Previously unseen texts show A-lister Rebel Wilson was involved in creating a smear website that alleged her co-producer was a sex trafficker, a court has been told. 

The Pitch Perfect star directed, co-produced and starred in The Deb, a musical comedy that became the battleground for multiple legal battles in Australia and the US. 

She opted to dial in to the NSW Supreme Court on Monday for the second week of her spat with her co-producers Amanda Ghost, Gregor Cameron and Vince Holden. 

Wilson is accused of breaching contracts and consumer law when making allegedly defamatory statements about the trio online in July 2024, including accusing them of inappropriate conduct towards lead actor Charlotte MacInnes. 

Texts show Wilson was involved in drafting the content on a website that described Ms Ghost as an “Indian Ghislaine Maxwell” who “trades pleasure for protection”, the producers’ barrister claimed. 

Sue Chrysanthou SC said the messages were recently disclosed in the US litigation by Melissa Nathan, the boss of a crisis management firm allegedly engaged by Wilson. 

According to the texts read out in court, Ms Nathan informed the Bridesmaids star it would be $110,000 for an untraceable site, ghost server and hosting, and algorithmic push.

Wilson then asked if that was the total price and confirmed she had set up an account on the encrypted platform Signal, which Ms Nathan had suggested to discuss “sensitive information”, the texts state. 

The messages – including any discussions on Signal – had not been produced by Wilson and there had been no explanation as to why not, Ms Chrysanthou told the court. 

She said the messages showed the first-time director followed up with Ms Nathan to see whether she had received the website content because she had not been invoiced. 

Ms Nathan responded, saying it would be live soon, according to the texts. 

“We say this proves that they agreed from those first texts on August 5 that Ms Wilson would pay $110,000 for an untraceable website,” Ms Chrysanthou said. 

“On 6 August, Ms Wilson drafted the content of the website from Australia and sent it to Ms Nathan (who passed it on).” 

In her Federal Court proceedings earlier in 2026, the Hollywood star repeatedly denied engaging the firm or authoring the document that would form the basis for the smear website. 

She insisted her US lawyer had engaged the PR firm and said anyone could have used her company Camp Sugar’s name to draft the document. 

Ms Chrysanthou took issue with a previously undisclosed email in which Wilson allegedly recorded a complaint made to her by MacInnes about Ms Ghost. 

Wilson has alleged Ms MacInnes confided – and later retracted – that she felt uncomfortable because Ms Ghost had asked her to have a bath and a shower together. 

MacInnes has denied making a complaint, insisting she had not been uncomfortable when she and Ms Ghost shared a bath in their swimwear after the producer suffered a medical episode in September 2023.

“This is a file note about a very specific and serious allegation. Apparently,” Ms Chrysanthou said. 

“This document has never been seen or referred to before.”

She urged Justice Elisabeth Peden not to consider the email, which she said would be unfairly prejudicial to MacInnes and would require valuable court time to authenticate. 

“This email flies in the face of everything we know about this case,” Ms Chrysanthou said. 

“It makes no sense that it exists.”

Wilson’s barrister Dauid Sibtain SC pushed for the inclusion of the email, which he said an expert had determined was unaltered. 

A probe into Wilson’s email account was suggested before Justice Peden ultimately declined to accept the email.

Wilson will not give evidence in the NSW Supreme Court.

1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)

National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028

A stronger tax take means Australia’s budget is in a better position than predicted a few months ago, but higher interest rates will do the government’s economic credentials no favours.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher revealed the underlying deficit came in at $22.3 billion in the last financial year, as they released the 2025/26 final budget outcome on Monday.

The budget bottom line was $6 billion better off than it was projected in May, largely thanks to a $4.6 billion boost to income tax collections.

Stronger superannuation returns, mainly due to higher-than-expected foreign exchange gains, and strong business and investor incomes drove the improvement in government revenue.

Payments were also below expected levels, down by $1.4 billion on budget forecasts.

That was, in part, because of decreased spending in the aged and child care sectors.

But defence and health expenses were both more than $1 billion above projections.

The result was still a downgrade on the previous year’s final budget outcome, which put the deficit at just under $10 billion for 2024/25.

“Despite this very welcome improvement in the budget, we know that pressures are intensifying rather than easing,” Dr Chalmers said.

Like governments around the globe, Canberra faces higher borrowing costs to service its mounting debt, which surpassed $1 trillion in August.

