Australia’s disability arts sector is sounding the alarm about cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

At Adelaide-based company Restless Dance Theatre, people with disabilities make groundbreaking dance that has toured Australia and internationally.

Almost all of its dancers rely on NDIS funding, and weekly classes can lead to further training and ultimately professional employment, Restless artistic director Michelle Ryan says.

“One of the things I would really like government and the community to understand is that NDIS participants can also be highly successful artists,” she said.

But large-scale changes to the scheme that passed parliament in August will halve overall funding for social, civic and community participation – the funding stream that supports organisations such as Restless – from October.

Many organisations are worried NDIS participants will have to prioritise daily living expenses over arts activities that provide community connection and mental health support.

They warn the cuts could harm trust built over years with participants who might not understand why changes are being made.

Leading arts disability groups from across Australia shared their concerns at a recent meeting chaired by Arts and Disability Network Australia.

NDIS Minister Jenny McAllister’s office has been contacted for comment.

West Australian disability arts organisation DADAA runs three studio/gallery sites across Fremantle, Lancelin and Midland, and client services director Alimul Al Tasin is worried NDIS participants will have to cut back sessions or stop coming altogether.

“Our concern is the social isolation, because they see their peers every week … when they’re not coming in, we are concerned about their wellbeing,” he said.

The NDIS cuts were dramatic, and there was no other source of funding to replace the scheme, the chief executive of peak body Arts Access Victoria Joshua Pether said.

Many NDIS participants described these arts programs as a lifeline and credited them with providing life-saving support, Pether said.

At Hands On Studio, run out of Griffith and O’Connor in the ACT, director Tilly Davey has heard from participants who were worried and confused.

“Lots of people think they’ve done something wrong, and they’re going to have nothing left in their NDIS plan to support them,” she said.

Some Hands On participants have been attending programs for 30 years, and families have been left wondering how they will cover the cost of classes without the NDIS.

“Some parents are in their eighties or nineties and they think, ‘what are my children going to do? I can’t continue, I can’t support them on a daily basis’,” Davey said.

At Hobart’s Second Echo Ensemble, which marked its 20th anniversary in 2025, general manager Judith Abell sees people running out of money for transport.

She said the cuts would compound the isolation caused by having a disability and living in regional Australia.

“They might have had a local place to go to participate in something, social and community support, and that’s going to be taken away,” she said.

“I just think the layers of damage that this is causing are actually much broader than perhaps imagined.”

The federal government faces higher long-term costs to finance its massive public debt, a development with far-reaching implications for taxpayers, corporations and share markets.

The danger comes after the yield on Australia’s 10-year government bonds rose beyond 5.4 per cent this week to the highest level since mid-2011.

At the same time, the average 10-year government yield for the world’s seven biggest economies hit its highest level since the global financial crisis in mid-2008.

Yields, which represent the annual return investors receive by lending money, had pulled back slightly by Friday but were still historically high.

“It doesn’t look like a US-specific story, or an Australian-specific story, or a UK-specific story,” according to Moomoo chief market strategist Tapas Strickland.

“It seems like there’s a secular rise in bond yields.

“Markets are effectively equilibrating to a higher interest rate environment because potential growth rates are lifting and because governments around the world have very large budget deficits.”

Artificial intelligence hyperscalers – which include mammoth companies like Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft – have also been borrowing dramatically to build data centres to support the technology.

“The AI build-out is about $800 billion this year and set to rise to $1.2 trillion next year,” Mr Strickland tells AAP.

High levels of public debt in countries like the US, France, the UK and Japan are driving the rise in bond yields, as well as borrowing by big tech companies, AMP chief economist Shane Oliver notes.

“US corporates, or corporates generally, have been borrowing dramatically to build their AI data centres, so that competes with other borrowing,” he says.

Alphabet in August tapped Australian institutional investors for $A5.5 billion – the largest corporate bond issue in Australian history – as part of its fundraising for its data centre rollout, which it expects to spend around $US200 billion ($280 billion) on in 2026.

