Tasmania's auditor-general has confirmed he referred Spirit of Tasmania operator TT-Line to the corporate regulator after suspecting its directors were in breach of the Corporations Act, ABC.net reported. Auditor-General Martin Thompson said he made the referral to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) on July 31, having formed the view earlier in the month that TT-Line was insolvent. He appeared at a budget estimates hearing on Monday, where he confirmed he informed TT-Line of his conclusion on insolvency on July 22, but the company continued to trade.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the country's largest lender, believes demand for home loans is too high and is helping to push property prices up, Chief Executive Matt Comyn said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. While admitting the bank benefitted from the surge in housing credit growth, Comyn said a lower level would be better for "long-term financial stability, equality and access to the housing market." "Our view would be that a more sustainable credit growth rate in housing would be slightly below the current level," he told lawmakers at a committee hearing in Parliament.

Australia’s corporate regulator is threatening more aggressive legal action against private credit funds that fail to protect investors, as the A$200 billion ($131 billion) industry continues to expand, Bloomberg News reported. The Australian Securities & Investment Commission’s deputy chair, Sarah Court, will announce plans to step up enforcement against poor private credit practices as part of its priorities for 2026, according to a press release Thursday. ASIC also said it will target misleading pricing practices by banks, insurance firms and pension fund trustees.

A top Australian central banker said on Wednesday that there was increasing debate about whether the current cash rate of 3.6% is restrictive enough to keep inflation in check, adding that the question is critical for the policy outlook. In an interview with Reuters in Sydney, Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Deputy Governor Andrew Hauser said the current judgment that monetary policy is mildly restrictive is central to the expectations that inflation would still slow in the economy.

Tasmania’s government-owned ferry operator was on the brink of insolvency during July’s state election, forcing an emergency bailout from the caretaker government, a parliamentary inquiry has heard, PulseTasmania.com reported. TT-Line informed the Liberal government on July 25 that it was facing a liquidity crisis and couldn’t wait until after the election for financial support. The following day, the government provided a guarantee that allowed state lending authority Tascorp to lift the company’s loan limit.

Australian consumer prices surged in the third quarter, scuttling any hope of a further interest rate cut this year, and potentially in 2026, the Wall Street Journal reported. The consumer-price index rose 1.3% from the previous quarter and 3.2% from a year earlier, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday. Economists had expected a 3% rise in CPI from the year-ago period. It was the biggest quarterly rise in inflation since early 2023, with soaring electricity costs driving the result. Annual inflation measured in September alone rose 3.5%, the ABS said.

Austrian former billionaire Rene Benko went on trial on Tuesday in the first case connected to the collapse of his property group Signa, which at its peak acquired stakes in New York's Chrysler Building and British department-store chain Selfridges, Reuters reported. Signa became the biggest casualty of Europe's property downturn when some of its main units filed for insolvency in 2023. Prosecutors are conducting a sprawling investigation into possible crimes committed, and estimate the related damage caused at around 300 million euros ($348 million).

Former senator Linda Reynolds has launched bankruptcy proceedings in the Australian Federal Court against her ex-staffer Brittany Higgins as she tries to recover damages awarded to her for defamation, ABC.net.au reported. In August Ms Higgins was ordered to pay Ms Reynolds $315,000 plus $26,000 in interest after she and her husband David Sharaz were found to have defamed the former senator in a series of social media posts. Ms Higgins was also ordered to pay 80 per cent of Ms Reynolds's legal costs.