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The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, will make the announcement in a speech to open the Labor national conference on Thursday, which will cast “practical” policies as the key to combating the anxiety and frustration gripping the electorate.

Labor MPs, trade unionists and rank-and-file members will use the triennial conference to thrash out the party’s policy agenda for the next three years.

A high-level commitment to increase taxes on gas exports and wind back fuel tax credits are set to be enshrined in the official party platform, which sets a long-term expectation – rather than an immediate requirement – for the parliamentary party to act.

Deals between factional powerbrokers are expected to avert major flare-ups during the three-day conference, although there is tension ahead of Saturday’s debate on the party’s position on Israel and Palestine.

Jewish groups and Israel’s embassy in Canberra are publicly putting pressure on the party to water-down the draft text, which they claim is not critical enough of Hamas’ role in the Gaza war, while pro-Palestine supporters within Labor are pushing to strengthen the language.

Senior Labor figures believe the draft version strikes the right balance and are reluctant to bend to either group, meaning a contested debate on the conference floor is unlikely.

A Students for Palestine protest calling for a stop to arms trade with Israel – which the government disputes occurs – is planned for Thursday afternoon outside the Adelaide Convention Centre, which will have beefed-up security for the 3000-person conference.

In his speech, Albanese will attempt to draw a clear contrast between Labor and its political opponents, in particular One Nation, warning that “raging against a system” without a plan to fix it doesn’t “take the country forward”.

“I understand that for many Australians right now, looking to the future runs second to the immediate pressures they are under,” the prime minister will tell the conference, according to a draft version supplied to Guardian Australia.

“It is a challenge confronting governments and democracies right around the world.

“That is why our focus remains squarely on helping with the cost of living, on the practical measures that matter to people and make a positive difference to their lives.”

The prime minister will announce students in ten extra courses will receive up to $338.60 a week during their clinical or professional placements, starting 1 July 2027.

The courses are: clinical psychology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, paramedicine, radiography, pharmacy, rehabilitation therapies, audiology podiatry.

The program is currently limited to teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work.

The expansion comes after pressure from MPs including David Pocock and Helen Haines, who last month tabled a 43,000-person signature calling for allied health courses to be included.

“This is how Labor governs,” Albanese will tell the conference. “We deal with the here and now in a way that builds for the future too. We navigate the rough seas, while always keeping our eyes on the horizon.”

After Kate Ellis is installed as the new Labor president on Thursday morning, the 400 conference delegates will start debating the text of the 126-page draft platform, starting with economic and climate policies on Thursday.

Delegates from the left and right factions held lengthy meetings on Wednesday to discuss their positions on various topics.

The section of the draft platform that commits Labor to securing a “fairer return” for natural resources is expected to feature in the final text, effectively binding the Albanese government to eventually act on the campaign to increase taxes on gas exports.

Left faction sources were on Wednesday night optimistic a proposal to “remove disincentives for decarbonisation” would also make the final text after it was excluded from the draft version.

The grassroots Labor Environment Action Network (LEAN) is pushing the amendment as part of a campaign to cap fuel tax credits for mining companies, which has won the support of hundreds of local branches and Labor MP Jerome Laxale.

Even if the amendments succeed, the government is unlikely to move quickly on fuel tax credits or a gas tax due to the uncertainty the Middle East conflict has caused to the global oil market.

The left is discussing pushing for even stronger positions in tackling online gambling harm, including a national regulator, ahead a scheduled debate on Friday.

The draft platform already goes further than the government’s gambling advertising legislation with a commitment to address inducements offered by wagering companies.

A ban on inducements and the establishment of a national gambling regulator were among several recommendations from the landmark Murphy report that were omitted from the the government’s bill, which is set to be debated when federal parliament returns next month. %!s()

You're a beer store owner trying to keep shelves stocked. Customers buy at a steady pace, you reorder accordingly, and for a while, it works. Then demand shifts because the Tartan Army is in town for the World Cup. Once you adjust your order, and then your wholesaler follows suit, it can send ripple effects throughout the supply chain that no one is prepared for. ​

In theory, every node in the chain should be able to forecast accurately and execute its task. You would think the game consistently shows how each node interprets signals differently, applies its own assumptions about what should happen and creates cascading inefficiencies. The problem is never a lack of effort or intention. It usually comes down to incomplete, misaligned data.