All that competition for funds pushes up yields, making long-term borrowing more expensive.

Australia’s Office of Financial Management on Wednesday sold $1 billion in bonds maturing in April 2037 at an interest rate of 5.391 per cent.

That’s up significantly from the 4.974 per cent it agreed to at a similar tender in August.

The federal government expects to issue $125 billion in bonds in 2026/27, so the increase in yields will increase its borrowing costs by billions of dollars.

“It’s going to mean higher debt servicing costs for the federal government,” Dr Oliver says. 

Australia already has more than a trillion dollars worth of government debt on issue.

David Bassanese, chief economist at Betashares, says rising bond yields also reflect rising inflationary pressures stemming from the war in the Middle East.

Higher inflation means people’s money is worth less over time, so investors want a higher premium for holding bonds, he explains.

But despite concerns about the US government’s huge debt pile – which has surpassed $US40 trillion ($56 trillion) for the first time – the rise in bond yields doesn’t seem to reflect concerns the US might default.

“Generally, when there’s fiscal solvency concerns, it’s a term premium that actually starts to rise,” Mr Strickland says, referring to the extra premium investors want for holding long-term debt.

“What we’ve seen in the US is that term premium is not rising at all – it’s actually been flat and that’s quite surprising given all the rhetoric around debt and deficit.”

High bond yields also tend to put pressure on equity markets.

“The incentive to put your money in the share market goes down because you get more money from the so-called risk-free asset like bonds,” Dr Oliver says.

While share markets have adjusted to the rise in bond yields, there’s still risk they will continue to rise.

“A five per cent yield market would be okay,” Mr Bassanese says.

“Five and a half, six per cent probably less so.”

Next week, the Reserve Bank of Australia is expected to increase interest rates following a board monetary policy meeting that concluded on September 29.

It’s a move that will undoubtedly flow through to consumers and business.

For years, one stubborn number has hypnotised Australia’s migration debate.

Population growth due to migration, or net overseas migration (NOM), has consistently refused to co-operate with the government’s targets, allowing the coalition and One Nation to club Labor over the head with it.

The government’s new magic figures are 245,000 net overseas migrants in the year to July 2027 and 225,000 per year thereafter, with sweeping changes announced by Immigration Minister Tony Burke on Thursday. 

Most foreign students will no longer be able to bring their relatives, backpackers will jostle for many fewer second- and third-year visas, and people who stay longer than they’re allowed will be more firmly shown the door.

Despite years of blow-outs, the latest report is apparently glowing: a tally of about 292,000 migrants in the year to March 2026 – fewer than expected – dropped about an hour before Mr Burke took to the lectern at the National Press Club.

But that was down to ratcheting up the refusal rate on student visas to an almost 10-year high of 24.2 per cent in the year to July 2026, unrelated to the measures announced on Thursday, former Immigration Department Deputy Secretary Abul Rizvi told AAP.

“If they continue the high refusal rate in conjunction with all of the changes they’ll make, they’ll probably get there,” he said about whether Labor could hit its targets.

But Mike Pezzullo, once the department’s top bureaucrat, said it was not clear the government had done enough and stressed the impediment of potentially having to scoot around parliament to affect the changes. 

“They might have to hit it (net overseas migration) again, and I can’t see where other measures would come from short of legislating them,” he told AAP on Friday.

Stalled negotiations between Labor and the coalition have doomed the migration reforms’ chances in the Senate, although coalition immigration spokesman Jonathon Duniam insists their door remains open.

A plan to detain some visa overstayers has also raised the heart rates of asylum-seeker groups, who leapt to comparisons with the US’s heavy-handed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

But, decked in coats and ties, Australia’s immigration compliance officers were not stormtroopers, Mr Rizvi said.

“We didn’t have ICE-like officers just breaking down doors and entering schools and hospitals and dragging people out,” he said, describing a pre-2015 system Mr Burke said he wanted to revive.

“Most of (the visa over-stayers) were not put in detention.”

