He is accused of trying to murder his wife after she told him their marriage was over.

A review of the teacher aide’s hiring found legal requirements were not met.

Westpac has forecast interest rates will be cut seven times over 2024 and 2025, but not before more hikes heap further pain on households.

The big four bank expects the cash rate to peak at 4.1 per cent in May – up from its previous predicted high of 3.85 per cent – and remain at the same level until December, before gradually dropping to 2.35 per cent in September 2025.

The Reserve Bank of Australia this month lifted the cash rate to 3.35 per cent, the ninth consecutive rise.

READ MORE: Big bank's ominous interest rate forecast

Westpac's board previously forecast there would be a pause in the interest rate lifting in April but due to higher-than-estimated inflation, their prediction has shifted.

"The RBA seems locked in to further hikes in the cash rate in both March and April," Westpac chief economist Bill Evans said in the bank's weekly report.

"The revised forecasts and March quarter inflation report are likely to require a further hike in May."

Evans predicted the cash rate sitting at 4.1 per cent would be "deeply contradictory" and a pause in the lifting of the rate would be appropriate.

Money Matters: Bizarre rule that makes coins no longer 'legal tender'

Evans wrote he didn't believe the cash rate would drop before the March quarter of 2024.

"Westpac concurs and expects that the next move in rates beyond mid–2023 will be the beginning of an easing cycle in the March quarter 2024," the report reads.

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Residents learned more about 60 new houses being built in their area for those in need.

In one incident, he smashed a service station sliding door with a weight nine times.

An open letter from the police officer who shot an Indigenous teenager has been condemned by NT police lawyers as a blatant attempt to pervert the course of justice.

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains an image of a person who has died, which has been used with the permission of his family.

An inquest into the shooting death of Kumanjayi Walker resumed on Monday, days after Constable Zachary Rolfe left the country having written a lengthy letter critical of the coroner and NT Police.

Rolfe shot Kumanjayi Walker, 19, three times as he resisted arrest in Yuendumu, northwest of Alice Springs, on November 9, 2019.

Rolfe said the NT Police Force had wasted millions of dollars on disciplining him rather than giving him a medal.

"Despite this, the coronial focus is still on me rather than on areas that could improve the circumstances of the NT," he wrote last week.

READ MORE: How inflationary pressures are driving up the cost of vitamins

Ian Freckelton, representing the NT Police Force, questioned the motive of Rolfe's letter and if it was an attempt to intimidate senior leaders of the police force.

"We don't know whether the motive of Mr Rolfe is to try to intimidate the two members of the executive who are going to be giving evidence before this week," Freckelton said.

"It is an attempt to pervert the course of justice. It is a gross and blatant attempt to interfere with your inquest.

"As best we read it, that seems to be the aspiration of Mr Rolfe."

Deputy Police Commissioner Murray Smalpage is one of more than a dozen witnesses scheduled to give evidence at the inquest in the next fortnight.

More police officers, Territory Families and other departmental witnesses are also due to give evidence.

Rolfe has previously refused to answer questions as part of the inquest.

He appealed an NT Supreme Court ruling that would compel him to answer uncomfortable questions at the inquest.

The appeal is scheduled for April 11.

He was acquitted last March by a jury after a high-profile five-week trial.

The inquest was established in early September to hear voices from his community, and to examine the wider circumstances surrounding the shooting.

Two Warlpiri elders from a different community near Yuendumu told the inquest the community's relationship with police officers had improved in recent decades, thanks to police efforts to work and build relationships with elders.

The inquest has heard from more than 50 witnesses so far.

Experts have told the inquest Rolfe's decision to forcefully enter and militarily clear the house where they found the Warlpiri man was risky and against orders.

The coroner has also heard Rolfe sent and received racist, sexist and homophobic text messages during conversations with other officers, which he claims have been cherrypicked to paint him in a certain way.

Rolfe defended the terms used in these messages as playground language in the letter.