The solution is simply better visibility. Simple. So why have supply chains struggled to achieve this? Because the data that should enable real-time visibility is fragmented across a kaleidoscope of data, inside different systems and owned by different stakeholders throughout the entire network.

The Data Problem Is Real, And It’s Getting Bigger

One item supply chains are not lacking is data. The amount of data being produced daily remains staggering. More than 400 million terabytes of data is generated globally daily. The challenge is whether any of the data is useful, timely or clean enough to act on.

Many technologists and visionaries over the years have claimed that “data is the new oil.” While the analogy may be slightly overused, the challenge is that oil still needs to be refined into a useful end product. Exactly like data.

Raw data, like crude oil, must be processed before it can generate reliable insights for an organization. That becomes even harder as you move beyond your own four walls and start ingesting data from dozens of suppliers, carriers and partners across the world, each with their own systems and standards. You quickly realize, like in the beer game, this is an everyday challenge.

The Case For A Platform Approach

So how do we start tackling this issue? Think back to the concept of a technology or data platform. A layer that can aggregate data and signals from multiple nodes and add intelligence and practical actions to them. One could even start to focus on signals or events within that supply chain that need to be ingested.

Platforms are nothing new in the supply chain world. But the irrational exuberance around artificial intelligence (AI) has raised the stakes considerably. The importance of having a clean and actionable data layer—sitting in an accessible platform—is paramount because, as they say: AI is only as good as the data it runs on. Feeding a large language model (LLM) or machine learning (ML) model fragmented or inconsistent data won’t produce anything but noise and distraction.

Before any organization and supply chain can realize the promise of AI, they need to solve for the foundation.

Start With The Basics

Data audits and hygiene checks aren’t the most glamorous tasks. It’s boring housekeeping, but try building a house on a weak and flimsy foundation. Your digital transformation journey is built on your data, your digital exhaust. If it’s not solid, your journey is probably already off the rails.

Start with auditing what you have. You can find where your gaps are. And then you can start fixing some of the integrity issues or blind spots you may have before layering in more complex capabilities from new emerging technologies and data platforms.

Then identify the specific use cases and key challenges you’re trying to solve. What data is necessary to address those problems? Ensure you have access and prioritize that data. The challenge only increases as you look across your supply chain network. How can you ensure your expanded network adheres to your best practices?

The harder question, and the one most organizations may avoid, is how to extend data discipline beyond your own systems and into your broader network. How do you ensure your suppliers, 3PLs and distribution partners are feeding you reliable signals? This is where supply chain visibility goes from a reporting exercise to a potential competitive advantage.

Bottom line: supply chains need to create digital platforms to address specific needs and gain real-time visibility. From applying AI to specific use cases to adopting new practices, the digital platform is foundational. Without one, you are building on quicksand that is about to be swept away by a tidal wave.

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?

When you think about Goths, what you likely picture is those kids in high school who always dress in black, wear lots of drab makeup, and really hate gym class. In fact, that group of iconoclastic outcasts takes its name from a group of Germanic tribes, who in the 5th century AD played a major role in toppling the Roman Empire. It is from this group that we also get Gothic architecture, which succeeded Romanesque styles in medieval Europe.

The 1994 Mercedes-Benz E 320 Cabriolet we considered on Tuesday offered Teutonic, timeless style that still impresses today, fully three decades after it was conceived. That just shows the staying power of German style and engineering. When its $15,499 price tag was taken into account, a lot of you felt it was worth keeping around a good bit longer. That was made plain in the 62% 'Nice Price' win the Benz received.

No wrong answers?

Since we had so much fun with yesterday's German convertible, let's keep the party humming with yet another one, albeit from Mercedes' perennial rival, BMW. While car people generally claim that Mazda's Miata is the answer to any and every automotive query, today's 1999 BMW Z3 2.8 is, itself, the Bavarian carmaker's answer to that wildly popular roadster. 

