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Speaker 1: It's Friday, the twenty first of March twenty twenty five.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to the Fast five Business News by Fear and Greed.

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Speaker 1: Whill we give you the top five business stories you

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Speaker 1: need to know and it's five minutes. I'm Michael Thompson

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Speaker 1: and good morning Sean Aylmer.

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Speaker 3: Good morning Michael.

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Speaker 2: Shown five big stories to race through in five minutes.

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Speaker 2: Let's get cracking story number one. The number of people

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Speaker 2: employed fell by.

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Speaker 1: A surprisingly large fifty three thousand last month, though the

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Speaker 1: unemployment rate remained at four point one percent. It is

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Speaker 1: a pretty poor number after many many months of very

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Speaker 1: good numbers.

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Speaker 3: Sure is, the drop is the sharpest fall since December

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Speaker 3: twenty twenty three. Well buy market expectations, but no one

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Speaker 3: was panicking yesterday, given it's just one data point. At

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Speaker 3: four point one percent, the unemployment rate remains around the

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Speaker 3: lowest in decades. The Bureau Statistics says few are older

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Speaker 3: workers returning to work in February contributed to the fall

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Speaker 3: in employment in the younger ah khort of fifteen to

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Speaker 3: fifty four years. Employment growth continues despite the fall. Total

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Speaker 3: employment is two hundred and sixty six thousand more than

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Speaker 3: a year ago. That suggests average monthly growth of about

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Speaker 3: twenty two thousand new jobs.

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Speaker 2: What does it mean for interest rates? So Sean, that's

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Speaker 2: what we want to know.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true, probably not a huge amount, although it

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Speaker 3: adds to the argument for the Reserve Bank to not

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Speaker 3: well at the edges. Maybe they could cut rates, but

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Speaker 3: they're not going to do it as a result of

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Speaker 3: this number, that's for sure, no doubt a few people

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Speaker 3: at the Reserve Bank might be a bit relieved about

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Speaker 3: the number. Last month's Governor Michelle Bullock said the jobs

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Speaker 3: market was tight and on some measures getting tighter. She

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Speaker 3: said that in the context of the Central Bank not

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Speaker 3: cutting rates again anytime soon, financial markets have priced in

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Speaker 3: a seventy five percent chance of a rate cut in May.

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Speaker 2: Okay.

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Speaker 1: Moving on to story number two now, a decision by

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Speaker 1: Prime Minister Anthony Albanezi that was immediately supported by Opposition

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Speaker 1: leader Peter Dutton to cut the out of pocket payments

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Speaker 1: on pharmaceuticals has triggered a war of words with the US.

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Speaker 2: And potentially tariffs on medicines.

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Speaker 3: US drug industry members have named Australia's pharmaceutical benefits scheme

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Speaker 3: as one of the egregious and discriminatory programs to be

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Speaker 3: targeted in Trump's well, they want to be targeted in

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Speaker 3: Trump's upcoming decision on reciprocal tariff's next month. It blames

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Speaker 3: the Australian policy for cutting prices and blocking American exporters.

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Speaker 3: It wants tariffs on our pharmaceutical products now. Yesterday, Anthony

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Speaker 3: Albernezi said the PBS is not for sale, won't be

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Speaker 3: part of any future tariff negotiations. Important this because pharmaceuticals

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Speaker 3: is one of Australia's largest exports to the US. It's

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Speaker 3: become a real focal point in the tariff war, helped

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Speaker 3: by Labour's pledge yesterday supported by the Coalition as you said,

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Speaker 3: to reduce by six dollars sixty the cost of a script.

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Speaker 3: The Albanezi government plans to bring the patient co payment

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Speaker 3: for subsidized medicines down to twenty five bucks from thirty

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Speaker 3: one dollars sixty, cutting up to a fifth of out

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Speaker 3: of pocket costs for about twenty million Australians.

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Speaker 2: A story number three Coals has singled out Victoria as

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Speaker 2: the state with a significantly higher level of theft and

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Speaker 2: that arise in organized crime is actually behind the increase,

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Speaker 2: which is a trend that's supported by other supermarkets and

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Speaker 2: by fashion retailers as well.

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Speaker 3: So Cole says, incidents of crime we're fifty four percent

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Speaker 3: high in Victoria then in New South Wales last year

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Speaker 3: as it accelerated the violated new technology to make theft harder.

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Speaker 3: In fact, Cole's stores in Victoria account for almost half

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Speaker 3: of its tital security guard hours nationally, which is pretty amazing.

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Speaker 3: Or a technology platform used by major retailers, including Woolly's.

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Speaker 3: Bunning's min said about thirty percent of the eight hundred

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Speaker 3: thousand incidents tracked last year were from Victoria. According to

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Speaker 3: the fin Review, most sort after products included fragrances, clothes,

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Speaker 3: beauty products, groceries and vouchers.

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Speaker 2: The story numberfore, how about this one? The US government

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Speaker 2: has released tens of thousands of pages about the assassination

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Speaker 2: of former President John F. Kennedy, and, in something of

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Speaker 2: a disappointment, you would say to conspiracy theorists, the paper

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Speaker 2: suggests that Lee Harvey Oswell did in fact shoot the president.

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Speaker 3: Such a disappointment, the National Archives published the documents on

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Speaker 3: Tuesday at the order of US President Donald Trump. The

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Speaker 3: files are mostly dense with information that experts already knew.

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Speaker 3: There are some gems. According to The Washington Post, it

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Speaker 3: unveiled American assets who spied on Fidel Castro, for example,

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Speaker 3: a fair bit about Soviets feeding information about Kennedy's assassination

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Speaker 3: to US professors, lots about the inner workings of the

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Speaker 3: ci A sixty years ago. But it doesn't seem that

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Speaker 3: it's unearthed anything to suggest that it wasn't Lee Harvey

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Speaker 3: Oswald that shot John F. Kennedy.

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Speaker 2: Last one story, number five, sean and La County jury

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Speaker 2: has awarded fifty million US dollars in damages to a

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Speaker 2: man named Michael Garcia after a scalding hot tea from

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Speaker 2: Starbucks caused severe burns.

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Speaker 3: Garcia, a post Mates driver essentially an urban driver, suffered

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Speaker 3: third degree burns to his gentle area when a loose

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Speaker 3: cup fell into his lap at a drive through in

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Speaker 3: February twenty twenty. The top of the cup wasn't secured

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Speaker 3: on It was found one hundred percent responsible for failing

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Speaker 3: to secure the cup properly, which led to permanent disfigurement.

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Speaker 3: According to the BBC, the company plans to appeal the decisions,

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Speaker 3: saying the damages are excessive.

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Speaker 2: Ouch. Yeah, that's all you can say. There we go

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Speaker 2: the top five business stories in five minutes. Thank you Sean,

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Speaker 2: Thank you Michael.

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Speaker 1: It is Friday, the twenty first of March twenty twenty five.

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Speaker 1: Remember to hit follow on the podcast and in five

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Speaker 1: minutes isn't enough. You can find our longer daily show

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Speaker 1: called Fear and Greed wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm

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Speaker 1: Michael Thompson and that was the fast five business news

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Speaker 1: by Fear and Greed.

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Speaker 2: Have a great day.