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Inflationary pressures are causing vitamin prices to spike and there's no end in sight for the hip pocket pain, business owners have warned.

Two factors are behind the soaring prices; high production costs, combined with the rising cost of raw materials used in the supplements.

For instance, fish oil exported from South America has seen a twofold rise in price since 2020.

READ MORE: Passengers trapped on Jetstar plane for seven hours after emergency

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Alastair Symington, chief executive of vitamin giant Blackmores told Sydney Morning Herald raw material costs have risen by 15 and 20 per cent over the past six months.

As a result, the prices of products across the Australia and New Zealand market has jumped between five per cent and six per cent.

READ MORE: Major Aussie airport brought to standstill by outage

Symington did not rule out further increases.

"It's something that we're looking at … but it is not something that we would take unilaterally across our range, it would be selective," he said.

READ MORE: Aussies choosing between meds and food amid cost of living crisis

It's not the only item feeling the inflationary pinch.

Figures published at the start of the year revealed grocery bills rose 9.2 per cent overall in the final quarter of the year – up from an 8.2 per cent increase the previous quarter.

Dairy prices rose by 14 per cent, led by a 24 per cent surge in cheese.Butter prices also rose 18 per cent.

Meat prices overall lifted 10 per cent, with pork up 16 per cent and lamb up 10 per cent.

A teenager has been arrested after an alleged hit-run in Melbourne over the weekend left a woman who was making an Uber Eats delivery seriously injured.

Police allege Choon Lin Lan, 50, was getting items out of her car, which was parked on Tunstall Road in Donvale, when she was hit by a red Mazda about 10pm on Saturday.

She was crushed between two cars and flung onto the road, leaving her with cracked skull.

READ MORE: Woman, 74, allegedly threatened with knife in car jacking

Relatives of Lan said she was left with life-changing injuries after she was hit while making the delivery in the city's east.

She was taken to hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.

Police have since arrested a 17-year-old Donvale boy, who is expected to be charged with a number of offences including failing to stop after an accident, failing to render assistance, unlicensed driving and failing to report an accident.

The Albanese government will appoint a Coordinator for Cyber Security who will be given new powers to protect Australians from mass cyberattacks.

The coordinator will be located within the Department of Home Affairs, with the exact nature of their powers to be decided upon following a roundtable of industry experts and department heads.

At a roundtable held Monday in Sydney, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said "cybersecurity is national security".

READ MORE: Australia's first womb transplant proof of mother's unconditional love

"Strengthening Australia's cybersecurity is a fundamental priority for our government," he said.

"We recognise it is an essential part of life, the way that every Australian and every business and every community organisation deals with each other, on a day-to-day basis."

He said the area of cybersecurity was a "rapidly evolving threat", admitting state-sponsored attacks are an area of concern.

"This is really fast-moving," he said.

"For too many years Australia has been off the pace. Our government is determined to change that.

"We of course are conscious as a government as well, about state-sponsored attacks, which are increasingly prevalent."

READ MORE: The war of words over superannuation explained

Albanese said the agency will fall under the responsibility of Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil.

"As part of this process, we are announcing a coordinator for cybersecurity," he said.

"We want that coordination to be done centrally so it's most effective, that's why that will be located in the Department of Home Affairs.

"I don't underestimate the challenge we are facing … it will need adaptation from us and for business and for the government, to make sure we keep on top of this."

The announcement comes in the wake of several high-profile cyberattacks including companies such as Optus and Medibank that saw the personal data of millions of Australians stolen.

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Scammers are taking to social media sites such as Facebook to rip off house hunters desperate to snare a rental amid near-record low vacancy rates.

Gold Coast renter Stefana Vella, who manages a clothing store in Burleigh Heads, was facing her third move in four months when she first came into contact with one of the scammers a few weeks ago.

Vella said she had a perfect rental history, but, as a single woman with a pet dog, she found herself getting rejected time and again by real estate agents who wanted a tenant to "tick all of their boxes perfectly".

