Federal politics live: Technology to ban teens from social media ready to deploy, early report finds
An organisation tasked with testing the technology behind the federal government's social media ban says a preliminary report has found age verification is ready to deploy in Australia.
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ABC News
16 minutes ago
- ABC News
Australia resisted America's gun culture — but couldn't help importing its obsession with oversized cars - ABC Religion & Ethics
Australia is rightly proud of having stood firm against one of America's deadliest exports — gun culture. After the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, our leaders acted with moral clarity and urgency. It was a bipartisan moment that has saved countless lives. While the United States doubled down on its right to bear arms, we said no. But there's another American export which we couldn't resist. In fact, we embraced it. It didn't come with bullets. It came with torque. Today, the vehicles dominating Australian roads are those dreamed up in Detroit and built to American scale. America has long held individual freedom as its highest virtue — often, it's placed above collective safety and social cohesion. Their idea of freedom is shaped less by care for others, and more by the logic of competition: survival of the fittest, the richest, and now, the biggest. Why Australia? The rise of oversized SUVs and utes in Australia is no accident. It's the result of a decades-long campaign by American car manufacturers to sell not just vehicles, but a story and a culture: that bigger is better; that personal dominance matters more than collective comfort; and that power is something to display. American car makers have exported more than vehicles — they've exported a value system. They've invested heavily in the Australian market and spent billions on advertising over the past decade to reshape what it means to 'drive'. They're turning it from an act of mobility into an assertion of identity. Their ads drip with masculinity, entitlement and conquest. Cars are no longer tools; they're statements. This American culture is embedded in the physical form of these cars: long, unapologetically flat hoods; lifted bodies; oversized ground clearance. And we bought it — not just the vehicles, but the idea behind them too. Australia resisted the guns; but we bought the trucks. When resistance to US-style excess emerged in Europe or Japan where space is tight and fuel expensive, car makers adapted. In Australia, with its car-loving culture and softer emissions rules, the American model found fertile ground. The marketing blitz followed — touting their 'utility' or 'sport' appeal (whatever that means), even though most people never tow a trailer or leave the suburbs. Ford spends over USD $2.5 billion annually on global advertising. RAM has flooded YouTube and sports broadcasts with testosterone-drenched imagery. Their campaigns lean heavily on rural imagery, regardless of whether the vehicle is driven by a tradie or an urban dad doing the school drop-off. Who bears the cost? The rise of massive vehicles on Australian roads is often framed as consumer preference. But that framing ignores the external costs borne not by the driver, but by everyone else, especially vulnerable road users: pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists. The evidence is unambiguous: large SUVs and utes are more likely to kill vulnerable road users. The pedestrian fatality crisis in the United States is the biggest testament to this. Pedestrian deaths were steadily declining for over two decades until 2009, when large vehicles began to dominate US roads. By 2022, annual pedestrian deaths had surged from around 4,100 to over 7,500 — a jump of nearly 80 per cent. This surge in pedestrian deaths has been directly linked to the growing popularity of these giant cars. And Australia is now on a similar path. We're trailing this trend. Pedestrians and motorcyclists are the only road users in Australia showing a consistent rise in fatalities for four years straight. No such pattern exists for drivers or passengers. And most vulnerable of all are children. In the United States, around 110 children are hit by vehicles each week in parking lots and driveways. The numbers have been climbing for years. Car hoods were once designed to slope downwards, giving drivers a clearer field of view. But today's boxy SUVs jut straight out before dropping off, creating large blind zones where small children simply disappear. You could line up a dozen children sitting in front of some of these vehicles, and the driver wouldn't see the first eight or nine. With certain models, you'd need more than twelve children in a row before one even appears in your view. Why car size is a moral issue We barely talk about car size as a moral issue. But maybe we should. The thing is, for many of us this is a subconscious choice. Nobody walks into a dealership and says, 'I'd like to endanger others.' But when you see enough of the same vehicle on the road it stops feeling like a choice. It starts feeling like self-defence. Especially when you're told that you need one of these to protect your family from all the other giant cars already out there. This imposes real — if marginal — risk on those who can't, or choose not to, participate in the vehicle size race: children walking to school or pedestrians crossing the road. And let's not forget all of us are pedestrians, at least some of the time. Driving tank-sized vehicles through residential streets, with bonnets at eye-level for most adults and towering above children, is a cultural export. And it's unmistakably American in posture — in-your-face, unapologetic, and indifferent to who gets left out. And this means, we're caught in a cycle of reactive consumerism: we buy big because others are big. We tell ourselves it's a personal choice, but how much of it was ever really ours to begin with? Milad Haghani is an Associate Professor of Urban Mobility at the University of Melbourne.