Mr Pezzullo warned cracking down on Australia’s roughly 77,000 unlawful non-citizens would land a drop in an ocean of more than one million temporary visas issued annually.

That figure nudged Australia towards becoming a guest worker economy, possibly making even minor changes to migration settings disastrous, he said. 

“It’s very hard to unwind that,” Mr Pezzullo said.

“The only way to achieve NOM without tanking universities and elsewhere is to get departures to increase … you might have to hit that legislatively.”

Mum and dad investors are increasingly using artificial intelligence to inform their stock market decisions in a fast-moving investment environment.

Just under half, or 48.6 per cent, now use AI tools when planning where to place their hard-earned money, according to a survey by stockbroking platform CMC.

Of those, 33.1 per cent use it occasionally, and 15.6 per cent regularly, the firm discovered after canvassing 8500 of its clients.

“I’ve definitely found it a lot more accurate and reliable if you learn how to prompt it properly and how to get the systems using the best sources only,” client premium manager Fraser Allan told AAP.

“However, a trust gap remains.”

Most of the survey respondents were using AI to research companies, analyse the market and generate trade ideas but a level of scepticism remained, with less than a third saying they trusted AI-generated market insights.

Overall, CMC found investors remained confident despite market headwinds caused by geopolitical tensions like the Middle East conflict and the Russia-Ukraine war.

A large majority want to invest as usual – or in greater amounts – in the next six months, despite cost of living issues limiting access to spare cash.

More than half of those surveyed pointed to their bank balance as their biggest barrier to investing.

“They’re not stepping away from markets just yet, but there’s a lot more caution,” Mr Allan said.

“Uncertainty has in the past led some retail investors and traders to flee to cash. This time, some investors and traders are staying in the market and adjusting how they participate.”

The study came after the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates and flagged further increases in borrowing costs in coming months, and ahead of a Reserve Bank of Australia monetary policy meeting next week which could result in a rate increase.

Many of the investors and traders surveyed also viewed exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, as the better investment in volatile times, and cryptocurrency as the riskiest.

ETFs are financial instruments that trade like shares on stock exchanges like the ASX, offering exposure to a basket of underlying assets such as stock market indexes, commodities, cryptocurrencies or investment themes.

“This is a market waiting for a catalyst rather than one positioning for a direction,” Mr Allan added.

“When that catalyst comes, whether it’s rates, earnings, or geopolitics, there’s a very large group of investors ready to move quickly.”

Australia is taking steps to shield its defence technology as data centres become targets in military conflicts.

As the Department of Defence’s Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, Chris Crozier is responsible for ensuring the safe and secure use of AI within the military.

From cyber to undersea autonomous warfare, the department sees AI as a force multiplier, allowing for faster, deadlier and more efficient deployments.

But seven weeks into his posting, Mr Crozier used his appearance at a parliamentary inquiry into AI on Friday to stress the need to protect against risks posed by relying on the emergent technology.

These stem from information security, with leading providers located offshore, to vulnerabilities created by hosting infrastructure within the country.

“If you look at the recent examples in the Middle East, the data centres were targeted,” he told the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence.

In March, two Amazon Web Services data centres in the UAE were damaged by Iranian strikes, amid its conflict with the US and Israel, along with a third in Bahrain.

Defence last year signed a deal with Google to provide a disconnected hyperscale secret cloud to protect its most sensitive data.

It involved a “meshed series of data centres” with a substantial degree of built-in redundancy, Mr Crozier said.

“We hope we never get there, but in the event of kinetic (warfare), we want to hide in the noise and spread across multiple locations for survivability,” he said.

Mr Crozier stressed the department had taken steps to secure its AI infrastructure and that having sovereign compute was a strategic benefit.

But the comments highlight the novel challenges of modern warfare, including the risk posed by using technologies increasingly controlled by a few, foreign-owned tech giants.

A recent flashpoint concerned calls for an AI “kill switch,” a method to shut off misbehaving software should it become too powerful.

Putting aside the merits of such an application, Mr Crozier said the Australian military could not rely on any technology whose overseas creator had the ability to disable it on a whim.

