Telstra did not prioritise systems that caused a major nationwide network failure and lacked the technical expertise to properly maintain them.

An independent investigation into the telco’s July 8 network failure, which left thousands of Australians unable to make calls or access data, was released on Tuesday.

The outage sparked chaos with triple-zero calls and businesses affected, along with failures across train networks and electronic payment services.

A lack of ownership and oversight of the functions that led to the outage were identified as key contributing factors by Technology Audit Partners in the report.

The investigation also found a further eight triple-zero calls did not go through to emergency services during the outage.

The outage began at 2.50am, nearly an hour earlier than identified by the Telstra at the time.

Following the outage, Telstra confirmed it had conducted welfare checks on those who tried to place more than 600 unsuccessful emergency calls.

Since identifying the further eight unsuccessful calls, welfare checks had also been conducted with no adverse outcomes identified, according to the company.

The outage was triggered by a software update not being done on a GPS card, which resulted in incorrect date information.

It was primarily a result of a Telstra not treating network timing as a critical capability, the report found.

On the night of the outage, the two primary engineers involved in the botched upgrade were on mandatory stand-down, the report found.

“The overarching finding is we did not prioritise our timing system inside our networks at the highest level as a critical capability, which is exactly what it should have been,” chief executive Vicki Brady told media on Wednesday.

“That is a miss on our side.”

Ms Brady said additional resources and expertise had been allocated to the impacted area.

Since the outage, just over 30,000 customers have contacted the telco which has processed credits of just under a million dollars for those customers.

Any customers who felt they were impacted and had not been in contact were encouraged to reach out to the company.

Ms Brady was among 10 senior executives whose pay was cut as a result of the outage, taking her total compensation to $6.8 million, 11 per cent more than the previous year.

“I fully accept the board’s decision on that,” Ms Brady said.

A separate ongoing Australian Communications and Media Authority  investigation into the outage could result in fines of up to $30 million.

“From our perspective, it’s far too early to reach any conclusions or estimates about what potential breaches or fines might look like,” Ms Brady said.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says 19 of the members of the G20 have agreed to address streams of “cheap exports” that cause global economic imbalances, but China dissented.

Bessent said that getting even 19 countries to agree to take on the problem was “incredible” and shows “the sheer the enormity of the problem”.

Bessent spoke on Tuesday after a two-day meeting of the 20 countries in Asheville, North Carolina.

Bessent urged some of his G20 counterparts to take a page from the Trump administration’s playbook of using tariffs and other measures to crack down on trade imbalances.

He told reporters he warned other nations at the beginning of President Donald Trump ‘s second term that the new US “tariff wall” would mean that Chinese goods would flood their markets.

“And unfortunately, I was right,” Bessent told reporters on the sidelines of the G20 finance minister meetings.

“The rest of the world probably needs to take a hard look at what they should be doing to protect their citizens’ jobs, their manufacturing base, so that everything they do doesn’t get offshored.”

The Trump administration’s tariff policies have been criticised by economists and politicians for raising costs for US consumers and, in many cases, for punishing allies.

The Tax Foundation, an independent think tank, found that the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration throughout 2025 raised the overall retail price of imported consumer goods by roughly seven per cent relative to pre-tariff trends.

The US Supreme Court in February decided that the sweeping global tariffs that Trump imposed under an emergency powers law during his second term in office were unconstitutional.

The Trump administration has been overhauling its approach, and is eyeing an additional 7.5 per cent tariff on Chinese imports after investigating alleged Chinese excess industrial capacity and forced-labour regulations.

Bessent met with his counterparts from China at the summit, though he did not provide details of how those talks went.

“I often say in our trade discussions with China that we do not want to pull apart from them, but we have to de-risk,” Bessent said during a conversation on Tuesday with Fox Business commentator Larry Kudlow, who was a top economic adviser to Trump in his first term.

“We have more in common with the Chinese on Iran than we disagree on,” Bessent said.

“The Chinese agree Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. The Chinese agree that there should be freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Bessent has said China’s trade surplus, which reached a record-high $US1.2 trillion ($A1.7 trillion) in 2025, is a barrier to global economic growth – as well as what he calls excessive regulation.

Global debt has reached a record high of $US353 trillion ($A493 trillion), with the US debt reaching a record $US40 trillion($A56 trillion) in August.

Meanwhile, the presence of Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, has continued to agitate attendees of the conference hosted by the US Siluanov met with Bessent on Monday on the sidelines of the meeting, but was not included in the traditional “family photo” of ministers.

Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said Russia’s attendance at the G20 finance meeting “created a lot of discomfort around the table, not only from Canada, but from colleagues around the table”.

Experts claim a Himalayan glacier showed signs of collapsing days before it triggered a catastrophic flash flood.

Dozens of Australians are missing and more than 1000 deaths have been reported by authorities on either side of the Nepal-China border after a glacier collapse sparked devastating flash floods and mudslides near Gyirong port on August 26.

The official number of Australians missing in the flood-stricken region is down to 42 after authorities made contact on Tuesday with an Australian in Tibet.

The unidentified person is receiving support from consular officers and has spoken with family members.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong previously said nine Australians were missing on the Chinese side of the border, after speaking to Australia’s ambassador in China on Friday.

Victorian Tibetan community member Tenzin Norzin feared that number could be higher, claiming the global community was hearing “less and less” of the impact of the floods across the border in Tibet.

“Anything happening inside Tibet or China as of current not only impacts that region, but it will move downstream, whether it’s Nepal, or in the future it might be other Southeast Asian countries,” Ms Norzin told AAP.

As rescue efforts continue, experts say satellite imagery showed warning signs of a potential ice avalanche were evident days before it broke off and plunged into the Lhende Khola river.

A report published by international scientific consortium HiRISK on August 28 analysed a series of “pre-event indications”, concluding the ice surface had “sped up” prior to the avalanche, and melted water had turned “visibly brown” by the 24th of August.

“There is also some indication of a crack propagating into the surrounding bedrock slope in the days before the event,” the paper read.

Early warning systems aimed at alerting authorities to cryospheric events had been set up in the region recently, but there were none in place at the site of the avalanche due to its isolation, the paper’s co-author Jakob Steiner told AAP.

“The science is there, we have the data to do monitoring, but we have to constructively work together and and take action, ” he said,

“At the moment, in a geopolitically stressed situation, this is very, very difficult.”

Even if warning systems were in place, the speed of the avalanche meant communities at the border-checkpoint would not have been able to be evacuated in time, the report claimed.

However, a “significant number of lives” could have been saved if warning systems had been implemented further downstream, where more than 10 minutes warning could have been given, the authors said.

The floods impacted almost 13,000 building and washed away 40km of highway and at least 68 bridges, satellite data accessed by HiRISK shows.

Australia’s economy is expected to have limped along for the second quarter of the year, with weak growth on the cards.

Economists are tipping only modest growth for the national accounts when June quarter GDP data is released on Wednesday.

In the lead up to the figures, the Commonwealth Bank revised down its GDP estimate to 0.1 per cent for the period, because of softer public demand.

“The key drivers of softer growth in the quarter were a pull back in data centre investment in the quarter, weaker than expected public demand and weak travel imports as more Australians stayed home than travelled offshore,” the bank’s head of Australian economics Belinda Allen said.

And despite softer growth, inflation had not slowed, Ms Allen said.

“Rolling supply shocks, more Australians spending money domestically than offshore and weaker productivity growth are acting to keep inflation high and the RBA has more work to do,” she said.

NAB said it still expected GDP to grow by 0.2 per cent, alongside an increase of 1.8 per cent year-on-year.

“Domestic final demand will be supported by resilient consumption growth, higher residential building growth and ongoing growth in public demand,” senior economist Jessie Cameron said.

“Confirmation of the recent pulse in consumption growth is slowing sufficiently to be comfortable on the inflation outlook.”

Lead economist for Oxford Economics Australia Ben Udy said net trade barely rose in the second quarter, setting up small growth numbers.

He said high fuel costs and limited flight availability also impacted the economy.

“The current account deficit widened a little last quarter as the conflict in the Middle East pushed up the price of oil and the cost of imports for Australia,” he said.

“Solid commodity prices also benefited Australian exporters, with coal and lithium leading the way, but on net the balance of goods trade still declined and the terms of trade fell 1.6 per cent.”

Almost three million Australians are expected to retire over the next decade, but not everyone is heading toward their golden years with confidence.

Many are still thinking about their “number” – the preferred size of their superannuation pot and their likely annual living costs.

The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia suggests a modest retirement is achievable with around $630,000 for a single person or $730,000 for a couple, assuming home ownership and access to a partial age pension.

But for a lot of people who are their own boss, growing a strong superannuation pot feels nearly impossible.