News.com.au
22 minutes ago
- News.com.au
Retired publican lists $12m luxury apartment
A retired publican has listed his luxury $12m apartment in a luxury Elizabeth Bay block full of big hitters. Ken Thompson, who sold his Blues Point Hotel to former Qantas chief Geoff Dixon for $6m more than a decade ago, has owned the three-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment with double parking and harbour views in the exclusive 'One Onslow' building since paying $5.05m off-the-plan in 2007. He's now listed it with BresicWhitney's Romany Brooks, hot on the heels of her selling a luxury penthouse to fashion icon Collette Dinnigan for about $7.2m in the nearby Tradewinds block alongside principal Shannan Whitney. Brooks says Thompson's apartment is well-priced, compared with other newer buildings nearby that have recently sold for as much as $60,000 per sq m. 'I feel that around $40,000 per sq m, this delivers the scale downsizers are seeking and delivers on value,' Brooks says. She has deliberately chosen to market the apartment for sale without styling it. 'It has 3m ceilings and is 302sqm, I want buyers to feel the scale,' she said. 'If you look at the old shots with furniture it just reduces the scale and doesn't showcase the finishes.' Thompson moved out of the second-floor apartment, which sits directly above the one Aussie Home Loans founder John Symond bought for $4.1m in 2011, after the death of his beloved wife, Elizabeth, and it's recently been rented out to the Canadian embassy at $5000 per week Other famous owners in the nine-unit boutique block include Joanna McNiven, widow of businessman John McNiven, who bought in for $9.7m in 2011 and mining entrepreneur Nick Curtis and his wife, Angela. Symond initially owned three units in the block, but sold two of them in 2018, including the sub-penthouse to the Curtises for $7.25m. Rosanna Hindmarsh, the wife of Canberra's construction industry boss John Hindmarsh, sold the penthouse for $20m in 2021 to businessman and philanthropist Thomas Yim and his wife, Denise. It had been Hindmarsh's construction firm that built the block.
News.com.au
22 minutes ago
- News.com.au
Monsters of Rock: The shape of the lithium recovery, plus copper investments ramp up Down Under
Lithium prices remain subdued, but demand continues to rise Could deficit send spodumene prices back to US$1500/t next year? Copper investments ramp up as ASX options dry up Lithium prices remain very sick indeed, with lithium carbonate barely trading above US$8000/t and spodumene concentrate, the kind of product shipped to China by WA's hard rock miners, down around US$612.50/t, according to Fastmarkets. Few miners make enough cash at those prices to generate a profit, certainly not once capital costs are accounted for. June quarterlies will make for curious reading. There's more negativity on the supply side with the entry of Chevron into the Smackover Formation, a potential oil field brine source of lithium all the energy supermajors are keen on as they look to hedge their oil and gas businesses with exposure to 'new energy'. At the same time demand is still surging. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology reported a 68% lift in lithium ion battery output in the first four months of 2025 to 473GWh, with export values up 25% to US$21.6bn. With demand for lithium continuing to grow, a modest deficit could emerge soon, some analysts say. "Spot spodumene prices have continued to decline and we have lowered our near-term price outlook to reflect this. We believe a price recovery is likely to be rapid once the market swings to a modest deficit, but the cycle is likely to be shorter given the volume of brownfield capacity that can be brought on-line, largely in Australia," Argonaut head of research Hayden Bairstow said in a note to clients. "We now expect spot spodumene prices to peak at US$1500/t in late 2026, which is likely to trigger a re-start of existing capacity. A return to a balanced market is then forecast for 2027 before