The owner of two of the nation’s best-known bottle shop chains continues to lift sales in its flagship retail business after cutting prices to draw in more customers.

But the outlook for consumer spending remains uncertain as higher interest rates, cost of living pressures and the conflict in the Middle East weigh on sentiment.

Endeavour Group, which owns the Dan Murphy’s and BWS networks, made a bottom line net profit of $52 million for the year ended June 28, a fall of almost 90 per cent.

But the 2025/26 result was skewed by a one-off $311 million post-tax expense related to the writedown of certain assets and costs related to its strategy review.

It that’s taken out, its profit came to $363 million, a fall of almost 15 per cent, on sales of $12.2 billion, up 1.3 per cent.

“Our retail business is consistently gaining share, delivering 10 consecutive months of sales growth,” chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka said on Monday.

That growth followed the introduction of lower shelf prices in Dan Murphy’s at the end of the first quarter of financial year 2026.

It also increased promotional activity across both Dan Murphy’s and BWS.

“Sales momentum in retail is building with customers responding positively to our renewed focus on value and price leadership,” the booze boss said.

Retail sales totalled $10 billion in the year, up 0.7 per cent, with Dan Murphy’s contributing to most of that with a gain of one per cent.

However, Endeavour’s retail gross profit margin declined by 80 basis points on the back of its lower shelf prices strategy.

Endeavour’s hotel business, made up of hundreds of pubs across Australia, generated $2.2 billion in sales, up 4.2 per cent.

Looking ahead, retail sales for the first seven weeks of 2026/27 are positive.

“While the group enjoyed a strong start to the year in retail, the outlook for consumer spending remains uncertain,” the group said.

Endeavour has maintained its goal to take out $300 million in costs by 2028/29, including $100 million in the new financial year.

It declared a final dividend of 1.2 cents, taking the total for the year to 12 cents.

Barnaby Joyce has defended his fellow One Nation MP over comments suggesting the minor party’s migration numbers would not be much different to Labor’s.

One Nation MP David Farley said on Sunday the party’s migration policy would include an extra 100,000 people annually, on top of the 130,000 it had already flagged.

The overall number would be slightly higher than the forecast 225,000 people under Labor’s policy.

The comments from Mr Farley were soon corrected by party leader Pauline Hanson on social media, who said the policy remained to reduce net overseas migration to 130,000 people.

Mr Joyce said Mr Farley had misspoke when he made the comments on migration numbers.

“Show me a political career where people haven’t made a mistake, and I’ll show you a person who’s not told the truth,” he told Seven’s  Sunrise program on Monday.

“I’m not going to throw anybody under a bus. When people are new in parliament, they can sometimes get things incorrect, and that’s what happens. God knows, I’ve done it enough.”

Mr Joyce said One Nation’s policy remained at 130,000 people annually for net overseas migration.

Federal minister Pat Conroy said the different stances on policy from One Nation showed the party was incoherent on the issue.

“What we saw in the last 24 hours demonstrated why they’re not fit to govern,” he told ABC Radio.

“We’re focused on on making sure that we’ve got the right migration mix to support the Australian economy, as well supporting our long-term foreign policy objectives.”

Immigration Minister Tony Burke was set to make a speech at the National Press Club earlier in August unveiling a change to Australia’s migration numbers, but the address was cancelled at the eleventh hour.

The speech was cancelled due to the policy not being signed off by cabinet amid internal disagreement.

The rise of One Nation in opinion polls has spurred a re-think on migration by Labor and the coalition.

Mr Conroy would not say whether the revised Labor policy would be closer to the 130,000 target of One Nation.

“I understand some in the community want answers to this yesterday, but this is a very complex area, and it’s important that we get the answer right rather than we get a fast answer,” he said.

“We need to be accurate when we’re talking about this area, given it’s subject to a lot of … debate.”

Current migration numbers are at about 301,000.

The coalition has not flagged its own migration policy numbers, instead stating they would be tied to the number of new houses that are completed.

Opposition frontbencher Andrew Bragg raised eyebrows within the party when he suggested overseas migration be capped at 180,000 in a speech to the National Press Club, which earnt a rebuke from party leadership.

The coalition’s home affairs spokesman Jonathon Duniam said the opposition’s migration numbers would not be revealed in 2026, and would instead be revealed closer to the next federal election, due to be held by May 2028.

Senator Duniam said the balance needed to be right.

