Aussie shares lift as Fed rate call calms bond market
Australia’s share market has logged a second session of tentative gains after a US interest rate hike helped soothe global bond market jitters.
The S&P/ASX200 rose 35.9 points on Thursday, up 0.41 per cent, to 8,732.4, as the broader All Ordinaries gained 36.4 points, or 0.41 per cent, to 8,910.9.
Long-dated yields eased from multi-decade highs after the US Federal Reserve delivered its first interest rate hike in three years, showing it was serious about taming inflation and tempering fears about bond markets – the effective plumbing for the global financial system.
A rebound in the financials sector did some heavy lifting as seven of 11 local sectors traded lower, while energy stocks and non-energy miners slumped as oil, iron ore and gold prices eased since Wednesday.
The Australian dollar is buying 71.08 US cents, down from 71.31 US cents on Wednesday at 5pm.
‘Mixed bag’: unis mull block on student families
Australia could lose its competitive edge in the scramble for the world’s brightest minds under a plan to wipe out student visa hopping and bogus degrees, an education peak body has warned.
International students and those on graduate visas will no longer be allowed to bring family members with them to Australia under sweeping changes announced by Immigration Minister Tony Burke on Thursday.
The tweaks were targeting the injustice of Australian citizens waiting years for spouses to gain entry while international students can bring relatives along from the start, Mr Burke said.
While welcoming aspects of the policy designed to ensure students were genuine, International Education Association of Australia chief executive Phil Honeywood told AAP the reforms were a “mixed bag”.
“The opportunity for your partner to work full-time while you study means that you can meet the cost of living pressures,” he said.
“Bear in mind that (international students’) tuition fees are three times more on average.”
Students’ family members and dependents already onshore, of which there were almost 120,000 as of June 30, will be allowed to stay.
Some Southeast Asians and Pacific islanders studying certain courses, and all PhD students, will also be exempt from the new rule.
Students will only be allowed to extend their visas if they’re moving to a higher level course, like a bachelor to a master’s degree.
The change aimed to prevent dodgy institutions offering sham courses whose only purpose was letting migrants fulfil a student visa condition while they live and work in Australia.
“To hop around up and down to different institutions … actually just seeking a migration outcome as part of Australia’s export of international education will come to an end as a model,” Mr Burke said.
But Mr Honeywood said the overwhelming number of international students came seeking a world-class qualification and the changes could lead some to look at other options.
“Countries like France are now pragmatically teaching degrees in English because they’ve noted that they need international students to meet their domestic workforce requirements,” he said.
“The welcome mat to Australia has been withdrawn in the eyes of many education providers.”
‘May never be found’: grim wait for Nepal flood answers
Closure for the loved ones of many Australians and others still missing from the Nepal-Tibet floods is likely months away, while for some it may never come.
Forensic medicine expert Richard Bassed has worked to identify the dead following disasters in Australia and abroad.
The head of forensic medicine at Monash University flew to Thailand to help identify Australians lost to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and worked in the aftermath of Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfires in 2009.
But the scale of the task confronting forensics experts in flood-ravaged Nepal was in a class of its own, he said.
“I can’t imagine the difficulties,” Professor Bassed, who also serves as deputy director at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, told AAP.
“The bodies they recover will probably be miles from where they lived originally, they’ll be decomposed, they’ll be traumatised from what happened to them.
“There will be people buried under hundreds of feet of mud and they may never be found.”
Prof Bassed is not involved in the Nepal-Tibet disaster response but has been watching it from afar.
Of the work he has been involved in, he said only the 2004 tsunami – when as many as 5400 people died in Thailand alone – could compare.
“They were everywhere,” Prof Bassed said of the dead washed up and down the country’s Indian Ocean coastline.
“They were buried in sand dunes, they were inside wrecked hotels.”
Despite a year-long effort, aided by victim identification breakthroughs made during the 2002 Bali bombings, as many as 900 remained unidentified, he said.
DNA testing has significantly improved in the years since, adding to developments in imaging and facial recognition technologies, the professor said.
