Australia’s corporate regulator is to launch a crackdown on the country’s banking culture, which it claims is encouraging misconduct and the “fleecing” of consumers, the Financial Times reported. The intervention by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission follows a series of banking scandals and new research showing that a poor risk culture at financial institutions is allowing misconduct and “Machiavellian” tendencies to flourish.

Australia is raising its minimum wage by an above-inflation 2.5 per cent, providing a boost to low-paid workers amid sluggish economic growth, the Financial Times reported. From next month about 1.86m workers must be paid a weekly wage of at least A$656.90 ($501.50), Australia’s workplace regulator ruled on Tuesday. On an hourly basis the rate rises to A$17.29 an hour, one of the highest minimum wage levels in the world.

The corporate regulator sounded a warning on Thursday about stockbroking firms moving into higher-risk operations in the wake of the failure of Sydney-based BBY, noting it would have more to say next week on its inquiries into the collapse, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has been delving into what went wrong at BBY, particularly after the stockbroking and advisory firm was placed into voluntary administration on May 18.

Mid-tier stockbroker BBY has been placed in administration after the board could not secure enough capital, the firm said in a statement this morning. KPMG has been appointed voluntary administrator and BBY suspended by the ASX as a market participant. Financier St George Bank has sent in PPB as receivers to protect the bank’s interests. “I regret to inform staff that despite exhaustive efforts by the BBY board to secure investors to inject additional capital into BBY we have been unsuccessful,” said BBY executive chairman Glenn Rosewall, in a note to staff.

A year after declaring the days of “borrow and spend” were over for Australia, treasurer Joe Hockey on Tuesday shifted the government’s strategy to boosting the economy by ruling out fresh austerity measures, the Financial Times reported. Delivering his second budget against the backdrop of a collapse in commodity prices and lacklustre growth, Mr Hockey cut taxes for small businesses and increased spending on childcare and infrastructure in a bid to create jobs.

The Australian government announced a world-leading crackdown on Monday on alleged tax avoidance by 30 multinational companies that will likely force them to restructure their businesses before next year, the Irish Times reported. “These companies are diverting profits earned in Australia away from Australia to no-tax or low-tax jurisdictions,” treasurer Joe Hockey told reporters in Canberra. He declined to identify the targets, but said “it’s pretty evident which companies are involved”.

The state government of Western Australia has broken widely held conventions with the introduction of legislation to seize and distribute A$1.7bn (US$1.3bn) owed to the remaining creditors of the Bell Group of companies, Reuters reported. A government authority has been appointed to prevent further litigation over the liquidation of Bell Group in 1991, a legal case that has dragged on for two decades.

Australia’s struggling conservative government faces a high-stakes test this week as it prepares to unveil its second budget, The Wall Street Journal reported. Announcing too much austerity on May 12—as the government did last year—could turn off voters ahead of an election that must be called next year. Too little would make a mockery of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s pledge two years ago, before the last election, to end quickly a string of deficits under the previous Labor government.

In cutting interest rates to a fresh record low of 2.0% Tuesday, Australia’s central bank is hoping to give a jolt to an economy that’s suffering from the end of a decadelong mining boom, The Wall Street Journal reported. But a series of rate cuts in the past three years have failed to achieve the Reserve Bank of Australia’s goal of fostering manufacturing and other businesses that lost out during the era of high commodity prices. Weighed down by high costs, weak consumer demand and other worries—many of which are hangovers of the boom—businesses are reluctant to invest.

A company that shares its director with the Noggi Frozen Yogurt chain has entered voluntary administration, SmartCompany.au reported. Stewart Free and Bradd Morelli of Jirsch Sutherland were appointing administrators of SKS Partners on April 9. An investigation by SmartCompany has revealed SKS Partners has close ties with the franchised Noggi Frozen Yogurt chain, which was founded by John Suh in 2009 during the height of the frozen yoghurt craze in Australia.