Punter’s Politics is spot on about the gas cartel today. The excise on beer is significantly higher than what we collect via the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax (PRRT): HECS is also a revenue boom versus gas: Below is another cracker chart: Or try Norway for a comparison: Any way you cut it, Australia is being
DXY traded sideways as the American madman couldn’t stop loving the sound of his own voice with the longest SOTU ever. It said nothing of importance. CNY is off, and AUD will trail it. No Iran war and oil tumbles. Gold up for no reason tall. AI metals party resumes. Mining parabolas too. Copper is
In the debate over the appropriate level of migration into Australia, the argument is often made that there would be significant economic downsides if a major reduction in intake were to be realised. On a very short-term time horizon, that is almost certainly the case. With 10 out of the last 13 quarters seeing falls
Australia recorded the strongest net overseas migration (NOM) in the nation’s history between Q4 2019 and Q2 2025, with 266,000 net migrants arriving annually, including the Covid-19 border closure: This huge immigration inflow had a devastating impact on the rental market. Since the end of 2019, the record net migration flows (i.e., 266,000 per annum)
Adelaide Airport managing director Brenton Cox has labelled immigration critics “economically illiterate”, arguing that lower immigration levels would hinder growth and hinder housing supply. “Those things (people say) like people coming to Australia are ‘taking jobs and taking our houses’… But the macro (economic) work absolutely disproves that”. “It makes clear (immigrants) are creating jobs
The ABS monthly number is out, and whoa! Both headline and trimmed mean came in 10bps above consensus. The details aren’t good, either. How has Australia managed to experience 4% goods inflation while China is flooding the world with dirt-cheap products displaced from the US? Energy shock, I’m guessing. The same is still playing out
The charts look absolutely horrible, but when Goldman does a seaonal comparions it’s not as bad. It compared the daily average volume during the 2026 CNY holidays (Feb15th-23rd) vs. 2025 holiday period (Jan 28th-Feb 4th): against an undemanding base, sampled primary markets recorded improvements with daily average volume rising +39%, while secondary markets registered more
The ABC reported that only half of the 22,000 homes approved for construction in Western Sydney are proceeding to construction because there are not enough buyers able or willing to pay enough to cover construction costs. KPMG urban economist Terry Rawnsley warned that interest rate rises would worsen the viability of new apartment projects due
Charts from TME. The IGV software index is trading at 23 RSI. Seventh level of hell. Yet AI remains a tool, not a process manager. The hallucination rate is still high and is a feature, not a bug of LLMs. My argument is that humans may have already proven themselves more useless and mistake-prone than
The evidence from around the world shows that when you raise energy costs, your economy deindustrialises. Consider the following examples. Germany: Germany once had about 22 GW of nuclear power, producing over 160 TWh annually at a reasonable cost and with no emissions. Following the Fukushima accident in 2011, Berlin shut down 8 GW of