Australia’s top economists overwhelmingly want Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to scrap a special deal with Western Australia that’s set to deliver it an extra A$40 billion in Commonwealth funding by the end of the decade.
Albanese pledged to maintain the special treatment for Western Australia in a visit to Perth in February. He even signed a promise on a newspaper front page and on a reporter’s arm with a marker pen.
Generative AI has created a gold rush today, but that rush has not yet grown into either a productivity boom or a financial bubble. There are good reasons to think this rush could become either one.Which one is just around the corner? Could it be both? In case you forgot, we did live through a productivity bonanza that morphed into a financial bubble during the commercialization of the Internet. That alone makes it plausible to forecast that history will repeat itself a quarter of a century later. You may also have more self-centered reasons to pay attention.
A knife attack at the Bondi Junction Westfield shopping centre in Sydney has resulted in the deaths of seven people, including the killer.
The dead include four women and one male who died at the shopping centre. The mother of a nine-month old baby subsequently died in hospital. The baby was also stabbed in the attack.
The killer, a lone 40-year-old male, known to police, was shot dead by a NSW Police Inspector who was the first police officer to arrive on the scene.
This page shows the heads of government and opposition leaders in Australia from April 10, 2024.
There are nine parliaments in Australia. There is one Federal Parliament in Canberra, six State Parliaments (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia & Tasmania) and two Territory Parliaments (Northern Territory & Australian Capital Territory).
There are just five weeks until the budget, and the usual lists of winners and losers.
Among last year’s winners were said to be single parents, renters and first home buyers. Among the losers were said to be vapers, truckies and consultants.
Samantha Mostyn, a lawyer,business-woman and gender equality campaigner, has been appointed the 28th Governor-General of Australia.
The appointment was announced this morning by the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. The vice-regal appointment is made by King Charles III on the advice of the prime minister.
Mostyn will take up the 5-year appointment on July 1, 2024.
Watch the Albanese-Mostyn press conference (26m):
Who’d want to go back to the days before Uber? The days in which you could never be certain you could get a taxi, the days of long wait times trying to order one on the phone, and the days in which you would never know for sure how your driver would treat you.
This is Senator Dave Sharma’s maiden speech to the Senate.
Sharma, a Liberal, assumed his NSW Senate position on November 30, 2023. He filled a casual vacancy created by the departure of Senator Marise Payne. At her retirement, Payne was the longest-serving female senator, having held her seat for 26 years, 5 months and 21 days since 1997.
The Reserve Bank has left the cash rate unchanged at 4.35%, in a decision announced today.
The cash rate has now been held at 4.35% for the past four months.
In a statement released today, the RBA board says that inflation has moderated but is still high. It says the “outlook is highly uncertain”.
Watch RBA Governor Michele Bullock’s press conference (39m):
Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio?
It can’t be because of the money.
Australia’s top economists are pressing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese not to ape US President Joe Biden’s “think big” approach to clean energy.
The commercial future of AI will soon be bigger than the actions of any firm, individual, research team, or open-source community. In the near term, a massive tailwind of potential use cases and nearly completed projects will determine the rate of progress in creating value for users and suppliers. Still, the source of the next frontier commercial breakthrough and the distribution of profits look undetermined and, for reasons to be explained, underdetermined.
Large language models (LLMs) have overrun commercial markets, more like a tsunami than a normal technical wave of interest. The topic is everywhere –news stories, blogs, podcasts, startup investments, analyst reports, hackathons, and government announcements. A virtual frenzy surrounds it.