“We simply can’t be working with a technology that’s based offshore, where someone can have a bad day and turn it off,” he told the inquiry.

“We need, particularly when we’re getting into conflict, we need to be 100 per cent capable with our military.”

The inquiry is probing Australia’s embrace of AI and the policy settings needed to protect against its social, environmental, security and privacy risks.

Tech giants have warned the federal government Australia needs to slow down its artificial intelligence use and create better security laws.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has launched a new regional grouping of eight countries from ‌the Carpathian region of central and eastern Europe at a summit ‌in Ukraine designed to promote trade and security co-operation.

At the ‌meeting in western Ukraine, Zelenskiy thanked regional allies for keeping trade and transport links open following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

The new grouping – labelled the “Carpathian Eight” – brings together Romania, Serbia, Poland, Slovakia, ‌the Czech Republic, ‌Austria, ⁠Hungary and the European Union.

Polish Prime Minister ​Donald Tusk, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Romanian President Nicusor Dan attended the inaugural event, which is expected to last until Sunday.

“This marks the start of a movement that should ⁠bring our countries even closer ‌together ​and create another strong framework for co-operation at the EU ​level,” Zelenskiy ‌said on Telegram, citing the expansion of energy and ​logistics co-operation, cross-border trade and security.

“Naturally, security issues are a priority right now and for the years ahead,” ​Zelenskiy ​said in a ​speech.

Close to 550 business representatives ‌were expected to attend the forum, with investment and trade agreements worth a billion euro ($A1.6 billion) expected to be signed, Zelenskiy said.

“It’s a good start: energy, logistics, infrastructure and cross-sector agreements,” ​he said in a speech broadcast on Ukrainian TV.

Some of the countries attending the meeting, such as Poland and Romania, have been staunch supporters of Ukraine.

Others, such as Hungary, Serbia and Slovakia, have declined to provide direct military assistance to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign ministry said on Friday it had summoned the United Kingdom chargé d’affaires to strongly protest the UK’s continued increase in the supply of drones and other weapons systems to Ukraine.

The ministry said the UK’s “fiercely confrontational stance” was aimed at “prolonging and escalating the armed conflict by every possible means”.

It added that Russia reserves the right to take necessary countermeasures in self-defence and that “any British military facilities in Ukraine used to strike Russian territory represent legitimate targets”.

with AP

Warren Buffett will step down as chairman of investment giant Berkshire Hathaway ‌and become chairman emeritus, effective immediately, nine months after handing the CEO reins to longtime lieutenant Greg Abel.

The ‌company on Friday named his son, Howard Buffett, a director since 1993, as chairman.

Warren Buffett is credited with transforming Berkshire from a failing textile company into a $USUS1.1 trillion ($USA1.5 trillion) conglomerate while building an ‌investment philosophy that influenced generations of investors and executives, making him one of the most consequential figures in modern corporate America.

“As chairman emeritus, Mr Buffett will remain a member of the Board of directors and will continue to offer his valued judgment and perspective,” Berkshire said in a statement.

Shares of the company were broadly unchanged in pre-market trading. 

Buffett’s reputation has ‌also been reflected in Berkshire’s ‌valuation, with investors for ⁠years ascribing a “Buffett premium” to its shares.

The conglomerate’s price-to-book value has fallen since Buffett announced he would step ​down as CEO, slipping from about 1.62 to 1.53, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Berkshire remains the only financial firm in the trillion-dollar market-value club dominated by technology giants.

“Father Time always wins. He has, however, ⁠been generous with me,” Buffett, 96, wrote in a letter to shareholders on Friday.

“I have served Berkshire since 1965.

“Sixty-plus years in, I still have the best job in the world. That is not something many people my age can say and I have never felt better about what comes next.”

Buffett’s influence ‌has extended far ​beyond Berkshire, shaping generations of corporate leaders and investors with his emphasis on long-term thinking, disciplined capital allocation and straightforward management.

