As more women take on public leadership and regulatory roles, Australia’s first eSafety commissioner warns they could require security protections similar to elected parliamentarians due to plausible online threats made against them.

Julie Inman Grant made history when she was appointed to lead Australia’s eSafety Commission in 2017, a world-first government regulatory body dedicated to keeping citizens safer online.

She has driven significant regulatory reform, including developing industry standards to address illegal content, age-restricted material and emerging AI harms online.

But it is in leading the implementation of Australia’ landmark social media ban, which delays children’s access until they are 16, that Ms Inman Grant herself has endured the most significant online threats.

Following the ban announcement, billionaire Elon Musk, who owns social media platform X, made a public post calling Ms Inman Grant a “censorship commissar”.

Within 24 hours, 75,000 posts had been directed at her, 80 per cent of which were toxic, harmful and plausible death threats.

Speaking to Australia’s first female prime minister Julia Gillard during Women Deliver, Ms Inman Grant said she had been doxxed and had deepfakes and death threats made against her.

The pair’s conversation was part of a live recording for Ms Gillard’s podcast, A Podcast of One’s Own.

“It is gendered and it is designed to wear you down, just like any other form of sexualised, violent online abuse that plays upon gendered standards,” she said.

“My issue is when they dox my children and my family members … it makes you sit back and go, am I putting my family and my kids in danger, and how do I protect them?”

Doxxing is a form of online harassment where an individual’s private information such as their home address, phone number or photos are published without their consent.

Ms Inman Grant noted there were security protections for elected officials, who can face similar threats due to their work, but not the same for regulators.

“There are protections – and I support them – provided to elected members of parliament, but there aren’t the same protections provided to regulators like myself,” she said.

“I’m kind of a new case, because I guess there aren’t that many regulators around the world that have been issued a dog whistle from Elon Musk.

“It comes with a cost, but what (perpetrators) don’t realise is: the more they target me, the more I dig in.”

Elon Musk has taken the stand at a trial over the future of OpenAI, casting ‌his lawsuit as a defence of the institution of charitable giving.

Musk, the world’s richest person, is suing OpenAI, its co-founder and chief executive Sam Altman and its president Greg Brockman, saying they betrayed him and the public by abandoning the ChatGPT maker’s ‌mission to be a benevolent steward of artificial intelligence for humanity, and transforming the non-profit into a profit-seeking juggernaut.

“If we make it okay to loot a charity, the entire foundation of charitable giving in America will be destroyed. That’s my concern,” Musk said in ‌initial remarks, going on to describe his own life history.

Musk appeared calm, sometimes looking at and addressing the jury.

Bill Savitt, a lawyer for OpenAI and Altman, said it was Musk who saw dollar signs as he helped finance OpenAI’s early growth and pushed it to become a for-profit business, one he might eventually lead as CEO.

Savitt said Musk wanted “the keys to the kingdom,” and sued only after he failed and then in 2023 started his own AI business, xAI.

“What he cares about is Elon Musk being on top,” Savitt said in his opening statement.

“We are here because Mr Musk didn’t get his way at OpenAI.”

OpenAI’s lawyer also framed OpenAI’s March 2019 creation of a for-profit entity as critical ‌to letting it buy computing power ‌and pay top scientists to stay ⁠competitive with Google’s DeepMind AI lab.

Musk’s lawyer Steven Molo told jurors in his opening statement it was the OpenAI defendants who wanted riches for themselves as OpenAI ​began drawing investors including Microsoft.

“The defendants in the case stole a charity, and we’re asking you to hold them accountable,” Molo said during his opening statement.

“It wasn’t a vehicle for people to get rich.”

Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX founder, is seeking $US150 billion ($A209 billion) in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, one of its largest investors, with proceeds going to OpenAI’s charitable arm.

He also wants OpenAI to revert to a non-profit, with Altman and Brockman removed as officers and Altman removed from its board.

Musk’s claims include breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment.

Before jurors were seated, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers admonished Musk after OpenAI lawyers complained about his posts on X on Monday in which he assailed Altman as “Scam Altman” and ⁠accused him of stealing a charity.

Rogers said she was loath to issue a gag order but urged Musk to “try to control ‌your propensity to use social ​media to make things work outside the courtroom … Perhaps you’ve never done that before”.

