Home owners are being offered $4000 off the cost of household batteries as Labor tries to woo voters with promises of cheaper energy.

The policy, which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will unveil at a campaign speech in Brisbane on Sunday, will reduce the cost of a typical battery by 30 per cent.

It will kick in from July 1, if the government is re-elected on May 3.

Batteries allow households with solar panels to charge the battery during the day and use the power in the evening.

For a regular household taking advantage of the incentive to purchase a new solar and battery system, that means savings of up to $2300 a year – or 90 per cent – off their energy bill, government analysis shows.

The one-in-three Australian households with existing rooftop solar could save up to $1100 per year.

Labor has upped its focus on cutting energy prices to help with the cost of living, following a failed pledge to lower bills by $275 at the last election in 2022.

The battery subsidies build on an existing scheme to reduce the cost of solar installation, and follow a promise to extend power bill rebates and a $1 billion fund for households to upgrade to energy-efficient appliances.

“This is good for power bills and good for the environment,” Mr Albanese said.

Australians who don’t take part in the scheme would also benefit as it would push down peak electricity demand, reducing prices for the broader market.

The government expects the subsidies to cost taxpayers $2.3 billion and drive sales of batteries to one million by 2030.

Business owners and community organisations will also be able to access the battery subsidies.

Independent MP Helen Haines, who could become a king-maker in the event of a hung parliament and has advocated for a similar scheme, welcomed Labor’s announcement.

The Clean Energy Council labelled it a significant and welcome cost-of-living measure.

“A national battery scheme will ensure more households will be empowered to turbocharge their energy independence and save on their bills,” said the council’s general manager of distributed energy, Con Hristodoulidis.

“It’s good news for everybody’s wallets, and the long-term future of Australia’s modern energy system – built on the cheapest form of renewable energy backed by storage.”

Despite the subsidy, buying a battery will still be out of reach for many households, with up-front costs currently averaging around $14,000.

Opposition housing spokesman Andrew Sukkar refused to confirm whether the coalition would match the policy, labelling the subsidy “an admission of failure”.

“What Anthony Albanese seems to be saying is, because energy prices are going to be so high, we will give some people who can afford $10,000 for a battery … allow them to get off the grid, presumably,” he told Sky News.

Meanwhile, the cost of the coalition’s nuclear energy plan is under the spotlight as Labor claims it will cost $5.7 billion a year in interest over the next decade.

The coalition claims its nuclear plan is 44 per cent cheaper than the Albanese government’s plan to shift the grid to renewables, backed up with storage and gas.

But Labor has put a $600 billion price tag on the opposition’s plan to build seven nuclear reactors across five states on the sites of coal-fired power stations.

Labor has also released costings estimating the plan will require $5.7 billion a year due to interest payments on debt over the next decade, and $57 billion over the decade to 2035 to 2036.

The coalition’s plan was “nuclear insanity” that would blow out the Commonwealth’s budget, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said. 

Labor says the coalition’s plan will cost every taxpayer $86,339 by 2050, $42,857 to build and another $43,482 in interest.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he’s ready to step in to help “shelter” the country’s businesses from the fallout from US President Donald Trump’s new tariff policies, mooting state intervention for the worst-affected industries.

“We stand ready to use industrial policy to help shelter British business from the storm,” Starmer wrote in the Telegraph newspaper.

“Some people may feel uncomfortable about this – the idea the state should intervene directly to shape the market has often been derided,” he said.

“But we simply cannot cling on to old sentiments when the world is turning this fast.”

While Starmer said the government’s priority remains to try and secure a trade deal with the US which could include tariff exemptions, he said he will do “everything necessary” to protect the national interest.

Britain was spared the most punitive treatment in Trump’s tariff announcement on Wednesday when it was hit with the lowest import duty rate of 10 per cent, but a global trade war will hurt its open economy.

“This week we will turbocharge plans that will improve our domestic competitiveness, so we’re less exposed to these kinds of global shocks,” he said, adding that the government also wanted to strengthen alliances and reduce barriers to trade.

The Telegraph said that Starmer’s government could bring in emergency reforms to reduce red tape around regulation and raised the prospect of targeted tax breaks to help affected sectors.

