A pack of legal cigarettes would be around $30 cheaper under a coalition policy that it says will help stub out the growing black market for illicit tobacco.

After One Nation proposed a 75 per cent cut to the tobacco excise in August, Liberal Leader Angus Taylor is now pushing for it to be slashed by 80 per cent, which would see a packet of cigarettes fall to prices not seen since 2013.

Mr Taylor, who is seeking to counter a surge in popularity for Pauline Hanson’s party that has also seen support for his coalition drop to near-record lows, said he’s confident making legal cigarettes competitive would smash the illegal trade.

“I understand business, and sadly, this is a bad business that we have to destroy,” Mr Taylor told ABC News Breakfast on Thursday.

“We’ve got the worst of all worlds right now, with rising smoking, rising crime, and the result of this is that there’s less tax revenue for the government.”

The excise, which adds about $1.55 to the cost of every cigarette to take the average price of a legal pack of 25 sticks past $50, has been blamed for a surge in organised criminal activity and a wave of firebombings on retailers in the major cities.

An estimated 80 per cent of all tobacco consumed in 2025 was illicit, up from 12 per cent in 2017, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

A coalition-led inquiry, which handed down its final report on Friday, called for an immediate pause to the excise and further investigation into possible impacts of lowering taxes.

The Albanese government has resisted making any change to the excise, which reaps billions from the excise every year, despite growing pressure from economists and NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns.

Senior government minister Tanya Plibersek has rubbished the opposition’s policy, labelling it a race to the bottom.

“It will kill people. Like seriously, we have some of the lowest smoking rates in the world because cigarettes are expensive.” Ms Plibersek said on News24.

Greens Senator David Shoebridge has echoed these accusations and said the coalition policy ignores public health concerns.

Meanwhile, deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume is adamant the coalition has not copied the homework of One Nation.

“This is not a slogan. This is not a headline. This is a solution to a policy problem, a failure of this government,” she told Channel Nine’s Today.

The coalition’s policy includes a $200 million for law enforcement and a further $60 million for a public health campaign to discourage taking up a smoking habit.

Australia has sent more aid to Nepal, including a team of drone operators, to help with search operations as conditions remain “extremely challenging” following devastating floods.

At least 38 Australians are still missing and the total death toll from the disaster has surpassed 1200, the government said on Thursday morning.

Rescue teams are searching for more than 4200 people missing after a glacier collapse near Nepal’s border with China triggered devastating floods across towns and valleys.

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong confirmed on Thursday that a team of specialist drone operators are being deployed to help with the effort. 

The 15-person team will include members of state fire and rescue departments and will use advanced technology to provide rapid mapping and imaging. 

There remains no change in the number of missing Australians, after five citizens were confirmed safe on Wednesday.

“Australian officials are working closely with authorities in Nepal and China to support efforts to establish their whereabouts and provide assistance to their families,” Senator Wong said.

“The conditions facing search and recovery teams remain extremely challenging. 

“Communications are difficult, infrastructure has been destroyed and many areas are still difficult to reach.”

Aid supplies aboard a Royal Australian Air Force plane arrived in Kathmandu on Wednesday, carrying humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. 

More than 1400 hygiene kits, 2200 solar lights and phone chargers were among the items on board.

Australians have donated more than $4 million to the Emergency Action Alliance to support recovery efforts. 

The federal government will provide a further $3 million to match public donations, bringing the ongoing humanitarian support package to a total of $11 million.

Grieving community members in Australia continue to cling to hope their loved ones are safe. 

“Lots of people are stuck in the tunnels over there as well, and most don’t have any contact … we are still hopeful that maybe we can get good news,” Non-Resident Nepali Association Victorian co-ordinator Mahadev Dhanuk told AAP.

The tight-knit Victorian Nepali community of less than 30,000 is wrapping its arms around those affected by the tragedy, with hundreds uniting at a candlelight vigil in memory of the victims in Melbourne on Monday.

“Many are not personally affected, but culturally we feel like one family. That’s why everyone is devastated,” Mr Dhanuk said.

“All of the community is trying to overcome their own plight and trying to help and think how can we stand with Nepal?”