Musk agreed to minimise his social media activity, as did Altman.

Both are expected to testify at trial, as is Microsoft chief Satya Nadella.

The trial could offer a ​window into some ‌of the egos and personalities that shaped OpenAI as it evolved from a non-profit research lab in Brockman’s apartment to a company worth more than $US850 billion.

It also risks complicating OpenAI’s plans for a potential initial public offering by casting ​doubt on its leadership, and could intensify fears about AI technology more broadly.

OpenAI was co-founded by Musk and Altman in 2015 with a goal of developing AI to benefit humanity and fend off rivals such as Google.

Molo said “Elon became more worried” as the technology advanced, and collaborated with Altman to “develop AI safely” after a meeting with US President Barack Obama in 2015 did not address AI’s risks.

Recruiting ​top AI scientists like Ilya Sutskever was part of that process, Molo said.

Savitt countered that AI safety ​was not a priority for Musk and that Musk denigrated OpenAI employees who focused on it.

“Jackasses is what he ‌called them,” Savitt said.

As Australian home owners stare down the barrel of more interest pain and higher inflation due to the Middle East conflict, the major banks are laying down defences.

ANZ, National Australia Bank and Westpac are due to report their interim results from Friday, and while the news is likely to be solid, less-sunny days could lie ahead.

This set of banking earnings covers the six months ended March 31, a period that includes the US-Israeli war on Iran that began in February and has sparked a huge jump in energy costs.

The banks have since had to deal with Donald Trump-driven market volatility and set barriers for a potential uptick in bad debts held by customers struggling with rising living costs and impending increases in lending rates.

NAB has already warned its first-half results will include $706 million in credit impairment charges, while Westpac has warned that geopolitical uncertainty and the associated increase in market volatility have affected its earnings.

Fidelity International’s Australian analyst and portfolio manager, Zara Lyons, told AAP this set of results would likely be strong in terms of business credit and mortgage growth.

“It’s a bit of a mixed bag, but I would have said, had we not had the energy situation, that the banks had been in very good health coming into this period,” she said.

“The outlook is looking a little less shiny than it did.

“But I still think that they are very resilient and should be able to navigate this world.”

Josh Gilbert, lead Australia-Pacific market analyst for eToro, said the Reserve Bank’s back-to-back rate hikes in 2026 were, on paper, a tailwind for bank margins.

“But higher rates are a double-edged sword – they lift margins on one side of the ledger while squeezing the borrowers on the other, and that is where the pressure starts to build on provisioning and credit quality,” he said.

Bank watchers will be looking at how far they lean into provisioning – the size of the buffers they put aside for losses they have not yet seen.

“If the banks are leaning in hard, that is management signalling what they’re seeing in the household and business book,” Mr Gilbert said.

They would also look at net interest margins, a key measure of profitability, and capital returns, Mr Gilbert said.

Westpac, he noted, was sitting on surplus capital and had the biggest pile of franking credits in the sector, which put a special dividend firmly on the table.

“The results, as ever, will be important, but what management says about the road ahead will likely matter more,” he added.

“The market is clearly bracing for cautious tones across the sector.”

ANZ will lead off with its results on Friday after making a $1.94 billion cash profit in the first quarter, followed by NAB ($2.02 billion) on May 4, and Westpac ($1.9 billion) on May 5.

Commonwealth Bank will issue its third-quarter update on May 13.

Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD’s quarterly profit has fallen at its fastest pace since 2020, ‌a stock market filing shows, hit by sluggish sales at home and intensifying competition.

The world’s biggest EV ‌seller, known for its focus on budget models priced under 150,000 yuan ($A30,600), is under pressure from rivals including Geely and Leapmotor.

BYD’s first-quarter net profit dropped 55.4 per cent from a year earlier to $US599.46 million ($A836.67 million), deepening a 38.2 per cent fall in the fourth quarter, the data showed.

Revenue fell 11.8 per cent, extending a ‌declining streak to ‌a third straight ⁠quarter.

“BYD needs domestic sales volumes to pick up sequentially in Q2 and see ​a more sustained rebound and market share recovery in Q3 for overall profits to improve,” said Eugene Hsiao, head of China equity strategy at Macquarie Capital.

Pressure has mounted as China scales back trade-in subsidies for entry-level electric cars and plug-in hybrids.