British car maker Jaguar Land Rover said on Saturday it would pause shipments of cars to the US for a month due to the tariffs, adding to fears about the impact on an industry which employs 200,000 people in the UK.

Writing in the newspaper, Starmer reiterated he would take a “cool-headed” approach to the tariffs rather than immediately retaliating, but he added: “All options remain on the table”.

Britain on Wednesday published a 400-page list of US goods it could include in any possible retaliatory tariff response.

Tens of thousands of people have demonstrated across Spain to protest the lack of affordable housing.

Several tenants’ organisations and trade unions on Saturday called for the demonstrations in around 40 cities, including Palma de Mallorca, Barcelona and Madrid, under the slogan: “Lets put an end to profiteering from homes”.

The organisers called for an end to property speculation, more social housing, restrictions on converting housing to holiday accommodation, rent reductions and expropriations.

According to media reports, 150,000 protesters turned out in the capital Madrid.

For years, too little housing has been built in Spain as rents have risen sharply.

The consequences of mass and luxury tourism have caused anger, especially in holiday centres like Mallorca, Barcelona, Valencia, Málaga and Madrid.

The housing crisis has hit particularly hard in Spain, where there is a strong tradition of home ownership and scant public housing for rent.

Rents have been driven up by increased demand. Buying a home has become unaffordable for many, with market pressures and speculation driving up prices, especially in big cities and coastal areas.

A generation of young people say they have to stay with their parents or spend big just to share an apartment, with little chance of saving enough to one day purchase a home.

High housing costs mean even those with traditionally well-paying jobs are struggling to make ends meet.

Incomes have failed to keep up despite Spain’s recent economic boom, especially for younger people in a country with chronically high unemployment.

Spain does not have the public housing that other European nations have invested in to cushion struggling renters from a market that is pricing them out.

Housing Minister Isabel Rodríguez said on X that “I share the demand of the numerous people who have marched today: that homes are for living in and not for speculating”.

While tourist numbers continue to break records in Spain, residents on low incomes are unable to afford rents.

According to the real estate agency Fotocasa, rents on the Balearic Islands, which include Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza, have risen by 158 per cent in the last 10 years.

with AP

For years, thorny underwater critters have been chewing their way through kelp and other plant material, leaving behind nothing but bare rock.

Straying much further south than their native habitat in NSW as ocean temperatures warm, the “Centro” long-spined sea urchin has become a notorious pest wreaking havoc on southern reefs.

Yet as a delicacy in many cultures, “eating the problem” has been touted as a solution, with restaurants like The Roe in Melbourne committed to showcasing the ingredient.

Building on the commercial fishing industry’s success is the topic of the documentary White Rock by award-winning director Damon Gameau and the Great Southern Reef Foundation that’s touring the nation.

Plating up urchins has proved effective, with the edible pests thought to be twice as plentiful in Tasmania without fishing.

Scott Bennett, a marine ecologist who co-founded the Great Southern Reef Foundation, says the commercial fishing model is working but is “on a bit of a knife edge”.

Fuel, wages and insurance are costly and margins fine, with more work needed to open up lucrative overseas markets.

Processing is another bottleneck, taking 15 workers to process one diver’s 800 kilogram haul.

And while the market for premium urchin roe is well-established, there are few established applications for lower-grades despite potential for processed foods.

Leftover shells and guts are also largely going to waste.

A more productive and profitable industry would make fishing feasible in deeper waters and spots with fewer urchins, Dr Bennett says.

“We need to open this innovation challenge to get smart minds thinking about how we use the sea urchins to solve the ecological crisis in the process,” he told AAP.

Boosting productivity and developing new markets feature in a comprehensive $55 million, five-year Centro business plan endorsed by a 2023 federal senate inquiry with members from across the political spectrum.

Commercial fishers, scientists, Traditional Owners and bureaucrats from state and federal governments were all part of the Centro Task Force that developed the blueprint for research, removal and habitat restoration, in a rare example of consensus.

The plan calls for a prominent role for First Nations jobs and involvement in recognition urchin barrens are damaging traditional fishing spots and cultural practices.

Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson, who led the senate inquiry, has since been pushing the federal government to fund the full $55 million, a smaller sum, he says, than the billions spent on the crown-of-thorns starfish threatening the Great Barrier Reef.