Australia’s listed corporations snapped a three-year streak of declining earnings this profit season, but their gains lagged those of their global peers, particularly in the US tech sector.

“It was quite a soft earnings season,” VanEck senior portfolio manager Cameron McCormack told AAP.

Australia’s benchmark S&P/ASX200 index – which reflects most of the companies that reported in August – only marginally beat expectations, although small and mid-sized companies did better.

But the materials sector grew earnings by nearly 30 per cent, and was amongst the best sectors in terms of exceeding expectations.

“A key driver was really strength from goldminers seeing an increase in profit margins coming through, and also particularly exposures to copper miners as well, given that both gold and copper had reached an all-time high,” Mr McCormack said.

Results from the banks – even though Commonwealth Bank was the only major that reported – were actually “quite solid” despite their forward earnings guidance being a bit weaker.

A key takeaway was that new mortgage applications were down around 15 per cent following federal government housing-related tax changes announced in May, Mr McCormack added.

Overall earnings growth was driven mostly by Australia’s resource sector, Morningstar market strategist Lochlan Halloway agreed.

“If we think about the two main stories of earnings season, it’s like resources stocks, and everything else,” he told AAP.

While the miners collectively grew earnings by around 30 per cent, most industrial companies and banks’ earnings climbed by just mid-single digits.

“That’s barely ahead of inflation,” Mr Halloway said.

Mr Holloway did give credit to Woolworths for a standout performance, flipping the narrative from a year ago when Coles seemed to be gaining ground on its larger rival.

But overall earnings growth for Australian companies was lacklustre compared to the United States.

Wall Street’s Nasdaq-100 index – which reflects technology companies like Nvidia, Apple, Amazon and Tesla – grew earnings by 38.8 per cent in 2025/26.

AMP deputy chief economist Diana Mousina was a bit more enthusiastic about Australian companies’ results this season, although she acknowledged that earnings growth was quite limited and came mostly from the resource sector and banks.

“This is the best earnings season that we’ve had in three years, so there are still some positives there,” Ms Mousina said.

Thirty-six per cent of companies beat earnings expectations, which is a bit below the long-run average, but also fewer companies missed them, Ms Mousina said.

“There are more companies just performing in line,” she told AAP.

Two-thirds of companies reported they would pay a dividend, a figure that’s up from a year ago and better than the long-run average.

“So overall, I’d say it was fine, and the good news is that we are seeing stronger earnings growth in Australia, but it’s just not enough to compete with some of our global peers at the moment,” she told AAP.

Tim Johnston, portfolio manager at Bell Asset Management, was more sanguine about the smaller end of the market that he favours.

“The reporting season was better than the weak expectations going in,” he said, adding that 80 per cent of smaller companies had either met or beaten expectations.

Earnings growth in the small cap market is forecast at about 13 per cent or 14 per cent over the next couple of years, compared to low single-digit growth for large cap companies, according to Mr Johnston.

Morningstar’s Mr Halloway also pointed out that Australia’s resource sector shouldn’t get too much credit for growing earnings, given that the higher commodity prices that worked in their favour are beyond their control.

“I think that the challenge for Australia’s stock market is very much sort of the challenge that we have in our economy more broadly, which is how do we get productivity to rise so we get the economy growing in real terms again,” he said.

Australia hasn’t had a big productivity-boosting technological revolution yet, which explains why its corporate earnings haven’t grown as much compared to the United States, Mr Halloway said.

“But let’s hope that Australia can start to implement and reap the rewards of the AI revolution, so we can start growing again.”

The bond vigilantes are back and could force the government into deeper spending cuts.

Bond yields climbed to a 15-year high on Wednesday, with 10-year Australian government bonds fetching 5.2 per cent, after economic growth figures came in stronger than forecast.

The aggressive repricing was mainly driven by global bond yields, especially in the US, where government debt levels are increasingly worrying markets, AMP chief economist Shane Oliver said.

But Australian traders were also taking note of higher expectations for interest rates, following hotter-than-expected GDP and inflation figures over the past week.

Rates markets were pricing in a 78 per cent chance of another Reserve Bank hike in September, with one rate rise fully priced in by the end of the year.

