Veterans want the Albanese government to “tap the brakes” on a sale of Defence properties designed to raise money for the military and save on costs.

After mulling over a review for almost two years, Labor announced on Wednesday 67 sites will be fully or partly sold in a move described as the “largest Defence estate divestment in Australian history”.

The sale is expected to bring in $1.8 billion for the Defence budget and save taxpayers another $100 million a year in maintenance costs.

RSL Australia National president Peter Tinley said the organisation was ready to work with the government which needed to “take a breath”.

“These aren’t empty paddocks on a spreadsheet, they’re places where Australians learned to soldier, where bonds of mateship were forged, and where generations prepared to defend this nation,” he said.

“The government needs to tap the brakes here. Take a breath. Because once these sites are gone, they’re gone forever.

“Veterans right across the country have deep connections to these places and they deserve more than a press conference announcement.”

Defence properties across the nation come to about 3.8 million hectares.

The sites listed include historic military barracks, training depots and a repatriation centre for wounded troops returning from war.

Mr Tinley raised concerns about where cadets and reservists would train and maintain a community presence when key sites in the major cities were earmarked for sale.

“These places belong to all Australians, past, present and future,” he said.

Defence Minister Richard Marles acknowledged the plan had been opposed by some top military brass, with senior officers in the army particularly concerned.

The audit of the Defence estate found defence force personnel should be relocated away from a number of historic properties to newer military buildings.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the move was a win-win situation which would unlock land for housing development while saving taxpayers huge sums of money.

The list of properties to be sold off includes Sydney’s Victoria Barracks – a complex established in 1840 – and the heritage-listed site in Melbourne bearing the same name which played a crucial role in both world wars.

All sites earmarked for sale will be handed over in coming years to the Finance Department, which will be responsible for finding a buyer.

Government officials believe some properties will likely take years to sell.

Australia’s “booming” relationship with Indonesia will take another step forward when the nations’ leaders pen a security agreement.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will travel to the southeast Asian nation on Thursday and meet with Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto to formally sign the deal they negotiated and announced in November.

While the parties have been somewhat coy about what the pact specifically entails, Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior analyst Gatra Priyandita said the “umbrella arrangement” would likely codify existing deals to find common strategic vision.

Dr Priyandita added Australia’s PukPuk Treaty signed with Papua New Guinea in October that ensures mutual defence between the nations prompted some suspicion in Indonesia, which would likely be nullified by the new deal.

“Indonesia just seeks clarification, and now both Indonesia and PNG have security treaty level status,” he told AAP.

“It’s an attempt to reassure Indonesia that you’re just as important to us as PNG is, and having more codified engagements also means there are more opportunities to express concerns and policy preferences and so on.”

Australia-Indonesia Centre industry fellow and author Jemma Purdey said the treaty indicated any concerns Indonesia held about the AUKUS arrangement were in the past.

President Prabowo has faced criticism at home for appearing to abandon the nation’s long-held foreign policy of non-alignment.

“There is criticism at home that he is getting too close to the US, in an effort to extract some concession on tariffs,” Dr Purdey told AAP.

“But the fact is that under Prabowo, Indonesia has also done deals to buy defence equipment from Russia – there are lots of indications that he does not discriminate.”

Outside of defence, Dr Purdey said Mr Albanese would use the trip to improve trade relations and help ease access for Australian businesses seeking opportunities in Indonesia.

Dr Priyandita said the relationship could only be viewed as being in a great place.

“Defence and security ties are at their peak, economic ties continue to improve, trade ties are booming, investment ties are booming,” he said.

Mr Albanese, whose first overseas trip after his re-election in 2025 was to Indonesia, told his caucus this week Australia would continue strengthening international ties.

“I’ll be in Indonesia to sign the treaty that we agreed with President Prabowo at the end of last year, again making sure that in this region and in the world that we’re engaged in a way that protects our national interest,” he said.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers is being urged to give Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock a hand in her fight against inflation by cutting spending and introducing productivity-boosting reforms in the upcoming federal budget.

The RBA was forced to hike interest rates on Tuesday to get inflation under control, just six months after its last cut.

Ms Bullock was careful not to shift blame onto the government, but she will hope Dr Chalmers does two things in the May budget to help her out.