There’s been no word from any of the relevant federal ministers so far but he is hopeful of an announcement during the election.

The Labor government has been working to secure international markets for Australian Centro and has committed some funding for research.

State and territory governments are also largely responsible for invasive species management.

The Parliamentary Friends of the Great Southern Reef has also been raising awareness among federal decision-makers, with Nationals MP Darren Chester and independent MP Rebekha Sharkie among the non-partisan group’s membership.

Senator Whish-Wilson said the first profile-raising event in Canberra earlier in the year was a huge success.

“We had not just urchins but we had the food that it’s impacting, like abalone, scallops,” he says.

The threat urchins pose to abalone habitat stirred the Tasmanian government into action several years ago, with the industry instrumental in securing subsidies to improve the economics of harvesting the pest.

Shane Blackwell has been working in Tasmania’s sea urchin fishing and processing industry for seven years.

He and his business partner now have a factory in Hobart producing and selling trays of premium roe that typically go for $220-$250 a kilo, mostly to the domestic market.

He reckons divers have “hammered them down a fair bit” over the past few years.

“So every time when we go diving out, it’s getting a little bit harder to find really good quality big fish,” he says.

University of Tasmania senior research fellow Katie Cresswell has studied inherent tensions between conservation and business sustainability closely.

“The goal is functional eradication, which is about setting a target density below one that results in ecosystem destruction like urchin barrens – but not aiming for total eradication which would be extremely expensive, ultimately unsuccessful and likely crash the control mechanism itself,” she explains.

Tasmania’s subsidies have been found to be extremely effective, Dr Cresswell says, with more money offered to divers further south in areas with healthy reefs in the understanding prevention is better than cure.

She says a continuation of the subsidy funding beyond its expected June 2026 expiry date is crucial to keeping Tasmania’s industry viable and populations in check.

“We have to stay on top of it, or our reefs are just going to go barren,” she says.

“NSW is 50 per cent barren and it’s been that way for decades,” she adds, stressing that it’s hard to return sea beds to forest once stripped of plant life.

She is hopeful state and federal governments will commit to the $55 million Centro action plan and subsidies can be funded for all affected states out of that pot.

The US state of Texas says it has opened a probe into WK Kellogg, saying the breakfast cereal maker could be violating state laws by advertising its products as “healthy”.

The office of state Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement that some of the company’s breakfast cereals – which include Froot Loops, Apple Jacks and Frosted Flakes – “are filled with petroleum-based artificial food colourings that have been linked to hyperactivity, obesity” and other health problems.

Paxton’s office said the company had removed artificial food colourings in Canada and European countries but not in the United States.

“In no world should foods that include these dyes be advertised as healthy,” Paxton said in the statement.

WK Kellogg did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The cost of the coalition’s nuclear energy plan is under the spotlight as Labor claims it will cost $5.7 billion a year in interest over the next decade.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s plan to build nuclear power stations has been a focus of the campaign for the May 3 federal election, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese routinely criticising the policy.

The coalition claims its nuclear plan is 44 per cent cheaper than the Albanese government’s plan to shift the grid to renewables, backed up with storage and gas.

But Labor has put a $600 billion price tag on the opposition’s plan to build seven nuclear reactors across five states on the sites of coal-fired power stations.

Labor has also released costings claiming the plan will require $5.7 billion a year due to interest payments on debt over the next decade, and $57 billion over the decade to 2035 to 2036.

The coalition’s plan was “nuclear insanity” that would blow out the Commonwealth’s budget, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said. 

“The only way for Peter Dutton to pay for his nuclear reactors will be to cut Medicare,” he said. 

“Australians would have been much worse off if he had his way on tax cuts, wages and energy rebates and they’ll be worse off still if he wins the next election.”

Experts have previously warned the nuclear debate is mired in cherry-picked figures and flawed comparisons. 

Nuclear costs are highly uncertain, and the estimates cited by politicians on both sides are incomparable.

Labor claims the coalition’s plan will cost every taxpayer $86,339 by 2050, $42,857 to build and another $43,482 in interest.

“We know that when Peter Dutton cuts, you pay and when it comes to his $600 billion nuclear reactors, you’ll pay a lot,” Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said.

