Category Archives: Business

PwC-backed mental health platform was scrapped after $33m government trial launched without open tender

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Experts call for transparency over Project Synergy grant awarded to Innowell, whose platform is no longer used by the federal health department

A PwC-backed startup received tens of millions of taxpayer dollars through a closed, non-competitive grant to develop a digital mental health platform, which was almost scrapped due to health workers finding it an administrative burden.

Policy experts and transparency watchdogs have raised alarm about the grant and called on the federal government to explain why the money was not allocated through an open and competitive process to ensure value for money.

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News live: Burney rules out voice debate with Price, saying ‘this is about Australians not politics’

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Minister for education Jason Clare said increasing access to a Commonwealth-supported place at university will cost $34m over the next four years – “That’s a pretty good investment”.

He said on ABC RN this morning:

If you’re a young Indigenous person today, you’re more likely to go to jail than you are to university.

The cost of having somebody in jail every year is about $120,000. The cost of a university place is $11,000.

Tuna sushi.

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Public servants complained about PwC ‘spamming’ them with unsolicited work offers, emails reveal

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Correspondence released by agriculture department shows level of discomfort among officials about embattled firm’s efforts to land new contracts

Senior public servants have complained about PwC “spamming” them with unsolicited bids for work, internal emails reveal, with department managers told to be vigilant about the potential misuse of government information and the importance of protecting taxpayer money.

The emails, released by the department of agriculture, provide more detail about a practice criticised by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) and demonstrate the level of discomfort within the public service about PwC’s methods of trying to land new contracts.

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Rural bus services hit new low after losing out on post-Covid funding

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More than a quarter of routes in English county and rural areas have been lost over 10 years

Endangered rural bus services have dwindled to a new low after losing out on funding after the pandemic, analysis for councils has shown.

More than a quarter of routes in county and rural areas of England have been lost in the past decade, with passenger numbers falling sharply.

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Twitter investor writes down stake by 47% as analyst claims Threads user fall

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Elon Musk has said advertising has plunged on his social media platform and it is cashflow negative

An investor in Elon Musk’s Twitter has written down their stake in the business by 47% as advertisers rein in their spending on the social media platform.

The move by ARK Investment Management came as an analysis firm claimed that usage of the “Twitter killer” Threads app has fallen by half since its launch by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.

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UK relaxes visa rules for foreign builders amid Brexit shortages

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Bricklayers and other construction jobs added to list alongside care workers and engineers

Bricklayers, plasterers and other construction jobs have been added to the government’s “shortage occupation list”, making it easier for foreign builders to come to Britain amid labour shortages partly caused by Brexit.

The UK government has relaxed visa restrictions for a number of sectors that face severe worker shortages, and has added bricklayers and masons; roofers, roof tilers and slaters; carpenters and joiners; plasterers and other construction workers to the list. Fishing jobs have also been added to the list.

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Tesla directors agree to return $735m to settle claims they were grossly overpaid

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Shareholders sued the directors over stock option awards in 2017, accusing them of unfair and excessive compensation

Tesla Inc’s directors will return $735m to the company to settle claims they grossly overpaid themselves in one of the largest shareholder settlements of its kind, according to a Monday filing in a Delaware court.

The settlement resolves a 2020 lawsuit by a retirement fund which holds Tesla stock and challenged stock options that were granted to Tesla directors starting in June 2017.

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Grant Shapps appears to row back on supermarket petrol prices law

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Energy secretary backs voluntary price comparison scheme in meeting with supermarket bosses rather than new law

The energy secretary, Grant Shapps, appears to have rowed back on plans for a law to force supermarkets to make fuel prices more transparent, instead backing a voluntary price comparison scheme in a meeting with supermarket bosses.

Shapps on Monday endorsed the non-mandatory scheme, which had been suggested by the competition regulator, after a summit with retailers that he had promised would involve him holding “rip-off retailers” to account.

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Olive oil industry in crisis as Europe’s heatwave threatens another harvest

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World’s biggest olive producer, Spain, on course for second bad harvest in a row, raising fears of gaps on shelves and even higher prices

The olive oil industry is “in crisis”, with the heatwave in southern Europe threatening to inflict the second bad harvest in a row and gaps on shelves this autumn.

After a spring heatwave affected flowering in Spain, which produces about half the global olive crop, the harvest was forecast to be only 28% up on last year, which was the worst in almost a decade.

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Post Office inquiry chair criticises Horizon compensation scheme

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Wyn Williams calls for legislative change to resolve issues for those affected by the scandal

Schemes set up to compensate former post office operators wrongly accused of crimes are “a patchwork quilt” with “holes in it” that are likely to miss the deadline to pay up, the chair of the inquiry into the scandal has said.

More than 700 people were prosecuted for theft and false accounting between 2000 and 2014 after the Post Office’s flawed Horizon IT system incorrectly suggested there were financial shortfalls.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

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Australia news live: ‘are you really worth seven times the salary of the PM?’ Labor senator asks Deloitte chief

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Former competition watchdog Allan Fels tells parliamentary inquiry federal government must act now to avoid conflicts of interest. Follow the day’s news live

Divers are trying to retrieve hundreds of drones that plunged into Melbourne’s Yarra River over the weekend due to a technical error.

The drones were part of a light show for the Matildas’ game against France on Friday night but fell into the river due to a technical glitch. The retrieval operation began on Sunday and is continuing on Monday.

We want to see all drones taken back out of the river because we know if they are left there they will leach chemicals which can damage the environment.

