Fresh off a big win on property investor tax breaks, the union movement has set its eyes on its next big housing fight.

Peak union body the ACTU wants to dramatically lift the amount of public housing built in Australia.

Its new housing plan, released on Wednesday, will push federal and state governments to agree to a public housing target of one in 10 new homes, compared to the current rate of one in 50.

That’s a similar rate to what was achieved under former prime minister Bob Hawke in the 1980s and can be attained by using modern methods of construction such as modular housing, ACTU president Michele O’Neil said.

While it would require a massive increase in investment, the benefits would be worth it, she said.

“When you look around the world, every country that has supported significant increases in public housing sees the benefit multiple times over,” she told AAP.

“It has that impact on people being more secure, you have less homelessness, you also have less excessive rent hikes in the private market, because the stock is increasing.”

Importantly, the unions are targeting publicly-owned housing specifically, rather than social and affordable housing – a vague term which can include private landlords receiving government subsidies to rent out homes at below-market rates.

While getting access to affordable housing was a lifeline for Lou Housego, 69, after escaping from an abusive marriage, it didn’t solve her affordability problem.

When she was finally offered a place in Sydney, the rent would still have set her back $650 a week at 75 per cent of market rate, forcing her to delay her retirement and move to Wollongong to find a home she could afford.

“I think we should be putting a huge amount into public housing,” she said.

“Housing should be a right, not a privilege. 

“The things that are important for a society to function – security of food and safety in housing – are the absolute baselines.”

Ms O’Neil said public funding too often ended up supporting “affordable” housing that was out of reach for working people.

While the government was spending a lot of money on social and affordable housing, including the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, she questioned whether it was the best use of funds.

Instead of funding public housing and building up the public balance sheet, governments were bleeding subsidies to private companies through affordable housing payments and commonwealth rent assistance, RMIT emeritus professor David Hayward said.

He said the unions’ push was well-timed, given new UK Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham has pledged to redirect the $74 billion affordable housing funding stream to build government-owned council homes.

The ACTU will also push for stronger rental protections, including a national standard lease of two years, from the current 12 months.

In a speech to the National Press Club earlier in August, opposition housing spokesman Andrew Bragg called for more direct investment in public housing rather than social and affordable housing.

“There’s nothing wrong with public housing, and there is a case to be made that public housing can be cheaper than the social and affordable route,” he said.

Opening arguments are set to kick off in a pivotal trial for Meta Platforms in a California federal court. 

Attorneys-general from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are seeking extensive financial damages plus changes to how the company operates Facebook and Instagram. 

Twenty-nine states sued the tech giant in 2023 over child safety and privacy – the other 25 will go to trial later. 

The company also faces lawsuits in state courts. 

The lawsuit accuses the social media giant of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features that get children addicted to its platforms. 

It also argues that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of federal law.

“This week, we’re in court with the largest consumer protection lawsuit in American history. We’ll show a jury that Meta concealed what it knew about the harm its products cause young people because looking away was more profitable,” said Kentucky Attorney-General Russell Coleman in a statement. 

Meta said it believes it has a strong case. 

“We are proud of our record in protecting teens on our platforms and the amount of effort that we’ve put into developing protections over the years, even before these cases were ever filed, and continuing to the present day. We look forward to showing the judge and the jury those facts in court,” the company said in a statement.

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland will oversee the proceedings starting on Tuesday, which are expected to last six to eight weeks, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives and former employees testifying. 

Gonzalez Rogers, appointed to the bench by president Barack Obama in 2011, has overseen a bevy of complex, high-profile cases involving Big Tech. 

These include Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its founders as well as Epic Games’ lawsuit against Apple over its app store.

The trial is the latest in an avalanche of lawsuits against Meta Platforms and other social media companies including Google’s YouTube, TikTok and Snap, over arguments that their platforms harm young people, illegally collect their data and are deliberately designed to addict them.

A federal minister has criticised calls to scrap Western Australia’s GST deal, labelling it as wrong.

The Productivity Commission on Friday recommended scrapping a 2018 deal that transferred top-up GST payments to WA.

The payments are set to cost the federal budget $60 billion by the end of the decade, with the commission finding the changes made the GST system less equitable for the states.

Resources Minister Madeleine King, who is from WA, said the commission’s report did not have credibility.

