Large scale data centres in Australia will be forced to generate enough of their own power to run their facilities and must minimise water usage to keep a lid on household bills, under plans announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday. The federal government is also exploring a new copyright solution designed for artificial intelligence training.

In a landmark speech yesterday, entitles “AI in Australia’s interests”, Albanese reversed the government’s hands off approach to regulating the new technology, and announced a set of AI standards and an Office of AI within his own department.

The speech was aimed at addressing the disruption AI will bring to the country, including the economy and national security, and the growing concern about the increasingly powerful global tech giants.

Albanese said his government was not against AI investment and wanted it to boost economic growth and job opportunities. Change was inevitable but governments had the ability to design it. Albanese added he doesn’t want government to repeat the mistakes made with social media.

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Greed-o-meter

Since its founding in the 1970s, Nike has seen remarkably consistent revenue growth. But the last few years have been problematic for the sportswear giant. A change in sales strategy saw Nike focus on Direct-To-Consumer sales, rather than retailers, which allowed competitors like Hoka and On Running to gain market share. The company has shifted strategy again, trying to restore those retail relationships - but the turnaround is taking longer than many hoped.

Fear & Greed Q+A today

On the $300,000 fraud attack that changed Luxury Escapes' approach to fraud prevention, and why a zero-fraud target may actually backfire:

 

“We were actually doing that in 2024. We were blocking everything that looked like fraud. And there's this asymmetry where the noise that a fraudulent order makes is huge, but the silence that ten genuine blocked customers make, because you thought they might be fraudulent, isn't there.

 

If you want your manager to think you're doing a great job at fraud, you can block everything that looks like fraud and you'll have no fraud—but you'll have a lot of cross-catch.

 

If you really want to do a good job, the right amount of fraud is above zero. Stripe helped us tighten up our fraud rules and we actually unlocked about a million dollars a year in genuine customer transaction value that we'd been blocking because our fraud rules were too aggressive.”

 

Luxury Escapes is a customer of Stripe, which is a supporter of Fear & Greed.

News in brief

Property auctions are losing some of their lustre, with more than two thirds of sellers preferring private treaties in June, up from about 50 per cent at the end of last year.

More than 17 million Australians have viewed the FIFA World Cup on SBS during the first 100 matches of the tournament, and each game has an average audience of 1.3 million people.

Bitcoin yesterday had its strongest daily gain since April as investors took another look at digital assets. Bitcoin is trading around $US65,000 a token, and is still around half its value of late last year.

US President Donald Trump dropped his plan to impose a 20 per cent charge on cargo shipments through the Strait of Hormuz after US allies in the Gulf urged him to drop it.

Billionaire Warren Buffett omitted Bill Gates’ foundation from his annual donations this year after disclosures of the Microsoft co-founder’s ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Fear-o-meter

Cameron McCormack, VanEck Australia

"The US CPI print provides a sigh of relief for the Fed and equity markets. Beyond the drop in energy prices reflecting lower oil prices, the biggest takeaway is that core inflation came in flat month on month, and year on year came in lower at 2.6%, suggesting that sticky inflation components are showing mild signs of easing.

"However, with the US labour market conditions improving, this will continue to up upward pressure on services inflation, the largest component of headline inflation. A rate hike by year end is still plausible.

"In contrast, the Australian outlook is more challenging. Inflation is looking stubborn across several components, including housing, food, transport and services. The 4.75% minimum wage increase effective from July adds further cost pressures for businesses.

"Despite the threat of a stagflationary environment emerging locally, we think the terminal rate for this cycle is either the current 4.35%, or 4.6% if the RBA is forced to move once more later this year.

"For equity market positioning, our view is that being defensively positioned and seeking growth at a reasonable price locally is prudent, while exposures to more economically sensitive parts of the global economy look increasingly attractive such as value and small cap companies."

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