Australia’s biggest lottery operator has recorded a slump in annual earnings after its popular Powerball and Oz Lotto jackpots didn’t get the attention from punters it hoped for.

It was the first time in five years the Powerball jackpot failed to hit $100 million, The Lottery Corporation chief executive Wayne Pickup said.

And there was no Oz Lotto jackpot of $50 million or more for the first time in nine years.

“Financial year 2026 was a rarely soft year for big jackpots – a one-in-45-year outcome,” said Mr Pickup, who has been in the job for nine months.

“As you know, the math tells you jackpot runs even out over time.

“The momentum in pricing, base game participation and digital share matters more to the long-term trajectory than what happens in any single period.”

The Lottery Corp, which bills itself as a “place where Australians come to play”, made a net profit of $284.6 million in 2025/26, down 22 per cent from the prior year.

Underlying earnings – before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation – was $736 million, a little below the market consensus, with the lotteries business delivering the bulk, or $627 million, followed by Keno earnings.

Revenue fell 2.7 per cent to $3.6 billion, after the absence of those large jackpots impacted revenue by about $350 million.

But some of that impact was offset by price increases after Lottery Corp raised the cost of a Powerball game to $1.40, from $1.20, which was its second increase in three years.

Still, fewer large jackpots translated to lower retail and digital platform lotteries turnover, corresponding to a three per cent fall to $6.5 billion.

Lottery Corp had 8.3 million active lottery customers in 2025/26.

The group believes there are more than four million unregistered players across Australia, which it hopes to convert to registered, as well as attracting new customers.

“We want people to come back more often, and not just to participate when there are large jackpots,” Mr Pickup told an earnings briefing on Wednesday.

The group’s shares rose by almost two per cent ahead of lunchtime to $5.41.

Asked about the consumer environment, in a time of rising living costs and interest rates, Mr Pickup said the company’s gaming data wasn’t giving it any cause for concern.

“Lotteries are traditionally resilient through economic downturns,” he said.

“We haven’t seen anything in our data, but we’re obviously cognisant of it.

“When I’m visiting retailers, it’s tough out there in general

“We’d just like a few more (big) jackpots.”

Mr Pickup did note the group’s scratchie games were still doing well, as were its Keno operations.

Lottery Corp wants to evolve from being a lottery operator to a digitally led entertainment platform, as more customers move online and demand more.

“We need to fill the entertainment portfolio with more reasons to engage and really build on these winning moments,” Mr Pickup said.

Lottery Corp said it was confident about its outlook after recently signing a 40-year extension of its lottery license with Victoria, where it generates 30 per cent of its lottery turnover.

Its next major renewal is for NSW in 2050.

Lottery Corp declared a final dividend of 8.5 cents, taking the total for the year to 16.5 cents.

National Gambling Helpline 1800 858 858

Coalition MPs breaking ranks over contentious gambling reforms is a sign of a “healthy democracy at work”, the deputy opposition leader says.

Jane Hume defended internal dissent after backbenchers Pat Conaghan and Andrew Wallace crossed the floor to vote against gambling ad reforms, bucking the party line for the first time in their political careers.

Ms Hume said there had been robust debate within the coalition about the reforms and welcomed the decision of her colleagues.

“When you join the Liberal Party, you don’t sign up for a frontal lobotomy the way you do in the Labor Party. We are entitled to cross the floor,” Senator Hume told reporters on Wednesday.

“That’s a good thing. That’s a healthy democracy at work … I think we’ve landed well.

“I think the balance is right.”

Mr Conaghan slammed his party for being “weak” on the reforms after his time spent on the original inquiry into gambling chaired by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy, which advocated for a total ban.

Under the proposed changes, Australians would have access to a one-stop shop allowing them to opt out of online betting ads, put limits on commissions for betting agents and restrict incentives for problem gamblers.

The Nationals MP told AAP Ms Murphy would be “disgusted” by the Labor party avoiding an outright ad ban, and felt she would have thanked him for crossing the floor.

