Australia news live: embattled casino operator Star offered $650m lifeline; name of next cyclone changed from Anthony to avoid using PM’s name
Falling Star offered $650m lifeline for ailing casinos
Embattled casino operator Star Entertainment Group has been offered a five-year financial lifeline worth $650m, AAP reports, after a series of bruising battles with regulators over scandals at its venues.
The proposal would require approval from the NSW and Queensland governments, and would still leave the company short of funds before the deal kicked in.
The board is considering the proposal from Oaktree Capital Management, a US firm majority owned by Canadian giant Brookfield Asset Management, to provide up to $650m in funding across five years, The Star announced today.
In an announcement to the Australian stock market, the company said:
There is no certainty that the proposal will be progressed, that the conditions to the proposal will be satisfied, or that the proposal will be implemented.
If The Star proceeds with the proposal, the company will require additional funding for the period prior to the proposal being implemented. There remains material uncertainty as to the group’s ability to continue as a going concern.
The company has been battling a cash crunch that threatens to push it into insolvency as its revenues continue to slide. It ended the year with just $78m in cash available, losing more than $8m in the final quarter of 2024.
Key events
Emily Wind
Many thanks for joining me on the blog this Monday, Caitlin Cassidy will be here to take you through the rest of our rolling coverage. Take care!
Name of next cyclone changed from Anthony to Alfred
The name of Australia’s next tropical cyclone has been preemptively changed from “Anthony” to “Alfred”, because the name is also held by the prime minister.
The Bureau of Meteorology is responsible for naming tropical cyclones in the country, as a way of raising public awareness and ensuring there is no confusion when there are multiple cyclones at the same time.
It began naming cyclones in 1964, using a list of approved names in alphabetical order. It alternates between male and and female names, with the list divided into five sections.
A Bureau spokesperson said the next names on its list are Alfred and Bianca – but that Alfred was originally meant to be Anthony.
When a name matches a prominent person of the time, we reorder to the next name starting with that same letter to avoid any confusion. As the name Anthony represents a current prominent person in Australia, we have moved to the next name on the list which is Alfred.
The change occurred earlier this month, the spokesperson said.
Falling Star offered $650m lifeline for ailing casinos
Embattled casino operator Star Entertainment Group has been offered a five-year financial lifeline worth $650m, AAP reports, after a series of bruising battles with regulators over scandals at its venues.
The proposal would require approval from the NSW and Queensland governments, and would still leave the company short of funds before the deal kicked in.
The board is considering the proposal from Oaktree Capital Management, a US firm majority owned by Canadian giant Brookfield Asset Management, to provide up to $650m in funding across five years, The Star announced today.
In an announcement to the Australian stock market, the company said:
There is no certainty that the proposal will be progressed, that the conditions to the proposal will be satisfied, or that the proposal will be implemented.
If The Star proceeds with the proposal, the company will require additional funding for the period prior to the proposal being implemented. There remains material uncertainty as to the group’s ability to continue as a going concern.
The company has been battling a cash crunch that threatens to push it into insolvency as its revenues continue to slide. It ended the year with just $78m in cash available, losing more than $8m in the final quarter of 2024.
Ex-Tropical Cyclone Zelia lingering over inland WA
The Bureau of Meteorology says that ex-Tropical Cyclone Zelia is continuing to linger over the interior of Western Australia.
The system is bringing showers and possible thunderstorms to eastern parts of the state today.
Banking, goldminers dragging Aussie shares lower
The local share market has fallen, AAP reports, retreating from record levels amid losses by the banks amid disappointing earnings from Westpac and Bendigo and Adelaide.
Goldminers were also struggling amid a pullback in the price of the yellow metal, while insurance companies were dropping after opposition leader Peter Dutton accused them of price gouging and threatened to break them up if the Coalition wins power.
At noon, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was down 51.1 points, or 0.6%, to 8,504.7, while the broader All Ordinaries was down 44.9 points, or 0.51%, to 8,776.7.
The ASX’s financial sector was down 1.9% at midday, with Westpac dropping 5.4% to a four-week low of $32.84 and Bendigo and Adelaide plunging 16.7% to a nine-month low of $11.18 following their financial updates.
The other big banks were down as well, with NAB dropping 1.8%, ANZ falling 1.6% and CBA dipping 1.7%.
Elsewhere in the sector, Suncorp Group had dropped 6.4% and IAG had retreated 3.4% after Dutton floated the idea over the weekend of extending the Coalition’s plan to carve up supermarkets into the insurance industry to stop consumers from getting “ripped off”.
The Australian dollar was at a fresh two-month high against its US counterpart, buying 63.60 US cents, from 63.23 US cents at 5pm on Friday.
Jewish business targeted with antisemitic graffiti in Melbourne
A Jewish business has been targeted with antisemitic graffiti in Victoria’s Malvern East.