According to wealth manager AMP, only 55 per cent of self-employed people or business owners across all age groups feel confident about retirement, with those in their 40s having the least confidence (46 per cent).

At the same time, women in their 40s feel the most vulnerable about their super future, with just 35 per cent saying they are moving ahead with confidence.

Bec Bremner owns Ottimo Bakery, which specialises in organic and sustainable flour-made sourdough breads and other baked goods, in Sunbury, in Melbourne’s northwest.

“You open a business and, in my case, you’re dreaming about sourdough, and you’re talking to customers and getting their feedback and responding to what they need,” she told AAP.

“So you don’t necessarily dream about superannuation.”

Ms Bremner has faced the tough realities of many small-business owners – rarely paying themselves what they’re worth or contributing to super.

“I haven’t contributed since I’ve opened this bakery,” the 46-year-old mum of three said.

Recently, Ms Bremner had to have a hard think about what to do next and decided to shift to educating people about all things sourdough and breadmaking, which had already been a successful arm of the overall business.

“That is more lucrative for me than making bread or trying to sell more bread,” she said.

And more lucrative for her superannuation goals.

“The next chapter for me needs to be finding a balance, continuing to build on what I love … and making sure that somewhere along the way I can actually pave and build a future for myself and security for my retirement,” she said.

AMP’s annual retirement confidence pulse survey, published on Wednesday, found 52 per cent of 2000 Australians surveyed felt financially confident about retirement.

That’s up by a meagre two percentage points on the 2025 report, indicating not much has changed in a year.

Almost three in five, or 58 per cent, worry about running out of money, with 47 per cent pointing to ongoing cost-of-living concerns.

Overall, only 42 per cent of women feel confident about their retirement, compared with 61 per cent of men.

Margot Shannon owns Merchant Campbell, an artisan homewares store in Yass, in regional NSW. 

The 59-year-old is closer to her retirement horizon than Ms Bremner, and she’s observed how important it is to have adequate funds to build confidence.

“What you think you need is probably never going to be enough, and particularly as a woman who’s had to step in and out of the workforce,” she told AAP.

“So many women are already behind.”

As a small-business owner, Ms Shannon is also well aware cash flow can dictate how much and how often she can add to super. 

“Superannuation is my fixation – I’m always wanting to make sure that I have enough money so that I don’t have to be beholden to anyone.”

According to AMP’s survey, there’s a 56 percentage point ‘certainty gap’ between those who feel financially confident (28 per cent) about retirement and those who don’t (84 per cent).

And that’s not good enough.

“Australia has built one of the world’s largest retirement savings pools,” AMP chief executive Blair Vernon said.

“But these results show we have a lot of work to do to turn those savings into confidence about retirement.”

Hundreds of retail, fast food and warehouse workers have gathered at parliament to demand an additional public holiday in their state.

Members of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association marched to NSW parliament on Tuesday, to protest the state having the fewest public holidays in the country.

South Coast retail worker Donna Tyrrell said workers wanted September 1 to become a public holiday to allow them to spend more time with their families.

“As everyone knows, retail work is not a Monday to Friday nine to five job,” she said.

“Most of our workers don’t get to eat meals with their family at night time.”

Western Australia, which previously had the least amount of public holidays in the country, legislated two additional ones earlier this year, bringing its total to 13.

SDA NSW Secretary Bernie Smith called on Industrial Relations Minister Sophie Costis to bump the state’s number of public holidays from 11 to 12.

“Why does New South Wales have less? We should have the same rights as everyone else,” he said.

“We think a new public holiday at the beginning of spring will be a great time for our community to stop, to make memories instead of money.”

Ms Costis, who attended the protest and received a petition signed by 10,000 workers supporting the move, said the government would conduct a review of public holidays.

She said the government earlier this year announced a new public holiday to mark Anzac Day in 2026 and 2027.

But Business Sydney executive director Paul Nicolaou said it was hard to justify an additional public holiday because of the costs associated with it at a time that businesses were doing it tough.

“We have the utmost respect for workers particularly in the retail sector, but it really is a question of timing,” he told AAP.

Ms Costis also announced that the government was set to introduce new laws aimed at protecting retail workers from violence, intimidation and harassment.

The Workplace Protection Orders would help workers or business owners seek court orders against those who attack staff.

A breach of such an order would be punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment, a $5500 fine or both.

Retail worker Kirra-Lee Macqueen welcomed the new laws, saying it would help protect herself and her colleagues in the future.

She recalled a past experience where she was unable to leave her post at the door when a customer allegedly threatened to stab “all the females in his sight”.