“I could not live with anything in that Productivity Commission’s report. I think it is quite wrong,” she told ABC TV on Tuesday.

“Their recent report conflicts with their earlier report, and of course commissions can change their mind. I do accept that, but it is a little bit puzzling the journey they have gone on.”

Prominent economist Saul Eslake had previously described the GST deal drawn up by the former Morrison government as the “worst public policy decision of the 21st century thus far”.

In its report, the commission called for a return to the GST system pre-2018, but with targeted changes to address issues arising when mining-dominant states increase mineral royalty rates.

But Ms King said WA had been worse off under the previous GST arrangements before the 2018 deal was implemented.

“Western Australia would have been, but for these reforms, outrageously disadvantaged against the rest of the country because of the resources sector that provides for the prosperity of the country,” she said.

“When you have a broken consensus on something as important as GST distribution, you have to take action.”

Every state and territory bar WA had called for the 2018 deal to be ripped up or strongly changed.

WA Premier Roger Cook hit out at “east coast clowns” following the report’s release, vowing to keep the extra GST dollars for the state.

The Productivity Commission will hand down a final report into the GST deal by the end of the year.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he would consider the final report before making any decision on whether to change the GST deal.

The national consumer watchdog has vowed to take action against businesses that “optimise” false or manipulative practices through social media and online marketplaces.

Digital customer journeys occurring at speed and scale were creating a “race to the bottom”, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chief Luke Woodward warned on Tuesday.

“Firms compete not by offering better products, services, or price, but by manipulating choices and obscuring information,” he said.

“Conduct that once affected one customer at a time can be deployed online to millions.”

The watchdog chief outlined its digital enforcement agenda at the Mallesons Digital Future Summit, saying it would prioritise action against harmful conduct, particularly involving “material consumer harm”.

“But we’ll also focus more broadly on general deterrence, and so that means that we’re focusing on senior leadership accountability, and compliance practices and systems and culture,” Mr Woodward said.

The ACCC was taking action on deceptive and manipulative online sales practices, subscription and service practices, misrepresenting consumer guarantees, and the offering of unsafe products.

Recent matters had involved large and small online traders, digital and social media platforms.

“We’ve sought outcomes including stopping conduct … (and) consumer redress, but we’ve also sought significant court penalties to support general deterrence.”

Digital platforms had become a pathway for overseas traders with no Australian presence and no direct accountability to sell unsafe products, Mr Woodward said.

Other areas of focus frequently raised by consumers were guarantees on products being misrepresented and undermined, and unfair contract terms.

New restrictions on unfair trading practices under Australian Consumer Law take effect next July and this would “enhance our ability to address harmful conduct”, Mr Woodward said.

The new regime comprises a general prohibition on unfair trading practices, mandatory disclosure requirements for drip pricing and new obligations governing subscription contracts, with significant penalties for non-compliance.

Product safety was another priority for the ACCC, which is working with platforms such as the Australian Product Safety Pledge.

“The pace at which unsafe products can reach consumers online is unlike anything we’ve seen before,” Mr Woodward said.

A dependency on migrant workers to keep Australia’s aged care sector afloat remains a “sleeper issue” that could leave older citizens vulnerable.

Migrant workers are the backbone of the domestic aged care workforce, Ageing Australia chief executive Tom Symondson told an industry event in Melbourne on Tuesday.

His peak body is calling on the federal government for new, permanent visa pathways to allow care worker to come to and stay in the nation. 

Mr Symondson said more also needed to be done to attract and retain new and existing domestic aged care workers.

“The over-reliance on immigration is a real sleeper issue,” he told the Centre for Economic Development of Australia event. 

“It’s going to bite us in five or 10 years when the rest of the world says we don’t want you to have our carers anymore, we need them here.”

Migrant workers make up a significant share of Australia’s aged care workforce, plugging gaps in a chronically understaffed sector. 

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s 2023 aged care provider survey found 17 per cent of nursing and personal care staff were temporary residents.

The United Workers Union, however, estimates migrant workers make up about 40 per cent of Australia’s overall aged care workforce.

While international workers are key to supporting aged care, relying too heavily on the cohort can expose the sector to risks posed by changing policy and global migration flows.

These risks were canvassed in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s 2023 Draft National Strategy for the Care and Support Economy. 