Driven by high inflation, conflict in the Middle East and increasing competition with AI companies for debt, bond yields have climbed to 15-year highs.

“The competition for capital is fierce in the world right now. And the hyper-scalers in the AI world are seeking to raise mountains of capital to fund their investment plans,” Dr Chalmers said.

Public debt interest was $87 million higher than expected at $27.7 billion, but is one of the fastest-growing expenditure items in the budget. 

The May budget projected interest payments to hit $46.9 billion a year by the end of the decade.

Taxpayers are also struggling with higher borrowing costs.

The Reserve Bank is widely expected to increase the cash rate to 4.6 per cent – the highest level in 15 years – when it wraps up its two-day meeting on Tuesday.

Inflation is still stubbornly above the RBA’s two to three per cent target band, with the Middle East oil shock set to keep price pressures elevated.

Dr Chalmers would not be drawn on whether the government’s fiscal settings would directly impact the expected rate rise.

He instead pointed to global economic strains putting pressure on interest rates, adding his government was taking productivity gains more seriously than any other in decades.

Central banks in the US, Europe and Japan have all hiked interest rates amid rising fuel costs since the RBA met in August.

Hawkish comments from governor Michele Bullock and other top RBA officials in recent weeks have emphasised the bank is losing patience with inflation and is likely to follow suit.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor sought to pin the inflation spike on government spending.

Spending reached 26.9 per cent – the highest level in 40 years excluding COVID-19 – while tax revenue was 24.1 per cent of GDP, the highest on record except for 2004/05 and 2005/06 at the height of the mining boom.

Tobacco brought in $200 million less than projected at $3.9 billion, the final outlook showed.

It’s the first time the tobacco excise has delivered less than $4 billion since the turn of the century, as the explosion in black market cigarettes and vapes siphons consumers away from legitimate products.

Brent oil futures have risen to $US106 a barrel after peace talks between the US and Iran hit another snag.

Each $US1 dollar increase in the Brent oil price roughly translates to a 1c increase in fuel prices at the bowser.

Those higher servo costs will likely nudge headline inflation from 3.5 to four per cent by the time the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports on Wednesday.

Because everyone wants your money, you can charge them more for it.

That’s the issue facing governments forced to pay investors more for borrowing cash in the form of bonds.

The eye-watering sums being raised by artificial intelligence “hyper-scalers” now mean there’s a flood of higher-yield bonds jostling with the Treasury for buyers, forcing the government to price its debt higher.

“There’s huge competition from the hyper-scalers for capital, and you’ve got all of the uncertainty … around the energy transformation and AI,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers told reporters in Canberra on Monday.

That assessment came while Dr Chalmers was taking a victory lap, as the final budget outcome for 2025/26 showed the government’s balance sheet was $6 billion stronger than forecast in May.

The price of the government’s debt was a sore point in the fiscal report card, coming in at $27.7 billion – $87 million more than forecast.

But that is predicted to grow a whopping 8.8 per cent a year to $46.9 billion in the 12 months to mid-2030.

The cost of government debt has also consistently exceeded Labor’s estimates since before hyper-scalers came onto the scene.

Having tipped 10-year bonds to return 4.8 per cent a year in May’s budget, that figure now sits at a 15-year high of 5.4 per cent.

It’s more than double what Canberra thought borrowing would cost in 2022.

The numbers showed the world was in the twilight of an era where money was unusually cheap, NAB market strategy head Skye Masters told AAP.

“We’re going back to the pre-GFC (2008 global financial crisis) period,” she said.

“The geopolitical risks, the on-shoring, the demographics, the digitalisation, the inflation, all these things that mean that cash rates … are probably going to be slightly higher than we’re used to.”

More expensive money was simply something to get used to, not panic about, according to Ms Masters.

“Don’t look for yields back down at one per cent, don’t look for cash rates back near zero,” she said.

The treasurer’s jab at hyper-scalers came after Alphabet, Google’s parent company, in August raised $5.5 billion in the largest corporate bond sale in Australian history outside the banking sector.

Amazon is also expected to hop aboard with its own Kangaroo debt issuing later in 2026.

But it was easy to overstate the impact these deals had on Australia’s bond market, which was primarily driven by global factors, Commonwealth Bank market strategy research head Adam Donaldson told AAP.

“The first deal by Alphabet was digested very, very well … we think there’s very good room for further issuance by hyper-scalers,” he said.