But he stressed Nepal’s mountainous landscape and the challenges of co-ordinating international support teams, along with local resource constraints, meant the work of identifying the dead would likely end before all those missing are found.
“It’s a real political decision as to how long they keep going,” he said.
“I imagine that they’ll keep going for a while yet, but they’re not going to be going in a year’s time.”
The disaster began on August 26, when a glacial collapse brought catastrophic floods to far-flung towns along the Nepal-Tibet border.
More than 1400 people have died while 6150 remain missing, according to the latest figures from Nepalese authorities.
Among the missing are 35 Australians, added to separate losses on the Tibetan side of the border.
On Wednesday, Nepal’s Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said DNA samples had been taken from 1286 bodies.
In a statement to Reuters, it confirmed 105 bodies had been successfully identified, less than 7.5 per cent of those recovered.
As forensics experts, including those tasked by the Australian Federal Police, work to identify the dead, rescue crews are working to reach survivors.
UNICEF estimates more than 3600 people have lost their homes, while more than 84,000 have been in some way affected, including 32,000 children.
Aid groups are delivering vaccines to towns at risk of water-borne diseases and working to restore water services and install sanitation supplies.
But many areas remain hard to reach due to damaged roads and collapsed bridges, forcing workers to make use of helicopters and makeshift ropeways.
Those with missing loved ones are clinging to hope but Prof Bassed said the chances of finding more survivors were increasingly dim.
“I hope to God that they find them, but I wouldn’t be for certain saying yes, ‘we will find them’ or that ‘we will bring them all home’,” he said.
“I think now it’s just purely recovery and identification.”
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was contacted for comment.
Loss-making vaccine maker agrees investors ‘frustrated’
An Australian healthcare giant that’s trying to turn itself around after a torrid couple of years has accepted that its shareholders are frustrated.
The admission by chair Brian McNamee was made in CSL’s annual report published on Thursday, just weeks after the blood plasma and vaccines supplier posted a shattering $3.7 billion annual loss.
“The board acknowledges that many shareholders are frustrated with the recent disappointing commercial and financial performance of the company,” he wrote.
“We built up substantial fixed costs, we were slow to adapt to competitive pressures, our research and development efforts didn’t deliver and some investment the company made did not perform.”
The admission comes ahead of CSL’s annual general meeting on October 27 in Melbourne, when its board will come face to face with shareholders.
Since July 2024 and August 2026, shares in CSL, which is best known in Australia for its groundbreaking Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine, tumbled by about 70 per cent.
The drop was driven by softening demand from its key markets in the US and China, a major restructure and a wave of asset downgrades.
In August, it reported an eye-watering $US2.6 billion ($A3.7 billion) annual net loss, against a profit of $US3 billion ($A4.2 billion) the year before.
The result took the brunt of $US7.1 billion ($A10 billion) in pre-tax writedowns, mostly linked to its CSL Vifor kidney treatment and iron deficiency business.
Vifor has struggled against generic competition and regulatory shifts since its 2022 acquisition by CSL.
It also ousted its former boss Paul McKenzie in 2025, putting board director Gordon Naylor in place as interim chief executive.
CSL wanted to earn back shareholder confidence, Mr McNamee said, before adding that the board had been encouraged by the actions taken by Mr Naylor so far.
“These efforts are showing early positive results,” he said.
The reassurance has given investors hope that the worst could be over and CSL shares rose by more than one per cent around lunch on Thursday to $176.36.
At the annual results announcements in August, Mr Naylor said the tough result marked the start of a reset for the company.
The search for a permanent boss continues, with Mr Naylor at this stage set to return to his board seat after the new chief executive has had time to settle in.
Pauline Hanson, Muslim senator join forces for staffing
An unlikely political trio has joined forces to petition the prime minister for more staff, putting aside their usually fractious relationships and views on religion to launch a united campaign.
Independent senator Fatima Payman, One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and independent MP Dai Le told journalists on Thursday their unity was a sign the system was “completely broken”.
