Latest updates on Key Economic Indicators:

A$: $0.6608 USD (up 0.0010)

Iron (SGX): $105.20 USD (down $2.30)

Oil (WTI): $80.66 USD (up $2.21)

Gold: $2,319.20 USD (down $13.81)

Copper (CME): $4.4580 USD (down $0.0405)

Bit-coin: $66,510.66 USD (up 0.11%)

Dow Jones: 38,778.10 (up 188.94 pts)

All changes compared to 7am yesterday.

Israeli protesters demand new elections after war cabinet dissolution:

Thousands of Israelis on Monday protested against Netanyahu’s government, demanding new elections at the start of a “week of disturbance” call by activists. 

The protests came hours after Netanyahu dissolved the war cabinet that was tasked with steering the war in Gaza.

Netanyahu is now expected to hold consultations about the Gaza war with a small group of advisers, including Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Thousands of Israelis protesting outside parliament and Netanyahu's residence in Jerusalem on Monday called for new elections at the start of a "week of disturbance" call by activists. 

US presidential special envoy Amos Hochstein on Monday held talks with top Israeli leaders to press for a de-escalation on the Lebanese border.

US Surgeon General calls for social media health warning labels: 

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Monday called for a warning label to be added to social media apps as a reminder that those platforms have caused harm to young people, especially adolescents.

Murthy wrote in the New York Times on Monday that a warning label alone will not make social media safe for young people but that it can increase awareness and change behavior as shown in evidence from tobacco studies.

The U.S. Congress would need to pass legislation requiring such a warning label.

Why Is This Important?

For a long time, Murthy has been warning that social media can profoundly harm the mental health of youth, particularly adolescent girls.

In an advisory last year, he called for safeguards from tech companies for children who are at critical stages of brain development.

A 2019 American Medical Association study showed that the risk of depression doubled for teenagers who were spending three hours a day or more on social media.

Some U.S. states have been working to pass legislation to safeguard children from the harmful effects of social media, such as anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses as a result.

New York state lawmakers this month passed legislation to bar social media platforms from exposing "addictive" algorithmic content to users under age 18 without parental consent.

In March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that bans children under 14 from social media platforms and requires 14- and 15-year-olds to get parental consent.

Candid' meeting clears the air

The Australian Financial Review - Page 1 & 4 : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Andrew Tillett - Portmac.News Summary

Five memorandums of understanding between Australia and China were signed following the meeting between PM Albanese and Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Monday.

Details of the meeting will not be released until after Li concludes his visit in Perth on Tuesday.

In what was described as a "candid" meeting, Li and Albanese agreed to improve military-to-military lines of communications in order to hopefully prevent potentially dangerous confrontations in the air or at sea, while Li stated that the two countries could seek common ground while "shelving their differences".

'Awkward' : Forrest hails an end to 'puerile' politics

The Australian - Page 5 : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Paul Garvey - Portmac.News Summary

Fortescue chairman Andrew Forrest says the slump in the relationship between China and Australia during the first part of the pandemic placed Australia's economic prosperity at risk, given that China is its biggest trading partner.

Forrest hopes that the visit to Australia of Chinese Premier Li Qiang marks the end of what he claims was a "puerile" era in Australian political attitudes towards China,

Meanwhile he is critical of Peter Dutton's recent decision to foreshadow that he would abandon Australia's 2030 carbon-reduction targets if he comes to power.

Forrest says keeping the target is crucial for business planning, and that scrapping it could see Australia missing out on the "enormous economic opportunity around the global ­energy transition".

Beijing praises PM 'for not being under US thumb'

The Australian - Page 4 : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Will Glasgow - Portmac.News Summary

PM Albanese has attracted high praise from the China Daily, regarded as Beijing's most authoritative English language masthead.

With Chinese Premier Li Qiang being welcomed by Albanese in Canberra on Monday, the China Daily said that Albanese had shown that "Canberra can balance relations with Beijing and Washington".

By way of contrast, it accused Albanese's predecessor Scott Morrison of being "confrontational" and "under the sway of Washington".

Meanwhile, a survey published in China's fellow English language masthead, the Global Times, has found that Chinese attitudes towards Australia remain far more positive than the attitudes of Australians towards China, a consistent finding since the survey started in 2020.

