As 2024 starts, a reminder that across the nine federal, state and territory jurisdictions, there are eight Labor governments.
Current Australian Heads of Government & Opposition Leaders – from December 21, 2024
No.
Jurisdiction
PM/Premier/
Chief Minister
Age
Party
Since
Opposition Leader
Age
Party
Since
1.
AUSTRALIA
Anthony Albanese
62
ALP
23.05.2022
On the eve of the third anniversary of the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill insurrection, President Joe Biden has made a swingeing attack on his putative Republican opponent in this year’s election, former President Donald Trump.
Speaking in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Biden told his audience: “Democracy is on the ballot. Freedom is on the ballot.”
Watch Biden’s speech (33m):
It is time to review the year in digital technology. Oh, what fun! As with prior reviews, we will arrange this review like an award ceremony.
There are three criteria for an award:
Among the seemingly endless coverage of Queen Elizabeth II dying at age 96 in Balmoral, Scotland, a legal fact gets lost: this event generates exactly zero change in law. There are non-law implications – historical, cultural, symbolic, administrative – but not legal change.
Homeowners will face mortgage rates near 5.5% in a little over a year, according to a survey of 22 leading Australian economists.
The Conversation’s 2022-23 forecasting survey predicts an increase in the Reserve Bank’s cash rate from its present 0.85% to a peak of 3.1% by next August.
Census data to be released Tuesday shows Australia changing rapidly before COVID, gaining an extra one million residents from overseas in the past five years, almost all of them in the three years before borders were closed.
For the first time since the question has been asked in the census, more than half of Australia’s residents (51.5%) report being either born overseas or having an overseas-born parent.
More than one quarter of the one million new arrivals have come from India or Nepal.
The really bizarre thing about calls for a UK-style windfall profits tax on gas is that Australia’s already got one.
By lifting its cash rate by 0.5 points, from 0.35% to 0.85%, the Reserve Bank has added about another $120 per month in payments for a A$500,000 mortgage.
If financial markets are to be believed, by the end of this year it will have added a total of $800 per month – and, by the end of next year, a total approaching $1,000 per month.
A recession in the US usually brings on a recession in the rest of the world, although not always in Australia.
Australia has escaped such a recession twice in the past 50 years.
We avoided the early-2000s so-called tech-wreck recession, and we avoided the so-called “great recession” during the global financial crisis.
The Victorian Labor government has done some fantastic work, but principles have to count for something.
Just for the record, I canceled my membership to the Victorian Labor Party on the 13th May.
Those of you who know me well will know that this hasn’t been a decision I’ve taken lightly, however under the circumstances, it’s a decision that was easy to make.
Stand by for something “reckless and dangerous”.
You may find this hard to believe, but the 2016 federal election campaign was a full fortnight longer than this one. I remember journalists from the campaign bus complaining afterwards that Malcolm Turnbull was moribund and lazy, booking a single daily event.
The last week of campaigns used to be frantic, behind the scenes. In public, right up until the final week, the leaders would make all sorts of promises, many of them expensive, with nary a mention of the spending cuts or tax increases that would be needed to pay for them.
The Reserve Bank is pushing up interest rates to take money out of our hands.
The first increase in the current round will add about A$65 a month to the cost of paying off a $500,000 mortgage.