Essentially, the reason for the RBA’s drastic volte-face was because the economy’s speed limit has been constrained by low productivity growth and high government spending has acted like a turbocharger burning up more fuel.

After three rate cuts in 2025, household spending, business investment and home building roared back much faster than the central bank anticipated.

With private demand growing and government spending still strong at 26.9 per cent of GDP, the economy’s engine is red-lining despite barely pushing down on the accelerator. 

Inflation is moving further from the RBA’s target despite modest GDP growth of only 2.3 per cent per year.

The most immediate thing the government could do to tackle inflation was cut spending to give the private sector more room to grow, AMP chief economist Shane Oliver said.

Otherwise, the RBA will be forced to hike rates again to get inflation down.

“Then you will wind back private demand, and that could have negative consequences,” he told AAP.

That’s easier said than done, with the government facing stiff opposition to constrain growth in the NDIS, an ageing population overloading health and aged care services, growing pressure to raise defence spending, and the rising cost of servicing almost $1 trillion in debt.

Programs such as the NDIS and childcare subsidies are popular among voters, but also spray money in a non-targeted manner.

Reducing reliance on these ‘in-kind’ payments and increasing means-testing should be a priority, Dr Oliver said.

The government has made moves to get spending under control, like lowering the NDIS growth target from eight to six per cent per year.

But it needed to look across the budget holistically and determine whether every dollar was being spent as efficiently as it could be, said Deloitte Access Economics partner Stephen Smith.

The second part of the equation is increasing the supply capacity of the economy.

“What the government can do there is policy reform to help to boost productivity, to boost investment, and improve the run rate that the economy can grow at,” Mr Smith said.

Cutting public spending would help boost productivity by leaving more resources for the private sector, which was more efficient, Dr Oliver said.

But tax reform is also vital longer term. 

Shifting the tax burden from income towards goods and services would boost incentivises to work and invest, while also reducing intergenerational inequity, Dr Oliver said.

Reducing the capital gains tax discount on investment property, as Dr Chalmers was reportedly considering under pressure from the Greens, unions and economists, would also help, he said.

Mr Smith said it was a worthwhile reform but would not have much of an impact on productivity. 

“Really, we need a broader basket of reforms, related to company tax investment allowances in particular, and other things like reducing personal income tax, to improve incentives around work and reward for people’s work as well,” he said.

However, he said the Productivity Commission’s recommendation of a new cashflow tax to encourage capital expenditure was not the right idea as it would add too much complexity and worsen businesses’ administrative burden.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has spoken with US ​President Donald Trump by phone, state ⁠broadcaster CCTV reports, ahead of an expected visit by Trump to China in April.

The White House did not immediately respond to ‌a request for ​comment.

Chinese state media did not ‍provide further details on the call.

The two leaders last spoke by phone in late November, after which Trump touted “extremely strong” relations with China.

The call with ​Trump also came ‌hours after Xi spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin via video ​link.

The Kremlin said Putin accepted an ‍invitation from Xi to visit China in the first half of this year.

Following ​months ​of trade ​tensions triggered by Trump’s tariffs last year, ​relations between the United States and China stabilised after a meeting between the leaders in October in South Korea, where a fragile trade truce was struck.

The custodians of Australia’s $4.2 trillion in retirement savings must do better to shield their members from fraudsters and scammers, the corporate watchdog says.

Superannuation trustees are falling behind other industries in communicating scam risks and supporting targeted members, according to an Australian Securities and Investments Commission review of fund communications.

“Our latest review of superannuation website content confirmed that super funds often lacked clarity, accessibility, and support for scam victims,” commissioner Simone Constant said on Wednesday.

“When benchmarked against other industries, super funds fell short for victims.”

The review, which examined anti-scam and fraud content on company websites for clarity, relevance and prominence, found super funds are significantly lagging the banks.

Banks scored positively in 80 per cent of measured criteria, compared to between 40 and 60 per cent for super funds.

The commission wants funds to lift their game to protect Australians’ nest eggs, which were $22 million lighter in 2025 due to scams, according to the National Anti-Scam Centre.

“Super trustees have a clear and unavoidable responsibility to oversee risk and ensure these emerging threats are identified and managed actively,” Ms Constant said.