READ MORE: Australia setting up new agency to fight cyber-crime

With her landlord set to sell the granny flat she had been living in, Vella said she had looked at more than 100 properties since November.

Vella was searching everywhere possible for a rental, including on social media.

"It was taking me a long time to find something," Vella said.

"My girlfriends were sending me links from things they had seen on Facebook Marketplace."

Rental vacancy rates for the central Gold Coast area came in at a tiny 0.7 per cent last month, according to the latest data from SQM research.

In the meantime, prices for rental homes in the area surged 28.5 per cent over the last year and 26.2 per cent for units.

"There's just so much price-gouging with rent. I run a store in the heart of Burleigh Heads. I've been a local for years, but I've been priced out of my own community," Vella said.

So when a friend sent Vella a link to a Facebook Marketplace advertisement for a three-bedroom house for rent in Burleigh Heads at $950 per week, she jumped on it.

"It looked perfect and it was in my area. It was being rented privately so straight away I reached out to the man who was listed as the local contact," Vella said.

Vella said she was then passed on to a woman who claimed to be the owner of the property.

Not wanting to miss out on the property, Vella said she sent the woman all of her references and her recent bank statements.

The owner told Vella she was overseas, but that Vella seemed like a perfect tenant for the property.

Vella said she was told she would need to put a deposit down in order to secure the property, with the bond listed at $3800.

Not willing to pay the money without seeing the property, Vella asked both of the parties involved if she could arrange an inspection.

"The lady then became quite nasty, threatening that I would lose my chance if I didn't give them money," Vella said.

"Obviously I didn't want to do that. I was highly suspicious that it was a scam, so I went to the property to have a look for myself.

"They had told me the unit was empty, but when I went there I could see there was a bin out and it looked like people were living there.

"This confirmed for me that it was a scam."

READ MORE: Where rents are up almost 50 per cent in the last year

A Google search of the property address provided further proof.

The same unit was listed on real estate site Domain as having been rented out by a real estate company a month earlier, in January.

Identical photos had been used to advertise the property on Domain as on the Facebook Marketplace posting, making it clear the scammer had simply lifted the photos from the real estate agent's ad.

Chief executive officer of the Real Estate Institute of NSW, Tim McKibbin, said he had heard of scammers using similar tactics and stealing images from bonafide real estate agents in NSW.

While real estate scams became common on social media a few years ago, back then it was largely confined to the holiday and short-term rental market, McKibbin said. 

However, the scammers were growing ever more prolific and now appeared to be targeting the long-term rental space, he added. 

"People are just desperate because trying to find a rental property now is a real challenge," McKibbin.

McKibbin said that not only were real estate agents routinely seeing lines snaking down the street of house hunters at rental property openings, but he was also hearing of buyers agents fielding calls from potential renters trying to get ahead of the game when a property sold to an investor.

House hunters should be wary of following any type of property lead on social media, McKibbin said.

"I think the message needs to get to consumers that if you are not going directly through a recognised channel – either an agent or an owner, who you have confidence is the real owner – unless you're doing that, you really are at risk," he said.

Vella said she was so incensed by the actions of the scammers that she took her investigations one step further, creating a fake email to message the woman who claimed to be owner of the property and pretending to be a new potential victim.

After playing along with the scam, Vella said the woman requested she send her ID.

Vella was told once her ID was verified she would be asked to pay for the unit's bond in Bitcoin.

While she has since managed to find a property to rent through personal connections, Vella said she felt compelled to speak out about her experience in order to warn other more vulnerable members of society.

"These people must be exposed and stopped," Vella said.

A spokesperson for Meta, the owner of Facebook, said scammers were presenting a challenge in all online environments, and marketplaces were no exception.

"We're committed to safeguarding the integrity of our services, and dedicate substantial resources and technology solutions to protect our community from fake accounts and other inauthentic behaviour," the spokesperson said in a statement.

"We also encourage users to take steps to protect themselves, such as checking reviews of online sellers, not handing over money until you see the item for sale, and using payment options that provide strong protections."

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