Gina Rinehart has been holding $10,000 per head fund-raising dinners at her Brisbane mansion for One Nation.
Welcome to Talking Business, a podcast produced in Melbourne Australia, built on the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation. The podcast is available on the Acast site, my own website, the Apple podcast store or wherever you go to get your podcasts. Or you can get it at the Business Acumen website at businessacumen.biz
I am Leon Gettler. My job is review and monitor the week’s news in business finance and economics. I bring it all to you every week.
For the most exclusive access to leading economists and business leaders from around the world, subscribe to Talking Business from my website leongettler.com or whatever your favourite podcast platform is.
This is episode number 27 in our series for 2026 and today’s date is Friday August 7.
First, I’ll be talking to Grant Augustin, the CEO and founder of SISS Data Services. We’ll talk about why he believes now is the time when we need to look at the future of finance in Australia and how we regulate data control and consent.
And I’ll be talking to independent economist Saul Eslake about the impact of the war on Iran on the price of oil and inflation and Trump’s tariffs. And Australia’s inflation rate
But first let’s talk to Grant Augustin
So what’s happening in the news?
Airlines are getting hammered by fuel costs right now — and it’s forcing a real dilemma: eat the cost, or risk pricing people out of flying altogether. The headline number: Singapore Airlines just posted its first quarterly loss since Covid. And get this — revenue was actually up over a billion dollars for the quarter. But their fuel bill jumped by $1.1 billion, and that alone flipped a really strong quarter into an $84 million loss. Jet fuel is up 80% year-on-year, largely because of the Middle East conflict disrupting supply. It’s not just Singapore. Korean Air’s profit shrank by a third despite revenue jumping 26%. Ryanair’s profit dropped 34%. And American Airlines actually pulled its full-year profit guidance entirely after flagging a $5.7 billion hit to its fuel costs. Here in Australia, Qantas has flagged an $800 million fuel hit, Virgin’s expecting a smaller $40 million hit since they hedge more aggressively. The interesting quote here comes from Qantas Domestic’s CEO, Markus Svensson — he’s basically saying airlines can’t just pass these costs straight onto passengers through fares, because you risk what he calls “demand destruction” — essentially, pricing people out of flying entirely. Qantas has nudged international fares up around 5%, and demand’s held up so far, partly propped up by fare sales and frequent flyer promos. Meanwhile, global travel demand overall is still soft — down 1.7% in June year-on-year, according to IATA, driven mostly by domestic weakness in China, the US, and Japan. And even Sydney Airport saw international passenger numbers dip almost 2%, though interestingly there’s a shift happening — routes to Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Kuala Lumpur are booming as travelers reroute away from Middle East airspace. So the big picture: strong demand, record revenue in some cases, but fuel costs are eating the profits — and airlines are walking a tightrope on how much of that they can push onto ticket prices.
Australia just had its first mass bird flu die-off (H5N1) off the South Australian coast, and officials are worried it’s about to spread across the country. Until now, Australia was the only continent that had dodged this virus entirely — but everywhere else it’s landed, it’s eventually gotten into poultry farms (and in North America, dairy too). Why it matters for your wallet: economists think this could push up food prices and inflation generally. There’s actually a precedent — when a cyclone wiped out Queensland’s banana crop in 2011, banana prices jumped 45% and nudged overall inflation up too. A smaller, less contagious bird flu strain that hit some Victorian poultry farms in 2024 already pushed egg prices up 30% — and experts say a bigger outbreak could dwarf that. (Remember how bird flu-driven egg prices became a whole political flashpoint in the US election?) There’s also a trade angle: Australia’s poultry has been valued precisely because it’s been flu-free, so an outbreak could see other countries ban Australian poultry imports. Governments have put up roughly $137 million combined (federal + state) for biosecurity so far, but critics like the Invasive Species Council say that’s not nearly enough — they’re calling for a much bigger funding boost, especially for protecting wildlife, since a serious outbreak could hit native species hard too. The federal environment minister has acknowledged they can’t rule out the disease reaching the poultry industry. Bottom line: it’s early days, but the potential knock-on effects — for grocery prices, trade, and wildlife — have officials and experts on edge.
