☕️ Govt's plan to cutdown working holiday visas

Uber Eats turns 10 in Australia this week, and it has marked the occasion by exposing our collective ordering habits. My favourites:

As for the next 10 years? Uber Eats would like us to know “robots [will] join the delivery network.”

The quote: “Looking back, I regret the decision to not have stepped off the track. I recognise that I should have made a different choice.” Australian athlete Joanna Wietrzyk in her first statement since she went viral for soiling herself during a HYROX competition earlier this week. Organisers were criticised for not withdrawing Wietrzyk from the event at the time of the incident.

The stat: Around 11 trillion. The number of tonnes of ice lost from Greenland and Antarctica over 47 years, according to a new study.

The big question:

Yesterday’s results: 21% of you live in a share house, while 79% don’t. Thanks for voting - your responses inform TDA's journalism and research. [2,517 votes].

Together with AAP.

Comedy hits different when you're in the room.

Sydney Theatre Company has it all, and they're serving up three comedies worth your night. The Unfriend's got manners and murder colliding, Housework turns Parliament into pure chaos, and The Gospel According to Paul roasts our favourite PM.

^{Transparency: This is a sponsored part of the newsletter - the best way to keep the newsletter free for you.}

The U.S. central bank has raised interest rates for the first time in more than three years, marking a major shift for the world’s largest economy.

The U.S. Federal Reserve (aka the Fed) decided to increase interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point.

Central banks around the world set interest rates for their respective countries, which directly affect what banks pay to borrow from each other. The cost is then passed on to the broader economy.

Central banks raise interest rates to reduce inflation. The higher the interest rate, the more expensive it is to borrow money (increasing mortgage repayments).

The idea is that making it more expensive to borrow will slow spending and, in turn, slow down the speed at which prices are increasing.

Overnight, the Fed unanimously voted to increase the target range from 3.5%–3.75% to 3.75%–4%. Unlike in Australia, the U.S. central bank rate is a range.

The reasons given for the hike were a strong U.S. economy, persistent high inflation and geopolitical instability (referring to the U.S. war with Iran).

Warsh refused to be drawn on the possibility of future increases, saying: “I’m not in the forward guidance business.”

U.S. President Donald Trump announced Warsh as the next Fed Chair in January. In the months leading up to his announcement, Warsh publicly favoured lower interest rates, a view strongly shared by the president.

Warsh’s appointment raised questions about whether the Fed would cut rates even if inflation was above its 2% target.

When asked if he had any discussions with Trump about this decision, Warsh declined to answer twice.

Australia’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), is due to meet on 29 September.

Economists and investors are leaning towards the RBA increasing interest rates, from 4.35% to 4.6%.

This is because Australia is facing issues similar to the U.S.: persistent high inflation, stronger-than-expected economic growth, and the flow-on effects of unrest in the Middle East.

Reporting by Adam Wan.

🎧 On today’s TDA podcast, co-founder Zara explains the Government’s new immigration plans. Listen or watch on Apple here, Spotify here, or YouTube here.

🌞 Sign up to TDA Good News here for a wrap of all the good news from this week in your inbox on Sunday morning.

On Thursday, the Federal Government shared its immigration policy plan, which includes cutting net overseas migration by 75,000 people by 2028.

A key change is to working holiday visas, where a ballot system will be set up for people looking to extend their visas into a second and third year.

It comes after One Nation shared its plan for “net-negative” migration on Monday.

So, what does the Government’s plan look like?

The net overseas migration rate is the number of people who arrive and stay for at least 12 months, minus the number who leave and stay away for at least 12 months.

The latest ABS data was released on Thursday morning. It shows net overseas migration to March 2026 was around 292,000 people, down 5.6% from the previous year.

On Thursday, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced the Government’s plan to cut net overseas migration to 245,000 per year in 2026-27 and 225,000 by 2028.

One visa type that will see a significant cut is the working holiday visa, with a new ballot system introduced for people applying to extend it to a second and third year.

Burke said the allocation for second-year visas will be cut from around 57,000 last year to 45,000, while third-year places will be reduced from around 31,000 visas to 5,000.

Burke announced a requirement where temporary student visa graduates can only be granted a new student visa for a more advanced level of education. This means that someone who has, for example, completed a bachelor’s degree cannot then study a graduate diploma, but would need to undertake a master’s degree to receive a new student visa. Burke said this is to prevent “visa-hopping”.

Another policy means family members of temporary student visa-holders will no longer be granted visas to also move to Australia.

In his speech, Burke said: “The housing shortage we have is not caused by immigration”.

He referenced data showing the average Australian household size has decreased from 2.9 in the 1980s to 2.5 now. Burke said for each 0.1 change, an additional 450,000 houses are needed.

“Immigration will need to be part of the solution,” he added, saying that migrant labour can address skills shortages in the housing industry.

Burke also noted that the number of temporary skilled worker visas granted to construction workers has tripled.

On Thursday morning, One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce told the Today show the plan was “an exact replication, but not to the extent of what One Nation is doing.”

One Nation shared its plan on Monday, with leader Pauline Hanson saying the party would seek “net-negative” overseas migration levels. This means more people are leaving the country than arriving.

In a statement, National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) President Hamish McIntyre called the Government’s policy a “low blow for farmers and the businesses that produce Australia’s food and fibre.”

McIntyre welcomed agriculture being named a priority sector, but urged the Government to rethink a recent three-month processing timeframe for working holiday visas, which usually took days to approve.

He said the ballot could be a “step in the right direction if it protects regional work” but will “mean little if the system cannot process people in time.”

Reporting by Emily Donohoe.

Aussie basketball's almost back, and there's a competition running right now to celebrate.

The Hungry Jack's NBL tips off Saturday, September 19, 7:30pm AEST, and this year it's built to Play It Loud, on and off the court. Every game streams live on ESPN across Australia and New Zealand, with Saturday games also live and free on the 9Network - and the hype isn't just local, with fans in over 30 countries tuning in worldwide.

To celebrate, you could win a voucher to the NBL Store - enter now and Wear It Loud this season.

It is the result of a powerful impact two years ago that initially went undetected. The steep-sided hole – about 220m across and up to 45m deep – is the solar system’s biggest known impact crater carved out in recent times. Such a large-scale event is estimated to occur only once every 132 years, researchers said, making this a treasure trove of information as NASA prepares to build a base for astronauts on the moon.

Reporting by Lucy Tassell.

Travis Kelce, aka Mr Taylor Swift, has been caught up in a scam scheme.

The Chiefs player invested in what he thought was a real company coincidentally called Swiftarc Capital which has since turned out to be fraudulent, with the man behind it jailed and ordered to pay back millions to investors this week.

Baby, now they’ve got bad blood.

Reporting by Lucy Tassell.