“Australia with the AAA (credit) rating and the RBA showing its resolve stands apart from most of the rest of the world in terms of credibility … there’s a strong appetite to invest.”

One of the world’s top mining firms is disappointed the board of Australia’s leading goldminer has knocked back its near $40 billion takeover approach but isn’t giving up its pursuit.

Northern Star revealed on Monday that on Friday it had rejected an unsolicited $38.7 billion offer from Johannesburg-based Gold Fields, describing it as an “opportunistic” attempt to get its assets on the cheap.

News of the takeover offer sent Northern Star’s shares surging, however, suggesting that investors don’t believe the story is over.  

Both companies have significant operations in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields region and Gold Fields chief executive Mike Fraser said a merger would result in cost savings of around $US4 billion to $US5 billion ($5.7 billion to $7.1 billion).

“We see this combination as creating a stronger platform that can deliver value sooner,” Mr Fraser said.

Gold Fields was disappointed that Northern Star’s board hadn’t chosen to engage on its proposal, but his company remained open to “constructive dialogue” and would continue to seek engagement with Northern Star’s board, Mr Fraser said.

The owner of the famed Super Pit goldmine, a major tourist attraction in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, Northern Star has suffered a series of operational setbacks in 2026.

The offer was “highly opportunistic” because it came ahead of several near-term value catalysts for the miner, including the ramp-up of a new processing plant at the Super Pit and the arrival of a new chief executive, Northern Star’s board said.

Gold Fields was asking Northern Star shareholders to accept nearly three-quarters of its massive offer in Gold Fields stock, which Northern Star said carried a “meaningfully higher jurisdictional risk profile”.

Johannesburg-based Gold Fields has assets across Australia, South Africa, Ghana, Peru, Chile and Canada, while Northern Star owns goldmines in WA and Alaska.

It is also developing the huge Hemi deposit in the Pilbara that it acquired during its $5 billion takeover of De Grey Mining last year.

“Gold Fields has sought to acquire one of the world’s premier gold portfolios at a price that falls well short of what the board considers to be its fundamental value and at a highly opportunistic time,” Northern Star chairman Michael Chaney said on Monday.

The potential target’s share price has fallen significantly from its peak above $30 in March after a number of events.

It cut production forecasts, first in January and then in March, after equipment failures and maintenance bottlenecks at the pit. 

It also faced productivity issues at its other WA assets.

Chief executive Stuart Tonkin stepped down at the end of August, and former Glencore executive Suresh Vadnagra will take over on October 5.

RBC Capital Markets analyst James Redfern said the Gold Fields offer implied a $27-per-share valuation for Northern Star, and a 22 per cent premium to its price at the time of the offer.

The miner’s share price closed Monday at $24.70, up 6.2 per cent from Friday but still slightly in the red for the year.

Gold Fields’ offer involves paying each Northern Star shareholder $7.25 in cash and 0.3125 in Gold Fields scrip, which would leave them collectively owning about a third of a combined company.

Gold Fields said in its statement that there was no certainty any further engagements with Northern Star would materialise or that a transaction would be successfully concluded.

Australian shares have had a shaky start to the week, with a slump in miners counterbalancing rallies in banks, utilities and health care stocks.

The S&P/ASX200 inched 14.7 points higher on Monday, up 0.17 per cent, to 8,679.7, as the broader All Ordinaries gained 5.1 points, or 0.06 per cent, to 8,850.7.

The financials sector did some heavy lifting as dip-buyers fuelled a rebound in bank stocks, while the defensive utilities and health care sectors outperformed as the market braced for a likely Reserve Bank cash rate hike on Tuesday.

Basic materials stocks were heavy as soaring bond yields weakened precious metals prices, while copper futures retreated as resurgent crude prices constrained global growth hopes after the US rejected an Iranian plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The Australian dollar is trading at 70.21 US cents, down slightly from 70.24 US cents on Friday at 5pm.

A dairy group that has been through tough times after a new asset proved to be a drain and a key customer cut orders is confident it can get back to profitability.

New Zealand’s Synlait Milk, which is majority-owned by a Chinese group, says it has learned its lesson and is banking its near-term future on a new Middle East customer after selling the North Island processing facility.

The mid-2020 acquisition hurt its financial performance so much that its earnings fell from a peak net profit of $82.2 million in fiscal 2019 to a nadir loss of $NZ182.1 million in fiscal 2024.

