Sydney silk Ruth Higgins has been named Australia's first female solicitor-general, fresh off securing ASIC's partial win against Star Entertainment's former directors. The competition law heavyweight, who's appeared for and against the ACCC, CBA and Woolworths, starts June 8 on $878k. She'll immediately face the constitutional challenge to the government's social media ban: AFR

⚖️ Class Actions: If your client hands documents to a regulator, assume plaintiff firms will come looking for them. ASIC can provide examination transcripts and related books directly to firms contemplating related proceedings under s 25 of the ASIC Act, and confidentiality won't typically shield materials without a suppression order, which is hard to get. In Victoria, defendants must give early discovery of all "critical documents" from the outset of a class action. It is critical to treat every document created for a regulator as a potential exhibit in downstream litigation, and keep a meticulous disclosure log so nothing surfaces unexpectedly later: Corrs

⚖️ Arbitration: The Victorian Supreme Court has reinforced the primacy of the kompetenz-kompetenz principle in Oil Basins Ltd v Esso Australia Resources Pty Ltd, staying proceedings under s 7 of the International Arbitration Act 1974 (Cth). Oil Basins sought a narrow carve-out from the Canadian Dell Computers decision, arguing that the jurisdictional question was a short point of law fit for judicial determination. The judge wasn't buying it: the arbitration clause sat within a suite of complex provisions with a long amendment history, making it anything but simple. Reaffirming Hancock v Rinehart, courts aren't in the business of filtering what's suitable for arbitration: Clayton Utz

⚖️ Consumer: The ACCC is pushing for a $36m penalty against Emma Sleep. In ACCC v Emma Sleep GmbH & Ors, the online mattress retailer admitted to three years of misleading strikethrough pricing across 74 products, 58 of which were never on sale at the strikethrough price at all. The regulator's counsel called the conduct "deliberate, systematic, aggressive and longstanding", noting Emma Sleep had been on notice since late 2021. Emma Sleep is countering with $2m. Justice Hill queried the seriousness of the penalty, noting consumers sustained no quantifiable loss, having at least received a decent quality mattress. Corrs act for the ACCC. Allens act for Emma Sleep: Lawyerly

Pam Bondi is out as Trump's Attorney General, and the official line is that she's "transitioning to the private sector." The real line? She couldn't keep both Trump and the MAGA base happy over the Epstein files, while Trump was openly pushing her to prosecute his enemies. Tough brief for any lawyer with professional ethics. Her subpoena to face the House Oversight Committee still stands, so she's not done yet: ABC News

Economists have spent three years calling AI labour disruption overblown, but that's shifting. The concern now isn't mass redundancy, it's that entry-level white-collar roles are quietly disappearing first. One Brookings researcher put it plainly: "I really don't know anything a college student can bring to my team that Claude can't do." Given the scale of what's coming, governments need to start thinking about displaced worker policies now: AFR

📺 OpenAI has acquired TBPN (Technology Business Programming Network), a daily live tech talk show described by the New York Times as "Silicon Valley's newest obsession." Sam Altman says the standard comms playbook doesn't cut it for a company driving AGI, so buying the platform made more sense than building one. TBPN retains editorial independence and sits within OpenAI's Strategy org: OpenAI

🏦 HSBC is back on the block with its Australian retail business, this time offloading just the loan book while running down deposits, mirroring its NZ exit playbook. Indicative bids are due by the end of April, with Blackstone among the frontrunners, helped along by Pepper co-founder Mike Culhane's seat at the table: The Australian

💰 Bank of Queensland has struck a strategic capital partnership with Challenger, offloading a $3.7bn whole-of-loan portfolio to cut debt funding by $3.4bn and return $300m to shareholders via buyback and fully franked special dividend. The deal's expected to close by the end of May: Capital Brief