“The only time he left was when my male manager came up and confronted him,” she said.

“But he has continued to come into store and steal and throw things off the shelves, and threaten female customers and workers.”

Victoria Beckham’s fashion and beauty label has recorded an operating profit for the first time in the 18 years since it launched.

The former Spice Girl started her eponymous label in 2008, debuting her ready-to-wear collection at New York Fashion Week.

The brand then expanded to include a beauty line in 2019, but three years later it was nearly STG54 million ($A102 million) in debt.

Over the years it has struggled to turn a profit – until now.

As reported by the Financial Times, accounts show Victoria Beckham Holdings Ltd achieved an operating profit of STG7.3 million ($A13.8 million) in 2025, compared with a STG1.6 million loss in the previous year.

The brand reported an increase in total revenues of 15 per cent to STG129.8 million in 2025, up from STG112.7 million in 2024.

Beckham told the FT: “We have all worked hard for a long time for this moment of profitability and growth.

“We’ve been very transparent about the problems that we had in the business but have recovered and are now growing at a sensible pace.

“After 20 years, people don’t look at my brand as a celebrity brand any more.”

Last year, the Netflix documentary Victoria Beckham followed her career from pop star to fashion designer, which was filmed as she also prepared to show at Paris Fashion Week. The series also highlighted the fashion brand’s struggles.

Mining magnate Clive Palmer has sought to recover $34 million from his former solicitor, asking a court for equity in a large property portfolio allegedly purchased with “misappropriated” funds.

Mr Palmer’s companies including Mineralogy claim Sam Iskander forged legal service invoices worth millions of dollars.

Brisbane Supreme Court Justice Melanie Hindman previously granted an emergency injunction to freeze multiple accounts linked to Mr Iskander, including a solicitor’s trust account.

As a civil trial opened on Tuesday, she was told a forensic accountant had studied Mr Iskander’s alleged transfer of money from a solicitor’s trust.

“A total of $34.272 million has been misappropriated,” Mineralogy’s barrister Brian O’Donnell KC said.

Mr O’Donnell sought an order to award Mineralogy equity in several multi-million-dollar properties in Queensland and Victoria, including the Brisbane riverside suburb of Westlake and the prestigious Paddington area.

“All but two of the properties were acquired 100 per cent with the use of money Mr Iskander took from funds in trust,” Mr O’Donnell alleged.

One of the properties had had $4 million in improvement works since the purchase, Justice Hindman heard. 

Mr Iskander, who has since been declared bankrupt, and his various companies and trusts have been listed as respondents in the civil case.

None of the respondents attended or had legal counsel present in court on Tuesday.

The allegations against Mr Iskander have not been tested in a criminal court.

Mineralogy would be able to deal with the liquidator of Mr Iskander and arrange the sale of court-awarded properties, Mr O’Donnell said.

“I’m told there are assets in the bankruptcy case to be negotiated including gold (bullion),” Mr O’Donnell said.

Justice Hindman previously heard Mr Iskander had surrendered his legal practising certificate.

Mr Iskander represented Mr Palmer in the voluntary administration of his nickel refinery and failed High Court bid to re-register the United Australia Party before the last federal election.

He also worked on Mr Palmer’s appeal against a $1.5 million copyright infringement lawsuit over using the song ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ in political advertising and sent comedian Jordan Shanks a $500,000 defamation threat over his friendlyjordies YouTube channel.

Justice Hindman reserved her decision.

Growth in retail spending is expected to almost half in the next financial year as households look to tighten their belts, a report suggests.

The expected pullback in the 12 months from July 2026 is unlikely to be as severe as the “retail recession” that hit during 2023 and 2024, but may play out in a similar manner, Deloitte Access Economics partner David Rumbens said.

“It’s not as bad as that period,” he told AAP, reflecting on an era of almost eight per cent inflation and a retail sector marred by regular insolvencies. 

“But it’s the same kind of dynamic at play: inflation’s too high, that’s eroding spending power, and the Reserve Bank has reacted.”

Real retail turnover growth is expected to slow from 2.8 per cent in 2025/26 to 1.5 per cent in 2026/27, Deloitte Access Economics’ most recent quarterly Retail Forecasts report found.

The report ties the pullback to economic pressures from the first half of calendar 2026, including rising interest rates and declining real wages and house prices.

Supported by heavy end-of-financial-year discounting, consumer spending stayed resilient throughout the June quarter, the report found.

