Australian Shares Fall Amid Middle East Tensions and Telstra Outage

Market snapshot

D By David Chau

ASX 200: -1.4% to 8,684 points

Australian dollar: -0.4% to 69.3 US cents

Wall Street: Dow Jones (-0.3%), S & P 500 (-0.5%), Nasdaq Composite (-1.2%)

Europe: FTSE (+0.1%), Stoxx 600 (-0.7%)

Asia: Nikkei (-1.2%), KOSPI (-0.7%)

Spot gold: -1.4% to $US4,105/ounce

Oil (Brent crude): +2.8% to $US76.21/barrel

Iron ore: +0.1% to $US98.15/tonne

Bitcoin: -0.2% to $US63,552

Prices current around 10:25am AEST

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Telstra outage 'big inconvenience' for regional businesses

T By Toby Hemmings

In Cooma, in the NSW Snowy Mountains, Marion Mason has been unable to call her clients for a construction cleaning job.

"We've just driven two and a half hours up here to go to work," she said.

"It's been a pretty big inconvenience."

Tourists visiting the region for the school holidays are also navigating the connection loss.

"I actually didn't know there was an outage until my wife rang me on my son's phone who is with Optus," said one holiday maker passing through the town.

"Just by pure chance we diversified."

Australian shares fall sharply, ASX opens 1.4pc lower

D By David Chau

The Australian share market is off to a worse-than-expected start.

The ASX 200 was down 1.4% to 8,680 points by 10:20am AEST.

It seems local investors have been put off by the latest flare-up in Middle East hostilities and Wall Street's tech sell-off.

Locally, today's best-performing sector is energy (+3%) following a sharp rise in oil prices.

That, in turn, was after the US launched strikes against Iran this morning, which it says was in retaliation for Iran attacking three commercial ships around the Strait of Hormuz overnight.

Most sectors, however, are trading lower, with materials (-2.3%), technology (-1.3%) and financials (-1%) among the worst performers.

Telstra share price down 2.8pc in early trade

D By David Chau

Telstra shares have fallen sharply after a nationwide telecommunications outage, which led to train networks in parts of NSW and Victoria being suspended.

The telco's share price was down 2.8% to $4.93 by 10:13am AEST.

That's a wrap on the Telstra CFO

S By Stephanie Chalmers

And with that, the press conference with Telstra CFO Michael Ackland has wrapped up.

Telstra chief executive on annual leave

S By Stephanie Chalmers

The Telstra CFO Michael Ackland is asked why he is giving the press conference instead of chief executive Vicki Brady.

Mr Ackland says she is on annual leave.

Nothing to suggest malicious activity: Telstra CFO

S By Stephanie Chalmers

Telstra CFO Michael Ackland says: "At this stage, we have nothing to indicate malicious activity."

"We've been in contact with all regulators and government agencies to that effect. We continue to investigate," he tells the Melbourne press conference.

"We continue to remain curious and explore every avenue, but we have nothing on that."

Disruption intermittent but national: Telstra CFO

S By Stephanie Chalmers

Mr Ackland described it as a "set of intermittent outages" and said it affected people nationally, regardless of their location in relation to the nodes.

We don't yet know the root cause: Telstra CFO

S By Stephanie Chalmers

Mr Ackland says the telco has not yet identified the root cause of the outage.

The nodes affected are located in Melbourne or Sydney "largely", and a number have been restored.

He said to think of a node as a server, and they are located in Telstra-owned data centres.

Customers encouraged to use wi-fi or 'try again'

S By Stephanie Chalmers

Telstra CFO Michael Ackland says Telstra customers should try again if they experience issues, given they are intermittent.

He encouraged those who have wi-fi access to use that.

Telstra identified issue at 4:30am

S By Stephanie Chalmers

Telstra's CFO is speaking now. He says the issue was caused by a number of nodes that "keep time" across the network, leading to intermittent issues with calls and data services.

He says the issue was identified at 4:30 this morning.

Telstra says 'good progress restoring services'

S By Stephanie Chalmers

Telstra is updating customers on its progress in restoring services on X.

Several commenters have replied, saying their services are still out.

Telstra CFO to speak shortly

S By Stephanie Chalmers

Telstra CFO Michael Ackland is due to speak shortly in Melbourne; we'll bring you those comments live.