BYD’s overall sales declined for a seventh straight month in March despite sustained strong growth ⁠in overseas shipments.

As its domestic sales ‌face a ​prolonged slump, BYD is aggressively targeting international markets with a focus on advanced technology or manufacturing localisation.

The biggest ​Chinese competitor to ‌Tesla has said it is confident of reaching its 2026 overseas sales target of 1.5 million vehicles ​or even higher, implying growth of more than 40 per cent from 2025 although it has not disclosed an overall sales target.

Vincent Sun, an analyst at Morningstar, projected BYD’s exports would rise 25 per cent to 30 per cent ​this ​year while total vehicle sales are expected ​to grow about 12 per cent.

However, Hsiao said overseas sales may ‌not be enough to fully offset domestic weakness if current sales trends continue.

Seeking to regain its technological edge, BYD is doubling down on ultra-fast charging technology, aiming to lure drivers loyal to petrol-powered cars by easing charging time concerns.

BYD kicked off pre-sales for its Datang full-size electric SUV at the Beijing car show on ​Friday, joining a growing list of Chinese car makers targeting the higher-end segment and stepping up competition with ​European premium brands.

Energy, housing and resources projects will be fast-tracked under an Albanese government bid to remove a “layer of bureaucracy” by speeding up approvals.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will on Wednesday announce more than $45 million over the next four years to progress environmental bilateral agreements with states and territories to remove approval duplication.

The funding will be provided to encourage governments across the country to prioritise signing on to new assessment and approval agreements with the Commonwealth.

State and territory leaders who sign a new deal with the federal government will be allowed to assess proposals and green-light them on behalf of the Commonwealth.

In a speech to the Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA in Perth on Wednesday, Mr Albanese will point to median approval times for projects under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act blowing out from 48 weeks 20 years ago to 118 weeks now.

The drawn-out process resulted in investors walking away from projects and communities missing out, the prime minister will say.

“This will fast-track new energy, housing and resources projects by combining federal and state approvals, effectively removing an entire layer of bureaucracy from the process,” he will say.

“So instead of a two-stage, two-track process, with that all the cost of delays and doubling up, this will be a one-step process, with one, clearer, faster, yes or no.

“After too many wasted years, this can be a circuit-breaker – if the states step up and sign up.”

Labor’s environmental protection reform was passed by parliament in November 2025.

The changes seek to increase efficiency in project assessments and provide greater transparency in decision making.

The prime minister will also say as a result of the conflict in the Middle East, building national resilience will be a key focus of the May budget, to be handed down in two weeks’ time.

“It will be our government’s most important budget to date – and our most ambitious,” he will say.

“The challenges confronting our nation right now demand that ambition – and so too do the opportunities ahead of us.”

The Iran war may be in its ninth week but its impact on the Australian economy has yet to materially show up in hard data.

That changes on Wednesday.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics is likely to reveal fuel prices surged by 35 per cent in March, pushing headline inflation up to 4.7 per cent, according to economists at ANZ Bank.

However, the Reserve Bank, which was concerned about inflation before the conflict, will pay closer attention to quarterly inflation figures also released on Wednesday.

The bank’s preferred gauge of underlying inflation, the quarterly trimmed mean, is likely to show a 0.9 per cent rise, lifting annual growth from 3.4 per cent to 3.6 per cent, predict ANZ economists Madeline Dunk and Adam Boyton.

“For the RBA, the quarterly data is likely to affirm the underlying inflation pressures evident in the economy before the escalation of the Middle East conflict in late February,” they said.

“We continue to expect the RBA will hike 25 basis points in May, taking the cash rate to 4.35 per cent.”

Markets are pricing in the chance of a rate hike on Tuesday at about three-quarters, with two hikes fully priced in by Christmas.

Although fuel will be trimmed out from the underlying figure, it pushes other fast-growing expenditure items back down into the basket, mechanically pushing up core inflation.

In February, the RBA had forecast the trimmed mean to hit 3.7 per cent in June.

Headline inflation will also receive a significant leg up from electricity prices, which are set to record a jump of about 20 per cent quarter-on-quarter as a result of government subsidies rolling off, economists at JP Morgan said.

With follow-on effects of the oil shock set to hit even harder in following months, the clear risk is that inflation will exceed the RBA’s forecast.