Ms Murphy’s widower Rod Glover said the bill was a big improvement on the status quo in a post on social media.

But he admitted it still falls well short of the Murphy Report recommendations.

“The limits of the reforms reflect, in large part, the considerable lobbying power of the gambling industry, major sporting codes and media organisations,” he said.

Debate has begun in the Senate after passing the lower house on Tuesday.

The bill before the Senate has been vastly improved, opposition communications spokeswoman Sarah Henderson said.

“No longer will wagering companies in this country, be allowed to target those who are incurring very large losses, targeting those who are addicted to gambling and making their lives hell,” she said.

A partial ban on inducements has been included in the legislation, but it only applies to people during the first three months on the self-exclusion register BetStop.

The peak body for betting agencies has criticised the amendments for complicating the Australian market and playing into offshore illegal gambling sites.

Responsible Wagering Australia chief executive Kai Cantwell raised concern with the opt-out advertising register to be run by the media watchdog.

“These measures will significantly curtail our ability to advertise a legal product safely to adults,” Mr Cantwell said.

“If you push people away from the licensed, regulated market … you don’t stop them punting.

“You push them offshore, into products with no consumer protections, no support, no Betstop, and no contribution to Australian sport and racing.”

Greens communications spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young slammed the bill, which she said was designed to fail Australian families.

“Labor has proven itself to be captured by the industry, and the Liberal Party has proven itself to be weak and toothless,” she told the Senate.

Senator Hanson-Young said she has received countless first-hand accounts including of a widow receiving gambling inducements after their husband died by suicide.

“The list goes on and on and on. And yet, it doesn’t seem to matter how many bodies pile up on these companies’ watch,” Senator Hanson-Young said.

“What a pack of bastards! How disgusting!”

Liberal senator Paul Scarr will cross the floor when the bill reaches a vote in the upper house.

“It’ll be only the second time in the seven years I’ve served in this place that I’ve chosen to do so,” he said.

“But I think this is such a serious issue for millions of Australians who’ve been impacted by gambling harm, and this is such a flawed piece of legislation that I have no choice but to do so.”

Australia’s share market is trading lower, after a global bond sell-off sent long-term yields to multi-year highs, highlighting fiscal spending and inflation worries.

The S&P/ASX200 fell 33.6 points by midday, down 0.37 per cent, to 9,036.4, as the broader All Ordinaries dropped 30.6 points, or 0.33 per cent, to 9,243.6.

The dip followed a slump in global equity markets as bond market jitters re-emerged overnight.

“Rising bond yields weighed on asset prices around the world as investors became increasingly nervous about higher long-end rates,” Capital.com senior market analyst Kyle Rodda said.

While the move was modest and eased through the US session, cross-asset price action was pointing to structural tensions in the markets bubbling to the surface again.

“While market participants have been willing to stomach the higher yields because the future returns are expected to be worth it, the rise in some parts of the curve to multi-year or multi-decade highs has shaken confidence enough to force a slight re-rating of stocks,” Mr Rodda said.

Financial stocks weighed heavily, the sector down 1.2 per cent as CommBank led the big four banks and Macquarie lower.

Basic materials gained 0.4 per cent despite a slight down tick in BHP shares after Tuesday’s post earnings rally, as Fortescue and Rio Tinto edged higher in-line with the copper price and iron ore futures.

Gold stocks were broadly higher as the precious metal found buying support near $US4,353 ($A6,153) an ounce.

Ongoing tensions in the Middle East continued to support oil prices, with Brent crude trading near $US92 a barrel, with no signs of progress to reopen the Strait of Hormuz shipping route.

The broader energy sector was up 1.1 per cent, led by Santos shares after the oil and gas giant lifted first-half production by three per cent and delivered sales revenue of $2.6 billion.