One Nation has 0.83 staff per parliamentarian, compared to Labor’s 4.09 and the coalition’s 1.47, according to modelling.
Politicians hire their own electorate and personal staff, but the prime minister has ultimate control over staffing allocations.
Senator Payman, who quit the Labor Party in mid-2024 to sit as an independent, has no personal staff. Ms Le has one, following her victory in the historically Labor safe seat of Fowler in 2022.
It is the first time the two senators have shown a united front, usually at odds on fundamental policy.
A major row erupted between the women on the floor of parliament in 2024, when Senator Hanson attempted to have her counterpart investigated for citizenship concerns. Senator Payman called her “vindictive, mean, nasty” as a result.
Pauline Hanson in February said there were no “good” Muslims during a during a media interview, before offering a convoluted apology in which she said “some” Muslims could be good, referring to those who were non-practising.
On Tuesday, Senator Payman called out a “certain Queensland senator” for inciting divisive, hate-filled migration debate.
But none of that seemed to matter on Thursday.
“Australians want to see politicians act in a mature way to put their differences aside when it comes to common causes, and we’re here demanding transparency from this government,” Senator Payman said.
“We have different views on almost everything, but what we have all in common is we’re all women,” she said.
The trio accused Labor of trying to punish them for having dissenting views.
“I have been begging the prime minister to listen to what is happening in my office and to allow me the staff to do my job,” Senator Hanson said.
Mr Albanese saw the “writing on the wall” and was trying to restrict One Nation’s success, following its Secret Harbour by-election victory in the Western Australian state parliament earlier this month, the One Nation leader said.
“I think it’s nasty, and the people are seeing right through this government and through our prime minister. I’m going to keep going with this.”
Trump lashes out at US Fed after latest rate hike
US President Donald Trump has levelled his most pointed — though still indirect — criticism yet at his hand-picked Federal Reserve chief, fuming on social media over the central bank’s move to raise interest rates in a bid to calm persistent inflation.
“Interest Rates in the United States should be 1 per cent, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR,” he wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.
“LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!” he concluded.
It was the closest Trump has come yet to levelling one of his broadsides directly at Kevin Warsh, picked by Trump earlier in 2026 to take over the Fed from Jerome Powell, a figure the president frequently derided for not delivering the dramatic rate cuts Trump has routinely demanded.
Trump’s screed came shortly after Fed policymakers unanimously agreed on Wednesday to raise rates by 25 basis points to 3.75 per cent-4.00 per cent, an action Warsh described at a subsequent press conference as”a sober decision, serious decision, responsible decision”.
“The plain fact is that inflation is too high and has been for too long,” Warsh said.
And rates are likely going still higher. New policy projections showed 16 of 18 policymakers anticipate at least one more quarter-percentage-point hike by the end of 2026, with only two of them seeing rates remaining stable from here.
Warsh said again on Wednesday that he is opposed to sharing forward guidance and did not submit a projection.
Trump’s post was the second time this week he’d taken aim at his own appointees. After the Supreme Court struck down his attempt to regulate how states issue mail ballots, Trump wrote of the three justices he appointed: “These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves.”
White House officials spent much of the week publicly pressuring the Fed to hold rates steady. One former White House official told Reuters the president’s social media post about the Fed was a tame response in the context of that campaign.
Aussie wagyu producer raises the ‘steaks’ a third time
Australians are pretty proud of the quality of their homegrown beef and a family-run producer has got the gong to prove it.
Jack’s Creek has taken out the World’s Best Wagyu stakes – for the third time in a row – at the 2026 World Steak Challenge in the Netherlands.
“What Jack’s Creek has achieved … over the last few years is a reflection of what the wider Australian industry is doing – there’s a lot of incredible Australian beef out there,” business manager Bob Barker told AAP.
It’s a big boost for the local wagyu industry, which is the world’s largest exporter with an estimated value of $2 billion a year, according to the Australian Wagyu Association.
Jack’s Creek is based near the small rural village of Willow Tree in the Liverpool Plains, about 375km north of Sydney in NSW.