We want investors to come into the market to take advantage of the great demand for rental accommodation.

But we don’t want to stifle that by putting unnecessary burden (on landlords).

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Betting firm logos shown on TV up to 3,500 times in Premier League matches, study finds

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Average was once every 16 seconds across 10 matches last season, with a total of 3,522 in West Ham v Chelsea

Betting company logos appear as often as 3,500 times during the course of a televised football match, the majority on pitchside hoardings, prompting renewed scepticism about top-flight clubs’ plan to give up front-of-shirt betting ads only.

A study led by psychology experts from four universities measured the volume of gambling adverts during 10 matches that took place last season, featuring every Premier League club.

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Andrew Forrest cleared of wrongdoing after Fortescue ordered review into anonymous allegation

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Mining company engaged a private law firm to investigate when directors became aware of an anonymous letter about the executive chairman

Fortescue Metals ordered a review into an anonymous allegation about the behaviour of its executive chair, Andrew Forrest, after a whistleblower tipoff, but cleared him of wrongdoing.

The company said in a statement it engaged an independent law firm that had not previously represented Fortescue or its billionaire founder to investigate the issue.

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Green energy tycoon to launch UK’s first electric airline

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But Dale Vince’s Ecojet plane will run on kerosene-based fuel in 2024 to enable quick start to project

The green energy tycoon Dale Vince is planning to launch Britain’s first electric airline in a move designed to prove polluting industries can decarbonise.

Ecojet, styled as a “flag carrier for green Britain”, will launch early next year with a 19-seater plane travelling on a route between Edinburgh and Southampton.

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Microsoft agrees to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation ahead of Activision buy

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Software giant acquiesced after US trade commission expressed concern that Activision Blizzard acquisition would hurt gamers

Microsoft has signed a binding agreement to ensure that the Call of Duty video game franchise remains available on Sony’s PlayStation platform after Microsoft’s $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the tech company said on Sunday, easing concerns from Sony and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

A tweet from Phil Spencer, Microsoft Gaming’s CEO, read: “We are pleased to announce that Microsoft and @PlayStation have signed a binding agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. We look forward to a future where players globally have more choice to play their favorite games.”

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‘A huge market going untapped’: lack of visitors worries Wales

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Country does not seem to get its fair share of tourists or money, despite so much spectacular mountain scenery and coastline

Any summer’s day on top of Yr Wyddfa you may be forgiven for thinking all is well with Welsh tourism. People are queuing to touch the summit cairn, the cafe is rammed and the railway fully booked.

But the Welsh affairs committee at Westminster this week voiced serious concerns. It pointed out that in 2019, international visitors spent about £515m in Wales, less than 2% of the £28bn they spent in the UK overall. Closer scrutiny revealed other worrying signs: in 2022, there were almost 2.8bn day trips taken by British residents but only 6% happened in Wales, and on those visits people spent less than elsewhere in Britain.

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How Britain became the G7’s inflation outlier – in one chart

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This week’s CPI figures look set to highlight a trend: that prices in the UK seem to rise faster than they do elsewhere

The UK has a longstanding problem with inflation. Since the 2008 banking crash, bouts of inflation felt across the world have sent prices higher in the UK than its G7 rivals.

In July 2009, during the recession that followed the banking crisis, UK inflation was 3.1 points above the G7 average. Two years later, when recovery sent oil prices soaring, it stood about 2% above the G7 average. In March this year, however, it stood a full 3.5 points above the G7 level.

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Florida rocked by home insurance crisis: ‘I may have to sell up and move’

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Soaring hurricane-cover premiums are bad news for the state’s homeowners – and Ron DeSantis is accused of dragging his feet

Households in Florida, the third most populous state in the US, have been grappling for some time with a property insurance crisis that is making home ownership unaffordable for many. After at least six insurers went insolvent in Florida last year, Farmers on Tuesday became the latest to pull out of the Florida market, saying in a statement that the decision was based on risk exposure in the hurricane-prone state.

Climate change is threatening the very existence of some parts of Florida. And the costs are already being felt by Floridians. At the end of 2022, average annual property insurance premiums had already risen to more than $4,200 in Florida – three times the national average.

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In America’s ‘Voltage Valley’, hopes of car-making revival turn sour

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EV manufacturer Lordstown Motors, lauded by Trump in 2020, has gone bankrupt – what now for the once-proud auto-making region?

When Lordstown Motors, an electric vehicles (EV) manufacturer in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley, declared bankruptcy last month, it was the latest blow to a region that has seen decades of extravagant promises fail to deliver.

The 5,000 new jobs executives vowed to create in 2020 generated fresh hope for the shuttered General Motors Lordstown plant, which once functioned as an economic engine for the area and a critical piece of the nation’s industrial heartland.

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UK supermarket food prices up by more than 25% in two years, says Which?

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Retailers should be forced to display detailed price information on loyalty card deals, says consumer group

Supermarket food prices have increased by more than 25% over the past two years according to the consumer group Which?, with the size of the rise reinforcing the case for retailers to be forced to display detailed price information on loyalty card offers and promotions so shoppers can find the best deal.

Which? said the government needed to close loopholes that result in “confusing and inconsistent” pricing practices of some supermarkets. Last month it reported Tesco to the UK’s competition watchdog because it does not provide unit prices – such as the price for each 100g or 100ml – for the loyalty card offers it uses as a sales tactic to pull in shoppers.

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