A follow-up rate hike by mid-2027 was also priced in near 80 per cent.

Higher interest rates and higher bond yields were likely to be felt acutely by Treasury, which faces higher costs to service more than $1 trillion in federal debt, Dr Oliver said.

“There’s a graph in the budget which shows that the fastest-growing big ticket item of government spending is public debt interest. This will only accentuate that,” he told AAP.

“It will put on more pressure to cut government spending, basically.

“It’s almost as if the bond vigilantes are coming back out of the woodwork after being asleep for a few decades.”

While Treasurer Jim Chalmers found $64 billion in gross spending cuts in the May budget, the government arguably should have been more aggressive, Dr Oliver said.

The forecast savings, which were largely in the NDIS, are already behind schedule because of delays in getting legislation through parliament. 

Most of the forecast savings are also due to land on the other side of the next election, which raises the risk that they don’t eventuate because of more spending commitments lavished on voters during the campaign.

Getting spending down would not only help reduce the deficit and future interest payments, it would also ease public demand in the economy, which is contributing to inflation.

“Public spending has slowed to 2.1 per cent year on year. So it’s slowed down, but it’s still too high,” Dr Oliver said.

The RBA’s hopes that higher borrowing costs and a rapidly deteriorating housing market could slow the economy enough to get inflation back under control without the need for more rate rises appeared to be scuppered by Wednesday’s GDP data.

At 2.1 per cent year-on-year, the economy was growing above the RBA’s assumed “speed limit” of two per cent, said HSBC chief economist Paul Bloxham.

“It is clear that demand growth is still tangibly exceeding growth in the supply capacity of the economy,” he said.

Mr Bloxham expects the Reserve Bank will need to hike rates twice more, in September and either November or December, resulting in an even deeper house price decline of 13 per cent, peak to trough.

A leading consent advocate has cautioned leaders against stopping at an opt-out model for social media algorithms, warning that artificial intelligence is adding more fuel to the fire of harmful content.

Chanel Contos’ organisation, Teach Us Consent, has been running a campaign since 2025 to allow Australians to opt in to algorithms.

The measure would give people the option to just see posts from friends and accounts they follow, reverting social media platforms to their original models.

“I think political will is the only thing stopping us,” Ms Contos told the National Press Club on Wednesday, arguing social media outlets were exposing young boys to misogynistic “manosphere” content at unprecedented rates. 

The federal government is exploring a plan to let Australians opt out of social media algorithms, but they would still be in place by default, Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek recently said.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers backed the plan on Wednesday, telling journalists: “It’s self-evident that social media and particularly the way that these algorithms work are not doing us a lot of good.”

“I share the concern that a lot of people have,” he added. 

Ms Contos said the system would be a good first step and congratulated Labor for seeking to address the issue.

“However, opt-in algorithms would fundamentally make the transition onto social media for 16-year-olds and other children safer, and it would bring the principle of affirmative consent to our screens,” she said, adding that watertight reform would be key to the plan’s success.

Her speech followed an under-16s social media ban and ongoing work on a digital duty of care, which Ms Contos supported.

But without transparency from social media companies about how algorithms worked, it was hard to push government momentum, she said. 

Many manosphere influencers fed off the insecurities of young boys and used cheap labour to repost their content hundreds of times, making it nearly impossible for teenagers to avoid.

“We also know that AI controls (algorithms) as well, so it might be confusing to the people close up involved in them,” she said.

“It is intangible, shape-shifting, invisible and omnipresent all at once.”

Boys aged between 16 and 18 were likely to be fed misogynistic content less than 25 minutes after signing up to social media, Ms Contos said.

That was true even if preferences were set to try and exclude it, according to research from Teach Us Consent.

Teens were regularly fed content suggesting women should not leave the house alone, should not work and should not be in charge of their own money, she said.

Most harmful content for boys starts in the wellness landscape through gym videos or motivational content.

They then promote good looks and dominance over women as markers of male worth.

Ms Contos said men who subscribed to those ideals were twice as likely to binge drink and eight times as likely to have suicidal thoughts as their peers.

They were also 17 times as likely to have hit their partner, she said.

Australian teenage boys aged 16 to 18 are committing sexual assault against children more frequently than adults, the Australian Child Maltreatment Study found in 2023.

