Good morning all.

1. Victoria’s lockdown has been extended by seven days. Premier Daniel Andrews said the state needed “more time” to drive case numbers down and to quash its growing coronavirus outbreak. The border with NSW has been tightened too, with the only ‘red zone’ permits for travellers from the northern state being issued to authorised workers and those who have been granted a compassionate exemption. There were 22 new cases announced today.

2. South Australia has joined the lockdown club, announcing a seven-day effort after recording three new cases of coronavirus in the community. “The reality is we are dealing with a different variant to last year’s Parafield cluster,” Premier Steven Marshall said. “This is a highly infectious strain and that is why we are taking these extreme precautions.” Also entering the not-so-exclusive club: residents of Orange and surrounding areas of regional NSW.

3. Well, it happened. Jeff Bezos launched 100 kilometres above Earth on the first crewed flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket. Bezos’s brother Mark, 82-year-old aviator Wally Funk, and Dutch teen Oliver Daemen flew with him. You can watch the return to Earth here:

4. After his trip, Bezos said that the Earth’s entire “polluting industry” must be moved into space in order to preserve the Earth. “We need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry, and move it into space,” the former Amazon CEO said. The billionaire businessman explained that the massive undertaking would “take decades to achieve, but you have to start. And big things start with small steps.” Alright, get back to me once it’s done.

5. A slim majority of Australians want political leaders to phase out the use of lockdowns and border controls as more people are vaccinated, according to a survey by the Nine papers. 54% of voters believe these measures should be gradually discontinued over the coming months. Only 19% disagree with the idea of phasing out the curbs, with 27% neutral or undecided.

6. Enjoying your sluggish wage growth? If your answer is a bizarre “yes”, then you’re in luck! In the minutes for its July meeting, where it kept interest rates on hold at 0.1%, the Reserve bank wanted that inertia would likely keep wage growth low, and there was no sign of a lift. Wages growth reached a record low of 1.4% during the worst of the pandemic last year.

7. Afterpay is making a major pivot into banking services, unveiling its new Money by Afterpay app to be released in October. Offering a savings account and a debit card via Westpac, the company wants the standalone app to become the go-to financial management tool of young Australians. Westpac is expected to pay interest to Afterpay customers and a finder fee to Afterpay directly in a bid to access the buy now, pay later company’s user base, while deals with other financial institutions are expected further down the track.

8. Australian education platform Go1 is now valued at more than $1 billion after raising $272 million in new investment. The platform, which links users with online education courses from different publishers, now has 3.5 million users with an eye on overseas expansion. Led by Softbank and backed by AirTree, Salesforce and Microsoft’s venture arms among others, it was one of Australia’s largest ever funding rounds.

9. JB Hi-Fi expects full-year net profit to soar more than 60% and sales to rise more than 12% despite a weaker June quarter. The company and its appliances business, The Good Guys, have been big beneficiaries of the redirection of consumer spending through the pandemic. The record result was underpinned by strong sales and bigger gross margins as JB Hi-Fi sold more high-margin appliances and discounted less.

10. The number of Australians who think states have performed better than the federal government in handling the pandemic is growing, according to new research. A paper from the Australia Institute shows that the gap between those who think the Morrison government has performed well compared to the state’s approaches has widened in recent months. Only 16% of respondents believe the federal government is outperforming the states, polling from July showed.

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