Category: 3. Business

Spending on rail infrastructure is a political hot potato in Wales with Plaid Cymru in particular arguing that Wales is being short changed by as much as £4bn because HS2 was designated an England and Wales project.

In June the Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced that the Treasury would be providing £300m for five new stations around Cardiff and Newport between 2026 and 2030, and a series of improvement works including measures to improve capacity in north Wales.

Another £48m would be spent on the South Wales Metro.

The Welsh government said it is pushing for further electrification of lines around Wales.

But it doesn’t believe devolving sections of lines such as the Great Western – which runs from stations such as Swansea and Cardiff, into England and to Paddington in London – is the solution.

“I’m not sure we’re wanting the devolution of it,” said minister for delivery Julie James.

“Really what we want is the funding formulas to be right and the organisation of it to be right so that we have a loud voice for Wales in what is done in Wales and actually we have a very good working relationship with the UK government about which railway stations will be invested in.

“I’m not a separatist politician at all. I want to work inside the UK infrastructure. It’s very important to me that the Great Western Railway line goes all the way to London seamlessly, you know, I don’t want it to only work to the border.

“If you did devolve the whole of rail infrastructure to Wales, you’d want to be really certain that all the money that you needed for that came with, I’d be very concerned whether that would happen as a one off event.”

Once the tri-mode trains are in operation on the Rhymney Valley line, new trains will be introduced on the Ebbw Vale, Cheltenham and Maesteg routes.

As another fire season kicks off, the ACT has a new tool in its arsenal to fight the threat.

It’s not a new giant “Elvis” helicopter, or a fresh batch of volunteers.

It’s one state-of-the-art recruit — artificial intelligence (AI).

At ACT Emergency Services Agency headquarters, fire tower operator Andrew Beer surveys the vast capital region ranges, via a remote video camera network dotted among the hills and valleys.

When he describes the difference that AI tech makes, he uses phrases like “major benefit”, “really, really helpful” and “a great backup”.

“Once upon a time we had people in fire towers on high fire danger days” Mr Beer says.

“AI works 24-7, so it’s always there, it’s never asleep and it’s the first port of call to identify fire incidents.

Rohan Scott, the chief officer of the ACT Rural Fire Service (RFS), is similarly enthusiastic.

“The introduction of AI … is seeing significant improvements in the way we detect fire, but also how we then use that AI technology for intelligence gathering and real-time monitoring of a situation,” he says.

Mr Scott said the first time the ACT RFS began experimenting with AI assistance was just prior to the tragic summer of 2019-20.

“Unfortunately, we had an incident with one of our fire tower operators, and the chief officer at the time decided to look at other technologies to improve our capability, but also make it safer for our staff, particularly when they’re working in remote environments.”

He adds that more recently, “the AI is getting smarter and smarter as we use it.”

“It determines now whether a fire is dust or whether it’s fertiliser spreading,” he says.

“Is it steam coming off a storm that might have passed? So as it’s being used, it’s getting a lot more accurate for us and our ability to make decisions in a timely manner.”

But will it take the jobs of firies with decades of experience, decision-making and composure, that can only be learned on the fire front?

“AI is actually then giving us that reassurance and confirmation of our decisions and our commitment to those resources out on the fire ground.”

Already here, and evolving rapidly

Bettina Konti is the interim director general of a new arm of the ACT public service — Digital Canberra.

Ms Konti says beyond “garden variety” uses such as ChatGPT or Google large language models, AI is being incorporated into various areas of everyday life. 

And she says that it’s vital everyone has a voice in how that happens.

“Probably the simplest way I could put it is, AI is here. It will continue to grow and evolve, despite us and without us,” Ms Konti says.

“So best let’s get in and understand it, learn how to work with it … if there are adverse consequences that come from it, how do we stop that from occurring?

She cites everything from fire safety, road monitoring, healthcare and education as areas where the ACT government has already incorporated some form of AI assistance.

But no matter what task AI is being used for, Ms Konti acknowledges that human oversight is crucial.

“It’s really, really important,” she says.

She also makes clear that unquestioning faith in AI’s power to solve big challenges is the wrong approach.

“We can’t just implement an AI-enabled solution and just let it rip,” she says.

“We need to make sure that on an ongoing basis — and this is probably one of the areas where we’ve got new kind of job types and new kind of roles emerging through AI — someone needs to monitor.”

AI in the healthcare system

Ms Konti says that AI has particular “potentially out-of-this-world transformative” potential for the under-pressure healthcare system.

“AI won’t just be able to help in the administration and to reduce the burden of administration for our healthcare providers, but also it will help in actually being able to detect disease and those kinds of things,” she says.

One specialist using AI is Purnima Bhat, a public/private gastroenterologist based in Canberra.

She says AI is an established tool in several areas of healthcare, including administration, note-taking and training.

“AI has just revolutionised what we’re doing now for patient care in many ways … and it’s improving day by day,” Dr Bhat says.

A colonoscopy practitioner needs to meet an Australian standard for detecting potentially harmful polyps and lesions, some of which develop into cancerous growths.