Initially hitting the road in 1996, the small two-seater was the first mass-production car to carry the Z badge, the earlier Z1 having only been produced in small numbers and having never been sold in the U.S. BMW chose not only to sell the Z3 in the States, but to build them here too, in the company's Spartanburg, South Carolina plant. Initially offered, like the Miata, in only four-cylinder form, the Z3 eventually was granted membership in the straight-six club, one-upping its role model. Later M editions would turn the wick up even more brightly, although despite upgrades, the Z3's chassis has a hard time keeping up.

In the middle

This Boston Green over tan and black leather edition sits in the Baby Bear middle, offering a 2.8-liter M52 straight six and a ZF-sourced five-speed manual as its drivetrain. In the Z3, that's good for a factory-claimed 190 horsepower and 207 pound-feet of torque. According to the seller, the car has seen regular maintenance over the years and has recently enjoyed a full change of fluids in anticipation of hitting six figures on its odometer. At present, it rocks 94,000 miles. Per the seller, it's all stock, with no modifications or monkey business, though the aftermarket head unit does stick out a bit.

It also makes a pretty good first impression in the pictures. The metallic green paint pairs wonderfully with the tan top and the handsome Style 42 alloy wheels. Those, by the way, are shod with what the seller says are "newer z rated tires." The ad notes some scratches in the paint, as befitting a car of this age that has been enjoyed, but nothing egregious appears in the pics.

Wear and tear

It is, however, an older car, and there are some places where it has waved the white flag. Noted in the ad, the convertible top mechanism has failed, and now it must be raised and lowered manually. The seller says that it's a light top, so it wouldn't require extra arm days at the gym to work.

Another obvious issue is the glove box door, which is falling off the latch side. This is an incredibly notorious problem on the Z3, to the extent that both replacement boxes and retrofit strengthening kits are readily available to rectify the problem for good.

That's the only obvious flaw in the cabin. The seats look to be black, but that is just the aftermarket covers that serve to protect the tan factory leather underneath. A shot of the passenger squab is offered in the ad to show it is in decent condition. The only other non-original item in here is an aftermarket stereo. Perhaps making up for that, the seller advises that the car will come with all its original manuals and some service history, as well as a clean title.

A family affair

All that was apparently scrounged by the seller from their grandfather's garage. Granddad bought the car new and kept it in Southern California for most of its use, so the car is rust-free.

It's now offered a fair distance from California in Boise, Idaho, with a price tag of $7,500. According to the seller, extensive research was undertaken regarding the proper range for cars of this ilk and condition before that price was set. You know what, though? They didn't ask us for our opinion. I'm going to rectify that omission right now.

What's your take on this clean Z3 at that $7,500 asking price? Does that feel fair to you, given the car's presentation and description? Or does that price warrant the seller keeping it in the family?

You decide!

Boise, Idaho, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.

Help me out with Nice Price or No Dice. Hit me up at [email protected] and send a fixed-price tip. Remember to include your commenter handle. %!s()

I have started companies during three major technology category shifts, so let me say what many leaders are thinking but not saying out loud: You are likely funding a transformation you cannot yet fully define, and so is everyone you benchmark against.

The numbers make the gap hard to ignore. Gartner projects enterprise AI spending will reach $2.59 trillion in 2026, a 47% jump in a single year. Yet IBM’s research finds only about 29% of executives can confidently measure the return on that spending.

The investment is real, but execution is lagging behind. Organizations are spending as though the destination is clear while still struggling to define what success actually looks like.

I've helped build three technology categories. This one feels different.

I've seen this pattern before with enterprise performance management and customer success. The budget arrives before the definition. Vendors rush in to supply the meaning. Everyone benchmarks against everyone else, even when few can clearly explain what they're benchmarking. That rhythm is familiar. What makes this moment different is what comes next.​

But I want to be honest about something, because it would be easy for someone with my background to pretend otherwise. The substance of this one is genuinely new, in a way the others were not. Performance management and customer success rearranged how people worked. This rearranges who does the work.

The last time technology didn’t just inform a task but actually performed the action, not only the analysis, was never. There is no prior cycle to pattern-match against for that. Not for me, not for the analysts, and not for the vendors selling you certainty.