“The North Island assets created a drag on Synlait’s performance and now they’re sold,” acting chief executive Leon Fung told an earnings call on Monday.

However, the sale around April wasn’t early enough to reduce the pull on Synlait’s annual results for fiscal 2026.

Its bottom-line net loss for the year ended July 31 was NZ$75.4 million, which was worse than the prior year’s $NZ39.8 million.

It was a difficult year, Mr Fung said, even though the group’s second half performance was better than the first half.

“Synlait is still in a recovery phase,” he said.

“The capacity issue is resolved following the sale … (and) … our new revenue strategy will ensure Synlait is no longer exposed to a single customer, market, or product again, which will help protect us from future shocks.”

Synlait’s second-largest shareholder, with 19.8 per cent, is fellow NZ corporate a2 Milk, which was using its specialised milk powders to make its flagship milk for people with sensitive stomachs and other products.

The deal changed in early 2025 when a2 cut volumes previously fulfilled by Synlait, including its English-labelled baby formula sold in China.

However, because Synlait holds a special Chinese licence for supply from its processing facility in Dunsandel in the South Island, a2 still needs it for its Chinese-labelled formula.

Synlait went shopping for another supply partner and on Monday laid out its hopes that the unnamed Middle Eastern client would backfill about 18 per cent of its capacity.

“This customer has their own brand, they want to use NZ high-quality products, grass fed products, for their brands,” Mr Fung said.

“So yes, this is a very promising business for us, for the near future.”

Synlait’s major shareholder, Bright Dairy, with 65.3 per cent, is one of China’s biggest dairy producers.

Synlait shares rose 15 per cent to 34.5 cents in early trading in low volume.

A ban on card surcharges is supposed to deliver savings for Australian shoppers, but the reality could be quite different if retailers raise prices and the banks claw back losses by axing rewards.

The reform, driven by the Reserve Bank of Australia, comes into effect from Thursday, when anyone paying with a debit or credit card will be spared the surprise of extra charges at the till.

Under the new rules, retailers must either absorb the cost or build it into their prices.

But they could also offer a discount for cash or payment services such as PayID, which some experts think could lead to savings of up to 10 per cent off the transaction price.

Cash fan Steve Worthington says it can’t come soon enough, after the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission earlier in September confirmed it would be legal for businesses to discount against their displayed prices.

“I suspect a number of merchants will start to do that, to offer a discount for cash,” the Swinburne University of Technology professor and payments system expert told AAP.

However, dealing in cash means keeping a float and taking it to the bank at the end of the day, which can be difficult given the general decline in branches across the country, and does lay a burden on small business owners.

“But nevertheless, I think a 10 per cent discount might be an attractive basis for people in this era of the cost of living,” said Professor Worthington, who thinks discounting could fuel cash use.

Cash makes up barely 15 per cent of all counter purchases, against a spike in card use – debit, credit or charge – to 73 per cent, according to the latest central bank data.

“I pay already in cash for certain places because I just don’t like being surcharged because it’s just really pathetic,” Prof Worthington said.

For those sticking to tap and go, there’s a good chance some businesses will raise prices to offset the merchant fees they still pay to the banks and payment providers to process those payments, which they used to recoup under surcharges.

According to the central bank’s inquiry into surcharges, about 80 per cent of businesses absorbed the cost but smaller enterprises, such as cafes and restaurants, passed it on.

This is where the RBA’s decision to cut interchange fees – the fee paid by the merchant’s bank to the customer’s bank each time a payment is processed – could come into play.

The new maximum rate will be 0.30 per cent – or about three cents on a $10 spend – down from 0.80 per cent, and has been set to compensate payment providers, like banks, for the ban.

“The biggest issue for those small businesses is whether they actually receive the benefit of the interchange cuts,” RMIT University’s professor of finance Angel Zhong said.

“My advice is to call your payment provider now and ask if you can get a better deal.”

Down the track, retailers will have better visibility on their merchant fees because the RBA plans to publish pricing information from card networks, making it easier to find a better deal. 

The surcharge ban is tipped to deliver more than $1 billion in savings for consumers, the RBA believes, but like all things in life, someone has to pay.

And while market watchers are waiting to see how retailers and consumers react, one thing seems likely – it won’t be the banks.

