Business, consumers feel squeeze; big tech’s ‘global reckoning’; cricket sale shake-up
Published: September 08, 2026
Business, consumers feel squeeze; big tech’s ‘global reckoning’; cricket sale shake-up
News in brief
The Albanese government is taking on big tech, proposing rules that would let users choose feeds free from algorithmic curation. Companies could face penalties of more than $100 million, with Communications Minister Anika Wells declaring a “global reckoning is coming for big tech”.
Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix and Spotify could face billions of dollars in additional Australian tax bills after an ATO ruling that some payments to overseas parent companies can be treated as royalties. The US strongly disagrees with the interpretation and a court challenge is expected.
Australian AI infrastructure company Firmus has signed OpenAI as a major customer for two Malaysian data centres. The deal comes as Firmus reportedly considers an ASX float valuing it at between $20 billion and $30 billion.
Australian cricket is heading for a major shake-up, with states given the green light to sell stakes in their Big Bash League teams. New investors could potentially rename teams, change colours and overhaul some of the competition’s best-known clubs.
Gen Z knows networking matters, but many young Australians are reluctant to do it. LinkedIn research found 61% aren’t actively engaging with their professional community, with fears about bothering people or being judged among the biggest barriers.
The US-Canada trade war is escalating, with Canada imposing new tariffs on about $20 billion of American goods after negotiations collapsed. The bigger threat is further escalation, with Donald Trump threatening additional tariffs on Canadian cars.
Fear-o-meter
Nvidia boss Jensen Huang claims that the launch of OpenAI's new Astra model heralds the arrival of AGI - Artificial General Intelligence. Professor James Bailey from Monash University says he might be going off a little early:
“Jensen Huang may yet be proved right, but this launch doesn't show that AGI has arrived.
“Today's AI systems are strikingly broad and on some tasks they beat us, but breadth is not the same as general intelligence. An AGI system that deserved the name would cope with problems it hadn't seen before, learn from its mistakes and correct them, see a long, messy project through without much supervision and do all of this while weighing conflicting goals against social norms and the law, as people do.
“At the same time, the progress is significant. A doctor with no coding background can now build a working application prototype over a weekend. A tenant can drop a 50-page lease into a chatbot and find out which clauses need a lawyer. Researchers are using AI to speed up discovery, teachers to tailor lessons to individual pupils, engineers to attack problems that were simply too big to model before.
“My own view is that AI will mostly extend us rather than replace us. Machines can search, calculate and compare at a scale no person can match. People decide what's worth doing, judge what the results mean and carry the responsibility. The gains come from putting the two together, not from a contest between them.
“Benchmarks, demos and vast quantities of compute tell us the field is moving fast. They don't tell us AGI is here. What we have is already powerful and useful and likely to be transformative. These are grounds for optimism, so long as we're clear about what it can't yet do and are careful about how we use it.”
Fear & Greed Q+A today
On why this El Nino could be the strongest on record, and what it means for businesses and households:
“The projections at the moment for the peak are +3.5, and we've never seen that deviation before. And the big historical events that we can think of, Ash Wednesday, that was coming off an El Nino that was you know +2.2 in 1982 and 83. The fires around 2015, South Australia had fires, Victoria had fires as well. That was about +2.6. So +3.5 is a significant event and... we've not quite seen it. So what we're doing is just talking to everybody about it, making sure they know what's happening and they can start to plan.
“Farmers will probably already be preparing for a very dry summer and probably already bake that in... they're probably already planning for drought conditions, for extreme heat conditions and lower production. So there is a potential that household costs around food go up just because of lack of production.
"The other interesting thing, how it plays out in the energy market, is it touches multiple parts of the energy market at the same time. So from a hydropower perspective... we might have reduced stream flow, which has a cascading impact on power generation.”
There are fresh signs Australia’s economy is losing momentum. NAB’s latest survey shows business conditions turned negative in August for the first time in six years, while confidence fell for a second straight month. Profitability dropped to its weakest level since the pandemic, with businesses facing costs rising faster than the prices they can charge customers.
Households are struggling too. The Westpac-Melbourne Institute consumer sentiment index fell 5.2%, and is down sharply compared to a year ago. Mortgage holders were particularly gloomy, with sentiment plunging.
And there could be more pain ahead. RBA chief economist Sarah Hunter says inflation risks remain tilted to the upside, pointing to oil prices, rents and services. Westpac is now forecasting another rate rise in November, meaning all four big banks expect the RBA to hike again this year.
Greed-o-meter
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Bond yields surged over the last couple of weeks, and on Friday strong US jobs data increased expectations of a Federal Reserve rate hike this month. But according to Bloomberg, the sell-off has been largely contained to bonds, with sharemarkets proving remarkably resilient.