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A criminal syndicate is accused of laundering damaged Australian coins worth more than $1 million through ATMs across Sydney.

Police arrested and charged two alleged syndicate members, 36-year-old man Xin Hu and 37-year-old woman Sigia Wang, this week.

The damaged $1 and $2 coins were brought into Australia concealed as belt buckles in a shipment picked up by Border Force agents in June, NSW Police said.

Police said the coins were laundered at smart ATMs across Sydney, with the money deposited into several bank accounts and sent offshore.

The damaged coins were thought to have been taken out of circulation and no longer considered legal tender.

After further consignments were detected this week, police executed search warrants at businesses in the Sydney city centre and a home in Strathfield on Wednesday.

Hu and Wang were arrested and charged with recklessly dealing with the proceeds of crime.

Organised Crime Squad commander Peter Faux said the group attempted to avoid detection by using several different ATMs and depositing varying amounts of cash each day.

"The alleged actions of this group demonstrate the elaborate ways offshore syndicates are attempting to infiltrate our country and extort our financial system," he said.

"These groups all chase one thing - money.

"They want the power and control which comes with it and do not care who they defraud to get there."

Hu and Wang were refused bail and are due to appear at Burwood and Downing Centre Local Courts respectively on Thursday.

© AAP 2023

Reeling from the heartbreak of falling short in their Women's World Cup semi-final, the Matildas believe they can still reap silverware from their golden generation.

That journey starts with picking themselves up from their 3-1 loss to England and beating Sweden in Saturday's third-place play-off in Brisbane to ensure they don't leave their home tournament empty-handed.

"We had left everything out there, gave it our all and to be so close to playing for the World Cup, it's incredible and I guess it's just disappointing," winger Caitlin Foord said on Thursday.

"But we've had time to reflect on it and we still have a game to go and we don't want to leave this tournament empty-handed and we think we deserve to go home with something after the tournament we've had.

"So we'll leave it all out there Saturday and hopefully end on a high.

"It's extremely important. The first thing that came to my mind was the Olympics when we fell short and then we battled for the bronze medal match.

"Nothing hurt more than losing that game (to the USA). So we have that in the back of our mind going into this game and we deserve to go home with something from this tournament."

Australia's run that has captured the nation - including reaching a record TV audience of 11.15 million people for their semi-final clash, with an average figure of 7.13 million - was brought to a screeching halt on Wednesday.

Plenty of the Matildas' top players are either on the wrong side of 30 or not far off it - meaning this World Cup presented a golden opportunity for success.

Lydia Williams (35), Clare Polkinghorne (34), Aivi Luik (38), Kyah Simon (32) and Tameka Yallop (32) are the squad's oldest players.

Sam Kerr (29), Steph Catley (29), Katrina Gorry (31), Foord (28), Alanna Kennedy (28), Hayley Raso (28) and Emily van Egmond (30) will be at the tail end of their careers, or retired, by the time the 2027 World Cup rolls around.

"Everyone's going to be hurting. The veterans probably more - we don't really have another World Cup in us," Gorry told reporters.

"So it's a tough one to swallow at the moment.

"But we'll all get around each other, we'll make sure that we're ready to go for the next game. Because we want that bronze medal.

"It's dangling right in front of us. Australia has got us here so far, we're not going to let them down."

It took England three consecutive semi-finals, after heartbreak in 2015 and 2019, to finally break through for a World Cup decider.

Catley, at her third World Cup, pointed to Mary Fowler (20) and Kyra Cooney-Cross (21) as reasons to continue to believe.

"It does take a while and we've made enough quarter-finals, enough round of 16s," she said.

"You learn a lot from those moments. Some of these young girls that have just stepped in, and they've now played in a semi-final, they're going to learn so much and they're going to be so much more prepared for the next time it comes around.

"The fact that they've got that so early in their careers is massive.

"Some of the players that we've seen come through: Mary, Kyra, the way they've performed; Clare Hunt, there's so many.

"They just stepped up - they look so ready, they've got long careers ahead of them. Hopefully we're developing loads more girls that can come in and step in when they need to.

"Hopefully us old ducks can hold on a little bit longer and push for some more trophies."

© AAP 2023

The Australian Greens have recommitted to backing renters, who the minor party says have been left behind by federal, state and territory governments despite planned reforms.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, premiers and chief ministers agreed to rental market reforms at a national cabinet meeting on Wednesday, which includes limiting rent increases to once a year and creating minimum rental standards.

The reforms include developing a nationwide policy to require landlords to provide genuine, reasonable grounds for evictions.

Mr Albanese also offered a multi-billion dollar carrot to build new dwellings, announcing the construction of 1.2 million homes in the next five years, an increase of 200,000 dwellings from a previous target.

States and territories will be offered $15,000 for each new home they build from $3 billion in federal funding for 200,000 new dwellings.

The Greens had opposed the federal government's $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, arguing a lack of support to renters, delaying debate on the bill until October.

Greens leader Adam Bandt said his party would discuss whether the national cabinet outcomes would secure its support for the fund.

But his initial response was that the measures didn't go far enough to address the rental crisis.

"We are in a fight to push Labor to deliver for renters and we are not going to stop," he told ABC Radio on Thursday.

"We have bent over backwards to negotiate with the government on this and to push for action on renters and to get the government to take the rental crisis seriously.

"In a full-blown rental crisis, we need action now and instead it looks like we're getting more of the same."

Mr Bandt criticised the decision not to stop unlimited rent rises altogether, saying an increase once a year could still crush renters.

"(The Greens) proposed a rent freeze for two years and limiting it after that, but we've said we are prepared to negotiate on that and it seems like Labor is not," he said.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton questioned whether the Albanese government would be able to deliver the promised increase in housing.

He said the prime minister was giving false hope to Australians.

"The trouble is that figures don't mean anything under this prime minister," he told reporters in Penrith.

"As we've seen in relation to other issues, he just doesn't get across the detail, he makes the announcement but there's no delivery."

Independent MP Dai Le said despite all the talk she didn't know whether there would ever be extra houses built.

"The more that people talk, but actually don't bring people together to work and start planning, it is not going to happen and we're not going to see any houses being built," she told Sky News.

"We know the problem and we just need a solution."

© AAP 2023