Health care was the third and final segment trading higher by lunchtime, up almost two per cent as CSL rallied for a second day after its well-received full-year results, which prompted an upgrade from investment giant Morgan Stanley.

In other earnings news, consumer cyclicals have tumbled for a third straight session, as Temple & Webster shares tanked more than 18 per cent, as weak consumer confidence weighed on its result.

Breville also sold off, its shares shedding more than six per cent despite recording growth across all major metrics, as US tariffs and the resulting relocation of manufacturing impacted earnings.

Stockland rocketed more than 12 per cent higher after its full-year statutory profit jumped by more than a fifth to $994 million.

The Australian dollar is buying 70.76 US cents, down from 71.01 US cents on Tuesday at 5pm.

Democratic socialist Angie Nixon has scored an upset victory in Florida’s Democratic primary race for the US Senate, as media outlets projected she ‌defeated former national security official Alex Vindman.

Nixon, who has served in the Florida state legislature since 2020, will face Republican Senator Ashley Moody in November’s general election.

Vindman, a retired Army officer, rose to prominence in 2019 when he testified ‌to Congress during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment about a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Nixon, 42, has been active in Florida’s labour movement and was reprimanded this year for disrupting a Florida House vote when she protested congressional ‌redistricting legislation with a pink megaphone.

In her campaign, she urged voters to “make sure you wear your pink to the polls.”

She was backed by prominent progressives including Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

Non-partisan analysts say Moody is favoured to win the match-up and finish the remaining two years in the term of former Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who now serves as Trump’s secretary of state.

Republicans are also favoured to win the governor’s race, in which Republican Byron Donalds will face Republican-turned-Democrat David Jolly.

Nixon’s victory was a surprising result as Florida voters picked candidates to run in the November election, which will determine control of Congress.

Two veteran Democratic politicians cleared their first hurdle as they sought ‌to survive a Republican redistricting ‌that forced them to run in ⁠new seats.

Representative Jared Moskowitz was projected to win the Democratic primary in Florida’s 25th congressional district, fending off challenger Oliver Larkin, who was backed by ​the Democratic Socialists of America.

Moskowitz will face Republican Scott Singer, a former Boca Raton mayor, in one of the few congressional races in the state seen as competitive in November.

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, first elected to Congress in 2004, won her party’s nomination to represent a Black-majority district in Broward County.

Elsewhere in the state, Mike Beltran, a state representative, was projected to win the Republican nomination to face Democratic Representative Kathy Castor in a district redrawn to favour Republicans.

Florida’s new map, pushed through by the Republican-controlled legislature this spring, ⁠could leave the state with a House delegation of 24 Republicans and only four Democrats. Trump, a Republican, won Florida by ‌13 percentage points in 2024. 

States ​usually redraw their congressional maps only at the beginning of every decade, to reflect census results. But several have redistricted over the past year at Trump’s urging to shore up the Republican majority in Congress, prompting some Democratic-led states ​to redraw their ‌own maps in response.

Growth in wages for workers has remained steady but figures remain above pre-COVID levels.

The wage price index for the June quarter remained at 0.8 per cent, causing the annual growth rate to slow to 3.2 per cent, figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday showed.

Salary growth in the public sector has outpaced wage rises in private industries for the sixth quarter in a row.

The data was largely in line with economist predictions.

While the quarterly figures were unchanged, the annual data was down from the 3.4 per cent at the same time in 2025, the bureau’s head of price statistics Rachael McCrick said.

“Although we’re currently below the late 2023 peak of 4.3 per cent, annual wage growth remains above the 2.2 per cent that we were seeing in the December quarter 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said.

“The decline in the share of jobs with larger wage rises has contributed to slower wage growth overall.”

Public-sector wages increased by 3.4 per cent for the quarter, which was down slightly from a 3.7 per cent boost in June 2025.

In the private sector, there was a 3.1 per cent increase, but that was less than the 3.4 per cent gain the year before.

