Brisbane Hustle

Snowtown killer's parole 'sickening', says nephew of victim Barry Lane

The nephew of a victim of the notorious Snowtown murders says seeing images of convicted killer James Spyridon Vlassakis outside prison walls has triggered flashbacks and a deep fear of crossing paths with him in public.

Ron Lane, nephew of victim Barry Lane, spoke to reporters after Vlassakis was filmed leaving the Adelaide Pre-release Centre. "Seeing the photo for the very first time of him now is a shock to the system and gives flashbacks on why he was in [prison]," Mr Lane said. "You just wish that you could turn back the clock and this sort of thing was just a bad, horrible dream."

Vlassakis was jailed for life in 2001 and given a 26-year non-parole period, backdated to his 1999 arrest. He pleaded guilty to the murders of:

• Fred Brooks
• Gary O'Dwyer
• David Johnson
• His half-brother Troy Youde

His cooperation with authorities helped convict ringleaders John Bunting and Robert Wagner — jailed for 11 and 10 murders respectively — as well as accomplice Mark Ray Haydon, who has since been released after serving a 25-year sentence. The Parole Board granted Vlassakis parole last year, but the state government attempted to block the decision. That parole was subsequently upheld by the Parole Administrative Review Commissioner last month.

Vlassakis will spend up to 12 months at the pre-release centre while the Parole Board monitors his progress and determines conditions for his full release into the community. Parole Board chair Frances Nelson KC has previously stated he will be subject to standard parole conditions, including a curfew, restricted movements, and drug and alcohol testing. A government spokesperson confirmed he would be "subject to strict conditions for the remainder of his life."

Mr Lane, who was approximately seven years old the last time he saw his uncle — killed by Bunting and Wagner in October 1997 — said Adelaide's small size heightened his anxiety. "You could go down the shops, not knowing that he's out as well, and you're coming towards him, you could just be frozen solid," he said. He described Vlassakis's transition back into the community as "a failure" of the justice system, adding: "Our loved ones never got to see the light of day because of what he did to them."

Firmus IPO in doubt as AI sector jitters rattle Wall Street and ASX

Concerns surrounding two unlisted artificial intelligence companies — OpenAI in the United States and Firmus in Australia — rattled financial markets on Friday, as investor confidence in the AI sector showed signs of cracking.

Firmus IPO Faces Uncertain Future

Firmus, an Australian data centre company that describes itself as an "AI factory," is attempting to save what could become one of the nation's largest-ever share market floats. Reports indicate the firm is seeking to raise up to $7 billion from institutional and retail investors through an initial public offering (IPO), which could value the company at more than $50 billion. The funds were earmarked to build an AI facility in Launceston, with two more planned across Tasmania, and broader ambitions extending across Australia and into South-East Asian markets.

However, investor appetite has cooled markedly. Veteran fund manager Roger Montgomery flagged inconsistencies in the messages sent to market participants during the capital-raising process, noting that potential investors were previously told indicative orders had already exceeded the size of the offer at $11 a share — yet the price was subsequently cut in an apparent bid to get the deal completed. "If that were true, why has the price been cut to get the deal away?" Montgomery said, invoking Warren Buffett's view that investors should back people who are "energetic, intelligent and honest."

Bloomberg News reported Friday that Firmus is considering delaying the IPO and exploring private funding options.

Broader AI Sentiment Shifting

The wobble around Firmus reflects a wider reassessment of the AI sector. A Reuters report cited in the live markets blog captured the mood: "Sentiment towards AI has shifted sharply in recent weeks as concerns over high valuations have raised worries that the technology is slipping from human control and that the massive amounts spent on it may not pay off."

Salt Funds managing director Matt Goodson also pointed to rising bond yields as a compounding pressure on AI and data centre stocks. Speaking to the New Zealand Herald, he noted that listed players including Goodman Group, Infratil and Next DC had all weakened in recent weeks. "Effectively these are very-long-duration property assets in many ways with very attractive yields on development, so rising bond yields has been the thing weighing on the sector," Goodson said.