Cheng Lei the focus after security bid to keep her from view

The Australian - Page 5 : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Rhiannon Down, Ben Packham - - Portmac.News Summary

Journalist Cheng Lei says she is not surprised that Chinese officials tried to block her from the view of cameras during a joint press conference with PM Albanese and Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Monday.

Cheng, who was released from a Chinese prison in 2023 after being held for three years on dubious security charges, said the incident was a reflection of Beijing's desire to exert "utter control".

Cheng said she was sitting behind the Chinese ministers and the officials did not want her to be seen on the evening news, while they were afraid that she might do something to disrupt what they would view as a great success.

Labor's $189.5m VC stake in quantum computing revealed

The Australian Financial Review - Page 3 : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Paul Smith - Portmac.News Summary

The details of the federal government's $470 million deal with quantum computing firm PsiQuantum can now been revealed, with the government officially signing its contract with the company on Monday.

The deal had been previously reported as a combination of equity, debt and grants, but no grants were involved.

The deal consists of a venture capital-style equity investment of $US125 million ($189.5 million), with the remainder of the deal comprising debt.

It is understood that the government intends to publish details of the deal in coming weeks.

Coalition 'to do whatever it can to avoid large-scale renewables'

The Australian - Page 1 & 6 : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Rosie Lewis - Portmac.News Summary

National Party leader David Littleproud has indicated that the Coalition will pursue a 'slow transition' from coal-fired power to nuclear energy if it win the next federal election.

He adds that while renewables will be part of the energy mix, the Coalition will consider all options in order to avoid the need for large-scale renew­able energy projects.

Littleproud has also sought to clarify recent comments in which he stated that the Coalition would scrap the offshore wind power industry; he indicated that he was referring solely to the recently-declared wind zone off the coast of the Illawarra region of NSW.

British, US giants create AUKUS one-stop shop

The Australian Financial Review - Page 6 : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Andrew Tillett - Portmac.News Summary

US-based Huntington Ingalls Industries and the UK's Babcock International have established a joint venture called H&B Australia to support the AUKUS alliance.

Huntington has designed and built the Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines, with Australia to buy three of these vessels via the alliance; Babock in turn is responsible for maintaining the UK's fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.

Australia is slated to take delivery of the first British-designed and Adelaide-built SSN AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine in the 2040s.

Australia's Australia's highest-paid jobs revealed

The Australian Financial Review - Page 11 : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Michael Read, Tom McIlroy - Portmac.News Summary

Data from the Australian Taxation Office shows that the average income of surgeons was more than $480,000 in 2021-22.

Anaesthetists ranked second on the list of professions with the highest incomes, with an average annual salary of $448,000. In contrast, the average reported income of fast-cooks was just $22,000.

Meanwhile, Double Bay in Sydney tops the list of postcodes with the highest average taxable income, at $354,308 a year.

'Not every woman wants to go back to work'

The Australian - Page 6 : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Greg Brown - Portmac.News Summary

With the Coalition hoping to win back women voters at the next election, deputy Nationals leader Perin Davey says the idea of income splitting between partners has merit.

Davey says that rather than encouraging both parents to return to work as soon as possible after a birth, there needs to be a discussion about having a tax system that gives the mother or father the choice of staying home to raise children.

Davey claims there is a lot of pressure on women to get straight back in the workforce after having a child, but "not every woman wants to do that".

Meanwhile The Parenthood CEO Georgie Dent says the Coalition will need to commit to ambitious childcare and paid-parental leave policies if it wants to improve its standing with female voters.

The error in NSW's GST revenue claim

The Australian Financial Review - Page 1 & 5 : 18 June 2024 - Original article by John Kehoe - Portmac.News Summary

NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey is under scrutiny ahead of delivering the budget today, after he claimed that the state is set to lose $12bn in forecast GST revenue over the next four years.

Mookhey contends that the Commonwealth Grants Commission's changes to the formula for distributing GST revenue will result in the state budget remaining in deficit over the forward estimates period.

However, it is believed that the government has erroneously calculated that its share of GST revenue will remain steady at $0.92 in the dollar over the next four years, although this is slated to fall to $0.87 in 2024-25.

