Received

Details: Written by Grant Broadcasters; Category: Received; Published: 11 July 2023; Hits: 76

TikTok officials concede "serious changes" are needed at the social media company in the wake of a spying scandal.

The admission from Australian general manager Lee Hunter came during a fiery hearing on Tuesday of a parliamentary committee probing foreign interference through social media.

It also followed a story, first reported by Forbes, that employees of TikTok's parent company ByteDance allegedly spied on US journalists following negative stories written about it.

Mr Hunter previously denied the incident in an opinion piece last December in the Daily Telegraph, saying the method of surveillance was not possible.

But he told the inquiry "rogue employees" had since been let go by the company.

"This is not what the company stands for. These employees were seeking to isolate the source of leaked confidential company information," he said.

"With this serious misconduct from these rogue employees, serious changes need to happen in the business."

Mr Hunter said TikTok had ramped up efforts on data security following the scandal.

"I want to reassure Australians and in particular Australian journalists their safety and security on our platform is our number one priority," he said.

He stood by the opinion piece, saying he would not categorise the efforts of the employees as spying.

The parliamentary committee is examining how Australian elections and government agencies can be safeguarded online.

TikTok's director of public policy Ella Wood-Joyce rejected claims the app was a national security risk, after the federal government ordered the platform be removed from government devices.

Australia's ban followed the moves of other nations including the US and UK.

"We don't believe there is evidence to support claims TikTok is a national security risk," she said.

"We are very open to government to speak to them about what we do, how we do it and how we're continuing to invest to keep our app and our users safe."

Earlier, officials from Facebook parent company Meta reassured that its new social media presence, Threads, would be monitored for misinformation in similar ways to its other sites.

Meta launched the platform less than a week ago and it is being seen as a direct rival to Twitter.

Since then, more than 100 million users have signed up.

Meta's Australian head of public policy Josh Machin said the approach to Threads to combat misinformation or enforce community standards would be similar to that on its other platforms.

"All of the policies that currently apply on Facebook and Instagram apply on Threads," he told the hearing.

"Anything that would be removed or would violate our community standards on Facebook and Instagram from day one is being removed on Threads as well."

Mr Machin said while the platform was new, work was under way to have fact-checking labels on posts and labels identifying accounts as being affiliated with state-owned media.

Twitter's head of global government affairs Nick Pickles defended recent verification changes made to the platform after its takeover by billionaire Elon Musk.

Changes to the site have allowed users to receive a verification tick on their profile if they sign up to Twitter's subscription model, known as Twitter Blue.

Mr Pickles said the move was a way to crack down on fake accounts.

"There are a number of product changes we are making, designed specifically to make it harder and more expensive to try and manipulate Twitter," he said.

"It's also about raising the cost of bad actors and raising the cost of manipulation."

Details: Written by Grant Broadcasters; Category: Received; Published: 11 July 2023; Hits: 99

A collection of Penfolds Grange is up for auction, with the 60 bottles being offered as individual lots, including some expected to fetch thousands of dollars.

The collection dates from 1959 to 2018, but it doesn't include some of the earliest vintages. Grange was first produced in 1951.

Every bottle is presented in its original box, with some signed by John Duval, Penfolds' third chief winemaker producing Grange.

The collection has been curated by a former employee of Penfolds and collectively is expected to sell for more than $100,000.

It has been stored in a climate-controlled cellar and checked at the Grange clinic by former company winemakers.

Lloyds Auction chief operations officer Lee Hames said the auction was attracting international attention.

"We haven't seen a wine collection as complete and pristine and as carefully looked after as this," Mr Hames said.

"This is one for the ages, and collections don't come along like this very often."

Among the most sought-after bottles is a 1990 vintage that was the first wine from outside France or the US to win the Spectator magazine's coveted wine of the year award.

With the auction to wrap up on Sunday, among the highest bids so far are $3100 for a 1963 bottle and $2300 for the 1973 vintage.

The Grange owes much of its status to its history, starting out as an experiment by Penfolds' first chief winemaker Max Schubert, who did not sell it commercially but gifted bottles to friends and family.

The initial response to his creation was not favourable, and by 1957 Penfolds had ordered him to stop production.

Despite this direction, the next three vintages were still produced and a subsequent tasting of the early wines by the Penfolds board returned more favourable opinions.

In 2021 a bottle of 1951 Grange, signed by Schubert, sold for a record $122,001.

At the time, estimates suggested there were up to 35 bottles of the original vintage still in circulation, including about 15 that were part of complete sets.

In 2018, a bottle of the 1951 vintage sold for $80,386, with two bottles fetching $81,000 each the following year.

At that same auction in 2019, a then full set of Grange, from 1951 to 2015, was snapped up for $372,800.

That was followed in December 2020 by a Sydney wine lover paying $430,000 for a set.

Details: Written by Grant Broadcasters; Category: Received; Published: 11 July 2023; Hits: 72

Consumers are not convinced the Reserve Bank has finished hiking interest rates, despite leaving the cash rate unchanged.

The mood as captured by Westpac and the Melbourne Institute every month soured further after the July rate pause, with the weekly index assembled by ANZ and Roy Morgan also falling after last week's decision.

The central bank opted to keep interest rates steady at 4.1 per cent when the board met last week.

Westpac chief economist Bill Evans said the decision to pause did not seem to resonate with consumers.

"Notably, most commentators described the RBA's July decision as a temporary pause," he said.

Mr Evans said the same thing happened when the RBA held rates steady in April, which proved to be a short-term pause rather than the end of the hiking cycle.

Overall, consumer sentiment improved from 79.2 in June to 81.3 in July on the Westpac-Melbourne Institute index, with the bulk of that improvement in the wake of a sharp pullback in inflation.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics recorded inflation declining in the monthly consumer price index for May, falling to 5.6 per cent from 6.8 per cent in April.

Confidence levels have been deeply pessimistic for more than a year, holding in the weak range of 78 to 86 since the first half of 2022.

Business confidence also remains low but picked up a little in June, according to NAB's latest survey of the private sector.

The June business survey revealed relative resilience in business conditions despite damaged confidence and other warning signs on the horizon, such as a pullback in forward orders.

NAB chief economist Alan Oster said the expected slowdown in discretionary spending was showing up in worse retail conditions.

But this had been offset by better conditions in the construction industry.

The NAB survey also revealed a mixed bag of cost and price data that suggests inflation still has some fight left in it.

Labour cost growth jumped to 2.6 per cent in quarterly terms, up from two per cent in May, and purchase cost growth stayed unchanged at 2.3 per cent.

But growth in final product prices fell, down to 1.1 per cent from 1.3 per cent.

"Purchase cost pressures also remain and retail price growth picked up in the month, signalling that underlying inflation will likely remain elevated when the June quarter consumer price index is released later in the month," Mr Oster said.

Details: Written by Grant Broadcasters; Category: Received; Published: 11 July 2023; Hits: 67