The banks are already trimming lucrative credit card reward programs and hiking annual card fees, because payment processing doesn’t happen for free.

“Banks – payment providers – they need to make revenue. They’re not running a charity,” Prof Zhong said.

“A cake is only so big, so if you’re making one slice smaller or bigger, then you need to change the size of the other slice.”

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has been in the job for two months, and so far his party hasn’t demanded his head.

The governing Labour Party opens its annual conference beside the River Mersey in Liverpool on Sunday, with Burnham pledging to turn the page on a decade of economic and political turmoil that has made him the UK’s seventh prime minister since its 2016 vote to leave the European Union.

He says his message in a keynote speech on Tuesday will be: “It’s time for Britain to have hope again.”

“We’ve had a decade since Brexit and it’s been a decade of too much drift, too much division, and we need to draw a line on that,” Burnham said as he arrived in Liverpool on Saturday.

His message is aimed at both the British public and a hopeful but nervous centre-left party ready to embrace his promise of better times, but worried about economic damage rippling out from conflict in the Middle East.

University of Manchester political science professor Rob Ford said Burnham’s difficult task would be to win over “a sceptical electorate” eager for change within the constraints of “a very difficult economic and fiscal situation”.

“How do you serve people a bowl of cold porridge and convince them it’s a pepperoni pizza?” Ford said.

Britain’s main political parties hold conferences in September and October, a mix of pep rally, social gathering and policy forum that set the political tone and agenda for the year ahead.

Labour’s 2025 gathering was gloomy, as members despaired about then prime minister Keir Starmer’s deep unpopularity little more than a year after winning power in a landslide, and the seemingly unstoppable rise of the anti-immigration opposition party Reform UK.

Burnham, then the popular mayor of Greater Manchester, was followed around Liverpool by journalists as speculation grew he would challenge Starmer.

Events came to a head months later when a panicky party forced Starmer’s resignation and replaced him with Burnham as party leader and prime minister in July.

Now, Labour is seeing a “Burnham bounce” driven by the new leader’s upbeat talk and modest moves to put money in voters’ pocketbooks by cutting tax on electricity bills and capping bus fares.

Burnham has already set out some priorities, including handing more power to local leaders to generate “good growth in every postcode”.

He says he’ll reform Britain’s privatised utilities, especially the expensive, leaky and polluting water network.

While the party is relatively united behind Burnham, he faces a divisive decision on whether to approve new oil drilling in the North Sea – opposed by environmentalists but backed by trade unions – and pushback over plans agreed under Starmer to make it harder for immigrants to settle permanently in Britain.

The next general election does not have to be called until 2029, but Labour’s revival has sparked talk of a snap election – something Burnham denies he’s considering.

“All of this speculation on an early election, I can knock that dead,” he told broadcaster ITV on Friday.

But no matter how upbeat Burnham is, economic pain is coming.

Burnham must explain to party members and voters how he will deal with economic turbulence from the on-off US-Iran war, which has severely restricted the movement of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.

Treasury chief John Healey is set to deliver the Burnham government’s first budget on October 28 as rising energy prices tighten a cost-of-living squeeze.

Like other countries, Britain also needs to find money to increase defence spending to counter threats from Russia.

That means tax rises, spending cuts or both could be on the cards.

One thing that might boost the economy is to ease some of the trade barriers erected by Brexit.

Burnham has pledged closer ties with the European Union, but it’s unclear how close.

Under Starmer, Labour was elected in 2024 on a promise not to seek to rejoin the bloc or enter its single market for goods, services and employment.

Many Labour members would like to break that pledge, including former prime minister Tony Blair, who said last week the UK and EU should start negotiations “where everything is on the table”.

Burnham has said that’s a discussion for another time.

Getting hacked by a rogue artificial intelligence agent shouldn’t spook Australia into adopting a hostile stance towards the technology, the government has been warned.

An OpenAI agent infiltrated a Medicare data portal on June 18 in the first known instance of autonomous software breaching an Australian government website.

The break-in made global headlines after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese disclosed it during a visit to the United Nations.

What, if any, action should be taken against the tech giant is being examined by a task force that is expected to report back in a matter of weeks.

OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei may also soon have to answer a Senate committee about the breach.

But legal retribution for wrongfully accessing classified information was “missing the point”, deputy opposition leader Jane Hume said.

“I’m not entirely sure who it is that they’re going to put in cuffs and drag through the city streets and put in the stocks,” the Liberal senator told ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.

