Behind the alarming figures of an increase in shoplifting is an intricate network of organised crime
Welcome to Talking Business, a podcast produced in Melbourne Australia. 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 https://www.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 30 in our series for 2025 and today’s date is Friday September 5.
First, I’ll be Marc Washbourne, the co-founder of ASX listed tech company, ReadyTech. We’ll talk about its software innovations like JobReady which matches job seekers to find positions, its student management system, and its software for local government and justice system. It is also now examining how AI can be used as part of its offering.
And I’ll be talking to RMIT economist Sinclair Davidson about the outcomes of the government’s tax and productivity roundtable. .
But first, let’s talk to Marc Washbourne
So what’s happening in the news?
India and China are looking to work together in response to Trump’s tariffs after years of border disputes. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in China on Sunday with the sting of Donald Trump’s US tariffs still top of his mind. Since Wednesday, tariffs on Indian goods bound for the US, like diamonds and prawns, now stand at 50% – which the US president says is punishment for Delhi’s continued purchase of Russian oil. Experts say the levies threaten to leave lasting bruises on India’s vibrant export sector, and its ambitious growth targets. China’s Xi Jinping, too, is trying to revive a sluggish Chinese economy at a time when sky-high US tariffs threaten to derail his plans. As the US-India relationship faces increasing headwinds, Modi is moving closer to Xi. Both countries are not only the most populous, but also have two of the largest economies in the world. Modi announced that flights between India and China – suspended since deadly troop clashes on their shared Himalayan border in 2020 – would resume, without providing a timeline. Xi said “both sides need to approach and handle our relationship from a strategic height and long-term perspective” and that “it is the right choice for both sides to be friends”. Against this backdrop, the leaders of the world’s two most populous countries may both be looking for a reset in their relationship, which has previously been marked by mistrust, a large part of it driven by border disputes. “While the world has traditionally focused on the single most important bilateral relationship in the world, US and China, it is time we shift more focus on how the second and would-be third largest economies, China and India, can work together,” says Qian Liu, founder and chief executive of Wusawa Advisory, based in Beijing. “Dialogue will be needed to help better manage the expectations of other powers who look to India-China as a key factor of Asia’s wider stability,” Antoine Levesques, senior fellow for South and Central Asian defence, strategy and diplomacy at IISS, says.
Nestle has abruptly dismissed its CEO Laurent Freixe for failing to disclose a romantic relationship with a subordinate, the Swiss food giant said on Monday, a dramatic removal exactly a year after he took the reins. The maker of products ranging from KitKat to Nesquik said that it had appointed veteran insider Philipp Navratil, who had headed the Nespresso coffee unit, as Freixe’s successor with immediate effect. The shock departure threatens more volatility for Nestle amid a tough consumer environment and the disruptive US trade tariffs. Nestle said Freixe’s departure follows an investigation overseen by Chairman Paul Bulcke and Lead Independent Director Pablo Isla into an undisclosed romantic relationship with a direct subordinate, which breached the company’s code of business conduct.
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The Australian government is pressuring banks to lift -prefab home lending to reach its target of 1.2 million new homes by 2029. Australia’s second-largest mortgage lender is being urged by the federal government to lend more to customers choosing prefabricated homes, as Labor struggles to meet its ambitious target to tackle a chronic housing supply shortage. Federal Housing Minister Clare O’Neil and her senior advisors have met with Westpac to discuss the issue in meetings since Labor’s landslide election win in May, with similar discussions on the agenda for ANZ and NAB. Prefabricated or modular homes are seen as part of the solution to Australia’s housing supply crunch – they are relatively cheap and can be built in a fraction of the time it takes to build a traditional home because they are assembled offsite in a factory. At an investor roundtable in November last year, the Albanese government discussed working more closely with banks to improve access to prefabricated homes. In January, Commonwealth Bank began offering loans for prefabricated homes at the construction stage, allowing customers to borrow up to 60% of the total contract cost before the house is moved to land. In July, CBA took the commitment further, lending up to 80% of the costs for a contract of up to $1.5 million, if a customer chooses one of the bank’s approved manufacturers. But O’Neil said CBA needs the support of its three major rivals to further boost the uptake of prefabricated homes. Other major banks, including Westpac, currently lend to prefabricated homes once they are fixed on land, but not during the construction period. That means customers need to cover the upfront costs of the build. “The big four banks will play a crucial role in making prefabricated housing accessible to everyday Australians,” O’Neil said. “We will continue to raise the prefab question with Westpac, ANZ and NAB so our economy can develop financing solutions that match the speed and innovation of modern prefabricated construction.” Prefabricated housing used to sit under the industry and science portfolio until a recent restructure brought it into O’Neil’s portfolio. The change signalled the importance of the technology to Labor, with the government lagging on its target to build 1.2 million new homes by 2029.
Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen insists the government will achieve its target of 82% renewables by 2030 but he concedes Labor has more work to do to win over regional communities at the coalface of Australia’s energy transition. Bowen’s confidence in the government’s ability to realise its clean energy goal comes despite mounting scepticism among some energy analysts and vocal opposition to the renewables rollout from green groups and farmers in regional areas. Chris Bowen says Labor “can and will” achieve its 82% renewables target by 2030. “I believe 82% renewable energy by 2030 can and will be achieved,” Bowen said. “It won’t happen automatically or inevitably. A target which everyone agrees will happen automatically is hardly worth having. It’s meant to drive decisions and investment, and that’s exactly what it’s doing.” Energy consultancy Rystad has forecast that the slow rollout of wind and transmission projects across Australia means the government is not likely to meet its 82% renewables goal until 2037, and will only be at 60% by 2030. But Bowen says that the massive pipeline of new investment outlined in a major report by the market operator last month put Labor well on track to meet the ambitious renewable energy goal it took to the 2022 election. The plan to achieve 82% renewables underpins Labor’s existing target of 43% emissions cuts by 2030, but some climate policy experts have suggested that ongoing delays to the rollout could constrain the government’s 2025 ambitions. Labor is just a few weeks away from announcing its plans for Australia’s 2035 emissions reduction target, and is facing pressure from business and climate groups to set an ambitious target as it attempts to secure the right to host next year’s UN climate summit in Adelaide.
The Albanese government says a new report proves age restrictions online can work with the right approach by tech giants, as Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms flies in top executives to meet with Australia’s online safety regulator. Meta’s global head of safety, Antigone Davis, and engineering director Dustin Ho will visit Australia this week to meet with eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, days after the release of a 1200-page report into ways to stop children accessing pornography and harmful material online. The long-awaited age assurance trial found it is technically possible to stop the majority of minors accessing pornographic websites and social media while protecting privacy, but the real-world effectiveness of any reform will rest on co-ordination across all tech platforms. It also found that there is no single ubiquitous technology that can be rolled out across all realms of the internet. The findings contradict many of the arguments made by some of the biggest tech giants in the world, including Meta, which have spent the better part of the past year insisting there’s no easy way to age-gate without jeopardising the privacy of all users. Davis and Ho will meet with Inman Grant on Thursday to discuss, among other topics, recent reports that Meta’s artificial intelligence chatbots were allowed to engage in “romantic or sensual” conversations with children. Meta has said it is updating its AI chat policies. It’s the latest round of talks between the government and the tech giant ahead of the December start date for the government’s world-first social media ban for under-16s. The trial was commissioned ahead of the new laws, which will force social media platforms, including YouTube, Snapchat, Imstagram and TikTok to keep underage children off their platforms or risk fines up to $49.5 million. It was conducted by the UK-based Age Check Certification Scheme and consultancy firm KJR, who were tasked with figuring out whether it was possible to control how children access the internet. It assessed more than 60 technologies across 48 companies, including Apple, Google, TikTok, Epic Games and Meta. Communications Minister Anika Wells said the report proves tech giants are equipped with tools to better protect young people from inappropriate content and harm. “While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to age assurance, this trial shows there are many effective options and importantly that user privacy can be safeguarded,” she said. The trial found there was a range of ways to check a person’s age online, including verifying age with official documents, inferring a person’s age from their behaviour, or estimating their age from their face and voice. It left the decision about which method to use to the government. A key challenge to introducing age-gating is deep disagreement between social media companies, including Meta and Snapchat, and tech giants like Apple and Google over whether age restrictions should be enforced by social media platforms, each app developer or once by the app store itself. “Co-ordination among dominant infrastructure providers is essential if any truly ecosystem-wide age assurance model is to succeed,” the report reads.
Households would be about $4000 a year better off, business investment boosted and real wages higher under a major tax reform package proposed by a leading economist to meet Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ economic roundtable goal of a better tax system. State property stamp duty would be abolished, GST-free items such as private education taxable, most small businesses no longer exempt from payroll tax and personal income tax slashed by $43 billion a year under the combined three reform packages. Corporate tax would be reduced for most companies to encourage investment, while franking credits for dividends paid to shareholders would be made less generous. Highly profitable miners, banks and supermarkets operating in less competitive sectors would pay more corporate tax. The modelling was conducted by Chris Murphy, the economist who is undertaking separate work for the Productivity Commission on its proposed radical company tax shake-up. He was also hired by former Treasury secretary Ken Henry’s sweeping tax review in 2009. Murphy estimates total consumer welfare would be about $43 billion a year higher under his proposal, which is the equivalent of about $4000 each for the 11 million households in Australia. Murphy estimates his combined three tax reform packages for property, companies and households could increase real GDP by almost 6%, which is about $170 billion in today’s dollars.
