Major banks and miners jump in broad market rally
The benchmark ASX 200 gained 60 points or 0.69 per cent to finish trading on Wednesday at 8,737.20, while the broader All Ordinaries climbed 59.90 points or 0.67 per cent to close at 9,001.49.
Australia's dollar rose 0.13 per cent and at the time of writing was buying 65.62 US cents.
In an agreement between the US and Japan, the US will impose a 15 per cent levy on Japanese imports, down from 25 per cent. Japan in return will invest $US550bn into the United States.
Stocks on Japan's Nikkei index rallied and the yen leapt on the news the country was able to sort a trade deal with Mr Trump, including on the critical car manufacturing sector.
Last year, cars shipped to the US were around 28 per cent of Japan's 21.3 trillion yen of total exports to the world's largest economy.
Global X senior investment strategist Billy Leung said Japanese equities hit a record high on Wednesday on the back of the announcement.
'This isn't just about a one-day rally. Japan is the world's largest robot manufacturing country and its role in global tech supply chains especially in high-precision manufacturing and automation makes it a key beneficiary of both tariff clarity and the broader reconfiguration of US-aligned production,' he said
Australia's sharemarket followed with 10 of the 11 sectors gaining, led by the miners, banks and energy sector.
The big three iron ore miners all finished in the green, with BHP up 0.9 per cent to $41.85, Rio Tinto gaining 1 per cent to $119.47 and Fortescue gaining 2.3 per cent to $18.21.
Woodside Energy shares were up 1.45 per cent to $25.21, Yancoal Australia jumped 2.81 per cent to $6.58 and Whitehaven Coal soared 6.53 per cent to $7.18.
On an overall strong day for the financial sector, three of the four major banks gained during Wednesday's trading.
Commonwealth Bank shares finished 0.51 per cent higher trading at $173.30, Westpac shares gained 1.41 per cent to $33.11 and ANZ soared 2.52 per cent to $30.57.
NAB slipped 0.05 per cent to $37.20.
In company news, shares in Telix Pharmaceuticals plunged 15.13 per cent to $21.32 after it told the market it had received a subpoena from the US Securities and Exchange Commission for various documents primarily related to the company's disclosure regarding its prostate cancer therapy.
Shares in Australia's top fuel retailer Ampol Limited rallied 3.27 per cent to $27.77 despite telling the market it forecasts weaker half yearly earnings on the back of sea-freight conditions impacting its supply chains.
Iluka Resources jumped 4.05 per cent to $5.39 after the global critical minerals business after telling the market it achieved its full-year production guidance for Zircon by June 30.
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The report's author, Ali Noroozi, spent 10 years as the inspector general of taxation. Citing the ATO's internal data, he found that its so-called risk assessment systems were only marginally better than random selection. "They have certainly been on notice that their risk assessment tools could do better," Mr Noroozi told Four Corners. The tax office was slow to heed this warning, and then it also downgraded its assessment of external fraud risks from "severe" to "low" two months before the scam took off in mid-2021. It said the likelihood of risk had gone from "almost certain" to "rare". The tax office said it began building and updating new fraud detection systems even before the critical 2018 inspector general report. But the auditor general noted one of the ATO's new fraud detection systems ran a year late and was therefore not fully switched on until January 2022. At this point, it successfully detected the massive fraud, but it still took the tax office a further three months to launch Operation Protego. The auditor general found "the ATO did not have a procedure to respond to a large-scale external fraud event" like the GST scams. Watch as Four Corners investigates one of the most powerful and secretive institutions in the country, tonight on ABC TV and ABC iview. Tax experts said these processes need humans in the loop. "Before money goes out the door, particularly if there's been large changes in a taxpayer's details or accounts, that should be verified," said Karen Payne, who stepped down last year as inspector general of taxation. "Once upon a time, there was a desk audit when you first lodged your GST return to make sure you are carrying on a business that you can verify and these amounts that you're claiming are legitimate." As the Abbott government swept to power in 2013, the ATO was moving away from this model of human verification to an automated system. That would eventually see around 1,000 staff — or half the people in the division responsible for the GST — lose their jobs. "I'm not sure the ATO has ever recovered from that sort of drain of knowledge and drain of skill sets," said Stephen Hathway, a liquidator currently investigating a large-scale GST fraud. "The people [at the ATO] work really hard and diligently, but there just needs to be more of them. And there needs to be more regard to getting out there in the field and making those inquiries." While the ATO has claimed to have contained smaller-scale GST frauds as part of Operation Protego, it has struggled to stop loopholes being exploited by larger-scale scams. Stephen Hathway has seen this up close. He is currently chasing Nahi Gazal, who claims to be a wealthy Sydney property developer, but has been accused of masterminding a giant GST fraud. Gazal and his associates managed to squeeze more than $21 million out of the tax office in GST refunds. They allegedly used fake invoices to claim GST refunds for building projects that either did not exist or had been completed by other developers. Once again, the ATO did not bother to do even the most basic of checks. "It never had any legitimacy," Mr Hathway said. "There's nothing in it that ever demonstrates any act of commerce or enterprise. The whole set of transactions were completely and utterly made up, fraudulent, had no basis." By September 2023, the ATO had issued Gazal with a $44 million tax bill, including penalty interest. Four Corners can reveal that while the ATO was chasing Gazal for that money, it failed to detect that he was using a new string of companies to continue scamming the tax office. Mr Hathway has been funded by the ATO to pursue Gazal over this latest scheme, and has connected him to an additional 22 companies, which Mr Hathway said have fraudulently claimed another $25 million in GST refunds. Once again, Gazal claimed to be a property developer. "Not one bag of nails was bought from Bunnings," Mr Hathway said. But once again, the ATO did not check before paying out the GST refunds to Gazal's companies. Mr Hathway said the ATO never asked basic questions, like the address of the properties being developed, whether a development application had been approved, or to even look at a building contract. "I'm the liquidator after the event. And then when we're looking into the file, we find nothing," Mr Hathway said. Mr Hathway was not hopeful the ATO would be able to recover much of the money, and said there was nothing to stop someone else from doing the same thing. Karen Payne said the tax office needed to do better, as these frauds resulted in less money for essential services. "We should all care because it raises revenues that allow the government … to fund the services that we all benefit from … health, defence, security, infrastructure … it's pretty key part of our democracy." Watch Four Corners' full investigation into the tax system, No Return, tonight from 8:30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