Market snapshot figures from around 7:30am AEDT showed the broader mood:

• Nasdaq: -1.3% to 27,193 points
• S&P 500: -0.5% to 7,765 points
• ASX 200 futures: +0.2% to 8,697 points
• Brent crude: +2.6% to $US102.81 per barrel
• Spot gold: +0.2% to $US4,119 per ounce

The Australian dollar slipped 0.1 per cent to 69.51 US cents. Reporting by ABC business reporter Daniel Ziffer.

WA man held illegally in jail for two months due to psychiatric bed shortage

A mentally impaired Western Australian man was kept in jail unlawfully for approximately two months after a magistrate ordered him to receive psychiatric care — care that could not be provided because the state's only facility for mentally impaired prisoners had no available beds.

The man, identified in court only by the pseudonym SJQ, is in his 40s and has treatment-resistant paranoid schizophrenia. A magistrate found him unfit to stand trial on an assault charge and directed he be transferred to the Frankland Centre at Graylands Hospital. Instead, he remained at Hakea Prison while a waitlist at the Frankland Centre stretched from six to 212 days, according to the judgment.

Justice Terence Palmer found officials were being forced to break the state's own laws by holding people like SJQ in prison until a bed became available. He rejected the government's argument that staff had "done their best" with limited resources, writing that those responsible for the care of mentally impaired people in the criminal justice system "should not be placed in a position where a lack of resources forces them to act unlawfully." He also declared it was in the "public interest" to expose what he described as a "systemic failure that should be decried."

Capacity Has Not Grown Since 1993

The Frankland Centre's 30-bed unit opened in 1993 and has never expanded, even as Western Australia's prison population has grown four-fold over the same period. The facility operated at 99 per cent occupancy last financial year and had a waitlist of 18 people at the time SJQ was ordered to be admitted — including at least one other person in a comparable situation.

State governments have received repeated warnings. In 2018, WA's Inspector of Custodial Services cautioned that the number of beds had been "inadequate for over a decade." Four years later, the Inspector found conditions at the facility amounted to breaches of human rights, describing them as "inhumane."

Debra Zanella, who leads community service provider Ruah — which operates the state's only mental health law service — said the judgment came as no surprise to those working in the sector. She argued that stigmatisation of mentally impaired prisoners had driven the systemic failure the court identified. "In any other part of our health system we would not deny anybody that care," she said.

Ms Zanella acknowledged a government expansion project is underway, with a nearly $200 million plan that includes 32 sub-acute male forensic mental health beds at Graylands. However, she stressed the need for accurate data to determine both current and future requirements, and called for a firm timeline to be established. No timeline has been confirmed.

Firmus weighs postponing ASX float, eyes private funding round instead

Australian data centre company Firmus is considering postponing its planned initial public offering and is in talks with existing and new investors about a private funding round, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named as the information is not public.

Order-taking for the IPO closed as scheduled on Thursday morning, yet no clear indication of price or deal structure emerged. Firmus had priced its IPO at $11 a share, which would have given it a market valuation of approximately $43.7 billion. Deliberations are ongoing and details could still change, the people said. A spokesperson for Firmus did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Investor Concerns Cloud the Deal

Some potential investors grew more cautious as the process advanced, raising concerns that existing shareholders could flood the market shortly after the company's debut. That overhang compounded questions over what some viewed as an aggressive pricing strategy. "I've never seen an IPO so polarising," said Jun Bei Liu, co-founder and lead portfolio manager at Ten Cap Investment, speaking on Bloomberg TV. "There was a lot of international investor interest, however, when it comes to the crunch, the demand seems like it isn't there when they were asked to put up the capital that's required."