Nationals leader Matt Canavan blamed “feminisation” of school curriculums for a rise in misogynist beliefs.

“(Boys) are sick and tired of getting lectures about how bad men are at school,” he told Nine’s Today program.

1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)

National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028

Lifeline 13 11 14

beyondblue 1300 22 4636

WHAT CAUSED THE OUTAGE?

* Telstra’s July 8 outage began at 2:50am following a planned NTP (Network Time Protocol) timing chassis change, according to an independent investigation into what triggered the network failure

* When the chassis came back online, its internal GPS card had reset and began sending an incorrect date – 2006 – into the network

* To prevent the issue, the GPS card required a firmware update, stipulated in bulletins sent by the supplier

* While the chassis change triggered the outage, steps leading up to it go as far back as 2020

WHAT WERE THE IMPACTS OF THE OUTAGE?

* At its peak, the outage impacted 45 per cent of all Telstra calls and data sessions,

* Some users were unable to make or receive voice calls including Emergency Calls, send or receive messages, or access mobile data

* Telstra undertook more than 630 welfare checks on customers prevented from having triple-zero calls connected

WHAT WENT WRONG AT TELSTRA?

* Alarms in Telstra’s system were not recognised as signifying potential broader network issues.

*Telstra failed to recognise and prioritise network time protocols (NTP)

* The department responsible for the failure point had not sufficiently modernised and maintained adequate support for NTP in part due to budgetary constraints

* A lack of competency, curiosity and technical expertise meant problems arose, but no one investigated them

* Two engineers who were involved in the planned change were on mandatory standdown when the outage was noticed

* Despite the change associated with the outage being seen as high risk, no pre-checks of equipment and software were undertaken

*After the change, no testing was done to check key functions were working correctly

KEY QUOTES

* “It’s not a matter of not having sufficient engineering and network experience. It’s that we did not prioritise this particular capability high enough.” – Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady

“It’s not about not enough resources. It’s not about not enough money. It’s about the prioritisation.” – Vicki Brady

The world will exceed 1.5 degrees of warming within years, a United Nations report has found, exposing communities to more extreme heatwaves, cyclones, floods, fires and rising sea levels. 

Even the most optimistic scenario forecasts global warming to peak at 1.8 degrees above pre-industrial levels, raising the risk of irreversible environmental harm and leaving island nations vulnerable to submersion. 

The United Nations Environment Programme issued the warning in a major report on Wednesday, which urged governments to accelerate emission cuts and carbon removal to plot a return to lower temperatures. 

The report comes as leaders meet at the Pacific Islands Forum in Palau to discuss climate conditions affecting the region, and weeks before world representatives attend a pre-COP event in Fiji and Tuvalu. 

Environmental groups called the findings terrifying, and said they should sound a worldwide warning for policymakers to reconsider additional coal, oil and gas projects. 

The 141-page study, called Limiting Overshoot, found action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions had not been fast enough to prevent temperatures breaching the Paris Agreement’s 1.5-degree target. 

The climate challenge had shifted from avoiding a 1.5-degree rise to navigating it, the report said, and bringing temperatures down as fast as possible in an approach described as “overshoot, peak and decline”.

Under current policies, global warming is projected to reach a median of 2.6 degrees by 2100, while the most optimistic scenario, in which all nations meet their pledges and long-term net-zero targets, predicted a peak of 1.8 degrees. 

The scenarios underlined the need for urgent action to limit climate damage, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. 

“We must make the overshoot as small and short as possible, limiting how high temperatures rise and how long they remain above 1.5 (degrees),” he said. 

“That demands an overshoot of ambition: accelerating the phase-out of fossil fuels and the renewables revolution, slashing methane pollution, and protecting land, forest and oceans.”

The projected temperature rise would not be safe for the planet, the report found, with risks including more coral bleaching, biodiversity loss, and extreme weather, such as cyclones, floods, droughts and fires. 

Some climate damage would be irreversible, such glacier loss and sea-level rises, and small island developing states and low-lying cities could become uninhabitable before they are partially or totally submerged.

