30m agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 11:30pmMarket snapshotASX 200: -0.2% to 8,442 pointsAustralian dollar: -0.1 to 68.47 US cents
Wall Street: Dow Jones (+0.1%), S&P 500 (-0.2%)
Europe: FTSE (+1.6%)Asia: Nikkei (-2.8%), KOSPI (-3%), Hang Seng (-0.8%)Spot gold: -0.1% to $US4,504/ounceSpot silver: -0.3% to $US69.78/ounceOil (Brent crude): Flat at $US112.78/barrelIron ore: +0.1% at $US106.32/tonneBitcoin: +1.1% at $US66,663
ASX 200: -0.2% to 8,442 pointsAustralian dollar: -0.1 to 68.47 US centsPrice current around 10:28am AEDT
Live updates on the major ASX indices:
2m agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 11:58pm
Thinking of laundering money? Think again
Australia’s money laundering regulator AUSTRAC is opening enrolments for lawyers, accountants, conveyancers, real estate professionals, and dealers in precious stones and metals from today.
It’s part of the next phase of the Australian Government’s anti‑money laundering reforms, which will see the new sectors come under its anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing (AML/CTF) regime from July 1.
That’s when the number of businesses regulated by AUSTRAC will grow from around 19,000 to close to 100,000 across the country.
AUSTRAC chief executive Brendan Thomas said the changes represent the most significant overhaul of Australia’s AML/CTF framework in more than 20 years.
“These reforms are about closing long‑standing gaps, lifting protections across the economy and making it harder for criminals to hide, move or enjoy the proceeds of crime,” Mr Thomas said.
From today, businesses can create an account and enrol through AUSTRAC Online.
From July 1 they will be required to comply with obligations under law, including implementing AML/CTF programs, conducting customer due diligence, reporting suspicious matters, and keeping records.
19m agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 11:41pm
Mastercard, Visa and EFTPOS surcharges to go
Want to know more about the RBA’s surcharge decision?
Our reporter Adelaide Miller has been in the lock-up at the Reserve Bank this morning and has written this piece.
The final part of the reforms is to increase transparency and competition over fees, with EFTPOS, Mastercard and Visa to publish the fees they charge.
“We will publish merchant fees to make it easier for businesses to check if they are paying high fees,” RBA Governor Michelle Bullock said.
34m agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 11:26pm
Jackie ‘O’ launches legal action against ARN
Radio presenter Jackie ‘O’ Henderson has launched legal proceedings against broadcaster ARN.
It comes one week after her former co-presenter Kyle Sandilands did the same, following the termination of his $100 million contract.
The proceedings have been launched against Commonwealth Broadcasting Corporation, a subsidiary of ARN, which is the licence holder of KIIS, the radio station that broadcasts The Kyle and Jackie O Show.
The show abruptly came to an end after an on-air row between Sandilands and Henderson, after which she told ARN she could no longer work with him.
Henderson later issued a statement, denying she quit the show, saying there had been “a lot of speculation and misinformation about my departure”.
In a statement to the ASX, ARN said Henderson sent a letter that:
“… made psychosocial health and safety and bullying complaints in relation to the conduct of Mr Sandilands.”
ARN alleges that the letter:
“… involved the exercise or proposal to exercise workplace rights, and that the contract was terminated because of that exercise or proposed exercise.”
ARN said in its ASX statement that the applicants claim compensation “of at least $82, 250, 000”.
“ARN disputes the claims. It intends to defend the proceedings.”
46m agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 11:14pm
RBA reaction function critical to forecasting cash rate
HSBC chief economist Paul Bloxham says the RBA has been more backwards-looking when it comes to inflation, but forwards-looking when it comes to full employment.
In a research note he writes they have examined how the RBA board has been weighing up inflation versus employment.
As part of their analysis they took the RBA’s own forecasts for headline CPI and the unemployment rate since 2010 — six and 12 months ahead — to look at how the cash rate has responded to forecast revisions.