“Peter Dutton is telling Australians they have to foot the bill for his nuclear reactors with higher taxes and worse services, all while sending the budget into the red for generations.”

The prime minister spent Saturday touring flood zones in western Queensland, while Mr Dutton was in the Northern Territory. 

US customs agents have begun collecting President Donald Trump’s unilateral 10 per cent tariff on all imports from many countries, with higher levies on goods from 57 larger trading partners due to start next week.

The initial 10 per cent “baseline” tariff to be paid by US importers took effect at US seaports, airports and customs warehouses on Saturday.

“This is the single biggest trade action of our lifetime,” said Kelly Ann Shaw, a trade lawyer at Hogan Lovells and former White House trade adviser during Trump’s first term.

Shaw told a Brookings Institution event on Thursday that she expected the tariffs to evolve over time as countries seek to negotiate lower rates.

“But this is huge. This is a pretty seismic and significant shift in the way that we trade with every country on earth,” she added.

Trump’s Wednesday tariff announcement shook global stock markets.

Prices for oil and commodities plunged while investors fled to the safety of government bonds.

Among the countries first hit with the 10 per cent tariff are Australia, the United Kingdom, Colombia, Argentina, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

A US Customs and Border Protection bulletin to shippers indicates no grace period for cargoes on the water at midnight on Saturday.

But a US Customs and Border Protection bulletin did provide a 51-day grace period for cargoes loaded onto vessels or planes and in transit to the US before 12.01am ET on Saturday.

These cargoes need to arrive by 12.01am ET on May 27 to avoid the 10 per cent duty.

At the same hour on Wednesday, Trump’s higher “reciprocal” tariff rates of 11 per cent to 50 per cent are due to take effect.

European Union imports will be hit with a 20 per cent tariff while Chinese goods will be hit with a 34 per cent tariff, bringing Trump’s total new levies on China to 54 per cent.

China on Saturday said “the market has spoken” in rejecting Trump’s tariffs after it hit the US with a slew of countermeasures, including extra levies of 34 per cent on all US goods and export curbs on some rare earth minerals.

“China has been hit much harder than the USA, not even close,” Trump said on Saturday on social media.

“THIS IS AN ECONOMIC REVOLUTION, AND WE WILL WIN. HANG TOUGH, it won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic.”

Shortly after posting the comment, Trump was spotted arriving at his Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, reading a New York Post article covering China’s retaliation to Trump’s tariffs and the stock market “crash”.

Some world leaders moved quickly to strike a deal with Trump to avert economic disruption while others weighed countermeasures.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to visit the White House on Monday, sources said, as unspecified goods from the country face a 17 per cent tariff under the new policy.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was reportedly seeking a telephone conversation with Trump.

Japan faces a 24 per cent levy.

Vietnam, which benefited from the shift of US supply chains away from China after Trump’s first-term trade war with China, will be hit with a 46 per cent tariff and agreed on Friday to discuss a deal with Trump.

The head of Taiwan’s National Security Council was in Washington DC for talks with the Trump administration that were expected to include the tariffs, a source said.

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te huddled with tech executives on Saturday to discuss how to respond to the 32 per cent duty it faces on its products.

Italian Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti warned on Saturday against the imposition of retaliatory tariffs on the United States, saying at a business forum near Milan that doing so could cause damage.

Canada and Mexico were exempt from both Trump’s latest duties because they are still subject to a 25 per cent tariff related to the US fentanyl crisis for goods that do not comply with the US-Mexico-Canada rules of origin.

Trump is excluding goods subject to separate, 25 per cent national security tariffs, including steel and aluminium, cars, trucks and car parts.

His administration also released a list of more than 1000 product categories exempted from the tariffs.

Valued at $US645 billion ($A1.1 trillion) in 2024 imports, these include crude oil, petroleum products and other energy imports, pharmaceuticals, uranium, titanium, lumber and semiconductors and copper.

Except for energy, the Trump administration is investigating several of these sectors for further national security tariffs.

Jaguar Land Rover will pause shipments of its cars made in the United Kingdom to the United States for a month, it says, as it considers how to mitigate the cost of US President Donald Trump’s 25 per cent tariff.

Jaguar Land Rover, which is owned by India’s Tata Motors, confirmed the temporary export suspension after the Times newspaper reported the plan.