“Over-reliance on migrants in lower skill and lower-paid roles risks embedding low wages across the care and support economy,” it said.

“This would make attracting domestic workers more challenging.”

Demand for aged care workers is expected to continue increasing in line with the Australia’s growing ageing population. 

According to CEDA’s State of Migration in Australia report, published in July, the aged care sector will need 400,000 extra workers by 2050.

It found the domestic workforce would be incapable of meeting that demand and claimed an essential skills visa for aged care occupations was needed to compliment existing migration pathways.

With pressure on federal policymakers to deal with the white-hot political issue of net migration, some fear the aged care sector may be left exposed.

“Decisions around capping some of the migration approaches is going to limit that workforce availability,” Monash University professor Libby Callaway told AAP.

“That needs to be really carefully thought through.”

The rape case of former agent to the stars Ralph Carr is not so exceptional that he should be allowed to appeal before being sentenced, a prosecutor has argued.

The man who managed the careers of AFL champion Dustin Martin and pop star ex-wife Tina Arena is seeking to stay his sentence for rape and sexual assault.

Carr was in July found guilty by a Victorian County Court jury of assaulting a younger former employee at his Melbourne home in March 2023. 

His identity was kept secret for close to three years but the suppression order lifted earlier in August.

At a hearing on Tuesday, Carr’s barrister Dermott Dann KC said his client maintained his innocence.

Mr Dann accepted judges only granted a stay on sentence in exceptional cases but said Carr’s case fell into that group.

Issues with the complainant’s evidence alongside Carr’s declining mental health meant the judge should exercise his rare power, he said.

“This is the first time I’ve made (a stay on sentence) application in 35 years,” the barrister told the judge.

“I feel this is the most obvious miscarriage of justice I have ever seen in that time.”

But prosecutor Matthew Fisher accused the King’s Counsel of being “entirely inappropriate” and trying to garner media attention with his “emotional speech”. 

“It does not assist Your Honour at all,” Mr Fisher told the judge.

The prosecutor instead argued there was nothing exceptional about Carr’s case and the jurors were open to reach the verdicts they did. 

The victim gave evidence over five days and was cross-examined extensively by an experienced barrister, Mr Fisher said.

The jury heard the complexities in her evidence, the submissions from the parties and the directions from the judge and still reached the guilty verdicts, the prosecutor said.

Dann had earlier pointed to 16 different pieces of evidence, mostly centred on what he argued were inconsistencies in the victim’s account and issues with her credibility.

“Anyone who was in this court and saw the complainant give evidence should be very, very concerned, very uncomfortable about the guilty verdicts,” Carr’s lawyer argued.

Any person comfortable with the jury’s decision had “lost sight of what justice is,” he said.

In advocating for a short sentence, Dann has argued Carr’s mental health issues would make his time in custody more burdensome and the offending lasted “one second”.

In response, Mr Fisher accepted the celebrity agent was a man of prior good character and he had suffered some additional punishment in the form of media and public scrutiny. 

He also accepted Carr had diagnosed mental and physical health conditions but noted he had refused to accept medical treatment and hospital transfer while in custody.

Mr Fisher did not dispute that Carr had contributed to society through his role in the entertainment and sporting industries, and that he had helped young people get their start. 

But he also noted the victim was one of those young people and none of Carr’s supporting references had come from any of his young female employees.

The hearing will continue on Wednesday.

1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)

National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028

The closure of one of Australia’s big four aluminium smelters is a “very real prospect” amid stalled power negotiations and accusations the facility has been used as a political football. 

Bell Bay Aluminium in Tasmania’s north is under a growing cloud, with its current electricity deal set to expire at the end of December. 

The Rio Tinto-owned smelter, which employs about 550 people, is at loggerheads with state-owned Hydro Tasmania over a new contract. 

There is a $60 million per year difference between Rio Tinto’s position and the price Hydro Tasmania can commercially offer, the state government has said.

Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union Tasmania secretary Jacob Batt wants the state government to intervene to ensure a deal is secured.

The state government recently ramped up calls for federal government help, after the nation’s largest aluminium smelter at Tomago, in NSW’s Hunter region, received a $2.5 billion bailout from Canberra. 

Mr Batt accused Tasmania’s government of using Bell Bay Aluminium as a “political football” and said the state should be the ones to sort out a deal.

