Should Australia cut company taxes?
It's a proposal that's being debated at the economic roundtable in Canberra this week.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
29 minutes ago
- ABC News
Productivity summit turns to building homes, with warnings housing targets will not be met
Housing will dominate discussion at the Economic Reform Roundtable this morning, with ministers, business leaders and conservationists all under pressure to solve the wicked problem of building more homes without trashing the environment. Productivity commissioner Danielle Wood, who will open the session, titled: Better Regulation and Approvals, is expected to explain to attendees that environmental approvals are one of the biggest handbrakes on housing. In her speech to the National Press Club on Monday, Ms Wood warned "regulatory hair balls" had found their way into "almost every corner of our economy". The result has included massive blowouts in approval times for housing and major infrastructure projects, and she argues it has hurt productivity. The focus has again turned to aging environmental laws that both the former Morrison government and the Albanese government last term failed to reform. Under current laws, new developments only need federal approval if they are likely to damage the environment, harm threatened species or affect culturally sensitive land. That means only a fraction of projects fall within the Commonwealth's remit. But ABC News understands that even within that smaller pool, there is still a backlog of 30,000 projects, including many of industry's largest proposals, and plenty of room to speed up approvals. Both Environment Minister Murray Watt and Housing Minister Clare O'Neil will be at the forum today, searching for the balance between protecting the environment and delivering homes faster. Ms Wood on Monday pointed out that housing approval times had blown out 50 per cent in the past three decades due to regulation. It means "hard conversations" are unavoidable, including about heritage and density restrictions. Last week, Treasury documents that were leaked to the ABC suggested the government could freeze changes to the National Construction Code to speed up housing approvals as a major outcome of the three-day summit. Labor derided a Coalition policy for a 10-year freeze at the 2025 election, arguing it would lead to the construction of "shoddy homes". Now, the government seems to be inching towards a freeze, which is feeding criticism from the opposition. "The government are hopeless when it comes to balancing the needs of more housing while protecting the environment. Labor are totally paralysed by this dilemma," Shadow Housing Minister Andrew Bragg told the ABC. "If their only outcome from the roundtable is to copy our policy, you can forgive us for rolling our eyes." Behind closed doors, Labor MPs admit the scale of the problem. Treasury documents show the government is not on track to meet its own election pledge of building 1.2 million homes in five years. Senator Watt has been consulting for months with miners, developers, business groups and conservationists on reforms to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act he hopes to legislate by mid-next year after two previous terms of government failed. A consistent complaint of the current system is duplication. Projects require the sign off of both state and federal departments, with the federal process not beginning until state or territory approval is given. Stakeholders agrees more housing is needed and that Australia's environmental laws are outdated. The sticking point is how far each side is willing to compromise. Graeme Samuel, who reviewed the EPBC Act in 2020, has identified a number of areas where approvals can delay and cause real impediments to proper investment. "The first is local government planning laws and approvals, they can take an inordinate amount of time and of course the NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) syndrome of local objectors can hold approvals up and in fact result in them never being obtained," he told the ABC. "The environmental approvals are also important and the recommendations in the review I did back in 2020 are designed to ensure efficiency and, more importantly, to ensure certainty." The same leaked Treasury documents also recommend a national artificial intelligence plan to cut environmental red tape. Housing approvals are just one concern of the flaws in the EPBC Act. Another is accelerating approvals for renewable energy projects, which the government considers just as critical in meeting its green energy targets. A Labor source told the ABC: "Reaching renewables targets and delivering on housing are the hardest challenges for the government politically. The big question for the talks is how to speed up approvals for both." It is why BHP's Australian president Geraldine Slattery and Australian Conservation Foundation chief Kelly O'Shanassy are central voices at today's discussion — symbols of the tension between growth and conservation. For Housing Minister Clare O'Neil, the Productivity Commission's report is blunt: red tape is choking supply. In some cases, it takes up to 10 times longer to get approval for a new home than to build one. She argues this bottleneck is shutting ordinary Australians out of home ownership and driving up costs. Fixing it has become one of the government's most urgent priorities. While housing dominates today's agenda, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will step away from Canberra to travel to South Australia to make his first inspection of the state's algal bloom crisis and flex his environmental credentials. Back in the capital, pressure will remain on attendees to strike the right balance between protecting the environment and solving the housing crisis. If tensions spill over, Mr Albanese will have the chance to smooth them over tonight, when he hosts union bosses, business chiefs and bureaucrats for dinner at The Lodge.