“The culture Warren built and the values he championed ​will remain at the ‌heart of Berkshire, and Howard will be their guardian,” Abel said in a statement.

Nicknamed the “Oracle of Omaha”, he has been viewed by CEOs as a sounding board on ​everything from acquisitions and succession to navigating periods of market turmoil, while his annual shareholder meetings became a gathering point for investors seeking insight into the broader business landscape.

Buffett first announced plans to step away from the conglomerate in May 2025, surprising shareholders and analysts despite his age. 

After decades at the ​helm, ​he had become synonymous with the company, making his succession one of ​the most closely watched in corporate America.

“The timing is right to complete the ‌transition,” he wrote in the letter on Friday.

In August, Berkshire said it began reducing its enormous stockpile of cash in the second quarter, investing billions of dollars in stocks such as Alphabet and repurchasing billions of its own, as it reported higher-than-expected profit.

Its quarterly operating profit rose 16 per cent to $US12.98 billion, topping analysts’ forecasts, while net income more than doubled to $US25.67 billion, including unrealised gains and losses on stocks that Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire still owns.

Howard Buffett is the chairman and CEO of the Howard G Buffett Foundation, a ​non-profit that focuses on global food security and conflict mitigation.

He has been a director of numerous public and private company boards, including Agro Tech, Archer-Daniels-Midland, ConAgra Foods, ​Coca-Cola.

“The company is in excellent hands, and ⁠I look forward to remaining a shareholder alongside you,” Warren Buffett said in his letter.

with AP

Nestle is weighing all options to protect its rights after the Kremlin’s decision to take control of the Swiss food maker’s Russian business, the latest move against a Western company since the war ‌in Ukraine began.

The maker of Nescafe coffee and KitKat chocolates said it took note of the decision, announced in a presidential decree on Thursday, and was assessing the situation.

“Nestle is committed to taking ‌all necessary steps to protect its rights and ensure continuity of business operations in the interests of all stakeholders, particularly its employees,” the company said on Friday.

It declined to comment further on what action it was considering.

Russia has tightened control over foreign-owned assets since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022.

A 2023 decree signed by President Vladimir Putin gives Moscow the power to place assets from countries it deems “unfriendly” under temporary administration.

Moscow has also used the law to raise cash through forced sales, exit taxes and ‌discounts, while rewarding Kremlin-loyal insiders.

French ‌supermarket group Auchan was also ⁠targeted by Thursday’s decree, with its Russian assets transferred to the temporary management of LEV Management.

Auchan, which runs 230 stores ​and an online business in Russia, employing about 30,000 people, declined to comment.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that politics was a factor in the decisions.

Without naming Switzerland and France, he alleged they were “actively involved in military actions” against Russia, including “strikes by the Kyiv regime on the objects of our peaceful economic infrastructure”.

The Swiss government, which has been sharply criticised by the Kremlin for following European Union sanctions on Russia, had no immediate comment on the matter.

Nestle has six factories in Russia producing coffee, pet care and infant formula products.

It generated sales of about two billion Swiss ⁠francs ($A3.4 billion) in Russia in 2021, the last year it released figures, and has about 7000 ‌employees there.

The sales figure ​corresponds to about two per cent of Nestle’s total sales, although analysts estimate the contribution has declined after the company scaled back activities in the country.

Global shares and bonds have dipped while Japan’s ‌well-telegraphed hike fell short of supporting the yen, as markets approached the end of a turbulent week marked by a global push by central banks to quell inflation.

Monetary policy has ‌been the prime focus this week, as the war in the Middle East nears the seven-month mark with few signs of ending, which is keeping oil prices above $US100 per barrel and fanning ‌inflation fears.

The Japanese currency headed for its biggest daily slide since mid-February, with the dollar up one per cent to 157.54, after the Bank of Japan raised rates to a 31-year high of 1.25 per cent.

The decision on Friday, though expected, excited yen bears with two board members dissenting to the hike.