the widening deficit pushes prices higher in the long-term. The changes have driven material cuts to earnings for the spodumene miners. We retain our positive view on the sector, with most stocks factoring in weaker spot prices for longer." Argonaut has buy labels on Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS), IGO (ASX:IGO) and Liontown Resources (ASX:LTR), with spec buys on Core Lithium (ASX:CXO), Wildcat Resources (ASX:WC8) and Patriot Battery Metals (ASX:PMT), the latter upgraded from a hold in the most recent update. Watch this space. Aussie copper investments accelerate ASX copper investors are facing a conundrum with more and more options taken off the table and heading overseas. Those that do remain in Aussie hands are trying to ramp up as many investments as they can to hit some sort of critical mass. On the outta here list are New World Resources (ASX:NWC) and MAC Copper (ASX:MAC), though there is at least some intrigue emerging at the former. While MAC Copper is yet to pull in competition to Harmony Gold's $1.6bn bid for it and the CSA copper mine in Cobar. But PE firm Kinterra Capital has emerged as a potential challenger to NWC's takever by Central Asia Metals. The bid from CAML was ratcheted up from 5c to 5.3c, lifting its consideration from $185m to $197m, with CAML also making a $10m placement at 5.3c (~5% of NWC) to meet bonding requirements on a quicker than expected Arizona state permitting timeframe for its Antler mine in the US state, as long as no competing proposal is lodged before COB on July 4. Kinterra, which recently emerged with a ~12% stake in NWC, has taken its grievance over the placement to the Takeovers Panel, which has yet to make any interim orders. Meanwhile, capital is being splurged from the top to the bottom of the mining sector on the critical mineral, expected to play a major role in the expansion of green energy and modern technologies. BHP (ASX:BHP) this week announced plans to spend $1.5bn in an arrangement with logistics provider Aurizon Holdings (ASX:AZJ), which will see much of its haulage of copper concentrate, cathode and inbound freight shift from road to rail haulage between Pimba and Port Hedland. Rail's a lot more efficient, creating cost savings as BHP looks to nearly double the scale of its SA copper business, including Olympic Dam, Carrapateena and Prominent Hill by the mid 2030s to 500,000tpa. The mining giant says 13m kilometres of truck movements will be taken off SA's regional roads annually, or 11,000 total truck movements. At a far smaller scale, AIC Mines (ASX:A1M) in Queensland has announced a $55m placement and US$40m prepayment facility ($61m) with Trafigura, which will be used to complete a $77.6m plant expansion led by GR Engineering Services (ASX:GNG) for its Eloise copper mine. The development will grow the Eloise plant from 725,000tpa to 1.1Mtpa to increase its production capacity from ~12,500tpa of copper to 20,000tpa after commissioning in the December 2026 quarter. It will also include the installation of oversized equipment, enabling the company to ramp up to a processing rate of 1.5Mtpa in the future. This all comes as the Queensland government mulls the future of the nearby Mt Isa copper complex, with the underground mine owned by Glencore set to close in the coming month and work now going on both behind and in front of the scene to keep the smelter that is the lifeblood of the town – known as Stack City for its iconic candy striped smoke stack – open up to and beyond its planned closure date in 2030. The ASX 300 Metals and Mining index fell -4.36% over the past week. Which ASX 300 Resources stocks have impressed and depressed? Making gains Capricorn Metals (ASX:CMM) (gold) +11.2% IperionX (ASX:IPX) (titanium) +9.2% Adriatic Metals (ASX:ADT) (silver) +8.6% Newmont Corporation (ASX:NEM) (gold) +7.9% Eating losses Patriot Battery Metals (ASX:PMT) (lithium) -17.9% ioneer (ASX:INR) (lithium) -16.5% Coronado Global Resources (ASX:CRN) (coal) -16.7% Vulcan Steel (ASX:VSL) (steel) -14.8%