But growth in discretionary spending is expected to slow from 1.9 per cent in 2025/26 to 0.7 per cent in 2026/27, a delayed response to building economic pressures that is expected to impact non-essential retail purchases.

“The economic consequences of events over the first half of 2026 are starting to come home to roost for Australian households,” Mr Rumbens said.

The retail sector should brace for some pain, with store closures and flat employment growth possible over the financial year, he said. 

“You would expect to see some retailers go under and you might expect to see little or no growth in employment in retail.”

But the impacts will not be evenly spread, with big-ticket items tied to the housing market, including furniture and white goods, facing the greatest slowdown.

“Moving house is often a trigger for spending,” Mr Rumbens said, adding fewer property transactions would likely compound the challenge. 

Mr Rumbens said the pain is likely to persist until inflation is brought back under control, a process he estimates will take at least a year.

Faced with stubborn inflation, the Reserve Bank implemented three consecutive rate hikes in the first half of 2026, with three of the four major banks expecting another by the end of the year.

“It’s not necessarily a forever phase,” Mr Rumbens said of the forecasted retail slowdown.

“But it’s most likely a year of slower growth compared to what we’ve seen over the last 18 months.”

An unprecedented deal for the US to gain access to a fifth of Venezuela’s oil reserves – and ‌the central role a Venezuelan businessman will play – is prompting questions and hesitation from some oil companies evaluating potential investments in the country.

A White House fact sheet released late ‌on Monday outlined an arrangement under which private oil firm North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP) would receive a 100-year lease for 17 oilfields in Venezuela holding some 65 billion barrels of oil reserves.

The US will take ‌a 35 per cent equity stake in the corporate parent company, receive a guaranteed 20 per cent of the oil production and hold a right-of-first-refusal to purchase all of the remaining output.

NABEP is controlled by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, who has been the subject of investigations by US and European authorities following past dealings with the Venezuelan government, although he was never charged. He has previously denied allegations against him.

“Oil majors and large foreign companies negotiating contract migrations want to make sure they will not be seated at the same table with Betancourt,” said a person involved in preparations for an event where energy contracts are expected to be signed this week.

NABEP, which produces ‌around 170,000 barrels of ‌oil a day, did not immediately ⁠respond to a request for comment.

In an emailed company statement after the White House released details of the agreement, ​Betancourt said that the transaction would “unleash that potential to the great benefit of both Venezuelans and Americans”.

“Mr Betancourt has been in the Venezuelan oil industry for more than 15 years with a consistent track record of success, most recently at the helm of NABEP, where he rapidly scaled the company’s production,” the company said in the statement, adding it has a near-term goal of increasing production to more than one million barrels of oil per day.

Others may be more cautious, illustrating the uphill battle President Donald Trump faces to convince major US oil companies, particularly ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips , to invest in Venezuela and quickly expand the country’s oil production.

Both companies ⁠left Venezuela in 2007 after their assets were nationalised by the government of former President Hugo Chavez, and both ‌have repeatedly said that ​their requirements of legal certainty and contract sanctity have not yet been met to re-enter the country.

Trump told reporters on Monday that Exxon was among the companies going into Venezuela, without elaborating.

ExxonMobil declined to comment ​when asked about ‌Trump’s statement. 

A ConocoPhillips spokesperson referred to an earlier statement that said any investment decision would be guided by a number of factors, including policy stability and adherence to the rule of law.

The planned structure and the massive assets NABEP could accumulate in the OPEC country are raising concerns that American oil companies could face competition from the US government itself in Venezuela, the sources added.

That could add more obstacles to Trump’s goal of increasing Venezuela’s oil output and exports to boost US reserves, said Alejo Czerwonko, chief investment officer of emerging markets for ​UBS.

“You ​would need sizable investment and know-how from the likes of Exxon and ConocoPhillips,” he ​said. “How do you lure these companies into the country?”

“There’s still a lot of unknowns and confusing elements,” said ‌Radhika Bansal, a senior vice president at Rystad Energy, in an interview before the White House published details about the agreement.

There are, however, some deals getting done.

Chevron – the largest US oil producer in Venezuela and which never left the country – along with Italy’s Eni, India’s ONGC, Colombia’s GeoPark and US GE Vernova are on track to sign agreements for energy projects in Venezuela this week, Reuters reported on Monday.

Those deals, and others, including licences recently granted to Shell and BP for major offshore gas projects, are separate from the US endeavour with NABEP.

with AP