“What we’re seeing now is effectively the state government saying that Tasmania is no longer able to be self-sufficient in our industry policy,” he told reporters on Tuesday. 

“We’re just wanting to know why a power deal hasn’t been reached and why Hydro isn’t being used to support industry and these jobs.” 

Bell Bay Aluminium began operations in 1955 and produces about 190,000 tonnes of aluminium annually, the majority for export. 

Federal Industry Minister Tim Ayres hasn’t directly answered when asked if Canberra will provide funds to help secure a deal.

The Tomago bailout was different as the NSW smelter needed to shift away from coal power while Bell Bay Aluminium was already powered by renewables, he told ABC radio. 

University of Technology Sydney special innovation advisor Roy Green said the saga raised questions about Hydro Tasmania’s efficiency and why it hasn’t offered a price Rio Tinto wants. 

Bell Bay Aluminium produced high-quality aluminium despite being one of Australia’s smaller smelters, he said. 

“It would be hard to understand why anyone would want to see it close. We certainly can’t afford to see it go,” Professor Green said.

Northern Tasmania is grappling with the closure of Australia’s only manganese smelter in July.

“We can’t take another hit … for 550 jobs to be under threat because a power deal hasn’t been done is unacceptable,” Bell Bay Advanced Manufacturing Zone chief executive Susie Bower said. 

“(Closure) is certainly a huge concern. It’s a very real prospect.” 

The state government has said Hydro Tasmania is abiding by its ministerial charter, which states it must support the lowest-possible power prices for Tasmanians and enable economic growth and job creation. 

A Hydro Tasmania spokesperson said the price offered to Rio Tinto was as low the energy provider could go without the offer becoming uncommercial.

An Australian company that pioneered hearing implants sees its future growth in the ongoing “medicalisation” of adult hearing loss, after suffering a fall in earnings on softer markets in the Middle East and China.

But chief executive Dig Howitt says hearing loss is increasingly being recognised as a chronic disease requiring medical intervention rather than an optional “lifestyle” issue.

“We’ve seen medicalisation fundamentally transform treatment patterns in other conditions,” he told an earnings call on Tuesday.

Mr Howitt pointed to the use of pediatric implants, saying that more than 20 years ago, parents of children with hearing loss had to self-navigate a path to get access.

“Today, they are the standard of care,” he added.

“Over 80 per cent of children (with hearing loss) in most developing countries will get one or two Cochlear implants by the time they are 12 months old.

“We’re now doing the same for adult hearing loss … The clinical evidence connecting untreated hearing loss to dementia and falls continues to strengthen.”

Cochlear shares were up by more than 7.5 per cent to $141.28 in early afternoon trading.

Sydney-based Cochlear, which was set up 45 years ago to commercialise its pioneering technology, saw its net profit fall by 62 per cent to $147.3 million in the 2025/26 year.

Sales revenue was flat at $2.3 billion, even though sales of its implant devices rose five per cent to almost 57,000 units.

While Cochlear’s unit sales grew at a faster rate than sales revenue, that growth was driven by a higher mix of lower-priced sales in emerging markets, where strong performances in Latin America and Eastern Europe were offset by declines in the Middle East and China.

“Performance in the Middle East was affected by conflict in the region, which disrupted market access,” it said.

Its strongest developed markets in terms of revenue were the US (up four per cent) and Asia Pacific (up seven per cent).

But Western Europe faltered, dropping by eight per cent due to elective surgery backlogs in the UK and industrial action in Spain.

While Cochlear’s underlying net profit of $322 million was at the upper end of its guidance and better than expected, it was still down 21 per cent year-on-year.

Cochlear is forecasting a modest rise in underlying net profit to between $330 million and $350 million for the 2026/27 year.

The group declared a final dividend of $1.30 per share, taking the total for the year to $3.45, which was lower than the $4.30 paid out to shareholders in 2024/25.

A so-called widow tax hidden in the federal government’s budget tax reforms will be removed after Labor reached a deal with the coalition.

In exchange for closing the loophole, which would have caused divorcees and widows to lose negative gearing entitlements on investment properties, the opposition will support Labor’s bill to slash spending on the runaway NDIS.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced Labor’s plans to close the loophole weeks earlier, but the government was not planning to introduce it to parliament until later in the year, with consultation on the draft bill not due to end until Friday.