“We’ve set these detection rates above [the point] which we think you’re safe to do colonoscopies on patients,” Dr Bhat explains.

Put simply, using AI-assisted detection equipment increases competence.

“For early-career endoscopists, for people who are providing the general service but may not be in a high expertise setting, it’s making them very competent and it’s raising the floor for the average patient who’s going to see the average person doing the procedure,” Dr Bhat says.

“And it’s made them safer and better.”

AI means ‘we’re doing our job better’: doctor

Dr Bhat said that experienced, skilled specialists and nurses are still superior to current AI, and that it’s too early to statistically say whether using AI tech is reducing colon cancer rates overall.

“We’re finding a lot more lesions. We are hopefully preventing a lot more cancers. I think the data is still not entirely clear if that’s true.”

But one consequence to the technology is that “we’re doing a lot more work,” Dr Bhat says.

“That’s the thing with medicine, right? The more you look, the more you see, the more you scan, the more you’ll find.”

However, she predicts the future will be pivotal for diagnoses.

“The next-gen AI is going to be able to say, ‘That’s this kind of polyp. This carries with it an x-per cent risk of turning into something nasty. You better do something about it’,” she says.

“Or, you know, patients had 10 polyps, but they’re all super low risk. He’s going to be fine.

Dr Baht is acutely aware of the concerns and questions regarding the use of AI in healthcare.

“One is that if you train with AI, are you going to have a generation of colonoscopists that don’t know how to find polyps on their own? That’s been a big question,” she says.

“And I think my answer is, I’m not sure my kids can read a map … But we remember the day when you still have to look at the ‘Refidex’ to find where you’re going and have one person read the map.

“Now we use our map system or whichever one we’re on and it tells us where to go and how to get there.

An education ‘game-changer’

AI is also influencing the ACT school system. 

Students have been dabbling in AI to help with their assessments (without approval) for years, but the ACT education system is now at the starting line of incorporating approved AI tools for teachers and students.

“The student-facing platform that we have here in ACT government is Google. And obviously, Google has [AI assistant] Gemini,” Ms Konti says.

“So there are considerations right now about how, not if, but how, we implement Gemini for students.”

For public school teachers, approved use of AI is here and now.

The ACT Education Directorate has confirmed to the ABC that AI has recently been approved for use by teachers across the public school system.

“Over the past 12 months, a range of AI tools have been trialled by teachers for specific use cases,” the directorate told the ABC in a statement.

Amaroo School principal Ed Cuthbertson has no doubt that AI has more benefits than drawbacks for teachers.

“It’s just an absolute game-changer,” he says.

Mr Cuthbertson explains that AI allows teachers to tailor any lesson, text or instructions to a diverse range of students.

“For example, our school here, we’ve got 45 per cent of kids from an EALD [English as an Additional Language or Dialect] background,” he explains.

“You can say, I’m going to have this piece of work delivered at this level, this piece of work delivered at this level, and this piece of work delivered at this level. And everyone can engage with the text … as opposed to a teacher having to rewrite each level.

Mr Cuthbertson cites curriculum improvements and selection of elective subjects as other areas where the technology is having an influence.

He sees AI as giving teachers back the most precious of resources.

“Time is a huge pressure in teaching. And it [AI] also takes that administrative component, which can be slow and laborious, and helps speed that up as well,” Mr Cuthbertson summarises.

He adds this can be a doubled-edged sword.

“When you find time, it’s a vacuum and it fills with other things. And I just hope that … what it can become, is that it frees up time for the important to be preferenced over the urgent,” he says.

He also understands the many concerns there are about the technology, including some raised in the creative and artistic world.

“It can do a lot of the doing, but it can’t replace thinking.

“And that’s where your job as a teacher is around, how do you stimulate? How do you allow kids to make that connection?”

Maine’s housing market cooled off in 2025, as the inventory of available homes grew.

Compared to recent years, 2025 proved to be a slightly better one for buyers, said Jeff Harris, a Farmington-based realtor and the outgoing president of the Maine Association of Realtors.

More homes stayed on the market for longer, he said. Even so, many first-time homebuyers in Maine are still priced out of the market due to high interest rates. Harris said before the pandemic, the average age of a first-time buyer in Maine was 27. Now it’s 40.

Financing is also a challenge for older Mainers who want to make a change.

“There’s a lot of sellers out there that would like to downsize,” Harris said. “But the smaller homes are hard to find.”

The market has cooled in more rural parts of the state, but Harris said it remains strong along the interstate corridor from York County up to Waterville.

Harris doesn’t predict much change in the Maine market in the coming year, unless interest rates go down. If they do, Harris said he’s hopeful that older Mainers will downsize, which could open up more options for first-time homebuyers.

China’s leading new energy vehicle manufacturer BYD sold around 2.26 million electric vehicles (EVs) in 2025, surpassing Tesla in global EV sales last year.

U.S. electric automaker Tesla delivered about 1.63 million EVs in 2025, according to company data. Last year, BYD sold roughly 4.6 million new energy vehicles (NEVs).

BYD said it has expanded its market in China, while also increasing its overseas sales. Its European business has been robust and the company is exploring markets in Latin America and Southeast Asia. Notably, BYD is stepping up its local production efforts. The firm’s factory in Brazil started operation last year. 