So here is the distinction most leaders are collapsing, and it matters more than anything else in this article: The confusion is familiar. What we’re actually deciding is not. Money-arrives-before-the-meaning is an old story. But the thing the money is buying, the software that does the work rather than waiting to be used, is a genuinely new decision.

The instincts from a career of buying tools could mislead you here, because this is not a tool you use. It is work you hand over. Treating an unprecedented decision like a familiar purchase is the most expensive mistake available to you right now.

The real danger isn’t moving too slowly.

In an emerging category, leaders worry about being late. The more expensive risk is the quiet one: spending hard against a definition you didn’t write. When the category has no agreed meaning, the meaning gets supplied by whoever is selling. Every vendor will tell you that what they do is the transformation. Buy enough of them and you will have spent the line item without ever deciding what it was for.

The leaders who win a new category are never the ones who buy the most of it. They are the ones who define the problem for themselves before the market defines it for them.

That starts by asking a better question than the one most teams are asking. The question I hear most often is about tools. The question that actually matters is about work.

The common question asks, “What AI tools should we buy?”

The better question asks, “What work should our people stop carrying, and what should carry it instead?”

Answer the second, and the goal of the whole exercise comes into focus. It is not “having AI.” It is not even efficiency. It is capacity, growing what your existing team can carry, without growing headcount. That is the outcome a board funds and a CFO can measure. Everything else is sizzle.

Here are four questions to answer before you spend the line item.

If you are accountable for that budget, here is what I would settle before approving another dollar of it. None of these require a purchase. All of them protect the spend.

1. Define the goal before you shop.

Write down the outcome in plain language, capacity and the specific constraint you are trying to remove, before you take a single demo. A demo is designed to define the problem for you. Walk in with the problem already defined.

2. Separate what you’re experimenting with from what you’re committing to.

Some of this budget should fund cheap, reversible experiments (small bets you can kill next quarter). Some of it is a foundation you will build on for years. Treating those the same is how money gets wasted and stacks get stranded. Experiment freely at the edges. Commit deliberately to the foundation.

3. Insist on understanding what the AI is actually doing.

Before you trust a system to act, ask it to show its work, show you what it looked at and tell you what it is unsure of. The most dangerous output in enterprise AI is a confident, complete-looking answer with no visible boundaries. You, not the vendor, will answer to the board for the decisions made on top of it.

4. Write your own definition before the market writes it for you.

Decide what “AI GTM transformation” means for your business, the work it redraws, the capacity it creates and the outcome it serves, and use that definition to evaluate everything you’re shown. A definition you author is a strategy. A definition you inherit is a shopping list someone else wrote.

Ask this question to the C-suite.

There is no analyst report, no peer playbook and no vendor that genuinely has the answer of exactly what AI GTM transformation is. Everyone is improvising. In three years, the executives who look prescient won’t be the ones who bought the earliest. So it's up to us to define what it means for our organization.

Here is the honest question to take into your next budget review: Are you funding an AI transformation you have defined, or are you funding it because everyone else is?

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?

Hegseth provided the estimate during an intense session in Congress on Tuesday while speaking to lawmakers of the Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC), where he attempted to justify additional funding requests for a conflict that Washington claimed to have won months ago.

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The new estimates are significantly higher than previous figures Trump administration officials provided between April and June.

Democrat and Republican senators grilled Hegseth and General Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, over the cost of the war and the US’s failure to show results.

“Secretary Hegseth, despite your failure to win this war, you are back now before Congress asking for almost $70bn in additional funding,” Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat, said. “You are asking the American people for a blank cheque.”

“We need straight answers,” Republican Senator John Kennedy added during the tense questioning.

The testimony came as a June agreement between Tehran and Washington has broken down, and as the US has launched 11 consecutive nights of attacks on Iran.

The US has already racked up thousands of dollars in weapons bills since the war began on February 28, and is increasingly using up its stockpiles.

At least 18 US service members are dead, and about 500 are injured. Globally — including in the US — petrol prices and living costs are soaring.

Here’s what we know about Hegseth’s war maths:

How much has the US spent on the war so far?

Hegseth told the SAC on Tuesday that $37.5bn had been spent on the US’s war on Iran so far.