“If we don’t have workers doing the jobs we need, if we don’t get the right skill set into our country, then we all are worse off,” he told ABC Radio.

“One Nation has zero regard for that, as evidenced by the multiple positions they’ve had on migration policy all over the last few weeks.”

Aussies have lost hundreds of millions of dollars to scammers in 2026, with swindle tactics becoming trickier despite a drop in reported activity.

Cybercriminals have cheated Australians out of $186.9 million so far in 2026, down from almost $210 million at the same time in 2025, according to Scamwatch.

Total losses last year came to roughly $335 million.

Investment scams took the greatest toll, costing Australians almost $96 million between January and August, followed by romance scams ($17.7 million) and account takeover or identity theft ($16.5 million).

Investment scams were increasingly using artificial intelligence to create deepfake images and videos of trusted personalities to throw weight behind swindles.

It was crucial for people to do a “sniff test” of offers and information online, ANZ bank’s cyber services lead Erica Hardinge said.

“It’s really important that individuals go away and do their research themselves, and don’t trust immediately what you see online,” she told AAP.

“Does this feel too good to be true? Does this feel particularly unusual?”

When feeling pressured, it was crucial to step back and break the sense of urgency used by con artists to force decisions.

“Breaking of the emotional response that often comes with these requests is incredibly important,” Ms Hardinge said.

People should also consider what they share online.

“Everything you put online is like a digital tattoo,” Ms Hardinge said.

“It’s very hard to remove it once it’s out.”

With the federal government’s national Scams Prevention Framework due to take effect from March 2027, scam losses were heading in the right direction.

“We’re seeing losses reducing, which we can really attribute to the uplift in investment that banks in particular — but industry and government as well — are putting into the systems and the technology to detect and prevent where possible,” Ms Hardinge said.

Identification checks, which notified users of mismatches between account names and numbers, had been key to stopping dodgy transfers before they happened. 

At the same time, scammers were becoming more advanced, sometimes building trust with victims for months before asking for money, and had even hacked legitimate websites to switch phone numbers ahead of invoice phishing grifts.

Younger and financially active Australians were increasingly being targeted, ING data has found.

Millennials and Gen Z were more likely to shop, invest, or manage side-hustles online.

However, more than half used single passwords across multiple sites, almost three in five used weak passwords, while a third didn’t think carefully before clicking a link.

“Don’t just assume that because you’re digitally native or digitally active means that you’re good at spotting a scam,” ING consumer and market insights head Matt Bowen told AAP. 

“Actually, you’re more exposed than ever.”

It was also important for victims not to feel embarrassed after being targeted by scammers.

“Don’t be afraid to actually share when you’ve been tripped up by a scam – it’s super prevalent,” Mr Bowen said.

“The more we talk about it, the more prepared everyone can be.”

A world-leading push to vaccinate penguins on Phillip Island against an outbreak of bird flu is under way after Australia recorded its first case of the disease in a mammal.

A long-nosed fur seal at Beachport in South Australia tested positive for the H5 bird flu, authorities confirmed on Sunday.

The seal, which was found already dead, is believed to have been contracted the disease from wild birds.

Federal Agriculture Minister Julie Collins said while the development was distressing, it was not unexpected. 

“Although this is a concerning development, it is not unexpected for us to start to see infection in other wildlife, particularly in marine mammals, particularly in areas where there are high infection rates in wild birds,” she said.

“Sadly, we also know that once the H5 bird flu is spreading in the natural environment, it is not possible to avoid significant losses.”

The vaccination of a further 300 of Phillip Island’s penguins is hoped to take the total number receiving a first dose to 1000, in the largest such vaccination project attempted globally.

“This is the first time that anyone around the world has attempted something like this at this scale,” Phillip Island Nature Parks chief executive Catherine Basterfield said.

As the penguins move up the beach they are corralled into small pens to undergo vaccinations, with the birds requiring two doses of the  vaccine at different times, Ms Basterfield explained.

“It is really tricky, and penguins are difficult to handle, but we have very well trained people doing that work,” she said.

The penguins’ habit of returning to the same place every night and being accustomed to being handled by people made them suitable candidates for the vaccination program.

It is not known exactly what protection the vaccination will offer the birds, but is hoped to reduce the severity of the disease if they contract it.