It all really kicked off in April with a comically giant board at the White House.

And eight months after Donald Trump’s so-called liberation day, the impacts of the US president’s sweeping tariff agenda are still reverberating here in Australia.

Local fashion brands, toy manufacturers and others continue to reassess how they do business in the United States, and some still have not recovered from the economic uncertainty caused by tariffs.

The bumpy ride could continue, with America’s highest court set to rule as soon as this month on whether Mr Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs on countries globally are actually legitimate.

“It could be really interesting,” trade expert Felicity Deane says.

Impact on business

Sun protection brand The Nashie is one Australian business that has already been paying tariffs — a form of tax — on the garments it sells in America.

Like many Australian companies selling into the US, the brand is paying far higher tariffs than the 10 per cent baseline that Australia received all 2025.

That is because The Nashie makes its goods in China, which spent much of last year embroiled in a tit-for-tat tariff situation with the US that is still playing out.

The Nashie pays its tariff bills directly when it imports them to a distribution warehouse in Utah. Its co-founder, Tom Wilson, is there now, grappling with a changing business climate.

“We are seeing reduced demand in the US,” he says, and believes American consumers are “spooked” by tariffs.

Core data out of the US also shows that consumer confidence is deteriorating.

Just before Christmas, chief economist at The Conference Board, Dana Peterson, told Reuters that consumers are led by what is happening in the economy.

“References to prices and inflation, tariffs and trade, and politics,” she said.

Beatrice Toh from Australian toy brand HeyDoodle is also grappling with reduced sales.

She had only just signed deals to sell her reusable drawing pads into American department stores when Mr Trump’s tariff mandate kicked off.

“The biggest impact we’ve felt this year hasn’t been the direct cost of tariffs, but the effect they’ve had on customer confidence,” she says of her businesses’ fortunes eight months later.

“That caution has also flowed through to retail.

“We’ve unfortunately lost some wholesale stockists as physical stores were forced to close due to reduced foot traffic and tighter margins, which has had a ripple effect across the supply chain.”

Ms Toh plans to keep navigating this changing environment. It is the same deal for The Nashie’s Mr Wilson, despite referring to the current tariff situation as “the wild west”.

“We have raised US prices to absorb the tariff cost, but have not raised Australian prices to absorb USA tariffs.”

The end of ‘de minimis’

One of the most disruptive elements for Australian exporters into the US in 2025 was not so much individual categories being targeted, but the end of an exemption for taxes on smaller-value goods.

The end of the so-called de minimis exemption not only rocked online retail but also led to postal carriers globally, including Australia Post, making a temporary snap decision to halt most shipping into the US.

Fashion brand Apero is still struggling to integrate orders into the US using Australia Post’s systems and is starting the new year with a different e-commerce provider.

The company’s co-founder, Laz Smith, says they are hoping to grow US sales again in 2026.

“The removal of de minimis has affected our brand, with up to 30 per cent of our revenue previously coming from the US market,” he said.

“We have not seen any meaningful support from Austrade or the Australian government, and brands have been left to navigate this huge period of uncertainty on their own.”

Back on “liberation day “in April, the Australian government pledged $50 million for stressed exporters, with details of what this meant only coming months later in 2025.

This funding under a so-called Accessing New Markets Initiative (ANMI) is described as a scheme that “brings together national peak industry bodies and Austrade”.

It has so far resulted in initiatives for fresh produce growers in Hong Kong, local companies that deal with Peru, and brokered meetings for fine foods brands.

Yet some Australian companies that ABC News has reached out to are still feeling frustrated about their interactions with Austrade as they go into 2026.

“I think to the government, this is yesterday’s issue and businesses are on their own,” The Nashie’s Mr Wilson says.

In a statement, Trade Minister Don Farrell said ANMI had delivered “five business missions in our first 100 days of being re-elected” in May.

“We will have more to say on the final composition of remaining ANMI programs in the near future,” he said.

The owner of one Australian brand also impacted by tariffs, Bond Eye, told ABC News they had found the work of the fashion industry’s lobby group helpful.

The swimwear brand joined others at an industry event held in Hong Kong by the Australian Fashion Council in September, and the brand is still selling its garments in the US.

“We didn’t make any knee-jerk decisions and we stayed calm,” founder Steve Philpott said.

“We absorbed the costs and stayed loyal to our factories and supply chain partnerships, which was reciprocal.”

Possible olive branch

While QUT’s Professor Deane says she has never seen a year quite like 2025 when it comes to global trade, she believes the situation with US tariffs is “settling down”, as Mr Trump “has other problems to deal with”.

As the festive season wraps up, there has been more news about tariffs out of the US, with the president offering an olive branch for Italian pasta brands and delaying taxes on imported furniture.

“The other thing that may have stopped him a little in his tracks is inflation,” Professor Deane says.

“People have stopped throwing their toys out of the pram.”

Her advice to Australian exporters in 2025 is to wait out the US Supreme Court decision on tariffs — which could deliver another curveball — and just be nimble.