PM calls to tone down rhetoric; cars spying on owners; value of an Olympic medal

PM calls to tone down rhetoric; cars spying on owners; value of an Olympic medal

News in brief

Macquarie Group gave investors a briefing yesterday and focused on its Australian business. It sent out a warning to the big four banks – Macquarie is after their home loan and deposit markets.

 

National Disability Insurance Scheme providers are falsely advertising products, breaching contracts and charging for services they never provide, to an extent that threatens participants' safety in the scheme that services 751,000 Australians, according to the competition watchdog.

 

Australia’s Privacy Commissioner is looking into whether cars with internet connections are spying on their drivers. The Commissioner has launched investigations into two carmakers over potential breaches of privacy laws.

 

Big tech giant Alphabet is looking to sell a 100-year bond – essentially an IOU that will take 100 years to pay back – as it looks for new ways to fund its huge investment spree.

 

The medals being handed out at the Winter Olympics in Italy are the most valuable ever awarded in the history of the Games, thanks to surging gold and silver prices.

Fear-o-meter

Macquarie Group’s management team made it clear yesterday that its Australian banking unit is coming after the big four.

 

And they are doing a very good job at winning share – 6.8 per cent of the mortgage market which is five times what it was a decade ago. And 6.3 per cent of the deposit market, which is double what it was five years ago.

 

One of Macquarie’s big advantages is that it doesn’t have to be all things to all people, like the big banks do. Also, it doesn’t have anywhere near the legacy systems of the other four.

 

Macquarie puts competition into the market, and that’s good for customers.

 

Commonwealth Bank is reporting its results today. It is, arguably, the most important earnings announcement of the half year because the bank knows how the economy is running. We should get an insight into just how competitive Macquarie, and the banking market, is.

Fear & Greed Q+A today

Neara is Australia's newest unicorn, having just raised $90 million, valuing the tech company at more than $1 billion. It aims to tackle one of the biggest challenges for the AI boom: the extraordinary power demands of data centres:

 

“Power comes from two things. It comes from generating assets — solar, wind, gas, historically coal — and it comes from the electricity network that transports that generation to the people who need it, like data centres.

 

Over the last five to ten years, the constraints around generation have come down dramatically. Renewables are much cheaper, and generation can be brought online relatively easily. The problem hasn’t been generation. The problem has been whether there’s enough network capacity to move that power to new, very large users.

 

Data centre developers are running around the world trying to find places where generation is available and the grid can support them. What we’ve discovered is that the number one thing slowing down data centres — in Australia and everywhere else — is access to energy, and specifically access to the electricity network.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called on the Greens to lower the temperature when it comes to Australia’s relationship with Israel and the Middle East, saying he won’t walk away from the visit of Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog. The PM also called for more nuance in the debate over conflict in the Middle East, adding that discussion wasn’t helped by people thinking they had to support one side of the other, comparing the debate to a football game. Albanese was talking after Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown demanded the PM condemn what she called police violence in Sydney on Monday night during pro-Palestinian protests. She also called on the PM to send Herzog home.

Greed-o-meter

City	ULP 91 price
Sydney	$1.60
Melbourne	$1.63
Brisbane	$1.65
Perth	$1.60
Adelaide	$1.56
Canberra	$1.82
Hobart	$1.67
Darwin	$1.79

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It's a good time to fill up the car. Petrol prices are very low right now, after the price of oil dropped a few weeks back. It may not be the case for long though, with crude prices climbing again, largely due to tension between Iran and the US.

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Source: fuelprice.io