Australia’s share market has broken multiple records as it nears the end of a solid earnings season that delivered outsized returns for bigger miners, banks and consumer staples stocks.

The S&P/ASX200 gained 47 points on Thursday, up 0.51 per cent, to 9,175.3, as the broader All Ordinaries rose 49.7 points, or 0.53 per cent, to 9,408.7.

Both indices notched fresh intraday peaks during the session and ended the day at their highest-ever closing values, with an extra $85 billion added to the top-500’s combined value in February, taking it to $3.2 trillion.

“Financials are up nine per cent for the month and raw materials up almost eight per cent, so you’ve got those two big locomotives of the Australian stock market really chiming in,” IG market analyst Tony Sycamore told AAP.

The Australian dollar is buying 71.25 US cents, up from 71.09 US cents at 5pm on Thursday and creeping higher since January inflation came in higher-than-expected, raising the odds of more interest rate hikes.

Discounting at Rebel Sport and lacklustre sales at boating, camping and fishing chain BCF have taken a toll on their owner’s bottom line.

Super Retail Group, which also owns Supercheap Auto and Macpac, posted a first-half net profit of $104 million on Thursday, down 20 per cent from the same period in 2024.

Sales rose just over four per cent to $2.2 billion, with same-store sales up 2.5 per cent in the six months to December 27.

Chief executive Paul Bradshaw said the group sales lift was a solid outcome given the challenging retail environment.

Supercheap Auto same-store sales rose 3.5 per cent while Macpac delivered 7.8 per cent comparable sales growth.

Rebel’s same-store sales were up 3.8 per cent but margins fell due to increased discounting activity during the half – and then suffered from availability issues when key suppliers could not deliver enough stock to meet demand.

Mr Bradshaw said the team had delivered a credible top-line performance and was meeting weekly with suppliers to stabilise its inventory situation. 

“I would say, we let some goals in here, that is absolutely in our hands, and we will be absolutely focused in that space right now,” Mr Bradshaw told an earnings briefing.

Stock loss – industry jargon for theft – also remained elevated at Rebel during the half but the retailer said it had successfully managed to halt that upward trend. 

Same store sales fell 1.6 per cent at BCF, which Mr Bradshaw said was a disappointing performance.

So far in the first eight weeks of the second half, same-store sales have been stronger across all four brands, particularly Macpac, where sales are up 8.7 per cent.

Overall sales were up five per cent, which RBC Capital Markets analyst Michael Toner said was ahead of consensus expectations.

Super Retail Group shares were up more than eight per cent to $15.23 in afternoon trading.

Australia’s Outback Wrangler Matt Wright is broke and set to defend himself when he returns to court after firing his lawyers.

The star of hit TV shows Outback Wrangler and Wild Croc Territory is behind bars in Darwin, serving a five-month prison sentence for attempting to pervert the course of justice.

But the Netflix star is set to take the reins of his next legal fight, defending action brought by the widow of his best mate Chris “Willow” Wilson.

Wrangler co-star Mr Wilson plunged to his death in a remote area of the Northern Territory in February 2022 while dangling from a helicopter owned by Wright as he collected crocodile eggs.

His widow Danielle Wilson filed Federal Court proceedings in 2023 against Mr Wright, his company Helibrook and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) over the fatal chopper crash.

The mother-of-two is seeking damages for personal injury and for the loss of her husband’s income.

The case returned to the Federal Court for mention on Thursday, where the court was told Wright can’t afford a lawyer and will handle his own defence after terminating top Sydney firm Gillis Delaney Lawyers.

The Wrangler’s former lawyer, David Newey of Gillis Delaney, formally withdrew after being terminated as Wright’s representative.

“Moving forward, I can indicate Mr Wright intends to be self-represented,” Mr Newey told the court.

“He won’t be engaging lawyers and he has no funds to do so.”

Wright’s company, Helibrook – now in liquidation – is also being sued in the Federal Court.

The court was asked to protect documentation amid fears Wright might tamper with evidence.

“Matthew Wright has demonstrated through a court … a propensity to falsify critical aircraft records,” Ms Wilson’s lawyer told the court.

“Indeed, he has been convicted by the Northern Territory Supreme Court … of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

“If Mr Wright gets hold of these documents, gets personal control without anyone else having a copy, there is a very real risk they won’t be discovered, and they are critical documents.”