With the NDIS laws marooned in the Senate, the government’s promised budget savings were eroding each day the package was not passed. 

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor offered Labor an ultimatum: fast-track the bill amending the widow tax, as well as other fixes to discretionary trust tax and the capital gains tax, and the coalition would support both pieces of legislation through the Senate before parliament retired for the month.

Dr Chalmers said nobody had raised any issues with the draft widow tax legislation in consultation so far, essentially giving it the green light.

“If the opposition’s main ask is that we pass the government’s legislation quicker, then obviously I’m up for that discussion,” he told reporters on Tuesday. 

Dr Chalmers initially claimed there was no rush to pass the tranche two reforms because the changes only applied from July 2027.

But pressure ramped up on Labor to move faster on the widow tax fix after independent senator David Pocock revealed he had been contacted by a domestic violence victim who claimed she had been denied financing on a property because of the loophole.

The tax reforms grandfathered negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions for investors who held property before budget night, including for landlords who jointly owned a property with a spouse.

However, if their marriage broke down or their spouse died, they would lose their negative gearing entitlements when the title transferred to their name, under the initial legislation implementing the reforms.

In a joint coalition party room meeting, Mr Taylor said fast-tracking the widow tax fix was a “big win” and vowed to keep fighting to eliminate the rest of Labor’s tax changes.

The Senate is expected to pass the NDIS bill, which is expected to save $37.8 billion by the end of the decade, late on Tuesday.

It will then be sent back to the House of Representatives for final assent on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the tax changes will be introduced to the House on Tuesday afternoon and could pass the Senate as soon as Wednesday.

An artificial intelligence hyperscaler is tapping Aussie investors to help fund its billion-dollar data centre rollout, capping a record year for Australian-dollar bond deals.

Google’s parent company Alphabet has hired ANZ, Deutsche Bank, RBC Capital Markets and TD Securities as joint lead managers to handle its first Australian dollar bond issue, ANZ confirmed to AAP.

The US tech giant is considering issuing three, five-, 10- and 20-year bonds. It is not clear how much money the company hopes to raise, but it will be in the billions.

It would be the first US large-cap tech company to issue an Australian-dollar bond in almost a decade, Betashares’ head of fixed income Chamath De Silva said.

Apple was the last to do so, raising a total of $3.7 billion from bond issuances in 2015 and 2016.

Australian-dollar bonds issued by foreign companies are known as “kangaroo bonds” or “matilda bonds”, and 2026 has been a record year for the offerings in global debt markets.

Companies including UK green energy giant SSE, Spanish bank CaixaBank, Singapore Airlines and the government of Portugal have raised around $60 billion in kangaroo bonds so far in 2026, up more than 40 per cent from 2025.

Mr De Silva said global investors and issuers were paying greater attention to the Australian bond market, and Australia’s fiscal position stood out at a time when concerns around debt sustainability were rising globally.

Australia’s investment-grade credit market has had no exposure to US large-cap technology companies following the maturity of Apple’s bonds earlier in 2026.

“An Alphabet transaction would begin to change that, broadening the opportunity set for Australian investors while increasing technology representation in the Australian corporate bond market,” Mr De Silva said.

Alphabet’s bond issue might also prove to be the start of a broader trend that could fundamentally alter the composition of Australia’s corporate bond market, giving local investors greater access to world-leading technology companies without having to invest offshore, Mr De Silva said.

Alphabet has been aggressively tapping international debt markets to finance its massive expansion into AI, data centres and cloud intelligence.

It has issued bonds in British pounds, Canadian dollars, Swiss francs, Japanese yen and euros in 2026.

Its British bond offering was for a billion pounds ($A1.9 billion) for 100 years – one of the longest-dated bond issuances executed by a tech company.

Its Canadian deal for $C6.5 billion ($A6.6 billion) briefly set new records until Amazon issued a bigger bond a few weeks later.

Alphabet also raised $US25 billion ($A35 billion) in a US bond sale in early August and $US80 billion ($A113 billion) through equity offerings in June.

The tech behemoth plans to spend between $US195 billion and $US205 billion on AI data centres, servers, networking equipment and chips in 2026 – a sixfold increase over its capital expenditure from 2022.