A decade of global warming could take 50 years to reverse under optimistic carbon-removal assumptions, the study found, and a return to temperatures below 1.5 degrees of warming remained uncertain.

Future climate policies would need to remove carbon and cut emissions to limit temperature rises, and UN Environment Programme executive director Inger Andersen said action should be swift. 

“There are no good outcomes if we remain above 1.5 degrees,” she said.

“Across the globe, extreme heatwaves are already proving that climate impacts will strike faster, hit harder and last longer, costing more lives and causing deeper disruption.”

The findings were an indictment of global inaction on climate change, Greenpeace Australia Pacific COP31 lead Dr Simon Bradshaw said, and proof governments should reconsider support for fossil fuel projects. 

“The UN report is warning that we are now in bloody dangerous territory,” he said. 

“A pathway back to 1.5 degrees is possible but this pathway cannot be paved by fossil fuels.”

Global warming could devastate island communities at current levels, Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change director Vishal Prasad said.

“This report is terrifying for the young people of the Pacific,” he said. 

“We know what 1.5 (degrees), and what anything beyond it, means for our future, our families, our culture and our environment.”

The deadline is fast-approaching for a major housing developer to secure a last-minute funding lifeline, with thousands of buyers left in the lurch.

Insolvency advisory Teneo is scrambling to secure a $20 million short-term funding package for the embattled Bathla Group within 24 hours.

One of Sydney’s largest residential developers, Bathla announced it had entered voluntary administration in late August, owing a reported $3.3 billion.

The news left countless home buyers and creditors wondering what it meant for their investments, with staff uncertain whether they would lose their jobs.

Payroll for the developer’s roughly 350 staff – some of whom have worked for several weeks without pay – will fall due on Thursday, leaving Teneo as the voluntary administrator liable for the outlay. 

AAP understands administrators are continuing to constructively negotiate with Bathla’s lenders to organise a cash injection to keep the group operational.

A $20 million one-month runway would allow administrators to pursue longer-term funding and progress the group’s 45 projects under construction.

Should they fail to secure a lifeline by Thursday, the home developer is expected to be wound up after the NSW government declined to bail it out.

According to Bathla’s website, the group has 20,000 apartments and 7000 dwellings in its delivery pipeline, added to the scores of projects under construction, centred mainly in Sydney’s northwest.

The projects comprise a significant share of the NSW government’s target of 75,400 new homes a year for five years until 2029. 

Some homebuyers who bought off-the-plan have been left in the dark, uncertain when, or if, their properties will be completed, while contractors have been left scrambling to recoup debts. 

Sydney lawyer Tony Taouk told AAP on Wednesday he represented two NSW construction industry clients owed as much as $400,000 by the developer. 

Despite carrying months-old debts, he said his clients had been taken by surprise by Bathla’s move into voluntary administration given its size and stature. 

“Sometimes developers are slow to pay their debts,” he said. 

“It came as a shock.”

Funded by a range of private lenders, Bathla’s collapse has also sent shock waves through the private credit market. 

Some lenders have called in receivers to take control of certain sites while others have taken steps to assure investors they are not overly exposed. 

Australian Securities and Investment Commission chair Sarah Court described the situation as private credit’s “first real test” at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia event in Sydney in August.

Founded in NSW in 1997, Bathla joins a long list of Australian home developers which have recently entered voluntary administration or liquidation.

Founder Bhart Bhushan described the move as an “orderly restructure” and cited a range of circumstances, including tax changes in the May federal budget and falling buyer confidence.

Football club Western Sydney Wanderers announced on Tuesday it would stop selling jerseys displaying Bathla branding after ending its partnership with the company.

“Protecting the reputation and integrity of the Wanderers brand outweighs the financial cost of this decision,” the club said.

One-size-fits-all restrictions on how artificial intelligence data centres are powered could send investment in the growing technology overseas, business groups warn.

In a submission to a Senate inquiry into AI data centres, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said a source neutral approach was needed to drive investment in the energy-hungry hubs.

“Australia needs a data centre plan, not a data centre panic,” the submission said.

“Blanket restrictions, moratoriums or one-size-fits all rules would drive investment offshore without solving energy, water or planning constraints.

