10 things you need to know this morning in Australia

Happy hump day, team. Let me inaugurate this auspicious Wednesday by unloading upon you a volley of politics and economics stories – exactly the shot of caffeine you need to succeed and achieve.

1. Scott Morrison gave his address to the National Press Club yesterday arvo, hitting on all the expected points about national recovery. In short, Morrison is calling upon the economy's stakeholders – primarily business, unions, and government – to sit down and hash out a non-ideological system which works for recovery. Of course, he couldn't help firing off a few potshots at the unions during his speech, and referred to business as the real engine room of the economy. A cynic might see this as a signpost that this may not end up being the collegial accord Morrison wants.

2. The PM flagged changes to industrial relations as central to his agenda. That means "simplifying" the award scheme as part of an effort to get the economy "out of ICU". It's a lovely simple pitch, but belies a much larger fight which workers and many unions won't be happy with. As a sign of "good faith", Morrison announced he would shelve the government's union-busting Ensuring Integrity Bill – evidence the government knows it will need to offer some incentive to get the unions on board.

3. In response to a question from reporters, Morrison acknowledged another challenge Australia faces: migration. It's a serious political football, but it has economic consequences under our current system. Australia will need to brace for a "concerning" lack of migration because of the coronavirus, with as many as 220,000 fewer arrivals expected this year. “We’re looking at net overseas migration, I think, falling to 34,000-odd next year,” Morrison said. “When you think that – it was the great Professor McDonald who set a figure of between 160,000 and 210,000 as being what you need in this country to maintain a GDP-per-capita growth, then there’s obviously a big gap there.”

4. One more politics update, and we'll move on. Morrison has urged state premiers this morning to "justify" maintaining border closures, and said it was never the recommendation of the national cabinet. "The National Cabinet has never agreed that there should be borders closed in Australia," Morrison told Today. "That was never the medical expert advice that came at any time." There will be more squabbling to come on this.

5. We're seeing some tentative efforts from rideshare companies to ramp up operations again, as restrictions ease. For example, DiDi will begin to wind back key financial relief measures offered to drivers, including a reduced commission rate. Company spokesperson Dan Jordan told Business Insider Australia the change was necessary to create a sustainable business, and did not rule out following competitors like Uber and 13cabs into delivery services.

6. Target's downsizing effort last week has put the spotlight on similarly struggling rival retailer Big W, which is owned by Woolworths. Big W is historically loss-making, and isn't as well targeted as the clear product divide of Kmart and Target. "Big W has a bit of the [cheaper] Kmart end and also some of the [more expensive] Target end,” Argo Investments' Jason Beddow told the SMH.

7. The news Ticketek will be the first ticketing platform to integrate Afterpay was quietly announced at the end of last week. Obviously, it's not a huge deal right now, given there's not a lot of live entertainment to be purchasing tickets for. But it's a signal of Afterpay's increasingly strong manoeuvres to pick up Gen Z and millennial shoppers through more of their purchases. “Ticketing and entertainment is an area that millennials and Gen Z have a strong passion for and interest in, so it makes sense for Afterpay to partner with a fellow Australian business to bring a buy now pay later solution to the ticketing industry,” a spokesperson for the company told us.

8. An ongoing conversation in the world of tech is the role of social media platforms like Facebook in radicalising people by exposing them to more and more extreme views. (I call it 'Facebook Brain'.) A new report suggests Facebook tried to engage with this problem in 2016 and 2018 – and indeed found that its platform did encourage divisive rhetoric – but that any changes were shot down on the basis they would affect engagement. According to the Wall Street Journal, Mark Zuckerberg said he did not want these problems brought up to him again.

9. Also on social media and partisanship: Twitter has begun adding fact-checking links to Donald Trump's tweets. One expects people on all sides of the political aisle will respond to this in a calm and reasonable manner. Trump falsely claimed on Tuesday that mail-in ballots cast in California will be “substantially fraudulent” and result in a “rigged election.” Here are the tweets in question:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265255845358645254

10. Remember all the hullabaloo about oil? What's happened there? Well, throughout the month of May, oil prices have mostly rebounded from their shocking – and, at one point, negative – lows. Nonetheless, traders still fear a prolonged demand pressure fuelled by the coronavirus. Here's a timeline of how it all played out.

BONUS ITEM

A woman has been fired from global investment firm Franklin Templeton after a video showed her calling the police on a man who had asked her to put her dog on a leash. A video with more than 29.6 million views shows the woman, later identified as Amy Cooper, threatening to tell the police that “there’s an African American man threatening my life” and then doing so. It's no doubt crossed your feed at some point in the last 24 hours, but here it is:

https://twitter.com/melodyMcooper/status/1264965252866641920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1264965252866641920%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Finvestment-firm-suspends-central-park-woman-rang-nypd-black-man-2020-5