In December, Wright was sentenced at a Supreme Court trial to 10 months in prison on two counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice following the fatal crash, suspended after he served five months.

An Australian Transport Safety Bureau report into the accident found the chopper’s engine stopped mid-flight because of a lack of fuel.

During the emergency landing, pilot Sebastian Robinson released hooks and the sling line carrying Mr Wilson.

Mr Robinson, who survived the incident but suffered life-long injuries, was found to not have refuelled when necessary and had traces of cocaine in his system.

A former pilot and friend of Wilson who was on the scene soon after the crash was later convicted and fined $15,000 for destroying the mobile phone of the Netflix series star.

On Thursday, Justice Elizabeth Raper adjourned the matter until March 27 to allow Wright to attend future hearings.

The latest blow comes after the Wrangler copped a $10,000 fine in early February for landing his helicopter in his backyard in a rural Darwin area in 2024.

Wright pleaded guilty to contravening a development permit in the Darwin Local Court as the extent of the Wrangler’s financial situation emerged.

His defence team pleaded for leniency after the “financially devastating” Supreme Court trial.

Darwin Local Court Judge Greg Macdonald acknowledged Wright’s world was “crumbling into a quagmire” of legal conflict and dispute after his “spectacular fall from grace”.

One of the nations most vulnerable to sea level rise will host leaders as part of the Pacific’s international climate conference duties.

The main consultations for the pre-COP31 event will take place in Fiji in October and a “leaders’ component” will be held in Tuvalu, a low-lying island state expected to lose 90 per cent of its land to the ocean by the end of the century.

While Turkey ultimately emerged the victor from a three-year stand-off with Australia and Pacific nations to host the annual summit, the rival bidders did negotiate some COP-related responsibilities.

Australia is now leading multilateral negotiations and text drafting, while the Pacific secured a leaders pre-COP event.

Solomon Islands prime minister Jeremiah Manele, chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, said the region would have a strong presence at the climate conference.

“Pre-COP is a chance to show that when it comes to climate change, the most vulnerable nations can lead, and the world’s most powerful nations can listen,” he said.

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen, who has been tasked with running negotiations, said the Pacific region was at the frontline of the climate crisis.

“Leading the COP31 negotiations in partnership with the Pacific will strengthen our ties with our closest neighbours” he said. 

Also as part of the COP31 arrangements, Palau will host a “special climate event” during ​the ​55th PIF leaders meeting in September.

The main purpose of the annual United Nations climate summit is to make progress towards the Paris Agreement – the global pact that aims to limit global warming to 1.5C.

While the last summit in Brazil failed to make meaningful progress on roadmaps to end deforestation and phase-out fossil fuels, climate experts are hopeful Australia can use its negotiating role to advance the big-ticket agenda items.

Unions and green groups want data centres to meet their enormous power needs by building more renewable energy capacity.

Providing mandatory apprentice training to prevent a workforce drain and responsibly using water supplies also feature in the eight-point plan endorsed by the Electrical Trade Union, the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Clean Energy Council and other groups.

Their requests have been put to the federal government ahead of data centre development guidelines on energy, water and other matters that are anticipated to be released within weeks.

Australia has become a preferred destination to host the AI boom but questions have been levelled at the sizeable energy and water usage needed for the computing power.

Without the right policy settings, data centres risked “siphoning” skills from national priorities like housing and the energy transition, ETU national secretary Michael Wright said.

“Australia needs tens of thousands more electrical workers to wire our nation into the 21st century – including by building data centres,” Mr Wright said.

To protect the grid, the plan demands data centres be powered by 100 per cent additional renewable energy. 

Demand is expected to balloon from 1.35 gigawatts now to between 5-8 GW by 2035 on projections prepared in a Clean Energy Finance Corporation and Baringa report. 

New approvals should come with clear community benefits, Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley said.

“After all, the data centres can only be built leveraging the existing publicly funded water and grid infrastructure we have all paid for,” Mr Buckley said.

Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said data centres should be building new solar and wind capacity and have “flexibility and redundancy” built in to protect the network.

“People who are building data centres do need to build new energy to go with it, and that energy will be renewable,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

State and federal energy ministers were “of the same mind” and updates on the matter could be expected in May, he said.