“We know that bird flu is here, we know we can’t stop it, but we really want to put the penguin colony in the best possible place to ensure that they are protected as much as possible,” Victorian Environment Minister Jaclyn Symes said.

Speaking on the spread of the bird flu to mammals, Invasive Species Council chief executive Jack Gough said the disease could be devastating for local seal populations.

“We know from South America and Antarctica that mammal-to-mammal transmission among seals quickly led to high mortality rates, particularly among pups,” he said.

“We are still just at the early stages of this devastating virus and the bad news is going to keep coming for our wildlife as it spreads around the continent and between species.”

Increasing numbers of bird fatalities have been recorded after the virus was first detected on Australia’s shores in June.

There have so far been no cases detected in an agricultural setting and the health risk to humans remains low.

The public is urged to report birds that look sick to authorities and not to approach or touch them.

One Nation will include 100,000 more people in its migration targets, bringing in more people than planned for under Labor in net overseas intake, MP David Farley says.

The member for Farrer, who clinched Sussan Ley’s old seat from the coalition at  a by-election earlier this year, said his party had decided to separate the net overseas migration figure into a “true NOM” which didn’t include other migration in their total.

He said One Nation’s policy of getting net overseas migration down to 130,000 from the budget forecast of 225,000 in the following four years, excluded people under a Pacific scheme, aged-care nurses and other in-demand skilled workers.

This total would mark an additional 100,000 arrivals, and an increase of 5000 people from the budget forecast.

“What we’re doing is we’re focusing on the NOM in its true form, and then we’ve got these programs that have been available now for over a decade that drive our economy,” Mr Farley told ABC’s Insiders.

“The raw number is not too different, but the reality is, where do we need them?

“We don’t need them in the great urban metroplex – we need them out to be productive, working in agriculture, engineering, mining.”

Opinion polls have shown that voters trust One Nation to manage migration  better than the two major parties.

It comes as One Nation leader Pauline Hanson declared she would take her racial discrimination challenge with Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi to the High Court.

Senator Hanson lost a Federal Court appeal last month against a ruling which found her in breach of racial vilification laws after she told the Greens senator to “piss off back to Pakistan”.

Asked if racial discrimination laws should be changed, Mr Farley said he wasn’t convinced they should be.

He said his leader’s comments “can be taken as an insult” but wasn’t inciting racial discrimination.

“Hanson’s got every right to challenge it,” Mr Farley said.

“I think if we went through the pub test, I know which way it would go. It’d go in Pauline’s favour.”

A crucial inflation reading will be the focus of a big week in economics that could rule out or keep alive the chance of more Reserve Bank rate hikes.

After easing in June, inflation figures on Wednesday are set to show fuel prices bounced back in July.

ANZ Bank economists Madeline Dunk and Jasmine Zheng have forecast the headline consumer price index to rise 0.8 per cent for the month.

However, a softer electricity print compared to 12 months prior will see the annual figure ease 0.6 percentage points to 3.2 per cent, they predicted.

They expect the trimmed mean, which shows growth in underlying prices and is watched closer by the RBA, to lift 0.3 per cent for the month.

That would cause the annual trimmed mean to edge down to 3.5 per cent.

But the re-escalation of the Middle East conflict in July means the RBA is mindful that the battle against inflation is not over yet.

After the bank’s board held the cash rate at 4.35 per cent at its August meeting, governor Michele Bullock said there would be no hesitation in raising rates again if inflation exceeds its forecasts.

“Recent RBA communication has focused on upside risks to inflation,” Ms Dunk and Ms Zheng said in a research note.

“A high 0.3 per cent month-on-month trimmed mean print in July is likely to be a little uncomfortable for the RBA and would keep the November meeting live.”

Fuel prices are expected to have risen six per cent in July, according to NAB senior economist Taylor Nugent, reflecting part of the government’s fuel excise cut rolling off and higher oil prices due to a re-closed Strait of Hormuz.

“Fuel prices are set for a larger monthly increase in August, which should support a re-acceleration in year-ended headline inflation next month,” Mr Nugent said.

While inflation is the headline event on the domestic data front, analysts will pore over minutes from the RBA’s last board meeting when they are released on Tuesday.

Household spending figures for July to be released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday, will give the central bank another insight into how consumers are coping with higher inflation and interest rates.

Household spending has exceeded RBA expectations in recent months, which deputy governor Andrew Hauser conceded was pushing up demand and inflation. 