“The real alarm bell that was set off this week is the fact that the only reason we knew about this breach … is because OpenAI told us.” 

Aggressively going after big tech risked repelling AI firms that could also help build the cyber defences Australia desperately needed, Senator Hume said.

She also criticised Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s advocacy for global AI safety standards at the UN General Assembly meeting, putting him at odds with US President Donald Trump’s view the technology should go essentially unregulated.

“I don’t necessarily think that finger-wagging at our trusted partners or in trying to gazump Donald Trump is the way to go about that,” Senator Hume said of the need to partner with US AI companies.

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who chairs the committee summoning Mr Altman and Mr Amodei, said the two bosses had to prove their concerns about AI safety were genuine.

Both men recently urged governments to work together to contain AI’s harms and ensure the technology remained under human control.

Parliamentary probes can only force people in Australia to appear before inquiries, but Senator Hanson-Young argued “it’d be a pretty bad look” for OpenAI and Anthropic to ignore the committee entirely.

The firms could opt to send local representatives, rather than more senior overseas-based executives.

AAP has contacted OpenAI and Anthropic for comment.

But tech giants’ relationship with Canberra could still remain friendly even if the government pursued the company vigorously over the Medicare breach, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles told News24.

“What has happened here with OpenAI’s agents is completely unacceptable and we’ve made that very plain to Sam Altman,” he said.

“But we are grateful for being able to work closely with OpenAI.”

Mr Marles revealed he met with Mr Altman earlier in September, after OpenAI discovered the hack during a broader review of its agent but before it notified the government via a public email inbox.

“We didn’t speak about the incident and this was before there had been a notification to the Australian government in any form,” he said.

“We have raised with OpenAI our concern about the fact we were not notified earlier and indeed in the form in which we were notified.”

However, he said was reassured by the US AI company bosses publicly calling for policy guardrails for their own technology.

“I take concern from what occurred last week, but I take heart from their words,” Mr Marles said.

Rising unemployment, stubbornly high inflation and a looming interest rate hike are piling misery onto Australian consumers, but Labor insists better days are on the horizon.

The pinch of optimism comes as mortgage holders brace for the Reserve Bank of Australia to lift the official interest rate to a near-15-year high of 4.6 per cent on Tuesday, an outcome money markets are treating as largely a foregone conclusion.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said the government knew households were “doing it tough” and was working to put downward pressure on inflation.

“We just need to keep working at this to see this through and there will be light at the end of the tunnel,” he told News24 on Sunday.

Inflation, which came in hotter than expected in August, could rise from 3.5 to four per cent when the Australian Bureau of Statistics publishes its latest figures on Wednesday.

High fuel prices, driven by conflict in the Middle East, have lit a fire under rising living costs.

Mr Marles was quick to point Australians to overseas circumstances as the driver of their economic woes.

“We’re facing an internationally inflationary environment, essentially stemming out of the conflict,” he said.

“We’ve got a budget, an economy with less debt than almost any country in the world that places us in a good position to manage this.”

Central bankers in the US, Japan and Europe have all pushed interest rates up since the RBA’s board met in August, all crediting their decisions to sky-rocketing oil and fuel prices resulting from the increasingly intractable US-Iran war.

Average fuel prices in Australia’s five largest cities had risen to $2.37 per litre for petrol and $2.69 for diesel as of Wednesday, but Labor has rejected calls for it to reinstate a previous cut to fuel taxes to help ease the burden on road-users.

But opposition frontbencher James Paterson said runaway spending was influencing the Reserve Bank more than overseas conflict.

“The government is spending at stimulus levels and that is driving up inflation and forcing the RBA’s hand,” the Liberal senator said.

“I think that will be devastating for Australian people, I don’t think they share the rosy view of the economy’s performance over the last four years … debt is up, taxes are up, real wages are down, the cost of everything is up, even unemployment is up.”

Australia’s jobless rate jumped to its highest level in almost five years, the ABS reported on Thursday, but it did little to put fears of an interest rate hike to bed.

Three consecutive rate hikes and the May budget’s removal of tax concessions for property investors have also helped to drive down housing sentiment and prices.

Auction clearance rates, considered a key leading indicator for prices, slumped to a 10-week low of 50.3 per cent across capital cities, according to housing data firm Cotality.

A weak clearance rate, of below 60 per cent, generally points to further price falls.