Heloise Pratt is working to settle a bitter dispute over the future of the billionaire family’s Thorney Investments vehicle. The renewed discussions come after months of public acrimony, and hours after the stoush with her former husband, Alex Waislitz, was due to be heard in court. Pratt and Waislitz are now working on an agreement, after earlier deferring the first day of hearings scheduled in the Victorian Supreme Court. Waislitz and Pratt married in 1994 and have three children together. They separated in 2014, and for several years maintained a united front, until relations soured. The acrimony become public in November after Pratt filed a suit against Waislitz. Key to the dispute has been a battle for control of Thorney, Richard Pratt’s investment arm that he gifted to his daughter and son-in-law in 2005. In the subsequent 20 years, its assets have increased from $500 million to more than $1 billion. Pratt claimed Waislitz falsified records at their jointly owned private vehicle known as Jamahjo, which was the trustee of their Halex Family Trust. The trust was set up to provide for their three children. Pratt alleged Waislitz falsified board meeting records and inappropriately used more than $21 million in loans from a family trust to buy a property for his new partner, Rebekah Behbahani, and finance her music career. Waislitz and Behbahani had a daughter together in December 2019, and Pratt and her supporters started to fear Waislitz had not ringfenced Thorney. Pratt believes Thorney’s assets should go to their three children and that Waislitz’s new daughter, Storm, should not inherit any of that wealth.Pratt initially accused Waislitz of criminality, but that was withdrawn. Waislitz claims Pratt “abdicated responsibilities” as a director of their private family companies and the pair had an agreement in which he would run the family businesses. Both have denied the allegations made against them. Pratt was seeking to have a trustee appointed over Thorney. She alleged Waislitz was simply an executive of Thorney, the ownership of which belongs to her family.
Organised criminal groups are now behind an increase in shoplifting. Stolen steaks are being sold out of car boots to struggling restaurants before being plated up for diners and makeshift clothes shops are popping up in private homes with a range of in-vogue styles in every size. These are the bizarre points of sale appearing on suburban streets across Australia – a new black market that has exploded over the past 18 months in an intensifying retail theft crisis costing retailers more than $9 billion a year. The chief executives of Coles, Woolworths, Dan Murphy’s operator Endeavour, and retail giant Wesfarmers are among the latest to expressed their growing alarm at the deepening losses and harm caused by shoplifters. Though the problem is national, Victoria emerged as Australia’s capital of retail theft after offending reached its highest level on record this year. Behind the alarming figures is an intricate network of criminal groups. Their ruthless operation makes retail jobs increasingly dangerous and stolen goods are feeding a well-oiled black market that authorities are struggling to intercept. The unfolding problem isn’t petty shoplifting, though that’s certainly happening too. The business model is completely different. “You have in your mind a teenager stealing a pair of socks. That’s not this. This is professional,” Anthony Heraghty, chief executive of Super Retail Group, whose brands include Rebel Sport, said this month. Professional thieves are often weapon-wielding repeat offenders, walking out with trolleys of groceries, armfuls of merchandise and cash – often without resistance from staff, who are instructed to keep out of harm’s way. It’s a response that the criminals have learnt to use to their advantage. Two-thirds of the 800,000 incidents lodged last year through retail theft reporting platform Auror involved a weapon, typically knives, hammers and box cutters. Grocery giants Coles and Woolworths have been rapidly rolling out anti-theft measures as supermarkets fend off ongoing attacks. The number of threatening situations happening at Coles has risen 28% nationally. Woolworths dealt with more than 6000 violent incidents last year, with Victoria accounting for more than half of those. “It’s an everyday occurrence,” said Mike Schneider, the chief executive of hardware giant Bunnings. Michael Townsley, a professor at Griffith University’s school of criminology and criminal justice who researches retail theft, said statistics backed up the view that organised crime groups were the main driver of the recent uptick in retail crime. About 10% of offenders are responsible for 60% of all harm and loss, according to Auror, the platform for retailers to prevent crime. While organised crime syndicates exist in both NSW and Victoria and are players in illicit tobacco, drugs and prostitution, Townsley, who is a consultant to the National Retail Association, said retail theft – especially in Victoria – had emerged as a gainful area for criminals.
And that’s it for this week. And next week, I’ll be talking to Francis Prince Thangasamy, the managing director for Asia-Pac of Lumen Technologies. We’ll talk about how Lumen helps companies digitise now and remain relevant, despite market conditions.
And I’ll be talking to independent economist Saul Eslake about what we can expect from the government’s tax and productivity round table.
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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Looking forward to the next episode of Talking Business next week