“The right response is a can-do attitude to put Australia in the front rank of tech-savvy countries.”

The submission followed plans by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for mandates for AI data centres to provide their own renewable energy as the use of the technology grows.

The proposal was met with resistance from Queensland and the Northern Territory, which argued for data centres in their jurisdictions to be powered by coal and gas.

A national cabinet meeting in August appeared to sign off on carve outs for Queensland  and the NT to power their data centres without renewables, although Energy Minister Chris Bowen denied such measures were signed off.

The chamber’s submission said approaches advocated by Queensland  and the NT were the right way to lift investment.

“Inherent differences between states and territories’ energy profiles must be recognised,” it said.

“ACCI supports source-neutral energy decisions across the economy, in the understanding that a diverse energy mix ultimately provides better outcomes for price and reliability for businesses and consumers.”

The business peak body said Australia was on the cusp of having world-class investment in the sector domestically if it had the right settings.

“Australia should welcome the significant investment, productivity gains, jobs and sovereign capability that data centres bring to the economy,” the submission said.

In a Treasury brief handed to Treasurer Jim Chalmers, AI could provide productivity gains across the public and private sectors to the tune of 1.2 per cent a year by 2030.

Treasury also flagged the capacity of AI to disrupt high-skilled, non-routine and cognitive jobs in a way never seen in previous technological advances.

“This is probably the most transformational economic development of our lifetimes,” Dr Chalmers told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

“I’m confident that we can maximise the economic upside and minimise the risks, but it will take work.”

Council of Small Business Organisations Australia chief executive Skye Cappuccio said smaller companies could be left behind in the AI race.

“Small businesses cannot be expected to make that transition in the same way or at the same pace without an initial hand to adapt,” she said.

Australia’s share market is on track for its worst session since May after escalating hostilities between the United States and Iran sent oil prices and bond yields sharply higher, sapping investor confidence.

The S&P/ASX200 tumbled 105.3 points by midday on Wednesday, down 1.15 per cent, to 8,962.8, as the broader All Ordinaries fell 114 points, or 1.23 per cent, to 9,146.9.

“Risk sentiment was hit by the continued re-escalation in tensions between the US and Iran as strikes continue to be exchanged,” WEstpac economist Ryan Wells said.

“The threat of further disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz has brought about renewed anxiety over inflation, driving a sell off in stocks across most major markets and a rout in global bond markets.”

Renewed fighting sent Brent crude above $96 a barrel for the first time in almost six weeks, while bond yields spiked to multi-year highs amid concerns around persistent global inflation and spiralling government debt levels.

Australian 10-year yields hit 5.2 per cent for the first time since 2011, while US 30-year treasury yields reached their highest levels in nearly two decades.

The resources sector was hit hardest, slumping 3.4 per cent as BHP and Rio Tinto shares buckled under the weight of fuel supply concerns and easing copper prices.

Capstone Copper was one of the top-200’s worst performers, tumbling 7.7 per cent to $15.15 per share.

Precious metals were also under pressure, with gold stocks a sea of red as the yellow metal fell to $US4,307 ($A6,024) an ounce, dragging the local sub-index 4.5 per cent lower.

Energy stocks gained 0.5 per cent, despite a solid lead from Woodside and Santos being as largely offset by dips in refinery operators, coal producers and uranium stocks.

Communications stocks outperformed the other sectors with a 0.5 per cent lift as Telstra rebounded to $4.72 after an external investigation found the company’s July outage had been caused by a timing issue and lack of oversight.

Telstra shares are still down almost seven per cent following the incident, which impacted millions of Australians.

Financials stocks were trading slightly above break-even, as strong performances from major insurers helped ballast flat-to-weak moves from the big four banks.

CommBank shares were down for the session to $158.29, but bounced slightly after the Australian economy grew 0.4 per cent in the June quarter, outshining consensus forecasts of 0.3 per cent.

The figure leaves the door open to a Reserve Bank interest rate hike later in September, with markets putting the likelihood at a coin toss, and full-pricing the official cash rate to be 4.6 per cent by November.

The Australian dollar is buying 71.49 US cents, down from 71.64 US cents on Tuesday at 5pm, also improving marginally after the GDP data release.