News In Brief

Welcome to our ‘News In Brief’ column in which we digest all the news releases for you in no more than five paragraphs.
Below are snippets of all the media releases we received from Oct 26 till the end of the week.
This article updates throughout the week

$10m Loans, No Pre-Sales

Perth, Oct 27: Western Australian property developers can now access up to $10 million in development funding without pre-sales, after Australian Finance Group (ASX: AFG) added Perth-based RAC Finance to its commercial lending panel.
The arrangement, announced on 26 October, gives AFG brokers a new option for developers whose projects don’t fit traditional construction finance rules. Pre-sale requirements often make it harder for smaller developers to secure funding.
RAC Finance lends across single homes, villas, townhouses, apartments, mixed-use, industrial and select commercial developments, as well as land subdivisions, in metropolitan Perth and selected South West regions. It also accepts owner-builder applications, and says its WA-based team processes progress payments within 48 hours.
“Development finance is a specialised area of lending and every project is different,” said Mark Hewitt, AFG’s General Manager Industry and Partnerships. “Brokers need access to lenders that understand local market conditions.”
RAC Finance General Manager Michael Patino said the lender had supported local developers for more than 30 years.
RAC Finance joins a panel of more than 80 lenders and partners. AFG says one in every nine residential mortgages in Australia is arranged by one of its brokers.

Adobe, NVIDIA Speed Up Photoshop

Perth, Oct 27: Adobe has expanded its partnership with chipmaker NVIDIA, promising faster AI-powered editing in Photoshop, Premiere and Substance 3D.
Announced on 15 October, the deal optimises Adobe’s creative apps for NVIDIA’s new RTX Spark superchip, launched earlier this month. Adobe says users can expect up to twice the speed for AI processing, editing, colour and effects.
Photoshop has been rebuilt around GPU-accelerated compositing, making tools like Remove and on-canvas effects more responsive. In Premiere, features such as Enhance Speech and Object Mask also run faster.
Adobe is also using NVIDIA chips to speed up Frame.io, its cloud platform for video review. Early tests showed embedding generation about five times faster, meaning uploaded footage becomes searchable sooner.
The companies have also optimised Adobe Brand Concierge, a conversational AI tool for businesses, using NVIDIA’s open Nemotron models. That version will be available to enterprise customers later this year.
“Creative workflows are more multimodal than ever,” said Deepa Subramaniam, Adobe’s vice president of product marketing for creative professionals.
More updates are expected at Adobe MAX, running 10–12 November.

Recycled Water to Cool NEXTDC

Perth, Oct 29: A $250 million expansion of the AquaNet recycled water network will begin construction in Western Sydney next month, with NEXTDC’s S4 Sydney data centre at Horsley Park as its first customer.
coNEXA, through its AquaNet business, will supply up to 16 million litres of recycled water a day from its Fairfield plant to the data centre. It is believed to be the largest recycled water connection to a data centre in Australia. The project is fully funded by the private sector, has IPART approval, and is expected to deliver its first water in late 2027.
The scheme will reuse up to 5.8 billion litres a year that would otherwise be released to the ocean. It will also take the wastewater equivalent of up to 35,000 homes out of a constrained sewerage network.
“This is exactly the type of project we envisioned when we released the NSW Data Centre Guidelines. Instead of sending billions of litres out to sea each year, we’re putting that water to productive use and building infrastructure that can support communities and industry for decades to come,” said NSW Minister for Water Rose Jackson.
Once developed, S4 Sydney is designed to provide up to 365MW of IT capacity. The expansion will support up to 200 construction jobs and allow other industry and local councils to connect, including to irrigate public open spaces.