The plan prepared by the Carbon Zero Initiative says that without the right policy architecture, the extra electricity demand could push up power prices, undermine national climate goals, and slow the development of emerging green industries.

“Clear guardrails now will benefit households, communities and the grid,” the initiative’s project lead Alexander Hoysted said. 

Australia’s biggest airline will return up to $450 million to investors after reporting a lift in interim earnings as it eyes ways to offset higher airport fees.

Qantas’s first-half underlying pre-tax profit ended at $1.5 billion, up about five per cent on the prior corresponding period.

Its bottom-line result was relatively flat at $925 million for the six months ended December on revenue of $12.9 billion, which grew just over six per cent.

The flow of money will add to an increased interim dividend for shareholders totalling $300 million, or 19.8 cents a share – a 20 per cent increase.

Qantas group chief executive Vanessa Hudson described the carrier’s first-half performance as strong despite cost increases.

“We have seen a sharp increase in some costs like airport charges and government fees, which have increased at double the rate of inflation over the past 12 months,” she said.

“We are offsetting these where possible, through transformation, and we’re working across the industry to address what can be done to ensure this doesn’t impact the ongoing affordability of air travel in this country.”

The Qantas and Jetstar domestic businesses continued to record growth in travel demand and delivered underlying earnings before interest and tax of $1.1 billion.

International and freight earnings fell six per cent to $463 million.

Qantas is forecasting continued strong travel demand across its business.

The domestic operations are tipped to generate a three per cent rise in revenue in the second half, while the international arm is heading for a one to three per cent increase.

Artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia has announced another quarter of astounding growth as investors try to decipher whether technology’s latest craze is overblown hyperbole or a springboard into a new era of prosperity and productivity.

The results for the November-January period blew past the analyst projections that shape investors’ perceptions, as has been the case since Nvidia’s high-end chips emerged as AI’s best building blocks three years ago.

Nvidia’s fiscal fourth-quarter surged 73 per cent from the previous year to $US68.1 billion ($A95.7 billion) while its profit almost doubled to roughly $US43 billion ($A60 billion), or $US1.76 ($A2.47) per share.

The Santa Clara, California, company also provided a forecast exceeding analyst projections while its chief executive Jensen Huang reinforced the demand for the company’s chips is still “skyrocketing”.

That description feeds into Huang’s thesis that the AI boom is still in the early stages of a buildout that will reshape society. 

If Nvidia hits its revenue target for the February-April period, it will translate into a 77 per cent increase from last year – a sign the company’s already phenomenal growth is still accelerating.

Nvidia’s stock price rose by more than two per cent in extended trading after the report came out.

The chipmaker has regularly cleared the bar set by analysts in the past three years, often by a wide margin, but that hasn’t always been enough to satisfy investors who have become increasingly skeptical about whether AI will live up to all the hype surrounding the technology.

After Nvidia delivered a stellar performance that far exceeded analyst forecasts in its last quarterly report, its stock price still fell by three per cent during the next day’s trading.

The AI fervor has escalated again during the past month as the four companies leading the AI charge — Amazon, Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta Platforms — collectively made commitments to spend about $US650 billion ($A914 billion) in 2026, ramping up their AI computing power.

A significant amount of the money is expected to be earmarked to buy more Nvidia chips required to power their AI factories, just as has been the case for much of the past three years — as Nvidia’s annual revenue soared from $US27 billion ($A38 billion) to $US216 billion ($A304 billion). 

Analysts expect the chipmaker’s revenue to surpass $US330 billion ($A464 billion) during the company’s next fiscal year.

“Our customers are racing to invest in AI compute — the factories powering the AI industrial revolution and their future growth,” Huang said.

Families of Australian diplomats in Israel and Lebanon have been advised to leave, as the government cites unpredictable security tensions in the Middle East.

The Australian government has also offered voluntary departures to its diplomats’ dependents in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Qatar, it said on the Smart Traveller website on Wednesday. 

“This is a precautionary measure, in view of regional tensions,” the advice states.

“Australia’s embassies in Tel Aviv and Beirut remain open.

“The situation in the Middle East is unpredictable.”

Embassies will also remain open in Jordan’s Amman, Qatar’s Doha and UAE’s Abu Dhabi, along with the consulate in Dubai.

The advice comes after US President Donald Trump laid out plans for a possible attack on Iran in his State of the Union speech to Congress. 