Gina Rinehart has been hosting $10,000-a-head dinner parties at her Brisbane riverside mansion, with Pauline Hanson and sometimes Barnaby Joyce among the regulars. These used to be free, low-key gatherings for conservative political circles, but they’ve recently turned into a paid fundraising channel for One Nation — part of a broader surge in support from Rinehart, including a donated $1.5 million plane and millions more from her associates. Alongside this, One Nation is facing scrutiny over its financial transparency. The Australian Electoral Commission is looking into whether the party should have declared entities like its new film production company as “associated entities.” That company made an anti-woke animated film that’s since being sold to raise party funds. Hanson herself has lent the party over half a million dollars since 2016 at commercial interest rates, but hasn’t declared the interest income she’d be earning — which should exceed the disclosure threshold. The party’s also been caught underreporting Queensland election spending by $255,000, and risks losing its legal status in that state over unfiled financial statements. Experts say the low donation-disclosure threshold (currently $16,900, dropping to $5,000 next year) makes it hard for the public to see who’s really funding the party, given a big chunk of its declared income has no named source.
AMP economist Shane Oliver thinks the decades-long property “super-cycle” that pushed Australian house prices sky-high may be over, thanks to higher interest rates, weaker immigration, poor affordability, and tax changes. National prices dipped 0.9% last month, with Sydney and Melbourne both falling. Oliver expects roughly a 7% further easing by next year, though prices would still sit well above their long-term “fair value” even after that drop. Not everyone agrees on the trajectory: KPMG’s Brendan Rynne expects a milder dip this year followed by a rebound in 2027, arguing the chronic housing shortage will drive a “V-shaped” recovery. Politically, the opposition is blaming Labor’s housing tax changes for the slowdown, while Treasurer Jim Chalmers says these swings are normal and prices should keep rising over time, just more gradually than before.
Business leaders are increasingly frustrated with the Albanese government, and a new survey shows just how much. Only 1.6% of directors think business is working “very well” with government, while over 40% say the relationship is “poor” — nearly double last year’s figure. The survey, run by law firm Mallesons, polled 200+ directors and senior leaders in June and July. The big worry? That poor productivity and rising living costs mean the next generation could end up worse off than their parents. Company director Carol Austin says red tape has pushed business to breaking point, and pointed to growing community anger over living standards potentially stalling for good. This lines up with recent warnings from RBA governor Michele Bullock and former Treasury boss Ken Henry, who’ve both flagged weak productivity as a serious long-term problem — with Henry stressing this generation shouldn’t be dumping a debt burden on the next. Survey respondents were especially frustrated by the May federal budget, with more than half saying it’ll hurt productivity growth. Mallesons partner Meredith Paynter said there’d been real hope after last year’s productivity roundtable, but a year on, businesses feel like things have actually gone backwards — especially on regulatory red tape. The scrapping of the 50% capital gains tax discount was a particular flashpoint, sparking backlash from small business owners (including a wave of mocking AI-generated images aimed at Albanese). One respondent summed up the mood: instead of growing the economic pie, government is just squeezing more out of business and individuals — shrinking it instead. Still, it’s not all doom and gloom — 68% of businesses say they’re maintaining or even boosting investment, with AI as their top short-term priority. Mallesons partner Rhys Casey reckons it shows business is pushing ahead regardless, even if they don’t think policy is keeping pace with the growth they’re chasing.
