994, LSEG data showed.

France’s 10-year ​yield gained 120 basis points in the quarter, the most since 1987, and its yield ‌briefly jumped by a further 10 basis points on Thursday to 4.96 per cent, closing in on the symbolic five per cent level.

It too then eased back and was last down 2 bps at 4.82 per cent, though the French budget process is keeping investors on edge.

Yields in Japan have also climbed to multi-decade highs, while Britain’s 30-year yield nudged above six per cent.

Somewhere in the mix for bonds also was a reduction in bets on a further Federal Reserve rate hike in October after Wednesday’s softer-than-expected US inflation reading.

Traders are pricing in a 38 per cent chance of ​a Fed hike in September, versus 50 per cent a day earlier, CME’s FedWatch tool showed.

In currency markets the winner from the bond sell-off has been the dollar, which ​was stronger again on Thursday.

The euro was ⁠down 0.3 per cent at $US1.1297 and sterling was down by a similar amount at $US1.3223.

Gold was up a touch at $US4,174 an ounce.

Australians are closely attached to their local banks and no more so than in regional areas where where a well-placed and staffed branch makes all the difference.

“Well, it’s just everything to keep a bank open in a regional centre,” third generation farmer David Tudgey said, as he surveyed his impressive wheat field in Breeza, central NSW.

Like many people, Mr Tudgey does his fair share of banking online, but the other day was paid by cheque.

“You know, you’ve got to be able to go to your local centre and be able to be face-to-face with someone.”

The nation’s biggest network of bricks and mortar banks on Thursday gave regional Australians a guarantee there would be no branch closures for at least the next four years.

The commitment by Commonwealth Bank of Australia applies to 281 branches, stretching from the east to Port Hedland in Western Australia.

While good news for customers, it also gives certainty to the 3000 Commonwealth workers in the regions.

“Regional communities are central to the Australian economy and our way of life,” chief executive Matt Comyn said.

“We have been part of these communities for generations, and today we are providing certainty that every one of our regional branches will remain open into the next decade.”

The bank was one of the first major institutions to make a commitment to regional branch services in February 2023, during a Senate inquiry into rural closures and services.

That moratorium has been extended until December 2030.

Asked what would happen after that, retail banking services head Angus Sullivan said the second promise was a good indicator of the bank’s “substantial” allegiance to rural Australians.

The 281 branches will continue to accept cash deposits and withdrawals and support everyday banking and business banking.

Gunnedah local Richard Gallen’s family has been a customer of Commonwealth’s town branch for more than 80 years.

“It’s weird,” the principal of LJ Hooker told AAP.

“They become very loyal, you know, country people.

“It’s very rare that you go and change, if they’re doing the right job.”

The bank’s Gunnedah branch, in central NSW, has been open since 1931, but what really matters is the role its played in peoples’ lives across 95 years.

“Generations of families have walked through those doors, opened accounts, purchased homes, purchased businesses,” branch manager Jason Woolley said.

The branch recently completed one of its biggest loans – $1.7 million for a house.

Commonwealth is also spending $140 million upgrading all of its branches and refreshing layouts and technology with the goal of cutting waiting times.

Mr Tudgey reckons he’s probably got a better relationship with his local bank manager than his city counterparts, especially since they all go to the same events and their children go to the same schools.

“If you know the person, it helps a lot,” the farmer, who later found out he could have dealt with that cheque in his banking app, told AAP.

“But it was nice to go in and, you know, be able to present the cheque to someone and get paid,” he said.

So what if someone tried to close the bank?

“There would be uproar – revolution.”

* AAP travelled to Gunnedah with the support of Commonwealth Bank.

Australia’s share market has erased almost $60 billion in value in a day as soaring bond yields foreshadow higher global borrowing costs, hammering cyclical stocks.

The S&P/ASX200 tumbled 174.9 points on Thursday, down 1.99 per cent, to 8,614.4, as the broader All Ordinaries lost 174.8 points, or 1.95 per cent, to 8,794.4.

The move wiped $59.67 billion from the top-500 stocks’ combined $3.1 trillion market cap.

Investors had nowhere to hide as all 11 sectors bled lower.

Even defensive groups such aslike health care and consumer staples dropped more than two per cent, along with financials segment, real estate trusts and energy stocks.

The plunge came as global bond yields continued to track inflation risks higher, elevating future borrowing costs and constraining the growth outlook, hitting the cyclical-dominated ASX200 particularly hard.

The Australian dollar is buying 69.48 US cents, down from 69.71 US cents on Wednesday at 5pm.

Australia’s housing downturn is on track to become the deepest in 40 years as economists warn already sizeable price drops could be only one-third of the way through.

National property values fell 1.1 per cent in September, taking the total decline since the March peak to 5.2 per cent, data firm Cotality revealed on Thursday.

The median dwelling value dropped to $899,236 – essentially back to where it was 12 months earlier.

Brisbane overtook Sydney as the city with the steepest monthly fall, down 1.5 per cent compared to Sydney’s 1.4 per cent.

Sydney home values are 8.6 per cent lower than their February peak.

The downturn was deeper than at the same stage of the 2022/23 price drop, Cotality research director Tim Lawless said.

“This is just a little bit more rapid than what we’re seeing through that previous period of decline, which was one of the largest corrections on record,” he told AAP.

“But it was really short and sharp. I think this one’s quite sharp, clearly, but I’m not sure how short it’s going to be.”

Some economists, such as HSBC’s Paul Bloxham, have forecast prices to decline 13 per cent, from peak to tough.

AMP chief economist Shane Oliver said the slump could be as large a 15 per cent and run until the middle of 2027.

While rising interest rates are having a larger influence on prices, Labor’s tax changes for property investors are clearly having an impact.

“Once the dust finally settles, maybe around the middle of next year, then fresh home buyers will probably be in a situation where housing is more affordable and there’s less competition with investors,” Mr Lawless said. 

“So on that framework … I think the budget would have done what it set out to achieve.”

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said prices were already coming off before the May budget, but the changes would help ensure there were more affordable opportunities in the market for first-home buyers.

“Young people and first-home buyers have been locked out of the housing market for decades, since the mistake was made with the tax changes a quarter of a century ago,” he told reporters on Thursday.

As interest rates climb, the property downturn is widening as well as deepening.

Over the three months to the end of September, 97 per cent of capital city suburbs were down in value, Cotality said.

While the lower quartile of the market was holding up in the early stages of the downturn, pockets of resistance were increasingly disappearing.

But Labor’s expansion of its five per cent deposit scheme was still buttressing demand among first-home buyers at the lower end of the market.

Since it was uncapped one year ago to the day, more than 102,000 first-home buyers had made use of the scheme, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

“This scheme is helping Australians, particularly young Australians, get their foot in the door and achieve the dream of home ownership,” he said.

The tax changes were predicted to push rents up due to a reduction in rental stock.

However, inflation data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday showed rents have stabilised, rising 3.6 per cent in the 12 months to August – a rate of growth that has been unchanged since May.

A rebound in the rental vacancy rate from a record low 1.5 per cent to two per cent – due to larger household sizes and lower migration levels – was helping take some heat out of the market, Mr Lawless said.