“Rises paid to state government public service jobs were the main driver of public-sector growth, supported by scheduled rises paid under the existing APS-wide enterprise agreement for Commonwealth employees,” Ms McCrick said.

The number of jobs that a had change of wages of less than four per cent rose to 79 per cent for the quarter, an increase from 75 per cent.

It’s the largest share of jobs that had a pay-packet rise of less than four per cent since June 2022.

Poor consumer confidence continues to weigh on Australian retailers, after online seller Temple & Webster’s profit tumbled, despite record revenue.

The online furniture and homewares group posted a bottom-line net profit of $4.3 million for 2025/26, down 62 per cent from the year before.

The business delivered record revenue of $665 million, up 11 per cent, driven by higher average order value and a 4.6 per cent increase in active customers.

“This result was delivered in the face of a challenging consumer environment, which continued to soften for the last few months of the financial year,” executive chair Mark Coulter told an earnings briefing on Wednesday.

The gap between revenue and profit reflected tax timing, marketing spend, and the group’s expansion into home improvement and the New Zealand market.

For the new financial year so far, trading has been sluggish, with revenue down 13 per cent on a year earlier as living costs, high interest rates and a housing market downturn continue to weigh on consumer spending.

In 2025/26, pre-tax cash flow grew 17 per cent to $21.9 million, representing a margin of 3.3 per cent, driven by pricing structure changes and promotional changes, while artificial intelligence adoption helped drive $3 million in extra savings.

New chief executive Susie Sudgen said there was more to be gained as the retailer leveraged artificial intelligence.

“Our retail reporting and data are the best I’ve ever seen, and we’ve already developed AI agents to access data and analyse it in natural language,” she said.

“The next stage for us is to prioritise more customer-facing innovation, building on our industry-leading data to personalise their experience and improve conversion rates.”

Investors were unforgiving, sending Temple & Webster shares more than 18 per cent lower to a more than three-year low of $4.13 by midday.

Still, Ms Sudgen talked up the group’s growth prospects.

“This is a business with a huge growth opportunity ahead of it and a really consistent track record of execution against that opportunity,” she told analysts.

The new boss, who rejoined the company after a six-year stint in private equity, took the reins from Mr Coulter in July after he shifted to executive chair.

With a total addressable market of $40 billion between furniture and homewares, home improvement, and New Zealand, Ms Sudgen is targeting double-digit revenue growth in the coming months.

“Even as the leading online retailer in our category, we represent just 2.9 per cent of the furniture and homewares market in Australia, and only a fraction of a per cent of home improvement in New Zealand,” she said.

“There is a lot of room to grow.”

Temple & Webster did not pay a dividend.

One of the nation’s most popular toaster makers has delivered a rise in annual profit after a turbulent year, marked by supply chain disruptions due to the Middle East conflict and tariff burdens.

Home appliances group Breville made a net profit of $138.1 million in 2025/26, up 1.7 per cent from the previous year.

“Financial year 2026 tested the business on every front,” chief executive Jim Clayton said on Wednesday.

The year was marked by the impact of the war, which resulted in the closure of the key shipping channel, the Strait of Hormuz, and the application of US tariffs on foreign imports.

One of Breville’s biggest export markets is the United States, where the Trump administration has applied tariffs of 10 per cent or more to many goods. 

Most of the group’s earnings came from its coffee and cooking appliance segments, which both delivered double-digit growth.

But Breville also played up its China foray, which has just completed its first full year of direct sales operations and delivered more than seven times the revenue of its previous distributor.

“These are the results you hope for when you make the decision to go direct,” Mr Clayton said.

Group sales revenue was a record $1.8 billion, and a gain of 6.7 per cent for the 12 months ended June 30.

Underlying earnings – before interest and tax – rose 1.2 per cent to $207 million, which was in line with its guidance.

Looking ahead, Breville said it expects demand for its products in the new financial year to remain resilient, although some issues are ongoing.

“The risk of oil-based supply chain disruption and cost inflation across both materials and transport continues to evolve,” the company said.