Mr Trump said he would not allow the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism to have a nuclear weapon.

Iran and the US resumed negotiations earlier in February ​as Washington ‌builds up military capability in the Middle East. 

Iran ​has threatened to strike US bases in the region if it is attacked, but Tehran’s top diplomat ​said ​on Tuesday that ​a deal with the US was “within ‌reach” if diplomacy was prioritised.

The Australian government continues to advise citizens in Israel and Lebanon to consider leaving while commercial options are still available, the foreign ministry said.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said families “absolutely should be heeding that advice”. 

“It’s the best advice we have, and there’s no question that the situation there appears to be hotting up,” he told Sky News.

In a time of climate change and strained housing affordability, sometimes it pays to think small.

At just 50 square metres, the apartments and townhouses inside the Two Sisters development in North Melbourne are far smaller than the 236 sq m average Australian home – the biggest in the world.

It’s a decision that has allowed sisters Eve and Michelle Pickering – building developers, owners and occupants of two of the homes – to minimise costs and environmental footprint.

Director of the architectural practice behind the design, Breathe’s Jeremy McLeod, says smaller homes lead to less embodied carbon in the materials used, less energy and emissions to run them, and improved affordability.

“It’s a beautiful, simple way to solve a carbon and a cost crisis simultaneously,” he told AAP.

While small, every square inch is maximised, with most dwellings stretching over two floors and complete with their own private courtyards.

Tenants of the build-to-rent building will also go without car parks, an intentional call that keeps emissions and costs down even more.

Mechanical heating and cooling is rarely needed in the passively-designed, high-performance dwellings, with rooftop solar powering the common areas.

Climate-friendly homes are also increasingly accounting for the carbon released in the making of buildings and the concrete and steel.

Low carbon cement replacements and carbon neutral bricks were used and unnecessary material minimised by leaving ceilings exposed and floors polished rather than coated.

“It’s about exposing the honesty of the building rather than covering it with materials,” Mr McLeod said.

He applauded Michelle and Eve for their generosity.

“These two sisters approached the whole thing through a lens of, ‘I’m building my own home, but what can I give back to the city?’,” he said.

The project came about when the pair started looking for an inner-city site to build homes for themselves.

Urban, walkable North Melbourne quickly became a top contender.

“It’s such a diverse neighbourhood in terms of its physicality, it’s sort of got residential and commercial and retail all jammed up together,” Eve told AAP.

“And there’s fabulous transit here.”

It was Eve’s background in urban development and architecture that made her realise it made sense to squeeze more than two dwellings onto the unconventional site they landed on.

The Two Sisters development will be one of 240 homes open to the public on May 17 for Sustainable House Day, a Renew-hosted event set up in recognition housing accounts for more than 10 per cent of total emissions.

Stubborn high inflation is set to impact the upcoming federal budget, with the treasurer warning belt-tightening of the nation’s finances is coming.

Data has revealed underlying inflation rose to 3.4 per cent in January, giving the Reserve Bank more reason to lift interest rates.

While headline inflation remained steady at 3.8 per cent to start the year, the central bank looks more closely at the underlying figure when it sets rates.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the federal budget would be handed down in May amid higher-than-expected inflation, which would lead to clawed-back spending.

“There’ll be belt tightening in the budget, we’ve made that really clear, and there has been belt tightening in the first four budgets,” Dr Chalmers told ABC News.

“Every budget is delivered in the context of the economic conditions. 

“And the economic conditions right now are defined by inflation, which is higher than we’d like, for longer than we would like.”

While the Reserve Bank is expected to keep rates on hold after hiking them to 3.85 per cent in February, the inflation figures reinforce a further rise is on the cards.

Capital expenditure data for the final quarter of 2025 will be released on Thursday, offering more insight into the economy.

Economists have tipped a drop in the rate for the December quarter as a previous spike in data centre equipment eases.

Westpac chief economist Luci Ellis said a fall of 0.5 per cent was predicted for the quarter.

“Weaker capital goods imports through the quarter, alongside a slowdown in short‑term expected capex growth, point to a decline in capex growth,” she said.

“We will be closely monitoring whether the investment pipeline is sustained across key sectors.”

The most recent figures showed capital expenditure growing 6.4 per cent in the September quarter, driven by data centre growth and investment in air transport.

It was the largest quarterly increase since March 2021.