ASIC found that while most funds offered some kind of information on scams and fraud, it was often hard to find, while several funds offered no information at all.

The quality of information also raised eyebrows at the corporate watchdog, with content often noted as “frequently outdated, generic, or overly complex”.

Less than two in five funds clearly outlined what a scam was, while one in three offered no messaging on common warning signs, the review found.

And only one-third of funds provided actionable information on how to prevent or report scams, and only one in five had a dedicated contact method to report scams or fraud.

Consumer advocate Super Consumer Australia backed the report and urged the federal government to add super funds to its national Scams Prevention Framework rollout.

The framework sets out rules and requirements for businesses in segments targeted by scammers, but so far it only applies to banks and financial firms, telecommunications providers and digital platforms like social media and messaging services.

“After another year of insufficient action, we have no faith the sector will resolve these problems on their own,” the advocate group’s chief executive Xavier O’Halloran said.

Poor customer service and limited call centre hours also left Australians exposed to scam risk.

“People who fear they may have been a victim of a scam or fraud can’t even call their super fund to get help,” Mr O’Halloran said.

He wants to see the introduction of enforceable customer service standards.

“It’s time the super sector did its fair share in safeguarding Australia’s financial system and protecting their members’ retirement savings from scams and fraud.”

AAP has sought comment from industry representative, the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia.

Spain plans to ban social media for children under 16, in a bid to shield young people from the harms of online content.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has chided the world’s biggest tech companies,  saying they allow illegal content such as child sex abuse and non-consensual sexualised deepfake images to proliferate on their platforms.

Governments also needed to “stop turning a blind eye”, he said in a speech at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on Tuesday.

“Today, our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone,” Sánchez said. 

“We will no longer accept that.”

Spain joins a growing number of countries, including Australia and France, which have taken or are considering measures to restrict minors’ access to social media.

In January, France approved a bill banning social media for children under 15, paving the way for the measure to take effect at the start of the next school year in September. The bill would also ban the use of mobile phones in high schools.

Australia has started implementing the world’s first social media ban for under-16s, after its government passed a measure that holds platforms including TikTok, Twitch, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for failing to prevent children from having accounts.

Denmark has introduced similar legislation to ban access to social media for users under 15, while the UK said last month it would consider banning young teenagers from social media, as it tightens laws designed to protect children from harmful content and excessive screen time.

Sánchez said Spain would require social media companies to enforce the ban with age verification systems, “not just check boxes, but real barriers that work”.

Many social media apps require users to be at least 13, though enforcement varies. Users are often asked to declare their own age.

Spain’s ban will be added to an already existing measure centred on digital protections for minors that is being debated by parliament, a government spokesperson said. Sánchez said that could happen as early as next week.

It’s unclear if Sánchez’s left-wing coalition will get the approval needed in parliament, where his government lacks a majority.

A spokesperson for the far-right Vox party said the Sánchez government’s measure was aimed at “making sure that no one criticises them”, while the main opposition party – the centre-right Popular Party – said it had proposed similar restrictions last year, seemingly offering its support.

Social media companies Meta – which owns Facebook and Instagram – and X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But Elon Musk, X’s billionaire owner and the world’s richest man, wrote that “Sánchez is the true fascist totalitarian”, in a post referencing his speech.

Sánchez also said that Spain had joined five other European countries in what the Spanish leader dubbed a “coalition of the digitally willing” to co-ordinate the regulation of social media platforms at a multinational level.

Additionally, Spain would make it a criminal offence to manipulate algorithms to amplify illegal content and would hold tech executives liable for failing to take down criminal content from their platforms, he said. 

“No more pretending that technology is neutral,” Sánchez said.

Both measures would require parliamentary approval to change Spanish law.

Homegrown global consumer packaging group Amcor has posted a big jump in interim revenue following its $13 billion acquisition of a US competitor.

Amcor delivered $US11.1 billion ($15.8 billion) in net sales for the six months to December, up 70 per cent from a year ago, the Australian-founded, Switzerland-based company announced on Wednesday.

Amcor’s underlying earnings – before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation – grew 80 per cent to $US 1.7 billion ($2.4 billion), feeding into net income of $US439 million ($A627 million) for the half.