Australia’s medical device watchdog — the TGA — is under serious strain, and a freedom of information investigation has just pulled back the curtain on it. Here’s the story: the TGA is supposed to track “adverse events” — basically, reports of medical devices hurting people — across 1.4 million devices in use nationwide. But internal documents show that back in 2024, the team handling those reports was running at only half its budgeted staffing. And that was before a new mandatory reporting rule kicked in for hospitals this past March — a change the TGA itself predicted could bring a tenfold jump in reports. Internal estimates said they’d need up to 150 extra staff and as much as $15.8 million a year to keep up — and the government knocked back the funding request. The knock-on effects are pretty stark. A 2025 internal presentation flagged serious IT problems — outdated, disconnected legacy databases, a system that reportedly crashes weekly, and each report taking over 85 minutes to process manually. There’s also no ability to automatically flag emerging trends in injuries or deaths. Of more than 37,000 adverse event reports filed between 2019 and 2023, the TGA only investigated about 4%. The public database was even found to be missing dozens of reported deaths from before October 2019. The TGA’s response: officials acknowledge the old systems are a problem and say they’re mid-transformation, with temporary funding in place to keep things running, and that staffing has improved since 2024. Health Minister Mark Butler says the agency did get departmental funding to handle the hospital reporting surge. Meanwhile, this has reignited a separate debate — around devices like Medtronic’s SynchroMed II pain pump, which is still approved for sale despite limited evidence it actually works and a rare risk of paralysis. Pain specialists are now pushing for a national registry to track outcomes for implantable pain devices, especially since the one existing registry is facing closure after losing NSW government funding.
Australia’s courts are getting swamped by a new problem — workers representing themselves in employment disputes with ChatGPT or Claude as their “lawyer.” And the numbers are wild.
The key stats:
- Self-represented litigants in Federal Court workplace cases jumped 125% in a year — from 36 to 81 cases
- General protections claims (the “unfair dismissal on steroids” claims, since they’ve got no compensation cap) grew almost 50% in the Federal Circuit Court, from 889 to 1,314
- Over three years, filings in the Federal Court are up 153%
These general protections claims are attractive because the burden of proof flips onto the employer, and there’s no cap on damages. Combine that with free AI drafting help, and suddenly it’s a lot easier for someone to file a claim — even a weak one. An employment lawyer at Dentons described judges walking into court “frustrated,” having to wade through what he bluntly calls “AI slop,” and applicants who won’t settle because ChatGPT has given them unrealistic expectations. His line was something like — you can’t negotiate with someone who’s gotten confirmation bias from a chatbot. The government’s fix is a new “Fair Work Court” to speed things up. But critics — including that same lawyer — say that’s like building more highways to fix traffic: you just get more cars. Without changing the actual rules (like letting courts penalize meritless AI-driven claims), the flood just moves to a new venue. A judge says ‘sterner action’ might be needed against self-represented litigants who use AI. Another judge in a separate migration case said a chatbot straight-up hallucinated evidence, dragging the case out for months and warning that this kind of AI misuse is coming close to contempt of court. It’s becoming a partisan flashpoint too — the Coalition’s employment spokesperson is pushing for an inquiry into whether a new court is even the right fix, versus just simplifying workplace law itself.
And yes, it’s the profit reporting season again. Charter Hall Social Infrastructure REIT has reported a 27.5% increase in profit to $90.5 million in the 12 months to June 30. Centuria Office REIT has posted a 379% Jump in profit over the 12 months to June 30, but funds from operations – which is profit adjusted for certain non-cash and other items – fell 4.9% to $66.9 million. Credit Corp Group has posted a 12.1% increase in profit to $105.5 million. ASX-listed liquor store and hotel network Endeavour Group has posted a full-year underlying profit slump to $363 million, a 14.7% drop from $426 million the year before. Listed gaming and poker machine company Light & Wonder has posted a 26% surge in net income to $US120 million ($A170.2 million), Argo Investments has eked out a 0.1% profit increase to $260.2 million for the financial year ended June 30
And that’s it for this week.
And next week, I’ll be talking to Dylan Winik, CEO of Oceania at Nayax, a global fintech leader in cashless payment technology. We’ll talk about scaling and the future of fintech and retail.
And I’ll be talking to RMIT professor Sinclair Davidson about how, or if, Victoria’s new premier Ben Carroll can save the state’s economy.
For the most exclusive access to leading economists and business leaders from around the world, subscribe to Talking Business from my website leongettler.com or whatever your favourite podcast platform is.
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