THE NEWS WRAP: Premiers to meet Tony Abbott after Holden closure announcement

The premiers of Victoria and South Australia, Denis Napthine and Jay Weatherill, are set to hold talks with Prime Minister Tony Abbott following the announcement by Holden it will end production in Australia by 2017.

The decision by Holden’s parent company, General Motors, to end production in Australia will directly impact 2900 jobs over the next four years across Victoria and South Australia, with more than 30,000 jobs at risk nationally.

“It’s about the whole industrialisation of our economy, and what now needs to be put in place to replace what is a very significant element of the South Australian economy, indeed of the national economy,” Weatherill says.

“I’ll seize that opportunity to talk to Mr Abbott about the future of Toyota and how the federal government can work with the state government and Toyota and the entire automotive supply chain industry to secure the future of Toyota,” Napthine says.

“I spoke to Mr Yasuda of Toyota last night. Obviously the government will be talking to Toyota… We want Toyota to continue. They are in a slightly different position to Holden – much more of their local production has been for export,” Abbott says.

Bill Morrow to be named new NBN boss

Vodafone chief executive Bill Morrow is set to be named as the new chief executive of the NBN Co., according to reports.

The announcement is set to be made as Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull prepares to deliver a strategic review into the rollout, which identifies cost issues and flaws in Labor’s rollout of the project.

Vodafone plays hardball on rents

Mobile communications giant Vodafone is threatening to abandon stores as part of its hardball negotiating tactics with retail landlords, as the struggling telco attempts to renegotiate leases on its stores.

“[They] verbally are refusing to pay the rent. For an enterprise of the calibre of Vodafone, this is cowboy behaviour, considering all the bad press Vodafone have had. They are playing hardball,” one landlord told Fairfax.

“This request [to cut rents] is on the back of numerous store closures that have been performed in the last two years due to the significant losses that have been incurred from the impact of customers leaving. In conjunction with the above customer base loss there have been considerable revenue losses,” a leaked letter from the company to landlords reportedly states.

Overnight

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down to 5109.5. The Aussie dollar is down to US90.63 cents.