Police believe the roller door of the business on Dandenong Road was offensively graffitied sometime during 15 and 16 February. An investigation remains ongoing.
Police said in a statement:
Investigators are keen to speak to anyone who has CCTV or dashcam footage that may assist the investigation. There is absolutely no place at all in our society for antisemitic or hate-based symbols and behaviour.
The Australian reported an image of the graffiti, showing swastikas and the phrase “gas the Jews”.
Supermarket shelves bare amid widespread Western Australia flooding
Supermarket shelves are bare in tropical cyclone-affected northern Australia, AAP reports, with flooding cutting off freight routes.
Residents in Broome are some of the hardest hit by road closures in Western Australia’s northwest in the aftermath of Tropical Cyclone Zelia.
Roads have been cut across the region including the Great Northern highway which connects the northwest with WA’s south, ensuring no fresh supplies for many including in Broome.
Broome Shire president Chris Mitchell said contingencies were in place to have trucks arrive via South Australia and the Northern Territory.
I believe the shelves are fairly bare. I am not sure how long the highway [to the south] will be closed but we can get stuff in from the Territory and South Australia.
Road closures are a concern for East Pilbara shire which is larger than Victoria and Tasmania combined, featuring more than 3000km of unsealed roads.
NSW premier blasts rail union
Chris Minns has taken aim at the Rail, Tram and Bus Union as disruption continues across the Sydney Trains network. As AAP reports, the NSW premier said:
They think everybody in Sydney is stupid or that they’re getting away with it, when everyone’s on to them. We are on the side of commuters here.
The ongoing uncertainty around the train network is set to continue ahead of another Fair Work Commission hearing and opposition calls for the federal government to get involved. Minns said:
We are hopeful that the commission steps in at this point and ends this circus, but we’ll have a plan B and a plan C.
Disagreement over a previously undiscussed $4500 incentive payment, included in the previous agreement, caused negotiations to break down. Minns continued:
The government cannot give in to the union’s blackmail … it would only embolden them. I could solve this dispute this afternoon by handing over a blank cheque to the union and agreeing to their latest outrageous claims, but it wouldn’t solve it permanently.
Dutton calls out government for not releasing 2035 targets
Responding to the latest polls, Peter Dutton said “there’s a lot of fluctuation in them”. He took aim at Labor over energy policy, calling out the government for not releasing details of its 2035 targets:
The government’s got a 2035 target that they have modelled and they’re refusing to release it. If it’s good for consumers and good for our country, why not release the detail? I tell you why they don’t want to, because in it will be the assumptions around how much more electricity will go up if Mr Albanese is re-elected.
On the Coalition’s decision to scrap rebates, the opposition leader outlined the decision:
Say you give a family $300 but their electricity bill has gone up by $1,000, people are happy to take the money – but it means their interest rate is staying higher on their mortgage for longer. That’s what the Reserve Bank has warned about.
You can put out little amounts of money that people happily take and they’d be happy to take more because the costs of everything has gone up under Mr Albanese, but they all say no – Australians aren’t stupid. They know their power bills [have] gone up by $1,000.
Dutton puts insurance industry ‘on notice’ after flagging divestment powers
Speaking about insurance, after he yesterday flagged breaking up companies in the industry, Peter Dutton said:
I just put the insurance sector on notice right now – that when we win the election, I expect them to bring down insurance premiums significantly by the time we form a government. And if they don’t, then I will deal with the industry afterwards because we can’t have people who can’t afford to insure against public liability.
David Littleproud spoke about this earlier on ABC RN, saying Dutton’s announcement wasn’t a policy, after being asked if it had passed the joint party room.
Speaking just now, Dutton said “we had the policies in relation to a number of issues [and] I’m not going into internal processes”.
If we have a situation where people have been priced out of insurance or deemed an uninsurable risk when they shouldn’t be, that is a failure of the market and we’ll respond accordingly to that. We have done it in relation to supermarkets and we’ll speak with the insurance companies.
Dutton says RBA cutting interest rates would be ‘fantastic’ but not an endorsement of Labor policy
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has been speaking with reporters in Brisbane.
Asked about tomorrow’s RBA interest rate decision, Dutton said he is hoping for a “25 point cut, or if it’s more than that, that’s fantastic.”
If there is a rate cut, would this be an endorsement of Labor’s policies? Dutton rejected this and said no, it wouldn’t:
The short answer is no. But interest rates have gone up 12 times under the prime minister’s watch.
He accused Albanese of being “distracted right from the very start” of his term:
He spent the first 16, 18 months of his term in parliament on the [Indigenous] voice [to parliament]. And it meant that he wasn’t concentrating on how to deal with inflation, how to deal with the decisions that needed to be made in the first couple of budgets. Instead, he was distracted by the voice and other issues and it’s just meant that interest rates have been higher for longer.