News.com.au
5 hours ago
- News.com.au
Telstra warns of new wave of scams on encrypted messaging apps
Popular encrypted messaging platforms are becoming a safe haven for scammers looking to bypass scam blocking technology, Australia's largest telco has warned. Telstra has cautioned its customers against flocking to encrypted messaging platforms, flagging users may be more vulnerable to scam messages and calls. While the security of end-to-end encryption means messages can only be accessed by the sender and receiver, limited visibility for telecommunication providers means their scam blocking technologies cannot scan or filter suspicious activity. Telstra's Cyber expert Darren Pauli said while encryption was a 'wonderful thing', the nature of these platforms make it tough for Telco's to monitor for potential scams. '(Encryption) protects banking, it protects everything. And it doesn't care about what the contents are that it's protecting. It just works,' he told NewsWire. 'I think more broadly that wherever the scams are happening, that platform should really genuinely put effort in and money in to really try to crush this. 'It's one of those things that you have to do for the broader security of the internet.' The telecommunications provider has also flagged an uptick in sophisticated recruitment lure scams, offering fake job opportunities that seem legitimate, and a rise in AI-enhanced scams and deepfakes. In the 12 months to June, Telstra was forced to block more than 18 million scam calls a month, almost double the number from the previous year. It also intercepted an average of more than 8 million scam text messages a month, and observed a 13 per cent year-on-year increase in reports of suspicious contacts. 'These fake job offers and recruitment scams are particularly nasty … they're targeting people who are vulnerable,' Mr Pauli said. 'They might be looking for work or whatever, and they will come out with offers of work from home, with good remuneration, and a quick interview process … So these are really quite lucrative and enticing offers. 'The tragedy really is that these scams are all about harvesting personal information (which) they then use for identity theft and sell it on the dark market.' Despite the increasingly sophisticated methods used by scammers, the National Anti-Scam Centre's Targeting report recorded a 25 per cent drop in losses between 2023 and 2024. Telstra's 'Cleaner Pipes' cyber initiative comes amid a massive advocacy push across the telecommunications and banking industry, spreading awareness to the harms of scams. 'I'm genuinely impressed with what the industry as a whole has done. It's remarkable stuff,' Mr Pauli said. 'They are frustrating scammers who are trying to hammer out texts or phone calls and it's not working and it costs (the scammers) money. 'If they weren't such terrible people I'd almost have some sympathy for them.'
News.com.au
7 hours ago
- News.com.au
Resources Top 5: Magnetite Mines identifies REE as potential iron ore value add
MGT will undertake low-cost follow-up work to test a REE find in South Australia Further antimony has been identified at the Reynolds Range project in the NT First phase drilling is underway at RML's Horse Heaven gold-antimony project Your standout small cap resources stocks for Tuesday, August 19, 2025 Magnetite Mines (ASX:MGT) While retaining primary focus on the development of the Razorback Iron Ore Project in South Australia's northeast, Magnetite Mines has uncovered near-surface, clay-hosted rare earth mineralisation right beside the large Ironback Hill magnetite deposit. The rare earths, which grade between 356ppm and 1,153ppm total rare earth oxides (TREO), represent a potential value-add for the iron ore and the company will now undertake low-cost follow-up work to test the find. As a result of the find, which was picked up after re-assaying limited clay-rich samples from archived RC drill samples, MGT hit a 12-month high of 29c, a 308.5% improvement on the August 18 close. Significant results include: 8m at 1,153ppm TREO (215ppm Nd2O3) from 12m within 18m at 866ppm TREO from 10m; 6m at 816ppm TREO (190ppm Nd2O3) from 16m within 20m at 583ppm TREO from 12m; and 4m at 977ppm TREO (64ppm Nd2O3) from 18m within 20m at 608ppm TREO from 14m. The company believes this is the first time that REE mineralisation has been detected at Ironback Hill, which is one of the Razorback deposits. 'As signalled in our August 8, 2025 announcement, Magnetite Mines has commenced a low-cost assessment of its vast South Australian tenement base for gold and critical minerals potential,' Magnetite Mines managing director Tim Dobson said. 'While the development of the Razorback Iron Ore Project remains our core priority, the board believes it is in shareholders' best interests to understand the full potential of the company's extensive tenements in response to favourable market conditions. 'Accordingly, we have tasked our experienced in-house geology team to provide an assessment of mineral prospectivity on our existing ground. 'This announcement provides the first response from that assessment with the identification of rare earth element mineralisation at Ironback Hill, as detected by analysing existing samples from a previous Magnetite Mines drilling campaign. 