Ship-in homes receive show of faith from big four bank
Australia's largest mortgage lender is funding the construction of a new 21,900 square metre factory on the Sunshine Coast for Oly Homes – set to be built in the second half of 2026. Once built, the factory will help lift Oly Homes' annual average from 200 homes to about 550 a year.
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AU Financial Review
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AI agent boom powers two-year-old Sydney start-up to $200m valuation
Lorikeet, a two-year-old Sydney start-up that is making waves globally in the red-hot artificial intelligence agent market, has doubled its valuation since February in a $54 million funding round that values it at more than $200 million. Canva founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht were among the investors in the latest round, which was led by US-based firm QED Investors. Venture capital groups Blackbird Ventures and Square Peg Capital also participated, as well as the founders of Australian fintech Airwallex.
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Global profits plunge amid Trump's latest tariffs — what's at stake for Australia?
Some of the largest and wealthiest companies in the world have reported losses equalling US$15 billion ($23.1 billion) this quarter, as the United States' latest tariffs eat into global profits. Meanwhile, the Australian economy is showing "mixed" results, which experts say could leave the country in a vulnerable position. Felicity Deane, professor of trade law and taxation at Queensland University of Technology, said the tariffs have "thrown out the door" decades-old trade agreements, raising questions about what happens next. Here's what to know. Which sectors have been affected? A majority of the losses caused by the US tariffs have come from the industrial, manufacturing and automotive sectors, while financial and technology sectors have been less affected. Companies like Caterpillar, Yum Brands, Molson Coors and Marriott are among those experiencing tariff-related losses. Deane said complex supply chains and legalities mean tariffs can be inconsistent in their impact on pricing. "While some sectors that rely on importing raw resources, like manufacturing, will obviously be impacted, it can be harder to tell how other sectors may be affected," she told SBS News. "Different countries may have differing definitions of their products, which can also change how customs classify imports, and therefore tariffs themselves. "For instance, a taxable product in one country, by definition, might not be in another." Deane said while it is hard to discern, Trump's rationale behind the tariffs is that he wants to bring back investment and manufacturing to the US. "He's saying the way to do this is through tariffs. And that he feels the United States is treated unfairly by its trading partners," she said. What impact is Trump having on the US economy? Luke Hartigan, a lecturer in economics at the University of Sydney, told SBS News the US economy is dealing with a lot of uncertainty. "I think there's always a risk of a recession, and Trump's approach to people could also harm the economy," he said. Earlier this week, Trump fired the commissioner of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after the department revised down recent job numbers by more than 250,000. Despite a lack of evidence, Trump said the figures were "rigged" to make his administration "look bad". Hartigan said this was "deeply concerning". "What this says is that Trump is not happy with the figures being provided, and that he would rather accuse the BLS of cooking the books rather than acknowledging the data that didn't suit him," he said. "What's deeply concerning about that is that if he puts in someone who's just looking to please Trump, they may want to mess with the data. "Then we're in a world of very bad outcomes because you don't know what's happening in the economy." While the threat of recession and surprise dismissals might make investors uneasy, the impacts on Australia appear limited. What does this mean for Australia? Flavio Menezes, a professor of economics at The University of Queensland, said any impact from these tariffs would be "indirect" for Australia. "The broader and more significant impact is likely to be indirect — stemming from how these tariffs affect China, Australia's main trading partner, and subsequently other key partners such as the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, and South Korea," he told SBS News. "The full extent of these ripple effects remains largely unresolved." While the cost of groceries and household goods will largely remain the same, you could experience changes to your superannuation which is tied to foreign stock markets. But for now, Australia's economic picture is "mixed", Menezes said. "Unemployment has edged up slightly but remains at historically low levels. Inflation has returned to within the RBA's target band, and while economic growth continues, it is modest."
7NEWS
9 hours ago
- 7NEWS
China used to fine couples for having too many babies. Now it can't pay them enough
Zane Li was nine years old when he got a baby sister — and her arrival plunged the family in a small city in eastern China into crippling debt. Under China's stringent one-child policy at the time, Li's parents were fined 100,000 yuan (about $A21,440) for having a second child — nearly three times their annual income from selling fish at the local market. 'We were barely able to survive,' Li recalled. The then third-grader was forced to grow up overnight, taking on most of the housework and spending school holidays helping his mother at her stall. Now 25, Li says he has no plans to have children — a stance increasingly common for his generation and something that worries China's government as it tries to avert a population crisis of its own making. For decades, officials pressured couples to have fewer children, through hefty fines, forced abortions and sterilisations, only to now plead with Li's generation to make more babies. Last week, in the latest push to boost flagging birth rates, China announced it would offer parents an annual subsidy of 3600 yuan ($A772) for every child until age three, effective retroactively from January 1. But for many young adults like Li, the offer falls flat. 'The cost of raising a child is enormous, and 3600 yuan a year is a mere drop in the bucket,' said Li, who took out a student loan to study for a master's degree in health services in Beijing. Raising a child to the age of 18 costs an average of 538,000 yuan ($A115,345) in China, more than six times its GDP per capita — making it one of the most expensive places in the world to have children in relative terms, according to a recent study by the Beijing-based YuWa Population Research Institute. In Shanghai, the cost soars past 1 million yuan, with Beijing close behind at 936,000 yuan. '(Having kids) would only bring more hardship,' said Li, who's anxious about his job prospects and contemplating pursuing a PhD. 