“One of the interesting slight puzzles for us at the moment in reading the macro economy is that although consumer confidence in the surveys is very, very low, people are very angry and they’re very angry about inflation in particular,” he told the Queensland Futures Institute Annual Regions Summit last week.

“That isn’t feeding through into anything like the kind of weakness in consumption growth that you might naively think it would imply.

“One of the reasons for that is that actually households do have – on average, I should say, not every household – these buffers to dip themselves into.”

Construction data on Wednesday and capital expenditure figures on Thursday will provide further clues about the strength of the economic impulse.

The main US stock indices have meanwhile returned weekly declines marked by investor jitters over fluctuating government bond yields and a lack of clarity on progress in the Middle East.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.98 per cent, to 53,277.01 on Friday, the S&P 500 ‌gained ​0.43 per cent, to 7,674.37 and the Nasdaq gained 0.44 per cent, to 26,180.46.

However, the S&P and ‌tech-heavy Nasdaq snapped three-week winning streaks while the Dow registered its second consecutive weekly loss.

Australian share futures are up 41 points, or 0.45 per cent, to 8,465.

The S&P/ASX200 fell 24.9 points on Friday, down 0.27 per cent, to 9,058.9, as the broader All Ordinaries lost 28.8 points, or 0.31 per cent, to 9,269.7.

Tarun Richards was in high school when she heard a classmate talking about her dad’s barramundi business.

The boy said his father was also working on the farm on the banks of the Adelaide River in Humpty Doo, at the top of the Northern Territory.

“So that’s how I met my husband,” Ms Richards told AAP, with a laugh.

“He was the boy sitting behind me, and we’ve been together for 30 years now.”

Ms Richards and her husband Dan lead Humpty Doo Barramundi, which was founded in the early 1990s by a group of farmers and scientists, including their fathers Max Williams and Bob Richards.

Starting by selling about six kilos a week, the business is now Australia’s largest barramundi farm and supplies 120 tonnes a week to exporters and major Australian supermarkets.

The farm has long been recognised for its sustainable wetland system that uses native grasses to cleanse and cycle water to protect the river and surrounding environment.

With consumer supply chains requiring farms to prove environmental and social standards, Ms Richards wondered if the costs and benefits of that mandatory reporting could be shared.

One idea, which Ms Richards explored in research through a Nuffield scholarship, was whether retailers could collaborate with the farm’s program to help First Nations producers enter the market.

The farm works with the people of Wadeye, a remote community 400km southwest of Humpty Doo, to help expose First Nations farmers to the industry.

In turn, staff from Humpty Doo spend time in Wadeye to understand how things are done on country.

The program, a collaboration with Thamarrurr Development Corporation, has so far helped producers sell their mud crabs at Darwin markets.

“We’ve got a third of our population who live in very, very remote areas, who don’t have that connection to economic opportunities,” Ms Richards said.

“You can’t have these two completely separate worlds in Australia.

“People need to have that opportunity if they want it … and if someone’s aspiration is farming, then we want to be able to assist them.”

Ms Richards’ research as a Nuffield scholar, a prominent accolade in the agriculture sector, took her to six countries to see how similar programs were assisting small producers.

She spoke to a distributor helping a marigold seed farmer scale-up her business in Zimbabwe, along with a coffee distributor directing profits back to producers in East Timor.

“It’s about a lot of good things that we can all do together,” Ms Richards said.

“How we can empower each other, work with communities and that’s the goal we’re getting to.”

Ms Richards will speak about her research at the Nuffield conference in Darwin in September.

Chinese humanoid robots have broken records set by humans, including beating Usain Bolt’s 100-metre sprint world record, on the opening day of the Olympics-like World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing.

More than 2000 humanoid robots were participating in the event, the organiser said.

The five-day games, now in its second year, are a spectacle demonstrating China’s rapid progress in advanced robotics as the technology race with the United States heats up, with 51 events and more than 1000 competitions taking place including running, table tennis and football.

The games, which are taking place in the National Speed Skating Oval built for the 2022 Winter Olympics, opened the same week as Beijing held the 2026 World Robot Conference, where companies showcased about 3000 products, including humanoid robots.

Chinese companies make the majority of the world’s humanoid robots.

At Saturday’s opening of the robot games, the organiser and robot makers said that Chinese humanoid robots defeated human world records, as hundreds of humanoid robots marched in formation onto the field in a massive display of synchronised co-ordination.