“As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are taking some short-term actions, including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans,” JLR said in an emailed statement.

The UK’s car industry, which employs 200,000 people directly, is highly exposed to the new tariffs. 

The US is the second-biggest importer of UK-made cars after the European Union, with nearly a 20 per cent share, data from industry body SMMT shows.

Jaguar Land Rover, one of the UK’s biggest producers by volume, said in its statement that the US was an important market for its luxury brands. 

It sells 400,000 Range Rover Sports, Defenders and other models annually and exports to the US account for almost a quarter of sales.

The US 25 per cent tariff on imported cars and light trucks took effect on April 3, the day after Trump announced tariffs on other goods from countries across the globe.

The UK has said it is focused on trying to secure a trade deal with the US.

The Times said that Jaguar Land Rover is thought to have a couple of months’ supply of cars already in the US, which will not be subject to the new tariffs.

Iran’s rial currency has traded at a record low against the US dollar as the country returns to work after a long holiday, costing more than million rials per greenback as tensions between Tehran and Washington likely will push it even lower.

The exchange rate had plunged to more than million rials during the Persian New Year, Nowruz, as currency shops closed and only informal trading took place on the streets, creating additional pressure on the market. 

But as traders resumed work on Saturday, the rate fell even further to 1,043,000 to the dollar, signalling the new low appeared here to stay.

Iran’s economy has been severely affected by international sanctions, particularly after US President Donald Trump withdrew America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018. 

At the time of the 2015 deal, which saw Iran drastically limit its enrichment and stockpiling of uranium in exchange for lifting of sanctions, the rial traded at 32,000 to the dollar.

After Trump returned to the White House in January, he restarted his “maximum pressure” campaign targeting Tehran with sanctions. 

He again went after firms trading Iranian crude oil, including those selling at a discount in China.

Trump, meanwhile, has written to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, trying to jump-start direct talks between Tehran and Washington. 

Iran has maintained it is willing for indirect talks, but such discussions under the Biden administration failed to make headway.

Trump is also continuing air strikes targeting the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, the last of Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance” able to attack Israel after Israel mauled other militant groups during its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Economic upheavals have evaporated the public’s savings, pushing average Iranians into holding on to hard currencies, cryptocurrencies, gold, cars and other items. 

Also, Internal political pressure remains inflamed over the mandatory hijab, or headscarf, with women still ignoring the law on the streets of Tehran. 

Rumours also persist over the government potentially increasing the cost of subsidised petrol, which has sparked nationwide protests in the past.

The falling rial has put more pressure as well on Iranian reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, whose finance minister was impeached in March – when the rate was 930,000 rials to the dollar – over the crashing currency and accusations of mismanagement.

“The market has spoken” in rejecting US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, China says, as it calls on Washington for “equal-footed consultation” after global markets’ dramatic reaction to the trade levies, which drew Chinese retaliation.

Several Chinese commerce associations in industries from health care and textiles to electronics also issued statements on Saturday calling for unity in exploring alternative markets and warning that the tariffs would worsen inflation in the US.

“The market has spoken,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said in a post on Facebook on Saturday morning. 

He also posted a picture capturing Friday’s falls on US markets.

Trump introduced additional 34 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods as part of steep levies imposed on most US trade partners, bringing the total duties on China to 54 per cent.

Trump also closed a trade loophole that had allowed low-value packages from China to enter the US duty-free.

This prompted sweeping retaliation from China on Friday, including extra levies of 34 per cent on all US goods and export curbs on some rare earths, escalating the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

Global stock markets plummeted following China’s retaliation and Trump’s comments on Friday that he would not change course, extending sharp losses that followed Trump’s initial tariff announcement earlier in the week and marking the biggest losses since the pandemic. 

For the week, the S&P 500 was down nine per cent.

“Now is the time for the US to stop doing the wrong things and resolve the differences with trading partners through equal-footed consultation,” Guo wrote in English.

China’s chamber of commerce representing traders in food products called on “China’s food and agricultural products import and export industry to unite and strengthen co-operation to jointly explore domestic and foreign markets.”

The metals and chemicals traders’ chamber said the tariffs “will push up the import cost for US importers and the consumption cost for consumers, exacerbate domestic inflation in the US, and increase the possibility of a US recession”.