Latest Australia Headlines
All the headlines from our Australia Topic Page, ordered by recency.
Optus Must Pay Cost of Replacing Hacked Customer Documents: Australia Government
Sep 29 2022 // Australian telecoms giant Optus must pay the cost of replacing the passports and drivers licenses of millions of customers whose personal information was stolen in one of the country’s biggest data breaches, the...
Australian Police Probe Purported Ransomware Attack at Telecom Firm Optus
Sep 28 2022 // CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australian police were investigating a purported hacker’s release of the stolen personal data of 10,000 customers of the nation’s second-largest wireless carrier and demand for...
Proposed Australian Law Would Make It Employers’ Job to Stop Sexual Harassment
Sep 27 2022 // New legislation introduced into Australia’s Parliament will place a “positive duty” on employers to prevent workplace sexual harassment, as part of sweeping changes to improve worker safety. Under the...
Australia Plans to Toughen Privacy Rules After Massive Cyber Attack on Optus
Sep 26 2022 // Australia plans to toughen privacy rules to force companies to notify banks faster when they experience cyber attacks, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday, after hackers targeted the country’s...
Telecoms Firm Optus Warns Cyber Attack May Have Exposed Australian Clients’ Details
Sep 23 2022 // Optus, the Australian unit of telecoms firm Singapore Telecommunications, said it was investigating the unauthorized access of customer details including home addresses, driver’s license and passport numbers, after a...
Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch Sues Australian News Site for Defamation
Aug 24 2022 // Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch has filed a defamation lawsuit against an Australian news site over an opinion piece he says accused him of being complicit in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former...
Australia’s Extreme Climate Risks Threaten to Make Home Insurance Unaffordable
Aug 17 2022 // Australia’s mounting extreme weather events threaten to make home insurance premiums unaffordable for an estimated 1 million households. On average, Australians living in high-risk areas like northern Queensland pay...
Australia on High Alert for Foot-and-Mouth Disease in Its Cattle Herds
Jul 25 2022 // Australia is on high alert for foot-and-mouth disease in its cattle herds after traces of the virus were found on imported animal products. The disease is already ripping through Indonesia, and is creeping ever closer to...
ANZ Agrees to Buy Australian Insurer Suncorp’s Bank Operations for $3.3 Billion
Jul 18 2022 // Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. agreed to buy Suncorp Group Ltd.’s banking operations for A$4.9 billion ($3.3 billion) as it seeks to gain an edge over larger rivals by expanding in the country’s...
What Is Causing Australia’s Incessant Rain?
Jul 5 2022 // MELBOURNE — Torrential rain is lashing Australia’s southeast coast, forcing thousands of people from their homes because of the danger of floods and landslides in a region battered by major flooding four times...
Probe Into Australia’s Mining Sector Uncovers ‘Horrific’ Sexual Abuses
Jun 29 2022 // A landmark inquiry into Australia’s mining sector has uncovered dozens of shocking cases of sexual harassment and abuse of women workers at companies including BHP Group and Rio Tinto Group. The Western Australia...
BMS Acquires Australian Retail Broker SRG Group
Jun 16 2022 // BMS, the London-based independent specialist insurance and reinsurance broker, announced the acquisition of SRG Group, the Australian corporate retail broker with operations in Perth and Queensland. Founded in 2005, SRG is...
Google Ordered to Pay Former Australian Lawmaker for Defamatory YouTube Videos
Jun 6 2022 // SYDNEY – An Australian court on Monday ordered Google to pay a former lawmaker A$715,000 ($515,000), saying its refusal to remove a YouTuber’s “relentless, racist, vilificatory, abusive and defamatory”...
Australia Faces Growing Risk of Foot-and-Mouth Disease as Indonesia Outbreak Spreads
Jun 3 2022 // The risk of foot-and-mouth disease reaching Australian shores has escalated as an outbreak sweeps through cattle herds in Indonesia. More than 20,000 animals have been infected by foot-and-mouth disease across 16...
Australia’s AUB Group Agrees to Purchase UK Broker Tysers for US$615.2 Million
May 10 2022 // Australia’s AUB Group has entered into a binding agreement to purchase UK insurance broker Tysers for A$880 million (US$615.2 million) from private equity firm Odyssey Investment Partners. AUB Group recently raised...
Insurance Price Tag for Australia’s Record-Breaking Floods Estimated at A$3.35B: ICA
May 6 2022 // The storms and floods that hit South-East Queensland and coastal New South Wales in February and March are likely to be Australia’s costliest floods on record, according to the Insurance Council of Australia...
Australia’s Westpac Banking Fined A$113M for Multiple Compliance Breaches
Apr 22 2022 // An Australian court ordered Westpac Banking Corp. to pay A$113 million ($82.92 million) in penalties for multiple compliance failures across its businesses, after hearing the last of the six cases filed against it by the...
Insured Losses From Eastern Australia Floods Estimated at A$4B: PERILS
Apr 21 2022 // Initial insurance losses for the Eastern Australia floods are estimated at A$3.99 billion (US$2.97 billion), according to PERILS, the independent Zurich-based organization that provides industry-wide catastrophe insurance...
Australia Should Force Firms to Report Human Rights Abuses in Anti-Slavery Law: Analyst
Apr 8 2022 // Australia should force companies to report potential human rights abuses as part of a review of its modern slavery disclosure rules, according to an analyst at a A$16 billion ($12 billion) fund manager who helped draft the...
Reinsurers to Bear Brunt of Australia Flood Claims: AM Best
Apr 5 2022 // The majority of gross losses from recent devastating flooding in Australia likely will be borne by reinsurers with limited impact on primary insurers’ balance sheets, according to an AM Best report. The flooding...