Firmus was co-founded by Oliver Curtis — husband of public relations consultant and influencer Roxy Jacenko — alongside Jonathan Levee and Tim Rosenfield. Curtis served one year in jail in 2016–17 for insider trading before co-founding Firmus as a bitcoin mining company in 2019. Proceeds from a successful listing would have funded purchases of graphics processing units for its first data centre project in Batam, Indonesia, developed with DayOne Data Centres Ltd. as part of an eight-year partnership with Nvidia. The company has secured $US2 billion in commitments from investors including Nvidia and Blackstone, with high-profile Australians — among them billionaire James Packer, former treasurer Joe Hockey and investor Alex Waislitz — holding stakes alongside fund managers Ellerston Capital and Regal Partners. Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Morgans Financial are acting as joint lead managers on the listing.

ASX set for modest gain as Wall Street slips on tech sell-off and oil surge

The Australian sharemarket is poised for a quiet rise after a rough session on Wall Street, where technology stocks dragged indexes lower and surging oil prices added to investor unease.

Futures pointed to an ASX gain of 18 points, or 0.2 per cent, at the open as of 6.59am AEDT, following a 0.8 per cent drop on the local bourse on Thursday. The Australian dollar was changing hands at US69.57 cents.

Tech stocks lead Wall Street lower amid bearish headlines

The S&P 500 fell 0.5 per cent — its second consecutive loss after recently reaching an all-time high — while the Nasdaq finished 1.3 per cent lower. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed flat. Nvidia shed 2.9 per cent, becoming one of the session's heaviest drags on the S&P 500. A cluster of negative reports hit AI and tech-linked stocks around midday, including a Financial Times report that OpenAI's annualised revenue is $US20 billion less than previously signalled, and a separate report that Oracle was trucking natural gas to server farms as a workaround for power shortages.

Brent crude rose 3.8 per cent to $US104.08 a barrel, continuing to swing sharply — between $US96 and nearly $US110 over the past month — as uncertainty persists about when the war with Iran will allow global energy markets to stabilise. Rising oil prices compounded pressure on equities alongside bond market volatility, with the 10-year US Treasury yield oscillating between 5.26 per cent and 5.35 per cent during the session. The yield remains near its highest level since 2002.

Locally, Bloomberg reported that Australian data centre company Firmus is weighing up postponing its planned initial public offering in favour of a private funding round. The company is said to be in talks with existing investors and new parties, though those discussions have not been made public. On the corporate earnings front in the US, PepsiCo rose 3.7 per cent after beating profit and revenue expectations, while Levi Strauss fell 2.4 per cent despite a stronger-than-expected profit, as revenue growth disappointed analysts. In Asia, South Korea's Kospi fell 2.6 per cent, hurt by a 2.4 per cent slide in Samsung Electronics even after the tech giant reported a dramatic rise in quarterly operating profit.

Tasmanian government's redundancy tax error could leave former workers with unexpected bills

The Tasmanian government has self-reported a tax classification error to the Australian Tax Office (ATO) that could expose former state service employees to surprise tax bills stretching back more than a decade.

The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) revealed last Friday that the government had made a voluntary disclosure to the ATO after discovering it had been incorrectly classifying voluntary redundancy payouts as "genuine redundancies" — a category that is tax-free up to a limit and then concessionally taxed. The ATO's position is that genuine redundancies are not voluntary, meaning those payments should instead have been classified as employment termination payments and taxed accordingly.

The error is estimated to date back to at least 2011, when Labor was in government under premier Lara Giddings — a period also marked by significant public sector job cuts through voluntary redundancies. The government has managed to correct the classification for the current round of redundancies, covering tax for those already paid out so recipients receive what they expected. However, historic cases remain unresolved while the ATO determines whether it will seek to recover money owed.

Uncertainty grows for those who already moved on

Labor workplace relations spokesperson Ella Haddad described the situation as deeply concerning for people who made major financial decisions on the basis of their redundancy payments. "Public servants who took redundancies up to a decade or possibly more ago could be hit with a tax bill that they weren't expecting and never saw coming," she said. She added that "potentially thousands of people" could be affected and called on the government to clarify whether it would cover the historic tax debt or seek to have the ATO wipe those debts, given the error was the government's own making. The Department of Premier and Cabinet has advised former employees on its website that no action is required "at this stage", with further information to be provided as advice becomes available.