At a 100-metre sprint, a humanoid robot achieved a result of 9.39 seconds, beating the human record of 9.58 seconds set by Jamaican athlete Bolt in 2009.

In a standing high jump, a humanoid robot was able to reach 2.88 metres, well above the 0.95 meters best result by a humanoid in last year’s first edition of the games.

It surpassed the human high jump record of 2.45 meters set by Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor in 1993.

Both robots were from Beijing-based X-Humanoid.

Before the opening, a humanoid robot from Chinese smartphone company Honor completed a 100-metre sprint in a record of 9.32 seconds during a trial of the games, the company said, at a peak speed of 14.5 metres per second.

Still, experts say humanoid robots are still mostly used for demonstrations, performances and research – at least for now – and it will still take time to achieve mass real-world deployment.

Some spectators at the robot games said they were excited about the humanoid robots’ quickly improving abilities.

Humanoid robots are “evolving rapidly,” said Li Yanfeng, an education worker and a Beijing resident.

“At first, I wasn’t very accepting of artificial intelligence. I was even a bit resistant to it, because of the possibility that it might replace or displace humans,” she said.

“But now that I see this development is unstoppable, I decided to come and take a look.”

“These sports are perfectly normal for humans but now robots can do them. I find it amazing,” spectator Yang Shangzheng said.

Liu Tao, who was watching the games with his son, said that he was hoping to see “the best robots China currently has to offer”.

This year’s robot games – which the organiser said has 16 countries participating, among them Germany, Japan and the US – also include other events such as weightlifting and tug of war.

US pop star Madonna has unexpectedly became the centre of a row between two Greek politicians.

It began with a post on Facebook, in which the progressive MP Elena Akrita complained about special arrangements that were allegedly made on the holiday island of Corfu for the superstar’s birthday party.

“According to a media report, residents in the village of Kouramades on Corfu were asked to close their windows, allegedly to protect Madonna’s privacy from ‘prying eyes’,” Akrita wrote.

If that were true, she continued, the question would not be whether Madonna had demanded it but whether people had obeyed her.

“Because this country is not a plantation in the south where we bend over to pick cotton so as not to spoil the lady’s birthday,” she posted.

Conservative Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis reacted immediately to the critical post by Akrita.

The “filthy rich lady,” he wrote – a reference to Akrita, who is considered very wealthy – could not imagine how valuable Madonna’s visit was in terms of promoting the country.

The superstar’s visit, her posts and comments, he wrote, were worth millions of euros and were therefore vital for the countless people employed in the tourism sector.

“Instead of being delighted, as any sensible person would be, (Akrita) has once again found a reason to grumble, mope and make accusations,” he added.

Madonna herself reported enthusiastically on social media about her celebration and her visit to Greece.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says the war with the United States should end since the world has accepted that his country has won, calling for a diplomatic solution.

“It would be better to end the war today, when we are powerful and have dignity, and the whole world acknowledges our victory and emphasises that the United States, ​contrary to all regulations, attacked our schools, hospitals and infrastructure and ⁠is hated in the world,” several news agencies quoted him as saying on Friday.

At an event in Tehran with the Iranian medical community, Pezeshkian defended the importance of restoring peace and fulfilling agreements.

However, he clarified that this did not mean Iran’s surrender and they would not yield to intimidation in any way and give them a crushing response.

He underlined that Iranian armed forces were fully prepared to defend the country with all their might and risking their lives.

US President Donald Trump said that his administration would impose an “unprecedented” level of economic pressure on Iran, aiming to force its leadership to end its nuclear program and fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz to oil and natural gas tankers.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is due to hold a press conference at 2pm on Monday after threatening “the toughest sanctions in history” on Iran.

Bessent has also urged co-operation with the US by China, which buys more than 80 per cent of Iran’s shipped oil, according to 2025 data from analytics firm Kpler.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Saturday the imminent US announcement of economic sanctions was an “assertion of extraterritorial sovereignty over every independent member state of the United Nations”.

“Such secondary sanctions find no foundation ‌in international law,” he said in ‌a post on X.

The chief ⁠of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Major General Ali Abdollahi, promised on Friday that Iran would respond to enemy threats militarily with “crushing, punishing and ​devastating responses”.

Trump, who has warned of economic consequences against any country that provides “any type of lifeline to Iran,” said on Friday the US was observing “what happens” in the conflict.

with Reuters and EFE