Tackling inflation isn’t the central bank’s only concern.

Equally important is ensuring inflation expectations remain anchored; that is, people expect inflation to return to target over the medium term.

ANZ and Roy Morgan’s weekly inflation expectations index, which asks respondents how high they expect inflation to be in two years’ time, came in at 6.6 per cent on Tuesday.

While it remains an uncomfortably high reading for the RBA, it was the lowest rate since early March, when the government announced it was cutting the fuel excise.

Hollywood star Rebel Wilson is set to spend a second day in the spotlight after denying repeated accusations that she was lying during a fiery defamation battle with her co-star.

The Pitch Perfect star is being sued by Charlotte MacInnes, the 27-year-old lead actor of the musical comedy The Deb.

MacInnes claims she was defamed by Wilson in social media posts that suggested she is a liar who retracted a sexual harassment complaint to further her acting and music career.

Wilson claims the young actor confided that she felt uncomfortable after the film’s co-producer Amanda Ghost asked her to have a shower and a bath together in September 2023.

“I was pretty shocked by it,” Wilson told the Federal Court during the first day of her evidence on Tuesday.

“I took it as a sexual harassment complaint.”

Work had been underway on The Deb for years and shooting was just weeks away at the time, the actor told the court.

“This is a fun girl-power movie and the worst thing that could have fallen into my lap at that point was a sexual harassment complaint,” she said.

The conversation allegedly occurred a day after MacInnes shared a bath with Ms Ghost in their swimwear in a bid to warm up after the producer suffered a medical episode at Bondi Beach.

MacInnes denies making a complaint to Wilson and insists she never said she felt uncomfortable.

The Bridesmaid star says she asked the young actor if she was alright and reported the matter to another producer before escalating it higher at a later date.

She will continue to give evidence on Wednesday, when she is expected to be grilled about the aftermath of the alleged complaint.

In her affidavit, the first-time director wrote that she overheard the producer and young star saying things of a sexual nature to each other, which MacInnes has rejected as untrue.

It is likely Wilson will face questioning about a claim MacInnes made in her own sworn statement that the older actor had directed a cyber attack on her social media accounts.

MacInnes alleges her Snapchat account was breached and there was an attempted breach of her Facebook account just days after she filed legal proceedings against Wilson in September last year.

The hack led to a nude photo of her being leaked to all of her contacts, she claims.

“I believe that this was orchestrated by Rebel,” she wrote in her affidavit.

There has not yet been evidence aired in open court to support her claim and Wilson has not been quizzed about it.

The United Arab Emirates says it is quitting oil-producers’ group OPEC as an unprecedented energy crisis triggered by the Iran war exposes discord ‌among Gulf countries.

The loss of the UAE, a longstanding OPEC member, could create disarray and weaken the group, which has usually sought to show a ‌united front despite internal disagreements over a range of issues from geopolitics to production quotas.

UAE Energy Minister Suhail Mohamed al-Mazrouei told Reuters the decision was ‌taken after a careful look at the regional power’s energy strategies.

Asked whether the UAE consulted with OPEC’s de-facto leader Saudi Arabia, he said the UAE did not raise the issue with any other country.

“This is a policy decision, it has been done after a careful look at current and future policies related to level of production,” the energy minister said.

The country will withdraw from the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries effective May 1, the state news agency WAM said on Tuesday.

The UAE’s decision had been rumoured as a possibility for some time, as it pushed back in recent years against OPEC production quotas it felt had been too low – meaning it was not able to sell as much oil to the world as it had wanted.

OPEC Gulf producers have already been struggling to ship exports through the Strait of ‌Hormuz, a choke point between ‌Iran and Oman through ⁠which a fifth of the world’s crude oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes, because of ​Iranian threats and attacks against vessels.

Mazrouei said the move, in which the UAE will also leave the OPEC+ grouping, would not have a huge effect on the market because of the situation in the strait.

The UAE’s exit from OPEC is likely to be welcomed by US President Donald Trump, who in a 2018 address to the United Nations General Assembly accused the organisation of “ripping off the rest of the world” by inflating oil prices.

Trump has also ⁠linked US military support for the Gulf with oil prices, saying that while the ‌US defends ​OPEC members they “exploit this by imposing high oil prices”.

