Ben is joined by William Bowe from the Poll Bludger to wrap up the results of yesterday’s Western Australian state election, which was a third consecutive landslide victory for Labor.
There was an ostensible “news” article on the ABC news site about Trump’s executive order (EO) titled “DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.” The capitalisation is not mine; it is in the executive order FFS! The Whitehouse is becoming an ALL_CAPS tweet factory.
For this post I wanted to put together a bunch of my thoughts the day after the WA election. I will be recording a podcast this afternoon and I hope to get it out before the end of the day.
Firstly, let’s zoom out and look at the scale of the result.
Labor won 41 seats out of 59 at the 2017 election, alongside 18 Liberals and Nationals. The 2021 result saw Labor win 53 seats, to just six for the conservative parties.
Goldman on the EUR rocket. Based on our models, the Euro’s surge this week went far beyond its typical relationship with 1-year growth expectations (even if we allow for a more front-loaded shift than our economists expect) and, to a lesser degree, the currency also strengthened more than can be explained by higher Bund yields.
6:57 – Bunbury is the kind of seat that would fall if the conservative parties were close to taking power, but the swing is falling a long way short. The first booth has a 17.7% swing away from Labor and 8.4% to the Liberals – the ABC thinks that’s a 2PP swing of 12.4%, which is far short of what they’d need to win.
International Reading: Elon Musk says the Post Office and Amtrak should be privatized – Business Insider Trump lifting US sanctions on Russia — a ‘huge win’ for Putin, ‘chaos’ for global economy – Kyiv Independent GOP Lawmakers Unveil Bill To ‘End The Fed’ – Daily Caller ‘Doge’s actual impact is less than $10bn’ – FT
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AUD/USD EUR/USD USD/JPY GBP/USD Gold WTI Brent Australia 200 US S&P 500 UK 100 Japan 225
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Could Trump and Musk be seeking to end our time on Earth?
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 5th March 2025
In thinking about the war being waged against life on Earth by Donald Trump, Elon Musk and their minions, I keep bumping into a horrible suspicion. Could it be that this is not just about delivering the world to oligarchs and corporations – not just about wringing as much profit from living systems as they can? Could it be that they want to see the destruction of the habitable planet?
On Thursday, Statistics New Zealand released data on Building Work Put in Place, which showed that residential construction plunged by 4.9% in Q4 2024, to be 25% down from its previous peak in Q3 2022. The following chart from Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro also shows that the level of building was revised down in
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From July 1, 2024, Victorian non-profit private schools with an income per student of more than $15,000 were liable to a 4.86% payroll tax. These schools would pay the Victorian government an estimated $101.8 million in 2025. An investigation by The Age revealed that the payroll tax charge resulted in an average annual tuition increase
Wednesday’s Q4 national accounts showed that Australia’s economy finally emerged from its prolonged per capita recession, recording the first increase (+0.1%) in GDP per capita in 21 months. In its media release following the result, the Australian Industry Group (AIG) cautioned that the “improvement in GDP masks continuing private sector weakness”. “Today’s national accounts data