“For RBA observers, a key question now is: will the RBA continue to favour full employment over getting inflation back to its 2.5% target,” he writes.
“To us, it seems unlikely that the RBA can have both. Understanding the RBA’s reaction function is critical to forecasting the cash rate — but, when that reaction function changes, the whole exercise gets particularly difficult.”
48m agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 11:13pm
Big call, but a few things
Junior rates are GONE for proto-adults.
At the moment if you’re 18 years old and work in fast food, pharmacy or retail you are paid 30% less than a 21 year old adult. There’s a smaller discount at 19, then 20, then it disappears.
Now they are all gone. Any 18-year-old is considered an adult.
There’s a few caveats.
There’s a long phase-in period of up to four years, you’ve got to have been with the employer for six months.
The change will start from December.
We’ll get more detail in the decision, which will be published soon.
There’s more background here:
51m agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 11:09pm
DECISION: Junior rates go for older (18+) workers
The full bench of the Fair Work Commission has killed off junior rates for over-18s, with one caveat.
“We have decided that adult junior employees should be paid adult rates… with an exception for those who have not worked for 6 months with the same employer”.
The discount remains for those below the age of 18.
54m agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 11:06pm
Flat open to trade
The local share market has opened down slightly.
The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 is off by 0.16% to 8,446 a few minutes after the open.
The AUD is buying 68.48 US cents.
57m agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 11:04pm
Junior rates case about to come down
It’s packed here in Melbourne at the Fair Work Commission, where we’ll soon get a decision in the “junior rates” case brought by the SDA union.
Scores of lawyers and quite a few young union delegates working in retail, fast food and pharmacies are here.
If successful, people aged 18-21 will get a pay boost — they’ll likely get full adult wages. If unsuccessful, they will keep getting the junior wage discount (10% off adult wages if 20 years of age, 20% if 19, 30% if 18) applied to their pay packet.
1h agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 10:41pm
Surcharge reforms could save businesses $910m
The reforms introduced by the RBA as part of its suite of surcharge changes are predicted to save businesses $910 million each year.
It includes lowering the caps on interchange fees paid by Australian businesses, with a focus on lowering these fees for small businesses who pay the highest fees.
The final part of the reforms is to increase transparency over the fees charged by card networks and payment service providers to strengthen competition.
It comes after 18 months of consultation by the Reserve Bank, including more than 260 written submissions, and about 150 stakeholder meetings.
1h agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 10:35pm
Surcharges on debit and credit cards to go from October
The Reserve Bank of Australia has introduced reforms that will remove surcharges on debit and credit cards from October 1, 2026, on card networks including eftpos, Mastercard and Visa.
These reforms are expected to save consumers about $1.6 billion in surcharging fees each year, and businesses about $200 million in surcharging fees each year.
The reforms from the RBA also include lowering the caps on interchange fees paid by Australian businesses, with a focus on lowering these fees for small businesses that pay the highest fees.
1h agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 10:28pm
ASX 200 futures update – and apology
Morning Daniel. Just recovering from my brief heart attack on reading ASX futures up “8.5%” !!! Might want to adjust market snapshot to the correct 8.5 points .
– Phillip
Hi team,
Apologies for any heart-starting this morning!
In our snapshot I wrote that ASX 200 futures were up +8.5%.
That would be HUGE. It is set to lift +8.5 points to 8,500 points
Apologies again.
1h agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 10:22pm
Petrol up 15 cents in a week
The national average price of a litre of unleaded petrol rocketed 15.4 cents to 253.4 cents in the week to Sunday.
Weekly data from the Australian Institute of Petroleum details the surge, which puts the average well above the 12-month average figure of 181.9 cents.
Will be interesting to see the impact of the cut to fuel excise, noted elsewhere in the blog, on figures for future weeks.
1h agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 10:15pm
What is petrol costing where you are?