Three in Four Australians Ghosted

Perth, Oct 29: Three in four Australians have had a bad experience with recruitment, from being ghosted by employers to applying for jobs that never existed, according to new research from Employment Hero.
Getting little or no feedback after missing out on a role was the most common complaint, affecting 41 per cent of those surveyed. One in three job seekers and hiring managers said they had been ghosted while looking for work.
Younger workers were hit hardest. Of Australians under 35, 32 per cent had been ghosted during recruitment, compared with 20 per cent of those aged 35 and over. Under-35s were also almost twice as likely to have applied for a fake job, or one that was never genuinely open (20 per cent versus 11 per cent).
Employers are struggling too. Of hirers surveyed, 59 per cent said there was too much manual administration, and 51 per cent said they lose good candidates because their hiring process is too slow.
“For young Australians especially, being ignored or chasing a job that never existed isn’t just frustrating. It knocks their confidence at the very start of their working lives,” said Employment Hero Managing Director of Talent Solutions David Holland.

Amazon Launches New Echo Range

Perth, Oct 29: Amazon has released three new Echo devices in Australia, including its first smart speaker with a built-in camera and a smart alarm clock that tracks your sleep.
The Echo Time (RRP A$379) is designed for the bedside table and has no camera. Its smart alarm detects when you’re in lighter sleep and wakes you at a better point, while the circular touchscreen brightens gradually like a sunrise. At night it dims to show just the time.
The Echo Studio with Home Camera (RRP A$479) adds a 13-megapixel camera to Amazon’s top speaker. Alexa+ can use the camera to recognise objects, such as explaining the rules on a board game box or reordering a box of cereal, and owners can check in on the room remotely through Live View. An LED lights up whenever the camera streams to the cloud, and a button turns off the camera and microphones. The standard Echo Studio is still available for buyers who don’t want a camera.
The new Echo Dot (RRP A$199) now doubles as a smart home hub, supporting Zigbee, Matter and Thread. It also includes a Wi-Fi extender that adds up to 93 square metres of coverage to an existing eero network, and Amazon says it has 50 per cent more bass than the previous model.
All three are available now from amazon.com.au.

Experts Tip Fifth Rate Hike on Cup Day

Perth, Oct 30: Three in four economists expect the Reserve Bank to raise the cash rate to 4.85 per cent on Tuesday, its fifth increase this year. In Finder’s survey of 40 experts, 30 tipped a 25-basis-point rise. For a borrower with the average $730,719 loan, that would add about $115 a month compared with October, and $538 a month compared with January. More than a third of mortgage holders said they struggled with repayments in October. Bendigo Bank’s David Robertson is among those tipping a hold, saying the RBA can afford to pause after four rises this year.

Work Begins on Pahang Floating Solar Farm

Perth, Oct 30: Construction has started on a 200-megawatt floating solar farm at Chereh Dam in Pahang, attended by the Sultan of Pahang and the state’s Chief Minister. Developed by Abu Dhabi’s Masdar with Malaysian partners Citaglobal and TIZA Global, the plant is due to start operating in 2028. It is expected to power the equivalent of about 100,000 homes and create around 1,500 jobs during construction. The project has raised about RM580 million in financing, and TNB will buy its electricity for 21 years. It is Masdar’s first project in Malaysia.

AI Shoppers Spend More, Says Adobe

Perth, Oct 30: Shoppers who arrive at retail websites from AI chatbots are now spending far more than other visitors, according to new Adobe data. In September, AI-referred traffic to US retail sites generated 83 per cent more revenue per visit than traffic from sources such as email, search ads and social media, and converted to purchases 90 per cent more often. Just over a year earlier, in August 2025, AI visitors converted 9 per cent worse. AI traffic to US retailers grew 71 per cent year on year in September, and Adobe forecasts it will jump 159 per cent on Thanksgiving and 95 per cent on Black Friday. The findings are based on more than a trillion visits to US retail sites.

WA Quokka Lands Sydney “Job”

Perth, Oct 30: A Western Australian native has landed one of Sydney’s most enviable harbourside addresses. WILD LIFE Sydney Zoo in Darling Harbour has welcomed RJ, a 3.8kg quokka of about four and a half years old, naming him its tongue-in-cheek “Head of Visitor Happiness & Good Vibes”. Often called the world’s happiest animal for their smiley appearance, quokkas are listed as Vulnerable, and zookeeper Emily Partridge said RJ would also act as an ambassador for his species. “Through seeing quokkas up close, guests can learn more about these unique animals and the conservation efforts helping to protect them in the wild,” she said.