“In the US, our biggest market, the tariff environment remains fluid, and the effective tariff rate we will face in financial year 2027 remains unclear.”

Breville, which has a market value of $5 billion, declared a final dividend of 19 cents, taking the total for the year to 38 cents, slightly higher than the prior year.

Queensland’s royalty regime has made new investments in the state unfeasible, the boss of the world’s biggest mining company says.

BHP on Tuesday disclosed it had paid $1.8 billion in state royalties on its five coking coalmines in central Queensland, a joint venture with Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp.

But Queensland’s sliding-scale royalty regime, introduced by the former Labor state government in 2022, has made new investment in the state unsustainable, according to BHP chief executive Brandon Craig.

The regime meant that when coking coal prices were high, BHP would pay the equivalent of a 67 per cent tax rate on its business, Mr Craig said.

“That makes the long-term economics of actually investing major capital quite problematic,” he told reporters.

“The current royalty rates, particularly at the highest pricing levels, are not sustainable for ongoing investments in growth.”

In September 2025, BHP blamed the royalty regime for a decision to cut 750 jobs across its Queensland coal operations.

However, Mr Craig, who became CEO on July 1, told analysts that its Queensland coalmine operation, officially called the BHP Mitsubishi Alliance, was an “exceptional business” and he believed its best years were ahead of it.

“We have a plan to improve performance and returns, and that plan doesn’t include selling the business,” he said.

Also on Tuesday, BHP released its 2026 Economic Contribution Report, which says the company made a nearly $46 billion contribution to Australia’s economy in 2025/26.

BHP calculated the figure by combining the amount it paid to Australian suppliers, shareholders, employees and the federal and state governments, as well as its social investment.

BHP paid $9.7 billion in royalties and taxes in Australia, for an effective tax rate of 32.4 per cent, or 44.7 per cent when including royalties.

It paid $3.7 billion in corporate income taxes on its Western Australia iron ore operations, along with another $2.7 billion in state royalties and other payments to governments.

It paid $1 billion in tax and other payments to governments on its copper projects in South Australia, including Olympic Dam.

BHP also paid $20.7 billion to its Australian suppliers, $9.3 billion to shareholders and $6.1 billion to its 44,000 Australian employees and contractors.

The company further invested $108 million in social projects in Australia, including the construction of new housing projects in remote Pilbara communities.

BHP was also a significant taxpayer in Chile, paying $US5.5 billion ($7.8 billion) in taxes and royalties there.

It paid a total of $US12.4 billion ($17.5 billion) to governments globally in 2025/26, or $US106.7 billion ($150.3 billion) over the past 10 years.

“We are proud of the contribution our team makes to the world around us,” chief financial officer Vandita Pant said in the report.

Hawkers who use social media to lure people into putting retirement savings into risky investments will be put on notice under reforms drafted after several investment schemes collapsed.

Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino will unveil the long-awaited consumer protection reforms, which follow the collapse of First Guardian and Shield Master Funds, in an address to the National Press Club on Wednesday.

Among the measures is a crackdown on lead generators, who used social media, online ads and cold calls to lure people into putting their retirement savings into risky investments such as the Shield and First Guardian managed investment schemes.

Unlicensed real time communication about superannuation will be banned while licensees will be required to take reasonable steps to ensure lead generation activities comply with legal requirements.

The anti‑hawking regime will also be bolstered, with stronger consent requirements, limiting the exemption for financial advisors to existing clients and harsher penalties for breaches.

“These reforms are designed to disrupt some of the most damaging business models operating in the system today,” Dr Mulino said.

“They target the point at which consumers are first exposed to harm and reduce the ability of bad actors to gain access to consumers in the first place.”

The government previously floated the measures in a consultation paper published in April.

The Financial Advice Association of Australia has previously called on Labor to crack down on the practices, which can steer consumers towards inappropriate financial products.

