ANZ CEO Shayne Elliot described Victoria as “one of the toughest” places to do business. It is easy to see why. The Victorian government introduced a payroll tax surcharge in the 2021-22 State Budget as part of a mental health and wellness levy, but only for businesses with a payroll of $10 million or more.
Increasingly, it appears DXY is topped and EUR bottomed. AUD follows EUR but it will be held back by CNY this time. Gold up. Is oil about to do what it should, finally? Chinese demand growth is dead. OPEC to go ahead with production increase. Bonus chart! There is room for lower oil. Commods meh.
Wall Street crumbled overnight as the realisation has set in that the Don in the Oval Office is hell bent on creating a recession in the US with the slew of tariffs that are now going to go ahead against almost every single major trading partner. The latest ISM print didn’t help either while European
Last month, Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro posted the following chart tracking labour productivity across major advanced nations. As you can see, Australia’s labour productivity growth has been among the worst in the advanced world after recording zero improvement since 2016. Last week, the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) Michael Plumb delivered a speech to a
Metricon Homes CEO Brad Duggan warns that Australia cannot house its growing population, and believes the federal government must adopt a “wartime response” to the housing crisis. Based on current construction rates, Duggan adds that the government’s target of building 1.2 million homes in the five years from mid-2024 will likely fall about 300,000 short.
Asian share markets are seeing generally positive results across the board but have been overshadowed by the spike in cryptocurrencies on the latest Trump spewing of verbal diarrhea that continues to evaporate confidence in the USD. Indeed King Dollar is falling against most of the majors with the Australian dollar coming back with a reprieve
In a November joint statement, Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher announced that the Future Fund, which is one-third the size of the Australian economy, will be directed to invest in housing, security, and the green energy transition “where possible, appropriate, and consistent with strong returns”. This marked the first time the federal
Every so often the old bastard makes sense. Sadly, he can’t do so with any frequency because Domain profits come with a fatwa against criticism of immigration . The productivity of labour hasn’t increased much because business hasn’t been spending much on labour-saving equipment. Mystery solved. Almost to a person, economists are great believers in
The latest rental vacancy report from SQM Research showed that the nation’s vacancy rate fell to 1.0% in January 2025, down 0.1% from a year earlier. “The sharp decrease in rental vacancies strongly indicates Australia’s rental market crisis is not over and has potentially deteriorated at the start of 2025”, SQM Research noted. SQM Research
Here are some sensible words. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to repair his relationship with US counterpart Donald Trump after a public spat at the White House on Friday. …Qualifying the incident as “very unfortunate,” Mark Rutte said in an interview with the BBC that he’s spoken to Zelenskiy twice