Australia live: Ley faces Coalition leadership doubts as retirees feel inflation most, under-16 ban widens

On Wednesday morning, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released figures showing that the people hit hardest by Australia's renewed inflation were not workers but retirees. Age pensioners saw their living costs rise 3.9 per cent in the three months to September 30. Across the economy, inflation ran at 3.2 per cent.

The gap between groups was wide. Employees' living costs rose 2.6 per cent, close to the middle of the Reserve Bank's 2-to-3 per cent target band. Self-funded retirees came in at 2.8 per cent. Grattan Institute economist Matthew Bowes said older Australians on fixed incomes were suffering the most from price rises. The renewed inflation could delay or cancel interest rate cuts next year.

The same day, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley was trying to calm her party. Leadership concerns have been growing inside the Coalition, and a debate over net zero has divided it. Ley's message was that the Coalition is "stronger than ever."

In South Australia, Police Commissioner Grant Stevens defended the search for four-year-old Gus Lamont, more than five weeks after the boy vanished from his family's remote sheep station. Stevens said two reviews had found no flaws in how the search was run, and that police intend to search the property a fourth time. Gus disappeared from the Oak Park Station homestead on September 27. His grandmother last saw him around 5pm, playing on a mound of dirt outside in a blue Minions shirt. When she went looking half an hour later, he was gone. The effort has become one of the longest and most intensive ever undertaken by South Australian police.

On social media, Communications Minister Anika Wells confirmed that Reddit and the streaming platform Kick will join the under-16 ban. They will be covered alongside Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, X and Threads, all assessed by eSafety as age-restricted. From 10 December, these services must take reasonable steps to stop under-16s holding accounts. Failure could bring fines of up to $49.5 million. Wells described the ban as a three-year reprieve from algorithms and harmful content, and said she wants parents to be able to tell their children that it is against the law for them to allow use of these platforms.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said the list "will always change" as platforms evolve, and that companies have been told to keep self-assessing. She explained that Roblox was assessed as primarily a gaming platform, with chat that kids probably wouldn't use without the game. If a platform starts to look more like social media, she said, the regulator will move to capture it.

Elsewhere, Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, won the New York mayoral race, as called by Decision Desk HQ shortly after polls closed. At 34, he becomes the city's youngest mayor in over a century and its first Muslim mayor. He defeated independent Andrew Cuomo, a former governor, and Republican Curtis Sliwa.

In business, Woodside Energy told investors in Sydney that it expects oil and gas to make up 90 per cent of its business next decade, with production rising at least 50 per cent to 300 million barrels of oil equivalent by 2032. Chief executive Meg O'Neill said growth would be dominated by fossil fuel projects in the US and Australia, alongside "focused" new energy investments, and would support a 50 per cent dividend increase to 2032.

ASIO director-general Mike Burgess, speaking in Sydney after a Lowy Institute address, said he would keep calling out China for harming Australian interests, citing wholesale intellectual property theft and interference in political systems. He said Chinese officials complain to others across the system, but not to him.

In cricket, Jake Weatherald moved closer to a Test debut in the Perth Ashes opener, named in a 15-man squad. Mitch Marsh, Sam Konstas and Matt Renshaw were left out. Next up are the 10 December ban start and the fourth search at Oak Park Station.