The Shield and First Guardian collapse showed how devastating high-pressure sales tactics can be when unregulated.

“Around 12,000 Australians lost, in some cases, all their retirement savings after being targeted by sales processes that looked and felt like advice,” said FAAA chief executive Sarah Abood.

“Consumers need stronger protections against predatory lead generation, while still being able to find the right adviser for them.”

Ms Abood also called on Dr Mulino to make the compensation scheme of last resort (CSLR) sustainable, so the costs do not continue to drive up the price of advice.

In April, Treasury released a consultation paper floating the possibility of making self-managed super funds contribute to the CSLR, which is increasing in cost substantially.

“Innocent financial advisers are currently paying these bills, and in many cases are forced to pass the costs on through higher advice fees,” Ms Abood said.

She also urged Dr Mulino to finish off the financial advice reforms started by his predecessor Stephen Jones, called the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes package, and deliver the simpler, more efficient advice system that was promised..

“Australians need a financial advice system that is affordable, accessible and trustworthy,” Ms Abood said.

A coalition of US states suing Meta Platforms over claims Facebook and Instagram were designed in ways that ‌harmed young users’ mental health has begun making its case in California federal court, in a trial that could reshape some of the most popular apps on the planet.

Megan O’Neill, a deputy California attorney ‌general, told the eight-person jury in Oakland, California, that Meta’s business model was to “hook the users, hold them for as long as they can, harvest their data, and then hide the truth from the public”.

“It worked especially ‌well for kids,” she added.

O’Neill told the jury the case was not about taking away Instagram or social media.

“This case is not about whether social media has some benefits for some people. It does,” she said.

California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are leading a bipartisan group of 29 states suing Meta.

Jurors are expected to issue an advisory verdict but US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will determine Meta’s liability.

If she finds Meta liable, Rogers could impose civil penalties and order changes to Facebook and Instagram.

The trial will address claims by the four lead states that Meta designed Facebook and Instagram to addict young children ‌and teenagers, resulting in such harms ‌as anxiety, depression and even self-harm, ⁠and misled consumers about the platforms’ safety.

“Meta needed kids, and it needed to reassure the people who cared about those kids ​that the kids are safe,” O’Neill said.

Jurors will also hear claims by all 29 states that Meta violated federal law by improperly collecting and using personal data of children while they used its platforms.

Lawyers for Meta are expected to tell the jury that the company has made a huge effort to keep kids safe online.

Meta has said it did not make misleading statements about safety, and the states failed to show their residents were harmed.

Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri are expected to testify.

The trial is scheduled to last six weeks.

Experts have said the trial is the biggest ⁠legal test yet of social media’s effects on young users, and comes amid a broader reckoning across the globe ‌over those effects.

Meta has ​said penalties could be as high as $US1.4 trillion ($A2 trillion), close to the Menlo Park, California-based company’s market value.

Attorneys general have yet to specify penalties but said at a hearing last week the amount could be ​closer to $US200 billion – equivalent ‌to about three years of after-tax profit for Meta.

California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey also want Meta to implement age restrictions, eliminate the infinite scroll that encourages users to keep looking at ​new posts, and make other changes to its platforms.

In a statement before the trial, a Meta spokesperson said the states’ claims are unsubstantiated and the company stands by its record of creating strong protections for teenagers.

“The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled, claim benign features like having an additional Instagram account somehow harmed their residents, and attempt to ​penalise Meta for ​industry-wide challenges like age verification,” the spokesperson said.

“Rather than sticking to the facts or ​the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout.”

The lawsuit began in 2023 ‌and stemmed from a multistate investigation into Instagram and Facebook’s effects on young users.

That followed testimony by whistleblower Frances Haugen, who told a US Senate committee in 2021 that Meta knew its products could harm young users and knew how to make them safer, but chose not to make changes in favour of pursuing higher profits.

The states are expected to present a trove of internal documents and research from Meta, and testimony from former Meta employees and experts.