The Japanese currency has risen 1.6 per cent in September, driven by expectations of a faster pace of hikes from the BOJ and early signs of repatriation from Japanese investors.

But the Federal Reserve raised rates for the first time in three years on Wednesday and ‌switched to a more ‌aggressive stance on inflation, which ⁠knocked the yen, putting it on course for its worst weekly performance against the dollar in two years, down 2.6 per cent.

BOJ governor Kazuo Ueda said, with underlying inflation approaching two per cent, the bank’s policy focus had shifted, and most of the central bank’s board members believe policy was still accommodative, even after Friday’s hike.

The BOJ decision wraps up the series of major central bank meetings in which policymakers ‌have ratcheted up ​hawkish rhetoric.

September has seen the biggest rise in average interest rates across the G10 since July 2023, with four raising rates and others indicating they may need to do so ​before too long.

The ‌Bank of England on Thursday left UK rates unchanged but said it may have to hike if the Iran war drags on.

The European Central Bank last week ​also flagged the need for further tightening as it raised rates.

And Australia’s top central banker on Friday said some of the upside risks to inflation flagged by policymakers appeared to be materialising.

A retreat in the oil price provided little respite for stocks or bonds, which registered modest price losses.

Stocks ​in ​Europe fell 0.3 per cent on the day, while US stock futures rose 0.3 per cent to ​0.6 per cent, led by strength in tech shares, which shook off the negativity earlier in ‌the week from dire warnings from the top AI executives about the threat to humanity from unchecked AI development.

Brent crude futures fell as much as 2.8 per cent to $US101.92, following a Reuters report that China has asked Tehran to help rein in the Houthis after their military blitz over the past week.

That, together with hopes Gulf exporters may find alternative routes to ship oil, has put crude futures on course for a two per cent weekly drop, although the strain is showing in physical markets, where prices are about $US120.

Bond prices edged up, although volatility was far ​lower, after another brutal sell-off this week that took the 10-year US Treasury yield beyond five per cent to its highest since 2007.

It was last at 4.93 per cent.

Yields across the euro ​zone and in Britain have also hit multi-year ⁠highs in the last week but by Friday were only a touch higher on the day.

An embattled developer has received a reprieve in the form of a 12-month extension to finalise its existing construction projects.

Insolvency advisor Teneo says the Supreme Court of NSW has granted Bathla an extension of the convening period for voluntary administration until September 13, 2027.

The developer stood down more than 200 staff and halted a number of construction projects earlier in September after it entered voluntary administration on August 25.

Bathla owes $3.4 billion to creditors, including $3.08 billion to secured lenders, $130 million to unsecured lenders, $145 million to the tax office and $4 million to employees.

Teneo’s head of financial advisory Stephen Longley said the 12-month extension reflected the scale of Bathla’s portfolio and the varying stages of completion across its projects.

There are almost 220 current projects with a total value of $4.87 billion and $3.13 billion in debt against them.

Roughly 660 lots are already subject to pre-sale contracts, while 1974 lots remain available to buy.

“We have taken a cautious approach to the time frame to ensure there is sufficient time to progress and complete projects in an orderly way,” Mr Longley said.

He also noted the extension afforded Teneo time to secure the additional funding needed to maintain operations. 

Administrators have already secured $4.7 million in additional funding from six lenders, and are continuing discussions on longer-term funding arrangements.

“The extension gives us the time needed to progress projects towards completion, but that outcome remains dependent on securing further lender support to maintain critical central functions at Bathla,” Mr Longley said

“Locking in this funding is therefore an immediate priority and discussions are continuing.”

In addition to securing financing to complete unfinished construction projects, administrators need to reconcile about $736 million of intercompany receivables and payables as Bathla’s bank accounts had not been reconciled for some time.

NSW Premier Chris Minns has defended his decision not to spend public money bailing out the Sydney-based developer, noting Bathla’s corporate structure was unusual and reliant on debt from private lenders.

“I can’t just hand money over to an administrator, particularly when the finances of this particular firm are so opaque and difficult to decipher,” Mr Minns said earlier in September.