Land tax 'could drive investors from NSW'

The Australian Financial Review - Page 5 : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Campbell Kwan, Nila Sweeney - Portmac.News Summary

NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey has defended the state government's decision to freeze the tax-free threshold for land tax at the 2024 level of $1.075m.

He contends that "very few people" will be affected by the budget measure, and the majority of property investors will pay no land tax.

However, Opposition Leader Mark Speakman has described it as a "tax grab" and argues that increasing the tax burden on property owners is inappropriate during a housing and cost-of-living crisis.

Propertybuyer's founder Rich Harvey says he will now reconsider purchasing additional investment properties in NSW.

No multi factor authentication led to the Medibank hack

abc.net.au - Page Online : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Clint Jasper - Portmac.News Summary

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has claimed that the 2022 hack of private health insurer Medibank was due to an absence of multi factor authentication protections on its private network.

The OAIC is alleging that Medibank breached sections of the Privacy Act by not taking enough steps to protect the sensitive data it held about its customers, with each contravention of the Act carrying a maximum penalty of $2.22 million.

The OAIC is alleging a contravention for each of Medibank's 9.7 million customers, which works out to a potential maximum fine of more than $21 trillion.

ASIC cautions investors about crypto ETFs

The Australian Financial Review - Page 29 : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Joshua Peach - Portmac.News Summary

The VanEck Bitcoin ETF will commence trading on the ASX on Thursday, making it the first bitcoin-linked exchange-traded fund to trade on the Australian Stock Exchange.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has responded to its listing by urging investors to be cautious about bitcoin ETFs, with an ASIC spokesperson stating that investing in crypto is a "highly speculative activity".

The listing of the VanEck Bitcoin ETF is expected to result in a 'wave' of similar crypto ETFs being added to the ASX.

Cettire quietly enters China's rocky luxury goods market

The Australian Financial Review - Page 15 : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Carrie LaFrenz - Portmac.News Summary

Luxury goods marketplace Cettire announced earlier in the year that it would soon launch its platform in China, with CEO Dean Mintz saying it would do so before 30 June.

However, it is doing so at a time when rivals such as the Richemont-owned Yoox Net-a-Porter have announced they are pulling out of the Chinese luxury goods market to focus on more profitable regions.

Meanwhile RBC Capital Markets' head of small-cap research Wei-Weng Chen says there is no guarantee that Cettire's strategy will be a success in China

'Uber of therapy' platform BetterHelp faces scrutiny over customer data privacy

The Guardian - Page Online : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Natasha May - Portmac.News Summary

Consumer advocacy group Choice contends that Australia lacks the regulations to deal with online mental health platforms such as BetterHelp, which has been dubbed the 'uber of therapy'.

With the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) having required BetterHelp in 2023 to pay $US7.8 million ($11.8m) to customers to settle claims it had shared their personal details with platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat despite promising to keep their details private,

Choice and former privacy commissioner Malcolm Crompton say that the FTC's action against BetterHelp means the Australian information commissioner should investigate whether it had breached local privacy laws.

Publishers fear Google AI search will kill their sites

The Australian Financial Review - Page 21 & 23 : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Paul Smith - Portmac.News Summary

Google is using AI to create summaries of content from publisher web sites to answer search queries, rather than the actual web site link.

It has claimed that summaries encourage, rather than discourage, readers to click on publishers' websites, but publishers and media experts have dismissed its claim, while research by US-based Future Media has also cast doubt on Google's claim.

Private Media CEO Will Hayward comments that tech firms are known for making bold statements that do not pass the "sniff test", and that "Australian journalism can't wait five years to see if what they've claimed turns out to be true".

ASX China & rate decision A Downer

The Australian Financial Review - Page 28 : 18 June 2024 - Original article by Cecile Lefort - Portmac.News Summary

The Australian sharemarket lost ground on Monday, with the S&P/ASX 200 shedding 0.3% to close at 7,700.3 points.

Rio Tinto fell 1.7% to $118.16, Beach Energy was down 1.9% at $1.565 and Integral Diagnostics finished 4.3% lower at $2.43 in response to a merger deal.

However, West African Resources rose 2.5% to $1.42 and National Australia Bank was up 0.7% at $35.29.