CSL's $22b fall; unions vs business in Canberra; sentiment soars
Published: August 19, 2025
CSL's $22b fall; unions vs business in Canberra; sentiment soars
News in brief
Unions have clashed with business leaders on day one of the economic reform roundtable in Canberra, after union bosses pushed for a new tax on businesses to fund worker training. One employer group labelled the proposal a “crock of shit.”
Australian consumer sentiment has surged to its highest level in over three years, lifted by a series of rate cuts and easing cost-of-living pressures. The Westpac-Melbourne Institute survey shows households reported less anxiety about finances and greater confidence in the economy over the next year.
Woolworths is stepping up the supermarket price war against Coles and Aldi, expanding its “lowest shelf price” campaign to nearly 700 grocery items.
Australian tech darling Canva’s valuation has been given a boost to almost $65 billion, after venture capital firm Blackbird revalued its stake following the blockbuster IPO of rival Figma in the US.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he is ready for a face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, followed by a trilateral summit with US President Donald Trump. The development comes after talks at the White House with Trump and European leaders.
Fear-o-meter
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese delivered an opening address at the economic reform roundtable in Canberra, setting out his hopes for the next three days, and delivering what some initially believed to be a thinly-veiled swipe at RBA Governor Michele Bullock, who was only a few seats away. The PM's office insist it wasn't directed at her.
It’s about lifting living standards of Australians. That’s what it’s about, lifting people up. We are quite proud of the effort, and I think that Jim [Chalmers] and Katie [Gallagher] in particular deserve extraordinary credit for the fact that we meet at a time where our economy is growing, where unemployment fell last week down to 4.2 per cent, where inflation has been got under control, where we’ve had three interest rate decreases so far this year, and where real wages are growing.”
There are some economists, perhaps some in this room, who thought that you couldn’t get inflation down without getting unemployment up. Well, that’s not my government’s way. My government is focused on looking after people on the economic journey.”
Fear & Greed Q+A today
Can BHP continue its dominance as its focus shifts from iron ore to copper?
BHP CFO Vandita Pant spoke to Ausbiz about yesterday's full-year results, showing a 26pc drop in the miner's underlying profit. But there's a lot of optimism about iron ore, potash, and copper, and also how the company will benefit from the AI boom:
"AI is continuing to be a very exciting avenue. One angle for BHP is that that is giving huge demand for data centres, which are very copper intensive. So this is giving another positive driver of demand to the copper demand, which we are very excited about being the largest copper producer in the world.
And second is what can AI do for our own operations, be it in safety, be it in quality of decisions because we have better data, be it in exploring resources or in our value chain. So we remain very excited about the potential that AI has around making our resources better explored, better mined and through the value chain."
It’s Wednesday the 20th of August. After six consecutive record-setting sessions, the local sharemarket slumped yesterday, led by a massive fall in Australia's third largest company. Shares in CSL experienced their biggest one-day fall ever, as the biotech giant announced a major restructure and almost 3,000 job cuts. The company's share price fell almost 17pc, wiping $22 billion off its market cap.
Greed-o-meter
| Industry | Annual wage growth (%) |
|---|---|
| Utilities | 5.0 |
| Health care & social assistance | 3.9 |
| IT & telco | 3.9 |
| Public administration & safety | 3.7 |
| Education & training | 3.6 |
| Transport, postal & warehousing | 3.5 |
| All industries | 3.4 |
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Last week's wage data showed growth easing slightly, but real wages are continuing to pick up. So which industries have seen above-average increases? The top six are below. At the other end, finance and insurance came in at 2.6pc, and retail at 2.9pc.
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Source: ABS and AMP
Business By Numbers
The top 3 numbers to know for the week, brought to you by Xero
17pc: the drop in CSL's share price yesterday, the largest one-day fall ever for the biotech giant.
24: the number of participants at the economic reform roundtable in Canberra, tasked with fixing Australia's productivity crisis.
$110: how much Woolworths claims families can save on their weekly shop, after cutting prices in the latest round of grocery price wars.