'We are excited by this early-stage indication of rare earths mineralisation at Ironback Hill and are planning low-cost follow up exploration work to determine if a wider program of work is warranted.' iTech Minerals (ASX:ITM) Antimony is becoming more important for iTech Minerals alongside gold at the Reynolds Range project in the Northern Territory and the identification of more zones of the critical mineral has seen shares increase 150% to a 2025 high of 8.5c. Two high-grade antimony zones overlooked by previous gold explorers have been identified in recent mapping and rock chip sampling. Most historical drill holes were not assayed for antimony or did not test the new zones. The zones at the Sabre and Falchion prospects each extend more than 300 metres and when combined with historical drill results, iTech believes they are at least 14 metres thick. Rock chips have assayed up to 30.6% antimony at Sabre and up to 15.9% at Falchion. These zones bring the total number of high-grade antimony systems at Reynolds Range to three and validate iTech's belief that the project has a significant endowment of the increasingly valuable critical mineral. With both new zones open along strike and at depth, drilling has the potential to increase the scale of the discovery. 'While one high-grade antimony rock chip existed within historical exploration data at Reynolds Range, there was no indication of continuity or extent of mineralisation,' managing director Mike Schwarz said. 'iTech has now identified the source of the high-grade antimony as coming from >300m long veins at both the Sabre and Falchion prospects. 'These veins have been tested with very few drill holes that were analysed for antimony, presenting immediate drill targets for our upcoming drilling program later this year.' iTech is undertaking site visits to potential drill sites over the next few weeks to collect data and assess logistics to assist with planning of the upcoming drill program. iTech has already obtained heritage clearances to drill at the proposed prospects and will now seek government drilling approvals. Drilling will focus on testing the depth extent of antimony mineralisation beneath the highest-grade outcrops which have not been tested by historical drill holes at the Sabre and Falchion prospects. Drilling is expected to begin in late October or early November this year. With first phase drilling underway at the Horse Heaven gold-antimony project in central Idaho, Resolution Minerals reached 6.3c, a lift of 26% on the previous close. The program will comprise 3000m of diamond core drilling over nine holes with an average depth of 300m per hole and will test mineralisation trends at depth and along strike at the Golden Gate target. There is also potential to expand the campaign to 6000m as RML looks to confirm historical shallow drilling results at Golden Gate and assay for antimony and tungsten, which weren't sampled in prior drilling. Horse Heaven has strong gold, antimony, tungsten and silver mineralisation in two known highly prospective mineralised corridors, and further potential in several emerging targets that include a past-producing antimony and tungsten mine. The project is directly adjacent to Perpetua Resources' Stibnite Antimony & Gold Mine and the geological model is a direct analogue to Stibnite, bearing a strong resemblance to its A$3 billion neighbour. The company is also looking to start a stream sediment sampling program, which will be completed in September or October this year, to the east of Golden Gate. Metal Bank (ASX:MBK) An assessment of the development potential of the shallow Kingsley and Homestead deposits could lead to fast-tracked gold production at the Livingstone project near Meekatharra in WA. As a result Metal Bank improved by 60% to a daily high of 1.6c. In March 2025, the Livingstone gold resource increased 75% to 2.81Mt at 1.36g/t for 122,500oz with 30% in the indicated category. At-surface and near-surface resources at the Homestead and Kingsley deposits are within trucking distance to existing processing centres for potential toll-treating. There is also considerable scope for resource growth at Livingstone with several exploration targets untested across 395km2 of granted exploration licences and drilling being planned. Over in Saudi Arabia, MBK continues to advance its exploration strategy with local funding options being considered ahead of the next exploration phase on the Wadi al Junah copper-zinc-gold-silver project. At Livingstone 'we have multiple catalysts to unlock value for shareholders through near-term production utilising nearby third-party processing infrastructure and further exploration,' executive chair Ines Scotland said. Sierra Nevada Gold (ASX:SNX) After identifying an opportunity to retrieve gold from tailings at the New Pass project in Nevada and generate early cash flow, Sierra Nevada Gold continues assessing processing options. Sampling earlier this year returned high-grade gold at four historic tailings dams, opening the window for SNX to tap into a new and potentially lucrative revenue stream. If feasible, this would help fund a plan to bring New Pass back into production in a bullish environment for gold and US mining. With the restart in mind, the company is progressing underground mining options for the accessible high-grade ore within the Superior Mine. Permitting to allow for re-opening the mine is underway and the company is ready to spring into underground drilling once permits are received. 'Reprocessing the tailings has potential to generate revenue in conjunction with the planned trial mining and bulk testing program,' SNX executive chairman Peter Moore said.