The amount is much higher than the $25bn estimate the Defense Department had given the Senate in April, during the US’s first phase of the war tagged Operation Epic Fury.

At the time, Assistant Secretary of the Army Jules Hurst III told the House Armed Services Committee that most of the costs had gone to munitions, operations, as well as equipment maintenance and replacements.

Other independent estimates put the war’s costs at about $1bn a day, reaching more than $100bn by mid-July. Trump administration officials have not provided broken-down figures.

Why is Trump asking for $67bn more?

Hegseth also told senators that the US would need an additional $67bn – nearly double the current bill – to keep up the war effort.

“He’s not making this up,” Paul Musgrave, a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera, adding that this was an unpopular war Americans did not ask for.

“The United States will need to replenish its arsenals [as] the munitions and the airframes that have been used in this conflict need to be replaced,” he said.

US President Donald Trump first requested supplemental funding from Congress earlier in June, spurring Hegseth’s testimony in the Senate.

The White House asked for $87.6bn in additional funding for the 2026 budget year. More than three-quarters of that, or $67.1bn, has been earmarked for the Department of Defense.

US weapons stockpiles are running low amid the war on Iran, investigations show, and replenishing them will take billions of dollars and between several months and several years.

Analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies shows that the US has used up significant numbers of its most powerful munitions on Iranian targets.

Stockpiles of at least four munitions – Patriots, THAADs, Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) are now at 50 percent or less, compared with pre-war levels, according to the analysis.

The additional defence funding Trump’s administration has requested forms part of a $1.5 trillion budget proposal for the Defense Department for the 2027 fiscal year, according to Hegseth. The supplement will go towards weapons production and procurement, payroll, operational costs, training, and replacing damaged or lost equipment.

The 2027 defence budget, if approved by Congress, will represent a 44 percent increase in annual US defence spending and will be the highest such budget in the country’s history.

Already, US defence spending in 2026 was at a record high – $1.05 trillion. Comparatively, Washington spent $919.2bn on defence in 2025.

Hegseth, in his presentation to the SAC on Tuesday, said the additional funds and the record-high 2027 budget were a “generational investment”.

If Congress fails to approve them, the US “will face critical shortfalls that threaten our ability to pay our service members, replenish some of the equipment and munitions consumed during contingency operations and sustain vital global operations without disruption,” Hegseth warned.

What’s the cost of the Iran war to the US economy?

Aside from the direct monetary bill of the conflict, the humanitarian costs in the Middle East, the deaths and injuries to US servicemen, and the mangling of Washington’s reputation as a global superpower, the war on Iran is also painful for the domestic economy.

• Petrol pump prices shot up in the US after the war disrupted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, where about a quarter of the world’s oil supplies transit through from Gulf countries. While per-litre petrol prices were about $2.98 before the war, some states, such as California, are seeing a nearly 100 percent price increase.
• By July 22, Americans had paid more than $72bn in extra petrol and diesel costs since the war began, according to estimates by Brown University’s Iran War Energy Cost Tracker. That amounts to $549 per household.
• Volatile oil prices have also pushed inflation to a three-year high, and interest rates are soaring, according to the Center for American Progress (CAP). The consumer price index, or the average change in prices, rose by about 4.2 percent in May, while households are expected to pay an additional $4.6bn in interest rates.

How do the Iran war costs compare with other US wars?

The US is the world’s leading spender on defence by far, and its wars, especially, are expensive.

Where the government would historically raise taxes or sell bonds to fund wars, modern wars are funded through borrowing, making their immediate effects less noticeable.

• One of the most expensive wars in modern US history remains the so-called “war on terror” that cost $8 trillion between 2001 and 2026, according to the war tracker website, War Costs. It resulted in 7,074 American deaths.
• The second world war saw Washington spend $4.1 trillion between 1941 and 1945, according to the Navy Department Library. More than 405,000 Americans died.
• The 20-year-long Vietnam War cost the US the present-day equivalent of $1 trillion and resulted in more than 58,000 American deaths.
• The war in Iraq cost $648bn by the US Navy’s estimates in 2008. Between 186,000 and 210,000 Americans were killed.
• The Afghanistan war cost $171bn by the US Navy’s estimates in 2008. More than 2,400 American troops died.