The move came after the UAE, a regional business and financial hub and one of the United States’ ​most important allies, criticised ‌fellow Arab states for not doing enough to protect it from numerous Iranian attacks during the war.

Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic adviser for ​the UAE president, criticised the Arab and Gulf response to the Iranian attacks in a session at the Gulf Influencers Forum on Monday.

“The Gulf Cooperation Council countries supported each other logistically but politically and militarily, I think their position has been the weakest historically,” ​Gargash ​said.

“I expect this weak stance from the Arab League ​and I am not surprised by it but I haven’t expected it ‌from the (Gulf) Cooperation Council and I am surprised by it,” he said.

Mazrouei noted the UAE has been a member of OPEC and OPEC+ for a long time but he said the world would demand more energy, suggesting his country’s move will help meet those needs.

The UAE’s exit comes as global spare capacity hovers at historically low levels, leaving the oil market increasingly tight.

Ultimately, the UAE views its exit from the bloc as ​a net positive for consumers and the ⁠broader global economy, ensuring a more responsive and reliable energy supply.

with DPA and AP

The United Arab Emirates has announced it will leave the oil cartel OPEC and its wider OPEC+ group effective on May 1, a move rumoured for some time as the Emirates chaffed under production restrictions and increasingly had frostier relations with neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

The UAE had been a longtime member of OPEC, first through its emirate of Abu Dhabi in 1967 and later when the UAE became its own country in 1971.

But the UAE has been increasingly trying to leverage its own foreign policy in the Middle East that has contradicted some positions of Riyadh over time – particularly as Saudi Arabia began to directly challenge the Emirates in trying to draw foreign investments as the kingdom opened up under assertive Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The UAE made the announcement via its state-run WAM news agency.

“This decision reflects the UAE’s long-term strategic and economic vision and evolving energy profile, including accelerated investment in domestic energy production, and reinforces its commitment to a responsible, reliable, and forward-looking role in global energy markets,” the UAE said on Tuesday.

“Following its exit, the UAE will continue to act responsibly, bringing additional production to market in a gradual and measured manner, aligned with demand and market conditions,” the country said.

Saudi Arabia long has been considered a heavyweight of OPEC, an oil cartel based in Vienna that has seen some of its market power wane as the United States increased its production of crude oil in recent years.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE increasingly have competed over economic issues and regional politics, particularly in the Red Sea area. 

The two countries had joined in together in a coalition to fight against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels in 2015. 

However, that coalition broke down into recriminations in December 2025, when Saudi Arabia bombed what it described as a weapons shipment bound for Yemeni separatists backed by the UAE.

Saudi broadcasters long based in Dubai, the economic hub of the UAE, have pulled back to the kingdom in recent months as well as the tensions rose.

China’s top leadership is pledging to strengthen the nation’s energy security and respond to ‌external shocks by continuing to pursue a policy of rapid technological development and greater ‌control over supply chains to strengthen economic self-sufficiency.

The Politburo, a top decision-making body ‌of the ruling Communist Party, was cited on Tuesday as saying by state news agency Xinhua that the economy got off to a better-than-expected start in 2026.

The Xinhua readout did not mention the US-Israeli war on Iran, but said: “We must systematically respond ‌to external shocks and ‌challenges, ⁠improve energy resource security guarantee levels and counter various uncertainties ​with the certainty of high-quality development.”

The phrase “high-quality development” refers to the pursuit of scientific and technological progress with the goal of moving China higher on the value-added ladder.

China’s economy grew five per cent in the first quarter, at the top of its full-year ⁠target range of 4.5 per cent to ‌five per cent, ​showing higher resilience than most other economies to the energy and commodity shocks caused ​by the Iran ‌war.

Analysts say ample oil reserves, heavy use of coal and high adoption ​of solar, wind and electric vehicles have given China better chances of weathering the closure of the Strait of Hormuz than many European ​or ​Asian economies.

But China is not ​immune to the fallout from the ‌conflict.

Soaring energy and raw materials prices threaten to drive up production costs and squeeze already thin margins at factories that employ hundreds of millions of people.

And the economic hit taken by other countries could slow demand for ​Chinese exports.

Shipments grew just 2.5 per cent in March, slowing sharply from 21.8 per cent in ​the January-February ⁠period.