With its great view of fireworks, New Year’s Eve at Williamstown is a robust affair. This year was a bust. Police in every uniform and mounted on every conveyance outnumbered a crowd perhaps 20% the size of last year. Bikes, motorbikes, quads, horses, and jackboots corralled desultory revellers. Reveller in name only. Official violence stomped
Last week’s Cotality’s daily dwelling values index, which tracks home values across Australia’s five major capital city markets, ended 2025 with momentum stalling. At the aggregate 5-city level, Cotality’s daily dwelling values index rose 0.5%, down significantly from the 1.0% growth recorded in November. Today, we get the release of PropTrak’s competing series, which shows
Risk markets will pivot this week on the volatility around the Trump regime’s invasion of Venezuela as 2026 accelerates the new global order of “take what you want around you”. Watch out Cuba, Columbia, Canada and Greenland! Wall Street remains somewhat in holiday mode but will wake up with a bang tonight with stock markets
On Saturday, the U.S. armed forces launched a series of attacks on Venezuela, which culminated in the capture of President Nicholas Maduro. As these events continue to make headlines around the globe, it’s worth exploring why this nation on the northern coast of South America matters in global affairs. Oil And It’s Geopolitical Impact First,
You can lead a politician to gas, but you cannot make him/her use it. After thirteen years of campaigning for a sensible gas regulation regime on Australia’s east coast, MB has again failed to secure anything of substance from Canberra. Indeed, Labour’s late-year gas reservation is barely even a joke of a policy. Why those
2025 turned out to be a banner year in the great steel crash. As of the November data, Chinese output was down 4% year-to-date. With a generous extrapolation for December, Chinese steel output will have shrunk well below one billion tonnes in 2025, approaching 2018 levels. Leading CISA data confirms no late-year rebound for China.
On Friday 2 January 2026 every major media outlet in the country was running the news that 120 Australian Business leaders were calling for the Federal Government to call a Commonwealth Royal Commission into the Bondi Shootings and Anti-Semitism in Australia. Australia’s biggest industry groups demand an antisemitism royal commission – The Age Australia’s biggest
Yellow Robin with katydid in Broulee Courtesy Geoff McVeigh Global Macro Five charts that explain the global economic outlook for 2026 – Guardian Oil prices record steepest annual fall since Covid pandemic – Guardian The 2025 energy transition in eight charts: clean wins, dirty setbacks – Reuters Commodities buffeted by Trump whirlwind seek relief
Just before Christmas, the Albanese government released its wet lettuce East Coast gas reservation policy, which has arrived too late and will do little to improve gas supply and affordability. The main problem with the policy is that it will apply only to new gas projects from 2027 and will require exporters to set aside
The past five years have been a shocker for Australian tenants, with the median national advertised rent soaring by 44%, according to Cotality. This surge in rents has added around $10,600 to the annual cost of renting the median advertised home. As a result, the share of household income required to rent the median Australian