SpaceX, AMD and Intel sell-off could weigh on Australian tech stocks

D By David Chau

It will be interesting to see how Australia's technology stocks perform when the ASX opens for trade in a few minutes.

If they follow the lead of Wall Street, then it won't be a good day for the local tech sector.

Some of the largest falls in the US market were recorded by Intel (-9.7%), Western Digital (-7.9%), Marvell (-7.5%), Sandisk (-7.3%), SpaceX (-6.8%) and AMD (-6.5%).

Essentially, stocks that have some connection with artificial intelligence or microchips fared poorly.

Concerns about whether some of these companies are overvalued — given how much their shares have risen in value lately — led to the S & P 500 and Nasdaq Composite dropping 0.5% and 1.2%, respectively.

G8 Education sued for allegedly underpaying its workers more than $2 million

D By David Chau

The ASX-listed childcare operator G8 Education is being sued for allegedly underpaying its staff more than $2 million.

The Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) took legal action against G8 in the Federal Court and is seeking compensation for more than 1,400 affected workers.

The company self-reported its non-compliance with workplace laws, which then triggered an investigation by the FWO.

The key allegations in the lawsuit are that G8 underpaid its employees' minimum rates and overtime entitlements — as well as some employees who were hired as trainees, some of whom were younger than 20.

The FWO will also argue that G8 failed to pay a first aid allowance to some of its workers.

All affected employees worked in childcare centres as children’s services employees or support workers. Affected workers included, but extend beyond, some juniors aged under 20.

"It is completely unacceptable for large, well-resourced corporate employers to allegedly underpay hard-working childcare workers' basic minimum entitlements," the Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth said in a statement.

"We have been saying for years that large corporate employers need to place a higher priority on ensuring they pay their employees' lawful entitlements.

"Any workers with concerns about their pay or entitlements should contact us for free advice and assistance. They can also contact their union if they are a member."

In addition to compensation for affected workers, the FWO is also seeking fines against the company, and declarations from the court that G8 broke the law.

Tyro aware of customers having issues

S By Stephanie Chalmers

Payments provider Tyro says some customers are having issues due to the Telstra outage:

"Tyro is aware that some customers may currently be unable to connect their EFTPOS machines to the 4G network to process transactions.

"We understand this is related to an issue with a national telephone network provider.

"While the issue is outside Tyro's control, we are actively monitoring the situation and are advising affected customers to connect via ethernet or Wi-Fi where available until service is restored."

It encouraged customers to check its status page.

Stash your cash?

S By Stephanie Chalmers

It’s a bit extraordinary that so many people don’t carry enough cash for a taxi fare or breakfast. Lesson 1 is to put $100 in your pocket for emergencies.

- Phillip

Probably good advice Phillip, but personally I haven't even carried a card in about a year, so this would be a real behaviour change!

Markets recap: Alan Kohler's finance report

D By David Chau

In case you need a refresher before the trading day begins, I can certainly recommend Alan Kohler's finance report.

In last night's segment, Alan delved into several issues, including Deloitte's grim forecasts for the local economy and Australia's rapid population growth masking a fall in living standards.

He also talked about tech billionaire Richard White's decision to step down as chairman of WiseTech Global, while strenuously denying allegations that he engaged in sex trafficking.

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How Trump has made a fortune off crypto despite Bitcoin price slump

D By David Chau

The price of bitcoin climbed to a record high of around $US126,000 in October.

Since then, the cryptocurrency market has crashed, and the value of bitcoin has halved to $US63,519.

"Bitcoin mining" uses enormous amounts of computing power and electricity — the price of which has risen sharply in recent months.

Many of these bitcoin mining centres are now switching to become "data centres" because of the more lucrative AI boom.

The ABC's chief business correspondent Ian Verrender says a lot of major institutions have recently been selling off their cryptocurrency, including Michael Saylor's company Strategy.

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Just 18 months ago, Mr Saylor said "never sell your Bitcoin".

But more recently, he began selling small parcels of his crypto and authorised a program to sell up to $US1.25 billion of Strategy's reserves if need be. It's definitely not a vote of confidence!

Despite the slump, US President Donald Trump and his family reaped a $US1.4 billion bonanza from crypto ventures alone.

In their crypto dealings, the Trump family has taken the cash up-front, or clipped the ticket on transactions, rather than holding cryptocurrencies as assets.