Blogotariat

Last week saw Australia’s housing minister, Clare O’Neil, launch a propaganda campaign to distract voters from Labor’s housing failures. First, O’Neil tweeted that Labor that “for the first time in a decade, new homes are being built faster”, and that Labor is making homes more affordable by building more of them. O’Neil’s propaganda came as

The post Labor’s ‘Big Australia’ is locked and loaded appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Independent candidate Catherine Connolly, a long-time advocate of Irish military neutrality and a critic of NATO’s expansion and EU militarization, has won Ireland’s presidential election in a landslide.

The ballot count was still underway when Connolly’s main rival, Heather Humphreys, conceded defeat after early tallies showed her trailing by a wide margin. Preliminary results put Connolly ahead by 63% to 29%.

By Lucinda Jerogin, Associate Economist at CBA: It was a quiet week in Australia with a dearth of data releases. News offshore was dominated by trade headlines as US-China tensions flared and subsequently cooled. The US Government shut down continued. Next week locally all eyes will be on the all-important quarterly CPI ahead of the

The post The economic week ahead appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro has accused the US of "fabricating a new war", after it ordered the world's largest warship to be sent to the Caribbean.

The USS Gerald R Ford can carry up to 90 aircraft and its deployment marks a massive increase in US firepower in the region.

The first car I ever drove was my parents’ red and white EH Holden station wagon in which I started to learn to drive, with my father partly terrified in the front passenger’s seat. It had a radio which, when I could, was mostly tuned to whichever AM radio station played the music I liked (Beatles, Rolling Stones, and suchlike). My first car was a white second hand Mazda 1300 with whitewall tyres and rust in the bottom of all the doors. It had a very tinny radio (worse than that in the EH) but no cassette player.

In Asian media this week: Trump says he spoke to Modi but India denies call took place. Plus: Japan’s new coalition a shift to the right; Timor Leste finally gets seat at regional table; Life worse than death on Myanmar scam farm; Prabowo – control, populism and diminished accountability; Sri Lanka suffers from world’s worst plastics spill.

There was – or seemed to be – hope for peace for a brief moment. And how deceptive it turned out to be. I was among those cautiously optimistic when we were told just over a week ago that the presidents of Russia and the US, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, had a long and useful phone conversation and were planning to meet in person again.

International Reading: The Mother of All Corruption: Is $300 Million the Largest Bribe In Human History ?: White House releases donor list for Trump ballroom amid East Wing demolition – The Hill White House ballroom update: Trump raises price by $100 million – News Week Beyond Meat is falling back to earth after rallying 1,300%

The post Weekend reading and MB media appearances appeared first on MacroBusiness.

When the CEO of BHP tells everyone he meets that Australian electricity prices are double those of countries we compete with, some fact checking is required.

All 100 turbines of the first stage of massive Queensland wind farm now feeding power into the grid after final commissioning was completed this week. 

Wind farm that offered the lowest publicly announced feed in tariff, and a landmark "baseload renewables" contract with BHP is officially open for business.

By Monday, Australia will have surpassed 100,000 small battery systems installed and registered since 1 July when household batteries became eligible for rebates.