Amcor chief executive Peter Konieczny said that the benefits from the April 2025 acquisition of Indiana-based rigid plastic packaging company Berry Global were at the upper end of its expectations.

“Performance through the first half of the year supports our confidence in reaffirming fiscal 2026 earnings and free cash flow guidance,” he said.

Amcor has been working on its “portfolio optimisation actions,” Mr Konieczny said, positioning the company to be the global leader in consumer packaging and dispensing solutions for the major nutrition, health, beauty and wellness sectors.

Amcor produces packaging for products like baby wipes, bakery bags, shrink overwrap which is often used for items like paper towels, blister packs for medicines, and pouches for food and liquids like yoghurt, amongst others.

The company, which is listed in the US and Australia, reaffirmed its guidance of $US4 to $4.15 in earnings per share in 2025/26, and $US1.8 billion to $US1.9 billion (about $2.6 billion) in free cash flow.

Amcor will pay investors a second-quarter dividend of US 65 cents per share, up from 63.75 cents a year ago. Holders of its Australian-listed securities will receive an unfranked dividend of 93 cents per share.

Goldman Sachs analyst Niraj Shah said Amcor’s earnings were four per cent below consensus estimates, but the mid-point of its full year guidance was 1.8 per cent ahead of expectations.

This means all eyes will be on its performance in the second half of 2025/26, he added.

Goldman Sachs has reiterated its buy rating and $86.55 twelve month price target on the company’s Australian securities.

In morning trading on Wednesday, Amcor’s ASX-listed CDIs (or Chess Depositary Interests) were changing hands at $63.94, up 1.4 per cent from Tuesday’s close.

President Donald Trump’s call for Republicans to “nationalise” elections has drawn furious pushback from lawmakers, including from a few Republicans.

Democrats have voiced fresh concerns Trump intends to interfere with the November mid-terms that will determine control ‍of Congress. 

In a podcast interview with former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino released on Monday, Trump repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and said his party should “take over” and “nationalise” voting in at least 15 places, without detailing ​what he meant.

Under the US Constitution, state governments oversee elections, not the federal government, and most contests are administered by county and local officials. 

Democratic officials and voting rights advocates said Trump’s comments, just days after the FBI searched the election office in Fulton County, Georgia, for ⁠2020 ballots, show he plans to try to undermine or perhaps even manipulate the results of this year’s elections.

“This is not about the 2020 election,” Democratic US Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said at a press conference.

“This is frankly about what comes next.” 

On Tuesday in the Oval Office, Trump urged Republican lawmakers to pass election reforms and reiterated his call for more national control.

“The state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do them anyway,” Trump told reporters.

The president’s party has historically lost seats in midterm elections, and Democrats need to flip only three Republican-held districts in November to gain control of the US House of Representatives.

“The last time he started talking like this, his allies minimised the risks and ‍we ended up with Jan 6,” Brendan Nyhan, a political science professor at Dartmouth College, wrote on X, referring to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.

Trump has often expressed a desire to overhaul the country’s elections, based on false claims that his loss in 2020 to Democrat Joe Biden was fuelled by fraud. 

He has called for mail-in ballots to be outlawed, questioned the security of voting machines and claimed falsely that millions of non-citizens regularly cast ballots. 

In recent years, Democrats tried without success to implement some national election reforms like universal mail-in voting and address some aspects of voter ID laws.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump wanted Congress to pass a Republican-authored bill, the SAVE Act, that includes new voting requirements.

“The president believes in the United ‍States Constitution,” she said.

“However, he believes there has obviously been a lot of fraud and irregularities that have taken place in American elections.”

Several Trump allies in states with close races told Reuters they believe Trump might threaten to withhold federal election-related funding to states that resist new voting measures, such as ID requirements or limits on mail balloting.

The government provides hundreds of millions of dollars in federal assistance to states each year to help administer elections, including for voting equipment, ​cybersecurity upgrades ​and election worker training.

Dozens of properties owned by Australia’s military – including the historic Victoria Barracks in Sydney and Melbourne – will be sold off over coming years, raising billions of dollars to reinvest in the nation’s defences.