OK, so the national average price of a litre of unleaded petrol has hiked to 253.4 cents in the week to Sunday.
But what you really want to know is what it’s like where you live?
And thanks to the dedicated boffins at the Australian Institute of Petroleum, here’s that very data.
Table of fuel costs for the week to Sunday (Australian Institute of Petroleum)
1h agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 10:06pm
Busy day for the RBA publications department
Shortly (at 9:30am AEDT) the Conclusions Paper of the Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging will be out.
But on your broader economic chat, The Minutes of the March Monetary Policy Board Meeting will be released at 11:30am today.
One to watch.
2h agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 9:57pm
Is today the day Melbourne becomes #1?
Already the coolest city in the world according to some measures, today the ABS could give Melbourne more fire in its on-going rivalry with its hotter older sister: Sydney.
The ABS will release new population figures which could show that Melbourne is now the largest city in Australia.
Last year’s release, of 2023-24 data, had the cities here:
Sydney: 5,557,233 – up 2%Melbourne: 5,350,705 – up 2.7%
Melbourne is unlikely to take the crown just yet. You can see that 0.7 percentage point gap in growth. That’s Melbourne growing by 37,000 to 38,000 people more than Sydney is – not enough to bridge a 200,000-person gap in a year, but putting it on a five-year trajectory to overtake the Emerald City.
(The figures are contentious: they include areas of Sydney far further north than Melbourne’s boundaries extend)
For people shaking their heads at the two big kids fighting, there’s still a lot of fun to be had in the data – it shows where the “centre” of both the state and the capital is.
The centre for South Australia:
The suburb of Lightsview at June 2024, in Adelaide’s inner north-eastIt moved 60 metres south over 2023-24, reflecting stronger growth in the state’s south.
Here’s last year’s release:
2h agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 9:48pm
Middle East update
Just woken up?
Here’s our wrap of the latest developments in the Iran conflict.
2h agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 9:36pm
Fuel excise cut, but who wears the cost
If you’re still catching up from yesterday, the big news was the cut in petrol excise — a tax on every litre of fuel pumped.
The tax on every litre of petrol and diesel will be slashed by about 26.3 cents on every litre of fuel for three months from today, with Treasurer Jim Chalmers estimating it will save Australians about $19 on a 65-litre tank of fuel.
The fuel excise was last slashed in half for six months in 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted energy supply chains and sent global prices soaring.
At the time, the 24.3 cents-a-litre saving was “largely” passed onto motorists with a six-week lag due to the way fuel is priced, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
2h agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 9:27pm
RBA decision on billions of micropayments
The Reserve Bank will make its long-awaited decision on credit card surcharges today at 9:30am AEDT.
You should be way more than 0.4% interested in this.
My colleague Alison Branley will have more for us shortly, but here’s a catch-up of the issues.
2h agoMon 30 Mar 2026 at 9:14pm
Rationing? When we’re down to 10 days’ supply
When we’ve got 10 days left.
That’s when fuel rationing will kick in, according to a cracking report from my colleagues Clare Armstrong and Isobel Roe about what the government has modelled as it looks at our fuel market.
Federal government modelling conducted in the early days of the Middle East war assumed fuel rationing would kick in when Australia’s national stockpile falls to a 10-day supply.
Australia currently has 30 days’ worth of diesel, 39 days’ worth of petrol and 30 days’ worth of jet fuel in reserve and all fuel shipments through to May have been secured, meaning supply remains at pre-conflict levels despite service stations experiencing localised shortages.
The government has not publicly indicated a threshold for restricting petrol consumption, but the ABC can reveal preliminary analysis of war-induced lower fuel import scenarios assumed rationing would only be used when the minimum stockholding obligation dropped to 10 days.
The modelling, outlined in a document produced by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) in mid-March, assumed restrictions on petrol usage through voluntary measures would not begin until the present fuel stockpile fell to 15 days.