The business, run by the Warmoll family, has been producing beef for more than 30 years, from Black Angus in the 1980s to Tajima Wagyu in the 1990s.
It now processes grain-fed wagyu, wagyu cross and black Angus cattle and exports to more than 30 countries worldwide, including key markets in Asia.
The winning wagyu steak came from a purebred steer raised at Willow Tree, and getting it to the competition in Amsterdam in prime condition for judging took a bit of arranging.
Jack’s Creek has a couple of European importers it relies on to smooth the way.
It sends a regular load to one of those, along with a handful of cartons pre-packed for the awards it’s running for.
“You have to think about the competition date, the shipping time, the ageing time for the beef, the vacuum bag,” Mr Barker said.
“We make sure they all come from a highly marbled piece of meat, so it’ll be an 8 to 9 marbling score (which ranks as luxury or fine dining).”
Once in Amsterdam, the beef was handed over to more than 60 judges for blind testing, under raw and cooked conditions.
Mr Barker said the value of the win can’t be underestimated.
“It’s a really good thing from a marketing perspective, particularly in overseas markets, where we sometimes run into messages getting lost in translation,” he said.
Across its whole supply chain, Jack’s Creek exports about 25,000 to 26,000 tonnes a year.
That includes marble score 8-9 waygu totalling a small 1000 tonnes a year.
A standard level 9 marbled porterhouse can cost about $200kg, or $80/kg for a rump, but if you’re out near Taminda, Tamworth, you can buy Jack’s Creek award winner for $125/kg at its own outlet.
Of the 128 gold medals handed out in this year’s competition, Australia took 27, narrowly beaten by Ireland on 29.
But it did secure the top World’s Best Steak gong, won by Queensland-based producer Paradigm Foods with its Senku Pure Wagyu submission. Jack’s Creek is a former winner.
Overall, Australia ran second with a medal haul of 42, after being overtaken by Ireland with 82, but it did beat England on 26.
Fed hikes rates, defying Trump’s demands
The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates and flagged further increases in borrowing costs in coming months, with new US central bank chief Kevin Warsh joining a unanimous decision that effectively acknowledges the Trump administration’s inability so far to control inflation.
While President Donald Trump had promised to lower prices on his watch, the combined impact of his global import tariffs, an energy shock following the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran, and capital spending from the artificial intelligence boom has kept price pressures intense enough that the Fed felt it needed to raise its benchmark overnight interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday, putting it into the 3.75-to-four-per-cent range.
New policy projections showed 16 of 18 policymakers anticipate at least one more quarter-percentage-point hike by the end of this year, with only two of them seeing rates remaining stable from here. Warsh apparently again did not submit a rate projection.
It’s the first policy shift under the new Fed chief, who took office in late May after being selected by Trump with an expectation that he would cut rates.
The Fed’s new policy statement and economic projections, to the contrary, show a central bank opening the door on tighter monetary policy through next year, with the policy rate rising to the four-to-4.25-per-cent range by the end of this year and ending 2027 at the same level.
“Today’s policy action will support a timelier return to the Committee’s two per cent goal,” the central bank said in its policy statement after the end of a two-day meeting.
While the statement withheld any forward guidance about coming policy decisions, as is Warsh’s preference, the decision is likely to ease doubts that the Fed chief would hold off on tighter policy out of deference to Trump, a lingering question during his first months in office.
The statement dropped a previous reference attributing current elevated inflation to “supply shocks” particularly in the energy sector, a nod to concerns among policymakers, including Warsh, that price pressures were too broad for comfort.
Warsh is scheduled to hold a press conference to elaborate on the decision.
The rate increase was announced less than two months ahead of midterm elections that will determine whether Trump’s Republicans maintain control of Congress for the final two years of his presidency.
The Republicans are facing an uphill battle with voters angry about petrol prices that are about a third higher than a year ago and interest rates on home mortgages that have been rising steadily this year. The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is approaching seven per cent.