The federal government has agreed to sell 64 sites across the country, raking in an expected total of just under $2 billion and saving taxpayers $100 million a year in maintenance costs for the ageing facilities.

The sell-off follows an audit of Australia’s defence estate – a sprawling network of hundreds of properties across the nation totalling around 3.8 million hectares.

The independent review found a number of the sites are sitting vacant or are unfit for use because of rusted and derelict buildings, black mould and chemical contamination.

The list of sites to be sold off includes Sydney’s Victoria Barracks – a complex established in 1840 and located on a prime eastern suburbs site not far from the city centre.

Between 450 and 650 people are based at the barracks and will be relocated to other defence sites.

Melbourne’s Victoria Barracks, another heritage-listed site whose oldest buildings date back to 1850, will also be sold.

The site played a crucial role in both world wars.

In total, the defence estate review has recommended the sale of 68 properties, of which three have already been offloaded.

The government has decided to sell only part of another three sites.

One site, a dive-training site at Pittwater on Sydney’s northern beaches, was recommended for sale but will be retained because it hosts a “critical capability” which can’t be easily relocated.

All sites earmarked for sale will be handed over to the Finance Department, which will take responsibility for finding a buyer.

But government officials believe some properties will likely take years to sell off.

Buyers are likely to be a mix of state and territory governments along with private owners.

The proceeds of the sale, estimated to reach around $1.8 billion, will be reinvested into the ADF.

Defence Minister Richard Marles said it would be a “significant and challenging reform” but would leave Australia better off in the long run.

“In order for the Australian Defence Force to protect our nation and keep Australians safe, it must have a defence estate that meets its operational and capability needs,” he said.

“For many years this has not been the case, with many defence sites vacant, decaying, under-utilised and costing millions of dollars to retain,” he said in a statement.

Forestry has long and complex past on the Tiwi Islands.

Plantations on the islands 80 kilometres north of Darwin have not always worked in the interests of the Tiwi people in the decades it has been running, nor the natural environment.

Tiwi Plantations Corporation chair Kim Puruntatameri is confident the latest forestry endeavour ticks all boxes – it will be financially and environmentally sustainable, and keep more of the economic benefit in local hands.

Under the project owned by the organisation – which is governed by all eight clans – 30,000 hectares of a native eucalypt species will be planted on Melville Island that will eventually be harvested for construction timber and other wood products.

The project will be delivered by plantation investment manager Midway and backed by a $81 million total investment from the federal green bank, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and private investment firm River Capital.

Mr Puruntatameri said local employment opportunities were all-important, with Tiwi men and women already working in the nursery and planting due to begin in coming months.

“We get kids from the high school going to visit,” he told AAP.

“We talk to them about this, ‘if you leave school, and this is where you want to work, then there are a lot of things they can do’.”

“We’ve got to look after the land very well for the next generation coming.”

Trees will be planted on existing forestry land that previously housed an acacia species that was able to propagate quickly and was found to have escaped the plantation into native forests.

Scientists have been involved in testing a more suitable tree and landed on Eucalyptus pellita, understood to be less “weedy” than the acacia variety, according to Tiwi Land Council chief executive officer Brendan Ferguson. 

“The Tiwi people were much happier to see that there was going to be a less of an environmental impact on their country,” he said.

With robust bark and deep roots, the tree native to northeastern Queensland is more resilient to fires and cyclones, and is suited to high-value timber products.

Clean Energy Finance Corporation head of natural capital Heechung Sung said the long-rotation plantation would generate carbon credits, a source of all-important revenue to cover infrastructure and planting costs while the trees grow.

Carbon credits are granted to projects that absorb carbon, which can then be purchased by companies and organisations seeking to cancel out their own emissions.

While a source of funding for reforestation and other carbon-sequestering projects, the integrity and effectiveness of carbon credits has come under question.

Ms Sung said the credits generated by the Tiwi project would be high integrity, with the plantation methodology supporting genuine emissions reductions by underpinning the planting of new trees that draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. 

“Brand new plantation forestry projects are very hard to get up and running without the carbon markets responding,” she told AAP

Ms Sung said the financial structure of the project would support the self-determination of the Tiwi people.

“It was really important that they owned the project, both the revenues but also the risk, because it’s on their country.”