'I'm not a capitalist or anything, and my kid probably wouldn't have much of a good life either.' Such a dim outlook on future parenthood — fueled by China's slowing economy and soaring youth unemployment — presents a major hurdle to the government's push for young people to get married and have children. Faced with a shrinking workforce and a rapidly aging population, China scrapped its one-child policy in 2016, allowing couples to have two children, then three in 2021. But birth rates have continued to slide. The population has now been shrinking for three consecutive years despite a modest rebound in births last year, and experts are now warning of an even sharper decline. From fines to subsidies The newly announced national childcare subsidy marks a significant step in China's pro-birth campaign. For years, local authorities have experimented with a raft of incentives — from tax breaks, housing perks and cash handouts to extended maternity leave. Now, the central government is taking the lead with a standardised, nationwide program, allocating 90 billion yuan ($A19.2 billion) in subsidies expected to benefit 20 million families this year. 'It's no longer just a local experiment,' Emma Zang, a demographer and sociology professor at Yale University, said. 'It's a signal that the government sees the birth rate crisis as urgent and national. 'The message is clear: we're not just telling you to have babies, we are finally putting some money on the table.' The new scheme, which also offers partial subsidies for children under three born prior to 2025, has been welcomed by eligible parents, but Zang said it's unlikely to move the needle on the fertility rate. Similar policies have largely failed to boost births in other East Asian societies like Japan and South Korea, she added. For many Chinese young people grappling with unattainable housing prices, long workdays and a precarious job market, the subsidy doesn't even begin to address the deep-seated anxieties that underpin their reluctance to start a family. 'It's really not just about the cost. Many young adults are sceptical about the future, such as job security, aging parents, social pressure, so a cash handout doesn't address the emotional fatigue people are facing these days,' Zang said. The irony of the shift from fining parents for unsanctioned births to subsidising them to have more children is not lost on China's millennials and Gen Zs — especially those who have witnessed the harsh penalties of the one-child policy firsthand. On Chinese social media, some users have posted photos of old receipts showing the fines their parents once paid for giving birth to them or their siblings. Among them is Gao, who grew up in the remote mountains of Guizhou and asked to only be identified by her family name. The southwestern province is one of China's poorest and was among the many areas granted a carve-out under the one-child policy, allowing rural couples a second child if their firstborn was a girl — a concession to the country's traditional preference for sons. Like her two older sisters, Gao was sent to live with her grandmother shortly after she was born to hide from family planning officials, so that her parents could keep trying for a boy. They went on to have four daughters before finally having a son. Now living in the eastern province of Jiangsu, Gao, 27, says she has no interest in marriage or raising children. 'Knowing that I can't provide a child with a good environment for education and life, choosing not to have one is also an act of kindness,' she said. 'I definitely don't want my child to grow up like me … with no chance of upward mobility and struggling at the bottom of society, just as I have.' Fading optimism For decades, as China's economy boomed and living standards improved, generations of young people had grown up with the belief that they would live a better life than their parents. That optimism is now fading. Today, many youngsters raised on the promise of upward mobility through hard work and education are growing disillusioned: property prices have soared beyond their reach, and a university degree no longer guarantees a good job — with coveted opportunities increasingly going to those with family connections. There is a growing sense of futility that their relentless effort yields only diminishing returns in an ever more competitive society — a trend summed up by the popular buzzword 'involution', a term borrowed from sociology to describe a self-defeating spiral of excessive competition. In response, many are choosing to 'lie flat' — another catchphrase that refers to opting out of the grind of meeting society's expectations, including marriage and child-rearing. June Zhao, 29, grew up in a middle-class family in one of the most 'involuted' places in China: Beijing's Haidian district. Home to three million people and many of the nation's top universities, Haidian is equally famous for its hyper-competitive approach to raising children. Zhao started attending tutoring classes every weekend in third grade — and she was already a few years behind her peers. After finishing her bachelor and postgraduate degrees overseas, Zhao returned to Beijing to work in investor relations. She says the immense pressure she grew up with — and still feels — has played a big part in her decision not to have children. 'The cost is simply too high and the returns too low,' she said. 'In general, I have a rather pessimistic outlook on life — I've put in so much, yet received very little in return.' Zhao considers herself lucky — her job rarely demands much overtime. Even so, she struggles to imagine finding the time to raise a child. After commuting and eating dinner, she has just two or three hours of free time each day before going to bed. It would be even harder for her friends trapped in the '996' grind of working from 9am to 9pm, six days a week, she said. Like many of her contemporaries, Gao simply is not optimistic about the life she could provide for a child, or the society it would be born into. 'You only feel the urge to have children when you believe the days to come will be good,' she said. Then there's the longstanding gender imbalance in child-rearing, along with the physical and emotional toll it takes on women. In Zhao's case, it was her mother who had to juggle having a full-time job and helping her with homework, or escorting her to tutoring classes. 'I saw firsthand how hard it was for my mother to raise me,' she said. 'I know for a fact that women bear a much heavier burden and cost than men when it comes to raising a family.' As the fertility rate drops, the ruling Communist Party has emphasised women's domestic role as a 'virtuous wife and good mother' —– touting it as a cherished part of China's traditional culture and essential to the 'healthy growth of the next generation'. Officials have exhorted women to establish a 'correct outlook on marriage, childbirth and family'. Zang, the demographer, said it's simply unrealistic to expect women to have more children without addressing the real barriers they face. 'You can't turn back the clock and hope that women will just embrace more traditional roles,' she said. 'Today's young women are highly educated, career oriented, and want more equality. 'Unless policies support that reality through things like paternity leave, workplace protection and flexible jobs, fertility rates won't rebound. 'The government wants more babies, but society isn't structured to support families. 'Right now, parenting looks like a trap, especially for women. Until that changes, subsidies won't be enough.'