Policymakers’ new quarterly economic projections marked up estimates of inflation, as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, to 3.7 per cent versus the 3.6 per cent projected at the Fed’s June meeting. Inflation is not projected to return to the two per cent target until 2029, a year later than previously expected.
Economic growth was marked up slightly from 2.2 per cent to 2.3 per cent, while the unemployment rate is seen ending the year at 4.1 per cent, versus the 4.3 per cent projected in June.
Warsh has pledged to lower inflation back to two per cent “clearly and at sufficient speed” by raising rates as needed.
Businesses scramble for staff as migration cuts loom
Job ads in the tourism and construction sectors have surged, revealing the labour market is getting tighter even as the government prepares further cuts to Australia’s migration intake.
As employers ramp up for the busy summer period, hospitality and tourism job ads surged 3.6 per cent in August, a report by employment marketplace Seek showed on Thursday.
Even adjusted for the usual seasonal bump at this time of year, ad volumes in the sector were up a significant 6.2 per cent quarter-on-quarter, with demand for wait staff up 11 per cent and ads for cooks rising six per cent.
Seek’s chief economist Blair Chapman said the figures suggest firms were front-loading hiring in this financial year.
“They’re preparing for that surge in sales come Black Friday and the summer event season,” he told AAP.
“So it’s above our normal seasonality, but it’s coming off sort of low base.”
The spike in demand for jobs comes as the sector braces for Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke to announce sweeping changes to Australia’s migration settings at the National Press Club on Thursday.
Wes Lambert, chief executive of the Australian Restaurant and Cafe Association, said hospitality companies were already hurting after the government’s move in July to freeze working-holiday-maker visas, which are especially relied on by regional employers.
“We’re going into the shoulder and high season for tourism and hospitality and they have cut the accommodation and food service industry off at the knees,” he said.
“In one month since the government has announced policy by stealth, we have seen a skyrocketing in job listings on Seek from the mid-40,000s to the mid-60,000s of open positions.”
As the housing pipeline ramps up to try meet Australia’s chronic supply shortage, builders have also faced a challenge to find skilled workers.
Construction job ads grew 10.7 per cent in the year to August.
“We do have massive house-building cycles and investment cycles,” Dr Chapman said.
“We saw a bit of a slowdown a couple of years ago, and there’s a bit of a surge again at the moment.”
Housing Industry Association managing director Jocelyn Martin said the residential construction industry was short 83,000 skilled workers.
“The solution is not moving workers from one sector to another. It is increasing the number of skilled people entering and completing trade careers,” she said.
UK PM vows tough decisions to keep economy on track
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham insists he is ready to take the difficult decisions required to ensure the UK economy remains on track after data showed a rise in inflation and as speculation mounts about what that means for an October 28 budget.
Britain is seen as more vulnerable to surging oil prices from the war in the Middle East than other countries, and the inflation pick-up adds to the headache for finance minister John Healey, whose budget options are limited by the weak state of the public finances and rising borrowing costs.
Burnham said the acceleration in inflation to 3.1 per cent in August, a five-month high, was “a concern”, but his government would take action to help people while also applying prudence to the running of the economy.
“We will take difficult decisions to make sure the economy remains on track,” Burnham told reporters on Wednesday.
The underlying picture from the latest data was one of “resilience” in the economy, he said.
British government borrowing costs hit their highest levels in decades this week as bond yields climbed globally on the back of worries about higher inflation due to the escalating conflict in the Gulf.
On Tuesday, the 30-year gilt yield touched its highest level since 1998, while on Monday the 10-year yield rose to its highest since 2007.
Burnham’s insistence that he is ready to make tough choices to balance the books comes after criticism from former Bank of England official Andy Haldane, reported to have been an adviser to Burnham in June before he became prime minister.
“The market now suspects that this is a traditional tax-and-spend socialist government with better TikTok videos,” Haldane told LBC on Thursday.
Burnham rejected that characterisation.
“We are not that already. I have taken difficult decisions in this job,” he said. “It’s not the case that we aren’t going to take difficult decisions.”